Tall Poppies (39 page)

‘Suits me fine,’ Elizabeth remarked to Hans over her creamed porridge and lean ham. ‘Artificial packs down those little air pockets, it’ll be faster.’

‘]a, and that is not so good. Veysonnaz, only a red, but very fast. Maybe now too fast.’

‘Too fast? That’s like too happy, there’s no such thing.’ Elizabeth smiled, her teeth white against her golden skin2

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She had the tight, healthy glow of the peak-performance athlete, and confidence dripped from her like jewels from Monica’s neck. Three days of events and she had built up unstoppable momentum. Hans had never seen her ski like this. It was like she had reached down right into her guts and pulled up her last reserve of speed and skill. He had to struggle to keep her away from the media, in case the things they were saying went to her head. Her nearest rival was Louise, with Christy second and Heidi third, but they were way behind Elizabeth. Hans had never seen a female like her. And he knew she knew it. She was so confident she reminded him of Jack Taylor.

‘You have two more days of races. You can be caught, Liebchen.’

‘Yes, Chicken Licken, and the sky might fall down.’ ‘I don’t understand …’

‘Oh, don’t worry, Hans. I promise I won’t be complacent, not till I’m wearing the gold. Louise’s really hot on this one.’ She shook her head for a second. ‘What do I do if she skis a perfect run?’

“‘You want to beat someone, there is only one way,’ Herr Wolf said drily. ‘Ski it faster.’

Elizabeth took a final slug of her freshly squeezed orange juice, jumped up from the table and poked her head out of the kitchen window. ‘I’m going to go out for a quick run down the Savoleyres.’

The speed-skiing course. Hans knew better than to forbid it, she was just crackling with energy.

‘Elizabeth, only once, verstehst Du? Or it can take the edge off your run this afternoon.’

Magic words. The green eyes were instantly grave. ‘You got it, Coach, just one trip.’

Stepping off the draglift at the top of the run Elizabeth wondered if this was what it was like to get high. She felt beautiful, invincible. The electric lifts were running for

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the benefit of the Olympians alone on several runs, but spectators on neighbouring pistes stopped to cheer her and wave at the Union Jack suit. The icy couloirs of the speed-skiing run were fenced off and almost deserted, apart from two or three athletes with some adrenalin to burn. Savoleyres was a real speed kick - leave your stomach at the start and rocket to the bottom, the skiers’ version of bungee-jumping. A plunge on this baby would fire her up. Elizabeth knew her brain was mainlining serotonin, the happiness hormone you got from perfect exercise. And victory. And the high, desert whiteness of this mountain.

She unhooked the metal circle between her legs and schussed forwards.

‘Lucky seat. I sure wish that was me.’

Elizabeth jumped out of her skin. Jack Taylor was standing .there, wearing a USA practice suit in subtle navy. The men were skiing the Tortin downhill today, a tough customer full of moguls. Elizabeth scowled a muttered hi.

‘We must stop meeting like this,’ Jack said easily. ‘How’s Holly bearing up? She’s making real good times, you be sure and tell her how proud I am.’

‘Give your messages to your girlfriend yourself, Jack, I’m not AT&T,’ Elizabeth snapped. ‘I have other things on my mind.’

‘So I see. You’re skiing pretty hot as well.’

‘God!’ Elizabeth exploded: ‘You are the most arrogant man I have ever met, Jack Taylor! Don’t you dare patronise me! I have this gold in my pocket, and you’re

getting caught up by Zubriggen.’ ‘I tripped on the last race.’ ‘Always some excuse.’

‘No excuse, Lizzie, I’m going to win this with a ten point margin,’ Jack said angrily.

‘I’m skiing as well as you are, Jack, and I’ve had to

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with your putdowns. You’re oialy faster than me because you’re a man.’

‘You noticed, how sweet,’ Taylor said icily.

‘Don’t flatter yourself, Jack, you were five minutes’ fun,’ Elizabeth said, hissing like a bobcat.

‘Well, baby, you sure gave me a real quid pro quo,” Jack said slowly, his Southern drawl crawling over her like his eyes. ‘And I’m lookin’ forward to my next piece, when you lose our bet. Though be warned, it’ll last a lot longer than five minutes. I’m going to collect in full.’

‘Ooh, what would Holly say?’ Elizabeth taunted. ‘Except she doesn’t need to worry, because you won’t be collecting anything. Now excuse me. I came here to ski.’

She snapped up her visor and pushed forwards, , disappearing in a flash of primary colours.

Jack glared after her. He’d chased halfway round the world for that?

‘Jesus fucking Christ!’ he said.

At the top of Veysonnaz the athletes stood around, shifting on the snow and not talking to each other. Most were silently following the monitors rigged inside and outside the hut. There was nothing to say.

At the starting gate Elizabeth was ready to go. Her heart was racing as though she were halfway down already. Two minutes to triumph or defeat.

The news wasn’t good. Her championship lead just narrowed. Heidi had led until Louise ski’d, two girls before Elizabeth. A bravura race; less than two-hundredths of a second slower than the world record. The race of Louise’s career. And the only thing between the Swiss girl and the podium was Lady Elizabeth Savage. The crowd thought it was sewn up. Obviously so did Louise, thrusting both fists skywards in a victory salute and hurling a pole into the air like a cheerleader’s baton. There was no more time to think. The klaxon sounded

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and Elizabeth settled forward, as low as she could go. Within the fifteen-second start time she could choose when to push off and she composed herself, keeping Hans’s words drumming through her head, settling low, low as she could to the ground …

Elizabeth shoved herself forwards, violently, launching due south like a rocket, the packed snow hurtling beneath her long skis, the edges turning nicely as she soared over a hill, a mini-jump taking her twenty yards ahead. How do you top a perfect run? You go faster, faster! Her muscles burned as she forced herself down for the vertical plunge, hugging the netting line for greater velocity. Wind howled past her helmet, the crowds near by shouting and clanging bells behind the rope. From the blurred red, white and blue of the Union Jacks Elizabeth knew she was ahead. Yes! Yes! She’d beat Louise, she just needed’to keep it up, to get that speed - run a sharper angle by the netting …

As she headed into the final furlong Elizabeth saw the Brits jumping up and down, hysterical with joy, waving flags and yelling. She must be ahead! But she couldn’t take chances, had to clinch it. Elizabeth thrust herself forward, taking the last turn at a dangerous tilt, her chest inches from the ground, right by the netting as she

Suddenly she was out of control! A small, sick lurch she tried to steady but was going too low and too fast to stop, and Elizabeth slammed into the side netting, screaming in pain as the tips of her skis thrust through the woven nylon, halting instantly as her body travelled forwards at over a hundred and twenty miles per hour. Her legs were spreadeagled, flung against the solid grip of her boots, the world was a white and blue tumble of sky and snow, then cracking bone, her own distant screaming, and a warm red stream of blood on the icy ground before pain washed everything away in a terrible darkness.

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All she wanted to do was crawl away and die, Nina thought. The young, beautiful woman who gazed back at her from the mirror seemed a mirage. Surely she was a raddled old hag of seventy; she had to be, feeling so weak and so exhausted. All the years she’d been working, at

Green Earth, Dolan and Dragon, Nina had kept up the

‘ pressure, climbing hand over fist up the ladder with blinkered determination. Now the sweep of events had hurtled past and left her behind, and she felt drained. Dragon was rewriting her history as ruthlessly as the KGB; she had been a nothing, a non-person. Every day she saw the upward march of the stock. Little articles about Dr Hall’s research appeared in the biotech sections of the papers. And big, commanding photos of Anthony Savage, Earl of Caerhaven, the Robber Baron, dapper and collected as he ramraided yet another three companies while bravely coping with the tragedy in Switzerland.

That was the thing that saved her.

No matter how lifeless she felt, there was still a core of strength buried deep inside. Too much pride to look at those charming pictures and just take it. Nina clipped the photos of Tony and pinned them everywhere - above her kettle, on her mirrors, by her bed.

It worked like a voodoo charm. Soon grief was only her second emotion. The first was rage.

The first thing to do was sell the house. Knight Frank & Rutley gave her ninetyfive thousand, a profi of five

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grand on the purchase price. Then there were the jewels. Since Tony had refused to take them back, Nina wasn’t going to offer twice. She needed the money. Every penny of it. You had to have funds to go to war. A place in New Bond Street, the leathery old tortoise behind the counter fairly drooling over the quality of the carats and the filigree workmanship, offered six thousand. Nina laughed and started to walk out. She left with fifteen.

Then she checked into a cheap hotel for a week to try and figure out what to do. Flights home were cheap, money went further in the States. Plus she had right of residence there.

But I’m used to Britain, Nina thought. I know the European market. And this is where Tony Savage operates.

It might be ridiculous, she knew, but she wanted revenge, o

If the authorities didn’t know where she lived, they couldn’t serve her with any nasty letters. Nina knew about English bureaucracy - she figured she would have some breathing space. She rented a cheap flat in Highgate for cash, using a false name - a nasty shock, when she’d got used to luxury. The clothes hanging in her tatty wardrobe were thousand-dollar suits, she had silk shirts and Italian leather shoes and a Patek Phillipe watch, but a tiny table, a creaking .bath and paint peeling off the door frames. The TV was secondhand and she didn’t have a kitchen, just a fenced-off little enclosure that was part of the drawing-room, but Nina had been in worse dives than that.

She bought a used computer and fax machine from Exchange & Mart. That ate up a thousand pounds but she needed those things for survival. Once they were set up in her cramped little bedroom Nina’s spirits lifted just a touch.

Now she was ready to go to work.

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She couldn’t find a job.

Glaxo, Wellcome and ICI turned her down flat. At Hoffman LaRoche, Eastman Kodak and Pfizer she talked her way to a first interview but that was all. She was trying to explain her ‘upset’ at Dragon, and as she sat there fumbling the shutters came down in the interviewers’ faces. Nobody was listening ….

Tony Savage had been as good as his word.

He was clever, very clever, Nina thought bitterly as she

left SmithKline Beecham. He let her have a few interviews. Even a couple of job offers. She could never prove any blacklisting, but she knew just what was going on.

The jobs she was offered were suitable for an entry

level executive without a degree. Procter & Gamble’s

‘ science trainee programme, Johnson & Johnson’s marketing course. She got five or six offers like that. She turned them all down. They would mean years of working her way back up; the same frustrating struggle for promotion and recognition. It would be like starting over.

Nina couldn’t live with that. She was going to have to

find another way.

Elizabeth blinked dizzily, her mind struggling to the surface through pain and fatigue. She was desperately thirsty and there was a wrenching ache in her left ankle. Her body felt wrong. Unbalanced.

‘She’s coming round.’ A clipped English voice, a greyhaired doctor leaning over her bed. ‘Lady Elizabeth. Do you know where you are?’

Elizabeth whispered, ‘Pain. Water.’

The surgeon lifted a beaker of water to her mouth and motioned to a nurse. ‘Give her ladyship some pethe dine.’ He gave her a brisk, impersonal smile. ‘I’m Dr Jopling, one of your father’s regular consultants. He had me flown out here to attend to you after your accident.

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You’re in the Clinique Reine Catherine, outside Geneva.

We’ll be flying you home as soon as you’re fit to travel.’ The nurse silently injected something cold into her side. Elizabeth stared at him, groping for meaning. Images flooded back into her mind: the race, her fall, agony and blood.

‘I fell.’

‘I’m afraid so. We removed your spleen. You had a serious accident and underwent several operations, but you’re all right now.’

‘No.’ Elizabeth shook her head. The pethedine was working, making her dizzy as the comforting warmth flowed through her body, washing away the pain, but something was very wrong.

Dr Jopling’s face was professionally reassuring. ‘We can discuss everything later, once you’ve had a chance to adjust. I’ll.call your family; they’ve been waiting for you to recover consciousness, and I’m sure you’ll want to see them—’

‘Doctor.’ Elizabeth’s voice was a weakened croak. ‘I want to know what happened. Please tell me now.’

‘Very well.’ Jopling came closer to the bed and looked like he might be going to take her hand, but then thought better of such familiarity. ‘You suffered a severe fall - at intense velocity - sustaining serious internal and external injuries, including haemorrhaging, broken bones and fractures.’ A beat. ‘The Worst damage was done to your left foot, which was broken by your fall and then sliced to the bone by your right ski. This injury was further compounded by your ski boot. It crushed the severed portion of the foot.’

He paused. There was no way to soften the blow. ‘Every effort was made to reattach, but the nerve endings were beyond repair. I’m sorry to have to tell you that we amputated your foot at the ankle.’