Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [185]
“Late.”
“It’s funny,” said Littlemore. “People are already forgetting September sixteenth. When it happened, it was like nothing would ever be the same. The country was frozen. Life was going to be different forever.”
“At least we didn’t go to war. A manufactured war on a country that had nothing to do with the bombing—God knows the price we would have paid for that, if you hadn’t stopped it.”
“Yeah—I should be famous,” said Littlemore. “Instead I’m broke.”
“We could go to India.”
“Why India?”
“Poverty is holy in India.” Younger ground out his cigarette under a heel. “So no one gets punished for it. The bombing.”
“I don’t know about that. Where did you and I first see Drobac?”
“At the Commodore Hotel—after they kidnapped Colette,” answered Younger.
“Nope.”
Younger shook his head: “Where then?”
“A horse-drawn wagon passed you and the Miss and me when we were walking down Nassau Street the morning of September sixteenth. Remember—about three minutes before the bomb went off? With a load so heavy the mare could barely drag it behind her? Drobac was the guy driving that wagon.”
Bonjour,” said Luc, looking up at his sister that night.
The Susquehanna had arrived twelve hours late. The boy, sprucer and cleaner than Younger had ever seen him, had just come down the gangway, hand in hand with Oktavian Kinsky, into the bright electric lights of the dock. There were no stars in the sky, nor any moon. The cloud cover was too thick.
For an instant Colette was paralyzed. It was the first time she’d heard her brother speak in six years. She could not fit the voice to Luc; it was too mature, too self-possessed, as if a stranger had taken over her brother’s body and were speaking through his mouth. Then somehow the voice and the steady eyes and the serious face came together all at once: it was he. She opened her arms and gathered him in.
“Bonjour?” she repeated, hugging him. “How can it be bonjour in the middle of the night, you goose? And your hair—you let them cut it?”
Luc nodded gravely.
Oktavian greeted Younger and Colette—the Littlemores having departed hours before—like long-lost friends. “I’m here to start a fleet of hired cars,” Oktavian declared. “That sort of thing is not frowned on in America, I’m told.”
“On the contrary,” agreed Younger. “And you’ll have to fight off the American ladies, Count, at least the ones I’m going to introduce you to. They worship aristocracy.”
“But you abolished your titles of nobility over a hundred years ago,” said Oktavian.
“People always want what they can’t have,” said Younger.
“Not me,” said Colette.
That night, they stayed with Mrs. Meloney, who generously opened her home to them. Colette had persuaded Mrs. Meloney to help the dial workers at the luminous-paint factories—and the good woman had taken to the business with all her usual industry and alacrity.
At Brighton’s Manhattan plant, the dial painters were being tested for radiation exposure. Over half the girls were radioactive, especially in their teeth and jaws; several of them glowed in the dark. Pointing of brushes with the mouth had been forbidden. Protective gloves were made mandatory. Radiation detectors were being installed. Brighton’s bank accounts had been seized, and his assets were being held for the benefit of girls who developed illnesses as a result of their work in his factories.
Younger and Colette put Luc to bed. “I have something to tell you,” the boy said to his sister.
“I know,” answered Colette. “Dr. Freud told us.”
“He told you?”
“Only that you had something to say. He wouldn’t tell us what.”
“But now that I’m here,” said Luc, “I don’t want to say it anymore.”
“Sleep for now,” replied Colette. “Tomorrow you can