Betrayals

by Carla Neggers

  Giving up on her sandwich, Rebecca wrapped up the leftovers, stuck both sandwiches in a small refrigerator and went after her grandfather.

  The woman at the front desk said he’d just left. “You can probably catch him.”

  “He didn’t say where he was headed?”

  “No. A friend of his had just come in, and they went off together.”

  Sloan. “Tall, dark hair, good-looking?”

  “Oh, no. This one had very white hair and quite a scar—”

  Rebecca ran.

  The sun, breaking through the clouds, glistened on the rain-soaked lawn in front of the Massachusetts State House. Thomas held his umbrella in his left hand, using it as a sort of cane as he studied Jean-Paul Gerard. War and time—and his own stubbornness—had left him ravaged and old and mean, a shadow of the carefree, daredevil young race-car driver he’d been thirty years ago. Thomas didn’t find it easy to look at a man who’d suffered as much, and as needlessly, as had this relentless Frenchman. Yet he still could see Gisela in the soft brown of the younger man’s eyes, in the shape and sensitivity of his mouth, and he wondered if he was being too harsh or if, at least, there was hope.

  “I want him to be happy, Thomas,” Gisela had said. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  She had been so proud of her only child. Nevertheless—and Thomas had never understood why—she had persisted in her refusal to acknowledge him as her son. She maintained that Jean-Paul preferred to shroud himself in mystery, pretending that he’d come from nowhere and letting people—women, especially—fantasize about his origins. It was a part of his mystique. That he was the illegitimate son of a popular woman who claimed she was a displaced Hungarian aristocrat certainly would have had its romantic side. Only after they were both gone, Gisela to her grave and Jean-Paul to Sidi Bel Abbès and the Légion étrangère as a fugitive, did Thomas consider that it was perhaps Jean-Paul who was protecting his mother, not the other way around. For the popular young Frenchman had to have known that telling the world he was Gisela’s son would have stimulated a scrutiny to which her life couldn’t have stood up.

  “You’re an old man now, Thomas,” Jean-Paul said with unmistakable satisfaction. “Are you starting to smell the dirt in your grave?”

  “I don’t believe I’m as old as you yourself are, Jean-Paul. You’ve had a hard life. I’m sorry.” He added softly, “Gisela never wanted that.”

  “Don’t give me your pity, old man.”

  “Consider it commentary, not pity.” Thomas felt himself tiring already and put more weight on his old, sturdy umbrella. “She won’t give you the stones, will she?”

  Jean-Paul’s eyes—so suspicious now when once they’d been eager, trusting, filled with an unshakable zest for life—narrowed as he considered Thomas’s words. “I haven’t even seen her.”

  “I don’t believe you, Jean-Paul,” Thomas said quietly, giving him a small, sympathetic smile. “You’ve never been an adept liar. Perhaps if you’d recognized this many years ago you’d have saved yourself—and others—a good deal of anguish.”

  “And you? Think of all the anguish you’d have saved if you’d thrown yourself into the Mediterranean thirty years ago instead of Gisela.”

  Thomas looked at him. “I have.”

  Jean-Paul clenched his fists at his side. “I want the Jupiter Stones, old man. Nothing more. They belonged to Gisela, and I intend to get them back. Don’t try and stop me.”

  “You can’t beat her. You of all people should know that.”

  “I’m not trying to beat her.”

  “You’re playing with fire,” Thomas said, his tone deceptively mild. Seldom had he been so serious. “You played with fire thirty years ago and got burned, and now you’re doing it again. It’s time to forget those stones and move on.”

  The Frenchman inhaled slowly, his eyes never leaving the older man, then he tried a new tactic. “Annette says she doesn’t have them.”

  Thomas shrugged. “Perhaps she’s telling the truth.”

  “She’s not,” Jean-Paul said softly. “She doesn’t know what the truth is. But I didn’t come for your approval of my actions. I know Jared Sloan is in Boston, and so is your granddaughter. Tell them to stay out of my way. And you, too. Let me do what I have to do.”

  “Jean-Paul—” Thomas sighed, breaking off. He put out a hand to the younger man, but Gerard stepped backward, as if afraid of any perceptibly amiable gesture. “I’ve made terrible mistakes. I’ve been arrogant and unthinking, but like you, I never thought my decisions would have negative consequences. Jean-Paul, be better than I was.”

  “Go back to your books, old man. I’ve said all I intend to say.”

  “I’ll stop you if I must,” Thomas said in a low voice.

  The Frenchman laughed, a sandpapery sound in which his years of suffering resonated more plainly than any threat. “You go ahead and try.”

  Leaving Thomas on the sidewalk in front of the State House, Jean-Paul trotted back across Beacon Street and onto Boston Common, disappearing in the shadows as the clouds once again closed over the sun. Drops of rain landed on Thomas’s nose and cheeks. He started to put up his umbrella, but discovered his knees were trembling and he needed its support for walking. With the rain increasing, he debated a moment, then headed inside the State House and down a quiet hall to the portrait of Eliza Blackburn. She looked rather like Rebecca. Thomas felt his eyes burning with fatigue and raw emotion as first he studied Eliza’s face, then the cameo brooch George Washington had given the plucky Revolutionary War heroine; the brooch itself was now on display at a museum in Concord.

  “Well, Eliza,” he whispered hoarsely, “I’ve made a fine mess of the Blackburn name, haven’t I?”

  He thought he could see her smile, hear her whisper back to him, “All for a good cause, my son.” But of course he knew that was impossible. They were only the words he wished he could hear, from someone, but never would.

  Jean-Paul was out of breath by the time he reached the Park Street subway station on the Tremont Street side of the Common. He slowed down, wheezing and totally disgusted with himself. In his two years with the Légion étrangère, he’d been able to run ten miles without getting winded, carry a seventy-pound load on his back for days, drink all day and screw all night, and the next morning spot a spider on a roof a half-mile off. His acute vision had been the envy of his fellow soldiers and had contributed to his skill as a marksman. Even after his five years as a prisoner of war, when he’d suffered malnutrition, isolation and severe brutality, he could see better than most, if not as well as he once could.

  “Hello. It’s Jean-Paul Gerard, isn’t it?”

  He whirled around and saw Rebecca Blackburn standing too close behind him, her face drained of color.

  “I followed you,” she said. “I saw you and my grandfather talking.”

  Jean-Paul found himself wanting to touch her, not in any romantic, sexual way, but as the child she’d been in picture after picture Stephen Blackburn had shown him on hot, lonely nights in Saigon. He couldn’t bring himself to speak.

  “What were you and my grandfather talking about?”

  “About how foolish you would be to stay after me,” Jean-Paul said quietly.

  Rebecca gave him a cool look, her cheeks regaining their color. “You were in the Mekong Delta with my father when he died.”

  So she knew. Jean-Paul all at once felt very tired and not nearly as confident in his purpose as he had. Perhaps he should have left The Score in the newsstand and remained in Honolulu.

  Rebecca eyed him with impatience. “And you’re a jewel thief.”

  But her voice quavered, and she hesitated, suddenly looking frightened when he took another step toward her. He could see how very blue her eyes were, how dark the lashes, how creamy her skin. Just knowing she was in Boston should have been enough to keep him away. Wherever he went, he brought agony and death. Perhaps Thomas Blackburn was right; he would never win.

  “Stay away from
me,” he told Stephen Blackburn’s beautiful daughter. She paid no attention to the rain pelting on her chestnut hair and soaking her blouse. He could see the clear outline of her breasts under the wet fabric. He put out a hand, as Thomas had to him, and didn’t blame her when she drew back. And he said, “I’ll only hurt you.”

  She raised her squarish chin. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “Perhaps you should be.”

  As she considered his remark and her own response, Jean-Paul suddenly understood that this wasn’t a woman who discouraged easily. She would keep coming and coming and coming until she’d found answers. She had spotted him talking with her grandfather and followed him onto the Common, a reckless act considering how little she really knew about him. He would have to be more alert.

  “I’m not going to be put off,” she told him.

  “Then you’re a fool.”

  He drew back one hand and before she could react, he cuffed her hard on the side of the head. He kept his expression grim and menacing, forcing himself not to grimace as her eyes widened in shock and pain and she staggered backward.

  Around them, people backed off.

  Blood spurted from Rebecca’s mouth and it might have been Jean-Paul’s own for the pain he felt.

  She didn’t scream. She put one hand up in front of her face in belated self-defense, but Jean-Paul couldn’t bring himself to strike her again. Instead he moved very fast to make certain that few onlookers witnessed what he’d done. Another blow and someone would call the police.

  “Stay away from me,” he said through gritted teeth, and fled into the Tremont Street traffic. Horns blared, brakes screeched. He wouldn’t have cared if a car hit him. Picking up his pace, ignoring the ripping pain in his chest, Jean-Paul darted down a side street.

  On the Common, Rebecca broke away from the crowd that had gathered around her and ran hard through the rain, trying to catch up with Gerard. She wanted to ask him about the Jupiter Stones—to give them to him if they were what he wanted. Then he could take the stones and go off and leave them all alone.

  But she’d lost him.

  She brushed one hand at the blood that had dribbled from her cut lip down her chin. She ended up smearing it, probably making her injury look worse than it was. How dramatic. Her head throbbed and she felt stupid. She finally gave up on finding the Frenchman among the lunchtime crowds and headed back up to Beacon Hill. She thought of her grandfather and his refusal to talk to her, Jared Sloan and his, of Jean-Paul Gerard and his. And for the first time in her life, Rebecca though she understood why intelligence-gathering organizations had invented truth serums.

  Twenty-Two

  Jean-Paul.

  Jared.

  Quentin.

  Former lover, nephew, son. And Thomas. What was he? Annette remembered when she’d thought he was everything to her.

  She hoped if she could put them out of her mind she could assemble the scattered fragments of her thoughts into a coherent plan. But it was one of those things that was easier said than done, and she thought perhaps digging in the dirt—physical labor—would help. Sitting around waiting for things to happen was against her nature. She wasn’t a passive woman.

  At the first break in the rain she went back out to the garden and was on her hands and knees pulling weeds in the soft, damp soil at a raised bed when she heard footsteps on the terrace behind her. Anticipating an unpleasant encounter with Jean-Paul or Quentin, she braced herself.

  “Hello, Aunt Annette.”

  She rolled back onto her hands and forced a smile. “Why, Jared, what a surprise.”

  He was one of those rare men with the capacity to see through her subterfuges and false civilities. It was just as well he’d gone to live in San Francisco. He said skeptically, “Quentin didn’t warn you I was in town?”

  “He mentioned it,” she said, rising. “I wouldn’t call it a warning.”

  Jared said nothing.

  Peeling off her lambskin gardening gloves, Annette wished she’d gone into her office today, after all. She’d have avoided that unpleasant confrontation with Thomas, and she’d have been around when Jared had barged into Quentin’s office. She didn’t care about protecting her son against his cousin. She simply preferred that her first encounter with her handsome nephew in more than a dozen years didn’t occur here in her garden, where she always felt so damned frumpy.

  “I’m going to have to look into tighter security,” she said. “It seems my excitement these days stems from wondering who might wander onto my property. It’s been a long time, Jared. I was under the impression that you’d never come back to Boston.”

  His teal eyes—his father’s eyes—bored through her. “Because you ordered me not to?”

  She checked her irritation. Even as a little boy Jared had had an annoying capacity to cut through the nonsense. She feigned amusement. “As if you’ve ever listened to my or anyone else’s ‘orders.’” She climbed to her feet, noting that Jared didn’t offer her a hand. “I recall I simply expressed my concern and disappointment that you’d had an affair with a Vietnamese woman and fathered an illegitimate child with her.”

  “Let’s not rehash the past,” Jared said tightly. “And let’s not pretend we’re happy to see each other.”

  “As you wish.”

  Annette walked across the terrace to her garden table and whisked off the plastic cover and left it to drip over one of the chairs. “So, Jared,” she said, gesturing to one of the chairs. “Sit down and let’s get caught up with one another. The sun seems to have come out for a bit, and I’m due a break.”

  She sat down herself, brushing loose dirt from the knees of her khaki pants. She was dressed casually, but expensively, in a yellow cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, tan poplin pants and dusty tennis shoes without socks. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and with her hair coming out of its pins, Jared saw echoes of the free-spirited woman Annette Winston Reed had been in her youth. But tragedy, the pressures and responsibilities of business and her own unyielding view of her place in the world had brought a weariness, even a hardness, to her mouth and eyes.

  Jared relented and sat across from her. “I’m in town because the pictures in The Score—I assume you’ve seen them—brought the man who shot me in Saigon out of the woodwork.”

  “Really? How unfortunate.” Annette gave him a sympathetic look. “But whatever would that have to do with Boston?”

  So innocent. Too innocent. “You’ve known all along about Quentin’s involvement with the drug smugglers in Saigon—”

  “Oh, Jared, honestly. I can’t believe you’re that naive. Quentin was a rich, vulnerable young man who allowed himself to be framed for something he didn’t do. The easiest course of action was for him to come home, which is what he did. If you think that has anything to do with this man who shot you, you’re dead wrong.”

  Her directness, her confidence, her absolute certainty that she was right weren’t easy to ignore. Her tone alone was enough to make Jared wonder if he were being an idiot. Had Gerard framed Quentin?

  He was about to pursue the subject when Rebecca landed on the terrace from the carriageway.

  Jared went rigid at the sight of her.

  Her hair, wet and tangled, hung in her face, and blood was smeared on her swollen cheek. She was pale and shaking, but her matchless eyes were blazing, fired with determination.

  And Jared knew then—even as he slid to his feet to ask her what the hell had happened—that it’d be another fourteen years before he’d have the slightest hope of forgetting her.

  She pulled out a chair, hard, but didn’t sit down. “Hi, there, Mrs. Reed.”

  “Rebecca,” Annette said regally. “What on earth—”

  “I’m fine.”

  Jared didn’t take his eyes off her. She was breathing hard and obviously in pain, but he held back.

  “Don’t look so grim,” she told the chairman of Winston & Reed. “If you hadn’t had Quentin fire me, I’d be so busy wo
rking on your company’s new graphic identity I wouldn’t have time to poke around in the library, get beat up, come around and pester you—stuff like that.”

  Annette inhaled. “That’s unfair.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. You can answer some questions.” She didn’t look at Jared. “Let’s begin with 1963. A man—a mercenary who’d been with the Foreign Legion—was driving the Jeep the day of the ambush. Know anything about him?”

  “Why should I? Rebecca—”

  “He’s French. Vietnam was a French colony for a hundred years. You have a house in France.”

  “Let’s get some ice for that bruise,” Annette said. “I recall hearing something about the French driver, but as for knowing him…no, I don’t think so. Yes, I have a house on the Riviera and spent some time in Vietnam myself, but I hardly know every Frenchman who was there. Jared—the refrigerator’s in the same place as always. Would you mind?”

  He didn’t move. Something had happened, and he had to get Rebecca out of there—but carefully. She looked ready to explode. “Sure,” he said, going easy.

  “I don’t need ice,” Rebecca said.

  “R.J.—”

  “I’m not sure what people around here aren’t telling me or why, or whether it’d make any difference if I knew what it was. But something’s not right here, and never has been, and I’m going to keep digging and pissing people off until I find out what really happened to my father and then to Tam. And if there’s anything that needs to be fixed in the record, I’m going to fix it.”

  Bravo for you, sweetheart, Jared thought, surprising himself, when Rebecca, white-faced and hoarse, finished.

  Annette regarded the younger woman with placid amusement. Jared had always believed his aunt blamed not just Thomas Blackburn for the ambush that killed her husband, but Stephen Blackburn, as well, for having been Benjamin’s friend, for having invited him along that day—just for being a Blackburn.

  “Rebecca,” she said, “I have no idea what’s happened to you or what you’re hinting at, but there’s no conspiracy of silence. Nevertheless—do what you have to do. The Blackburns always do, you know.” Her gaze turned cold. “And it’s the innocents like myself who suffer.”