Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (40 page)

Suddenly she was weeping. Smiling at
him wistfully and weeping. There was no sobbing or sniffing, the tears
merely welled up slowly as oil or blood from the huge dark eyes, broke
from the thick, arched lashes and rolled softly down her cheeks. Yet
she still smiled.

‘The madness is over, Nicholas. I
t didn't last very long but it was a
holocaust while it did.
’

‘
He comes home at nine o'clock now
,’
Nicholas
said.

‘
Yes, he comes home at nine o'clock.
’
He took the linen handkerchief from
his inner pocket and handed it to her.

‘
Thank you.
’
She dabbed away the tears, still smiling softly.

‘
What must I do, Nicholas?
’

‘C
all in a team of auditors,
’
he began, but
she shook her head and cut him short
.

‘
You don't know Duncan,
’
she
repeated.

‘
There is nothing he could do.
’

‘
He could do anything,
’
she contradicted
him.
‘
He is capable of anything. I am afraid, Nicholas, terribly
afraid, not only for myself, but for Peter also.
’

Nicholas sat erect
then.

‘
Peter. Do you mean you are afraid of something physical?
’

‘
I don't know,
Nicholas. I'm so confused and alone. You are the only person in the
world I can trust.
’

He could no longer remain seated. He stood up and
began to pace about the room, frowning heavily, looking down at the
glass in his hand and swirling the ice so that it tinkled softly.

‘
All right
,’
he said at last.
‘
I will do what I can. The first thing is
to find out just how much substance there is to your fears.
’

‘
How will you
do that?
’

‘
It's best you don't know, yet.
’

He drained his glass and she
stood up, quick with alarm.

‘
You aren't going, are you?
’

'There is nothing
else to discuss now. I will contact you when or if I learn anything.
’

‘
I'll see you down.
’

‘I
n the hall she dismissed the uniformed West Indian
maid with a shake of her head, and fetched Nicholas top coat from the
closet herself.

‘
Shall I send for the car? You'll not get a cab at five o'clock.
’

'I'll
walk
,’
he said.

‘
Nicholas, I cannot tell you how grateful I am. I had forgotten how safe
and secure it is to be with you.
’
Now she was standing very close to
him, her head lifted, and her lips were soft and glossy and ripe, her
eyes still flooded and bright. He knew he should leave immediately.
’
I
know it's going to be all right now.
’

She placed one of those dainty
ivory hands on his lapel, adjusting it unnecessarily with that
proprietary feminine gesture, and she moistened her lips.

‘
We are all fools, Nicholas, every one of us. We all complicate our
lives - when it's so easy to be happy.
’

‘
The trick is to recognize
happiness when you stumble on it, I suppose.
’

‘
I'm sorry, Nicholas.
That's the first time I've ever apologized to you. It's a day of many
first times, isn't it? But I am truly sorry for everything I have ever
done to hurt you. I wish with all my heart that it were possible to
wipe it all out and begin again.
’

‘
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that
way.
’
With a major effort of will he broke the spell, and stepped back.
In another moment he would have stooped to those soft red lips.

‘
I'll call you if I learn anything
,’
he said, as he buttoned the top of
his coat and opened the front door.

Nicholas stepped out furiously with the cold striking colour into his
cheeks, but her presence kept pace with him and his blood raced not from
physical exertion alone.

He knew then, beyond all doubt, that he was not a man who could switch
love on and off at will.

‘
You old-fashioned thing.
’
Samantha's words came back to him clearly -
and she was right, of course. He was cursed by a constancy of loyalty
and emotion that restricted his freedom of action. He was breaking one
of his own rules now, he was no longer moving ahead. He was circling
back.

He had loved Chantelle Christy to the limits of his soul, and had
devoted almost half of his life to Christy Marine.
He realized then that those things could never change, not for him, not
for Nicholas Berg, prisoner of his own conscience.

Suddenly he found himself opposite the Kensington Natural History Museum
in the Cromwell Road, and swiftly he crossed to the main gates - but it
was a quarter to six and they were closed already.

Samantha would not
have been in the public rooms anyway, but in those labyrinthine vaults
b
elow the great stone building. I
n a few short days, she had made half
a dozen cronies among the museum staff. He felt a stab of jealousy,
that she was with other human beings, revelling in their companionship,
delighting in the pleasures of the mind - had probably forgotten he
existed.

Then suddenly the unfairness of it occurred to him, how his emotions of
a minute previously had been stirring and boiling with the memories of
another woman. Only then did he realize that it was possible to be in
love with two different people, in two entirely different ways, at
exactly the same time.

Troubled, torn by conflicting loves, conflicting loyalties, he turned
away from the barred iron gates of the museum
.

Nicholas
’
apartment was on
the fifth floor of one of those renovated and redecorated buildings in
Queen's Gate.

I
t looked as though a party of gypsies were passing through. He had not
hung the paintings, nor had he arranged his books on the shelves. The
paintings were stacked against the wall in the hallway, and his books
were pyramided at unlikely spots around the lounge floor, the carpet
still rolled and pushed aside, two chairs facing the television set, and
another two drawn up to the dining-room table.

I
t was an eating and sleeping place, sustaining the bare minima of
existence; in two years he had probably slept here on sixty nights, few
of them consecutive. It was impersonal, it contained no memories, no
warmth.

He poured a whisky and carried it through into the bedroom , slipping
the knot of his tie and shrugging out of his jacket. Here it was
different, for evidence of Samantha's presence was everywhere. Though
she had remade the bed that morning before leaving, still she had left a
pair of shoes abandoned at the foot of it, a booby trap to break the
ankles of the unwary; her simple jewellery was strewn on the bedside
table, together with a book, Noel Mostert's Supership, opened face down
and in dire danger of a broken spine; the cupboard door was open and his
suits had been bunched up in one corner to give hanging space to her
slacks and dresses; two very erotic and transparent pairs of panties
hung over the bath to dry; her talcum powder still dusted the tiled
floor and her special fragrance pervaded the entire apartment.

He missed her with a physical ache in the chest, so that when the front
door banged and she arrived like a high wind, shouting for him,
‘
Nicholas, it's me
’
as though it could possibly have been anyone else,
her hair tangled and wild with the wind and high colour under the golden
tan of her cheeks, he almost ran to her and seized her with a suppressed
violence.

‘
Wow
,’
she whispered huskily.
‘
Who is a hungry baby, then.
’
And they
tumbled on to the bed clinging to each other with a need that was almost
desperation.

Afterwards they did not turn the light on in the room that had gone dark
except for the dim light of the street lamps filtered by the curtains
and reflected off the ceiling.

‘
What was that all about?
’
she asked, then snuggled against his chest,
‘
not that I'm complaining, mind you.
’

‘
I've had a hell of a day.
I needed you, badly.
’

‘
You saw Duncan Alexander?
’

‘
I saw Duncan.
’

‘
Did you
settle?
’

‘
No. There was never really any chance.
’

‘
I'm hungry
,’
she said.
‘
Your loving always makes me hungry.
’

So he put on his pants and went
down to the Italian restaurant at the corner for pizzas. They ate them
in bed with a white Chianti from whisky tumblers, and when she was
finished, she sighed and said:

‘
Nicholas, I have to go home.
’

‘
You can't
go
,’
he protested instantly.

‘
I have work to do - also.
’

‘
But
,’
he felt a physical nausea at the thought
of losing her,
‘
but you can't go before the hearing.
’

‘
Why not?
’

‘
It would
be the worst possible luck, you are my fortune.
’

‘
A sort of good-luck
charm?
’
She pulled a face.
‘
Is that all I'm good for?
’

‘
You are good for
many things. May I demonstrate one of them?
’

'Oh, yes please.
’
An hour
later Nick went for more pizzas.

‘
You have to stay until the 27th
,’
he said with his mouth full.

‘
Darling Nicholas, I just don't know
-‘

‘
You can ring them, tell them your
aunt died, that you are getting married.
’

‘
Even if I were getting
married, it wouldn't lessen the importance of my work. I think you know
that is something I will never give up.
’

‘
Yes, I do know, but it's only a
couple of days more.
’

‘
All right, I'll call Tom Parker tomorrow.
’
Then
she grinned at him.
‘
Don't look like that. I'll be just across the
Atlantic, we'll be virtually next-door neighbours.
’

'Call him now. It's
lunchtime in Florida.
’