“I see.”
“But there are many rivals. Many who would like to see me die before I inherit the estate of my father. Many who recognize that I am a threat to them.”
“And these men would kill you?”
Pierce nodded. “We are talking of fabulous stakes,” he said. “Conservative estimates of cost for building the tunnel range from half a billion to a billion dollars. But once completed, the tunnel will carry five million passengers, one million cars, and two million tons of freight a year. The income from passengers and cars alone will be at least thirty-five million dollars. By nineteen ninety that figure will be doubled or tripled. Of course, long before that the cost of the tunnel will have been repaid. Even with maintenance, it will be a staggeringly profitable operation.”
“And you plan to get in on the ground floor.”
“Precisely.”
Raynaud sat back. “Who’s trying to kill you?”
“I can’t be sure. It could be any of ten or fifteen different parties—including, if you will excuse me, the French government. The French would like to see the prime contracts go to French companies.”
“You want me to protect you against ten or fifteen parties?”
“Yes.”
“Do you seriously think it’s possible?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t,” Raynaud said.
“Shall we give it a try?”
Raynaud shrugged. “If I’m paid in advance.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Richard said. “Unless, of course, you tell me who you’re working for.”
“Working for?”
“Yes,” Pierce said.
“Nobody. You.”
“I have reason to doubt that,” Pierce said.
“Oh?”
“For example, the tape recorder in your room.”
Raynaud hesitated. He did not know how to answer. He wondered whether Richard had found the tape, though he knew it was unlikely; the tape had been hidden in another part of the house, far back in a cabinet over the refrigerator. Still…
“What about the tape recorder? I’ve had it for years.”
“It looks it. But why?”
“I use it in business.”
“And the gun?”
Raynaud frowned. “You’ve made a very thorough search of my room.”
“In the line of duty, old buddy.” Pierce smiled. “By the way, do you know whose gun it is?”
“It’s yours.”
“Very good,” Pierce said nodding. “Now tell me how you got it, old buddy.”
“I took it from the man who was following us that night.”
“And you neglected to mention it to me.”
“Yes.”
“Rather strange behavior.”
“I didn’t see any reason to disturb you.”
“How thoughtful.” He sighed. “And what do you intend to do with the gun?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re quite sure about that?”
“Quite sure,” Raynaud said.
Something happened then. Pierce seemed to accept what Raynaud had told him, and he began to get very drunk very fast. He talked wildly and improbably of the tunnel plan, of his schemes and payoffs. Raynaud listened, getting drunk too, but not believing any of it
It was possible, of course, that Richard was involved in negotiations to build a Channel tunnel. It was also possible that he was slipping money to various people to smooth his way.
But it was not possible that anyone would kill him for it.
Businessmen retaliated in kind. There might be a response from rival firms—there almost certainly would be—but murder was simply impossible. Large corporations did not murder anybody. They didn’t have to. Instead, they would use lawyers and researchers to find a crack, a flaw, a chink in Richard’s plan. And they would set out to widen the crack, wedge it, and split it up the middle. Other people could ruin Shore Industries without much trouble, and they would, the moment they felt threatened.
Which meant that Richard was projecting, puffing himself up to a vast self-importance, to the point of ultimate egotism, where he believed himself worthy of someone’s homicidal intentions.
No, Raynaud thought, impossible. If he were the head of a large firm, he would destroy Richard but not kill him. He would apply pressure, would shift funds, would perhaps arrange a scandal for Richard.
But nothing so crude as killing him.
On the other hand, someone had followed Richard, and someone had shot at him. There was no disputing that, though both attempts had been failures, amateurish in their way.
They had more to drink. Raynaud pretended to listen to Richard talk. And all the time, he considered the events of the past two weeks. He had the distinct feeling that something was missing, some vital connection hidden from him.
Caution. It would take caution.
But if he was cautious, he could come away in a few weeks with nearly a hundred thousand dollars.
And smelling like a rose.
When the last pub had closed, they stumbled back to the car, both drunk, both tired. A card was stuck beneath the windshield wiper.
“Damn,” Pierce muttered. “A ticket.”
As it turned out, it was not. Instead, a small printed card: “LONDON’S FINEST SPECIALTY SHOP Yvonne, prop.” And a number.
“What is it?” Raynaud said.
Pierce laughed. “Want to see the best whorehouse in London?”
“I don’t know,” Raynaud said, standing alongside the car, swaying. He felt very, very drunk.
“I think we should,” Pierce said.
“Maybe we should take a taxi.”
“A taxi? Nonsense. I say…nonsense.” Pierce bent over the door and tried to insert the key. He fumbled, making scratching sounds. “Damn lock. Keeps moving.”
“Let’s take a taxi.”
“Taxi, schmaxi. Ah. There it is. Right down the slot.” Pierce giggled and belched.
Raynaud got into the car and rolled down his window. He breathed the misty night air, trying to clear his head.
“Now,” Pierce said, starting the engine, “you will see Yvonne’s stable at work. Lovely girl, Yvonne. About eighty-five and ugly as a wart. But her girls. Ah. You want one, or two, or three, or what?”
“What?”
“What?” Pierce said, and giggled again. He put the car in gear, grinding noisily, and roared off. “Don’t worry about a thing. Just sit back and relax.”
“We should take a tax,” Raynaud said.
“No tax. Taxi. Tax-ee. And we shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Cause you can’t. Not to Yvonne’s. It’s a secret.”
“Oh,” Raynaud said. “But she advertises?”
“It pays to ad-ver-tise,” Pierce said. “She does it for expensive cars. You know?”
“No,” Raynaud said.
“Well, she does,” Pierce said. “We’ll get there in a minute. See for yourself.”
He drove very fast, swerving around corners, tires squealing. He ground the gears with every shift, but did not seem to notice. His eyes had a dead, drunken look, and he laughed a lot.
“Where do you drive in Mexico?”
“All over,” Raynaud said. “All over.”
“I mean, where—on the right or left.”
“On the right.”
“Okay, then, I’ll drive on the right.”
The streets were almost deserted, but there were still a lot of taxis out. Raynaud said, “Hey!”
“Don’ worry. We’re in Mexico.”
“Hey!” Raynaud said. The Maserati had moved to the right side of the road.
“We’re in Mexico. Olé!”
They screamed around a corner and saw the lights of another car approaching them.
“Stupid bastard. Wha’s he doing on the wrong side of the road?”
Pierce increased his speed and the other car honked. They came closer and closer, Raynaud seeing it all th
rough a soft, drunken haze. Then at the last moment, Pierce gave a shout and spun the wheel, and there was a lamp post coming right toward them, and a house and a fence, and then nothing.
Blackness.
15. HEAVEN
“JUST PUT HIM DOWN anywhere. It doesn’t matter.” Raynaud felt himself carried, and then set down on something warm and damp. He was sure he was dreaming.
“Bit of an accident is all,” said a voice which sounded like Pierce. “He was in the death seat, you see. Alongside me.”
“Doesn’t matter, sir,” said a gruff voice. “He goes as a double extra.”
“Double extra! My good man!”
“That’s it, gov. Take it or leave it.”
“Why double, you scoundrel?”
“As luggage,” said the man. “It was on the meter, plain as day.”
“You regard this man as luggage?”
“That’s it, gov. One bob extra.”
Raynaud opened his eyes to see a man in a leather jack talking to a man wearing a towel. The man in the towel was paying the other man. There were clouds of smoke everywhere.
“I must be dreaming,” Raynaud said.
“Christ, no,” said Pierce irritably. He finished paying the man in the jacket, then tightened the towel around his waist “Not dreaming at all. That bastard just robbed me of shilling. Charged you as luggage.”
“Me?”
“That’s right. You were out, you know.”
“Who was he?”
“A taxi driver.”
“Oh.”
Raynaud tried to sit up, but his head throbbed. Pierce pushed him back.
“Steady now. There’s a lump on your forehead. You cracked my windscreen, you know. With your bloody head.”
Raynaud looked around at the clouds of misty hot air. In far corners were other men in towels.
“Where am I?”
“The Savoy Steam Turkish Baths,” Pierce said, and laughed. “Did you think it was heaven?”
“No,” Raynaud said, coughing. “It’s too hot for that.”
“Better relax,” Pierce said. “You’ve had quite a jolt.”
Raynaud lay back and breathed the hot moist air. “What happened?”
“We seem to have met up with a telephone pole. We clearly had the right of way, but these things can be so stubborn…”
“How’s the car?”
“Left fender dented, and a crimp in the bonnet. Nothing that won’t be set right in a day or so.”
“That’s good,” Raynaud said.
“How do you feel, old buddy?”
“Nothing,” said Raynaud, “that won’t be set right in a month or so.”
After the bath, he found he was able to walk. They had a shower, then a rubdown, and then were shown to private beds. He fell immediately asleep, and was only awakened by the redolent smell of eggs and bacon.
“Breakfast, sir,” said a boy, leaving the tray by the door. Raynaud looked around, and the boy’s eyes widened in horror. “I say, sir…”
“Yes?”
“Have you hurt yourself? Your head…” He touched his own forehead.
Raynaud got up and looked in a mirror standing over a washbasin. In the center of his forehead was a large, puffed, purple bruise.
“Don’t mind that,” he said. “I swallowed an egg, and it went down the wrong way.”
“Yes, sir,” said the boy, not cracking a smile. He left the room.
Raynaud turned to his breakfast and discovered that he was starved. Though his joints were stiff and his head ached, the rest of his body seemed all right. Lucky, he thought. Damned lucky. He might have been killed, or in the hospital for months.
Pierce came in, smiling. “Feel better, old buddy?”
“Just great,” Raynaud said.
“That’s good. I was worried about you, for a while.”
“Were you?”
“Hell, yes,” Pierce said. “Of course, I was.”
Later in the day Raynaud went to the repair shop where the Maserati stood, a twisted, wrinkled heap of metal. He walked all around the car, trying to remember exactly what had happened.
One thing was clear: the car had struck a telephone pole. The front end was deeply indented, the hood telescoped back, the paint flaking away from the bruised metal.
But the telephone pole had struck on the left side.
Raynaud’s side. The death seat.
He walked around the car a second time, trying to make himself believe the evidence before his eyes. There were no ways to hedge, no ways to avoid the obvious fact:
Richard had tried to kill him.
At great risk to himself. Richard had rammed his car into a telephone pole in such a way as to kill Raynaud.
By accident.
He stared at the sheets of twisted metal and shook his head. Why should Richard want him dead?
He searched for an answer, but found none. And when he left the repair shop, he was more afraid than he had been in years.
16. CHEERS, HELL
JONATHAN BLACK LAY TENSELY on his back as the doctor strapped on the electrodes. The doctor was a thin, severe-looking man, but he was known as an excellent cardiologist. Black had seen him monthly for five years, since his first myocardial infarction. Yet he somehow had never adjusted to the visits. They always made him tense.
“Just relax,” the doctor said. He was applying white paste to Black’s chest, and pushing on the suction electrodes. “You’ve certainly had this before.”
He finished, and stepped back. “There we go. Just breathe easily.”
He turned on the small machine, and watched as the paper began to roll out toward the floor. Black could see the black ink squiggles of the electrocardiogram. The doctor pressed buttons and turned dials on the machine. Then he stopped it, adjusted the electrodes, and started it again. He repeated this until he had covered all six V leads, and had a tracing on paper that was several feet long.
“Hmmm,” he said, studying the paper.
Black sat up, pulled off the electrodes, and picked up a gauze pad. He sponged off the paste.
“Something wrong?”
“No, nothing.”
Black held out his hand. “May I see it?”
The doctor turned away. “Something wrong with this damned machine,” he said. “I thought so all along. I’ve got to have it looked at. Come back next week?”
Black kept his hand out. “May I see the tracing?”
“It’s meaningless,” the doctor said, with a shrug. He folded it and slipped it into his desk. “Absolutely meaningless. Shows right ventricular hypertrophy and left axis deviation. No sense at all.”
Black sighed. “I’d like to see it anyway.”
“Jonathan,” said the doctor sternly, “you and I both know that it would just upset you. And you yourself have told me there are no symptoms.”
“Symptoms of what?”
“Right heart failure. Edema, epigastric impulse, distended neck veins.”
“No,” Black said. “None.”
“Well then? You’ve answered your own question.” He smiled reassuringly. “But while I’ve got you here, let’s do a chest film.”
“Why?”
“Just to complete the picture, of course,” the doctor said, consulting his file. “You haven’t had one in a year.”
“I haven’t needed one.”
“And you don’t need one now,” the doctor said, “strictly speaking. But you know the value of a yearly film. Especially in a smoker. You haven’t given it up, I take it?”
Black shook his head.
“They never do. Especially doctors. Think they’re invincible. How’s your angina been?”
“Not bad. I get it once or twice a month, with exertion.”
“Dyspnea? Orthopnea? PND?”
“No,” Black said.
“Good. You’ve been following your heart closely?”
“Very.”
“Any change?”
“No. Still grade two
or thereabouts.”
“As long as you’re here, why don’t I have a listen,” he said, taking out his stethoscope. He clipped it around his neck and applied the bell to Black’s chest. He had a characteristic gesture, peculiar to cardiologists: whenever he shifted the bell on the chest, he made a little nod with his head, and closed his eyes.
After a moment he straightened, “No change, I think. I shouldn’t worry. Do the film now?”
“All right.”
They went into another room. A technician was there, a plain girl in a lead apron, standing beside her machine.
“I want an AP and lateral for Doctor Black, Cynthia,” the doctor said. He turned to Black and shook hands. “Call me in a week and we’ll do another EKG. And we can discuss the film at that time, though frankly I don’t expect any change from last year.”
“All right,” Black said.
“Cheers,” the doctor said, and returned to his office.
Cheers, hell, Black thought, as he got into his Aston and drove off. Nothing cheery about that bastard and his little games. Hiding the EKG, throwing off some cock and bull story about a broken machine. That was crap; he would have noticed it immediately, before he had finished the first three lead readings.
Black knew what was happening. The angina was getting worse, the pain coming more often, more sharply. It struck him once or twice a day now, and often so severely that he had to sit down and rest. He carried nitro with him wherever he went, in a small metal box, handy at his side.
He had noticed the changes. Before, he had carried the nitro with him, but had never bothered to take it into the operating room when he was doing experiments. Now, it went with him everywhere, even there.
One severe attack, doubling him over, forcing him to drop the scalpel to the floor, had been enough to change that.
He sighed and lit a cigarette, feeling guilty. He knew he shouldn’t smoke, just as he knew he should cut down on the rich foods. But he could not—denial, pure and simple, a classic denial reaction. But hell, he thought, half of England had suffered MI’s worse than his and were walking around into their eighties and nineties. His heart attack of a year ago had been relatively minor, so minor that he had not bothered to tell anyone about it. And it had damaged the papillary muscle, giving him a grade-two murmur, but a grade-two murmur was often unimportant. Functional. Lots of people had them.
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