The Fugitive Read Online Free PDF Page A

“might have been” is enough to make you drop everything and start over from scratch.
    The screw-up was the work of Horacio, a politically effervescent Argentine exile. I had told him a thousand times to use pay phones to call me, but he couldn’t grasp the difference between an accidental fugitive and a political exile. He called to invite me to a party; I couldn’t hear any noise in the background, which filled me with misgivings. “Horacio, you’re calling from your house, aren’t you?” I asked. The guilty silence on the other end of the line was all I needed to be certain. Fifteen minutes later I was already on my way. I pulled a folded sheet of paper out of my wallet with an emergency phone number. I stepped into the first phone booth I found and picked up the receiver.
    My ace in the hole was a Greek Communist who had fled the country when the Colonels took over. He stayed in France and enjoyed a highly successful career as a psychiatrist. I had never met him, but he knew about my situation; I told him what had happened and we made an appointment to meet near Place de la Bastille. He showed up late in a beat-up mustard-yellow Lada: a skinny little guy, about forty-five, well dressed, with a dark complexion that made him look more like a North African than a Greek. Courteous and friendly, he told me that I could use his apartment; he would sleep at his girlfriend’s place until I could find another place to stay.
    He just forgot to tell me that his house was located on the grounds of the psychiatric hospital where he worked, which I only found out when we drove through the main gate. It was an insane asylum for the wealthy, just outside of Paris; a handsome mansion with extensive grounds, and old stables that had been turned into a hospital. It was a private hospital that favored alternative psychiatry. The psychiatrists lived in elegant little row houses that blended into the greenery. There were tennis courts and playgrounds for children. After showing me around his home and recommending that I read a number of party documents (which I later found to be in Greek), we agreed on a plausible cover in case of indiscreet questions. We created the character of Alberto, an Italian colleague, who had come to visit him for a few days. I had never pretended to be a psychiatrist before, but the real psychiatrist told me not to worry. It’s a lot harder to pretend to be a heart surgeon, he told me. It was early on a Friday afternoon, and he took his leave, saying that he’d be back on Monday, since he had no appointments till then.
    About an hour later, I went over to the guard station. I wanted to go back into town to get matters back on track, though my first errand would be to give Horacio a thorough dressing down. I tapped on the glass and waited patiently while the guard finished reading an article in his sports magazine. When he finally looked up, I told him that I wanted to go out for a while. I was a friend of the Greek psychiatrist, I added, by way of explanation. The guard smiled pleasantly at me, but made no motion to buzz the gate open. I tapped on the glass a little harder, and made the same request, providing a greater array of details this time. His smile was just as benevolent as the first time, but I could tell that he had no intention of letting me out. I lost my temper. And it wasn’t so much because he wouldn’t open the gate to let me out; it was that the idiot refused to acknowledge that I was “sane.” Pounding furiously on the glass, I found myself shouting things like “I’m a psychiatrist myself” and the classic phrase, “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.” At that point, he lost his temper too, as only the French know how to lose their tempers. He unleashed a torrent of foul insults and rude gestures and threatened to call the male nurses.
    That’s when I began to smile pleasantly at him; I waved goodbye