Lovers and Liars Trilogy

by Sally Beauman

  “Thank you.” She made a small flinching movement. “I—I don’t talk about Sarajevo. I’ve made that a rule.”

  “Can’t you take praise?” Rowland replied somewhat sharply.

  She turned and gave him one long, steady look, then turned away. “No,” she said quietly. “Not on that subject. I would never feel the praise was deserved.”

  “Why not?”

  Rowland glanced at her again; she did not immediately reply. He had wondered—uncharitably, he thought—if she might have been fishing for further compliments. Then he caught the glitter of tears in her eyes and knew the suspicion was a cheap one.

  “Tell me,” he said more gently. “Explain. I’d like to hear.”

  “What I wrote wasn’t adequate.” She kept her face averted, but he could sense a sudden agitation. “What I saw there—I doubt I conveyed a thousandth part of it. Maybe that’s always true in that kind of situation. But, foolishly, it wasn’t something I’d foreseen. Words—I don’t trust words very much anymore. When did words ever change anything?”

  “Maybe not often, and maybe not for long.” Rowland hesitated. He could sense that she would respect him not at all for a glib answer. “On the other hand,” he continued slowly, “what does silence achieve? The right words, the right newspaper stories, can effect change.”

  “The pen is mightier than the sword?” She gave him a small glance. “My father used to quote that. I believed it once. I don’t believe it anymore.”

  “I met your father once,” Rowland said. “In Washington. When I was posted there. I worked there for a couple of years.”

  That caught her attention. She turned to look at him, her hands tightening in her lap. For an instant, glancing away from the road, he saw anxiety in her face.

  “How long ago?”

  “A while. About seven years. I spoke to him only briefly. It was in a bar called O’Brien’s—a lot of the Post journalists used to use it.”

  “Yes. Well, it would have been a bar. If not that one, some other. He drinks. As you’ll certainly know.”

  Her tone was sharply defensive; Rowland slowed.

  “I did know that. Did he always drink?”

  “He’s an alcoholic. Before he became an alcoholic he was a heavy drinker, the kind of heavy drinker who claims he can kick it anytime. I don’t know exactly when he crossed the boundary between the two, if there ever was a boundary.”

  “Did he drink when you were a child?”

  “I don’t remember. I’ve never really lived with my father. I’ve lived in England with my stepmother since I was five, six years old.”

  Her manner was growing more incommunicative by the second; Rowland could sense the barriers rise. They drove on for several minutes in silence. After a while he saw her hands move in her lap. She said: “He’s in a clinic in Arizona now. In a twelve-step program. He’s been there before. It may work this time. Was he very drunk when you met him? I hope—I’d like to think he wasn’t. People forget. They have such short memories. Once upon a time—he was a fine journalist, once…”

  Rowland could hear, and was touched by, the plea. He had a brief memory of a celebrated man, a Pulitzer Prize-winner who was now a florid, loud-voiced, overweight Harvard boor. He had been protected by a shrinking group of acolytes; shortly before Rowland had left, he had lurched to his feet, then slumped to the floor.

  “Not that drunk,” he replied mildly. “Nothing that noticeable…”

  “Was he talking about Vietnam?” She gave him a sharp, pained glance.

  “Why?”

  “It’s one of the stages. That’s all.”

  Rowland, who could hear desolation beneath the irony in her tone, decided to lie. “No, no, that subject never came up.” He reached a junction, slowed, then turned left. “Besides, if it had, I’d have been interested. I’ve read your father’s Vietnam book. And I admired it. His early work was very powerful.”

  “Oh, I’m glad you think that.” For the first time, Rowland heard her voice lift with an unfeigned delight. Disliking himself as he did it, he slid in the next question fast, and—as he had hoped—caught her off guard.

  “—And he must have influenced you, presumably? Was it your father’s influence that took you to Bosnia? Or Pascal Lamartine’s?”

  “I wanted to make my father proud of me. When I was still a child, I always thought, if I could become—” She stopped, her hands twisting in her lap, head bowed. “Perhaps, if I’d been a boy. A son. It might have been different. As it is—it’s men who make wars, and men are better at writing about them. There have been women who’ve reported wars, of course, and done it well. But not many.” She hesitated, regaining control, and her voice became dry. “So now I’m not sure what to blame for my failure. My sex or my character. On the whole, I think it’s my character, don’t you?”

  Rowland did not reply. There were several aspects of that answer that interested him, not least its resolute avoidance of any mention of Pascal Lamartine. Why did she think of her work in Bosnia as a failure, he wondered. With each sentence she spoke, he was revising his opinion of her, first this way, then the other. He liked her final question, and the way in which it was voiced. It had taken him by surprise.

  Slowing the car, he glanced toward her, then, coming to a sudden decision, drew onto the side of the road.

  Stopping the car, he turned to look at her.

  “May I ask you something? Do you know why you’re here?”

  “What—here at Max’s, this weekend?” She looked at him uncertainly, moonlight sharpening the planes of her face, then gave a slight smile.

  “Yes. I realize, Rowland. I’m not a fool. I’m here because Max and Charlotte feel sorry for me. Because Lindsay’s been nagging them, I imagine, and telling them I’m on the edge of a nervous breakdown. I’m here as an act of kindness—which I haven’t repaid too well.”

  “Is Lindsay’s diagnosis correct?”

  “About the nervous breakdown?” She met his gaze, then frowned and looked away. “No. I think perhaps I was close. At Christmas. Christmas wasn’t a very good time. I’m better now.” She hesitated. “Meantime, of course, I’ve been behaving badly, as you pointed out this morning. I’ve been irritating people. I’ve been irritating you—and I do know that. I can feel myself doing it.” She gave another half-smile. “You know what Lindsay says? She says I give her compassion fatigue.”

  Rowland, amused, returned her smile. He wondered what it was that had occurred at Christmas. He had caught the pain in her voice as she said the word, though she attempted to disguise it.

  “She’s right, of course. I have been selfish, and self-indulgent. I’m going to reform.” She was beginning to speak more quickly now, still keeping her face averted. “So, I did want to say, I should be working, I realize that now. When I got back from Bosnia I couldn’t write. I turned down several stories.”

  “Did you? Yes, I think Max might have mentioned that.”

  “But when we were talking to Mitchell earlier, when I went up to that barn… I could feel the story taking hold. I’d forgotten how that could feel, that sense of purpose and drive. But now—I would like to find Star. I’d like to find Mina, above all. So if I could help in any way—if you or Max wanted someone to talk to Cassandra and Mina’s friends, perhaps—I could do that I’d like to do that. It’s—I am here, after all…”

  Her suggestion faltered away. Rowland realized that as she made it, she lost confidence. She expected him to demur, or refuse. Something, he thought, or someone, had damaged her confidence very badly.

  “Why does it interest you so much?” he asked.

  “Because of Mina.” She let her hair fall forward, obscuring her face. “I used to know a girl like her.”

  “You did? And was she equally unwise?”

  “Possibly. But she was luckier.”

  She shivered, then seemed to realize for the first time that the car was no longer moving.

  “Anyway—we should get back. Why did you st
op?”

  “Because I wanted to tell you why you were here this weekend. It wasn’t an act of charity. You’re wrong.”

  “Am I?” She turned to look at him.

  “Yes. You’re here because I asked Max to invite you. I persuaded him to set up this weekend. I wanted to meet you. And I wanted you to work for me.”

  “You did?” She colored. “I don’t understand. Why couldn’t you ask me in the usual way? Why all this subterfuge? Oh, I see…” Understanding suddenly flooded her face. “You thought I’d refuse? Or you thought Lindsay might have prejudiced me against you.”

  “That did cross my mind.”

  “But it’s not just that?” She looked at him closely. “It’s something more. You wanted to assess me—to see if I came up to scratch—this neurotic woman who was being such a bore.”

  “I wouldn’t put it in those terms. You’d been covering a war—a particularly ugly war. Obviously that had affected you. I’d think less of you had it not affected you. But I had to be sure.”

  “You don’t have to be tactful. I don’t particularly like tact. You don’t seem to be a very tactful man. I’d rather you were straight with me.” She paused. “Oh, I see. I begin to see. There’s a connection, isn’t there, between your story and this one—a connection you hadn’t foreseen? It’s something to do with drugs, with White Doves, with Amsterdam. That’s why you and Max reacted that way earlier.”

  She stopped. The excitement and wry amusement that had raced across her face disappeared. “Ah, well,” she said in a resigned way, and leaned back in the seat. Rowland watched the moonlight move across her face.

  He said: “Would you let me explain?”

  “Now? Here?”

  “We might as well. Before we go back to Max’s. There’ll be fewer interruptions, and besides, it won’t take long. Are you cold?”

  “A little.”

  “I’ll leave the engine running, and the heater.” He paused, then cut the lights. He waited until his eyes had accustomed themselves to the darkness. He gestured to a track, silver in the moonlight, which led up across the fields.

  “You see that track? It’s another route to that barn. But this story, as you’ve gathered, doesn’t begin there. It doesn’t begin with Cassandra’s dying, or even a man called Star. Until today I’d never heard of Star. It begins…”

  He paused; he knew that if he were entirely truthful, he would have to say that for him, it had begun years before, in Washington—but such feelings, which he intended not to reveal, were irrelevant now.

  “It begins in Amsterdam. Last year…”

  “Last autumn,” Rowland said, “I’d been working on a series of drug investigations. Shortly before I joined the paper, I was given a new lead. I was advised to take a closer look at a relatively small drug-manufacturing outfit based in Amsterdam. Up until then I’d primarily been concerned with heroin and cocaine, the new smuggling routes, the involvement of the Mafia in Russia, and so on. Those investigations are still continuing; this story was one I wanted to pursue. The outfit in Amsterdam had a specialty, you see: designer drugs, the drugs of the future, some people say—although they’re already very successful, of course, in this brave new world of ours.”

  He glanced toward her as he said this, perhaps to see if she had picked up that last reference. Then, frowning, looking out across the fields and in profile to her, he continued.

  His manner of speaking, succinct and dry, interested her; once or twice she would have said that he experienced stronger emotions than he betrayed, and she thought she could sense a buried anger, which he kept under tight control.

  “The outfit in Amsterdam,” he continued, “was the brainchild of two young men. One was an American who’d operated for years on the fringes of the narcotics-smuggling world, a supplier and a user as well. The other, his partner, was a gifted young Dutch chemist. Both men had had some success manufacturing and selling MDMA, otherwise known as Ecstasy, and variations upon it. By last year, however, they had sensed that the market for Ecstasy had peaked—the teenagers in the clubs who were their prime market were getting leery. There had been Ecstasy deaths, there was a growing realization that the drug wasn’t the sexual panacea it had seemed, and the market was being flooded with impure imitations, some of which were little more than aspirin, or chalk, and some of which were lethal. Fashion plays a large part in the youth drug market. Teenagers who won’t go near a syringe, who wouldn’t risk mainlining, are perfectly willing to take pills or capsules—but they’re always on the lookout for something new, something that gives a better turn-on, a bigger thrill.

  “The Dutch chemist wanted a new product.” Rowland glanced toward her. “Commercially, the man is sharp. So he knew precisely what he was looking for. Something that was, if possible, more addictive than Ecstasy, something that gave a rush, and then immense energy, like speed, and above all a product that provided an even stronger sexual thrill than Ecstasy had produced—and without its sexual downside.”

  “It had a sexual downside?”

  “Of course. In some instances, it aroused but it made erection difficult for the male. All hard drugs have an adverse effect sexually, either short- or long-term—and needless to say, the Dutch chemist was well aware of that. He was also aware that if he could formulate a product that boosted sexual performance, it was likely to make him a rich man. A very rich man.”

  “And he succeeded?” Gini asked.

  “Yes. He succeeded—or so he claims. He was helped by the fact that he found an investor, someone prepared to back his experiments. Considering the size of the Dutch operation, that investor was generous. He provided two hundred and fifty thousand Swiss francs of funding, straight out of a numbered account in Zurich. It was handed over to the American partner in the Amsterdam Hilton, in April last year. Six months later, the Dutch chemist had perfected his product, and he was ready to start marketing it. I think you must know what he called it.”

  “White Dove?”

  “White Dove. Indeed.”

  There was a brief silence. Gini looked at Rowland curiously. “You’re very well informed,” she began. “Who’s been feeding you this information?”

  “I have a contact in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. The Dutch chemist and his American partner have been under surveillance for almost a year. Amsterdam is a major conduit in the trafficking routes for heroin and cocaine. It’s not unusual for the DEA to have operatives in place there.”

  “No.” Gini looked at him uncertainly, noting his sudden reserve. “But it might be a little unusual for them to feed so much information to a British journalist.”

  “I told you—I worked in Washington for several years.” He was now curt. “I have contacts there that go back a long way.” He paused. “I’ll come back to the question of the funding, and the identity of the investor, in a moment, if I may. Meanwhile, here’s what happened last autumn. The chemist had his new product—for which his hopes were high. The next move was to start feeding it out to clients—and that was the American’s task. He began in the usual way: friends in the rock music business were supplied. He passed some out to contacts in gay clubs. He gave some to photographers and models he knew. Word spread fast. Musicians discovered they could record all day, all night, and all the next day as well. Models discovered it killed their appetites stone dead. The word was, with White Doves you felt confident, happy, and inspired. You didn’t require sleep. Or food. The appetite for sex, needless to say, was not impaired.”

  “It delivered?”

  “So it was claimed. According to the American, it induced a craving, and when that craving was indulged—well, the earth moved. Six, seven, eight times a night—according to him. He’s prone to exaggeration, of course. On the other hand, they tripled their prices in two months, and the clients still kept beating a path to their door. So I imagine there was some truth in his claims.”

  Rowland, whose tone had been dry, gave a shrug. Gini sighed.

  “That’s predictable
. A drug that makes people thin, happy, and sexually successful? That just about covers every twentieth-century need.”

  “We live in a secular world.” Rowland, who had never felt greatly in tune with that world, and who sensed from her tone that she was not either, turned back to look at her.

  “You understand, don’t you, the kind of money that can be involved? Eventually, of course, White Doves will be copied. Other manufacturing outfits will obtain the drug, break it down, replicate it. But that takes time. What the Dutchman and the American want to do now is step up production—fast. They intend—again according to the American—to make their killing inside two years. He’s estimating they’ll clear a cool eight to ten million, at which point he’s planning to retire. He may do just that. Or the DEA, or the Dutch police, or his own heroin habit may slow him down. Meantime—if White Doves actually cause killings of a rather different kind, neither he nor his Dutch partner will lose too much sleep. As far as they’re concerned, an element of risk can enhance their product. They’re not worried about the Cassandra Morleys of this world.”

  There was a silence. As he had spoken, Gini had watched his anger grow, although it was perceptible only in his eyes.

  “We can’t know what caused Cassandra’s death until they complete those toxicology reports,” she said quietly. “All right, she was seen with Star last night, and he was in possession of White Doves. That may be suggestive, but it’s not proof. It’s circumstantial at best. Meantime, Mitchell definitely did take one. And he lived to tell the tale.”

  “I agree. And Mitchell is—what? Five feet ten? And heavily built. I’d say he weighed at least fifteen stone, two hundred pounds. Whereas Cassandra Morley was slender, less than half his size. It could simply be a question of body size and dosage. There could be other factors—food, water intake, alcohol intake.” He paused. “I don’t want to jump to any conclusions either. But I think you can see why this story interests me—why I wanted to pursue it before any of this weekend’s events happened.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “Gini—” He turned to look at her. “The right journalism can help to change things. Maybe it’s only a small alteration—to prevent one more teenager like Cassandra from dying, to close down one outlet for drugs while millions of others survive, to prevent a man like Star from peddling his products, even if it’s only for a while. But it is still change, and change for the better. Whatever you felt in Bosnia, however much your faith in your work was impaired—you must see that, surely?”