It was no mirage. The luxurious coolness was breathtaking at first. The shock of it made him wonder whether he could keep going, but he stroked his way with calm, easy movements down the length of the pool towards the diving board at the far end and then turned back. The sparkling, undulant, blue-green area of water ahead of him seemed to ride up to his eyes in small, successive waves and then recede, ride up, then recede, as he swam with growing confidence. The water’s surface resembled a long distorting mirror in which he saw the reflections of the silvery glass doors form into elongated, snaky blobs, then form eyes, then become shivering, quivering, mercurial shapes flickering on the surface and surrendering themselves to the water’s shifting motion. The tiles of the pool’s floor created a delightful lacy network shimmering beneath him. The water was clear and silvery and sun-warmed. It was so sensually satisfying he forgot his imprisonment and turned at the end and swam back again.
Climbing out of the pool, he almost came face to face with the fair-haired athletic guard. They exchanged neutral, defensive looks. What struck Joe was the whiteness of his own skin by comparison with the Californian brown of the other. The fact was reiterated by their differing, separate, dull reflections in the silvery glass doors. Self-consciously he padded across the tiles to his own room and went in. His hunch had been right. He could tell at once that the little pile of discarded clothes had been moved a fraction and small cuts had been made in the interior lining of his suitcase. Everything, in short, had been searched. So what had they been trying to find? He knew the answer: the locket round his neck.
Despite a whirring somewhere in the ceiling the air-conditioning was less than hundred per cent effective. He towelled himself in the cool white bathroom, trying to achieve a degree of privacy that seemed otherwise hard to find. Everything of his was accessible, he supposed, every action open to surveillance. Uncertainties now abounded. The only real certainties were that he, Joseph Richter, had a brand on the inside of his left wrist and he had seen all the original sheets of the letters go up in flames. All he had to himself was what now hung round his neck. He would keep that to himself like an aborigine nursing the secret of fire.
The heat in the room made him sweat. He left the sliding door open but drew shut some inner mosquito-netted doors. Sunlight filled the room, setting in clear relief a Mexican-Indian style painting of a ceremonial mask on the wall beside his bed and encasing it in a fine web of mosquito mesh shading. A large green lampshade atop a jade vase on a bedside table was also sharply blocked out in shadow on the wall. He stared at these shapes. In their unfamiliarity and brilliance they were alien and comfortless. He lay down on the bed and drew a loose cover over him. The sense of having been imprisoned oppressed him, but he knew that for the time being there was no choice. Sudden tiredness vied with the sense of insecurity and he fell asleep.
His dream was similarly full of insecurities. Jenny was naked beside him. The softness of her body against his was such an intense enticement he longed to press her to him. The insecurity, though, created an equally strong pressure dividing them. He was conscious of Jenny’s face changing. It became two large eyes staring at him, their expression still and glacial. Then there was a disturbing noise. It was as though someone were drilling through the wall in order to create a peephole. He thought he distinctly heard someone trying to insert a key into a door-lock. But no, it was Jenny, sure enough. He could feel her body close beside him. It was cool and smooth. He ran his right hand over her bare shoulder and down to her breast, to her round, firm nipple.
Immediately there was no mistake. His eyes were open. Someone was lying beside him in the darkness. In vague, close silhouette he discerned the shape of a shoulder and the curve of an arm. Before he could speak, a hand came out of the darkness and pressed down on his lips.
‘Ssshh!’
Julie! Julie lying beside him! The scent of her fingers told him as much. She kissed him. In an instant her whole body was pressed to his. Her fingers were running over his back, the nails now and then digging into his skin as she pressed herself against him, kissing him softly but frequently on his mouth, his cheeks, his eyes. Her tongue licked into his ear as she whispered soft words about love. Roused into sentinel alertness, he knew the invitation of her body was being offered to him as a natural delight, perhaps even as part of the firm’s hospitality. It was no more extraordinary or unconventional than Los Angeles itself and the hot night.
Then he was aware of her trying to wrench the locket free of the cord round his neck. He instantly flicked on the light and sat up. Her fingers released their grip. She sprang away from him and was kneeling on the bed, her arms clasped across her bosom. To his astonishment, her nakedness was not shameful. It empowered her for the moment.
‘Joe, what’s that? If it’s what I think it is…’
She pointed at his wrist. He looked down at the brand. In that light, on his white skin, it shone out like a vivid red sign of plague.
‘It’s… So what do you think it is?’
He asked the question angrily, in shock, but no louder than a whisper.
‘You are the one, then!’
‘One? What do you mean?’
She tried to avoid his gaze, the whites of her eyes shining like bare bones as she glanced round her in a kind of fright. ‘You know it’ll all be, er, you know. There are,’ she whispered, ‘listening devices.’ In a low voice: ‘It’s what they said.’
‘Who said? Julie, how did you know I’d been branded? Who told you?’
She started to shiver.
‘Who?’
He leaned forward, clutched her shoulders and gave her a light shaking. She limply submitted.
‘Who?’
‘Washington. The firm.’
She said it so softly it he could scarcely hear her. She again looked round her as if trying to find something else to say. The whirr of the air-conditioning grew as loud as a passing aircraft until he heard a sob and realized she had begun to cry. Quietly but deliberately. He struck the mattress with his fist.
‘Damn you, Julie, don’t do that!’
Her lips parted. She had obviously expected sympathy. Perhaps it had worked for her a dozen times before. Not this time. He found the bathrobe she had obviously discarded before climbing into bed beside him and threw it to her. With an elegant and economical movement she slipped it on.
‘What do you mean – Washington? I thought you had an influential source here in America, that’s what you said.’
She looked at him tentatively with her head lowered, quickly wiping her eyes with both forefingers. He drew the yellow bed-cover round him. They faced each in rather frosty mutual distrust.
‘It was partly private.’ She swept back her hair back. ‘The firm assigned me, but they wanted to know exactly what the so-called letter meant. Well, they got it through that oligarch…’
‘Through Goncharov?’
‘Yes.’
‘You mean the firm was collaborating…’ He felt the chill of this revelation run like ice down the length of his spine.
‘Yes. They were hand in hand. A coded letter! So what! Your source had stolen it from the archives. But there was something else, wasn’t there? An old letter written by a long-dead terrorist – or did it mean there was something else? Did it? Okay, so he was dead and embalmed if not buried, I know…’ The admission brought a pursing of her bright red lips. ‘But it was the living who might know what it meant. You, they said, the branded person – the cheat, that’s what they called you! – the cheat would know. You were to be warned off, but at the same time, you know, identified. That mark would identify you. Then your own people…’ She paused and narrowed her eyes. ‘I think it was the Russian oligarch who informed because he knew your source. It was Mr Krestovsky, wasn’t it? You got the coded letter from him, didn’t you?’
This was becoming too much like a Disney fantasy in 3-D for him to believe a word.
‘Who told you all this?’
‘Look, if someone say
s “terrorist” after 9/11, then all the alarm bells start ringing. You must recognize that, Joe! That coded letter had “terrorist” written all over it. So naturally the firm wanted to know more. And they know practically everything that needs to be known. Except one thing.’ She paused to watch the mystery have its effect on him. When he seemed almost indifferent, she smiled and gave several rapid nods. ‘Except they don’t know you! They don’t know who you are!’
‘So they look through my clothes to find who I am?’
‘Well, no!’ The irony did not escape her and she looked away.
‘Then why? Why search for something unless you believe someone’s got it? It’s my locket, isn’t it?’
‘Well, no!’ she repeated. ‘Maybe one of the staff here did it – searched, I mean. I didn’t and I didn’t want it done.’ She made a convincing show of indignation at such an underhand suggestion. ‘No, it’s not that!
He held up the locket. ‘Are you sure? I was told this was only for one person – Martha!’
‘Yes, of course it is!’ Her mouth opened wide and her eyes lit up with their old Times Square brilliance. ‘And of course you don’t know why, do you?’
He studied her. How much did she really know? ‘No,’ he admitted.
‘Okay, so you don’t know.’ She gave a triumphant shake of blonde hair. ‘Well, look, Mr Joseph Richter, I was very close to Dr Hazell Jr in the last couple of years. He was an old man. He had a whole heap of concerns. But he always made time to come over here to San Jorge. Every six months. And each time…’ She pulled her robe more tightly round her ‘… each time he suffered, he really did suffer…’
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘Dr Hazell Jr.’
‘Who is he?… Oh, now I realize!’
Her look was one of mild annoyance. ‘He was my employer, Gloria’s father. He was the real Mr Frankenstein. I thought you knew. Didn’t Gloria tell you?’
‘No. She merely told me we both had the same name – Richter.’
‘Maybe that was his original name, I don’t know. I always knew him as Dr Hazell Jr. He said he’d received an honorary doctorate from UCLA. He wasn’t a medical doctor.’
‘So he was awarded a doctorate for being a Mr Frankenstein, was he?’
‘A bit like that. He received it because he was a wizard at what he did.’
‘A wizard?’
‘Yes.’
Unaccountably this made him laugh softly. She did not take kindly to such laughter, made a derisory face and her long lips dug deep furrows of dimples into her cheeks. In a kind of desperation she started shaking her head to and fro and her pretty hair seemed almost to make a tinkling sound as though it were a shaken wind harp.
‘You don’t know anything, do you?’ She leaned forward, whispering with a little hiss of malice. ‘He was Hazell Enterprises! You know – HE. All the adverts everywhere, like “HEat your home!” “HE is best” – all that crummy stuff! It was all his! Though he didn’t like personal publicity. He travelled as Mr Richter. He was rich! He could afford it! And no one laughs at someone like that! He was one great man, Mr Richter, and only ignorant skunks like you laugh at someone like that!’
She seemed on the verge of either crying or laughing, aware no doubt how silly her invective sounded and even reddening a little with the embarrassment of knowing it.
‘Good for you, Julie Schiff,’ he said.
She reverted to insistent whispering. ‘You’re here for your own protection, don’t you realize that? Can’t you see what might happen if the people who called you a cheat decided to eliminate you? What would that thing round your neck be worth then?’ Her tone changed and the niceness began to show through. ‘Joe, please. If you co-operate, we could use it, you and I could use it, couldn’t we? It’s worth something, it must be! If the firm doesn’t protect you, well… Look what they did to you…’ She touched his wrist lightly and then placed a finger playfully on his nose ‘… and you don’t even know why!’
He seized her finger and held it. ‘Who’s the contact?’ he asked.
‘You mean you haven’t guessed?’
He did not answer but held her finger tightly as she tried to free it. She pulled but he would not let go. She grew cross.
‘Hurting me isn’t going to make me say.’
He released her finger and she made a show of nursing it tenderly. She was extremely attractive when she looked cross. At which point a thought struck him.
‘I’m just a skunk, am I? Your own words. Well, I’m a skunk who knows something now. And I’ve just realized…’
She gazed at him suspiciously, warily, her eyelids flickering. He leaned quickly towards her and kissed her on the lips. As she drew back, both startled and pleased, he said:
‘I’ve been a bloody fool. I should have realized who it was long ago.’
16
It was Leo Kamen. With silver hair, dark glasses, a smart, wide-lapelled jacket and the single rosebud, a neat pink dot in the otherwise bland off-white façade of his suiting, he walked very carefully across the wide patio, moving as if he did not wish to tauten or spoil the precise creases of his pants extending pillar-like to expensive buckled footwear. He made the one familiar, identifying gesture of smoothing his hair back with the palm of his right hand. Then he seated himself opposite Joe. The barman immediately set a glass of iced water on a paper mat in front of him.
They were silent. With deliberate and theatrical slowness Leo Kamen extended a thin hand towards the frosted sides of the glass and let the pads of his fingers rest lightly against them. It was possible to experience by empathy the coldness burning those fingertips. Otherwise morning sunlight shone through haze; soft traffic noises came from San Vicente. A blue plastic hose snaking along the tiles to one side of the pool carried water to a sprinkler down among the shrubbery at the far end. Its delicate splashing could be heard, as could the occasional unexplained slap of the water against the side of the pool. There was no music from the bar, no sign of the two athletic guards. A distant police siren, a horn sounding, and through the stillness of the haze, sometimes just audible, the sound of the rollers of the Pacific were all that constituted detailed reminders of the surrounding world.
‘Miss Schiff.’ Leo Kamen nodded towards her with a smile. ‘Very nice seeing you here, very nice.’ Then he slowly removed his dark glasses and turned to Joe, his lips broadening into a smile. ‘There’s a lot to explain, isn’t there? I reckon I’ll have to start with an apology.’
‘No,’ Joe said, ‘no apologies, please.’ He still felt a sharp sting of pain as his lips formed an answering smile. ‘How is my mother?’
‘Fine. Your mother’s fine. She sends her love and looks forward to seeing you a bit later on. Right now…’ Leo scrutinised Joe’s face. ‘Who’s been kissing you recently?’
Joe raised a hand to his still sensitive jaw. ‘An Old Believer. Remember?’
‘Not a kiss, then. Sad to hear that.’ Leo glanced a little naughtily at Julie Schiff before turning back to Joe. ‘Still we all suffer one way or another in the same cause, don’t we?’
‘Do we?’
‘We sure do. You suffer the slings and arrows, I suffer the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks. So you’ve been comfortable here?’
‘Perfectly comfortable.’
‘Miss Schiff has organised everything to your satisfaction?’
‘Miss Schiff has done that. For God’s sake, Leo, what’s all this about?’
The sudden anger in Joe’s voice changed everything.
‘I know, I know.’ Leo replaced his dark glasses. The thin fingers moved in a slow, caressing, tapping motion against the cold sides of the glass. ‘Okay, so Miss Schiff and I have known each other on a purely business basis for, oh, a couple of years. She was a very able personal assistant to her employer, the late Dr Hazell Jr. Isn’t that right?’
Julie Schiff agreed.
‘So that’s how I became a contact. Miss Schiff isn’t any longer persona
grata up at San Jorge, but I’m still tolerated. Live and let live, know what I mean? Because we have one great issue to deal with. It affects all three of us.’ He distributed separate serious looks at both his listeners. ‘You know him, Joe. You’ve met him.’
‘Who?’
Leo thrust forward his jaw. ‘An oligarch,’ he said solemnly, adding almost immediately: ‘One who likes to be thought of as a guardian of the holy of holies. Of all things holy, that is, relating to the prestige and good name of Holy Russia. Certainly he is able to afford such guardianship. But being an oligarch, he is frightened of losing his money. So what most frightens him is that free-market capitalism and liberal democracy, everything that protects him, will be threatened by a new form of communism. So he wants to buy into the future by protecting the past. Do you know what I mean? Well, he has offered to purchase San Jorge.’ He removed his dark glasses to brush his hand over his eyes before lifting the glass and taking a sip. Holding the glass in front of him, he asked: ‘Did either of you know this?’
Joe did not answer. He was distracted by the look of astonishment on Julie’s face.
‘But what about…?’
The question ended there. She evidently could not withstand the keen brown eyes that encompassed her surprise with such a show of calm avuncular understanding. Then Leo Kamen uttered the name of Mr Goncharov. Her eyes literally widened.
‘No!’
He replaced the glass on the paper mat. ‘That’s who, my dear. We’re talking very great wealth, very great wealth indeed. And it wants to remain anonymous for the time being. So it will pay a lot of money, if necessary, to achieve anonymity. Which is why, if you work for it, you’ll be very unlikely to talk about it.’
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