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St. Cyr watched Dru’s train disappear over the horizon. He forced himself not to think of the emptiness that had suddenly planted itself in the pit of his stomach.
As soon as the train was out of sight, he sighed heavily and began to make his way slowly toward the yawning station. He stared at the ground as he walked, his lips pursed tight with the effort he was making to keep his mind off Drucilla Durane.
He did not want to think of the hours he had spent with her and how much he liked her. Really liked her. He did not want to think about how warm and intimate it felt when she’d moved close to him in the Quartier Noir as Ramy approached.
Ramy!
The thought of his nemesis made him straighten up and quicken his pace. Inside the station he hurried toward a bank of pay telephones, barely beating a nervous-looking man to the last empty booth. The man flung up his arms in frustration and spun away wildly in search of another phone bank.
St. Cyr inserted a few coins into the box and dialed a number in Paris. Someone picked up on the third ring. St. Cyr heard the person fumble with the receiver before dropping the phone on what sounded like a bare wooden floor.
St. Cyr cursed and jerked the receiver away briefly as the clatter assaulted his ear.
A sleepy, irritated voice said, “Oui?”
“Merde, Michel! You nearly took my ear off !”
The voice became contrite. “Sorry, mon vieux. Just trying to catch up on some sleep. I’ve been working overtime all week with these damn reports. What’s up?”
“Didn’t mean to disturb your sleep, man, but I’ve got another pick up for you. For tonight.”
The man he called Michel groaned. “If it has to be tonight, can you get someone else? I’m down to the wire on these reports. They’re all due tomorrow.”
“It’s your turn, Michel. We can’t afford to mess up this deal. You know what the alternative is if we do. She’s a gem, Michel. We’ve got to keep her.” Michel groaned again. St. Cyr continued, his voice softening a little.
“It won’t take long, Michel. You know that. Just a matter of picking her up and dropping her off. You’ll be back home in no time. You’ve got to do this one. Ramy was already onto her and he’s pissed as hell that I snatched her away. Knowing him, he kept a tail on her and knows she’s heading to Paris.”
Michel sighed.”Okay, okay. Gimme a second to get a pen and some paper.” St. Cyr held the phone away from his ear again as Michel fumbled around noisily on the other end.
“Okay, I’m ready now. What do you have?”
“Are you sure you’re wide awake?”
“I’m wide awake, Theron. Just give me the damn details.”
“About twenty-one. Black American. Arriving around eight. Cute. Big Afro. Wearing a short black dress with little pink and green flowers on it. White sandals. Italian made. American Tourister luggage. Gray. Name is Dru. Drucilla Durane. You got all that?”
“Yeah, I got it all. I’ll pick her up.”
“Great. Be sure to take her to the new place, not the old rat hole. Oh, and Michel, this girl’s no fool. She’s got street smarts. Be extra courteous. We don’t want to lose her. She’s textbook perfect.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll handle it.”
“And one more thing. Don’t pan this off on Faustin like you did that other time. And you know what happened there. I don’t have to remind you.”
“No, you don’t have to remind me, Theron. I said I’ll be there tonight and I will.” Michel didn’t bother to hide his annoyance.
“I’m warning you, Michel. Keep Faustin away from this one! He’s a loose cannon.”
“All right, all right! Jesus! Can I go back to sleep now?”
St. Cyr hung up and walked out of Gare Saint-Charles, turning in the direction of the docks. He smiled to himself. It was a good day. A very good day. Drucilla Durane was his best find yet.
Michel Daubuisson pressed down the receiver hook, then released it, listening for the dial tone. He dialed quickly when he heard the sound. He’d just have to take his chances with Faustin. It was a straightforward assignment. The details were clear. Theron wouldn’t have to know a thing.
“Qui est à l’appareil?” The voice that answered was that of a man expecting a call from a lover.
“Ce n’est que moi, Faustin. Ça va?” Michel’s voice was that of a man who knew he was asking a favor that would not be granted without a string of insults.
“Oh, it’s you. What the hell do you want this time, brain boy? You’re tying up my line.”
“Calm down, Faustin. Have some sympathy for a poor brother who hasn’t seen a bed in forty-eight hours.”
“Like hell you haven’t. What do you want, Michel?”
“Theron just called.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“No, wait! Please. Help me out just this last time. I promise I won’t bother you again. After this week I’ll be free to jump back into things. I’ll even take over your turn for a month. I promise.”
“I’ve heard that song before, Michel. You’re not the only one with obligations, you know. And as for that ungrateful Theron, that worthless goodfor-nothing who wanders the earth, handing down orders like he’s some kind of messiah! I bet he warned you not to call me. He did, didn’t he? Why doesn’t he—”
“I know, Faustin, I know. And I agree with you. But let’s not bring all that up again. Not tonight. My head can’t take it. He’s given me an assignment for tonight that I just can’t do. I just can’t! I have to finish these reports for tomorrow and there’s a lot more to do than I thought. You don’t want me to fail, do you? Not after all the money you’ve loaned me to pay for this course.”
“So why don’t we just let this one go? What difference does it really make anyway?”
Michel let the question hang for a moment before he replied. His voice was measured and quiet when he spoke.
“You should be the last one to ask that question, Faustin,” he said. A long silence ensued.
“What does she look like?” Faustin said gruffly.
5
Lawton Pilgrim’s eyes filled with pride as he watched his protégés file out of the conference room, talking animatedly and smacking each other on the back in genuine camaraderie.
He did not have to warn them about duplicating each other’s reports. Each would know instinctively what the other would write about. After so many years, they just vibed that way.
He caught himself and chuckled at his use of their word, vibed. Even after the door had closed behind them, he could hear their laughter and easy banter with the secretaries.
He stood up and moved again to the window overlooking the East River. It was just after noon on a sweltering late-August day. Hundred-degree temperatures had been sucking the life out of the city for the past few days and more of the same was predicted for the week ahead.
Everywhere he looked he saw stillness or sloth. Even the cars on the Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive seemed too overcome with heat to speed.
A barge stacked three levels high with red, yellow, and gray containers idled in the river. A Circle Line ferry crowded with tourists inched north toward Bear Mountain. Pilgrim could see some of the tourists fanning themselves. He smiled. He had not taken the three-hour ferry ride since he was a kid in elementary school.
Over to his right, a lone seagull swooped and sailed, its white wings spread wide. It was magnificently graceful. Pilgrim loved to watch seagulls, though he always mused that God must have been a bit jaded by the time he got around to creating them. Such beautiful creatures in flight, but what a letdown when they opened their mouths and emitted their coarse, grating caw.
Like a beautiful woman with bad breath.
He turned away from the window and walked slowly to his chair at the head of the conference table. He stood behind the chair, trailing his fingers absently along a seam in the tightly stretched brown leather. His eyes followed the trail, seeing nothing. His thoughts were on the futu
re of the firm. He had to come up with a strategy for its survival.
He scowled. The CPA firms were beginning to sink their claws into the consulting market.
His terrain, goddammit!
Touche Ross. Deloitte, Haskins and Sells. Andersen. Price Waterhouse. Ernst & Young. Peat Marwick. They were the nobility of accounting. They audited the books of the country’s top corporations. Their reports provided a close-up view of these corporations’ financial health. Analysts at investment banks pored over these reports when assessing stock values. But now the corporations were moving into more complex waters, with mergers and acquisitions and management styles with fancy-schmanzy labels. And the CPA firms had a bug up their behinds thinking that, since the corporations were their clients already, what could be so wrong about advising them on reorganizing their operations so that everything ran smoothly after a merger or an acquisition. Pretty soon, Pilgrim fumed, they’ll all start acting like full-fledged consultants, recommending this and recommending that about everything under the sun—doing the very things that Pilgrim Boone built its reputation on. One or two of them had already set up small consulting units.
It stinks, Pilgrim growled, driving his fist into his palm. We’re heading for trouble. It’s a rotten conflict of interest when you advise companies on operations then turn around and audit their books. You’ll have to make your audits look good no matter what the real deal is. Hell, it’s your advice they’re taking!
He had said as much to a couple of his golfing buddies just this past weekend. One of them served on the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the private-sector organization that sets the standards for financial reporting.
“I don’t know what you guys are doing at FASB, but you had better open your eyes,” he had said darkly.
His buddies had laughed at him. It will never get that far, they said. Somebody in the government will stop them. They were willing to bet on it. “You just keep on doing what you’re doing and let someone else worry about the CPAs, Lawton,” the FASB buddy had said.
Pilgrim decided there and then that he wasn’t going to take any chances. He would position Pilgrim Boone to keep it solidly ahead of the pack.
As he ruminated on the situation now, his thoughts came to rest on the discussions earlier in the day about emerging markets. An idea struck him. An idea so simple in logic and execution that it was almost obscene that he had not thought of it before.
What if Pilgrim Boone began to offer its services to Third World governments that want to win favor with Washington? To companies that wanted to make inroads into the American market for their goods? No start-ups or microenterprises. Just established companies that could afford to pay for Pilgrim Boone’s services, companies that had long-term visions of being listed on the New York Stock Exchange, say.
Asia would be the most likely place to go trawling first. And Latin America—Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela. Africa? South Africa for sure. Maybe oil-rich Nigeria, if you could get past the corruption. Other countries have oil but nothing’s being done about it yet.There’s Congo Kinshasa, of course, with all those diamonds and minerals. Other than that, there’s nothing in that god-forsaken land that’s worth the trouble. At least not now.
It would mean hiring people with ethnic or cultural ties to those places and putting some of them on the Inner-Circle track. The same skills and education would be required, of course. A master’s degree, top third of their class, competence in a second language, formal studies in the politics and economics of the region, thinkers outside the box.
Pilgrim rubbed his hands in excitement as the strategy took shape. In his mind he went over the list of graduates he had been keeping his eye on since their junior year in college. Unknown to them, of course.
Funny the way things happen. For the first time his list of potential recruits had included minorities. Two of them. A Korean-American man and an African-American woman. He had not gone out of his way to choose minorities. These two just happened to be so damned good. The woman in particular. Bold as brass, this young woman was. Had the balls—the tits—to turn down a summer internship with Pilgrim Boone to go cavorting all over Europe. No graduate had ever turned down Pilgrim Boone.
Pilgrim felt warm inside. He liked that kind of spunk. Here was a person who knew where she wanted to go and everyone else be damned. Including Pilgrim Boone.
Damn, I like her!
As far as he was concerned, Drucilla Durane had a job at Pilgrim Boone whenever she was ready to show up. He was sure she would.
6
Dru watched the big black Citroën out of the corner of her eye.
Her heart was beating a little faster than normal, but she still felt pretty safe. There was enough of a crowd around to deter a kidnapping, if that’s what the people in the car were planning.
What an ugly car, she thought. Looks like an alien bug. Even worse than the Volkswagen. Europeans must have some kind of fetish about bugs. The Citroën had followed her from the station. This is what you get when your train screws up—a stalker, Dru thought. She should have been on her way to Geneva by now, but the train had stalled on the way to Paris and she had missed her connection, she and a whole lot of other people. She had not planned to stop over in Paris until she returned for her flight back to New York. She had given herself a few days to do the tourist bit then.
The next train to Geneva was early in the morning. She would have to find somewhere to spend the night. Nothing fancy. A pension—hostel—was all she needed. Or, she could sleep in the station with all the others, which is what the Japanese couple had decided to do. With her budget, it would make sense to do likewise. Not to mention the fact that there’s safety in numbers, bedding down in the station with the other passengers.
She decided she would sleep in the station, but she would walk around outside first, stretch her legs a bit before settling down to a night on a wooden bench. She put the bigger suitcase into a locker and walked out onto the street.
It was dark, but there was still a lot of hustle and bustle in the area. She should be fine as long as she didn’t wander into any of the side streets. Maybe she’d even find a decent hotel with a good bathroom in the lobby where she could wash up. She didn’t trust the ones in the station.
She crossed the street and turned toward the bright lights. The Citroën that was parked in front of the station pulled out and eased along the street behind her. Dru picked up the sound of the car matching her pace and she turned suddenly, her eyes briefly making four with the driver’s. She faced front again and quickened her pace. The Citroën accelerated. Dru stopped in front of a small bakery and pretended she was checking out the cakes and pastries in the window, but kept her eye on the reflection of the Citroën in the window. She saw the car pull into a parking space right in front of the bakery. A scruffily dressed man with a sour expression on his face emerged from the driver’s side and started walking toward her.
Terror filled her. Her heart pounding, she hurried into the bakery, thanking God it was still open. The man came in after her. Dru moved to the far end of the counter where a few people were waiting to be served. The man kept coming toward her, his unpleasant face drawn into a scowl. “Stay away from me!” Dru cried out in English as he came within a few feet of her. She hoisted her overnight bag, ready to strike. The man stopped abruptly and stared at her in genuine astonishment. Everyone else stopped what they were doing and stared at both of them.
“I beg your pardon?” The man spoke British English with a mild French accent.
“I said stay away from me or I’ll smash your head in,” Dru threatened. She looked around wildly at the people in the store. “He’s—this man is following me! I don’t know him!” she cried. She caught herself and switched to French. She spoke the language fluently. She had studied it since the sixth grade and excelled in it in high school and college. She was even a life member of the French Institute Alliance Française.
Faustin stared stonily at the American woman before him. T
his I don’t need, he thought angrily. If that son of a bitch Theron knows what’s good for him, he’ll keep away from me for the rest of his life. “Aren’t you Drucilla Durane?” He spoke politely, trying hard to keep his anger under control.
Dru lowered the overnight bag a fraction. “Who the hell are you? How do you know my name?” she demanded.
“Look, Mademoiselle Durane. I’m sorry if I alarmed you. Theron St. Cyr asked a friend to watch out for you at the station, but that friend could not come so he asked me to come instead. Very much against my will, I might add. My name is Faustin Daubuisson. Didn’t Theron tell you that someone would meet you in Paris?”
Dru shifted nervously from one foot to the other, but kept a defiant eye on Daubuisson. The shop patrons rolled their eyes and resumed minding their own business. One or two of them muttered something about uncouth, loud-mouthed Americans.
“Theron said nothing of the sort to me. Why the hell didn’t he?” Dru said. “How should I know? Perhaps he was so intrigued by your beauty that he forgot. Look, I was asked to do a favor and I’m doing that favor. Now, if you have no business to do in this place with these cockroaches, I’d be grateful if you came along with me,” Faustin said, switching to French for the last sentence and glaring at the people who had made the disparaging remarks about Americans.
Dru looked around with distaste and stuck out her chin. “I most certainly do not have business in this place,” she said haughtily.
“Good. Then let’s go.” He turned and walked out of the bakery without looking back to see if she were following him. His determined gait made it clear the he did not care whether she did or not.
“Where are we going?” Dru asked when she got into the car. “I’m taking you somewhere to spend the night,” Faustin said.
“Hey, wait a minute. I appreciate Theron’s—your kindness, but I’m perfectly all right at the station. My train leaves early in the morning and I don’t want to miss it. I’ve already missed one.”
The Guyana Contract Page 6