11 Harrowhouse (21 page)

“Sign it M. J. Mathew,” Massey told him.

“In my normal handwriting?”

“Of course.”

“M-A-T-H-E-W?”

“M. J.” instructed Massey.

Chesser signed the name on the application form. Massey took it from him. And the pen as well. “You'll notice I've managed to have the checks precertified,” said Massey.

Chesser thumbed through the checks and saw they were officially perforated and stamped with certification. They didn't have any amounts on them. Chesser didn't know that could be done.

“In order,” explained Massey, “that you may draw whatever funds are necessary. The bank will honor up to two million. That should be enough to handle it, don't you agree?”

“Should.” Chesser shrugged. He decided he was becoming accustomed to huge figures. “Are you sure about this bank?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” replied Massey. He had every right to be sure. He owned the bank, although his ownership was well camouflaged within the complex structure of his many enterprises.

Chesser thought a moment. “What's to stop me from withdrawing the two million and running?”

“Nothing except yourself.”

“I could do that.”

“You won't.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“If you did, you'd owe me,” Massey said. “Considerably more than you do now.”

“So, I'd owe you.”

“And I'd collect. Sooner or later, one way or another.”

“What about my fifteen million,” he asked. How will that be paid?”

“However you want it.”

“Dollars, negotiable bonds.”

“How about Standard Oil of New Jersey, that sort?”

“That'll be fine,” said Chesser, and demonstrated his confidence just for the minor drama of it. “Have them ready.”

“You deliver, I'll have them.”

Chesser stood and tucked the checks into his inside jacket pocket. Massey remained seated. Chesser was surprised to find he was now somewhat infatuated with the idea of giving this project a try. Maybe, he thought, insanity is catching. He also realized that fifteen million was not an incidental factor. He decided Massey didn't want to shake hands to seal the deal, so he started to go. When he got to the door it occurred to him that he'd forgotten something. He turned to Massey and asked, “Why?”

A quizzical look from Massey.

“Why do you want The System's inventory? You said you'd tell me.”

“I thought you'd have guessed by now.”

“It can't be for money.”

“No.”

“Revenge?”

“That's it exactly,” said Massey, too quickly.

“Getting back at them for the Shorewater project?”

“That's it.”

Chesser tried to believe it but couldn't. His expression told Massey that.

“I've another motive,” Massey admitted, “but it shouldn't concern you.”

“I want to know.”

Massey didn't want to lose Chesser now. “It's a personal matter,” he said.

Chesser waited.

“I'm a powerful man,” Massey said. “But power, like most vital things, requires nourishment. This project, if successful, will allow me to make a personal statement, so to speak, in a unique and substantial way.”

Chesser said nothing and kept his eyes steady.

Massey told him: “There aren't many really important things left for me to do, short of causing a war, and I'm too old for that.”

Chesser nodded and waited for Massey to continue. However, from Massey's expression, Chesser knew he wasn't going to get any more out of him.

No good-byes.

He just left Massey sitting there.

From the top of the stairs he saw Maren waiting in the main foyer. Lady Bolding was with her. They were talking in a serious manner. Chesser feared what he believed was probably the topic of their discussion. To spare himself from overhearing and perhaps provoking a confrontation then and there, he went down the stairs with enough noise to forewarn them.

“All set?” he asked, forcing a smile.

“The bags are in the car,” said Maren.

“Last night …” said Lady Bolding.

Chesser braced himself.

“… I promised to pay my gambling debt.” She handed Chesser her personal draft for a thousand.

“I left mine on the bed for Massey,” lied Maren.

Chesser hoped his relief wasn't too apparent.

Lady Bolding gave him her good-bye with swift cheek kisses. She gave Maren the same, left and right, and also an extra on the lips, a bit lingering, was Chesser's impression. But then, to him, everything seemed at that moment to be happening either too fast or in slow motion.

CHAPTER 13

I
N LESS
than a week, Chesser and Maren were settled in London. They stayed four nights at the Connaught and then moved into a house in Park Village, N.W.1.

The house was bought for Maren by her French lawyers, who went so far as to sacrifice their native compulsion to bargain in order to expedite the purchase. They estimated that more was to be gained by encouraging the domestic inclinations of their most promising client. With typical French tenacity and faith in the persuasions of passion, the lawyers were waiting for Maren to marry her fortune into their hands. So, they believed buying a house, something she'd never done before, was a step in the desired direction. For that reason alone they paid the first price asked, and obtained immediate possession for her.

The seller of the house was a foppish, middle-aged, semi-aristocrat by the name of Philip B. Hinds, who desperately needed the money to spend. Actually, Mr. Hinds was merely a tenant in possession of a Crown lease and the property really belonged to Princess Margaret, who received a modest sum in ground rent annually. Ground rent meaning literally payment for that portion of earth upon which the house was placed. The Crown lease had ninety-two years to run, which Maren considered time enough.

The house, as all the other four on the exclusive, crescent-shaped street, had been designed and built by Nash.
The
Nash, who had so much improved the look of London with his concepts. It was a four-story structure, furnished in excellent taste, complete with private garden and grouchy, fastidious staff. The latter was dismissed immediately by Maren. She preferred not to pay for the idiosyncrasies of the former foppish tenant. She replaced his servants with a pair of au pair girls, attractive young Danes named Siv and Britta, who, Maren wisely judged, would be more involved with satisfying their libidos than anything else. Besides, she thought, it was more pleasant to have attractive help around.

However, with her Nordic female directness, Maren let the Danes know they were to care for everything except that between Chesser's legs. She alone, emphasis on alone, would care for that. Not that the girls need be prudishly self-conscious. Stimulation was one thing, culmination quite something else. Siv and Britta understood exactly where the line was drawn and went about their duties with their fair, pretty faces framed by drawn-back blonde hair, their braless blouses punctuated by nipples and their skirts amply exposing well-shaped legs and even more whenever they bent to pick something up or reached for something high.

Thus, on the second day in the house, when Maren announced she was going shopping, she confidently left Chesser alone with the help.

Maren's precautions were practical but really unnecessary, considering Chesser's frame of mind. Certainly he was aware of the pretty Danes, but that form of interest was superseded by thoughts of his new occupation: thief. Since leaving Massey, Chesser had the feeling he was observing everything from a different dimension. As though he had stepped from one existence into another, just like that.

Now the reality of what he had committed himself to do came to him sharply. Ambivalence pulled him tight. One moment he was convinced that he should laugh the whole thing off. The next he was a man with fifteen million. What finally convinced him to be more committed to the venture was the realization that he had no choice. He had promised Maren, and to her a promise was an emotional mortgage. Maren and the venture were now inextricably related and although it was possible that he could continue to have her without the other, he knew that would somehow cause a change in their closeness—an important bruise, a flaw that might eventually have serious consequences. In theory he could, of course, walk away from the entire thing, including her, except that was something he knew he couldn't possibly do.

So, keeping the image of fifteen million in mind and pushing away caution and pessimism, he decided to get on with it.

The next problem was where to start. Chesser didn't know. He tried to think as a thief and came to the idea that perhaps what he ought to do first was take a look at 11 Harrowhouse from his new, criminal perspective. For disguise he put on a pair of dark glasses.

He exercised good judgment in not going too near number 11, but observed it from the corner. It told him nothing. It was as it had always been, merely a building butted tightly against other, similar buildings on each side.

He walked around the block to see it from the opposite corner, and all that presented was a view from the opposite corner. Nothing inspiring. He walked down Andrew Street, which ran perpendicular to Harrowhouse, and discovered a mews, one of those comparatively wide back alleyways which make the maze of London more of a maze. A city sign said its name was Puffing Mews. It ran parallel to Harrowhouse and would give him a rear view of number 11.

Chesser adjusted his dark glasses and strolled down the mews. He passed a parked Rolls-Royce saloon that was being wiped with routine affection by a uniformed chauffeur, who took no special notice of him. Chesser had difficulty ascertaining which building was number 11. But finally, when he saw a small sign that designated the delivery entrance of Mid-Continental Oil, he surmised that the next building was the one. It had to be. It was the only building on the mews with no rear entrance or windows, a sheer, five-story-high wall of brick.

He walked to the end of Puffing Mews, having learned no more than that the only way into number 11 was the front. Of course, it occurred to him another approach might be from above, the roof, but he had no way of confirming that.

He returned home. At least he'd accomplished getting started. He sprawled on a couch and tried for distraction with that month's edition of
Queen
. Siv voluntarily brought him a tumbler of very cold Aquavit and a warm smile, and he was thankful for both. He lay there, sipping the fiery yet frigid liquid, trying to get into what someone, via
Queen
, said was his horoscope.

Then he heard it.

A sound like a little sharp smack in a tight space. He thought nothing of it until he heard it several times at uneven intervals. It stopped for a minute or so and then began again. A unique sound that wasn't completely unfamiliar. It seemed to be coming from below.

He put his ear to the rug. It was definitely coming from below. He went to investigate, located the stairs to the cellar, and went down.

There was Maren.

She was standing solidly with legs apart, left hand on hip, other hand extended straight out. A perfect shooting stance with her body profile so that she was as minimal a target as possible for her adversary, which was an old, muslin-covered, headless dressmaker's dummy.

Chesser knew now that the sound he'd heard before was from a gun equipped with a silencer. He saw a bullet thump into the packed form of the dummy, where other bullets had previously hit, right where the heart would be. She took quick aim and pulled off another shot, which thumped in not a half inch off the same mark. She stopped to reload. Chesser had never before seen a woman with a gun, except in movies, of course. But never in the flesh. Extreme lethal attraction. He asked her: “Where did you learn to shoot like that?”

“Jean Marc.”

“Oh.”

She released the empty clip, picked up a loaded one, shoved it home and cocked a bullet into the chamber as though she'd done it thousands of times. “I'm not as good from the hip,” she said, “not as accurate.”

She turned and demonstrated, spent the entire clip rapid fire. The bullets hit the dummy's chest, making holes no more than six inches apart, a sort of circle.

“See?” she said with a sigh, “not a good, tight pattern.”

“Not bad,” he said, and thought, Jesus, she's deadly!

“It takes practice. We must both practice.”

“What for?”

“I got a Mauser for you too. Just like mine.”

She indicated an identical weapon lying on the surface of a nearby packing crate. It also was equipped with a silencer. There were several cartons of bullets, a small can of oil, and some special cleaning brushes. What she had gone shopping for. His and hers weapons.

She told him: “I used to prefer a Beretta 380 Cougar until Jean Marc got me a Mauser. Jean Marc said a nine-millimeter Mauser Special could stop just about anything.”

“Stop anything from what?”

“Living.” She said it out of the side of her mouth, and it was so incongruous coming from her that Chesser had to laugh.

“We won't be needing guns,” he told her.

“How do you know?”

“Because it's never going to get to that point.”

“Supposing
they
have guns?”

“They who?”

She shrugged. “Whoever.”

“Well, the best way to not get shot is to not have a gun.”

“That's stupid,” she said, and began reloading a clip.

“If you have a gun they may shoot because they think you intend to shoot. But if you don't have—”

“They might shoot anyway,” she said.

“Never happen.”

“Might.”

“Even the British police don't carry guns. So it must not be so stupid.”

“They carry guns,” contended Maren.

“No they don't.”