The Secret Agent

by Francine Mathews

There was a phone booth in Jacques Renaudie’s pub in Le Praz that looked primitive enough to be untraceable. Stefani had noted the spot during a pre-ski coffee run two days previous. At four o’clock that afternoon—nine A.M. in New York—she pulled the booth’s door shut, fed a token into the ancient machine and requested an international operator. “Collect call from Hazel,” she said, and pronounced one of the numbers that Oliver had given her.

  As the call went through, she kept her eyes trained on the front of Renaudie’s place. Local skiers thronged around the bar, ordering beer and hot toddies while insults flew back and forth in rapid French. Le Praz was a quieter village than Courchevel 1850, where Max lived; it drew few of the international jet set and more families with children. She had chosen the villa in Le Praz because it was less obvious than one of the four-star hotels near Max’s home; but she was an oddity here, in her fawn-colored doeskin and her mink headband.

  “Carlton Gardens,” said a quiet voice in her ear. She jumped. How like Oliver to name his transfer service after a Monopoly card. The operator gave her name; the call was accepted. And there was Oliver at the speed of light—from his current undisclosed location. Stefani was fairly certain he was nowhere near New York.

  “Hazel, darling,” he cooed. “Drinking buttered rum and pining for your dear old uncle? How are tricks on the World Cup Circuit? Tell me everything. We’re completely secure.”

  “Max and I were nearly buried alive this morning,” she replied, “in an avalanche someone triggered by gunfire.”

  “Good lord. You do intend to go out with style. Any casualties?”

  “None. We were alone—skiing one of Max’s private spots. Whoever fired the gun knew we would be there. The attack was deliberate and targeted very narrowly.”

  “Then the field of suspects is similarly narrow, I presume?”

  “I chose not to point that out to Max. But I want to know more about his lawyer, a man named Jeff Knetsch He appeared out of nowhere last night, looked me over and hated what he saw. He had an idea where we’d be skiing. You’ll find him in the dossier you gave me—but only as background. I need present-day stuff. His loyalties, his weaknesses. How much Max is worth in legal fees.”

  “Then you shall have it,” Oliver promised briskly. “I think it only fair to warn you that Mr. Knetsch has been making inquiries of his own.”

  “Regarding …?”

  “You, love, naturally. He’s gathered quite a bit of dirt.”

  Stefani digested this information in silence. “On Max’s orders?”

  “One would assume.”

  He takes nothing on faith. He trusts no one. Or is Knetsch acting alone, trying to undermine my job?

  “Shall I finger anyone else’s knickers?” Oliver asked mildly.

  “It’s a long shot, but there’s a woman. Name of Ankana Lee-Harris. Born Thai, married to a Brit named Bobbie Lee-Harris. She surfaced with Knetsch today. Max didn’t like it.”

  “Address? Maiden name?”

  “She lives in Hampstead Heath and works for the Hughes Museum of Asian Art. That’s in London.”

  “I know.” For the first time since she’d met him, he sounded faintly annoyed. “Age? Coloring? Bank accounts?”

  “I only had a drink with her, Oliver. She’s about my age. Asian hair that’s bleached orange.”

  “Right-o. Hazel—”

  “Yes?”

  “Enjoying yourself?”

  He trusts no one—

  For an instant, the memory of Max’s mouth on hers forced her to close her eyes.

  “Immensely,” she replied.

  9

  Mademoiselle Fogg!” cried Yvette Margolan as Stefani strode into the charcuterie. “What a pleasure it is to see you! And how were les pistes today?”

  “Thrilling. I practically threw myself down the mountain.”

  “The backcountry, it is always demanding.” The Frenchwoman leaned engagingly across her glass counter-top. “A joy, yes, like all of Courchevel, but très fatigant.”

  Stefani glanced at her shrewdly. “Is the backcountry written all over my face?”

  “Max, he told me where he would ski when he came for my tarte tatin yesterday. I always ask where he goes, because he has the best nose for powder of any man on the mountain.”

  Which meant that anyone who talked to Yvette yesterday could have known where Max planned to ski this morning. Stefani felt the sharp stab of frustration.

  “When one is following Max Roderick,” Yvette prattled, “one must race as though the devil himself were at one’s heels. I know. I have skied with him too many times to count.”

  “You’ve known Max a while?”

  “As long as he has lived in Courchevel.” Yvette gestured toward a framed photograph that sat above her cash register: four people laughing in the snow, Saulire in the distance. “We used to be so happy, Jacques and I and his wife and Max, when we hiked the backcountry together. But then …” She cocked her head at Stefani. “How is Max these days? He is happy?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You had not seen him for many years, I understand?”

  The woman was settling in for a long gossip. Time to feed the rumor mills.

  “We were quite close during the late eighties,” Stefani offered recklessly, “but when I married, we grew apart.”

  “You are married?”

  “Not anymore,” Stefani lied smoothly. “My ex-husband was an oil man. I’ve come to Courchevel to forget him.”

  “Ah.” The Frenchwoman scanned Stefani’s exquisite clothing, then nodded sagely. “And Max, he has been too much alone. But enough, bon, you did not come into my shop to talk of les amours.”

  “I thought we were talking of skiing,” Stefani said innocently. “But you’re right, madame—I’m here for that marvelous tarte tatin Max served last evening. Would you happen to have another?”

  It was as Yvette was wrapping the confection in plastic and brown paper that the bells over the door jangled. A dark, lithe girl in a ski sweater and fur boots sauntered into the shop. She had glossy hair the color of sable; petulant, full lips; and gray eyes thickly lashed. A cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth.

  “Allô, Yvette,” she called. “Tu vas bien?”

  “Oui, comme toujours, Sabine. Et votre papa?”

  “Ce con,” the girl replied venomously, and ground the butt under her heel.

  Yvette darted a worried glance at Stefani. “Thank you very much, Mademoiselle Fogg,” she murmured, and handed the tart over the counter.

  “Fogg?” muttered Sabine. “C’est la putain américaine?”

  “Zut, Sabine,” Yvette hissed.

  But the girl barred Stefani’s path. “You are the woman named Fogg?”

  “I am. And you would be?”

  Sabine eyed her from head to toe, then smiled maliciously. “But you are so old! Max cannot be in love with you. You must be nearly forty!”

  “Nearly. Are you out of diapers yet?”

  Sabine tossed her hair and sauntered over to Yvette’s counter, where she began to examine a tray of chocolates. “In France, vous comprenez, men prefer younger women. They use ones like you for tidying the house and ones like me for messing the bed.”

  “Sabine!” Yvette protested.

  “Don’t worry,” Sabine tossed over her shoulder. “I am going. I have a date with the Austrian Ski Team. You can tell Max where to find me if he is lonely.” She slid past Stefani and stalked out the door.

  “La pauvre petite,” Yvette mourned. “She has never understood the abandonment of the mother, you understand.”

  Stefani gathered her ski gloves from the shop counter. “Jacques Renaudie’s daughter?”

  “Mais oui. Her mama was head over ears in love with Max, once upon a time. But Max, he never saw Claudine as a woman—merely as the wife of an old ami—and she went off at last to Paris with a banker friend of Max’s. I have not heard from her in some time.” Yvette glanced at the photograph above her cash reg
ister. I “Cette jeune fille will not be happy until she has punished them all for making her miserable.”

  When she reached her rented villa, Stefani changed out of her ski clothes and sat down to compose a secure fax for Oliver Krane. It was imperative she add a few names to his query list. Jacques Renaudie might look benign, but his estranged wife and bitter daughter were reasons enough to hate Max Roderick. Even the best of friendships might shatter under strain; the best of men strike a bargain with murder.

  Jeff Knetsch splashed two fingers of whiskey into his glass and held it to the light. He was not the sort of man who drank to excess; but the impulse flared at moments like this, when events and people spun out of control.

  Control. It was a byword of his, the defining concept of his life. Control freak, they called him at Ballard, Crump & Skrebneski, the white-shoe law firm where he’d made partner seven years before. Control freak, and Mr. Anal-Retentive, and The Micromanager. Jeff had no quarrel with the names. His reputation began and ended with obsessive attention to detail.

  As an associate he’d been praised for the immense tally of billable hours he’d racked up each year, for the burning focus he gave the most incidental problem. He led a blameless life in the suburbs of Westchester, where he served as a Sunday-school teacher at the Episcopal church. His wife, Shelley, never behaved inappropriately at firm functions; she dressed well, if conservatively; and if the pair of them seemed at times to be colorless— if their conversation was too safe, their opinions too predictable—this did neither of them any harm in the eyes of those who governed Jeff’s career. He might not be a rainmaker—the sort of charming glad-hander who reeled in business by the fistful—but Jeff was steady. He was dependable. Jeff Knetsch, as partner at Ballard, Crump & Skrebneski, was given the difficult cases. The demanding and persnickety clients. The ones the firm could not afford to lose.

  Had one of his partners studied him closely, however, as he made his way each day from elevator to office, Jeff’s camouflage might have failed him. A nerve above his right eye twitched compulsively. His fingers were clenched on the handle of his briefcase. Discipline was no longer Jeff’s tool; it was his prison.

  He survived the tidal waves of life by keeping his thoughts and emotions in concentric boxes, nested firmly on the floor of his mind. Communication among them was strictly forbidden. One box held his past, and all the dreams he had nourished in late-night fantasies of glory and fame. In another box was the pain of profound physical injury and its recovery. A third held his law career. A fourth, his marriage. And in the fifth—

  A whoop of wild laughter floated up from the hot tub one floor below, breaking into his thoughts. Ankana Lee-Harris was bathing nude down there, her golden thighs iridescent in the underwater lights, her eyes luminous as a cat’s. She’d propped an open champagne bottle near the edge of the tub and one of Max’s crystal flutes lolled in her taloned fingers. She showed no inclination to leave anytime soon.

  Max hated having her in his house, and he’d let Jeff know it.

  “Get rid of her.”

  They’d faced off in the kitchen, where the swinging door guaranteed a bit of privacy.

  “I want her out in the next half hour.”

  “Max, I’m not sure I can—”

  “If she’s still here by three A.M., there will be hell to pay. And I refuse to argue the point with that woman in an advanced state of inebriation.”

  “It’s only seven-thirty. There’s plenty of time—”

  “Jeff,” Max muttered with contempt. “You’ve still got the backbone of a jellyfish.”

  His self-control beginning to unravel, Jeff had reached instinctively for the bottle of Scotch. A wave of vertigo, like a fever spike, and the Scotch sloshed wetly over his fingertips.

  “I’ll have to take her to dinner. Someplace expensive.”

  Max tossed him fifteen hundred francs. “Kick her ass-first into the snow. Rudeness is the only thing Ankana understands. You owe her nothing.”

  If only— Jeff thought now as he drained the Scotch in his glass—that were true. If only I owed her and all the rest of them exactly nothing-He did not drink to excess or keep a mistress or live carelessly on credit cards—but he was prey to one imperious weakness. The fifth box. The box where all the risk and wildness dwelled, the box where chance gave no quarter. Jeff loved that box—loved the unpredictability, the sudden windfalls of fortune, the losses so absolute they could crush a man.

  The gambler’s box.

  Everything was possible there, everything rosy, and he had begun to throw more and more money into games of chance with each visit to Vegas, each weekend trip to Atlantic City. He kept accounts with bookies under multiple names. He was adrift in a sea of Internet operations, all vaguely structured and probably illegal. He was in debt beyond his reckoning and the consequences had never mattered. To bet his life on the toss of a die was the ultimate intoxication. He was Fate’s plaything.

  “She’s leaving Sunday morning?” Max demanded.

  “So she says.”

  “Stefani and I are flying to Bangkok on Monday. You can head back to New York anytime you like.”

  Dismissed, Jeff thought, like baggage. So much for old friendship. You fucking idiot, Max. A wave of anger and fear, fueled by the Scotch, surged into his brain. “You invited Fogg to Bangkok—just like that?”

  “Just like that. I’ve made my decision. This is why I hired her.”

  “I’ve been wondering about that. Why you hired her.”

  Max glanced toward the hallway—listening for Ankana? He did not reply. Eavesdropping at keyholes certainly numbered among her talents.

  “Stefani’s not the most qualified person in the world,” Jeff persisted, “whatever Krane wants you to believe. She could do forensic accounting in New York as easily as in Thailand. Frankly, any competent paralegal in my own firm could accomplish about as much, at a fraction of the cost.”

  “Is that what this is about? Where I put my business?”

  “Not at all. It’s a judgment call. She’s not worth her fees.”

  “What have you got against Stef? She’s competent enough—”

  “So it’s ‘Stef’ now? Fuck competence if things have gone that far.” He waved the Scotch bottle vaguely in Max’s direction.

  “You’re pissed off about that crack she made. About your career,” his friend said with a trace of amusement. “You don’t like her because she refuses to kiss ass.”

  “I love her,” Jeff retorted. “She’s a gas. She looks at you with those melting eyes and lisps words of four syllables you can barely comprehend. That’s why Krane sent her over here. He figures you won’t balk at his bills if you’re dazzled.”

  Max snorted.

  “You wanted my advice,” Jeff said impatiently. “My expert opinion. I say: Send the woman home.”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  “Why? We were managing very well without Krane and Associates a week ago. Now you’re flying Fogg into Bangkok. What’s changed?”

  Max threw him a level look, the sort he reserved for competitors he’d beaten. “You’re not enough, Jeff. You’re in New York, with a practice that goes far beyond my problems. No matter how much money I throw at your firm, that’s not going to change.”

  “I’d be the first to admit I’m not God. I can’t save every situation. But I am your oldest friend.”

  “You’re closer than a brother.” He said it without emotion, a bald statement of fact. “But that’s got nothing to do with Stefani.”

  “I don’t trust her. That should mean more to you than it does. You were nearly killed today.”

  When he’d walked into the house that night, Max told him how he’d survived the avalanche. Max and the snow, the ultimate gamble.

  “She could have died, too.”

  “Some security expert! You were safe enough in Courchevel until her plane crashed on your doorstep. Max, what do you really know about her?”

  “She’s shrewd, she�
�s thorough, she’s got a hell of a good degree from a major business school and she’s financially independent through years of hard work. She can ski like a pro. She’s got courage and mental toughness. She isn’t afraid to look danger in the face. What else is there?”

  “She’s been married and divorced,” Jeff shot back, “twice. She’s done a total of twenty-seven months of therapy and a variety of depression drugs. She’s had three miscarriages and was arrested five years ago for possession of cocaine. Not the most stable woman in the world. Did Krane tell you why she left FundMarket?”

  “No. Did you send out your firm’s private investigator, Jeff, as soon as you knew her name?”

  “Of course.” He set down his empty glass. “I wouldn’t be offering the best possible representation if I did anything less. She was fired from FundMarket for inside trading. She was one step ahead of an SEC investigation. The mutual fund she managed was in deep doo-doo. She was given the choice of walking out, or being thrown. The rumors have been all over The Wall Street Journal.”

  “Rumors?”

  “It’s always rumors until the SEC jumps.”

  “So you paid a private eye to tell you what The Wall Street Journal decided to print? Don’t submit that cost in your next bill. Please.”

  “Krane can’t know what he’s sent you. He will, though, once I’ve placed a few calls.”

  “Why would you do that, Jeff?” Max’s voice was strained. “—Sabotage a woman I hired?”

  “Because your life is at stake, buddy,” he shot back, “and you’re thinking with your dick.”

  Max’s face hardened.

  “It’s been a while since you’ve spent this much time with a woman. You get wood every time she brushes against you in her leather pants. Why do you think she wears them?” Max looked abashed. He was considering the point.

  “What if the Thais got to her first?” Jeff demanded. “The same thugs who dumped the whore in your hotel room? What if your security expert set you up for that avalanche today?”

  “Why would she bother?”

  “Krane’s firm is FundMarket’s watchdog, Max. Don’t you understand what that means? Fogg traded on the inside and lost her job. Krane’s surveillance architecture is the reason why.” He gripped his friend’s shoulders. “Max, she’s got a motive for revenge against Oliver Krane that’s a mile wide. And she’s using you to bring him down.”