Drummer In the Dark

by T. Davis Bunn

  “No.”

  “Do you know where to find her?”

  Slowly, he raised and lowered his head. Not a nod so much as an admission of nightmares still to come. Jackie said, “You don’t mind me saying, you take an amazing amount of trouble for your sister.”

  The taxi drummed across the Tiber and joined the flow about yet more ruins out of time. Spotlights drilled the tableau into black and silver etchings, frozen there against the backdrop of night. Wynn remained blind to it all. “My parents died when I was five and we went to live with relatives. They were a miserable lot. Do you know Lakeland?”

  “Sure. Out on the other side of Orlando.”

  “Back then it was nothing but orange groves and hot rods and beer joints. The Vitalis crowd at its worst. My dad’s family owned a packing plant. Dad was the only one of them who ever made it out, the only one to finish high school, much less go to college. He was everything they despised—a professor at a university, smart, married to a Yankee from New Hampshire who was a teacher herself. They mocked our accents, they mocked our parents.”

  Jackie pressed herself more tightly against the taxi’s opposite door. The guy was too close to the bone just then, the reasons to care all too obvious.

  Wynn gave no notice to her movements. “The day Sybel turned eighteen, she forced the family lawyer to hand over our inheritance. Much as my dad’s folks didn’t like having us around, they still fought tooth and nail to keep us. So Sybel went to court and officially adopted me. There wasn’t much in the way of money. Back then no life insurance company would cover my folks, since they lived in Egypt. What there had been in the way of savings was pretty much drained away. But enough was left to get us settled in Gainesville. She started school, and then she met Grant.”

  Everything he said fueled her hopeless attraction, no matter what she thought or wanted to have happen. “Have you ever wondered if maybe life makes a random selection, chooses a person and just pegs them to the dart board of that particular time? Let everybody throw sharp pointy objects your way.”

  He grew very still. “No.”

  “Don’t mind me. I’m a font of useless ideas.” She forced herself to turn around and stare out her window, drawn by the loud drumming of tires upon cobblestones and the sight of the Coliseum up ahead. “And look where they got me.”

  WHEN THEY LEFT THE TAXI, Wynn watched as the doorman tipped his hat to Jackie. She entered the lobby before him, with shoulders squared and chin held rigidly high. The chandeliers illuminated an internal struggle, which finally gave in to the confession, “This day has held so much I don’t even know what to say.”

  “My thoughts exactly, but for entirely different reasons.” He did what she least expected, which was to take her hand and bow. Not drawing it completely to his lips. But doing as he had seen others do, giving her all the respect he could muster. Then explaining why. “The only nice thing about my entire journey is having you here.”

  She softened then. For the first time, he saw beneath her bulletproof shell and glimpsed another woman entirely. “I can’t even remember the last time a man said something that sweet to me. Thank you, Wynn.”

  “Do you know, that’s the first time you have ever spoken my name.”

  She parted her lips, uncertain, torn. A shaky breath, then, “You,” she said, for his ears alone, “are a very dangerous man.”

  “Only to myself.”

  She turned and crossed the lobby, the light caught and held by her hair. She nodded her thanks to the bellhop, who used a white-gloved hand to hold the elevator door for her. She pressed the button for her floor. Only then did she look up. Catch his eye. And whisper his name yet again.

  WYNN SCARCELY HAD TIME to step over to the concierge desk and make his travel requests before a too-familiar voice behind him said, “I can scarcely believe my eyes.”

  Hearing those dulcet English tones in this place, at this time, raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Like the mockingbird’s song heard at midnight. Lovely, perhaps, but in such a place the sound became a warning. He turned to Valerie nonetheless, with as much surprise as he could muster. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “Hoping to see you, of course.” Anger shone in eyes flecked with an improper season, autumn perhaps, or the facile passion of easier times. “I scurry about like a madwoman, putting my affairs in order, racing against the clock. A mad dash to the airport, barely making the last flight out. Arrive shattered, scarcely aware of where I am. Expecting to find you in misery and panic, searching high and low for your sister. Instead, what do I discover?”

  But Valerie did not look shattered. She looked as if she had just stepped off a yacht. Sleek and lovely and alert as ever. Wynn said, “I’ve found Sybel. At least, I know where she is.”

  A vehement shake of her head, hair spilling about in lovely disorder. “Don’t you dare try to tell me that was your sister I saw you giving the little bow and scrape upon farewell.”

  “No.”

  “I saw that woman at Esther Hutchings’ apartment, remember? I was there with you. Right at your side.”

  “Esther sent her here.”

  Valerie caught herself in midbreath. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Esther thinks I’m working for the enemy. She sent Jackie Havilland to spy on me.”

  She glanced about, then reached over and took his arm. “Come, dear Wynn. We are entertaining the staff.”

  Valerie led him back into the bar, a darker alcove off the main salon. She wore gray slacks of Shantung silk and a matching blouse with four seed pearls for buttons. A gray silk jacket hung from the back of a chair by the corner table. “What will you have?”

  “Nothing, thanks.”

  She waved the bartender away. “And just precisely what enemy might this be?”

  “I have no idea.” When she looked at him askance, he added, “To be honest, I don’t think Esther knows either. Not for certain.”

  “Esther Hutchings belongs in the bed beside her husband.” Valerie swept her hair back, using both hands to smooth the auburn flow. She eyed him in a coquettish fashion. “You’re certain this was all that was at work back there in the lobby?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well Jackie, is that what you said her name was? She seemed a very nice young lady, but operating utterly out of her league.”

  Wynn knew she was waiting and expecting him to agree, to close the distance and speak words of invitation. Yet her magic, however potent, was not working. Though she belonged to this moneyed world, though he had always thought this was the class of woman he sought, still his mind remained captured by the day and by the silent word spoken from the recesses of a departing elevator. “I have to leave tomorrow.”

  She crossed her arms. “That is not funny.”

  “Sybel is no longer in Rome.”

  “So just where, pray tell, has your errant sister strayed now?”

  He found himself not wanting to tell her. An utterly illogical response, but strong enough to keep him from speaking. The sound of approaching footsteps came as a welcome interruption. The late-night concierge took great pride in announcing, “I have managed to book you on the first flight to Cairo tomorrow morning.”

  Valerie repeated, “Cairo?”

  “Excellent,” Wynn said, though it was anything but. “Thank you.”

  “It leaves at six forty-five, I’m afraid.”

  Which gave him the perfect excuse to rise and say, “I’m so very sorry, Valerie.”

  She remained where she was. “You can’t be serious.”

  He chose to misunderstand. “I’m still jet-lagged from the trip here. I’ve got to get some rest.” He reached down, took both her hands in his, squeezed hard. “Enjoy Rome for me. Will you at least do that?”

  He followed the concierge back across the lobby, traded a tip for his booking confirmation, and waved back to where Valerie still sat. He entered the elevator and punched his button, sighing as the doors closed. He felt a sibilant hush
of confirmation, bubbles rising from his gut to the mental recesses where logic held no sway.

  When he entered his room, he walked to the telephone and asked to be connected with Jackie.

  She answered with the guarded alertness of having been half-expecting this call. “Yes?”

  He knew what she both anticipated and dreaded. Which was why he spoke as briskly as he did. “Something’s come up. We have to talk. Now.”

  To her credit, she did not play coy or feign sleepiness. “I’m in 601.”

  He copied out his travel details, walked down the hall, and waited without knocking for Jackie to open the door. The face beneath her tousled hair showed wary caution. So he started in while still standing in the corridor. “You remember the woman who came with me to Esther’s that evening?”

  “The lobbyist.”

  “Her name is Valerie Lawry. She’s here.”

  “In Rome?”

  “Downstairs. Right now.”

  Jackie pulled open the door, revealing an oversize Orlando Magics T-shirt tucked into jeans. Bare feet. An athlete’s taut, balanced stance. Still cautious, but willing to accept him at face value. “Come in.”

  He took the seat by the open French doors, feeling mocked by laughter rising from the plaza and steps below. “My sister has gone to Cairo. Bringing me to Rome was just a ploy to get me started. She’s wanted me to travel down there since before I was elected to Congress. Why, I can’t say. But I’m pretty certain it has something to do with a conference I heard about at the White House. You know the one?”

  Jackie lowered herself to the edge of the bed. “Kay Trilling is going. And Nabil, the Egyptian who invited you here.”

  “I want you to find somebody who will track Valerie. Find out where she goes. Who she reports to.” He handed over a sheet of paper. “Travel details and my hotel in Cairo, according to the woman at Sant’Egidio. Talk to somebody at the church. Maybe they can help you find a PI. The bottom number is my credit card. Charge everything.”

  Hair the color of winter wheat spilled across her face, hiding everything but her voice. “I can do that.”

  Suddenly the distance between them did not seem so great. An arm’s reach across the expanse, a single step, and he would be seated there beside her. Jackie sensed the sudden change as well, for she looked up, revealing a woman who had come to expect little of life. And men. But not refusing him. Just waiting.

  At that moment, however, Wynn desired nothing more than to elevate himself in her eyes. “I’m not the enemy, Jackie.”

  “No,” she said softly. “I don’t think you are.”

  He watched her waiting still, but perhaps hoping he was more than just another guy. Or maybe it was just him. So when he rose to his feet, it was to aim toward the door. “I guess I better do a few hours of jet-lag coma.”

  She followed him over, asked, “What is happening here?”

  He shook his head, not at her question, but rather at how easy it had been to leave the woman downstairs. The one who belonged, who invited. And how hard to depart from the one who offered nothing but a mirror of his own sad state. “I’m getting tired of being played like a puppet. More than that, I can’t say.”

  24

  Tuesday

  PAVEL HAYEK was not a traveler. He preferred to sit in his castle and command the world to come and bend the proper knee. But this journey to Miami was unavoidable. People with the kind of money he was after expected him to appear, if not at their doorstep, then at least at a suitable middle ground. As the Biltmore’s presidential suite was already booked, he was ensconced in the Coconut Grove Ritz-Carlton’s penthouse, as far from the tawdry glitz of South Beach as he could manage. Beyond his window, evening graced the Intracoastal basin with a quilt of subtle greens and golds and blues. The doors to his private balcony were open, admitting the sweet-scented breeze and a vague discord from streets far below. Hayek breathed in the myth of a gentle season and tried to keep his anger from showing. “I had expected to have Duclos himself here to speak with me.”

  “Monsieur le Chairman sends his sincerest regrets. He was unavoidably detained.” The woman was a product of generations of French overbreeding, no doubt a graduate of one of their top echelon schools—INSEAD or the Ecole Nationale or somewhere equally pompous. She was not utterly without charms but her hair was overly foppish, her clothes far too modern, and her perfume just hideous. “He has asked me to obtain the further information required to reach our decision.”

  Hayek waved an irritated hand, motioning for Burke to respond. This really was too much. Duclos was either not going to invest, or he was expecting further concessions. This young woman was sent as an excuse for Duclos to avoid making a decision. And of course she was too full of herself to understand. The French were detestable creatures to do business with. Not for the first time Hayek regretted contacting them.

  His search for coconspirators had been meticulous. From Switzerland had come NBS, runner-up to Credit Suisse for years. Nine months earlier, the bank had begun leaking institutional investors. Eleven billion dollars had flowed in the wrong direction in as many months, enough to have the senior directors quaking. The staid Swiss conservatism had been chucked, replaced by a frantic search for anything that would put them back in good stead with the money crowd. Hayek’s proposal was clutched in a two-fisted panic.

  Hanyo Bank of Yokohama was the world’s seventh largest, with two hundred and twelve billion dollars in assets. Forty-seven forex and derivative traders worked in New York, out of a total U.S. staff of two hundred. Five years earlier their New York operations generated over one-third of the bank’s total profits. This year they lost a cool billion and a half. From kings of the hill to lords of the dung heap. Desperate times. They had been Hayek’s easiest sell.

  The Frenchwoman used her gold pen to check another item off her list, then inquired, “When, exactly, will your plan be put into play?”

  Really, this was too much. “Duclos knows perfectly well that I can’t say.”

  “But my superiors demand—”

  “Our goal is to wait for a moment when the market is at a euphoric high, then hit it with catastrophic news. News that we control. Which Duclos is already aware of.”

  It was a lie, of course. But there was no need to tell these people or anyone else precisely what he had planned. Anyone who knew his true design was instantly an uncontrolled risk.

  She then asked the logical follow-on, which was, “How do you control such events?”

  It was Burke who answered. “By having the catastrophic news already in-house.”

  “This is news of your government, yes?”

  “News that the controllers are desperate to keep under wraps,” Hayek lied. Not even Burke knew the truth. Which was as it should be. “News that will wipe twenty percent from the markets within hours of its release.”

  “When this news is amplified by the market’s current volatility,” Burke added, “we should have a genuine stampede on our hands. We go in fast, we strike hard, we win while the market is still reeling.”

  “So when—”

  Hayek rose to his feet. This meeting was over. “The minimum input is two billion dollars,” he said.

  She accepted the dismissal with stiff grace. “I will report to my superiors and come back—”

  “No. Play or don’t, it’s your choice. If you’re in, transfer the money. Finish.”

  When Burke had shown the woman out, Hayek told his number two, “Hire someone good. Use the Liechtenstein bank for cover. Put tags on her and Duclos both.”

  “You don’t think he’s coming in?”

  “Whether he is or not, we have to assume the information will be passed on or used.” Neither of which he could afford. If their plans were successful, there would be an enquiry. The SEC and Fed would like nothing better than to hit him with a charge of collusion. Which was why no one knew the whole picture—not even Burke, and certainly not Duclos. Still, it was best to be safe. “Despicable people, the
French.”

  Burke shuffled papers and tried to make his query sound casual. “What about the Brazilians?”

  “I am meeting them tonight.” Hayek noted the underlying tension in his own voice. “That is another group quite beyond belief. Those gray-jacketed security oafs endanger everything.”

  “I still don’t see why you sent them to search the Havilland place.” Burke hesitated, then added, “Unless you meant for them to fail.”

  That was the trouble with hiring intelligent people, Hayek reflected. They might just surmise the underlying enigma. He countered with, “Not to mention roughing up my security technician in front of the entire trading floor. Such brutality might work where they come from. But it accomplishes nothing here.”

  “The Brazilians won’t agree to pull out their security.”

  Not yet, Hayek silently amended. “They’re multiplying like lethal spoors. We really must find a way to contain them.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  Hayek was tempted to tell him. Which was genuinely remarkable. He never gave his secrets away to anyone. It was the clearest indication yet of the strain he felt. So many years to arrive at this point, so much riding on each step, each motion, each and every word. The answer to Burke’s question was the same as to them all: find a solution that would turn the liability into his advantage.

  He said simply, “Call for my car, will you.”

  Burke did so, then helped him on with his coat. “I still don’t have the goods on Colin Ready.”

  “No doubt you’ll find them, if they are there to be found.” Lemmings, Hayek thought as he watched Burke spring for the door. A fraternity of highly intelligent, gilded lemmings. That’s all these traders are. They are a breed driven by rumors, he thought, nodding to his aide’s farewell. They prance about like princes, they bray like stallions, but at the first hint of peril they show their true nature. As the world would soon see.