There Fell a Shadow by Andrew Klavan Page B

Victoria, in the bar there. We traded stories. You know how it is. There were several about her.’’
    I listened. I imagined the reporters gathered at the bar’s round table. I imagined their voices murmuring.
    â€œIt was said, you see, that she ran an underground railroad. A sort of rescue operation for those caught up in the fighting, those—targeted, I suppose you’d say, for execution. What made it all so remarkable is that she took no side in the fighting. She had no political point of view.” His slim, well-manicured fingers reached for the silver coffeepot. He refilled our cups. “If you were wanted by the government—which meant you were subject to sudden arrest … I mean, Wells, you have to understand: it meant that you and your wife and your children could disappear silently in the night, that you could be dragged from your home and taken to the cellar of a place they called Imperial House. And in Imperial House, my friend, you could scream your lungs out while they killed you inch by inch. While your neighbors huddled together in fear pretending you’d moved away or never existed….” He paused. He sipped his coffee delicately. “So, as I say, if you were wanted by the government, there was a rumor that Eleanora could hide you, that she had a network of safe houses and guides who could get you out of the country, up the coast possibly to Morocco or down to South Africa. Maybe it was just something people told each other. A hope they conjured up when there was no hope left. At any rate, the same applied—so the story went—if you were being hunted by the rebels. And what a charming bunch they were.” Wexler raised his eyebrows as if he were talking about a group of boorish party crashers. “Oh, they, in the name of liberation and justice, they would come battering down your door with the butts of their machine guns and … I had a friend, a conservative editor named Briley, Joseph Briley. He was vacationing in the countryside when the glorious rebels burst into his house one night. They shoved a gun barrel up one of his nostrils and made him and his two children watch while they raped and murdered his wife. Then they cut one of the children, a little boy, to pieces with a machete while the other child, a girl of three, looked on. I won’t tell you how they killed her.”
    â€œHow do you know all this?” I said. My voice was hoarse.
    â€œI was coming over to his house that evening. I arrived ten minutes after the rebels left. Briley was still alive. He was bleeding to death, but he was still alive. He told me what had happened while we waited for the police. Frankly, Wells, I thanked providence when he died in my arms.”
    My imagination kept going. I saw the scene. I didn’t like what I saw. I tried to focus on the well-coiffed, well-dressed, well-situated man sitting before me. It seemed impossible he’d ever knelt in the blood and sweat of a massacre to cradle a dying friend.
    One corner of Wexler’s mouth lifted, as if he knew what I was thinking. But he only said: “So … if the rebels were looking for you, you could also go to Eleanora. She made no distinction. She would risk her safety, her operation, her life for anyone in need. That’s what they said about her at the Hotel Victoria in Mangrela. That was the story.”
    â€œIf it was true, why didn’t anyone stop her?” I asked.
    â€œAh, my friend, that’s just the point. When I say she was a legendary figure, I mean just that. No one had actually seen her in years. No one who returned to tell about it at any rate. The government couldn’t find her to arrest her. The rebels couldn’t find her to assassinate her. She came—like a good fairy, rather—when you needed her, and not a moment before. In fact, I think that was the aspect of it that tantalized Colt the most.”
    â€œFinding her.”
    â€œYes. When