Hostage Tower (7 page)

Graham assured her he would. He gingerly extracted one, cracked and peeled it, and popped it into his mouth. It was delicious. ‘Auf wiedersehen,' he said. ‘Goodbye,' she replied.

He strolled back down the street, and took a seat at a pavement café for coffee and schnapps. He emptied the chestnuts out on the table to cool. The packet was at the bottom of the bag.

He opened it and, shielding the contents with his other hand, unrolled five one thousand US dollar bills, and a first-class airline ticket to Paris. The flight was in three days' time. There was no explanatory note.

Graham opened the folded airline ticket. In the top left-hand corner was a poorly executed sketch of a Lap-Laser, accompanied by a terse message: ‘Now I want you to use them'. The message was unsigned. Mike drained his schnapps and ordered a refill.

Giulio was sitting as though bolted into the seat of the Alfa Romeo. They were well south of Rome now, and he had not even bothered to ask Sabrina where they were going. He just fervently wished he was somewhere else.

He had brought it on himself, Giulio freely acknowledged, when he unbuckled his seat belt. Sabrina had been driving with great restraint – for her – when Giulio had sensed that the time was right for one arm to slip around her shoulders, while the other hand skated over, then settled on, her knee. He could not have been more wrong.

She stepped fiercely on the gas pedal, and Giulio's head shot forward and rapped smartly on the fascia. The Alfa's engine shrieked, and Giulio dimly saw a road sign saying ‘Roma 170' – pointing in the opposite direction. He resigned himself to an early grave, and hoped his mother and numerous sisters would cry at his funeral.

Sabrina reached a corner, made a racing change, and screamed round the bend kicking dirt, on what seemed to Giulio to be only one wheel. It was a short road, and another bend was coming up, for they had long since abandoned the autostrada for more taxing sport. Sabrina double-clutched down through the gears, and drifted into a toe-to-heel braking power turn before gearing back up for the straight. The motor protested, but obeyed her feet and her tensed arms.

Giulio's handsome face shaded to chalk-white, his eyes glazed over, and his bowels turned suddenly to water. He could see a narrow, humpbacked bridge looming up, and he quickly recited what he was certain would be his terminal prayer.

Sabrina turned to bestow a ravishing smile on him, taking her eyes completely off the road while, at the same time, pressing the accelerator pedal down into the floor. Giulio gripped the Alfa's crash-bar so hard that his knuckles matched the white of his face. He closed his eyes and let out a scream of undiluted horror.

Sabrina gunned the motor, and with a roar of triumph the little car sailed off the bridge and launched itself into the air. It settled on the road again just in time to get into a power drift along another sharp bend. Sabrina was laughing with sheer delight, when a different sound intruded above the squeal of the tyres and the gruff whine of the engine.

It was an insistent and penetrating electronic bleep. As she pulled out of a turn, Sabrina took her foot off the gas and let the car ease down to a modest twenty mph. Guiding the wheel expertly with one hand, she reached under the dashboard and pulled out a radiotelephone mike.

Sabrina spoke into the microphone, ‘Pronto.'

Sonya's voice came over the line: ‘Is the pasta al dente?'

‘Not yet,' Sabrina said. Then, ‘Hang on a sec, will you?'

She steered the Alfa Romeo to a halt on the grassy shoulder of the road. Giulio slumped forward on the crash-bar, sobbing piteous thanks to as many saints as he could remember. Sabrina opened the dashboard locker and pushed a code key into the scrambler box fitted there. ‘Scrambled on 8-2-Baker,' she said into the mike. ‘Do you read me?'

‘I do indeed, my dear,' Philpott replied. ‘Are you alone?'

‘Why hello, Mr Philpott,' Sabrina said, ‘what a pleasure to hear from you. No, I'm not exactly alone, but he doesn't understand a word of English. In fact, at the moment he doesn't seem to understand much of anything.' Giulio turned his dazed eyes on her, and leaned back in the seat with his mouth drooping open.

Philpott brought her up to date with the news that C.W. would be joining her on the Smith caper. ‘Oh, great,' she crowed. ‘Give him a hug for me, and tell him I'll keep him out of trouble.'

‘And you look after yourself too, young lady,' Philpott ordered with mock severity. ‘I want you looking your best on Friday, because Sonya and I will be there as well.'

‘Why you sure enough bet I will, Mistah Philpott, Suh,' Sabrina replied. ‘So for now – ciao, baby.'

‘Sabrina!' Philpott commanded, ‘don't go, I haven't
finished. Those diamonds. You'll have to give them back, you know. I can't permit members of my organization to commit real crimes while you're in my service. You see my position, don't you?'

‘What?' Sabrina yelled. ‘Hello! Hello, New York, hello? Are you still there, Mr Philpott? Something just terrible seems to be happening to my equipment, you know? Ah well, whatever it was you said, I'm sure it wasn't all that important. 'Bye now,' she chirped and broke the link.

‘Wouldn't you say so, Giulio?' she enquired of her cataleptic passenger.

‘Glug,' said Giulio. In Italian.

Philpott chuckled, and flipped a key up on his communications console. ‘That girl,' he said, ‘will –'

‘– keep you young,' Sonya supplied.

Philpott winked. ‘No, you do that,' he whispered. Basil re-entered the room.

‘And call the Secretary General, Mrs Kolchinsky,' Philpott ordered, brusquely, ‘and see if he can get us a Red priority from the French Government.'

‘Yes, sir,' Sonya said, head buried in message-pad.

‘And get us two seats on the fast one to Paris Friday morning.'

‘Right away, Mr Philpott.'

Basil placed a folder on the desk, and made to leave the room. Philpott lowered his voice conspiratorially and said to Sonya, ‘And make sure we have our usual room at the Ritz.'

‘Of course,' Sonya whispered, and turned to go.

At the doorway, where they met, Basil winked at her.

Steam rose from the softly swirling waters of the Jacuzzi. Smith rode the tingling currents, and thoughtfully patted a whirlpool of bubbles which erupted to the surface, spoiling the sculptured undulations. The vortex subsided, and eddied away.

Smith measured the length of his body on the buoyant waters, and lazily paddled afloat. He heard the clickety-clack of footsteps on the tiles, and smiled a foxy smile. He sniffed and smelled Calèche or Cabochard. It didn't matter which. The body that wore it was well enough known to him.

A robed arm stretched out, the long, slim fingers curled around the stem of a Venetian air-drop glass. He let the amber liquid stay, admiring the delicate curve of the meniscus. Seconds, a minute, two minutes, passed. Life, and time, were trapped in a cryogenic matrix, the surface of the liqueur still in contrast to the restless pond of the Jacuzzi.

Smith was stoned out of his head.

His eyes drifted together, swivelled apart; then he lay back and breathed a tiny, muted sigh. He focussed on a blob of condensation trickling down the tiled wall, a dribble that transmuted into a cataract, tumbling and foaming until its maddened breakers overwhelmed the room, the gardens, the grounds, the château, all of Orléans, all of France, all that lay beyond.

He hiccupped, and nodded. The glass tipped obediently towards his mouth, and the sparkling fluid slipped down his throat.

Smith was still stoned out of his mind.

He spluttered, and the hand bearing the amazingly proportioned glass withdrew. Leah sat back on her heels, and regarded him with affectionate amusement.

Smith said, ‘I have been thinking, Leah.'

‘Yes, you have, haven't you.' She spoke English with him, but in tones overlaid with her native Vienna.

‘Why is it, Leah,' he murmured scarcely audibly, ‘that with all this money I have … this adorable château, and the other places … the yachts, the ranch, the island … the pictures, the sculpture, the jewellery collection, the books and autograph scores … not to mention you and my other – little friends … everything … everything … I have every thing, Leah … more than any man has a right to dream of owning … well, almost … I don't have the Great Wall of China – but I could get it.'

‘Yes, you could, my darling.' She was blonde and Nordic, not too big, but lushly voluptuous; her eyes were greeny-blue, her face and body enticingly rounded, all dips and curves, valleys and delicately swelling mounds. Smith owned her.

‘Why is it, then, that I am cursed with this disease, addiction … pestilence of crime? It's not even aesthetic. It's … positively plebeian.'

Leah lifted well-shaped eyebrows and smiled indulgently. ‘Plebeian?' she queried. ‘The theft of the Black Goyas from the Prado? The substitution of Troy in the Prix de L'Arc de Triomphe so that even his owner didn't spot it? The Liz Taylor ring, straight off her bath tray with a magnetized fishhook? The Inca sunburst smuggled out in a pizza? Plebeian?'

Smith's mouth pursed into a lazy smirk. ‘Mmm,' he purred. ‘You're right, of course. They said the Bloemfontein Krugerrands were untouchable, too, didn't they? And the Tutankhamen Exhibition that left London laced with pinchbeck. And what about that exploding ping-pong ball of Chairman Mao's?'

Leah giggled. ‘And the Fabergé eggs!' Smith laughed. ‘That's right,' he said. ‘Melted, didn't they? Into rather good chocolate, actually.'

Leah stood up. Smith nodded. With a casual oscillation of her body, she shrugged off the robe, and stood naked before him. Her breasts were upturned and expectant. She parted her legs. His eyes travelled down her inviting form to the vee
of her thighs. He nodded again, and she stepped into the Jacuzzi.

‘No,' she breathed, ‘not plebeian, my sweet. You are endlessly inventive, and for you, life, without crime, would be death. You
have
to have it. And besides, if you didn't, you'd be so bored … and boring.'

Smith wasn't absolutely sure he caught what she had said, and granted her the benefit of the doubt. Boring he was not. He stretched out an encircling arm, and Leah floated within it. She moaned softly as their bodies fused with practised ease.

The château stood in its own grounds, stretching several hundred acres, south of Orléans. Its parkland had been laid out and maintained in a state of unnatural and almost geometric perfection.

There were horses in the stable that Smith seldom rode. There were reaches of the garden he had never visited; rooms of the château he had never entered. The château was a possession, and Smith was plagued by possessions.

As he himself had said, he lacked for nothing. He was going to make a cool thirty million dollars from his current enterprise, yet money was the last thing he wanted. True, it brought him power … but who needed power? Smith, who changed his appearance and life-style so often that he had genuinely forgotten what he looked like as a young man, required only sufficient power and influence
for the next crime – and the next – and the next.

If people got in the way, or Governments, or nations … then they must be removed. Smith cared nothing for people, for humanity as such; and even less for nations. Where had he been born? Paraguay, was it? Or Samoa? Could have been. Iceland, even. In which language had he first spoken the faltering words of infancy? Did it matter? All tongues were his now; he had but to choose. All peoples were his; he was a citizen of the world, with a hundred names and faces. He demanded nothing from life, and he surely gave nothing to it.

Smith turned, and felt for Leah, knowing she would be there. Someone was always there. It did not matter who it was.

A helicopter descended to the lawns outside the château, and a young man, tall, dark and muscular, with a wicked scar giving an evil cast to an otherwise pleasant face, crossed to the front steps. His name was Claude Légère, and Smith owned him, too.

Smith and Leah lay locked together as Claude knocked at the Jacuzzi room door, and Smith said, ‘Come in.'

Claude stopped short when he saw the couple and stammered, ‘Forgive me. I thought you were alone.'

Smith withdrew from her, and regarded Claude mildly. ‘You know I'm never alone,' he
said. ‘Is everything all right? It must be, or you would not be here. You would not dare to be here.'

‘Of course everything is going well,' Claude protested. ‘How could it be otherwise?'

‘True,' Smith conceded. He fondled Leah again, but under the surface of the water. Somehow, it seemed to Claude even more obscene.

‘I – I am going to the airport now,' he ventured. ‘I'll pick up our new recruits and bring them here.'

Smith turned to him. ‘Not straight here, obviously,' he warned. ‘You'll follow the procedure we agreed.'

‘Yes, yes,' Claude assured him hastily. ‘Please don't worry, Mister Smith. Every possible care will be taken to safeguard yourself, your identity, and this place. It will be done as you said. When they arrive, they will not have the slightest idea where they are, or how far they have travelled, or even whether it's still the same day.'

‘Good, good,' Smith sighed. ‘Everything on schedule. That's how I like it. That's how it should be, Claude.'

‘It is,' Claude insisted.

Smith turned in the water, and stretched out his legs. Leah followed his movements, then drifted to the edge of the Jacuzzi, hoisted herself up, and sat dripping on the edge.

Smith grinned at Claude. ‘Would you like to join us?' he offered.

Claude controlled his breathing with difficulty, and tore his eyes away from Leah.

‘Another day, perhaps,' he said, ‘when I am less occupied. But thank you for asking.'