The President's Daughter (7 page)

Watercolors were her favorite, much more than oils. She did a quick charcoal sketch of the scene before her, catching a fishing boat as it passed, then faded it down and started to paint.

She still hadn’t got over the death of her beloved mother. The cottage had been a refuge, at least in her mind. No staff, just a peasant woman who arrived on a donkey three times a week with fresh bread and milk and firewood. Time to reflect on the meaning of life and its purpose and to paint, of course.

She opened the cold box. Amongst the other things in there was a bottle of Chablis, ice-cold. She uncorked it and poured a glass.

“Strange,” she said softly, “but everyone seems to die on me. First Maurice in that stupid Gulf War, then the general, and now Maman. I wonder what I’ve done?”

She was not aware of any sound of approach, only the voice saying, “Excellent, I particularly admire that blue color wash and the way you soak it in to the shoreline.”

She glanced up and found him standing there. Probably about her own age, with blond hair and a strong, tanned face. He wore jeans and an old reefer jacket. His English had a slight accent that she couldn’t place.

She said, “I don’t want to sound unwelcoming, but this is a private beach.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that, just as I’m aware that you are the Comtesse de Brissac.”

She knew then, of course, that this was no casual interloper, that there was purpose here. “Who are you?”

“What’s in a name.” He smiled. “Let’s say David Braun.” He took the bottle of Chablis from the cold box and examined the label. “Interesting.” He poured a glass and sampled it. “Not bad, not bad at all.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying it.” Strange, but she felt no sense of fear. This was no casual encounter, no threat of rape.

He whistled and called out, not in English this time, and a young man came down the path to join him and she recognized the language at once.

“Hebrew,” she said. “You spoke in Hebrew. I’ve been to Israel. I recognize the language.”

“Good.” He finished his wine. “Now, then,” he said in English, “pack up the lady’s things and follow us up to the cottage.”

“What’s this all about?” she asked calmly.

“All in good time, Comtesse.” He gestured with one hand. “After you, if you please.”

A Ford station wagon was parked outside the cottage. The other young man put her painting things in the rear and she saw that it was also filled with her suitcases.

“This is Moshe, by the way,” David Braun told her. “He started packing up the moment you left. The cupboard, as they say, is bare. I know you’ve only been using taxis while you’ve been here, so the old woman, when she turns up on her donkey, will think you’ve just up and left.”

“To where?”

He opened the rear door. “Your carriage awaits, and an interesting plane ride. What could be better?”

She hesitated, then did as she was told, and he got in beside her. As Moshe drove away, she said, “And the final destination?”

“Ah, now you’re expecting too much. Just enjoy the ride. The view over there, for example.”

She turned automatically, was aware of a prick in her bare right arm, turned and saw a plastic medical hypo in his hand.

“Damn you!” she said, “What was it?”

“Does it matter?” He tossed the hypo out of the open window. “You’ll sleep now—a nice long sleep. You’ll actually feel better when you waken.”

She tried to reply, but her eyes felt heavy, and suddenly he just wasn’t there anymore and she plunged into darkness.

In Sicily, the Peugeot was really into the high country, Monte Cammarata rising six thousand feet to one side.

“That looks like rough country,” Riley said.

Luigi nodded. “Salvatore Guiliano made his home up there for years. The army and the police couldn’t catch him. A great man, a true Sicilian.”

“A great bandit, he means,” Hannah said to Riley, “who paid the rent for some poor old woman now and then and liked to see himself as Robin Hood.”

“God, but you take a hard line, woman,” Dillon said. “Guiliano wasn’t such a bad ould stick.”

“Just the kind of man you would approve of.”

“I know, it’s wicked I am.” At that moment, they entered a village and he added, “A pit stop, Luigi. I could do with the necessary and so could all of us, I suspect.”

“Of course, signor.”

They paused outside a
trattoria
with a few rough wooden tables and chairs under an awning. The
proprietor, an old, gray-haired man wearing a soiled apron, greeted them. Luigi whispered to him, then turned.

“The toilet is at the back, Chief Inspector.”

“On your way,” Dillon told her cheerfully. “We’ll take turns.”

She followed Luigi, who went to the bar area to order the drinks. It was dark in there and the smell of the toilet was unmistakable. Dillon and Riley lit cigarettes as some kind of compensation. The only concession to modern living was an espresso machine.

Luigi turned. “Coffee okay?”

“Why not,” Dillon said.

Hannah emerged from the shadows and made a face. “I wouldn’t linger, gentlemen. I’ll wait outside.”

Dillon and Riley found the back room, which was in an appalling state. Dillon went first and shuddered when he came out. “Make it quick, Dermot. A man could die in there.”

Luigi was still getting the coffees and Dillon moved to the beaded entrance, pausing to light another cigarette. There was a cry of indignation from Hannah. He stepped outside and dropped the cigarette.

She was seated at one of the tables and two young men had joined her, poverty-stricken agricultural workers from the look of it, in patched jackets, scuffed leather leggings, and cloth caps. One sat on the table, a shotgun slung over one shoulder, laughing, the other was stroking the back of Hannah’s neck.

“I said stop it!” She was truly angry now and spoke in Italian.

The man laughed and ran his hand down her back. Dillon punched him in the kidneys, grabbed him by the collar, and ran him headlong to one side so that he stumbled over a chair and fell. In virtually the same movement, he
turned and gave the one sitting on the edge of the table the heel of his hand, feeling the nose go, knocking him to the ground.

Dermot called, “I’m with you, Sean,” and came out through the bead curtain on the run. The one who had gone down first sprang a knife in his right hand as he came up, and Dermot grabbed for the wrist, twisted, and made him drop it. The other pulled the sling of the
lupara
over his head and stood, his face a mask of blood. As he tried to cock it, Dillon knocked it to one side and gave him a savage punch to the stomach, and the man dropped the
lupara.

There was a single shot as Luigi arrived and fired into the air. He suddenly seemed a different man, the pistol in one hand, the warrant card in the other.

“Police,” he said. “Now leave the
lupara
and clear off.”

They shambled away. The old man appeared, strangely unconcerned, four espressos on a tray. He placed it in the center of the table.

“Sorry for the fuss, grandad,” Dillon said in excellent Italian.

“My nephew and his friend.” The old man shrugged. “Bad boys.” He picked up the
lupara.
“I’ll see he gets this back and there will be no charge. I’m sorry the signorina was molested in this way. It shames me.”

He went inside and Dillon took one of the coffees. “He’s ashamed. It was his nephew and a friend . . .”

“I heard what he said,” Hannah told him. “My Italian is as good as yours.”

Dillon turned to Riley. “Thanks, Dermot.”

“Nothing to it,” Riley said. “Just like the old days.”

“You move quick, signor,” Luigi said.

“Oh, he does that all right,” Hannah said as she drank
her coffee. “Boot and fist, that’s our Dillon, and you should see him with a gun.”

Dillon smiled amiably. “You have a way with the words, girl dear. Now drink up and let’s be moving.”

As they moved down toward the south coast, things changed, the landscape became softer.

“During the war, the Americans came through here on their way through the Cammarata to Palermo. The Italian soldiers fled after receiving a Mafia directive to support the Americans against the Germans,” Luigi told them.

“And why would they do that?” Dillon asked.

“The Americans released from jail in New York the great Mafia don, Lucky Luciano.”

“Another gangster,” Hannah said.

“Perhaps, signorina, but he got the job done and the people believed in him. He went back to prison in America, but was released in nineteen forty-six. On the pardon, it said: For services to his country.”

“And you believe in such fantasy?” she asked.

“During the campaign, my own father saw him in the village of Corleone.”

Dillon laughed out loud. “Now that’s a showstopper if ever I heard one.”

As the landscape softened, there were flowers everywhere, on the slopes knapweed with yellow heads, bee orchids, ragwort and gentians.

“So beautiful.” Hannah sighed. “Yet centuries of violence and killing. Such a pity.”

“I know,” Dillon said. “Just like the Bible. As for me, I’m just passing through.”

He closed his eyes and Riley glanced at him and it was the plane all over again and he felt as guilty as hell, but
there was nothing he could do after all. Salinas soon, and it would all be over. Some comfort in that.

Marie de Brissac surfaced in a kind of instant moment, one second nothing, dark as the grave, the next pale evening light. The first thing she was aware of was that she felt fine in herself, no headache, no heaviness, and that seemed strange.

She was lying on a large four-poster bed in a room with a vaulted ceiling and paneled walls of dark oak. There was oaken furniture, heavy and old, and a tapestry on the far wall with some sort of medieval scene on it. What seemed to be the outer door was also oak and studded with iron bands. There was another door beside the bed itself.

There was a large window, barred, of course, a table, and three chairs beside it. The man who had called himself David Braun sat there reading a book. He glanced up.

“Ah, there you are. How do you feel?”

“Fine.” She sat up. “Where am I?”

“Oh, in another country, that’s all you need to know. I’ll get you some coffee, or tea if you prefer it.”

“No, coffee would be fine, strong, black, and two sugars.”

“I shan’t be long. Look around.”

He opened the door and went out and she heard a key turn in the lock. She got up, crossed to the other door, opened it, and found herself in a large old-fashioned bathroom. The toilet, basin and bath with a stand-in shower looked straight out of the nineteenth century, but on the shelf beside the wash basin there was a range of toiletries. Soaps, shampoos, talcum powder, deodorants, a selection of sanitary napkins. There was even an electric hairdryer,
combs and hairbrushes, and it occurred to her that all this had very probably been procured for her.

Her belief was further reinforced by her discovery on the desk in the bedroom of a carton of Gitanes, her favorite cigarette, and a couple of plastic lighters. She opened a pack, took a cigarette and lit it, then went to the window and peered out through the bars.

The building, whatever it was, was situated on the edge of a cliff. There was a bay below with an old jetty, a speedboat moored there. Beyond that was only a very blue sea, the light fading as dusk fell. The key turned in the door behind her, it opened, and Braun entered carrying a tray.

“So you’ve settled in?”

“You could call it that. When do I get some answers?”

“My boss will be along in a few minutes. It’s up to him.” He poured coffee for her.

She picked up the book he had been reading. It was in English, an edition of T. S. Eliot’s
The Four Quartets.
“You like poetry?” she asked.

“I like Eliot.” He misquoted: “In our end is our beginning and all that. He says so much so simply.” He walked to the door and paused. “He won’t want you to see his face, so don’t be alarmed.”

He went out and she finished her coffee, poured a second cup, and lit another cigarette. She paced up and down for a while, trying to make sense of it all, but the truth was that there wasn’t any sense to it. Behind her, the key rattled in the lock, and as she turned the door opened.

David Braun came in and stood to one side, and it was the man following him who shocked her. He seemed about six feet tall, with good shoulders, and wore a black jump suit. The shock was the black knitted ski mask he
wore, through which his eyes seemed to glitter. All in all, as sinister-looking a creature as she had ever seen in her life.

His voice, when he spoke, was good Boston American. “A pleasure, Countess, and I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

“My God, you’re American, and I thought you were Israelis when I heard Hebrew spoken.”

“My dear Countess, half the men in Israel speak English with an American accent. That’s where most of us received our education. Best in the world.”

“Really?” she said. “A matter of opinion.”

“Yes, I was forgetting. You went to Oxford and the University of Paris.”

“You’re well informed.”

“I know everything about you, Countess—everything. No secrets.”

“And I know nothing about you. Your name, for example.”

She could see his teeth through the slot for his mouth and it was as if he smiled. “Judas,” he said. “Call me Judas.”

“Very biblical,” she said, “but, alas, an unfortunate connotation.”

“Oh, yes, I know what you mean, Judas betraying Christ in the Garden.” He shrugged. “But there were sound political reasons. Judas Iscariot was a Zealot. He wanted his country free of the Romans.”

“And you?”

“I just want my country free of everybody.”

“But how does that concern me, for God’s sake?”

“Later, Countess, later. In the meantime, David will see to your every need. You’ll have to eat in here, naturally, but if there’s anything special you’d like, just ask
him. Plenty of books on the shelves, and you’ve got your painting. I’ll speak to you again.”

Braun opened the door for him and followed him out. Judas pulled off the hood and ran his fingers through close-cropped, copper-colored hair. He had a strong face, high cheekbones, blue eyes, and there was a restless vitality to him. He looked around fifty years of age.