Quest for Anna Klein, The Read Online Free Page A

the obstacle was rarely clear, but then what did it matter if a mountain pass was blocked by a blizzard or by the thievish whim of some local warlord? In the importing business, his father had taught him, one learned to accept the inscrutable. There was no other enterprise on earth, according to the elder Danforth, that more fully and continually confronted hazard: shipments inundated by swollen rivers or buried in avalanches, trains seized by starving mobs or expropriated by revolutionaries, and if the merchandise did not fall victim to any of these, then it was held captive by greedy functionaries intent on expanding bribery’s already more than generous largesse. Importation operated like the universe, as Danforth had come to see it: irrationally and violently, with something vaguely criminal at its core.
    The bar door burst open and Clayton came through it, stopped, stomped the snow from his shoes, then peered about expectantly.
    Danforth lifted his hand.
    Clayton nodded briskly and headed toward him, rubbing his glasses with a white handkerchief. He’d returned them to his face by the time he reached the table.
    â€œIt’s like the Blizzard of Eighty-three out there,” he said.
    Clayton worked as a photography archivist for the library on Forty-second Street, a job secured for him, no doubt, by the large annual contribution his family made to the library. He specialized in New York City history; his head was filled with black-and-white images of its storied past. Danforth knew with certainty that at the mention of the 1883 blizzard, Clayton’s mind had instantly offered up striking pictures of that peculiar disaster: a city locked in great drifts of ghostly pale; horses buriedin harness, their heads protruding from white mounds, stiff as bookends.
    â€œHave you been here long?” Clayton asked.
    â€œOnly a few minutes.”
    He pulled off his coat and draped it over an empty chair but left his red scarf around his neck and shoulders. “This place seems quite cozy, don’t you think?”
    The barmaid lumbered over. Clayton ordered a vodka tonic with lime.
    â€œSo,” he said once it was just the two of them again, “how are things in imports?”
    â€œA family business is a family business,” Danforth answered. “I liked the training better than the mission.”
    â€œImagine how bored you’ll be at thirty,” Clayton said with a quick smile.
    Both of the drinks came a moment later. They lifted them but toasted nothing.
    Clayton put down his glass firmly. “What’s the most frightened you’ve ever been, Tom?”
    It was an odd question, Danforth thought, and yet he instantly recalled the incident quite vividly.
    â€œI was seven years old,” he answered. “My father and I were in Romania. The train suddenly stopped very hard, so you knew the brakeman had seen something unexpected up ahead. In this case it was a man hanging from a cross.”
    Clayton’s gaze intensified. “A cross?”
    â€œYes,” Danforth answered. “As in Calvary. It had been raised beside the tracks at the end of a mountain pass, and several men with rifles were standing on the railroad bed. A bandit with a dagger ordered us out of the train to see it. There was never a word after that. Other bandits came out of the woods and simply walked among the passengers, taking whatever they liked. Theynodded toward your pockets and you emptied them. They nodded toward your watch and you gave it to them. I noticed that my father’s fingers were trembling. I’d never seen him frightened, and I said to myself, ‘Well, I guess you don’t fool around with men who nail other men to crosses.’”
    â€œThat’s quite an experience,” Clayton said.
    Danforth recalled the flat look in the bandits’ eyes, how lightless they’d been, utterly without sparkle. “Dead souls are very scary, Robert.”
    â€œDead