The Secret Heiress (22 page)

Sugar and Yves rose to their feet and grabbed Angelo’s arms, trying to make him stop. “Angelo!” Sugar cried. “Stop! Stop at once. You’re only going to hurt yourself, and this isn’t going to solve any problems.”

As suddenly as he’d started, Angelo ceased pummeling Adrian and slipped from Yves’s and Sugar’s grasps. He collapsed on the floor at their feet. Giulia let out a cry of alarm and rushed to him, kneeling down on the floor beside him. “Angelo!” she cried. “Oh, Angelo! What have you done to yourself?”

He lay silent, his chest heaving with exertion, his face still red with rage. Then he shoved Giulia away with an arm and lifted his head from the floor. Holding Adrian’s gaze, he said, “I swear by Almighty God that I am going to kill you. And when I’ve accomplished that, I’m going to kill that bitch Nikoletta.”

Giulia sucked in her breath and began crying again. She shook her head from side to side in anguish while the others stared at Angelo.

He began sobbing and cried out, “My Bianca was worth a hundred Nikolettas! A thousand Nikolettas!” His head slumped to the floor again, and he wept quietly, his strength almost spent.

Sugar caught Adrian’s eye and nodded imperceptibly, signaling that perhaps it was for the best if he left.

“When you’re ready to talk about this, Angelo—” Adrian began, but he wasn’t allowed to finish.

“Out! Get
out
!”

Adrian had no choice but to obey. He went down the hallway disconsolately and out the entrance to the helicopter. He hoped that Angelo would have a change of heart. He’d loved Bianca like a favorite cousin, and her death had been a terrible blow to him, too. Angelo surely knew that.

Nikoletta was another story. He heaved a sigh.
The time has come to implement my plan,
he thought with rising dread.
I’ve held off too long already. Bianca’s death is proof of that.
When the telephone call had come from Yves, he’d known it was time. For years he’d prepared for something like this, and he saw no choice but to move forward.

 

D
arkness had fallen, and the tour boats with their guides and camera-toting tourists had stopped running for the night. Only a few late strollers walked along the promenade. Along the picturesque canals of Little Venice the colorfully painted live-aboard barges decorated with flowerpots and laundry lines seemed to be apparitions with glowing windows.

Just across the pool from Browning’s Island, draped with its willows, the windows of one single-wide, permanently moored barge glowed in the dark like others, but anyone passing by along the promenade would find it impossible to peer in past the drawn curtains. Nor could anyone eavesdrop. The windows and doors aboard this barge had been carefully locked, and only indistinct shadows could be seen moving about behind the cheerful print of the curtain fabric.

Inside the barge, the moderately successful young sculptor who owned it was playing host to a gathering of acquaintances. His wife, a designer of Web sites, sat quietly breast-feeding their baby. Their guests were nine bohemian types, all young men and women with faces that radiated ideological righteousness.

The group was all environmental activists who belonged to this particular English cell of Mother Earth’s Children. Like the other cells in various countries, this one was kept separate from others for anti-infiltration purposes. The nine members of the cell invited to gather on the barge considered themselves especially honored. On board was a thirteenth person—a heroic guest of honor—on whom all eyes were riveted.

Kees Vanmeerendonk was recovered from the gunshot wound he had suffered while scuffling with Adrian Single on St. Barth’s, and his eyes burned with the feverish intensity of a revolutionary. Compared with the photographs in Interpol’s files, Kees was totally unrecognizable. The slender, dark-haired and bearded would-be assassin had purposely gained weight, shaved off his beard and hair, and assumed the guise of a skin-head, wearing the familiar uniform of bleachers—skintight bleached jeans—held up by suspenders, along with a Fred Perry shirt and twenty-hole boots that laced up to his knees. His gaze, that of a true believer, was the only physical characteristic that was familiar to those who knew him.

“Is it really necessary to resort to violence?” asked the newest member of the cell, a gaunt-faced young woman who sported a buzz cut, denim overalls, and Doc Martens.

Before the guest of honor could answer her question, she continued. “Wouldn’t peaceful activism like Martin Luther King’s, or nonviolent, headline-grabbing confrontations like Greenpeace’s serve us equally as well?”

Kees Vanmeerendonk shook his hairless head. “The answer is no,” he said adamantly. “Especially where PPHL is concerned. Under Nikoletta Papadaki, PPHL has joined the five privately owned top polluters in the world. And privately owned polluters are the most dangerous because they don’t have to answer to stockholders.”

His eyes took on a fiery intensity, and he used a finger to stress his point, saying, “Nikoletta Papadaki is the symbol of all that is wrong with this planet. The damage that she alone is doing to mother earth will take thousands, maybe even millions, of years to repair. She is guilty of trying to kill the planet that sustains us, and the only way to send out our message so that it is truly heard is to make an example of her. She’s left us no choice.”

He paused briefly for dramatic effect before continuing. “She has to die.”

Kees looked around the small circle. “Any other questions?”

There were none.

He nodded with satisfaction. “In the meantime, don’t let up the pressure. Continue with the demonstrations. And remember, the more violent and newsworthy they are, the more the world will be aware of the continuing transgressions against nature.”

After another fifteen minutes or so of conversation, the host thanked Kees with the effusiveness reserved for heroes, and Kees slipped out into the night alone, his destination unknown to the other cell members. The gaunt-faced young woman quickly rushed out after him, ignoring the protests of her hosts. She spotted him, already in the distance, and ran to catch up with him.

Over a period of another hour, the remaining guests left the barge at intervals, each one alone.

The activity had been so furtive that not even the residents of the neighboring barges were aware that a meeting had taken place. They knew little of the young sculptor and his wife, but they would all agree that he seemed a talented young father and she a wonderful mother to their adorable baby.

T
hey were still miles from the city when Ariadne got her first glimpse of Manhattan’s skyscrapers. “It’s breathtaking,” she said enthusiastically, squeezing Matt’s shoulder. “Pictures don’t do it justice. Oh, look, Matt! You can see the Empire State Building.”

Matt grinned. “I can’t believe you’ve never been into the city.”

“I know. It’s crazy, especially since it’s so close. I wanted to come in so much, but my parents always warned against it. You know, they think it’s a big bad place where people get murdered in the streets.”

“A lot of the people in the country are like that,” he said.

“Most of the locals around Roxbury have never been, and they don’t have any desire to.”

They drove in on the East Side, and Matt parked the Jeep in a garage. “How about if we start with a walk?” he asked, pocketing the parking ticket. “That’s the best way to see things.”

“I’d love that,” Ariadne said. She was so excited that she thought she could walk all day.

Holding hands with her, he led her across town from Third Avenue to Madison, and they began walking downtown. “Oh, my,” Ariadne said as they strolled past the designer boutiques. “I’ve never seen so many beautiful clothes in one place in my life.”

Matt put an arm around her shoulders. “It is nice, isn’t it?”

After several blocks, he led her across to Fifth Avenue, and they changed direction and began walking uptown. “You can get a different perspective,” he said.

Ariadne loved strolling along Central Park, gawking at the apartment buildings across the avenue, with their white-gloved doormen, then turning to look into the verdancy of the park itself. “The people who live along here have a fantastic view,” she said.

They reached the Metropolitan Museum of Art and sat on the steps for a while, enjoying the sunshine while taking a breather. “We can go in if you want to,” Matt offered, “or save the museum for another time.”

“Let’s save it,” she said. “It’s so wonderful outside today.” Besides, she thought, she liked the idea of coming into the city with him again.

They watched a mime’s performance and a juggler before reversing direction and heading down the avenue. She enjoyed window-shopping at the big department and specialty stores and strolling through the Art Deco wonder of Rockefeller Center. Afterward, they peeked into the silent grandeur of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

“Are you getting tired?” Matt asked solicitously.

She shook her head. “No. Not even close,” she said. “This is all too exciting to get tired.”

They walked on, finally reaching Thirty-fourth Street and the destination Matt had in mind. Looking up, Ariadne turned to him. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “You want to go to the top of the Empire State Building? It has to be the most touristy thing we could possibly do.”

He nodded. “Guilty on both counts,” he said. “But it’s something everyone should do whether it’s touristy or not.”

The crowds waiting to get in were large, but they didn’t have to wait too long. They took the high-speed elevator to the floor where the observation platform was located and stepped outside. The wind was powerful and whipped Ariadne’s long hair about her face. She gathered it up and quickly put it in a ponytail, then, holding Matt’s hand, went as close to the edge as she could.

“This is really awesome,” she said. “Unbelievable.”

Initially, they looked north. Matt pointed out landmarks in Manhattan and beyond, up past Central Park to the Bronx and Westchester County. Taking their time, they walked west, where they looked across the Hudson River to New Jersey, then south to Staten Island and more New Jersey. Finally, they made their way to the east side, and gazed out across Queens to Long Island.

She was mesmerized by the views all the way around. “I’m so glad we did this,” she said. “This must be one of the greatest vantage points in the entire world.”

He squeezed her hand in his. “I’m glad you like it,” he said. “I haven’t been up here myself for many years. I’d forgotten how impressive it is.”

Other tourists bumped against them, talking animatedly. Matt leaned down and kissed her cheek, and she looked up with shining eyes. “Thank you for this,” she said.

When they got back down on the street, he hailed a taxi and gave the driver an address in SoHo. There, at a small French bistro on Spring Street, they had a late lunch, gorging on steak and
pommes frites,
washing it down with a good red wine, then enjoying a
tarte tatin,
all the while observing the street life of the neighborhood. Afterward, they walked off some of the lunch, window-shopping in the trendy environs.

“Nearly everybody is so well put together,” Ariadne said. “What I mean is, everybody seems to have a look.”

“There’s definitely a passion for fashion,” Matt said.

She smiled at his rhyme. “That’s one way to put it.”

“I think we have time for one more thing,” he said, looking at his wristwatch.

“What’s that?”

“You’ll see.”

He hailed a taxi, and they shot back uptown on the West Side Highway. Near Forty-second Street, the driver came to a screeching halt. Matt paid the fare, and they got out of the cab.

“Where
are
we going?” she asked. She saw bicyclists whizzing by and joggers running in a cordoned-off area across the street, and beyond that there was a ticket booth for the Circle Line, where a long queue of tourists waited.