Escape the Night by Richard North Patterson Page B

stretched it out, sheltering his boat from the wind, until, at last, it glided through a last swatch of sunlight into the shadow of his father’s hand.
    They sat by the fountain, putting on their shoes and socks as Peter watched the boats on the lake.
    â€œCan we get a rowboat sometime?”
    â€œWho’s going to row it?”
    â€œI’ll help, I promise. Can we? Please?”
    Charles grinned. “In that case, I’ll give it every consideration.”
    They were silent for a while.
    â€œIt was dark when I fell, Daddy.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œIs that what it’s like to die?”
    â€œI’ll never let you die, Peter.”
    â€œBut Grandpa will.”
    It was quiet. His father watched the lake. “Yes, he will. Someday.”
    Peter felt suddenly cold. “You’ll always be my Daddy, won’t you?”
    Charles grasped his shoulders, a smile at one corner of his mouth, eyes grave and level. “Always.”
    Peter hugged his father’s neck. “Your zipper’s still down,” he said.
    They laughed and went home.
    They did not go alone.
    Once more, from a shelter much more secret than HUAC, John Joseph Englehardt was watching them.
    It began on yet another solitary, dreary morning, as he was indexing books in the library. Abruptly, he looked up and saw one of his former professors, a man for whom he had excelled; it was like seeing the ghost of his failed promise.
    They stared at each other in surprise; the man spoke, and offered him a cup of coffee. Englehardt could find no way to account for the misery of his work; sitting in the cafeteria, he admitted what had happened, omitting only his obsession with the Careys.
    An odd expression crossed the man’s face. As teacher and student they had not been close; Englehardt read it as distant pity and contempt, distaste for hearing failure’s story. So he was surprised when the professor called two lonely evenings later, suggesting dinner.
    He accepted with alacrity.
    They dined at the man’s apartment, alone; their talk was rambling and discursive, covering Yale and his studies. Knowing that the man had never married, Englehardt’s nerves trembled at his indirection.
    There was something, the professor finally confessed, that he wished to broach to Englehardt; regardless of his feelings, it must be confidential. Englehardt felt himself nod, expectant …
    The man did not simply teach at Yale.
    Occasionally, he went on, he did more confidential work, which Yale did not know. Englehardt’s retentive mind, his skills in research and analysis, might appeal to his more shadowy employer. The position was modest, but …
    That night, alone in his apartment, Englehardt wept.
    He might have dignity again; in some secret way and place, perhaps years distant, he could repay Charles Carey for this time of silent agony.
    When Englehardt at last joined the CIA, surviving its gauntlet of interviews and tests despite the black mark of his firing, Charles Carey was still sequestered in his brain.
    At once, he saw that he was working among men much more serious than those at HUAC.
    He sent for the Carey file, moldering in HUAC’s records.
    Settling modestly in Georgetown, he neither drank nor smoked nor entertained, ate only salads and lean meats, went over the Carey file in the solitude of night. Only the notes of Phillip’s analyst, too powerful in his memory to need reviewing, remained unopened.
    The agency became a monastery where he could cleanse his mind without the need for wealth, making its resources his own. He learned the techniques of assassination while others slept with women, saved the money others spent, used target practice as recreation, enthralled by the rhythm of his shooting. Thinking still of Phillip Carey, he devoted weekends to the study of psychoanalysis, new god of modern man, that he might control others through their inner lives. Free of friends or social life, his