Microsoft Word - Rogers, Rosemary - The Crowd Pleasers

by kps

  Espinoza broke in smoothly. "But, my friends, what does it matter, after all? We are on to him, and he knows that we are. It should make him more careful. In any case, he still has not found out very much, has he? It makes no difference what he guesses. Within a week, perhaps less, it will be too late for Reardon to do anything at all. When James Markham makes his speech on the Senate floor and breaks open the hornets' nest .. ."

  Randall allowed himself an unusual guffaw of harsh laughter. "I must say I rather like your colorful turn of phrase, Sal! And you're right, of course. We might have been getting things slightly out of perspective."

  "And, of course, while the hornets are buzzing and the attention of the media is concentrated in that direction, the discreet activities of our other friends in the Middle East and elsewhere should go unremarked. The energetic and far-seeing Senator Markham will have found new sources for supplies of oil and created a cordial entente with the rulers of several Middle Eastern states. The United States will once again enter a period of prosperity."

  "You ought to start writing some of Rufe's editorials!" Harris commented rather sourly. He continued to wear a slight frown. "But I still think we ought to take steps to eliminate Webb Carnahan as a possible threat."

  "Well-of course, we go ahead with what we'd planned earlier," Randall said, shrugging as cigar ashes scattered. He noted slyly that Harris Phelps's frown smoothed out, and wondered how much of the other man's insistence had to do with Anne Mallory.

  Anne knew that she ought to rest-collect her thoughts and decide-but decide what, for God's sake? Rest, then. This time she wasn't going to run away. She was going to stay here, and She was safely in her room now-all the lights on, the door finish the movie, and she didn't have to think of afterwards right now.

  locked. Against whom, or what? Anne looked away from the door and saw her own reflection in the mirror. Her face looked pale and strained, with dark smudges under her eyes. Ghost face -wasn't that what the Indians used to call winter? And she felt just as cold, inside and out.

  The telephone by her bed rang, startling her, and Anne could feel her fingers trembling as she picked it up. Anna-Maria's voice came sharply over the line.

  "Anne? I'm sorry if I woke you up, but .. ." Anne felt her heart jump during the tiny pause. "Have you seen Webb? I had been sitting with him, you know, but when I saw he was asleep, I went to get some dinner and-he isn't in his room now."

  Anne tried to fight the tiny shock waves that ran up her spine, stiffening it. She couldn't help looking at the door. Webb wasn't in his room ... but why should his wife (remember that!) think he might have come to her?

  She was amazed that her voice sounded steady. "He isn't here-and I haven't seen him since this afternoon. Perhaps he decided to go for a walk."

  "You're sure?" Anna-Maria persisted, and then, as if she'd realized she might have gone too far, she let a sigh escape. "Oh-I am sorry! It's just that I became worried. Dr.

  Brightman gave him an injection of some kind for the pain. He warned me that it was pretty strong. I should not have disturbed you, but I thought I should .. ."

  "That's all right. My door's locked, and I've already been warned. I won't be letting anyone in at this time of night." Anne drew some small, malicious satisfaction from hearing the other woman draw in her breath sharply. But then she spoiled it all by adding, almost without volition, "He's-I mean he must be all right, then? Do you know where Karim is?"

  "I can only hope they have not found each other," Anna-Maria said grimly, before she hung up.

  After a few seconds Anne put down her humming, empty receiver. She hated the thoughts that had suddenly started buzzing around in her head. Where was Webb?

  Looking for her-looking for Karim? She remembered his cut, bloody back and shuddered, as logic and common sense fought against raw emotion she couldn't help, even now. Each memory she tried to run away from came back like a whiplash to flick at the fringes of her mind.

  She had been warned-she had been told what he was and what he had done-why didn't it make any difference? I'm tired of running away from reality, she thought suddenly, and she remembered again what he had told her of his past. She let memory wash her back to the more recent past, knowing with a sense of fatalism that she couldn't escape this time.

  Face it, Anne, face it! And she got up from the bed and walked over to the mirror again, studying herself closely as if she hoped to find some clue there that would help her understand herself better. And the truth shall set you free. More memory.

  The truth was that she loved Webb Carnahan, and it brought her a kind of relief to admit it to herself. Even if they ended up destroying each other, and they might yet do so ...

  Strange, maybe. Sick. But from the beginning there had been a bond between them, and some primeval instinct that had nothing to do with reason told her that. It was the reason they couldn't stay away from each other-the monstrous thing that kept them coming back to each other. She had tried other men, but it hadn't cured her. She had fought, but it hadn't helped. If he came to her room tonight, as Anna-Maria had thought he might, she would open the door to him and let him in.

  She had already changed for bed-into a nightgown that left her back bare and barely covered her breasts. Now, remembering the vigilant monitor that watched all of them, she moved around the room, methodically turning offlights.

  Chapter forty-two

  SHE HADN'T TAKEN a Valium that night. "Sweet-dream pills," Webb had called them-had it only been two days ago?

  She had locked all the doors, even the one that connected Harris's room with her own, and after the lights were out, there was only the moon to keep her company, shining through the French windows, and an electric blanket to keep her warm. The sounds of the ocean seemed very loud, and as she lay in bed she remembered her Dream. She hadn't had it again since Dr. Brightman-Hal-had put her under hypnosis and talked it away. Since then she'd caught him looking at her rather reproachfully on occasion. He was a nice man, and he'd helped her. She should talk to him again, join with Sarah and Jean in the daily meditation sessions. It was Anna-Maria's presence that had kept her away of late.

  Anne turned on her side, facing away from the moonlight, too lazy to get up and pull the curtains together and too tense to fall asleep yet. She closed her eyes and listened to sounds. The ocean, that was constant. The screech of a nightbird. She thought she heard Harris try the door between their rooms, very gently, but when he found it locked, he must have decided to let her be. Harris was so patient with her, so understanding. And if it hadn't been for Webb, coming back disruptively into her life, she might have been content with him. She had been, for a while.

  She thought she heard the helicopter come in, not as loud as it usually sounded, but it was far too late-after two in the morning, and who would be flying in or out at this hour? It was only thunder ... thunder, with the moon shining? She must have been half-asleep, but a second distant rumble drove her out of bed and to the windows in time to see a cloud bank swallow up the sea-falling moon.

  The freak storm wasn't close-somewhere to the east. She saw the sky light up for an instant, followed by another low rumble. And there were no lights anywhere below, so maybe they'd had a power failure as well. It used to happen quite often during the summers she'd spent here, and in the end her grand-father had had his own generator installed. Harris would know about it, of course. He'd have it turned on.

  She was deliberately letting her thoughts ramble, while she was-waiting. She realized that fact only when she had started to grope her way back to bed, and heard her door open-and close. She hadn't shot the bolt on it-consciously or unconsciously? Anne felt herself freeze, trying to control the sound of her breathing. The bolt she had forgotten made a tiny, clicking sound, and she was locked in with terror, and the darkness pressing smotheringly against her. It was almost like drowning, like being back in the Dream. It was only when she heard his voice, a soft, husky whisper, that she could let herself make a sound.

&n
bsp; "Annie?"

  "I'm-I wasn't asleep. How ... ?" The gun was still in the drawer of her night stand. But she knew with a feeling of despair that she could not use it.

  "I learned to pick locks-a long time ago. Where the hell are you?"

  A tiny beam of light flicked across her eyes and instinctively she blinked them shut. In the blackness that followed she felt his arm go around her shoulders, and realized only then, as he was holding her close against him, that she was shaking.

  In bed, the darkness was no longer a black shroud but warm velvet, gentle against her skin, a curtain closing her into a private world where only she and he existed and no one could watch or hear.

  He made love to her with an almost desperate urgency, and with hardly any words.

  Under his shirt, his body was swathed in bandages; they were sticky with blood. They found each other by touch and instinct; with mutual need, lost in the darkness of passion. She touched his hair and his face with her fingers, very gently and exploratively, and there was the wetness of tears on her own face. Everything had changed since the first time he had taken her and she had shed tears-and nothing had changed.

  "Oh, Annie-love!" he muttered afterwards, his voice slightly slurred. "I'm stoned out of my head. I knew I had to get to you ... there's not much else I remember. Not even how. I think they gave me sodium pentothal." He must have sensed her unspoken question, because he turned to put his lips against the hollow where her neck and shoulder met, and his voice sounded muffled. "Truth serum, baby. To make me tell everything they think I know. Only they know enough, and I couldn't have told them anything, anyway. The think tank fixed that. I'm brainwashing-proof, did you know that, hmm? Did they tell you?" He had her pinned down, somehow; she felt his fingers caress her hair, her temples, her neck, running gently over corded arteries.

  His laughter was very soft, as he nuzzled his lips against her ear. "You want to know anything, Annie? Why don't you ask me-every man's got a weakness, and you're mine, I guess. As long as you're alive .. ."

  She stirred under him, and his fingers tightened, ever so lightly, until she could feel the pulsing of her arteries under his thumbs. She remembered suddenly what he had threatened her with once. Pressure on the carotid artery that carried the life-giving supply of oxygen to the brain, causing unconsciousness. Worse, if the pressure was continued.

  "Webb ..." The thunder growled outside and the room lit up and darkened again. And if he were the assassin they had named him, she wasn't going to beg. "I love you,"

  she whispered. "And you? What's true and what isn't?"

  "Christ, we're both caught up in the goddamned mechanism, aren't we, love? But what's true is right now, and this." His mouth covered hers in a long kiss that left her shaken. "And whatever they tell you, or you see, you've got to trust me."

  How could she-how could she? Anne found herself persisting, in spite of everything her senses screamed to the contrary.

  "I don't know what you mean. Webb, I've got to know! Are you-is it true that you-you killed ... ?" She had to ask it, even if it meant condemning herself to death at his hands. Violet, Dune Frazier. How many others? Oh God, no-no!

  But-and maybe it was the drug they had given him-he answered her quite matter-of-factly.

  "Yes. I've killed when I've had to-or been ordered to." He was talking now more to himself than to her, and she had to force herself to keep still. "They train you, like a killer dog. After a while, you act by reflex, and you stop thinking about it." He thought about Peter the Wolf, always smiling, enjoying what he did, and his body shuddered involuntarily.

  Before Anne could ask any more questions he rolled away from her, wondering at his own weakness. He shouldn't have come to her. He had had other things to do, and the sudden power failure had helped, with everyone who was still awake running around looking for lights. He had heard Harris cursing as he searched for a flashlight.

  "Where the hell is Palumbo?f He'll know how to start the damn generator .. ." Piling out and scattering in different directions, they had left the door to the screening room unlocked, and that had been his opportunity to retrieve the tiny recording device, voice-activated, that he'd planted under one of the chairs when they'd been watching the rushes a few days ago. He should have gone straight back to his room, where Ria waited-sleeping soundly still, he hoped. If she wasn't-what the fuck, he'd been crazy, letting himself into Anne's room anyhow. But he'd been passing her door, and somehow he'd sensed her, had known that she'd be awake and alone. What he'd tell Ria depended on Anne, who had no idea of the time.

  The electric clock by her bed had stopped ...

  She had kept lying very still while he sat on the edge of her bed, dressing himself.

  Now she whispered, as if she'd been able to guess the dark direction of his thoughts,

  "Are you going back to her, to your wife?"

  His head turned in the direction of her voice. She thought for a minute that he might not answer her, before he said, "Yes, I guess so." Blunt, bald statement that he didn't bother to qualify, and in a way she was relieved that he hadn't made excuses. Her mind was still numb. He'd admitted, he'd betrayed himself to her. Worse than that was the fact that it didn't seem to matter. She'd known, even before, hadn't she? And she had betrayed herself to him, by telling him that she loved him. That didn't matter either. There was a strange closeness between them at this moment.

  "Do you still love her, Webb?" Or did he feel responsible? Had he been in part responsible for Anna-Maria's betrayal?

  "I used to think I did, a long time ago. Then I thought she was dead. It takes time, adjusting to the fact that I have a wife. Oh Christ, Annie!" He had stood up, but now he bent down, holding her face between his hands. "Do you need for me to tell you the words?" He said harshly, "I'm crazy in love with you, baby, and you damn well know it, don't you?"

  He released her abruptly, and left her without a kiss. She lay there for some time, trying to keep her mind blank, and then she got up and bolted the door he'd closed soundlessly, hearing the thunder accompany her all the way back to beg.

  Anne was to think later that it was just as well she had had a few hours of sleep. An aftermath of the lovemaking her body had been craving. An escape from the answers to questions she should not have asked.

  He had told her, almost unwillingly, that he loved her; and had admitted to being what she had been warned he was. An assassin-a man who killed by reflex, or because he was ordered to. He had told her,' and that made her a threat to him. She was strangely calm, or maybe she had traveled beyond feeling. The same sense of fatalism that had overtaken her last night, while she had waited for him almost without knowing it, overcame her now. She remembered a movie she had seen when she was a child-Duel in the Sun. And remembered vividly the very last scene, when the lovers who had killed each other had crawled towards each other as they were dying, to hold hands. Would that be the ending for them?

  Palumbo, that jack of all trades, must have started the generator going, or maybe PacificGas and Electricity had gotten on the ball. Harris was bound to have shares in the company.

  It was the radio that had awakened her, and all they were talking of on every station was the damage that the freak electrical storm had caused. A fire in the vast national forest that was only a few miles up the road to the south of the island raged out of control, fanned by the winds that had sprung up. And the forest extended to this side of the highway. It could cut them off; but then there was the helicopter, of course.

  And maybe Harris would decide that they should all leave. They could finish shooting the movie somewhere else.

  Anne brushed her hair mechanically. I'm crazy in love with you, baby, and you damn well know it! Was he? Did she? God, if only she could have slept longer!

  Harris knocked at the connecting door, sounding anxious, and she had to let him in.

  He looked as if he hadn't slept at all, and his manner was more abrupt than she had ever known it to be.

  "Anne. Thank God you'
re .. ." The radio was still on and he jerked his head toward it.

  "You know what that damned storm did? I've got to talk to you, before you go downstairs and hear it from someone else."

  "We won't be filming today?" It was a deliberate ploy to keep from hearing whatever it was he had come to tell her, and she thought, watching his eyes in the mirror, that he knew it. He came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders -she felt their pressure and flinched.

  "I'm talking about Karim. You didn't see or hear anything of him last night, did you?

  He's disappeared, Anne. Not a damned trace of him anywhere. And Claudia's in hysterics, succeeding in making nervous wrecks of anyone who believes her story."

  "What story? Claudia ... ?"

  "He'd been sleeping with her-on and off. Last night-well, last night I guess he was in an exceptionally bad mood. You humiliated him in front of everyone, Anne-not that I blame you, I suppose, but . . . I had to warn him myself to keep away from you, and he turned to Claudia." He was still holding her shoulders, and he must have sensed some movement, because he pressed down warningly. "No-please let me finish. He was with her, and he left her for a while, to go back to his room for-a joint. Hashish.

  That doesn't matter. The point is that he didn't come back, and when she got tired of waiting, and angry-you know what she's like-she went looking for him. She says it was just about the time that the lights went out, but the moon was still up. And she swears she saw two men, struggling together on the clifftop. Against the moon, she said. She has a way of dramatizing things, true, but ... Christ, the worst of it is that he's not been found. The guards at the gate stayed alert and they say no one tried to leave. And I sent men down to the beach, of course, but they couldn't find anything.

  Claudia swears, though, that she saw one of the men go over. She keeps saying over and over, 'He broke his neck-I saw it. There was a sound.'" Harris shrugged, deprecatingly. "Damn, now I'm dramatizing, aren't I? But I'm sure you'll hear it from her, and I wanted you to be prepared."