Watching proceedings from the audience with a rigid-jawed stare, Petra shared Saskia’s sense of impotence. Tina was clearly up to no good, but there wasn’t a lot they could do about it, not unless she really overstepped the mark.
“I apologize for this unscheduled diversion,” breathed Tina huskily, channeling her best Marilyn Monroe. “But given my own work with UNICEF, I felt it was appropriate. I believe many of you here tonight are familiar with my work.”
Suddenly a still from her infamous porn movie flashed up on the screen behind her. The crowd gasped as one, then erupted with laughter.
“Thank you; you’re too kind,” giggled Tina, camping it up.
Honor, who’d worked her way to the front of the crowd, blushed scarlet. The naked image had been her idea—a surefire attention grabber—and she was relieved Sian had managed to commandeer the projector as planned. But looking at her sister like that, all creamy, udder-sized breasts and candy-pink nipples, still floored her with embarrassment.
“Anyway, given my own charity work—and Mr. Tisch’s involvement with it, of which more later,” Tina smiled mysteriously, “I felt I couldn’t let this evening pass without a small, personal tribute. So if you’ll bear with me…Sian?”
Inside the summerhouse, converted by Saskia into a makeshift projection room for her tribute film, Sian’s hands were shaking like someone in the final stages of Parkinson’s. Thanks to Honor’s careful planning, everything had gone seamlessly. As soon as the credits rolled on Anton’s biopic, she’d been able to slip unnoticed into the building and lock it from the inside. But now that she was actually here, with her finger on the button both metaphorically and literally, she felt sick as a dog. Media from across the globe were lined up outside, their cameras trained on the screen behind Tina: her film, her story. Back in London, Simon would have already gone to print. The first copies of the News of the World would be on the newsstands within hours, with her exclusive exposé plastered all over the front three pages. It wasn’t just Anton Tisch’s life that was about to be changed forever. It was hers, too. Christ, she hoped she hadn’t fucked up the editing. Weaving her extra footage into the film they already had had been painstaking work, and everything had been so rushed this afternoon at Honor’s cottage. What if she’d somehow cut out something crucial? Or what if they had technical problems? Basic editing she could just about do, but Sian was no technician.
Seconds later, she had the surreal experience of seeing her own face pop up in front of her, on-screen.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” Sitting in a black leather chair in a nondescript white room, she spoke directly to camera. “My name is Sian Doyle. I’m a journalist. And I’d like to show you all another side to Anton Tisch.”
The camera panned outward to show a very young girl sitting opposite her in a second, identical black leather chair. Bug-eyed and visibly shaking with nerves, she was hauntingly beautiful but didn’t look a day over fourteen.
Up onstage, Anton’s hands tightened involuntarily around his bouquet. He didn’t even notice when the thorns from the roses skewered his palms and blood began to trickle over the flowers’ plastic wrapping.
“Find Petra,” he mouthed urgently over his shoulder to Saskia. “I want this stopped. Now!”
“At first, I thought Mr. Tisch was just being friendly. I was very grateful to ’im for trying to help me,” said the girl, in a childish whisper littered with cockney cadences. “The first pictures I done was all right. Tasteful and that. But then there was this other man, Bill or Billy I think ’is name was, who worked for Mr. Tisch on his website. He wanted me to do…other things.” She looked away. “He showed me pictures what some of the other girls from the home had done.”
Three stills filled the screen in quick succession, all of nude underage girls in sickeningly graphic sexual poses. A collective gasp of disgust erupted from the crowd.
“These images were posted on a website that’s a wholly owned subsidiary of the Tischen Group.” Sian was talking directly to camera again. “All three of these girls spent time in care homes paid for by Anton Tisch. All three were known personally to him.”
“This is preposterous!” spluttered Anton. Dropping the flowers on the ground, he made a lunge for Tina’s microphone, but she stepped back, whipping it away like a matador taunting a bull. She had no idea what any of this was really about—Honor’s explanations earlier about some sort of movie exposé sounded boringly convoluted to Tina. But she was definitely starting to enjoy being a part of it now.
Those of the guests who weren’t still reeling with shock began giggling as they watched Tina Palmer evading Anton’s grasp. Aware that he was starting to look like a laughingstock, as well as a pedophile, Anton cut his losses and stormed offstage.
“Where’s Petra?” he roared at the hovering staff behind the podium steps. “Can none of you switch off this fucking thing?”
“Whoever’s in the summerhouse has locked it from the inside, sir,” piped up one brave soul. “They’re trying to break in there now. Saskia’s got a bunch of guys down there.”
Back in the summerhouse, Sian could no longer hear her own projected voice over the frenzied rattling of the door behind her. As well as locking it, she’d managed to wedge it shut with various bulky items of furniture, but the guys outside weren’t giving up in a hurry. Aware that she was running out of time, she made an executive decision to skip the next section of footage altogether and cut straight to the finale. Activating her wire for the first time that evening, she sent a warning message to Lucas.
At the back of the garden, he clutched his ear, trying to make out what she was saying through the heavy crackle. “Need a minute. I’m g…second tape. Can you get Tina…cover?”
Getting the gist, he stood up on an empty champagne crate and waved a prearranged signal to Tina. Please God let her have remembered…
In fact, he needn’t have worried. With Sian reloading the tape decks, the screen faded to black, but Tina stepped forward quite unfazed and kept everyone occupied with a little show of her own.
“The story doesn’t end there, folks,” she said huskily, her diamond choker dazzling in the spotlight. “In a moment, our lovely hostess, Sian, will be back with some even more shocking revelations.” The crowd oohed and aahed. Their earlier disgust apparently forgotten, Tina had suddenly transformed them into gullible participants in a cheap reality show. “But in the meantime, I’d like to share my own personal experience of Mr. Tisch,” she went on. “Unfortunately for me, his interest in the sex-tape industry wasn’t entirely restricted to teenagers. I now know that Anton Tisch himself was personally responsible for my own debut in the adult movie world. That’s right.” She gave a wounded pout, preening for the TV cameras all the while and making sure she kept her chin firmly down. “He was the one who entrapped me, not poor Lucas Ruiz,” she wagged her finger playfully at the press, “whom you awful swine were so quick to blame at the time.”
A shocked murmur rose up from the hotel industry people scattered among the crowd. No one in the US would forget in a hurry how Lucas had been pilloried over that tape, and the self-righteous fever of condemnation that had swept the business at the time.
“But the good news,” said Tina archly, “is that we’ve raised over two million dollars to date, ladies and gentlemen. Well, I guess it’s primarily the gentlemen I have to thank.” Another loud burst of laughter. “So please, keep watching!”
She might be best known as a porn star, but there was no doubt Tina Palmer was East Hampton’s sweetheart tonight.
“And on behalf of UNICEF and the poor children of Africa, I’d like to propose a toast of my own: to Anton Tisch. A true humanitarian!”
Just as the roars of applause were dying down again, the screen behind Tina lit up once more.
“Atta girl,” whispered Lucas under his breath. He’d lost radio contact with Sian again, but she’d obviously come through.
“We now come to the final, and most disturb
ing aspect of tonight’s short film.” Still in her black chair, talking straight to camera, Sian’s clear, steely voice filled the night air. “Most of you probably don’t know much about Azerbaijan, so let me fill you in on the headlines. It used to be part of the Soviet Union. It’s got a lot of oil—expected oil revenues over the next twenty years of around a hundred and twenty billion dollars. And it’s run by one of the most corrupt regimes on the planet. Oh,” she added, breaking into a rare smile, “and it’s where Anton Tisch first made his fortune.”
A couple of stills followed of rugged, mountainous scenery, some enchanting coastline, and vast pipelines built to ship the country’s oil to the West. But just as people were starting to wonder quite where Sian was going with this geography lesson, another, horrifying image filled the screen. It was the body of a young boy, no more than eleven or twelve, his torso riddled with bullets, still clutching an ancient Kalashnikov rifle to his chest.
“We don’t know his name.” Sian’s voice, somber again now, drifted out of the speakers as they cut to more shots of dead children, some burned and tortured beyond recognition. “Or his. Or his.” Relentlessly the pictures kept coming. A number of people in the audience looked away.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” said the starlet to her friend.
“What we do know, and what I can prove, is that Anton Tisch supplied arms to boys like these, children forced to become armed warriors against President Aliyev’s ruthless regime. And this is what he bought with the profits.”
A shot of Anton’s stunning Geneva mansion loomed into view, followed by one of another child soldier, this one still alive but malnourished, his eyes wide with terror and confusion. More of the same followed: Anton’s yacht, and a pile of rebel bodies; Anton smiling as he shook hands with President Bush, and an Aliyev labor camp, complete with emaciated faces pressed up against the barbed wire. Then the screen abruptly went black.
“They must have got into the projection room,” mumbled Lucas to himself, trying in vain to raise either Sian or Honor on their wires. So much for state-of-the-art communications technology. But it didn’t seem to matter. They’d been on air long enough to get the point across. Within seconds, pandemonium broke loose. Everybody wanted a piece of Anton, but he seemed to have melted into the melee. Happily, Tina was still up onstage and more than willing to step into the breach in his absence, sacrificing herself to the media feeding frenzy.
“Tina, can you prove any of this?” yelled reporters, thrusting microphones and cameras at her from all angles. “Who is this Sian Doyle? How do you know her?”
“Please.” Holding up her hand, Tina did her best to look harassed and perhaps just a touch little-girl-lost. “One at a time, OK? Don’t crowd me.”
“Why didn’t you go straight to the police?” A pretty Asian TV reporter from one of the local news shows forced her way to the front. “If you had proof of criminal activity, why’d you wait?”
“To be honest with you, I’m just the front woman here,” said Tina. “You’ll have to ask my sister about that sort of stuff.”
“Honor’s behind this?” The Asian girl swooped on this new information like a hawk diving for a shrew.
“Well, no, I wouldn’t say behind it exactly.” Tina sounded uncertain.
“Where is she right now? Is she here tonight?”
At that moment Saskia came careening through the lines of press like a furious pink cannonball and hurled herself at Tina, knocking her to the ground.
“You bitch!” Climbing on top of her, she clawed at her face and neck like a savage, much to the delight of the TV crews. Her heavy mascara was running in thick black rivulets down her face, and her fuchsia lipstick was smudged everywhere, making her look like a psychotic clown. For a moment Tina was genuinely frightened.
“Do you know how much effort went into this party?” Saskia shrieked. “Do you know how hard I worked?”
As she raised her arm for another blow, Tina closed her eyes and flinched. But instead of the expected sting of talons ripping into her cheek, she felt a weight being lifted off her.
“Take her inside.” Petra’s voice sounded as ice-cool and imperious as ever. “She’s hysterical.” The only hint that the crisis was affecting her at all was that her Russian accent had become slightly more pronounced. “And help Miss Palmer to a chair, please.”
Opening her eyes to see two burly and by no means unattractive security guards looming over her, Tina decided not to put up a struggle. Though it pained her to yield the limelight, she was feeling a little shaken. Honor never mentioned anything this afternoon about the risk of being assaulted by fat British lunatics.
With Tina temporarily out of action, the reporters lost no time in cornering Petra instead.
“Ms. Kamalski, I take it tonight’s allegations against your employer have come as a complete surprise to you?”
“I’ll be making a full statement later, once I’ve had a chance to speak with Mr. Tisch,” said Petra calmly. “Right now, you’ll understand, I have over a thousand guests I need to deal with. I really don’t have the time for questions.”
“But you must have been shocked by these revelations, the abuse of young girls, the terrible lives and deaths of those poor children…”
Petra gave a magnificently dismissive wave of the hand. “None of which has anything to do with Mr. Tisch. To be honest with you, I’m not surprised to hear that Honor Palmer orchestrated this entire debacle. Clearly she and Lucas Ruiz dreamed this up together as some twisted form of industrial sabotage.”
“A little extreme, don’t you think?” A paunchy print journalist from the LA Times looked at Petra skeptically. “To make up a pack of lies that elaborate? Why would they do that?”
“Because the Herrick is number one, of course,” said Petra scathingly. “We’re the best in the world, while their respective hotels are foundering.”
“But according to Ms. Doyle…” the reporter pressed on bravely.
“Miss Doyle?” said Petra sharply, her paper-thin facade of politeness beginning to crack. “Sian Doyle is a money-grubbing former waitress, nothing more. The police are on their way here as we speak, and when they arrive, they will arrest her. She is not to be taken seriously.”
“What about the girls’ evidence?” the Asian girl piped up again. “Or Tina Palmer’s accusations? You can’t dismiss all of them out of hand, surely?”
“A few teenage hookers and a porn star with an ax to grind?” Petra snorted in derision. “I most certainly can dismiss them. This is nonsense. What Mr. Tisch decides to do about these libelous and, quite frankly, ridiculous accusations is a matter for him. My priority right now is to ensure that the people responsible for destroying tonight’s celebrations are brought to justice. Aha!” She looked up gleefully. “Here come the police now.”
A troop of uniformed officers, eight or nine of them, pulled up in front of the hotel and began spreading out in various directions. Two made straight for Petra, who greeted them with a brusque, professional smile.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” she began. “The girl, Doyle, is in our summerhouse in the care of my security. If you follow me, I’ll take you there. But it’s clear she wasn’t acting alone. Lucas Ruiz and Honor Palmer were both here earlier, although I suspect they may have taken off by now. I—”
“Actually, Ms. Kamalski, it’s you we need to talk to.” The older, more senior officer laid a hand on her shoulder. “I need to bring you downtown for questioning. If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t possibly leave the hotel,” said Petra, with a look that left the word “moron” hanging in the air. “Whatever you need to ask me, you can do it while we walk. But I want these people off hotel property.”
The senior cop gave a nod to his colleague. Before she even had time to register what was happening, Petra found herself being handcuffed and escorted toward the podium steps.
“We could have done this the easy way, you know,” said th
e officer, shielding his eyes from a sudden barrage of camera flashes. “This is your choice, lady. Petra Kamalski, I’m arresting you on suspicion of instigating an arson attack on Palmers hotel. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say—”
“This is ridiculous.” Petra’s voice was shaking. “I had nothing to do with that fire. You can’t possibly link me to it.”
“On the contrary, ma’am, we have some very strong links, courtesy of your friend Miss Doyle, and two solid witnesses who say they saw you entering the hotel kitchens that morning.”
“Anton!” Catching sight of him across the garden as she was dragged down the steps, Petra called out in panic. It had been so long since the fire, and the police had drawn such a total and consistent blank, she’d long ago started thinking she was home free. How on earth had Sian found witnesses? But she’d done it for Anton, for both of them. He’d see that, surely? He’d help her.
Having gone AWOL for the last twenty minutes, Anton had suddenly popped up arm in arm with a scowling, obese man in a suit, whom Petra recognized instantly as his lawyer, Bob Singer. Swarms of people were pressed around them on all sides, but they, too, were flanked by cops and being ushered politely but firmly in the direction of the waiting squad cars.
“Anton!” As they got closer, she shouted again. “Darling!”
Glancing up, he caught her eye. He had never seen fear on her face before—never seen any kind of weakness, in fact. It unnerved him so much, he dropped his gaze. Moments later he was bundled into the back of a squad car with Bob.
On his attorney’s advice, Anton hadn’t uttered a single syllable to either reporters or the police. To be honest, he hadn’t needed the advice. He had no idea what to say and was still in a state of stupefied shock, wondering if this was some sort of nightmare from which he would imminently wake. He also knew that in the long run, the US police were likely to be the least of his worries. Even if, by some miracle, Bob could talk him out of these charges, Aliyev was not a man known for his mercy toward his enemies. Anton had taken what he could from his government in the early years, and for a while had been happy to take his money and run. But seeing so many of his former Russian buddies surge past him in the wealth stakes these past few years, greed had gotten the better of him and he’d decided to get back in, switching allegiance to the rebels, who for a while had looked set to seize control of the pipelines in Azerbaijan’s east. Supplying arms was the easiest and cheapest way to buy himself a slice of that pie. What did he care if a few young boys took a bullet along the way? They were born into lives of such unutterable misery anyway, it hardly seemed to matter.
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