Free Quest for Anna Klein, The by Thomas H. Cook Page B

layered with other inflections, like a voice behind a mask.
    â€œThat’s her greatest asset,” Bannion said.
    â€œNot her courage?” Danforth asked.
    Bannion shrugged. “There’s never a shortage of courage,” he said. “It’s skill that’s hard to find.” He appeared sad that this was the case, that humanity was very good at meeting danger, very poor at knowing what to do about it. A realization of this fallen state, mankind nobly brave but helplessly incompetent, swam into his eyes, and Danforth thought it gave him the look of a disappointed god.
    â€œWhere did you meet Clayton?” Danforth asked.
    â€œAt one of his talks at the library,” Bannion said. “He seemed to think that the wealthy had an obligation to do something. I had an idea of what that might be.”
    â€œI still don’t know what the Project is, by the way,” Danforth told him.
    â€œWith any luck, you never will,” Bannion said flatly.
    â€œIt’s very ambitious, I’m sure,” Danforth said. “Clayton’s not one for small measures.”
    â€œVery ambitious, yes,” Bannion said, clearly refusing to reveal any part of the Project. “Has he told you that I was a Communist?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œOh, yes, I was a great singer of the ‘Internationale,’” Bannion said with edgy bitterness. “One of
those
kind of Communists.” He appeared still seared by the experience, a man cheated by a clever swindler. “I wasted years of my life marching under that banner.” Those lost years were obviously a source of deep resentment; Bannion seemed raw and charged with violence, a man who’d caught the only woman he had ever loved sleeping with another man. “Clayton prefers people whose gods have failed,” he added.
    â€œWhat god failed Anna?” Danforth asked.
    To that question, Bannion gave the saddest answer Danforth had ever heard.
    â€œLife.”
    Danforth felt that this was true and wondered if it was in this terrible failure she had found the steeliness he saw in her.
    â€œAnna’s going to be brought in earlier than we thought,” Bannion told him. “Clayton wanted me to tell you this in person. So that we could meet. You won’t have further dealings with her once she leaves for Europe.”
    So she would be a bird in his life, Danforth thought, a bird for whom he had briefly provided a nest and who would soon take flight and then simply disappear over the horizon.
    â€œWhen is she leaving?” he asked.
    â€œWe’d like her in place within a few weeks. No later than mid-May.”
    â€œWhy the hurry?”
    â€œBecause things are heating up, as I’m sure you’re aware,” Bannion answered.
    â€œWhere is she going?”
    â€œThere’s no need for you to know that,” Bannion answered. A disquiet surfaced in his eyes, as if he’d suddenly spotted trouble in the distance. “And once she’s gone, you should never mention her to anyone.”
    â€œI understand,” Danforth said. “I’ll never say her name again.”
    Bannion gave no hint of how he received this declaration, only glanced to the right, where a beat-up sedan had come to a halt at the far end of the park. There were two men in the front seat and one in the back, a configuration that appeared to draw Bannion’s grim attention. He waited until one of the men got out and walked into a nearby store, then he turned back to Danforth. “You should be aware that they may already be onto the Project,” he said. “And if so, they’ll stop at nothing. So right now, all of us have to watch our backs, because they could be anyone, anywhere.”
    Danforth found this assertion slightly paranoid. “Who is this mysterious ‘they’?” he asked doubtfully.
    â€œGerman sympathizers, of course,” Bannion answered. “The type who break up