The Persian Price (14 page)

‘We all miss her,' James said loudly, hoping that this too went to its target.

His attention was claimed by a beautifully dressed, exotic Iranian girl, married to one of the few Persian aristocrats still in public life and herself the heiress to a vast fortune. Her father owned one of the largest mines in Iran. Substantial gifts of ‘A' shares to influential ministers and a part holding to the Pahlevi Foundation had saved the mine from being nationalized. She was vivacious and attractive; she spoke French and German fluently and perfect English. She was bored with her husband and had often indicated to James that she found him attractive. If it hadn't been for Eileen, he would have taken up the challenge. While he flirted with her, he wondered what was happening with Logan and Saiid Homsi in the house.

6

‘I've brought you towels. And some soap.' Peters put them on the bed. Eileen was sitting in the chair; the bedside lamp was on. It was quite dark outside. The room was stiflingly hot.

‘Thank you,' she said. ‘At least I can wash properly.'

He took something out of his pocket and dropped it on the heap of towels. It was a man's pocket comb.

‘You can have this,' he said.

‘I'm so terribly hot,' Eileen got up slowly. She moved as if she were exhausted. Peters didn't mean to, but he balanced on the edge of the bed. He didn't intend to stay and talk.

‘Do you have to have that mesh over the window? It looks high enough and I promise you I'm not going to jump out. It stops the air from circulating; I feel suffocated in here.'

‘The mesh was put there for the child,' Peters said. ‘To stop her falling out.'

‘Would you have really kept her locked up in here?'

‘No.' He took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘She would have slept here. Madeleine would have looked after her; she'd have had the run of the garden. We meant to treat her properly.'

It was all so logical, and at the same time so inhuman. She didn't argue with him and the split-second impulse to spit her condemnation in his face was quickly mastered. She felt as if she were groping in total darkness whenever she talked to him. It wasn't so much a dialogue, however brief, as an exploration of a species quite unknown to her. And unlike the woman he showed her no personal hostility.

‘Could I have one?'

He looked surprised for a moment. Then he got up and offered her the cigarettes. He gave her a light.

‘Would you tell me something?' Eileen asked him. Peters waited. ‘Why have you kidnapped me?'

‘I can't tell you that. It's nothing personal against you.'

‘It must be something to do with my husband. Why can't you tell me?'

Peters looked at her and drew on the last of his cigarette.

Madeleine had said she was arrogant. She had spent a long time with him on the terrace, arguing that they should imprison the woman in the cellars and insisting that she was the type to give trouble. Peters hadn't agreed with her then and he saw no sign of it now. There was nothing about Eileen Field which antagonized him personally. She had saved her child at her own risk and he gave her credit for courage. She wasn't being truculent with him, whatever Madeleine said.

‘It
is
to do with your husband. That's all I can tell you.'

She picked up the comb and used it. One tooth was broken. It was his own comb. He noticed that she had pretty hair, which waved naturally round her face. She looked at him and shook her head.

‘And if he refuses to pay the ransom – whatever it is?'

‘He won't,' Peters said. ‘But the little girl would have been better.'

‘That's a filthy thing to say,' Eileen said slowly. ‘Don't you have any feelings? Don't you see that to use a little child for a purpose, ransom or anything else, is the lowest, most despicable thing anyone could do? I'm not trying to argue with you, because thank God you didn't get her. I can't understand how you could
say
a thing like that!'

‘We have a different set of values,' Peters answered. He wondered whether she could be brought to understand them if he did explain. It was a Liberation Army axiom that no opportunity to put their case should be neglected. There were cases where prisoners had become converted and asked to join in the struggle. She was intelligent and courageous; she didn't remind him of the mindless rich women he had known in the States, creatures of such superficiality that they wouldn't have survived Eileen Field's experience with enough wit to ask a question. She hadn't whined or grovelled. And the room was like a bake oven. His own clothes were sticking to him.

‘You see a little girl,' he said slowly. ‘I see a whole people. Thousands of children, not one child. Children without food or shelter, or hope for the future. I see their families, living with disease and dirt in hovels made of packing cases. To do something about that, I would have snatched your child, Mrs Field, and I don't see anything wrong in it. So long as she came to no harm.'

‘If, if she did come to harm – if she got ill or had an accident – you'd still be able to justify it?'

‘The end would justify it,' Peters said.

‘That old lie about the Jesuits,' Eileen answered. ‘It's been made the excuse for every crime under the sun. Tell me, what happens to me if my husband refuses to accept your terms? Supposing he won't give you the money – what will you do with me?'

Peters got up.

‘I'll leave you these,' he said. He put the cigarettes and a box of matches on the bed.

‘I shouldn't have asked that,' Eileen said. ‘You don't have to answer. I can imagine. Please, couldn't you take that wire off the window?'

He went over and tested it, as she had done earlier. He knew that the drop below was fifty feet to the rocks, and that the sea boiled round them in a strong undercurrent. There were no pipes or ledges on the outside walls. Nothing but a suicidal drop.

‘Okay,' he said. ‘I'll have it taken out tomorrow.'

‘Thank you,' Eileen said. ‘Would you tell me your name?'

‘Peters,' he said. ‘Do you want anything else?'

‘Something to read,' she said.

‘I'll see what there is,' he said.

When he had gone, Eileen ran to the window. She pulled at the wire mesh. Once that was down, at least there was a possible way out. She could see the sea below and guessed that there must be a sheer drop or he wouldn't have agreed to take the mesh away. The encounter had left her taut with nervous tension. He had been neutral, giving the few necessities without making her beg for them; there was a disturbing lack of personal animosity towards her. She would have found it easier to fight him if there had been. He wasn't going to treat her cruelly or indulge in petty persecutions. But if the order came through he would take her out of the room and shoot her dead. She knew that without any doubt. As a young girl her experience of men had been limited to the jolly young Irishmen with whom she had grown up, friends in the hunting field, partners at the rowdy horse show parties and the lavish balls where throwing bread rolls and squirting siphons of soda were a ritual part of the entertainment. Men had been in love with her and she had flirted happily with many of them. If Logan Field hadn't come to Ireland to look at a property owned by their neighbour, she would have married one of the gay young men who slid down the banisters at parties and known nothing different. There was no one in her experience comparable with the man who had kidnapped her. She had travelled widely with Logan when they married first; a month in the United States had brought her into contact with Americans from many different groups. They had been friendly, hospitable and easy to like. She could even recognize Peters as a physical type. Tall, showing traces of Scandinavian ancestry, physically very strong; he had the loose, easy way of moving that was typically American. She remembered saying to Logan that they made Englishmen look jerky by comparison.

He didn't waste words; he had cold eyes, very blue, and when he looked at her there was no expression in them. Not antagonism, or suspicion, nothing. She had felt instinctively that to be aggressive would gain her nothing. It hadn't been easy to master the impulse to fly at him with her nails, when he talked about what they had planned to do with her child. She had stayed calm and, by so doing, she had wrung a major concession from him. The wire was coming off the window. She wondered how high above the sea the window was. If it was possible to climb down even part of the way and then drop … she was a strong swimmer. The bed sheets and the counterpane. The towels he had brought her. It might be possible to make a rope. She went into the bathroom and splashed her face with cold water. The heat was sticky and close. She had never resorted to cunning in her life; it had never been necessary to wheedle and manoeuvre with a man to get something out of him. It was strange how quickly adversity instructed.

She lit one of the cigarettes Peters had left her. She needn't have done that. They weren't a necessity. She paused, struck by the thought that Logan wouldn't have left her the cigarettes, if he had been Peters. He certainly wouldn't have taken the wire off the window. Not because he was inhuman or enjoyed being harsh. But because he was a total realist. Prisoners lived with bars and didn't smoke. She turned the cigarette over in her fingers.

The cold eyes, the impersonal approach to her. She remembered how rough he had been when they landed, the gun pressing into her side through the drive to the villa. She didn't know why, but she shivered. She mustn't antagonize him. She must be quiet and dignified, because it seemed to have the best effect upon him. She must thank him when he brought her food, and appear to be quiescent, waiting for news of her release.

And that release would come. It must. Thinking how best to outwit Peters had brought only critical thoughts of Logan to her mind. She felt ashamed and petty. Jealous still of his choice of another woman, of the dismissal of all their years together and the happiness that both of them had known. She finished the cigarette and took her dress off. She lay down in her slip on top of the bed, propped up on the pillow. It was too hot to sleep. She remembered their first meeting and closed her eyes, willing herself out of the stuffy room with its implications of nightmare back to Clonagh Castle nearly eight years before.

The son of the house had wanted to marry her. The family were their neighbours and her father's oldest friends. Their name was Louth and the title went back to the twelfth century. They had a magnificent house with an original Norman keep, and a bank manager in Dublin whose patience was coming to an end. Clonagh was up for sale and the Fitzgeralds had been invited to meet the prospective buyers, a very rich Englishman who they hoped to persuade. Eileen was twenty; her dress was made by the dressmaker in Meath and was five years out of fashion. She had no idea how beautiful she looked the night she met Logan Field. She only knew that he dominated the room. Beside him her own father, even Lord Louth, who was a considerable personage in the country, and certainly his son, her suitor, seemed like a group of out-of-date ghosts, with their insular jokes and their endless talk of horses and neighbours. The Englishman had shamed them by his knowledge, his range of interests and his authority. She had felt him as a physical presence and when they were separated at the dinner table, she had seen him looking down towards her.

Logan hadn't bought Clonagh Castle. He didn't like Ireland or the Irish, only she didn't discover that till after she was married. He had met her and made up his mind. Within a month they were engaged and within three they were on their honeymoon.

She was back in the room again, with the ugly bedside light burning and a mosquito whining overhead. They had been deeply in love. She had been shy and untutored; he had been patient and tender until she understood his passion and could meet it. It couldn't go for nothing. Love might die but there were always traces left. If he were in danger at that moment, if positions were reversed, she would have given anything, done anything, to rescue him. He was a strong man, a powerful force, excited by obstacles. She had been part of his life, even if not the major part. Thoughtless and ambitious above all, but in his way he had loved her very much. With hindsight, she admitted that she had forced the issue of their marriage into the open. Had she stayed quiet, there might have been no crisis, no breakdown. Logan would get her out. She didn't doubt it for a moment.

She fell asleep and started a long, incoherent dream about climbing out of the bedroom window on a rope that had no end towards a sea that came no nearer. And suddenly it stopped and she was falling. She woke from the throes of finding herself struggling violently in Peters's arms and being borne down onto the rocks.

‘I don't believe you,' Logan Field said. He had taken a step towards the Syrian, but Homsi didn't retreat. He shrugged, both his palms turned upwards.

‘I am only a messenger, Mr Field,' he said. ‘A go-between. I can assure you these people seized your wife three days ago. And they mean what they say.' He shook his head a little. ‘Naturally this is a great shock to you. I do sympathize.'

‘I don't believe it,' Logan repeated. ‘My wife's in England. If anything had happened to her, I'd have been told at once!'

‘Apparently it was done in such a way that nobody knows she is missing,' the Syrian said. ‘The terrorists want this kept completely secret. That is one of their conditions. You must tell nobody. I advise you to do as they say. They are a very dangerous, extremist group.'

‘I'll find her,' Logan said. ‘I'll get every police force in the world on to it.'

‘The moment you go to the police or say anything, she will be killed,' Saiid Homsi said quietly. ‘Make inquiries by all means, Mr Field, but if you want your wife alive, you must be very, very discreet.'