The Stallion (1996) (43 page)

Bob Carpenter spent the graduation weekend in a suite at the Hyatt Regency. Cindy found time twice to spend an hour with him.

On the lawn in her backyard, she took her brother aside for a moment of quiet conversation.

“You have ways of finding out things,” she said to him. “So do I, but I don’t want Angelo to know.”

“What can I find out for you?” Henry asked, looking more solemn than usual. “Do you have a problem?”

“Surprise,” she said. “Would it surprise you that your forty-four-year-old sister is seeing a man?”

“It would surprise me if you weren’t.”

“His name is Robert Carpenter. He is a professor of art history at California State University, Long Beach. He seems to have an amazing amount of money to spend buying art. Also, he doesn’t seem to spend much time professoring. I can’t help being curious.”

“Professor Robert Carpenter,” said Henry. “I’ll check into him.”

After the graduation weekend, Angelo flew back to Germany. Alexandria McCullough and Keijo Shigeto went with him. Keijo was going on to Turin to meet with the designer. Alex was going with Angelo to Berlin to meet with a battery developer.

“We’re close to a decision about batteries,” he told Keijo and Alex as they sat in the upstairs lounge of a 747 high above the Atlantic. He turned toward Alex. “If you can match your computer program to the device we’re going to see in Berlin, I’m ready to buy the thing.”

“You’ve been a little secretive on this subject,” she said.

“I’ve been a little frustrated by the problem,” he said. “We’re going to have to merge two technologies, both of which are way out on the frontier.”

Alex drew attention. She was wearing a green mini dress that showed off her red hair to advantage, and the legs she showed below the hem of her short skirt were spectacular. Men sitting in the lounge envied Angelo. They could not have guessed that her heart belonged to Lucy.

“We’re going to have to go with the lithium-polymer cell,” Angelo continued. “It solves most of our problems.”

Keijo nodded. “All solid,” he said. “No danger of battery acid spewing out in the event of an accident.”

“It runs cool and makes almost no heat,” Angelo said. “Works just as well on the coldest day of winter as on the hottest day of summer.”

“How much will the cell weigh?” asked Alex.

“I’m looking at eight hundred pounds.”

“What about acceleration?” she asked.

“That’s where the second technology comes in. We’ll supplement the lithium-polymer cell with a flywheel battery. The flywheel battery will take electric current from the lithium-polymer cell and use it to spin a flywheel floating on magnetic bearings. It spins at thirty thousand rpm or thereabouts. It has two great advantages. First, it can deliver a surge of power on demand, for acceleration. Second, it recaptures energy that would otherwise be lost—during braking, for example.”

“Doesn’t this thing begin to get a bit complex?” asked Alex. “A lot of things have to work right.”

Angelo shrugged. “Isn’t a gasoline engine complex? You have to pump liquid fuel from a tank, vaporize it, mix it with the right amount of air, draw it into cylinders, explode the vapor with a spark at just the right time, utilize the power from the explosion, exhaust the fumes—”

“Et cetera,” Alex interrupted. “Okay. When all that was a new technology, it didn’t work very well.”

“This has got to be tested extensively,” said Angelo. “Tested and tested and tested.”

In the bar at the Bristol-Kempinski Hotel, in Berlin, Angelo glanced at his watch.

“I’m going to have to leave you,” he said to Alex.

She smiled. “I hope you enjoy her, whoever she is.”

“She’s lovely, but it’s a business appointment,” he said. “So are you, but—”

“Am I the only woman you ever met who couldn’t wait to feel your cock between her legs?” Alex asked.

“It would be embarrassing to admit how many times I’ve been refused.”

“The others were probably like me,” she said. “I understand the attraction. If I wanted a man—”

Angelo grinned. “Please!”

Alex glanced toward the door of the bar. “Is that elegant woman over there your date?” she asked.

He smiled and nodded. “I’ll see you in the morning, Alex. Sign the bar tab. XB is paying it.”

He walked over to the elegant woman, who was Princess Anne Alekhine. She extended her hand, and he turned it over and kissed her palm.

“Am I interrupting something?” she asked, glancing toward Alex.

“A computer guru,” he said. “I have her on retainer as a consultant.”

“Consultant in what?”

“Not in what you’re suggesting. She might be interested in you but never in me.”

Anne stared at Alex.
“She…?”

“She.”

They left the Bristol-Kempinski and walked along the busy Kurfürstendamm, among bustling crowds ogling the rich merchandise in store windows. Anne took his arm and ignored everything but him. He remembered how she had an almost unique ability to focus her attention.

She was staying at an older and more traditional hotel, what the Germans called a park hotel. They went directly to her room, which was a perfect example of the nineteenth-century Teutonic idea of luxury: walls paneled in dark oak, two sets of stag’s horns mounted on the walls, a dark, heavy bed squatting on splayed lion’s paws, three potted palms, and a painting of Kaiser Wilhelm on horseback, wearing his spiked helmet.

Anne undressed in the midst of all this but kept on her stockings, shoes, and garter belt. The contrast between woman and room was dramatic.

Making love with her was invariably memorable. Once again, Angelo observed that her elegance and restraint did not temper her boldness. She withheld nothing, but whatever she did she did with confident urbanity.

She was the only woman he had ever made love with who rarely removed her shoes and never removed her stockings. He guessed why: because she had a deft sense of what was erotic.

She had a pronounced distaste for the missionary position. This evening she offered herself in the doggy position:
on her hands and knees with her backside raised in display and offering welcome. Angelo entered her and shoved himself in deep. Being urbane and restrained did not prevent her gasping, then moaning. The Princess Anne Alekhine never pretended she didn’t love to be fucked.

Although the decor of the restaurant in the park hotel was dark and traditional, the menu offered a wide variety of choices, a majority of them French and some of them light.

What was more, the bartender knew how to mix a good American martini. Anne confessed to having developed a taste for them, and they sat over drinks, idly studying the menu and talking.

“My nephew has not given up,” she said abruptly.

“I never supposed he would.”

“It’s Roberta you have to worry about,” said Anne. “She’s smarter than Loren, and tougher.”

“He can’t back out of the Triple Zero project,” said Angelo. “It would bankrupt the company.”

“He might choose to go that route,” said Anne. “You’ve really got him by the balls … more than you realize. He’s hurting.”

“Specifically?”

“Loren the Fourth and your daughter Anna. The idea that his grandson might marry your daughter is absolutely painful to him.”

Angelo shrugged.

“Before he died, I told Number One the Hardemans are a family of corrupt parvenus. He almost had the fatal heart attack that evening. I wish he had. He had developed certain illusions—the same ones Henry Ford had—and was obsessed with them. Loren is just as obsessed as his grandfather was. I’m a legitimate princess. Betsy is a legitimate viscountess. But we don’t kid ourselves about what we come from.”

“What should I do?”

“Watch out for your daughter. They won’t harm her, of
course. Even Loren and Roberta lack the ruthlessness to do anything like that. But they’ll try to separate her and Van. I don’t know how. I just know they’ll do something.”

Anna was exuberantly happy her first year at Radcliffe. Her classes were stimulating, she had made a score of new friends, and, most important of all, Van was nearby all the time, not just during vacations. They were together almost every evening and certainly every weekend.

She was tearful when she saw him board the British Airways 747 at Boston’s Logan Airport. He felt he had to spend part of his Christmas break with his father and mother. He would return the day after Christmas, and they would be together for New Year’s.

She watched him until he was out of sight. She would take the Amtrak to Stamford in the morning, where her mother would meet her at the station.

Van had reached a decision. During his week in London he would cross the Channel to Amsterdam and, with his father’s assistance, buy the diamond he would offer to Anna as an engagement ring. The time had come to formalize what they already knew and to announce it to their families.

His grandfather—to hell with his grandfather!

Two nights later Van went to see
Les Misérables.
His mother had seen it and didn’t want to go again, so she had bought him a ticket and sent him on to the theater by himself. During the interval he went to the theater bar and bought a whisky.

“Oh, I say! Aren’t you Loren van Ludwige?”

The young woman speaking to him was an extraordinarily beautiful blond in a pink mini dress.

He smiled. “I … yes, I am.”

“I’m Penny—formally Lady Penelope Horrocks. I’m trying to recall where we met. Did you ever go to a curling match in Edinburgh?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“Do you remember Billy?” she asked. “He wasn’t at the curling match, but—”

“Billy Baines?”

“Yes. Extraord’n’ry fellow, isn’t he? Haven’t seen him for years. But you—you’ve gone to the States! So I heard. Is it true?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. My mother wanted me to be educated at Harvard University.”

“Extraord’n’ry! I’ve not been in the States. If I come, would you show me round?”

Van grinned. “Well, that’s a big order, you know. The United States is a big place. But I can show you around what I know—New York and Boston.”

“It’s good to see you again. We’ve but a few minutes before the curtain rings up again. Could we have a drink afterward?”

The chime rang, and Roberta went to the door of her suite at the London Hilton. “Lady Penelope” was there, dressed now in blue jeans and a sweatshirt.

“I’ll take my hundred quid. Plus the car rental. Here’s the receipt. He was hugely impressed with the Jaguar.”

Roberta grinned. “C’mon in. You scored, huh?”

“If that’s what you call it in the States. In a hotel room on Bayswater Road. Dinner at Wheeler’s Sovereign in Soho, then to the hotel. He had to phone his mum and tell her he’d met some old school chums and would be late. What’s more, he got up about two and went home. I swear, I think the boy was a virgin!”

“Did you arrange to see him again?”

“Yes. He’s only in town a week, but I’ll get him between the sheets once more, anyway.”

Roberta opened her purse and counted out a hundred pounds. “That’s on top of the fifty you got in advance. So, a hundred fifty each time you bed him. Rent that car again. Be sure you get the same one, or make some excuse that your family has several. And so on. But remember what
you’re doing, Becky. You’re not just helping him get his rocks off. He’s got to fall in love with you. That’s the whole point.”

“I’m going to get a visit to the States out of this,” said Becky.

“You better.”

“Cindy, I wish I could give it to you,” Bob Carpenter said of Amanda’s painting of him. It remained in Amanda’s studio. He had not taken it to California. “I know—”

“I could hardly hang a nude painting of you—”

“No … but I wish.”

Amanda had gone out, and they had her studio and her bedroom to themselves.

Carpenter stood before his painting, now standing on an easel near the couch. He admired it. No one who saw it could have failed to admire it. More than that, he cherished it. To have been painted by Amanda Finch so successfully had been a boost to his ego. He’d asked Cindy half a dozen times if Amanda had not flattered him; and when she had assured him Amanda hadn’t, he smiled inwardly and luxuriated in pride.

Cindy had become a problem for him. He had begun to care for her.

It was impossible not to. She was seven years older than he was—though that would have been difficult to guess, from her still-youthful face and body. She was intelligent,
shrewd, adventuresome, optimistic, sensual, caring. So far as he could see, she did not resent the frequent and prolonged absences of her husband. She was devoted to her family, of whom the youngest would be only ten years old this year; yet she had not allowed herself to be limited to the roles of housewife and mother. Neither was she a town booster. She ran a business in the city and had only limited time for local fund drives and the like.

As a professor of art history he had to respect her as an art dealer. If she was not as erudite as he was, at the very least she knew what was valid and had fine instincts.

But for the Hardemans, he would never have met her and would never have acquired the Finches. Even so, he knew now he had fallen in with a ruthless pair who were using him to damage Cindy and her husband. He was tempted to hand over the Finches and tell them he was backing out. He was tempted. But he was afraid of them.

He turned away from his painting. “It’s lucky for us that your husband spends so much time outside the United States,” he said. “I can’t help but wonder, though, what it says for the future of American industry. Is a large part of the new car going to be German and Japanese? Have we Americans lost the ability to make the kinds of things—” “The Big Three,” she said, “can afford to operate big research and development departments. XB can’t sink millions into developing new technologies. Angelo has to find them and buy licenses to use them.”

“He must be a brilliant man, to be able to identify what’s feasible and what’s a technological will-o’-the-wisp.”