Memories of Midnight

Constantin Demiris was calling. "Good morning, Catherine. How are you feeling today?"



"Fine, thank you, Costa."



"You are feeling better?"



"Yes."



"Good. I'm very pleased to hear that. I'm sending a delegation of our company executives to London to study our operation there. I would appreciate it if you would take them in hand and look after them."



"I'll be happy to. When will they be arriving?"



"Tomorrow morning."



"I'll do everything I can."



"I know I can count on you. Thank you, Catherine."



"You're welcome."



Good-bye, Catherine.



The connection was broken.



So, that was done! Constantin Demiris sat back in his chair, thinking. With Catherine Alexander gone, there would be no more loose ends. Now he could turn his full attention to his wife and her brother.



"We're having company tonight. Some executives from the office. I want you to act as hostess."



It had been so long since she had been a hostess for her husband. Melina felt elated, excited. Perhaps this will change things.



The dinner that evening changed nothing. Three men arrived, dined, and left. The dinner was a blur.



Melina was perfunctorily introduced to the men and sat there while her husband charmed them. She had almost forgotten how charismatic Costa could be. He told amusing stories and gave them lavish compliments, and they loved it. They were in the presence of a great man, and they showed that they were aware of it. Melina never got a chance to speak. Every time she started to say something, Costa interrupted, until finally she sat there in silence.



Why did he want me here? Melina wondered.



At the end of the evening, as the men were leaving, Demiris said, "You'll be flying to London early in the morning. I'm sure you'll take care of everything that needs to be done."



And they were gone.



The delegation arrived in London the following morning. There were three of them, all of different nationalities.



The American, Jerry Haley, was a tall, muscular man with a friendly, open face and slate-gray eyes. He had the largest hands Catherine had ever seen. She was fascinated by them. They seemed to have a life of their own, constantly in motion, twisting and turning, as though eager to have something to do.



The Frenchman, Yves Renard, was a sharp contrast. He was short and stout. His features were pinched, and he had cold, probing eyes that seemed to see through Catherine. He appeared withdrawn and self-contained. Wary was the word that came to Catherine's mind. But wary of what? Catherine wondered.



The third member of the delegation was Dino Mattusi. He was Italian, friendly and ingratiating, exuding charm through every pore.



"Mr. Demiris thinks highly of you," Mattusi said.



"That's very flattering."



"He said you are going to take care of us in London. Look, I brought you a little gift." He handed Catherine a package with a Hermes label on it. Inside was a beautiful silk scarf.



"Thank you," Catherine said. "That's very thoughtful of you." She looked at the others. "Let me show you to your offices."



Behind them was a loud crash. They all turned. A young boy stood there, staring in dismay at a package he had dropped. He was carrying three suitcases. The boy looked about fifteen and was small for his age. He had curly brown hair and bright green eyes, and he was fragile-looking.



"For Christ's sake," Renard snapped. "Be careful with those things!"



"I'm sorry," the boy said nervously. "Excuse me. Where shall I put the suitcases?"



Renard said impatiently, "Put them anywhere. We'll get them later."



Catherine looked at the boy inquiringly. Evelyn explained, "He quit his job as an office boy in Athens. We needed another office boy here."



"What's your name?" Catherine asked.



"Atanas Stavich, ma'am." He was near tears.



"All right, Atanas. There's a room in back where you can put the suitcases. I'll see that they're taken care of."



The boy said gratefully, "Thank you, ma'am."



Catherine turned back to the men. "Mr. Demiris said that you'll be studying our operation here. I'll help you in every way I can. If there is anything at all you need, I'll try to arrange it for you. Now, if you gentlemen will come with me, I'll introduce you to Wim and the rest of the staff." As they walked down the corridor, Catherine stopped to make the introductions. They reached Wim's office.



"Wim, this is the delegation Mr. Demiris sent. This is Yves Renard, Dino Mattusi, and Jerry Haley. They just arrived from Greece."



Wim glared at them. "Greece has a population of only seven million six hundred and thirty thousand." The men looked at one another, puzzled.



Catherine smiled to herself. They were having exactly the same reaction to Wim that she had had when she first met him.



"I've had your offices prepared," Catherine said to the men. "Would you like to follow me?"



When they were out in the corridor, Jerry Haley asked, "What the hell was that? Someone said he was important around here."



"He is," Catherine assured him. "Wim keeps track of the finances of all the various divisions."



"I wouldn't let him keep track of my cat," Haley snorted.



"When you get to know him better..."



"I do not wish to get to know him better," the Frenchman muttered.



"I've arranged your hotels for you," Catherine told the group. "I understand each of you wants to stay in a different hotel."



"That's right," Mattusi replied.



Catherine started to make a comment, then decided not to. It was none of her business why they had chosen to stay at different hotels.



He watched Catherine, thinking. She's much prettier than I expected. That will make it more interesting. And she has suffered pain. I can read it in her eyes. I will teach her how exquisite pain can be. We will enjoy it together. And when I have finished with her, I will send her where there is no more pain. She will go to the Maker or the Baker. I'm going to enjoy this. I am going to enjoy this very much.



Catherine showed the men to their respective offices, and when they were settled in, she started to return to her own desk. From the corridor Catherine heard the Frenchman yelling at the young boy.



"This is the wrong briefcase, stupid. Mine is the brown one. Brown! Do you understand English?"



"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir." His voice was filled with panic.



I'm going to have to do something about this, Catherine thought.



Evelyn Kaye said, "If you need any help with this group, I'm here."



"I appreciate it, Evelyn. I'll let you know."



A few minutes later, Atanas Stavich walked past Catherine's office. She called out, "Would you come in here a moment, please?"



The boy looked at her with a frightened expression. "Yes, ma'am." He walked in looking as though he expected to be whipped.



"Close the door, please."



"Yes, ma'am."



"Take a chair, Atanas. It is Atanas, isn't it?"



"Yes, ma'am."



She was trying to put him at ease, and was not succeeding. "There's nothing to be frightened of."



"No, ma'am."



Catherine sat there studying him, wondering what terrible things had been done to him to make him so fearful. She decided she was going to have to try to learn more about his past.



"Atanas, if anyone here gives you any trouble, or is mean to you, I want you to come to me. Do you understand?"



He swallowed. "Yes, ma'am."



But she wondered if he would have nerve enough to come to her. Someone, somewhere, had broken his spirit.



"We'll talk later," Catherine said.



The resumes of the delegation showed that they had worked in various divisions of Constantin Demiris's far-flung empire, so they had all had experience within the organization. The one who puzzled Catherine the most was the amiable Italian, Dino Mattusi. He bombarded Catherine with questions to which he should have known the answers, and he did not seem terribly interested in learning about the London operation. In fact, he seemed less interested in the company than in Catherine's personal life.



"Are you married?" Mattusi asked.



"No."



"But you have been married?"



"Yes."



"Divorced?"



She wanted to end the conversation. "I'm a widow."



Mattusi grinned at her. "I'll bet you have a friend. You know what I mean?"



"I know what you mean," Catherine said stiffly. And it's none of your business. "Are you married?"



"SȬ, sȬ. I have a wife and four beautiful bambini. They miss me so much when I am away from home."



"Do you travel a great deal, Mr. Mattusi?"



He looked hurt. "Dino, Dino. Mr. Mattusi is my father. Yes, I travel a great deal." He smiled at Catherine and lowered his voice. "But sometimes traveling can bring some extra pleasures. You know what I mean?"



Catherine returned his smile. "No."



At 12:15 that afternoon, Catherine left to keep her appointment with Dr. Hamilton. To her surprise, she found herself looking forward to it. She remembered how upset she had been the last time she had gone to see him. This time, she walked into his office filled with a sense of anticipation. The receptionist had gone to lunch and the door to the doctor's office was open. Alan Hamilton was waiting for her.



"Come in," he greeted her.



Catherine walked into the office and he indicated a chair.



"Well. Did you have a good week?"



Was it a good week? Not really. She had been unable to get Kirk Reynolds's death out of her mind. "It was all right. I - I keep busy."



"That's very helpful. How long have you worked for Constantin Demiris?"



"Four months."



"Do you enjoy your work?"



"It keeps my mind off...off of things. I owe a lot to Mr. Demiris. I can't tell you how much he's done for me." Catherine smiled ruefully. "But I guess I will, won't I?"



Alan Hamilton shook his head. "You'll tell me only what you want to tell me."



There was a silence. She finally broke it. "My husband used to work for Mr. Demiris. He was his pilot. I...I had a boating accident and I lost my memory. When I regained it, Mr. Demiris offered me this job."



I'm leaving out the pain, and the terror. Am I ashamed to tell him my husband tried to murder me? Is it because I'm afraid he'll think me less worthwhile?



"It isn't easy for any of us to talk about our pasts."



Catherine looked at him, silent.



"You said you lost your memory."



"Yes."



"You had a boating accident."



"Yes." Catherine's lips were stiff, as though she were determined to tell him as little as possible. She was torn with a terrible conflict. She wanted to tell him everything and get his help. She wanted to tell him nothing, to be left alone.



Alan Hamilton was studying her thoughtfully. "Are you divorced?"



Yes. By a firing squad. "He's...My husband died."



"Miss Alexander..." He hesitated. "Do you mind if I call you Catherine?"



"No."



"I'm Alan. Catherine, what are you afraid of?"



She stiffened. "What makes you think I'm afraid?"



"Aren't you?"



"No." This time the silence was longer.



She was afraid to put it into words, afraid to bring the reality out into the open. "People around me...seem to die."



If he was taken aback, he did not show it. "And you believe that you're the cause of their deaths?"



"Yes. No. I don't know. I'm...confused."



"We often blame ourselves for things that happen to other people. If a husband and wife get a divorce, the children think they're responsible. If someone curses a person and that person dies, he thinks he was the cause of it. That kind of belief is not at all unusual. You..."



"It's more than that."



"Is it?" He watched her, ready to listen.



The words poured out. "My husband was killed, and his...his mistress. The two lawyers who defended them died. And now..." Her voice broke. "Kirk."



"And you think you're responsible for all those deaths. That's a tremendous burden to carry around, isn't it?"



"I...I seem to be some kind of bad-luck charm. I'm afraid to have a relationship with another man. I don't think I could stand it if anything..."



"Catherine, do you know whose life you're responsible for? Yours. No one else's. It's impossible for you to control anyone else's life and death. You're innocent. You had nothing to do with any of those deaths. You must understand that."



You're innocent. You had nothing to do with any of those deaths. And Catherine sat there thinking about those words. She wanted desperately to believe them. Those people died because of their actions, not because of hers. And as for Kirk, it was an unfortunate accident. Wasn't it?



Alan Hamilton was quietly watching her. Catherine looked up and thought, He's a decent man. Another thought came unbidden into her mind: I wish I had met him earlier. Guiltily, Catherine glanced at the framed photograph of Alan's wife and child on the coffee table.



"Thank you," Catherine said. "I...I'm going to try to believe that. I'll have to get used to the idea."



Alan Hamilton smiled. "We'll get used to it together. Are you coming back?"



"What?"



"This was a trial run, remember? You were going to decide whether you wanted to go on with this."



Catherine did not hesitate. "Yes, I'll be back, Alan."



When she had gone, Alan Hamilton sat there thinking about her.



He had treated many attractive patients during the years he had been practicing, and some of them had indicated a sexual interest in him. But he was too good a psychiatrist to allow himself to be tempted. A personal relationship with a patient was one of the first taboos of his profession. It would have been a betrayal.



Dr. Alan Hamilton came from a medical background. His father was a surgeon who had married his nurse and Alan's grandfather had been a famous cardiologist. From the time he was a small boy, Alan knew that he wanted to be a doctor. A surgeon like his father. He had attended medical school at King's College and, after graduation, had gone on to study surgery.



He had a natural flair for it, a skill that could not be taught. And then, on September 1, 1939, the army of the Third Reich had marched across the border of Poland, and two days later Britain and France declared war. The Second World War had begun.



Alan Hamilton had enlisted as a surgeon.



On June 22, 1940, after the Axis forces had conquered Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, and the Low Countries, France fell, and the brunt of the war fell on the British Isles.



At first, a hundred planes a day dropped bombs on British cities. Soon it was two hundred planes, then a thousand. The carnage was beyond imagination. The wounded and dying were everywhere. Cities were in flames. But Hitler had badly misjudged the British. The attacks only served to strengthen their resolve. They were ready to die for their freedom.



There was no respite, day or night, and Alan Hamilton found himself going without sleep for stretches that sometimes lasted as long as sixty hours. When the emergency hospital he worked in was bombed, he moved his patients to a warehouse. He saved countless lives, working under the most hazardous conditions possible.



In October, when the bombing was at its height, the air-raid sirens had sounded, and people were making for the air-raid shelters below ground. Alan was in the middle of surgery, and he refused to leave his patient. The bombs were coming closer. A doctor working with Alan said, "Let's get the hell out of here."



"In a minute." He had the patient's chest open and was removing bloody pieces of shrapnel.



"Alan!"



But he could not leave. He was concentrating on what he was doing, oblivious to the sound of the bombs falling all around him. He never heard the sound of the bomb that fell on the building.



He was in a coma for six days, and when he awakened, he learned that, among his other injuries, the bones of his right hand had been crushed. They had been set and looked normal, but he would never operate again.



It took him almost a year to get over the trauma of having his future destroyed. He was under the care of a psychiatrist, a no-nonsense doctor who said, "It's about time you stopped feeling sorry for yourself and got on with your life."



"Doing what?" Alan had asked bitterly.



"What you've been doing - only in a different way."



"I don't understand."



"You're a healer, Alan. You heal people's bodies. Well, you can't do that anymore. But it's just as important to heal people's minds. You'd make a good psychiatrist. You're intelligent and you have compassion. Think about it."



It had turned out to be one of the most rewarding decisions he had ever made. He enjoyed what he was doing tremendously. In a sense, he found it even more satisfying to bring patients who were living in despair back to normal than to minister to their physical welfare. His reputation had grown quickly, and for the past three years he had been forced to turn new patients away. He had agreed to see Catherine only so that he could recommend another doctor to her. But something about her had touched him. I must help her.



When Catherine returned to her office after her session with Alan Hamilton, she went in to see Wim.



"I saw Dr. Hamilton today," Catherine said.



"Yeah? In psychiatric social readjustment, the rating scale for death of a spouse is one hundred, divorce seventy-three, marital separation from mate sixty-five, detention in jail sixty-three, death of a close family member sixty-three, personal injury or illness fifty-three, marriage fifty, being fired at work forty-seven..."



Catherine stood there listening. What must it be like, she wondered, to think of things only in mathematical terms? Never to know another person as a human being, never to have a real friend. I feel as though I've found a new friend, Catherine thought.



I wonder how long he's been married.