The Secret Agent

by Francine Mathews

  The Medevac unit had intubated Max’s lungs. He could not breathe on his own. His neck and head were in traction, now, and his limbs pinned to the surface of a rotating bed. Four hours after his arrival at the hospital, she stared down at the supine figure with rage in her heart. Max’s eyes swiveled beneath his closed lids, lost in opiate dreams.

  “You’re saying this vertebral fracture could eventually heal?”

  “Some do.” The doctor’s reply was careful. “Monsieur Roderick may require surgery to fuse the fractured bones. But the halo is there to encourage natural healing. He has already come far, madame—for left as he was, several hours on that mountain, Monsieur Roderick should have died. Ninety-eight percent of such victims would not have survived the Medevac flight. Of those that do, ninety percent will never walk again. But there are cases—”

  Later, Stefani told Jeff Knetsch, “We’re wasting time. We’ve got to get him to Paris, if it’s a question of surgery. Every minute Max loses, the less chance he has of full recovery.”

  “He’d be better off dead than living like this,” Jeff shot out wildly.

  “Do you think it was an accident?”

  “You tell me,” he retorted. “You’re the security expert…” with such malice that she understood, then, that he blamed her for everything that had happened to Max in the past few days.

  Stefani pressed her palms against the glass that separated her from Max’s room. Would anyone ever reach through the steel and tubes to touch his skin again?

  “I intend to see his skis,” Jeff muttered beside her. “I’ll go over them with a fine-tooth comb. And then I’ll kill whoever did this.”

  “If the skis were sabotaged, whoever did it is long since gone.”

  He laughed brusquely. “You’re the only person who had complete access to his design shop over the past few days.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Jeff. You’ve had access for years.”

  He seized her roughly by the shoulders with his long, nervous fingers. “I may not be a legend of the ski slopes who screws any woman he can get his hands on. But nobody’s ever been stupid enough to call me a fool.”

  She grasped his wrists and stabbed hard at the pressure points, as Oliver Krane had taught her. Jeff let go of her shoulders with a rasp of breath and stepped backward.

  “Bitch,” he snarled. “You think you hold the world between your knees. But you don’t hold me.”

  “Oliver,” she said around midnight into the hospital’s pay phone, “Oliver, Oliver, Oliver.”

  “You weren’t sent out as a bodyguard, heart. Stop hitting yourself over the head for another man’s weakness.”

  “Weakness? Good God—this wasn’t human error. It was deliberate. We know now that Max isn’t a murderer-he’s a victim, Oliver.”

  “And we’re all dreadfully sorry. But given what’s happened to Max Roderick in recent days he should have examined his equipment like a commando,” Krane replied callously. “Every five minutes. And at least before he trusted his life to it. He shouldn’t have skied alone. All in all, friend Max looks like having a death wish.”

  “Knetsch has already called the ski patrol. They’ve recovered Max’s skis. The screws securing the right binding were completely sheared off. So clean a break, the patrol said, that they might almost have been filed.”

  “Then they were. Any ideas?”

  “Lots,” she said succinctly. “Let’s start with the equipment. He took out a brand-new pair of skis and bindings this morning. Ones he’d designed. He always liked to test his stuff in extreme conditions before it went on the market.”

  “Who in Courchevel knew that?”

  “About testing the skis? Or which pair he planned to take?”

  “Both.”

  “His work habits are common knowledge to his friends. But he has only a few of those. Off the top of my head I could name a local woman—Yvette Margolan. Jeff Knetsch. Jacques Renaudie. His daughter.”

  “The aggrieved Renaudies,” Oliver murmured.

  “It was Jacques who found him today.”

  “Peering over the edge of the couloir to inspect his handiwork? When he might have skied two hundred other trails that morning?”

  “Coincidence?” she asked bitterly.

  “Bugger coincidence.”

  Oliver’s abrupt impatience. I do not accept accident in my part of the world.

  “And then there’s this woman,” she added, “named Stefani Fogg. Knetsch is convinced that I want Max dead. That I came to Courchevel for no other purpose. That I’m some kind of black widow.”

  “She mates and then kills,” Oliver returned. “Problem is, Knetsch has no motive. Why would you kill a client?”

  “Revenge against Oliver Krane,” she replied promptly, “for ending my career at FundMarket. I’m supposed to bring you down, Oliver, by destroying Max. Knetsch told me the story himself.”

  “Our Mr. Knetsch is a Machiavellian. We shall therefore include him in the suspect list. If he’s flinging accusations, he must have something to hide.”

  “He’s Max’s oldest friend.”

  “He’s also overdrawn in all his accounts and has a gambling habit that could sink Las Vegas,” Oliver returned brutally. “Max supports his law firm to the tune of sixty thousand dollars a year. That’s a nice little book of business, not to mention the prestige value of touting Roderick as a client. Knetsch might not like our competition; he wants his cash cow all to himself. He knew about the skis?”

  “Possibly. But then, so did I. Max propped them by the door of the design studio last night—”

  “Inside or outside?”

  “Inside. But the door has a very simple lock. A credit card might spring it.”

  “Of all the bloody—”

  “I know,” Stefani interrupted. “He didn’t take it seriously enough. This threat to his life.”

  “Bugger the man for an arrogant fool.”

  Suppressed violence, bitterness even, in Oliver’s Etonian drawl; and she suddenly remembered his anguish over Harry Leeds.

  “Have you seen Max? To speak to?” he asked.

  “Briefly.”

  “And?”

  “He could tell me nothing.”

  Impossible to explain to Oliver the crevasse that had opened at her feet, Max frozen on the opposite side. Max wandering somewhere beyond the halo and rotating bed, his eyes fixed on the line where wall and ceiling met. Max incapable of speech while the machines breathed for him. Max in the grip of despair so deep it might suffocate him entirely when no one was looking.

  “There’s rather a good man in Paris for this sort of thing,” Oliver mused. “Strangholm. Makes the dead walk, so to speak. I’d be happy to call him myself, if you think you could persuade the powers-that-be to send Max there. He cannot do better.”

  “Give me Strangholm’s phone number.”

  “You might face some opposition.”

  “Not if you could persuade Knetsch’s firm to recall him immediately to New York.”

  “Ballard, Crump and Skrebneski. I once played polo with Ballard and dallied with Skrebneski’s wife. I shall place the call immediately. We’ll have friend Knetsch out of your hair in a trice. And ducks: this is not your fault. Not even remotely.”

  “Did you feel that way when Harry Leeds died?”

  A slight check in the conversation, a palpable chilling of their mutual air.

  “Chin up, darling. I’ll call tomorrow with all the pertinent medical information.”

  But he still hadn’t answered her question.

  “The break in the vertebrae and the seepage of blood within the cord is causing extreme pressure on the spinal nerve.” The head of the Moutiers orthopedic team looked ill at ease, Stefani thought, as though he was giving them data even he didn’t trust. “We would like to send Monsieur Roderick to Paris for further evaluation.”

  “When?” Jeff Knetsch demanded.

  “Within the hour, if possible.”

  “Which hospital?�
� she asked.

  The orthopedist shrugged, his eyes flicking nervously from her face to Jeff’s. “I thought perhaps l’Hôpital-Générale de Paris.”

  “I want him sent to Dr. Felix Strangholm, at the Clinique St. Eustache, 27 Rue Carnavalet,” Stefani said. “It’s a private spine center. You know it, surely?”

  “As Mr. Roderick’s lawyer,” Jeff broke in quickly, “I must protest. Ms. Fogg has no authority to determine the nature of Mr. Roderick’s care.”

  The doctor frowned. “I have heard of monsieur le docteur, of course—but am unacquainted with him personally. He is très pressé. I am not sure that he would accept another patient on such short—”

  “He has already done so,” Stefani cut in. “I received a telegram this morning from Dr. Strangholm authorizing the transfer of Monsieur Roderick to his clinic.”

  “You had no right!” Jeff pivoted toward the orthopedist. “I’m sure you know best where Monsieur Roderick should go. L’Hôpital-Générale de Paris will be perfectly acceptable.”

  “Do you have medical power of attorney, Jeff?” Stefani demanded bluntly.

  He stared at her mutely.

  “I thought not. Then we’re at an impasse. Neither of us has the authority to determine Max’s care. Which means that his doctor will have to decide.”

  “Madame, I—”

  She threw the orthopedist her most impish smile. “Tell me, monsieur le docteur If someone you loved were damaged as gravely as Monsieur Roderick, and then offered the chance to be treated by Felix Strangholm— would you send him to a nameless specialist at l’Hôpital-Générale instead?”

  “I would not, madame. I would snatch at every hope and at the slightest possible chance. Bon. To Dr. Strangholm it is, within the hour.”

  Through the ICU window, she watched three male attendants disengage one set of tubes and connect another— these, the ones that would sustain Max’s life while he hurtled through the air to Paris.

  “I’ve been called back to New York,” Knetsch told her savagely.

  “Poor timing,” she returned, “unless you’ve a reason to get out of France fast. Worried about those bindings, Jeff? Afraid they’ll betray you?”

  Without hesitation, he struck her across the face. She shoved his chest hard, forcing him backward.

  “I wish to God he’d never met you.”

  “Oh, that’s a nice touch,” she said appreciatively. “Try it out on your bookie next time you need money.”

  The door to Max’s private room was kicked violently open. He lay strapped to a cervical board on a rolling gurney. Stefani fell back against the wall, silenced by the sight of that motionless face, the ventilator taped into his mouth. He was headed for the helipad for the second time in twenty-four hours.

  “You’ve been snooping,” Knetsch muttered with suppressed violence.

  “That’s right, pal. And I’ve just gotten started.”

  14

  Felix Strangholm was a rotund man with a bald head and penetrating green eyes. His plump lips were pursed contemplatively, as though he teetered perpetually on the brink of revelation. He was chary with words, which caused his colleagues to hang on his every syllable. When he entered a room, he commanded the most intense absorption—from his associate director down to the woman who cleaned his toilets. He wore a doctor’s white lab coat over a cashmere polo and a pair of riding jodhpurs. He moved through the hallways in stockinged feet, the legacy of a period of Zen meditation. He was unfailingly polite. His appearance gave next-of-kin the flicker of hope that what was eccentric might indeed be lifesaving. At the very least, they assumed from his expression of acute attention that he listened when they spoke; they found this novel and comforting.

  On the periphery of her mind, Stefani recorded these details of the man who now governed Max’s future.

  She had arrived in Paris eight hours after the medical helicopter landed on the roof of the Clinique St. Eustache. By the time she had checked into the hotel Oliver had booked for her on the Place Vendôme and taxied to the Rue Carnavalet, Max was already in fiber-optic surgery. Strangholm was désolé, the surgeon assured her three hours later, to find that the fragments of bone in Monsieur Roderick’s neck had been allowed to exert pressure on his spinal nerve for more than a day. He had halted the internal bleeding, fused the fractured vertebrae, and prescribed massive steroids for swelling in the spinal column that he believed was responsible for part of Max’s paresis. But even with the most assiduous intervention, Max’s future was cloudy. Strangholm would do what he could, but those imbéciles in the Haute Savoie …

  Strangholm furrowed his brow, pursed his lips and smoothed his palm across the polished surface of his granite desk. In perhaps eight hours—six, even—they should know a great deal more. Madame might hope to speak to monsieur after the doctor’s rounds—at eight-thirty tomorrow morning, yes?

  Stefani agreed. Her heart was suddenly pounding. She had not spoken a word to Max in two days.

  The traction was gone. He wore a plastic vest, reminiscent of a full body cast, that supported the lower edge of the halo. A nurse had placed a cushion beneath his neck to ease the ache of his rigid muscles; but for the moment, he remained supine, staring only at the ceiling, unable to move his head. An IV feed was taped to one wrist; electrodes were gelled to his chest; socks cloaked his feet below the hospital gown. His legs looked chill and gray— the skin of a dead man. But the ventilator, she noted with a catch at her heart, was gone. This morning, Max breathed on his own.

  If he heard her as she entered the room, he was unable to communicate it. “Max. Oh, Max—”

  “Stef.” The word seemed to cost all the breath he had. She reached out and gripped his arm.

  “Ms. Fogg.”

  Strangholm was frowning at a series of magnetic resonance images clipped to a light screen. “In my office, please.”

  She followed him from the room.

  “The news is both good and bad,” he said without preamble. “The extreme paresis begins to recede. You will observe that Monsieur Roderick is able to breathe on his own, and that he has recovered enough strength to speak. Both functions tire him enormously, but with therapeutic practice he should manage them to admiration. Already when the skin of his back is pinched, he registers sensation. I expect him to recover feeling in his fingertips by the end of the week, and perhaps—with time—the use of his arms and hands. I believe that we have been able to halt the damage to the spinal cord occasioned by the fracture in his neck.”

  “That’s … but that’s wonderful news …”

  Strangholm reached for his pipe and tamped its bowl thoughtfully. “However, I cannot hold out hope for a complete recovery. The time elapsed between injury and surgery was too long. We shall pursue an aggressive regime of therapy. Monsieur Roderick will remain in his halo for eight to twelve weeks, during which time he will be trained to use a wheelchair and, perhaps, a walker. But I cannot promise that he will ever regain the use of his lower limbs.”

  “There are worse things, I suppose. Does he know the odds?”

  “It is utterly inadvisable to talk of permanent loss at so early a juncture. We must give him something to hope for, and he may, eventually, achieve a miracle. Let him grow used to his limitations only when he has no alternative. Until then—”

  “I’m deeply grateful for all you’ve done,” Stefani said.

  The doctor inclined his head. “Monsieur Roderick may expect to remain in treatment for at least six months. You will wish to know what he will face in coming weeks, I am sure, and you will wish to make financial arrangements. I assume you will be able to conclude all this today, madame?”

  “After I speak to Max.”

  They had rotated his bed, to prevent the accumulation of fluid in his limbs and to thwart the onset of pneumonia. His breath wheezed raggedly through his parted lips. Stefani walked toward him, wishing his eyes could focus on her instead of the ceiling.

  “It’s so good to see you,” she said. “And
you’ve got sensation in your back. That’s marvelous.”

  “I would rather be dead.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  A flicker of the eyelids that might have been anger. “That binding—”

  She moved so close that his gown grazed her cheek. “The binding was screwed,” she told him softly. “Someone got to your skis. This wasn’t your fault, Max.”

  His eyelids closed. An expression of immense relief flooded his gaunt face. It was replaced swiftly by rage. A groan broke from his lips.

  “Don’t,” she protested, anguished.

  “Don’t feel?” A harsh sound, bitter, like laughter. His eyes remained closed. She wanted to touch his mouth, his cheek, his temple—but the halo’s bars kept her at arm’s length.

  “I’ll never ski again.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “Liar.”

  It was becoming his pet name for her. But, she reflected, hadn’t she earned it? “Your surgery was successful. Your chances for recovery are good. You need extensive therapy—”

  “Leave me.”

  “Strangholm is optimistic, Max. He says—”

  “You’ve got to leave me. Now.”

  She drew a deep breath. “Fine. I’ll be back in a few hours, after you’ve rested.”

  “Don’t.” The green eyes opened wide and fixed implacably on her face.

  “Max—”

  “A cripple. I won’t let you. Throw yourself away.”

  “That’s absurd. I’m here because I want to be.”

  “That won’t last,” he said clearly—the first few words he’d managed with force. “Go now. Before I hate you for leaving.”

  She returned to the clinic every morning and afternoon over the next four days. But each time she asked to see Max, she was told he refused to admit her.

  “It is a natural depression,” Felix Strangholm explained with awkward kindness. “He is at war with his body. As who would not be, who has dared what he has in life? He believes he is better off dead. And he does not wish to find you here out of pity. I would guess, madame, that as his strength and feeling return, so will his courage. You must allow him this period of selfish grief. Do not reproach him—even in your heart, hein?”