Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen : A Novel (9781101565766) (22 page)

“Is he?”

“He's sort of a player, or was—big talker, big boozer, big loser at the tables.”

“Or that's the word.”

“From many sources, but you're right, I've no firsthand experience. So I shouldn't judge.”

Ty wanted desperately to include himself in the conversation then taking place, in full view in front of him, between Ian and Luke Claussen but realized that it was not feasible for him to do so without arousing suspicion. He wished his telephone had been equipped with some sort of surveillance capability, though in such a crowd any device would be almost impossible to aim unobtrusively. So he sat back and watched as the initial
tercio
began.

Between it and the second, the
suerte de banderillas,
in which three of the toreros would attempt to implant two flags each into a charging bull, Ty noticed Luke stand up and make his way toward the exit. When he reached the row in which Isabella and Ty were seated, he slowed to a stop, then leaned in to thank her. Offering only a perfunctory smile to the Foos, who were seated between the aisle and Isabella, he did a double take when he saw Ty.

“You had a moment of doubt,” Ty said.

“I thought that was you. Then I said no, couldn't be. Luke Claussen,” he said, extending his hand.

“Ty Hunter.”

“I know. Everyone knows you. I'm sure you're used to that by now. Anyhow, it's nice of you to pretend you aren't.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You gave me your name. You didn't assume I knew it.”

“My parents brought me up right.”

“Listen, I know you're busy here, but after the first corrida would you come over and meet my friends? They'd get a real blast out of it if you did. We're just two entries down.”

“Sure,” Ty said before Isabella had a chance to give a different answer.

“
I'd
love to, but
—
” Isabella explained, remaining still, letting only her eyes wander toward the Foos and Ian's other guests.

“I understand,” Luke said.

“But there's no reason Ty can't join you.”

Luke hesitated. “You're not together. I'm sorry, I misunderstood.”

Isabella blushed.

Ty said, “We're together, but we're not
together,
if you get my meaning.”

“Well, that's too bad,” Luke said. “Shall we say before the
suerte suprema
?”

“You bet,” Ty said. “That's my favorite time to do just about anything.”

Luke shook Ty's hand a second time, nodded to Isabella and the Foos, then departed quickly through the shunt that led back to the main concourse of the
plaza de toros.

“What the hell is the
suerte suprema
?” Ty asked Isabella after Luke was out of sight.

“The third
tercio,
as I'm sure you've already guessed,” she said. There was disbelief, if not outright irritation in her voice.

Ty ignored it. “Which, I'm assuming, is when the torero faces down the bull and flashes his famous red cape—”

“It's called a muleta.”

“I'm glad to know that. And that's also when he kills the bull with his sword?”

“Yes,” Isabella said, “as it charges him, and the quicker the kill, the better. That's what it means to be a matador. The crowd can offer the praise of the multitudes, or it can be very unforgiving.”

“Tell me about it,” Ty said.

Isabella smiled faintly. “Why do you say that? You've never faced an unforgiving crowd, have you?”

“Not since I got lucky.”

“It was nice of you to say you'd join them for a few minutes. It surprised me, though. Why did you?”

“You told me the man's father and sister and his niece and nephew were murdered very recently. How could I say no?”

“Luke Claussen didn't seem to be in mourning.”

“People deal with grief in different ways. You don't mind, do you? I don't have to go.”

“Of course I don't mind,” Isabella said. “In fact, I think it's noble of you.”

“It's not,” Ty said.

“It is, even if he turns out to be just another obsessive fan, because you don't know that yet, do you?”

“I know only what you told me.”

“I didn't tell you that Luke Claussen is one of the richest men in the world.”

“No, but it wouldn't have made any difference if you had. Money can't buy you back your father, as we both know.”

“As we both know,” Isabella repeated softly.

It was unclear whose box Ty was entering, but it was almost exactly like Ian's. It took him a moment to locate Luke. Once he had, the incredulous stares of those around him gave way to well-honed smiles as Luke introduced him to his coterie. Expensively dressed and apparently less than intent on the spectacle unfolding before them, most were drinking tostadas or rubias, the dark or pale lagers of a local artisanal brewery.

Ty took a tostada.

“What brings you to Spain?” Luke inquired.

“Luke doesn't read the gossip pages,” said one of the young women, an American in her early thirties with lustrous golden-blond hair otherwise found only on small children.

“He's a smart man,” Ty said. “The answer is, I played a hunch. They don't always pan out.”

“No,” Luke said, “they don't.”

Having been introduced to the movie star and in several cases squeezed into a snapshot beside him, the others gradually began to drift out of his orbit, leaving Ty alone with Luke.

“And you? Is Seville one of your stomping grounds?”

“Not really. I was passing through, mostly for the polo at Soto, and you know, friends of friends . . . That's the way it goes, isn't it?”

Ty shrugged. “I've been working too hard to remember if it is or isn't.”

“I know you've had a lot of pictures out,” Luke said, “practically back-to-back, am I right?”

“You're right.”

“I'm afraid it looks like my life is about to take an abrupt turn in that direction,” Luke declared, a newly wistful note sounding in his deep bass voice as a trace of sadness crossed his face.

Ty knew enough to be careful. “What do you mean?”

“You may have heard that my father died and that there were other deaths in my family.”

“I did,” Ty admitted quietly. “I'm sorry. I wasn't sure what to say.”

“There's nothing
to
say, but thank you anyway. I'm afraid the net result of it all is that—some people would say for the first time in my life—I'm going to have to take on some responsibility.”

“That may come more easily than you think,” Ty said.

Luke took a long pull of his lager. “I hope so. As the last of the Claussens, I'm suddenly the largest shareholder in a company I spent my whole fucking life running away from. I'd still be running away if there were anyone left between it and me, but there's not. There are good executives, thank God for that. But that's all they are: well-paid, well-meaning, capable executives, not more. My father was a motive force.”

“I get the picture,” Ty said. “He was a friend of Ian's, wasn't he?”

“Definitely,” Luke said. “That's why I wanted to say hello to the old coot. I'm sure I've met him before, actually, but that would have been a long time ago, when I was seven or eight years old.”

“People change,” Ty said, “especially over that amount of time.”

“Damn straight,” Luke said. “Anyway, it's like I was saying, even the finest executives are only as useful as the charge you give them, right?
You
have to know what's going on. If you don't, they'll know you don't. I guess what I mean is that maybe business is my thing and maybe it isn't, but I damn sure don't want to be fooled out of a fortune. So I'm doing the rounds, learning what's in the pipeline and where, who I can trust and work with and who I can't. That's what I've been doing in Europe—mixed in with a little pleasure, of course.”

Ty nodded.

“How well do you know Ian?” Luke asked.

“Not well. In fact, this is only the second time I've met him. The first time was just last month.”

“That girl Isabella's something, isn't she?”

“Yes,” Ty agreed, “really something.”

“Who's she seeing? She must be seeing someone.”

“You met him, I think. Philip Frost.”

Luke started.

“Do you know him?”

“No one does. He was a year ahead of me at Rosey, but light-years ahead in other ways. We weren't really friends, nor were we enemies. Philip was far more serious about everything than I was, even if at the same time he could be reckless. We climbed the Giferhorn
together once, I remember, if only because that mountain was the most dangerous around and absolutely off-limits. We were crazed. We did it at night. You may never have known exactly where you stood with Philip, but you could trust him with anything, which may sound paradoxical, but it was true.”

“Maybe that's what Isabella sees in him.”

“You should make your move,” Luke suggested. “She'd go for you. Trust me. I have almost perfect instincts about these things.”

Ty laughed. “You're not interested?”

“I wouldn't get anywhere.”

“Why sell yourself short?”

“Listen, I'm nothing if not brutally honest with myself. That young woman is a perfectionist, and I am rather blatantly imperfect.”

“Opposites attract,” Ty told him.

“Seldom the case in my experience,” Luke replied. “Anyway, back to Ian. He's a piece of work. My father was fascinated by him. Guys like them, they're genuinely intrigued by each other.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Ty said.

“Aren't you fascinated by other movie stars?”

“I wouldn't use that word exactly.”

“But come on, you keep your eye on them. ‘A man should both appreciate and fear his rivals.' That's what my father always told me. My point is Dad and Ian Santal dwelled in the same neighborhood on Olympus, if you catch my drift. Oh, they were probably very different in many ways and very much the same in others, but there's no mistaking it, they were—
are
—a species apart, more like gods than men. So I was glad to reconnect with the old guy, because I have a lot to talk to him about.”

Ty let silence fill the pause, then, as if spontaneously, asked, “Did they do a lot of business together?”

“Once upon a time,” Luke said, “not so much lately. At least I don't think so. Truth is, that was one of the things I was glad to have a chance to talk to Ian about. Somehow or other he'd gotten my father involved in the redevelopment of a Russian resort.”

“Forgive me, but that sounds like an oxymoron,” Ty said.

“Nope,” Luke said. “I've seen the pictures. The place is as beautiful as anything you could possibly imagine. It's up at the top of the Black Sea, on the Strait of Kerch.”

“Never heard of it,” Ty said.

“By the Sea of Azov,” Luke continued, “the shallowest sea in the world. You have to love those names, don't you? I mean, some of them sound like they come straight out of Grimms' fairy tales. They can scare the shit out of you.”

“Now that you mention it.”

Luke regarded Ty thoughtfully. “Well, maybe not you,” he volunteered, “but my father must have felt that way, because he eventually pulled out of the deal. That's another thing I wanted to talk to Ian about, but he couldn't give me a reason for my father's pulling out. When I asked him whether it was really true that my father had decided to bail on the project, all he said was, ‘To my astonishment, yes.' What does that mean?”

“Impossible to say,” Ty concurred.

“Of course, he said that Dad must have had ‘other priorities,' but as to what those were or might have been, he either didn't know or wouldn't say. So I asked him another question, to which I got a more satisfactory answer, although not an entirely satisfactory one. If Dad and the company did pull out, I asked, why hadn't every last bit of Claussen Inc.'s involvement ceased by this time? All he said in response was that the company had been engaged to clear the site, that there were these stages in the contract and they couldn't leave until they'd completed their obligations through this stage or that. ‘One doesn't just turn off a switch,' he said. ‘These things have to be wound down. There is a process.' Those were his exact words. It was more than a bit patronizing, but probably true.”

“I'm sure,” Ty said, doing his best to display enough interest to keep Luke talking, but no more.

“‘Are you still invested in that deal?' I came right out and asked him,” Luke said. “‘No,' he told me, ‘that's not my modus operandi. I put together deals. I take a piece. As soon as the time is right, I sell that piece and move on to take another piece of something else. I do not operate businesses.' Well, fair enough. Good luck to him!”

“Absolutely,” Ty said.

By the time they left the
plaza de toros,
the long, sweet light around the summer solstice had faded, and they drove back in convoy, buzzed by alcohol and the adrenaline that had flowed since the last wounded bull had suddenly charged, then come within inches of killing the torero who faced him. An air of letdown lingered as they drove through the winding, narrow, steeply graded roads of Andalusia and moved steadily away from the evening's primordial excitement toward a calmer, more normal world. Ty was with Isabella and Philip in the second Mercedes, Tim and Celia Foo in the forward sedan with Ian, Fateen and Wazir having left them to head elsewhere. Halfway to Pond House, the telephone in the car carrying Ty beeped twice.

Isabella answered it. “Oh, hello, missing us already, are you?”

“Always, when you're not here,” Ian said. “I've just had a word with the captain. Day after tomorrow, just after breakfast, does that still suit?”