by Judith Gould
He began expertly tying up the assassin, rolling him over on his stomach first. He wrapped the panty hose around his wrists several times, securing his hands first. He repeated the process with his feet, but left about six inches of space between them, so he could walk, just barely.
“This will do for the time being,” Matt said.
Ariadne, who had been staring at the man, nodded. “I’ve never seen him before in my life,” she said. “At least not that I know of. It’s so weird to think that he tried to kill me.”
Matt got up off the floor and put his arms around her. “We’ll find out who he is,” he said. “Not that it’s any comfort.”
“You saved my life,” Ariadne said.
“I guess so,” he said, hugging her. He could feel her shaking harder now, and knew that the reality of what had happened was beginning to sink in. He wanted to keep her busy for the time being to help keep her mind off it. He needed to get the assassin out of the bedroom and out to the pool house, where he could question him.
“Can you do me a favor?” he asked.
“Anything.”
“Go to my bedroom and get me some clothes. Just pants, shirt, and shoes.”
At that moment Ariadne saw that he was wearing only his Jockey shorts. “I didn’t even realize . . . ,” she murmured. “I’ll be right back.”
“Thank you.”
When she left the room, he searched the man’s trousers, looking for identification, but all of his pockets were empty. He untied his track shoes and took them off his feet. Likewise. Nothing hidden in them. I’ll do a complete search once I get him out of here, Matt decided.
Ariadne returned with his clothes, and he quickly put them on. He took the pistol from its hiding place and shoved it down the back of his jeans at his spine. He looked at Ariadne. “Now, why don’t you go downstairs and make us both a drink? I’m going to take him out to the pool house to get some answers out of him.”
“I want to stay with you,” she said.
“I insist,” Matt replied. “I’ll have a much better chance of getting information out of him if we’re alone. You’ll be a distraction for both of us.”
“But—”
Matt shook his head. “No buts,” he said. “You were just nearly killed, Ariadne, and I’m going to find out who this creep is.”
She saw that he was serious and realized, too, that he didn’t want her to watch if he had to use force to get answers from the assassin.
“Please go downstairs to the library,” Matt said. “I won’t be a long time.”
“Okay.”
When she was gone, he went into the bathroom and filled a glass with water, then went back to the bedroom. He threw some in the man’s face, but there was no immediate reaction. He kicked him in the thigh, not hard enough to do him injury, but enough to get a response. Matt heard a moan, then watched as the man opened his eyes and began to struggle against the nylon that bound him tightly.
Matt roughly grabbed his arm. “Get up,” he ordered.
The man didn’t move, and Matt repeated his command. “Get up. Now. Unless you want me to call the police.”
The man did as he was told with Matt’s help, gaining purchase on the floor with his bare feet. When he was upright, Matt took him by the arm and led him downstairs and out the front door. He wanted to avoid the others, if possible. He frog-marched him out to the pool house, where he started his interrogation, thankful for once that he’d been trained in a number of methods by the CIA.
They had been sitting in the library for what seemed like hours.
“I can’t understand what’s taking so long,” Sugar said.
“Leave it to Matt,” Adrian said. “He knows what he’s doing.”
“Do you think we should call the police?”
“That’s probably not a good idea,” Adrian said, “but we’ll ask Matt when he comes in. There would be publicity. Articles in the newspaper. That sort of thing. We don’t want any questions about anything or anyone. Especially Ariadne.”
“Of course not,” Sugar agreed.
They heard a door open and close, and Matt came into the library from the direction of the kitchen. Ariadne jumped up off the sofa and rushed to him. “You’re okay?”
“Yes,” he said. “And you?”
“Worried about you. That’s all.”
Sugar and Adrian looked at each other, and Sugar nodded as if to confirm what they believed had been going on for some time.
“Let me get you something to drink,” Ariadne said. “Wine or something stronger?”
“Wine’s good.”
“What did you find out?” Adrian asked.
Matt sat down on the sofa, and Ariadne quickly sat beside him, handing him a glass of wine. He took a sip, then set the glass down. “Very little,” he said in a guarded voice. “He claims he doesn’t know who sent him. Only a voice at the other end of the phone. Payment was a wire from one numbered Swiss account to another.”
“Do you believe him?” Adrian asked.
Matt nodded. “Actually, I do. That’s the way these things often work. Nobody wants his or her,” he said with emphasis, “identity known.”
“Makes sense,” Adrian said. “Did he say whether the caller was male or female?”
“Female, for certain, although that doesn’t necessarily mean she was the person who hired him.”
“What do you think?” Adrian asked him.
“I think we have to be a lot more careful,” Matt said. “Whoever sent him will try again.” He took Ariadne’s hand in his.
“And the assassin?” Sugar asked.
“He’s gone,” Matt said.
“Gone?” Ariadne said.
“Think about it,” Matt said. “Since calling the police is out of the question, I had no choice, unless I was supposed to off him and get rid of the body. I don’t think he’ll be back, like I said, but we’re going to have to be very careful. Just because whoever it was failed this time . . .”
Ariadne squeezed his hand. My twin sister’s probably trying to have me murdered, she thought, and I’ve never even met her.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The big night was at hand. In midtown, Nikoletta was ensconced in her penthouse triplex atop the stunning new PPHL headquarters building that would be inaugurated this evening. Sixty-eight stories below, the red carpet had already been rolled out, and with binoculars she could clearly see it through the floor-to-ceiling windows in her apartment. She could also see up the Hudson River and the West Side of Manhattan past the George Washington Bridge to the Palisades and beyond. When she looked east, she saw past the modern sculptural top of the Condé Nast Building in Times Square, across the entire East Side to Queens, Brooklyn, and Long Island beyond. If she looked south, the missing towers of the World Trade Center, which had once been a lodestar to Manhattanites, immediately came to mind, despite the view of the Verrazano Narrows and Staten Island in the distance.
Putting down her binoculars, she slipped into a pair of flats, threw on a trench coat, and rang for Butch, one of her security guards. “I want to go down to the lobby for a few minutes to see how things are going.”
“I’ll get some of the men,” he replied.
“No,” Nikoletta said. “Just you.”
“I think—”
“I don’t give a damn what you think,” Nikoletta said. “Let’s go.” She took a pair of sunglasses from her purse, slipped them on, and pressed the button for the private elevator that traveled directly to her entrance foyer, before Butch could get it. It opened immediately, and they stepped in.
Descending to the lobby in the high-speed elevator took only a very short time, and after they stepped out, Nikoletta began quickly walking toward the main lobby, with Butch at her side.
Nikoletta stopped to survey the huge space. Thanks to the acres of marble, the clever use of mirrored screens, and over sixty crystal chandeliers made especially for the occasion, Lawrence Lowell, the party planner, and his theatrical se
t-design wizards had transformed the towering lobby and the vast atrium, with its various mezzanines, from functional architectural spaces into a Galerie des Glaces worthy of Versailles, as he had promised. Nikoletta made a mental note to use Lawrence again and possibly try to talk him into an exclusive contract with PPHL, so that none of her competitors, whether business or social, would have the privilege of using his services.
Everywhere she looked caterers, decorators, and florists, all coordinated by Lawrence, were frenziedly adding last-minute finishing touches. Musicians, from the string quartet to the two dance bands and the DJ, were warming up, testing instruments and electronic equipment. Waiters and waitresses circulated among the round tables, using measuring tapes to make certain the settings were perfectly aligned. Everywhere, everyone was making certain everything was just so.
For Nikoletta had demanded perfection, and she could see that she was receiving it. In abundance, the way she liked it. As she wandered through the vast space unrecognized by all but a few of the army of people readying for the party, she looked out toward Forty-second Street.
Butch followed her gaze. “The police have already cordoned off the two lanes of Forty-second closest to the building,” he said, pointing toward the main entrance doors.
“I see,” Nikoletta said, gratified that she got such cooperation from New York’s Finest.
“Security’s going to be extra tight tonight,” he went on. “A private security firm is screening all staff as they get here. When the guests arrive, their credentials and invitations will be screened, too. Their invitations warned that everyone would need a picture ID, no exceptions, and the invitations also have a special mark embedded in the paper that can only be read by ultraviolet light.”
Nikoletta nodded. She was accustomed to such precautions, especially for large events, but she didn’t recall them using the special mark in invitations before. “That sounds like a very good idea.”
“They’re so easy to copy nowadays,” he said. “Crooks can get the same paper and use computers, but they’d be hard put to know about the mark or what it was, much less duplicate it.”
“Damn,” Nikoletta said under her breath.
“What?”
“I see some of those Mother Earth’s Children protesters across the street,” she murmured.
“The police are keeping them and all the rubberneckers, even the pedestrians, on the far sidewalk across the street, so I think it’ll be all right.”
“I wish they could get rid of them altogether.”
Butch shrugged. “It’s a free country,” he said. “But I wouldn’t let it worry me too much. They’re across several lanes of traffic, cordoned off, and there’ll be a big police presence besides our own plainclothes security.”
Nikoletta turned back to the lobby for another look-see. It would be crowded with hundreds of important people tonight in their finest apparel and most exquisite jewels. All for me, she thought. Even if they aren’t all necessarily my friends or allies, they’ll be here. Her mind wandered to the board of advisers, who were supposed to be both. They would all be here tonight, even though they were scheming against her in what had once been secrecy. Their secret was out, of course, as was hers. They knew it, and she knew it. After the recent failed attempt on the impostor, there was no question that they were working against each other.
The impostor. Will she be here tonight? Nikoletta wondered. I wouldn’t be surprised. She’ll surely turn up soon.
“Let’s go,” she said to Butch. She quickly headed toward the elevator banks with him at her side. “I don’t think any of that scum’s going to ruin my party, but I want you to do me one very special favor tonight.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Keep an eye out for anyone who looks like me.”
“Looks like you?” he said, staring at her quizzically.
“Yes. And alert the others. I want to know the instant she shows up, if she does.”
Despite the small army of guards and guns for hire, Kees Vanmeerendonk had already gained entrance to the building. He wasn’t exactly the spitting image of security expert H. Richard Pipe, but some mustache and eyebrow dye had fashioned him into a reasonable enough facsimile. And the various forms of documentation he carried passed muster.
Dressed in the high-level security executive’s uniform of a Brooks Brothers suit and silk tie, with an all but invisible earphone planted in one ear and a miniature microphone pinned to his lapel, the fake H. Richard Pipe patrolled the tarted-up lobby of the new PPHL International Headquarters with a show of reassuring professionalism.
He couldn’t help but feel a frisson of excitement. Nikoletta Papadaki was here, in this very building, soon to make a sweeping entrance to her own party—
—soon to die.
For the first time since his amateurish failed attempt on her life in St. Barth’s, he felt a peculiar intimacy with her. The intimacy a hunter felt with his prey, he thought.
Indeed, Nikoletta Papadaki was so close in proximity that Kees Vanmeerendonk could practically smell her. He could also virtually taste the blood that would shortly pump, unchecked, out of her deceptively fragile-looking body.
What a pity she’s so beautiful, he thought.
On the other hand, her beauty would make her all the more an appropriate sacrifice to mother earth.
Frans, who still had trouble forcing himself to leave the safe but lonely confines of his downtown loft, had been persuaded to venture uptown for the grand opening of the PPHL headquarters.
“Bianca would’ve wanted you to, Frans,” Nikoletta had told him. “After all, you have to remember that she spent her entire working life at PPHL. She was devoted to the company, and the things we do to try to help people.”
Frans, who in reality knew almost nothing about the company and didn’t care one way or the other about it, had finally agreed to go, but not only for Bianca. He felt that he owed Nikoletta, even if the sex for him had been no more than a release. An enjoyable release, but not like making love to Bianca.
Now, dressed in white tie and devastatingly handsome, he sprawled across the bed in Nikoletta’s room, sipping bourbon, bored as he watched her being pampered. He thought of a thousand places he might be instead, but he knew that he was incapable of enjoying them anyway. What was the use of going someplace if Bianca couldn’t go along? The emptiness he had felt after her death remained the only constant in his life.
Nikoletta was not insensitive to his mood, but she thought the best policy regarding Frans was to cajole him into action, especially activity that revolved around her. Dismissing her hair stylist and makeup artist, she stepped into her gold python sheath and turned around.
“Zip me up, darling, will you?” she asked Frans.
He dutifully pushed himself up off the bed and obliged her.
“Now, how about popping the cork on a bottle of champagne, hmmm? I have plenty of time for a celebratory drink or two.”
“You’re in an awfully good mood,” Frans remarked.
“It wouldn’t do to arrive too early for my own party, now, would it?” she said. “I mean, that’s definitely not the way to make a grand entrance. What do you think, Frans, darling? Hmmm?”
Frans didn’t care before, and now he cared less than ever. The bourbon was taking him down. Down to a dark, unhappy place inside that her chirping was beginning to antagonize.
On West Forty-third Street, after being ensnarled in Manhattan gridlock, a black stretch limousine with diplomatic plates finally arrived at the rear garage entrance of the new PPHL International Headquarters. A uniformed security guard with a roster on a clipboard, as well as the candy-striped steel barrier that stretched across the entrance, halted the limousine’s progress. The guard on duty went to the driver’s window to check him out.
A tinted rear window slid open and Angelo Coveri, smoking a noxious cigar, thrust out his invitation, as well as his PPHL ID. A second guard rushed from the garage and took Angelo’s invitation and I
D, then leaned down to peruse the second passenger. Angelo partially obscured his view by exhaling a dense cloud of smoke. But through it the guard made out a beautiful young woman with waist-long platinum hair, wearing big sunglasses. She was dressed in a lavish red satin floor-length cape that was pinned together with a massive diamond brooch.
Had the guard had a better view, he might have noticed the gold python shoes she wore, pointy-toed, backless, and held in place with ankle straps. But he didn’t have the opportunity, nor would the shoes have meant anything to him.
In rapid-fire Italian, Angelo said something to the platinum-haired woman, and she sighed tiredly in response. She opened a red satin purse and handed him an Italian diplomatic passport. Angelo had borrowed it from a friend at the consulate who had long blond hair, and although she was much older and less glamorous-looking than the woman beside him, he was certain the ruse would work. After all, he was on the board of PPHL. Besides, passport photos never looked flattering. Most of them looked like mug shots.
He handed the passport to the guard, who perused it with a frown, compared it with the blonde in the limousine, then gestured for the other guard to take a look.
Now it’s time to pull rank, Angelo thought. Pretending to be fed up with the delay, he brandished his PPHL ID in their faces. “Didn’t you see this?” he asked in an irritated voice. “I’m on the board of PPHL, for God’s sake, and I don’t have all night to sit here.”
The guards took a second look at his ID. “Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” one of them said.
“I should hope so,” Angelo said. “You should be fired for keeping me and the marchesa waiting. If you value your jobs, you won’t let this happen again.”
“I’m new, sir,” the guard said in his defense, “and I—”
“Never mind,” Angelo said impatiently. “We have a party to go to.”