Steve stared after him. So his first crazy suspicions hadn’t been so crazy after all!
‘Everything OK?’ He looked up with a start as Lilli joined him. She frowned at his pale face. ‘Well? What did the medic tell you?’
‘Sophie is only being kept in overnight in case of concussion, but she isn’t seriously injured.’ He began to walk towards the elevator. ‘Come on, she’s on the second floor, room 323.’
Sophie was almost asleep when they walked into her room. Her lids lifting drowsily, she gazed across the room, saw Lilli first, gave a sleepy, incurious, almost childlike smile of recognition, then her eyes moved on to Steve and she drew in an audible breath of shock. At once she was wide awake.
‘What are you doing here?’
She sounded terrified, and Lilli gave Steve a quick, narrowed look.
‘Isn’t he a friend of yours? He told me he was.’
Deliberately Steve said, ‘Who pushed you under that train, Sophie?’ and saw her eyes fill with fear.
‘What the hell is going on?’ demanded Lilli, looking from one to the other of them. ‘Sophie? Were you pushed? What is all this?’
Sophie didn’t answer her. She whispered, ‘I don’t know . . . I didn’t see.’
‘But you can guess,’ Steve said. ‘You know who wants you dead, and I think I know too. For your own safety, I think you should tell me everything. Once you’ve talked, there’ll be no more attempts on your life.’
3
Sophie had been given some sort of sedative, but it hadn’t made her sleep. Her body felt so heavy it was like being paralysed, but her head was tumbling with uncontrolled ideas and images. They kept jumping up like the spooks in a fairground House of Horror, leaping out of the dark, at her, glowing green, phosphorescent, eerie. Each time her mind shrieked with panic and fear, as it had when she felt the hand in the small of her back. Each time she lived it over again, falling forward, falling, falling, for what seemed an eternity, clutching at something, an arm, a body, and being thrown off in another direction, the grinding crash as she hit something hard, and then pain. There had been screaming too: herself first then someone else, another woman’s voice, then others began, their cries overlaying each other in her head.
‘God . . . help me . . . Jeez . . . what’s happening? Oh, God . . . Look, somebody’s on the line . . . somebody dead? A woman . . . on the line under the train . . . on the line . . .’
After that she couldn’t remember how things had happened; she might have passed out briefly. The next thing she was looking up at a ring of faces staring down at her, and couldn’t remember what had happened or where she was; her stare wandered from the circle of strangers, swung in a wild arc around the tiled walls, up to the shadowy arch of a ceiling. Lights strobed, darkness pressed in on the edge of . . . of what? Where was she? Disorientated, dazed, she heard a train shudder backwards right next to her, and knew she was in a station. Men swarmed, shouting instructions to each other. A man in uniform began pushing the crowd of people back from her.
‘Get back, let the paramedics deal with her – c’mon, move back, please.’
Someone knelt beside her. ‘Hi, I’m Bill. What’s your name? How are you feeling? Any pain?’
A light shone in her eyes, she blinked, frowning, then shut her eyes against the intrusion and put a hand up to her head, groaning at a stab of pain.
‘Don’t worry about a thing, we’re here to take care of you. OK, guys, on the count of three, lift.’
They took hold of her shoulders and feet and she was lifted on to a stretcher. A moment later she was being wheeled along a low-lit corridor, into a lift, out again, and then she felt cold air on her face, heard loud noises, and opened her eyes on night-time New York. She was dazed for an instant; down on the platform she had thought she was back in Prague. The underground system was much the same, indeed brighter, more modern, in Prague, whose metro had only been built in 1967, a year before her birth.
Now, staring around, bewildered, she was dazzled by the bright lights of the street, neon flashing on and off, and near by the sound of the wind in the trees in Central Park a short walk from here, the sound of rain on shop canopies and rushing in gutters, the sound of cars hooting, tyres skidding on wet tarmac, the hiss of hot air escaping from the subway up through the road.
She had really woken up then, and remembered. As they put her into the waiting ambulance she had thought: somebody pushed me, somebody wants me dead. And each time her heart raced and she couldn’t breathe.
Don Gowrie . . . No, it couldn’t be. But Sophie kept remembering his face when he heard her question at the conference and turned to stare with that stunned expression on his face. If she chose to she could hurt him, maybe even ruin him. He was an ambitious man, a driven man who had no scruples about doing what had to be done to get what he wanted. That much was very clear to her; and, after all, he didn’t even need to get his own hands dirty. He hadn’t had to do anything himself. He was rich enough to pay someone to do it for him, to hire a hitman – he need not have even met the man who was hired, he would just have put out a contract on her, wasn’t that what they called it here? But whatever they called it, it was murder, plain and simple, or would have been murder, if the attempt had succeeded.
She shivered. No, she couldn’t believe it – he might be a hard, ambitious man, but she hadn’t got the impression that he was a cold or cruel one. He certainly wasn’t without feeling or he would not have been so shaken when he heard her speaking. She had seen the shock and dismay in his face. Of course, that could simply have been fear of the threat she posed, but she couldn’t believe he would go so far as to want her killed. Or would he?
Well, somebody did, she reminded herself. She hadn’t imagined that hand pushing her into the path of the train. Somebody had tried to kill her – and who else had a reason for wanting her dead?
But couldn’t it have been some crazy person, some total stranger, who had no motive, just wanted the kick of killing someone? Or maybe it had been an accident? Someone might have tripped and put out a hand to save himself, sending her tumbling?
No, no, it had been no accident – she was sure it had been coolly deliberate. She hadn’t heard or felt anyone stumble into her. There had just been that hand coming out of nowhere. Someone had tried to kill her, and there had to be a reason. The more she thought about it, the more she had to face the fact that nobody else had a notive – it had to be Don Gowrie who wanted her dead. What on earth was she to do? He had tried, and failed – he would try again.
Her mouth dry, her skin sweating, she desperately tried to work out what to do. She could ask Vladimir to get her out of New York, send her back to London . . . anywhere, out of Gowrie’s way.
Oh, but how could she just turn her back on something that meant so much? She had made promises, promises she had to keep. Emotion choked her. She was trapped by her feelings; however risky it was, she couldn’t turn her back.
You couldn’t turn your back on love. But oh, why did love have to hurt so much?
It should be warm and gentle. It shouldn’t drive spikes into your heart whenever you thought about it.
She tried to think of something else . . . home, she thought, aching with longing; she wished she was back home, not in Prague but in her childhood home, but she could never go back there now because it no longer existed as it had in her earliest memories. The golden glow which had lit it in her first years had gone now.
When she was little the village had always seemed to be bathed in sunshine. She remembered sharp vignettes of Christmas and skating on the village pond, but mostly she remembered May, her favourite time of year, the hedges white with hawthorn in flower, purple lilac out in all the gardens, orchards white with cherry and plum trees in frothy bridal blossom. She had often lain on her back on the grass under them and stared at the blue May sky through their foaming branches.
How long ago it seemed, those childhood years, before her mother married again, while there were just the
two of them, with their memories of the dead, of Papa and Anya, a gentle grief which was part of everyday life somehow and did not make her sad so much as tie her to that place, that time, woven into her heart’s fibres. Then her mother married Franz and everything altered. After him came the boys, her half-brothers, who took all her mother’s attention. Sophie could no longer go out and play – she was needed at home, expected to help with the housework, help look after the babies; she was no longer a child herself. Oh, she loved them. How could she help it when she had nursed them, fed them, changed them, cared for them? She was their second mother and she missed them – but their arrival had shut her off from her childhood, all the same.
Lost in her memories of home, she jumped in shock as the door of her room opened and Steve Colbourne walked in.
Sophie was staggered to see him. What was he doing here? Had he been to her apartment? Why? What was he up to? Questions buzzed in her head like bluebottles shut up in a room, driving her crazy. Why had he made a dead set at her in the conference? Why had he come rushing over after she asked her question? Why had he been so insistent about taking her for a drink, why had he been so curious about her, asked her all those questions?
A nerve jumped in her cheek. What if . . . what if he . . . he seemed to know so much about Don Gowrie, he admitted to having known him for years – could he have been the man behind her in the subway? Had he been the one who pushed her?
Oh, for heaven’s sake, she told herself – are you going crazy now? Of course it wasn’t him – does he look like the sort of guy who kills people?
He had a tough face, but there was an honesty there too, and a very human warmth when his eyes smiled or glinted with amusement. She couldn’t help liking him, and she couldn’t believe you wouldn’t know, by pure instinct, if someone was murderous. She couldn’t believe, either, that a man who had already tried to kill you wouldn’t betray it, somehow. The knowledge would show in his eyes, surely? Or maybe she was very naive? Maybe it didn’t show in the face, the killer instinct? Maybe men who could coldbloodedly kill could also hide their thoughts, deceive even the most watchful eye.
She wished, wished desperately that she could penetrate his skull and read his mind, pierce his breast and read his heart.
Then Steve said, ‘You know who wants you dead and I think I know too,’ and Sophie drew breath harshly, staring, her face so tight she felt as if the bones were pushing through her skin.
‘For your own safety, I think you should tell me everything,’ he said then. ‘Once you’ve talked, there’ll be no more attempts on your life.’
Sophie saw Lilli’s eyes fill with tears. ‘Somebody tried to kill you? Oh, Sophie . . .’ she whispered. ‘How terrifying.’ And their shared blood spoke between them, Sophie’s eyes filling with tears, too.
But Lilli was American-born as well as having Czech blood. Her first instinctive helpless fear, the inbred terror of a people who had had to live in a world where a knock on the door at night could lead to someone vanishing forever, without explanation, was swamped in a rush of defiance and rage. She bristled, her face filling with furious blood.
‘Have you told the police?’
‘No!’ Sophie and Steve both spoke at the same time, then looked at each other, knowledge leaping between them.
What does he know or guess? Sophie wondered. Don Gowrie wouldn’t have talked to him – she was sure of that, certain that nobody else in this whole world knew, except maybe Mrs Gowrie, and Sophie was not sure even she knew the truth.
‘Nobody would believe me,’ she said to Lilli.
‘They’d write her down as a crazy foreigner,’ Steve agreed. ‘There’s no evidence.’
‘I didn’t see who did it,’ Sophie admitted wearily. ‘I just felt a hand in the small of my back, he pushed me.’
Sharply, Steve asked, ‘He? You did see it was a man, then?’
‘I didn’t look round, there wasn’t time, but it must be, a woman wouldn’t have done that.’ She drew a shaken breath. ‘A woman . . . I grabbed at a woman . . .’ Her eyes were suddenly huge, dilated, glistening with tears as she began reliving those moments again. ‘Oh, God, that poor woman . . . I heard her screaming, she fell under the train, didn’t she?’ She swallowed visibly. ‘Is she . . .? Was she killed?’
‘No,’ Steve said quickly. ‘And she isn’t going to die, either. She was injured, but it isn’t fatal.’
Sophie closed her eyes, sighing deeply. ‘Thank God.’
Steve moved a chair out for Lilli to sit down and sat down himself next to her. ‘Now tell us about Don Gowrie.’
Her lids flew up like blinds on a wet window.
‘And don’t lie,’ Steve said flatly. ‘I know this is all about him. You’ve got something on him and he’s scared you may go to the press with it – right?’
‘Please go away,’ she said, her voice rising shrilly. ‘Go away, go away.’
The door opened and a nurse looked in, saw Sophie’s agitation and came into the room. Her large hand clamped on the girl’s wrist; she picked up the rapid pulse and frowned.
‘You shouldn’t be having visitors. You’re supposed to be resting.’ Her eyes accused Steve, instinctively fastening on him as the culprit. ‘You’d better leave now.’
‘Just another five minutes, it’s important,’ he protested, but the nurse shook her head.
‘It isn’t good for her to get upset. You must go now, both of you.’
Lilli bent to kiss Sophie, hugged her warmly. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow morning to take you home in a taxi. Try to sleep, and don’t worry, you can go and stay with my cousin in Connecticut for a few weeks. You’ll be safe there.’
‘I’m right,’ Steve said. ‘You know I am – think about it. You’ll be in danger so long as you’re the only one who knows.’
When she was alone she sighed, shuddering. She didn’t need to think about it, she already knew he was right. She was in danger. But she had promised not to tell a living soul and she could not break that promise, not until she had talked to Don Gowrie, made him understand she did not want to threaten him – he needn’t be afraid of what she might do, unless he refused to give her what she wanted.
She was given another sedative later that night, a more powerful one that almost knocked her out. Her sleep was heavy, troubled; she was back home again, seven years old, it was her first communion and she wore a long white dress, but there was blood on it, she screamed, then saw it was not blood, it was a red flower. Sophie picked it up and laid it reverently on her dead sister’s grave, but a bony white hand came up out of the earth and grabbed her wrist.
She woke up screaming. The little hospital room was dimly lit; a nurse hurried in. ‘Are you in pain?’ she asked, bending over Sophie.
For a second Sophie didn’t seem able to talk at all, then she managed to mutter, ‘Sorry, I had a nightmare.’
The nurse seemed unsurprised. ‘That would be the drugs,’ she casually nodded. ‘They can cause bad dreams if you aren’t used to taking them. Would you like some warm milk? That might help. Calm you down a little, more naturally than the drugs.’
‘You’re very kind,’ Sophie said gratefully.
In the cab driving away from the hospital, Lilli turned on Steve, eyes blazing. ‘You lied to me – you aren’t a friend of hers, you’re just a reporter after a story and you haven’t any scruples about getting it, have you? You saw the state she was in – but you still kept on at her, you bastard!’
‘I wasn’t after a story, I was trying to save her life,’ Steve said, biting the words out between tight teeth. ‘You don’t understand what’s going on here, Lilli. Believe me, she’s in danger.’
She tried to read his tense, angry face, but how could you be sure he wasn’t lying? ‘I wish I knew what was going on. Is she mixed up in something? This isn’t spying, is it? Her country isn’t in that business any more, I thought – or is it? Is this politics? The international kind? She isn’t being used to get at Don Gowrie? I remember she asked
me a lot of questions about him when she first arrived but I hardly knew a thing about the man. He’s another guy who wants to be president, isn’t he? Is that what this is about?’
‘I wish I knew – you saw her reaction, there’s something she isn’t saying, and it scares the living daylights out of her. She’s got to tell someone what she knows. Until she does there could be another attack on her at any minute, and next time they might get her.’
‘Who are they?’ cried Lilli, angry and distressed.
‘Ask Sophie. You know as much as I do.’
She didn’t look convinced. The cab pulled up. Lilli looked out of the window, surprised. ‘Oh, we’re back at my place. Well, goodnight. I’ll pay the fare to here; you can take the cab on to your own place.’
‘The fare is on me. I’ll put it on expenses.’
‘Oh, well, in that case – thanks,’ Lilli said drily.
‘I’m staying at the New Normandy Hotel for the night. Call me if you have any problems.’
Don Gowrie watched his father-in-law light a forbidden cigar, his eyes screwed up against the smoke but a beatific smile on his face. He was the oldest man Don knew, a living fossil, with skin like grey parchment, eyes buried in wrinkles like a tortoise, a few white strands of hair brushed across the pulsing pink dome of his bald head. Yet for all his age he was still very much all there; a shrewd old man with no illusions, an old man who held tightly to the reins of his ancient power, to his wealth and his influence in the world he was in no hurry to leave.
‘Haven’t had one of these for . . . oh, a year at least. Don’t often get off my chain these days,’ Eddie Ramsey told the other old men seated across the table from him, and they all grimaced understandingly.
‘Hardly worth staying alive, the way we get treated, is it?’ one of them said glumly. ‘My daughter hardly lets me breathe for myself! Fuss, fuss, fuss. You wouldn’t believe the time it took to persuade her to let me come tonight. If you hadn’t rung her, Don, she’d never have given in, I know that.’
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