‘A small country,’ Vladimir said, staring. ‘Very tame and domesticated, no wonder the English are so prim and two-faced. They grow up with this neat, cute countryside, like growing up in Disneyland.’
‘But with far more prickles. They can be bloody-minded, too,’ said Steve. ‘Don’t mix them up with us Yanks. We’re far more conventional than they are. We find eccentricity a little worrying; the English love it.’
Vlad laughed. They drove in silence then he said, ‘So, you really think Gowrie will still go to this dinner in the City of London?’
‘Does the tiger turn his back on fresh meat when he’s starving? Gowrie can’t afford to miss it; this dinner is a biggie, a major platform for an American politician fighting for presidential nomination. With a good speech he’ll make the TV news headlines back home, and all the breakfast shows, too.’
‘Television has become too important; it distorts politics,’ Vladimir said with heavy Slav gloom.
‘It’s here to stay, though. No turning our back on it, and what’s coming may be worse. The technical revolution gets faster and faster. We could all be born robots in a hundred years and there may be no more humans then.’
‘I wonder how many there are now? It is happening in my country now; we had the grey boredom of government lies for so long, and secretly made fun of them all, we stayed sane in a mad world that way – but now we have the gaudy colours of the rich corporations advertising every night, and nobody laughs any more! We began with such hopes for democracy, and already we follow America down the wrong roads.’
‘Hell, Vlad, we all get what we say we want, that’s our tragedy. No such thing as a free gift. There’s always a price. In the States we’ve talked endlessly of wanting democracy, praised the age of the common man. Now we’ve got it, we’ve got mindless game shows and chat shows, porn films, vacuous soaps; we’ve got the TV the common man wants, and the common woman, and it’s no good saying you don’t like it, it isn’t what you meant. Democracy is the lowest common denominator and the fastest method of communication, which means TV as we know it and love it.’
‘And it’s what you live by,’ Vlad said softly, taunting him, amused and yet cynical.
Steve grinned wickedly, angrily. ‘I know, and I shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds me, but, hell, owing everything I’ve got to it doesn’t mean I can’t see where we’re all going, and I don’t have to like it.’
‘You should be in politics, yourself; you’ve got the gift,’ Vlad said, grinning.
Grimacing, Steve told him, ‘Once upon a time I might have gone into politics, but that was before I realized how low you have to sink to get anywhere in that game.’ Steve stared ahead, his jaw taut. ‘My father was involved in politics all his life; he had a thousand friends in the party, all good old buddies, every last man. Now he’s just waiting to die and his good old guys have vanished like snow in June.’
Vlad looked at the grim face behind the wheel and then at the road and the other vehicles they flashed dizzyingly past. ‘For Jesus’s sake, Steve, slow down. I’m too old to die and go to hell.’
‘Sorry, but I want to get to Sophie as fast as possible,’ Steve said in a hard, angry voice. ‘And when I get to her I’m going to bawl the shit out of her.’
Vladimir shot him another look and smiled with sudden, surprising sweetness. ‘You’re crazy about her, aren’t you?’
Steve flushed and did not answer.
The angry scene inside the house, Cathy’s protests, Sophie’s screams, had managed to drown a sound outside the house: a helicopter landing in the dark parkland, blades whirring, the engine slowing as the great metal insect lowered itself to rest on a well-concealed landing pad among the grass. Only when the lights surrounding it were switched on could you see the pad; unless you walked right up to it, it was hidden from view by grass and shrubs discreetly planted as cover.
The occupants of the helicopter took half a minute to spring down and run, crouching, towards the house, straightening only when they were out of reach of the lethal, rotating blades.
The security men pulling Sophie out of the house walked straight into Paul Brougham and his own security men.
‘What the hell is going on?’ Paul rapped out, confronting the men, staring in bewilderment at Sophie. ‘Who are you people, and who is this?’
The older man, who had recognized him immediately with dismay, believing him to be in London at the Guildhall dinner, in spite of Cathy telling him otherwise – but then women always lied, a wise man never believed a word they said – began a smooth, careful answer, ‘Well, Mr Brougham, sir, we were sent down here by Senator Gowrie. We’ve been having trouble with a dirty tricks gang sent over here by one of the senator’s competitors and –’
‘Paul!’ Cathy ran out of the house and straight at him, and Paul’s arms closed round her, held her close to his heart, her head nestling against his chest so that she heard the beating of his heart right under her ear, a strong, fast beat that was the sound she went to sleep with every night, but nearer, then, because neither of them ever wore anything in bed, their bodies entwined naked under the sheets, legs tangled, arms across each other, the closer the better, one flesh, warm and relaxed after love.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked with fierce anxiety.
Relief was making her feel sick. She felt safe now he was here; she always did.
‘Tell them to let go of Sophie,’ she told him, lifting her head to glare at her father’s men. ‘And to get off our land!’
The older man quickly said, ‘Mr Brougham, we’re security men sent down here by Senator Gowrie. He wanted us to bring this girl back with us.’
‘This guy manhandled me,’ Cathy said, touching her upper arms and wincing. ‘I’ve got the bruises to show for it!’
‘He did what?’ Paul said through his teeth, and suddenly there was danger in the air. Paul Brougham was a hard man, aggressive, if he needed to be – in fact you felt he could be violent.
‘Mrs Brougham’s upset, sir,’ the older security man hurriedly said, ‘She’s exaggerating –’
‘I’m not,’ Cathy interrupted. ‘He’s a liar, don’t listen to a word he says. He grabbed me and held me, and tried to railroad me into letting him take Sophie, and when I wouldn’t have it he pushed me down on the couch.’
Paul made a snarling noise in his throat, like a lion, his teeth bared. ‘You did, did you, you bastard?’ His hand flashed out and got the older man by the throat, shook him like a dog with a rag doll between its teeth. ‘You hit my wife, did you? Like hitting women, do you? They’re an easy target, aren’t they? Not like men.’
‘No, sir, really . . . I didn’t mean . . . I just . . .’ The security man couldn’t think fast enough and floundered helplessly. His face was drawn and afraid.
Cathy saw Sophie sagging at the knees and rushed to put an arm round her. ‘Sophie? Paul, help me get her back indoors. She’s as white as a ghost, and she’s in shock already, she was almost killed by another of their people out there.’ She pointed towards the village at the far end of the drive, beyond the high ironwork gates.
Paul let go of the man he was shaking, turned to stare down the drive. ‘What do you mean, almost killed?’
Cathy gabbled, her voice shaking. ‘A car tried to run her down outside, then I drove out of the gates, and the other car went into a skid and hit a tree and exploded and the driver was killed, she must have been killed outright, I hope to God she was, anyway . . . The car burned for ages, it was terrifying, I should think you could see it for miles, half the village was out there and –’
‘Who is this woman?’ Paul broke in to stop her high-pitched, shaking voice, frowning at her anxiously. ‘What the hell has been going on here?’
She was still supporting Sophie with one arm round her. ‘Help me get her indoors first.’
Paul nodded to his own security staff. ‘Take this lady into the house, will you? And be careful with her.’ He turned on the other men. ‘As for you – get off my land
, go back to London and tell the senator that he can talk to us himself when he comes down here tomorrow. And tell him I don’t take very kindly to his men manhandling my wife or busting into my home, pushing my staff around and laying down the law. Now get out of here before I really lose my temper.’
They scuttled away in a mixture of sullen resentment and relief at getting away from him. Paul watched them get back into their big American car; the engine flared, the lights came on, they reversed and drove off, their tyres screeching on the gravel and sending up a flurry of little stones.
Once they had driven out of the gates, which closed silently behind them, Paul went inside and found his wife with Sophie in the firelit room they had left earlier. Sophie was shuddering, sobbing silently, her body shaking with dry little sobs you saw but could not hear.
‘Go through the house, check that there’s nobody else in here, and check for bugs, too, in case they’ve managed to plant some,’ Paul told his men. ‘Check in here, first, Jock.’
One of them, a thin sandy-haired man with a bony face, pulled a box out of his overcoat and began moving quietly around the room, testing each corner of it for bugs. He had finished in a moment and walked back, shaking his head at Paul.
‘Clean.’
He left, and Paul closed the door, turning to watch his wife who was bending over Sophie, pulling a tartan rug over her shivering body.
‘Is she OK?’ he asked her.
‘Physically . . . I think so. But she’s badly shocked. She ought to go to bed.’
‘She’s not staying here, is she?’
‘She booked in at the Green Man.’ Cathy came over to him and Paul put his arm round her, protective, possessive, dropping a kiss on the top of her dark head. She leaned on him, sighing. Their bodies instinctively moved together, seeking each other’s warmth and reassurance.
‘Oh, I’m so glad you got here, I needed you – I was scared stiff when those men broke in here.’ She lifted her face and he kissed her curved pink mouth lingeringly. She put a hand to his cheek and stroked the hard angles of it, loving the faint prickling of his stubbled skin against her own. The way he looked always made her heart move with passion; he was so distinguished, every woman she knew fancied him and he was hers. Sometimes she couldn’t believe it.
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you needed me, but I’m here now, darling, you can stop worrying,’ he said, smiling tenderly down at her. ‘Tell me what’s been going on.’ He dropped his voice to a whisper again, ‘And who on earth is she?’ He gestured with his head. Sophie was lying with closed eyes under the rug. Her too-rapid breathing had slowed; she seemed half-asleep.
‘Her name is Sophie Narodni. She claims she’s my sister.’
‘What? What are you talking about?’ Paul looked as if she had hit him with a brick and she knew how he felt because when Sophie first talked to her Cathy had felt just the same.
‘She isn’t, obviously, she has to be either mad or deluded, but I don’t believe she’s part of a dirty-tricks gang, although that is what Dad’s men said she was. I think she really believes her story. Maybe somebody has primed her, she’s being used by somebody a lot cleverer than she is, but, whatever the truth, someone has convinced Sophie that my father bought me from her mother, that I am her older sister, who was supposed to be dead, a girl called Anya.’
‘Anya?’ Paul repeated, hoarsely as if his throat was suddenly ash-dry.
Cathy looked anxiously at him. Surely he wasn’t going to believe any of this fairy story! ‘Darling, it isn’t true, it can’t be! I’m only worried because Dad’s reaction to her was so over the top. Sending those men down here to get her, and the car crash . . . I’d swear the driver tried to run her down, someone is trying to kill her, I saw that with my own eyes, and . . . well, that does make you wonder how much else is true . . . but it can’t be, the idea’s crazy.’
She stopped, realizing that Paul wasn’t listening to her. His arms had dropped. He moved away, walked to the couch. ‘Her name – what did you say her name was?’
‘Sophie. Sophie Narodni.’
‘Narodni,’ he repeated in a voice she did not recognize, a deep, thick voice which frightened her.
Cathy looked up at him, fear in her eyes. ‘Yes, she’s Czech, she says she comes from a village near Prague. Her mother worked for my mother years and years ago, when my parents were living there. My father was in the diplomatic, remember? It all happened in 1968 – remember, that was when the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia. Maybe that’s what gave her the idea? When people started talking about Dad as a future president she may have dreamt up this story about my parents losing their own baby, and giving my mother money to let them take her little girl away with them as their own.’
‘They bought you?’
‘No, of course not – Dad wouldn’t do a thing like that! For God’s sake, Paul! Think about it! OK, she tells a good story. The dates all fit, and she makes it sound plausible because she believes it herself, I don’t dispute she believes it. She isn’t a liar, but she has to be wrong. It must be a lie, Paul. Dad wouldn’t have cheated Grandee that way, and my mother wouldn’t have wanted somebody else’s child. I mean, she wasn’t sick then, she got sick later.’
Cathy hated to admit, even to herself, that her mother was not just sick, but on the verge of senility and getting worse all the time, that there was no hope of a recovery, only a slow slide into the dark.
Paul was still standing by the couch, staring down fixedly at Sophie, his back to Cathy. She saw his face in profile; every bone in it clenched, his skin ashen, his body as tense as a coiled spring.
She had expected reassurance and comfort from him, but she wasn’t getting it. Paul wasn’t taking it the way she had thought he would. What was he thinking?
She was suddenly afraid. She had been so sure he loved her for herself. Before she met him she had known a lot of men who were really only interested in the family she came from, the money she would one day inherit. She had learnt to pick them out on sight; the fortune-hunters, the creeps, the liars. Paul had been so different – he had his own money, he came from another, older culture, he knew very little about her family and what they meant in New England’s history. They had fallen in love at the same time, in the same place, for the same reasons.
Pure lust, he had said, once, laughing, and she had laughed, too, knowing he was joking. They had wanted each other on sight, it was true, but they had shared far more than that. They had simply known each other with total intimacy on first sight: body, heart and soul, they belonged together.
That was what she had believed. Now for the first time she wondered . . . did he really love her? What if she lost it all – the family background, the money, the social status.
What then? Would she lose Paul too?
10
Steve and Vladimir lost their way on unlit, winding English roads between the motorway and the village they were looking for, following signposts which took them round and round, it seemed to them, in ever-decreasing circles. When they finally, and quite by accident, found the right road and drove into the village, it was quiet and still. The police, the fire brigade, the people had all gone, the street was dark and the villagers had either gone to the pub or gone home. Only the burnt-out, blackened metal of the car remained to give evidence of what had happened; it still lay under the tree, the branches of which had been turned into charcoal. As Steve parked on the forecourt of the Green Man both men leaned forward to stare.
‘Somebody had a nasty accident,’ Vladimir murmured. ‘I guess they don’t survive. Nobody got out of that alive, huh?’
Steve didn’t answer. Pale and suddenly haggard, he leapt out of the car and ran towards the pub. He had left the car-keys in the ignition, so before following him Vladimir removed them and locked the car. It might only be a hire car but there was no point in leaving it unlocked right outside a bar where some drunk might find it.
The brightly lit pub made Vladimir laugh aloud. ‘I have seen thi
s place on an English Christmas card!’ he muttered to himself. ‘All it needs is some snow, and maybe Santa Claus and his reindeer on the roof. Is real, I wonder? Or another bit of Disneyland?’
He found Steve in the oak-panelled bar, which was crowded with people drinking, the air rich with a strong smell of malt and hops, bitter English beer, which Vladimir inhaled with interest – he must try their beer while he was here although he didn’t expect it to be as good as his home-brewed local beer or lager. Until Steve appeared the room had been rocking with noise, shouting, the click of darts hitting a round board, glasses clinking – Vladimir had heard all that as he got out of the car, and heard the hush that fell as Steve walked in through the door.
Now everyone was listening as the landlady answered some question Steve had asked.
‘The accident? Oh, you saw the car . . . yes, terrible, it was.’ She looked round the bar. ‘Wasn’t it?’
There was a chorus of agreement, heads nodded.
Steve said huskily, ‘It certainly looks horrific – did the driver survive?’
‘You must be kidding, dear – no, no, she was killed.’
‘She?’ Steve’s voice sounded as if he was being strangled.
The landlady gave him a sharp look but answered with a shrug. ‘Seems the driver was a woman. Someone saw her before she crashed.’
Very pale, Steve asked, ‘Do they know who she was?’
‘Not yet. The police are trying to find out. There was . . .’ She paused, grimacing with a faintly sick expression because she had rarely seen anything so terrible happen in this tiny place. Most days went by without stirring the air around them, it was hard to tell one day from the next, but it would be a long time before she forgot tonight. ‘There was nothing left, you know? To tell by, I mean. But they did find the car number plate, it flew off and wasn’t badly burnt, they’re trying to trace her from that. She was driving like a lunatic, I know that – a hundred miles an hour, I reckon. Nearly killed a young woman who’s staying here in one of my bedrooms.’
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