Exit Alpha (17 page)

‘Christ. It’s . . .’

‘Unsettling.’ His wintry smile. ‘Yes, you can be briefed very well. But the actual thing. Always
imprevisto
. It’s not under her control, of course. It comes when she reaches a certain emotional pitch. It seems to need the force of that to appear.’

He nodded. The best defence against the unknown was to keep things to business. He pointed to the ceiling. ‘You switch the movement sensors on at night?’

‘One can’t with things flying around. I have a hard-wired seismic sensor grid that monitors the perimeter and another around the house.’

‘Ten-metre spread?’

‘Yes. Because the staff comes and goes by day, I switch it on at night.’ He pulled something out of his pocket. ‘This is the receiver. It has light, vibration or beeper readouts.’ He worked the selector switches. ‘Also shows grid and quadrant. I have a spare.’

‘Any transponders for the family?’

‘They won’t wear them.’

‘Is the Russian team still in the country?’

‘No. But from what we know, they’re making plans for the kidnap now.’

‘So I don’t have long.’

‘Perhaps a week.’

‘And you’re ready to roll?’

‘Just waiting for the duplicates.’ He leaned close. He smelt of plonk. ‘The postman, bank manager, accountant, solicitor — all transferred, paid off or changed. Eve’s doll contacts are mostly American — made by post, internet, not a problem. The sisters keep to themselves so the local situation isn’t hard.’

‘Looks like you’re on top of it.’

‘The last people to change will be the staff. The gardener and housekeeper will be leaving before the duplicates arrive.’ He poked again at the fire. His thin body still seemed wiry. ‘Try to get Jane to give notice at the chemist. Her duplicate will know general pharmacy but obviously can’t dispense.’

‘So you’re set?’

He lifted the poker, scratched at the fire. ‘As set as a candidate for the inferno can be.
Corpore vili
.’

‘Aren’t you confusing your cover with your vocation?’

‘Your cover, Cain, is secular. But I was ordained. Ordained! Thus I am a travesty. I long to separate the spirit from the body.’ He swayed slightly, nursing his hyper-reflection. ‘Tell me . . .’ A breathy whisper smelling of port. ‘What manner of priest removes the Holy Father from the Church?’

‘You were doing your job.’

‘A Judas,’ he moaned. ‘A Judas.’

Cain steered it back to business. ‘The Rinaldis were from Palermo. But the sisters are hardly good Catholics.’

‘Nothing here,’ the priest hissed, ‘is true. It’s the devil’s house.’

‘I’m not convinced the devil fits a post-modernist world.’

A hollow laugh. ‘It means you’ve never lived in Brazil.’

‘Rhonda says it’s condition red here. Seems over the top to me. How do you read it?
Quando comincia lo spettacolo
?’

‘
Molto buono
,’ Stromlo smiled, displaying gapped yellow teeth. ‘We have time. I have excellent comms. I’m almost hard-wired into their intelligence.’

‘Okay. So how do I get to the sisters?’

‘You help them violate community standards. They’re animals — cows that copulate with one bull.’ He produced a silver flask from his back pocket, unscrewed the top. ‘My medicine.
Scusi
.’ He swigged, gasped with relief and said, ‘Brown muscat. Very cheap.’ He put the flask away with care. ‘They tempt. They tempt.’

‘Tempt you?’

‘Punch and Judy. The twin temptations of a priest.
Mi capisce?
’ He moved his head as if his collar were a noose.

Cain nudged it back on track. ‘So whatever way they go, forcibly or willingly, the mechanics of the switch remain the same?’

‘
Si
. We’ll remain with the duplicates for a time. Also the cook — who is our partisan.’

He nodded, stared at the fire. Small explosions from the burning wood shot embers over the circular brick hearth. It was still pouring outside but the house seemed quiet. He’d been told that the staff had Thursday off.

Stromlo turned to him suddenly, face bloodhound long. ‘Gianpaolo. Did you see him?’

‘Yes.’

The priest closed his eyes, hissed through his teeth. ‘How is he?’

‘
Magnifico
.’

He shook his head and rocked.

‘So anything else you want to tell me?’

The man just rocked.

‘Right.’ Cain got up. ‘I’ll check the house.’

C
ain knew the place was difficult to secure. He walked halls and corridors, peering into rooms, and eventually came to the humid central atrium with its heated pool and fernery. Spa and sauna one end, showers and gym the other. He looked up. The glass roof streamed with rain. He put the exterior recce on hold.

A noise from the back of the house. He followed his ears to Eve’s workroom. It had cluttered work benches, an electric kiln and shelving stacked with doll parts and moulds. The floor supported bags of plaster, plastic-wrapped clay and mounds covered in damp cloths.

The beautiful voice. ‘Come in.’ Eve Rinaldi, in plastic apron, was working by the bench. Four smooth boards encased a mould. The frame was held by sliding brackets.

He asked, ‘Can I help?’

She lifted a board clear. ‘No, this bit’s easy.’

‘So you sell dolls to America?’

‘Where the money is.’ She walked to the end of the bench and his eyes slid to her rear. She was a doll herself, disturbingly so. She removed a wet rag to reveal a clay sculpture of a head. The face was beautifully done. ‘It starts like this, then you make a plaster mould.’

‘What if the poltergeist comes and . . . ?’

‘Nina isn’t allowed in my workrooms. I’ve told her if she wrecks anything, I’ll send her back to her father.’

An effective threat, he decided. The father had tried to rape her.

‘When the mould dries you open it like those.’ She pointed to half moulds on the shelving behind. ‘You take out the sculpture, put the halves back together, pour slip — that’s liquid porcelain — through this hole and wait till you see drying rings.’

‘Involved.’

‘Very. I’m just giving you the overview. So when it dries to the thickness you want, you pour out the rest and it dries in the mould.’

‘Why doesn’t it stick?’

‘Because porcelain shrinks slightly. Then you open the mould, get out the shell . . .’ She chatted about greenware, seamlines, multiple colour firings, dresses, shoes, gloves, wigs. ‘Hundreds of hours of work go into an original porcelain doll.’

‘What’s one sell for?’

‘I get $8000 each for a limited issue of five. That’s $40,000 from one mould. And you people want me to walk out on this?’

‘Just for a while. When the Russians pinch your duplicate, you’ll come back. But if you don’t accept our offer and get grabbed — you’re out of business.’

‘I’m not convinced.’

‘If you’d been to Moscow you would be. Snow, slush, things falling apart. Not your scene.’

She took off the apron, looked at him speculatively. ‘What are you like at plumbing?’

‘Depends what it is.’

‘I’ll show you.’ She led him up the back stairs into a bedroom and pointed to the en suite. The taps weren’t dripping or stuck. The cistern seemed fine.

He went back into the bedroom to ask her what was wrong. She now sat on the bed, pulling the woollen top over her head. He stared at the full breasts, barely held by the light bra.

She said, ‘Don’t look so surprised. It’s what they told you to do to us, isn’t it?’

‘Just like that?’

‘Why not?’ The dark chocolate voice. ‘We haven’t had anyone for months.’

She put her hands behind her and undid the bra. Her freed breasts hung lower but were full and firm with mouthable nipples. She pulled back the bed-cover, unzipped the front of her jeans. ‘Your cue.’

He’d been propositioned many times but never so frankly. As he sat beside her she started undoing his shirt, his pants, then drew his head down to her breasts. He moved his tongue up between them, then round the nipples.

She lay back. ‘Don’t you like me?’

‘Behave.’

She lay still and shut her eyes.

He undressed himself, then her. The peeled Eve was worthy of Eden — beautifully shaped, the hips and belly superb. He began with her slowly, stroking her, drawing it out. She shuddered at his touch, opened her eyes to look up at him.

‘Close eyes.’

She did, obedient now. He kissed her lightly on the brow, worked down, avoiding the mouth, parted now for a kiss but left wanting. With the back of his fingers, he stroked every part of her, leaving the breasts and between her legs till last. Then he began with his tongue, feeling her tremble with each touch.

He brought her to the edge of climax, her hips and thighs squirming, arms tensing, before releasing her wrists and running his tongue up the whole of her — around her breasts, armpits, neck.

When he finally slid into her, her fingers dug into his back. Her eyes were open now, her hair across her face as she squirmed.

In less than a minute she arched and gasped out her release, then lay as limp as one of her dolls and murmured, ‘God. You’re hired.’

He flipped her, wanting to savour the shape of her from behind. She didn’t need cuteness lessons, had a butt a surfing magazine would have paid for. Rock of ages, cleft for thee . . . He slid back into her, let himself come. Sex — the hollow victory. Copulate or perish. ‘Feeling better?’

She looked at him from within some personal bliss. ‘You’ve just made yourself irreplaceable. ‘Jane’ll want some of this.’ She curled inside his arm like a cat. ‘Are you married?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Married men develop what British airmen used to call “uxorial drag”.’

Her throaty laugh.

He switched the subject to Nina and the poltergeist. ‘How do you live with the thing?’

‘You call it living? We cope.’

‘What happens at her school?’

‘Nothing. It’s shy of other brats. Probably too much competition.’

They slept for an hour, then she went back to work. ‘I’m behind on deliveries. No rest for the wealthy.’

After he’d showered and dressed he found the rain had stopped so checked the outside of the house then walked the perimeter fence.

It was six o’clock before Jane appeared — a severe-faced woman with an abrupt manner and the same low voice but few words. Apart from the blonde hair, she seemed not at all like her sister and he couldn’t imagine her in bed.

The two of them offered to cook dinner and left to bang around in the kitchen. The sound of Eve’s animated voice interspersed with Jane’s terse comments suggested that they got on well.

He sat by the fire while Stromlo gave Nina her piano lesson. ‘No, child! It says
legato
.
Legaaato
— smoothly, like this.’ He demonstrated. ‘Like a puppy dog running down the stairs.’

‘Stop treating me like a child. It shits me off.’

He sighed and looked across at Cain. ‘The doors of the heart can only be opened from inside.’

‘You’re so full of shit.’ She grumpily attempted the passage again.

Eve emerged with a meal on a tray and the pouting Nina took it to her room. Stromlo, Cain noted, watched the girl’s trim rear as she left, then saw he’d been spotted and intoned, ‘They tempt. They tempt.’

‘You don’t have to look,’ he grinned.

The priest furiously poked the fire, then, remembering something, felt in his pocket and handed Cain a perimeter handset. His pong was atmospheric. ‘It’s on now.’ Cain nodded, switched it to ‘vibrate’ and put it in his shirt pocket.

Eve’s head around the door. ‘We eat in two minutes.’

‘I’d better open some wine,’ Stromlo said. ‘One of our little traditions.’

They went into the dining room he’d seen on the video at Beta. No objects flew and the candles stayed on the table.

Eve gave a toast. ‘To happy days and dirty nights.’

Dinner was an excellent roast. While they ate, the sisters chatted about people in the locality. Stromlo added comments like ‘Hell is other people’ and opened two more bottles of red, much of which he drank himself.

Cain brought up security. ‘Jane works in the town and Nina goes to school. You should all be wearing transponders.’

‘I don’t want to be tagged,’ Jane said. ‘It’s your job to know where we are.’

Eve said, ‘I agree. Besides,’ a twinkle in her eye, ‘I’ve told Jane you have the skills we need.’

Cain, feeling uncomfortable, glanced at the dour-faced woman who said, ‘Don’t be concerned. I’m not like my sister.’

After dessert and coffee Jane stifled a yawn and glanced at Cain. ‘Tomorrow I’ll show you the local walking tracks if you like.’

‘Could be useful.’