Ride a Pale Horse Read Online Free PDF Page A

faces and gestures—no strain here, no tensions. Kärntnerstrasse was a quiet and colourful street where people talked and discussed, even disagreed openly, or read from a choice of varied newspapers (foreign as well as Austrian) as they slowly drank their coffee. No pressure, no hurry. The background to this leisure, this life-as-it-should-be, was only the soft sound of shoes on the pavement. Yet a few years ago, long-time visitors like Hubert Schleeman had told her, Kärntnerstrasse had been cobbled, had trolley-car lines and heavy traffic. But some visionary had the sense to wave a magic wand and presto! café tables with sunshades on a smoothly surfaced street, window boxes and giant planters overflowing with flowers, traffic banished, pedestrians everywhere. Yes, her mood was improving. And yet memories of last night kept edging back.
    Strange it was, when she was safely in bed in a free city (no interpreters or escorts, no overscheduled programmes), that she had lain awake, too troubled to sleep. Although she ached with physical exhaustion, all her busy mind could think of was Vasek, Vasek and that envelope, Vasek and his sombre predictions of world disaster. Over and over again, she had recalled his words, his phrases, his tone of voice; and her eyes—refusing to close and let her forget—had stared at the ceiling’s shadows and seen the garden, the terrace, Vasek, as if they were all part of a staged scene and she were in a front-row seat.
    Had it been a scene staged for her benefit? She no longer believed that. Until she had boarded her flight to Vienna, she had doubts mixed with fears. But no one had detained her, no one had led her away for questioning like Tony Marcus. She was free, and with her uncensored material intact. Vasek had not been trying to entrap her. Whatever he had been or had done in the past, at this moment in his life he was being honest. The garden scene was no myth; staged, perhaps, with careful planning, but real. Desperately real.
    She had plunged suddenly into sleep as dawn tried to steal through the red velvet curtains in her room, and lain oblivious to everything until eleven. After coffee and a brioche, Austrian version, she had washed and begun choosing her clothes for the interview. But her thoughts were on her briefcase. Half-dressed, she pulled it out from under her bed and flicked its coded numbers to unlock it: 0615—the month and day of her wedding to Alan Fern. A safe enough sequence: who would have thought that Karen Lee Cornell, a widow of four years, would be such a sentimentalist? We all have our weaknesses, she reminded herself sadly, and Alan was mine.
    What would he have been advising her now, if he were here? Probably, he’d laugh and say, “Just forget about Vasek and that damned envelope. How the hell did you get mixed up in a business like that anyway?” Yet, remembering Alan, she wondered if he wouldn’t have got mixed up in a business like that, too. Vasek had really played unfair, telling her that his life was in her hands. She wanted no more feeling of guilt over a death. Hadn’t she enough sense of remorse over Alan’s?
    She had sat, without moving, looking down at the neatly taped package of manila envelopes in her briefcase, thinking of Alan’s last evening in New York. Both of them were ready to leave for a first-night play, to be followed by a party at its author’s house. Alan hadn’t wanted to go: he was tired, dispirited—he had been working too much, his third novel (after two spectacular successes) was almost half-finished, but he wasn’t happy about it, was threatening to scrap it and begin something new. A night off the chain would do him good, she had urged. And looking at her expectant face, he said, “We’ll go. You look like a million dollars, love. You’ll slay them all.” So they went. And attended the post-theatre supper; too much food, too much drink, too much talk, too much everything. At three in the morning, they returned