Gone Tomorrow

Theresa Lee didn’t speak. I said, ‘We don’t know what happened to Susan Mark. Not really. Beyond the obvious facts, I mean.’

Lila Hoth nodded, courteously, delicately, and a little contritely. She said, ‘You want to understand my involvement.’

‘Yes, we do.’

‘It’s a long story. But let me say at the very beginning that nothing in it could possibly explain the events on the subway train.’

Theresa Lee said, ‘So let’s hear the story.’

And so we heard it. The first part of it was background information. Purely biographical. Lila Hoth was twenty-six years old. She was Ukrainian. She had been married at the age of eighteen to a Russian. The Russian had been knee-deep in nineties-style Moscow entrepreneurship. He had grabbed oil leases and coal and uranium rights from the crumbling state. He had become a single-figure billionaire. Next step was to become a double- figure billionaire. He didn’t make it. It was a tight bottleneck. Everyone wanted to squeeze through, and there wasn’t room for everyone to succeed. A rival had shot the Russian in the head, one year ago, outside a nightclub. The body had lain in the snow on the sidewalk all the next day. A message, Moscow style. The newly widowed Lila Hoth had taken the hint and cashed out and moved to London with her mother. She liked London and planned on living there for ever, awash with money but with nothing much to do.

She said, ‘There’s a presumption that young people who get rich will do things for their parents. You see it all the time with pop stars and movie stars and athletes. And such a thing is a very Ukrainian sentiment. My father died before I was born. My mother is all I have left. So of course, I offered her anything she wanted. Houses, cars, holidays, cruises. She refused them all. All she wanted was a favour. She wanted me to help her track down a man from her past. It was like the dust had settled after a long and turbulent life, and at last she was free to concentrate on what meant most to her.’

I asked, ‘Who was the man?’

‘An American soldier named John. That was all we knew. At first my mother claimed him only as an acquaintance. But then it emerged that he had been very kind to her, at a particular time and place.’

‘Where and when?’

‘In Berlin, for a short period in the early eighties.’

‘That’s vague.’

‘It was before I was born. It was in 1983. Privately I thought trying to find the man was a hopeless task. I thought my mother was becoming a silly old woman. But I was happy to go through the motions. And don’t worry, she doesn’t understand what we’re saying.’

Svetlana Hoth smiled and nodded at nothing in particular. I asked, ‘Why was your mother in Berlin?’

‘She was with the Red Anny,’ her daughter said.

‘Doing what?’

‘She was with an infantry regiment.’

‘As what?’

‘She was a political commissar. All regiments had one. In fact, all regiments had several.’

I asked, ‘So what did you do about tracing the American?’

‘My mother was clear that her friend John had been in the army, not the Marines. That was my starting point. So I telephoned from London to your Department of Defense and asked what I should do. After many explanations I was transferred to the Human Resources Command. They have a press office. The man I spoke to was quite touched. He thought it was a sweet story. Possibly he saw a public relations aspect, I don’t know. Some good news at last, perhaps, instead of all the bad. He said he would make inquiries. Personally I thought he was wasting his time. John is a very common name. And as I understand it, most American soldiers rotate through Germany, and most visit Berlin. So I thought the pool of possibilities would grow enormous. Which apparently it did. The next thing I knew was weeks later when a clerk called Susan Mark telephoned me. I wasn’t home. She left a message. She said she had been assigned the task. She told me that some names that sound like John are actually contractions of Jonathan, spelled without the letter H. She wanted to know if my mother had ever seen the name written down, perhaps on a note. I asked my mother and called Susan Mark back and told her we were sure it was John with the letter H. The conversation with Susan turned out to be very pleasant, and we had many more. We almost became friends, I think, the way you sometimes can on the phone. Like pen-pals, but talking instead of writing. She told me a lot about herself. She was a very lonely woman, and I think our conversations brightened her days.’

Lee asked, ‘And then what?’

‘Eventually I received news from Susan. She said she had arrived at some preliminary conclusions. I suggested we meet here in New York, almost as a way to consummate our friendship. You know, dinner and maybe a show. As a way of saying thank you for her efforts, certainly. But she never arrived.’

I asked, ‘What time were you expecting her?’

‘About ten o’clock. She said she would leave after work.’

‘Too late for dinner and a show.’

‘She planned to stay over. I booked a room for her.’

‘When did you get here?’