“And with Nina,” said Richard.
Beryl sat back, puzzled. Yes, she does put up with Nina. And that’s the part I don’t understand. How she can be so civil, so gracious, to her husband’s mistress. To her husband’s bastard son….
“You think Philippe is Anthony’s father?”
“That’s what Nina meant, of course. All that talk about Philippe’s responsibilities. She meant Anthony.” She paused. “Art school must be very expensive.”
“And Philippe must’ve paid a pretty bundle over the years, supporting the boy. Not to mention Nina, whose tastes are extravagant, to say the least. Her widow’s pension couldn’t have been enough to—”
“What is it?” asked Beryl.
“I just had a flash of insight about her husband, Stephen Sutherland. He committed suicide a month after your parents died—jumped off a bridge.”
“Yes, you told me that.”
“All these years, I’ve thought his death was related to the Delphi case. I suspected he was the mole, that he killed himself when he thought he was about to be discovered. But what if his reasons for jumping off that bridge were entirely personal?”
“His marriage.”
“And young Anthony. The boy he discovered wasn’t his son at all.”
“But if Stephen Sutherland wasn’t Delphi…”
“Then we’re back to a person or persons unknown.”
Persons unknown. Meaning someone who could still be alive. And afraid of discovery.
Instinctively she glanced over her shoulder, checking to see if they were being followed. Just behind them was the Peugeot with the two French agents; beyond that she saw only a stream of anonymous headlights. Richard was right, she thought. She should have stayed in the flat. She should have kept her head low, her face out of sight. Anyone could have spotted her this afternoon. Or they could be following her right this moment, could be watching her from somewhere in that sea of headlights.
Suddenly she longed to be back in the flat, safely surrounded by four walls. It began to seem endless, this drive to Passy, a journey through a darkness full of perils.
When at last they pulled up in front of the building, she was so anxious to get inside that she quickly started to climb out of the car. Richard pulled her back in.
“Don’t get out yet,” he said. “Let the men check it first.”
“You don’t really think—”
“It’s a precaution. Standard operating procedure.”
Beryl watched the two French agents climb the steps and unlock the front door. While one man stood watch on the steps, the other vanished inside.
“But how could anyone find out about the flat?” she asked.
“Payoffs. Leaks.”
“You don’t think Claude Daumier—”
“I’m not trying to scare you, Beryl. I just believe in being careful.”
She watched as the lights came on inside the flat. First the living room, then the bedroom. At last, the man on the steps gave them the all-clear signal.
“Okay, it must be clean,” said Richard, climbing out of the car. “Let’s go.”
Beryl stepped out onto the curb. She turned toward the building and took one step up the sidewalk—
—and was slammed backward against the car as an explosion rocked the earth. Shattered glass flew from the building and rained onto the street. Seconds later, the sky lit up with the hellish glow of flames shooting through the broken windows. Beryl sank to the ground, her ears still ringing from the blast. She stared numbly as tongues of flame slashed the darkness.
She couldn’t hear Richard’s shouts, didn’t realize he was crouched right beside her until she felt his hands on her face. “Are you all right?” he cried. “Beryl, look at me!”
Weakly she nodded. Then her gaze traveled to the front walkway, to the body of the French agent lying sprawled near the steps.
“Stay put!” yelled Richard as he pivoted away from her. He dashed over to the fallen man and knelt beside him just long enough to feel for a pulse. At once he was back at Beryl’s side. “Get in the car,” he said.
“But what about the men?”
“That one’s dead. The other one didn’t stand a chance.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Just get in the car!” ordered Richard. He opened the door and practically shoved her inside. Then he scrambled around to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel.
“We can’t just leave them there!” cried Beryl.
“We’ll have to.” He started the engine and sent the car screeching away from the curb.
Beryl watched as a succession of streets blurred past. Richard drove like a madman, but she was too stunned to feel afraid, too bewildered to focus on anything but the river of red taillights stretching ahead of them.
“Jordan,” she whispered. “What about Jordan?”
“Right now I have to think about you.”
“They found the flat. They can get to him!”
“I’ll take care of it later. First we get you to a safe place.”
“Where?”
He swerved across two lanes and shot onto an off ramp. “I’ll come up with one. Somewhere.”
Somewhere. She stared out at the night glow of Paris. A sprawling city, an ocean of light. A million different places to hide.
To die.
She shivered and shrank deep into the seat. “And then what?” she whispered. “What happens next?”
He looked at her. “We get out of Paris. Out of the country.”
“You mean—go home?”
“No. It won’t be safe in England, either.” He turned his gaze back to the road. The car seemed to leap through the darkness. “We’re going to Greece.”
Daumier answered the phone on the second ring. “All?”
A familiar voice growled at him from the receiver. “What the hell is going on?”
“Richard?” said Daumier. “Where are you?”
“A safe place. You’ll understand if I don’t reveal it to you.”
“And Beryl?”
“She’s unhurt. Though I can’t say the same for your two men. Who knew about the flat, Claude?”
“Only my people.”
“Who else?”
“I told no one else. It should have been a safe enough place.”
“Apparently you were wrong. Someone found out.”
“You were both out of the flat earlier today. One of you could have been followed.”
“It wasn’t me.”
“Beryl, then. You should not have allowed her out of the building. She could’ve been spotted at Galerie Annika this afternoon and followed back to the flat.”
“My mistake. You’re right, I shouldn’t have left her alone. I can’t afford to make any more mistakes.”
Daumier sighed. “You and I, Richard, we have known each other too long. This is not the time to stop trusting each other.”
There was a brief silence on the other end. Then Richard said, “I’m sorry, but I have no choice, Claude. We’re going under.”
“Then I will not be able to help you.”
“We’ll go it alone. Without your help.”
“Wait, Richard—”
But the line had already gone dead. Daumier stared at the receiver, then slowly laid it back in the cradle. There was no point in trying to trace the call; Richard would have used a pay phone—and it would be in a different neighborhood from where he’d be staying. The man was once a professional; he knew the tricks of the trade.
Maybe—just maybe—it would keep them both alive.
“Good luck, my friend,” murmured Daumier. “I am afraid you will need it.”
Richard risked one more call from the pay phone, this one to Washington, D.C.
His business partner answered with his usual charmless growl. “Sakaroff here.”
“Niki, it’s me.”
“Richard? How is beautiful Paris? Having a good time?”
“A lousy time. Look, I can
’t talk long. I’m in trouble.”
Niki sighed. “Why am I not surprised?”
“It’s the old Delphi case. You remember? Paris, ’73. The NATO mole.”
“Ah, yes.”
“Delphi’s come back to life. I need your help to identify him.”
“I was KGB, Richard. Not Stasi.”
“But you had connections to the East Germans.”
“Not directly. I had little contact with Stasi agents. The East Germans, you know…they preferred to operate independently.”
“Then who would know about Delphi? There must be some old contact you can pump for information.”
There was a pause. “Perhaps…”
“Yes?”
“Heinrich Leitner,” said Sakaroff. “He is the one who could tell you. He oversaw Stasi’s Paris operations. Not a field man—he never left East Berlin. But he would be familiar with Delphi’s work.”
“Okay, he’s the man I’ll talk to. So how do I get to him?”
“That is the difficult part. He is in Berlin—”
“No problem. We’ll go there.”
“—in a high-security prison.”
Richard groaned. “That is a problem.” In frustration, he turned and stared through the phone-booth door at the subway platform. “I’ve got to get in to see him, Niki.”
“You’ll need approval. That will take days. Papers, signatures…”
“Then that’s what I’ll have to get. If you could make a few calls, speed things up.”
“No guarantees.”
“Understood. Oh, and one more thing,” said Richard. “We’ve been trying to get ahold of Hugh Tavistock. It seems he’s vanished. Have you heard anything about it?”
“No. But I will check my sources. Anything else?”
“I’ll let you know.”
Sakaroff grunted. “I was afraid you would say that.”
Richard hung up. Stepping away from the pay phone, he glanced around at the subway platform. He saw nothing suspicious, only the usual stream of nighttime commuters—couples holding hands, students with backpacks.
The train for Creteil-Préfecture rolled into the station. Richard stepped onto it, rode it for three stops, then got off. He lingered on the next platform for a few minutes, surveying the faces. No one looked familiar. Satisfied that he hadn’t been followed, he boarded the Bobigny-Picasso train and rode it to Gare de l’Est. There he stepped off, walked out of the station, and headed briskly back to the pension.
He found Beryl still awake and sitting in an armchair by the window. She’d turned off all the lights, and in the darkness she was little more than a silhouette against the glow of the night sky. He shut and bolted the door. “Beryl?” he said. “Everything all right?”
He thought he saw her nod. Or was it just the quivering of her chin as she took a breath and let out a soft, slow sigh?
“We’ll be safe here,” he said. “For tonight, at least.”
“And tomorrow?” came the murmured question.
“We’ll worry about that when the time comes.”
She leaned back against the chair cushions and stared straight ahead. “Is this how it was for you, Richard? Working for Intelligence? Living day to day, not daring to think about tomorrows?”
He moved slowly to her chair. “Sometimes it was like this. Sometimes I wasn’t sure there’d be a tomorrow for me.”
“Do you miss that life?” She looked at him. He couldn’t see her face, but he felt her watching him.
“I left that life behind.”
“But do you miss it? The excitement? That lovely promise of violence?”
“Beryl. Beryl, please.” He reached for her hand; it was like a lump of ice in his grasp.
“Didn’t you enjoy it, just a little?”
“No.” He paused. Then softly he said, “Yes. For a short time. When I was very young. Before it turned all too real.”
“The way it did tonight. Tonight, it was real for me. When I saw that man lying there…” She swallowed. “This afternoon, you see, we had lunch together, the three of us. They had the veal. And a bottle of wine, and ice cream. And I got them to laugh….” She looked away.
“It seems like a game, at first,” said Richard. “A make-believe war. But then you realize that the bullets are real. So are the people.” He held her hand in his and wished he could warm it, warm her. “That’s what happened to me. All of a sudden, it got too real. And there was a woman….”
She sat very still, waiting, listening. “Someone you loved?” she asked softly.
“No, not someone I loved. But someone I liked, very much. It was in Berlin, before the Wall came down. We were trying to bring over a defector to the West. And my partner, she got trapped on the wrong side. The guard spotted her. Fired.” He lifted Beryl’s hand to his lips and kissed it, held it.
“She…didn’t make it?”
He shook his head. “And it wasn’t a game of make-believe any longer. I could see her body lying in the no-man’s-zone. And I couldn’t reach her. So I had to leave her there, for the other side….” He released her hand. He moved to the window and looked out at the lights twinkling over Paris. “That’s when I left the business. I didn’t want another death on my conscience. I didn’t want to feel…responsible.” He turned to her. In the faint glow from the city, her face looked pale, almost luminous. “That’s what makes this so hard for me, Beryl. Knowing what could happen if I make a mistake. Knowing that your life depends on what I do next.”
For a long time, Beryl sat very still, watching him. Feeling his gaze through the darkness. That spark of attraction crackled like fire between them as it always did. But tonight there was something more, something that went beyond desire.
She rose from the chair. Though he didn’t move, she could feel the fever of his gaze as she glided toward him, could hear the sharp intake of his breath as she reached up and touched his beard-roughened face. “Richard,” she whispered, “I want you.”
At once she was swept into his arms. No other embrace, no other kiss, had ever stolen her breath the way this one did. We are like that couple in bronze, she thought. Starved for each other. Devouring each other.
But this was a feast of love, not destruction.
She whimpered and her head fell back as his mouth slid to her throat. She could feel every stroke of his hands through the silky fabric of her dress. Oh Lord, if he could do this to her with her clothes on, what lovely torment would he unleash on her naked flesh? Already her breasts were tingling under his touch, her nipples turned to tight buds.
He unzipped her dress and slowly eased it off her shoulders.
It hissed past her hips and slid into a silken ripple on the floor. He, too, traced the length of her torso, his lips moving slowly down her throat, her breasts, her belly. Shuddering with pleasure, she gripped his hair and moaned, “No fair…”
“All’s fair,” he murmured, easing her stockings down her thighs. “In love and war….”
By the time he had her fully undressed, by the time he’d shed his own clothes, she was beyond words, beyond protest. She’d lost all sense of time and space; there was only the darkness, and the warmth of his touch, and the hunger shuddering deep inside her. She scarcely realized how they found their way to the bed. Eagerly she sank backward onto the mattress, and heard the squeak of the springs, the quickening duet of their breathing. Then she pulled him down against her, drew him onto and into her.
Starved for each other, she thought as he captured her mouth under his, invaded it, explored it. Devouring each other.
And like two who were famished, they feasted.
He reached for her hands, and their fingers entwined in a tighter and tighter knot as their bodies joined, thrusted, exulted. Even as her last shudders of desire faded away, he was still gripping her hands.
Slowly he released them and cradled her face instead. He pressed gentle kisses to her lips, her eyelids. “Next time,” he whispered, “we’ll take it slower. I won’t b
e in such a hurry, I promise.”
She smiled at him. “I have no complaints.”
“None?”
“None at all. But next time…”
“Yes?”
She twisted her body beneath him, and they tumbled across the sheets until her body was lying atop his. “Next time,” she murmured, lowering her lips to his chest, “it’s my turn to do the tormenting.”
He groaned as her mouth slid hotly down to his belly. “We’re taking turns?”
“You’re the one who said it. All’s fair…”
“…in love and war.” He laughed. And he buried his hands in her hair.
They met in the usual place, the warehouse behind Galerie Annika. Against the walls were stacked dozens of crates containing the paintings and sculptures of would-be artists, most of them no doubt talentless amateurs hoping for a spot on a gallery wall. But who can really say which is art and which is rubbish? thought Amiel Foch, gazing around at the room full of crated dreams. To me, it is all the same. Pigment and canvas.
Foch turned as the warehouse door swung open. “The bomb went off as planned,” he said. “The job is done.”
“The job is not done,” came the reply. Anthony Sutherland emerged from the night and stepped into the warehouse. The thud of the door shutting behind him echoed across the bare concrete floor. “I wanted the woman neutralized. She is still alive. So is Richard Wolf.”
Foch stared at Anthony. “It was a delayed fuse, set off two minutes after entry! It could not have ignited on its own.”
“Nevertheless, they are still alive. Thus far, your record of success is abysmal. You could not finish off even that stupid creature, Marie St. Pierre.”
“I will see to Mme St. Pierre—”
“Forget her! It’s the Tavistocks I want dead! Lord, they’re like cats! Nine bloody lives.”
“Jordan Tavistock is still in custody. I can arrange—”
“Jordan will keep for a while. He’s harmless where he is. But Beryl has to be taken care of soon. My guess is that she and Wolf are leaving Paris. Find them.”
“How?”
“You’re the professional.”
“So is Richard Wolf,” said Foch. “He will be difficult to trace. I cannot perform miracles.”
In Their Footsteps / Thief of Hearts Page 15