Drummer In the Dark (16 page)

After the service, Wynn stood by a side alcove and seemed uncertain what to do, until a smiling young woman no taller than a child approached. He showed no pleasure at her appearance. “Father Libretto isn’t here?”

“He came and he left again. He sends you greetings.” She smiled at Jackie. “Hello, I am Anna.”

“Jackie.”

“Your first time at Sant’Egidio?”

“Very first.”

“You are most welcome.” Back to Wynn. “He has left you a message. Perhaps you wish to come with me?”

“I’ll take it here.”

“The message, it is confidential.”

“Here is fine.”

“Bene.”
She tucked her hands into her shapeless sweater. “Your sister has already left.”

“She’s gone back home?”

Anna smiled. “In a sense. Yes.”

The air whooshed out of him, as though the candles and the incense and this small quiet woman had combined to deliver a vicious blow. “You can’t be serious.”

“The priest says, your sister gives to you the excuse to travel. Now you have two choices. Follow her, or return to safety and blindness.” She withdrew one hand long enough to pass over a slip of paper. “But to go forward means great risk. You understand?”

23

Tuesday

T
HEY LEFT THE CHURCH, crossed the piazza, and caught a taxi back to the hotel. The streetlights painted Wynn’s face into lines as bleak and hard as night-cut stone. Jackie leaned against the taxi door and studied what even in despondency was a very handsome man. Darkly chiseled features, eyes like the melancholy clouds of pending gales. A man who would age well. But she had long since learned that good looks were not such great shakes. “Your sister’s not in Rome any more?”

“No.”

“Do you know where to find her?”

Slowly, he raised and lowered his head. Not a nod so much as an admission of nightmares still to come. Jackie said, “You don’t mind me saying, you take an amazing amount of trouble for your sister.”

The taxi drummed across the Tiber and joined the flow about yet more ruins out of time. Spotlights drilled the tableau into black and silver etchings, frozen there against the backdrop of night. Wynn remained blind to it all. “My parents died when I was five and we went to live with relatives. They were a miserable lot. Do you know Lakeland?”

“Sure. Out on the other side of Orlando.”

“Back then it was nothing but orange groves and hot rods and beer joints. The Vitalis crowd at its worst. My dad’s family owned a packing plant. Dad was the only one of them who ever made it out, the only one to finish high school, much less go to college. He was everything they despised—a professor at a university, smart, married to a Yankee from New Hampshire who was a teacher herself. They mocked our accents, they mocked our parents.”

Jackie pressed herself more tightly against the taxi’s opposite door. The guy was too close to the bone just then, the reasons to care all too obvious.

Wynn gave no notice to her movements. “The day Sybel turned eighteen, she forced the family lawyer to hand over our inheritance. Much as my dad’s folks didn’t like having us around, they still fought tooth and nail to keep us. So Sybel went to court and officially adopted me. There wasn’t much in the way of money. Back then no life insurance company would cover my folks, since they lived in Egypt. What there had been in the way of savings was pretty much drained away. But enough was left to get us settled in Gainesville. She started school, and then she met Grant.”

Everything he said fueled her hopeless attraction, no matter what she thought or wanted to have happen. “Have you ever wondered if maybe life makes a random selection, chooses a person and just pegs them to the dart board of that particular time? Let everybody throw sharp pointy objects your way.”

He grew very still. “No.”

“Don’t mind me. I’m a font of useless ideas.” She forced herself to turn around and stare out her window, drawn by the loud drumming of tires upon cobblestones and the sight of the Coliseum up ahead. “And look where they got me.”

W
HEN THEY LEFT THE TAXI, Wynn watched as the doorman tipped his hat to Jackie. She entered the lobby before him, with shoulders squared and chin held rigidly high. The chandeliers illuminated an internal struggle, which finally gave in to the confession, “This day has held so much I don’t even know what to say.”

“My thoughts exactly, but for entirely different reasons.” He did what she least expected, which was to take her hand and bow. Not drawing it completely to his lips. But doing as he had seen others do, giving her all the respect he could muster. Then explaining why. “The only nice thing about my entire journey is having you here.”

She softened then. For the first time, he saw beneath her bulletproof shell and glimpsed another woman entirely. “I can’t even remember the last time a man said something that sweet to me. Thank you, Wynn.”

“Do you know, that’s the first time you have ever spoken my name.”

She parted her lips, uncertain, torn. A shaky breath, then, “You,” she said, for his ears alone, “are a very dangerous man.”

“Only to myself.”

She turned and crossed the lobby, the light caught and held by her hair. She nodded her thanks to the bellhop, who used a white-gloved hand to hold the elevator door for her. She pressed the button for her floor. Only then did she look up. Catch his eye. And whisper his name yet again.

W
YNN SCARCELY HAD TIME to step over to the concierge desk and make his travel requests before a too-familiar voice behind him said, “I can scarcely believe my eyes.”

Hearing those dulcet English tones in this place, at this time, raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Like the mockingbird’s song heard at midnight. Lovely, perhaps, but in such a place the sound became a warning. He turned to Valerie nonetheless, with as much surprise as he could muster. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“Hoping to see you, of course.” Anger shone in eyes flecked with an improper season, autumn perhaps, or the facile passion of easier times. “I scurry about like a madwoman, putting my affairs in order, racing against the clock. A mad dash to the airport, barely making the last flight out. Arrive shattered, scarcely aware of where I am. Expecting to find you in misery and panic, searching high and low for your sister. Instead, what do I discover?”

But Valerie did not look shattered. She looked as if she had just stepped off a yacht. Sleek and lovely and alert as ever. Wynn said, “I’ve found Sybel. At least, I know where she is.”

A vehement shake of her head, hair spilling about in lovely disorder. “Don’t you dare try to tell me that was your sister I saw you giving the little bow and scrape upon farewell.”

“No.”

“I saw that woman at Esther Hutchings’ apartment, remember? I was there with you. Right at your side.”

“Esther sent her here.”

Valerie caught herself in midbreath. “I beg your pardon?”

“Esther thinks I’m working for the enemy. She sent Jackie Havilland to spy on me.”

She glanced about, then reached over and took his arm. “Come, dear Wynn. We are entertaining the staff.”

Valerie led him back into the bar, a darker alcove off the main salon. She wore gray slacks of Shantung silk and a matching blouse with four seed pearls for buttons. A gray silk jacket hung from the back of a chair by the corner table. “What will you have?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

She waved the bartender away. “And just precisely what enemy might this be?”

“I have no idea.” When she looked at him askance, he added, “To be honest, I don’t think Esther knows either. Not for certain.”

“Esther Hutchings belongs in the bed beside her husband.” Valerie swept her hair back, using both hands to smooth the auburn flow. She eyed him in a coquettish fashion. “You’re certain this was all that was at work back there in the lobby?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well Jackie, is that what you said her name was? She seemed a very nice young lady, but operating utterly out of her league.”

Wynn knew she was waiting and expecting him to agree, to close the distance and speak words of invitation. Yet her magic, however potent, was not working. Though she belonged to this moneyed world, though he had always thought this was the class of woman he sought, still his mind remained captured by the day and by the silent word spoken from the recesses of a departing elevator. “I have to leave tomorrow.”

She crossed her arms. “That is not funny.”

“Sybel is no longer in Rome.”

“So just where, pray tell, has your errant sister strayed now?”

He found himself not wanting to tell her. An utterly illogical response, but strong enough to keep him from speaking. The sound of approaching footsteps came as a welcome interruption. The late-night concierge took great pride in announcing, “I have managed to book you on the first flight to Cairo tomorrow morning.”

Valerie repeated, “Cairo?”

“Excellent,” Wynn said, though it was anything but. “Thank you.”

“It leaves at six forty-five, I’m afraid.”

Which gave him the perfect excuse to rise and say, “I’m so very sorry, Valerie.”

She remained where she was. “You can’t be serious.”

He chose to misunderstand. “I’m still jet-lagged from the trip here. I’ve got to get some rest.” He reached down, took both her hands in his, squeezed hard. “Enjoy Rome for me. Will you at least do that?”

He followed the concierge back across the lobby, traded a tip for his booking confirmation, and waved back to where Valerie still sat. He entered the elevator and punched his button, sighing as the doors closed. He felt a sibilant hush of confirmation, bubbles rising from his gut to the mental recesses where logic held no sway.

When he entered his room, he walked to the telephone and asked to be connected with Jackie.

She answered with the guarded alertness of having been half-expecting this call. “Yes?”

He knew what she both anticipated and dreaded. Which was why he spoke as briskly as he did. “Something’s come up. We have to talk. Now.”

To her credit, she did not play coy or feign sleepiness. “I’m in 601.”

He copied out his travel details, walked down the hall, and waited without knocking for Jackie to open the door. The face beneath her tousled hair showed wary caution. So he started in while still standing in the corridor. “You remember the woman who came with me to Esther’s that evening?”

“The lobbyist.”

“Her name is Valerie Lawry. She’s here.”

“In Rome?”

“Downstairs. Right now.”

Jackie pulled open the door, revealing an oversize Orlando Magics T-shirt tucked into jeans. Bare feet. An athlete’s taut, balanced stance. Still cautious, but willing to accept him at face value. “Come in.”

He took the seat by the open French doors, feeling mocked by laughter rising from the plaza and steps below. “My sister has gone to Cairo. Bringing me to Rome was just a ploy to get me started. She’s wanted me to travel down there since before I was elected to Congress. Why, I can’t say. But I’m pretty certain it has something to do with a conference I heard about at the White House. You know the one?”

Jackie lowered herself to the edge of the bed. “Kay Trilling is going. And Nabil, the Egyptian who invited you here.”

“I want you to find somebody who will track Valerie. Find out where she goes. Who she reports to.” He handed over a sheet of paper. “Travel details and my hotel in Cairo, according to the woman at Sant’Egidio. Talk to somebody at the church. Maybe they can help you find a PI. The bottom number is my credit card. Charge everything.”

Hair the color of winter wheat spilled across her face, hiding everything but her voice. “I can do that.”

Suddenly the distance between them did not seem so great. An arm’s reach across the expanse, a single step, and he would be seated there beside her. Jackie sensed the sudden change as well, for she looked up, revealing a woman who had come to expect little of life. And men. But not refusing him. Just waiting.

At that moment, however, Wynn desired nothing more than to elevate himself in her eyes. “I’m not the enemy, Jackie.”

“No,” she said softly. “I don’t think you are.”

He watched her waiting still, but perhaps hoping he was more than just another guy. Or maybe it was just him. So when he rose to his feet, it was to aim toward the door. “I guess I better do a few hours of jet-lag coma.”

She followed him over, asked, “What is happening here?”

He shook his head, not at her question, but rather at how easy it had been to leave the woman downstairs. The one who belonged, who invited. And how hard to depart from the one who offered nothing but a mirror of his own sad state. “I’m getting tired of being played like a puppet. More than that, I can’t say.”

24

Tuesday

P
AVEL HAYEK was not a traveler. He preferred to sit in his castle and command the world to come and bend the proper knee. But this journey to Miami was unavoidable. People with the kind of money he was after expected him to appear, if not at their doorstep, then at least at a suitable middle ground. As the Biltmore’s presidential suite was already booked, he was ensconced in the Coconut Grove Ritz-Carlton’s penthouse, as far from the tawdry glitz of South Beach as he could manage. Beyond his window, evening graced the Intracoastal basin with a quilt of subtle greens and golds and blues. The doors to his private balcony were open, admitting the sweet-scented breeze and a vague discord from streets far below. Hayek breathed in the myth of a gentle season and tried to keep his anger from showing. “I had expected to have Duclos himself here to speak with me.”

“Monsieur le Chairman sends his sincerest regrets. He was unavoidably detained.” The woman was a product of generations of French overbreeding, no doubt a graduate of one of their top echelon schools—INSEAD or the Ecole Nationale or somewhere equally pompous. She was not utterly without charms but her hair was overly foppish, her clothes far too modern, and her perfume just hideous. “He has asked me to obtain the further information required to reach our decision.”

Hayek waved an irritated hand, motioning for Burke to respond. This really was too much. Duclos was either not going to invest, or he was expecting further concessions. This young woman was sent as an excuse for Duclos to avoid making a decision. And of course she was too full of herself to understand. The French were detestable creatures to do business with. Not for the first time Hayek regretted contacting them.

His search for coconspirators had been meticulous. From Switzerland had come NBS, runner-up to Credit Suisse for years. Nine months earlier, the bank had begun leaking institutional investors. Eleven billion dollars had flowed in the wrong direction in as many months, enough to have the senior directors quaking. The staid Swiss conservatism had been chucked, replaced by a frantic search for anything that would put them back in good stead with the money crowd. Hayek’s proposal was clutched in a two-fisted panic.

Hanyo Bank of Yokohama was the world’s seventh largest, with two hundred and twelve billion dollars in assets. Forty-seven forex and derivative traders worked in New York, out of a total U.S. staff of two hundred. Five years earlier their New York operations generated over one-third of the bank’s total profits. This year they lost a cool billion and a half. From kings of the hill to lords of the dung heap. Desperate times. They had been Hayek’s easiest sell.

The Frenchwoman used her gold pen to check another item off her list, then inquired, “When, exactly, will your plan be put into play?”

Really, this was too much. “Duclos knows perfectly well that I can’t say.”

“But my superiors demand—”

“Our goal is to wait for a moment when the market is at a euphoric high, then hit it with catastrophic news. News that we control. Which Duclos is already aware of.”

It was a lie, of course. But there was no need to tell these people or anyone else precisely what he had planned. Anyone who knew his true design was instantly an uncontrolled risk.

She then asked the logical follow-on, which was, “How do you control such events?”

It was Burke who answered. “By having the catastrophic news already in-house.”

“This is news of your government, yes?”

“News that the controllers are desperate to keep under wraps,” Hayek lied. Not even Burke knew the truth. Which was as it should be. “News that will wipe twenty percent from the markets within hours of its release.”

“When this news is amplified by the market’s current volatility,” Burke added, “we should have a genuine stampede on our hands. We go in fast, we strike hard, we win while the market is still reeling.”

“So when—”

Hayek rose to his feet. This meeting was over. “The minimum input is two billion dollars,” he said.

She accepted the dismissal with stiff grace. “I will report to my superiors and come back—”

“No. Play or don’t, it’s your choice. If you’re in, transfer the money. Finish.”

When Burke had shown the woman out, Hayek told his number two, “Hire someone good. Use the Liechtenstein bank for cover. Put tags on her and Duclos both.”

“You don’t think he’s coming in?”

“Whether he is or not, we have to assume the information will be passed on or used.” Neither of which he could afford. If their plans were successful, there would be an enquiry. The SEC and Fed would like nothing better than to hit him with a charge of collusion. Which was why no one knew the whole picture—not even Burke, and certainly not Duclos. Still, it was best to be safe. “Despicable people, the French.”

Burke shuffled papers and tried to make his query sound casual. “What about the Brazilians?”

“I am meeting them tonight.” Hayek noted the underlying tension in his own voice. “That is another group quite beyond belief. Those gray-jacketed security oafs endanger everything.”

“I still don’t see why you sent them to search the Havilland place.” Burke hesitated, then added, “Unless you meant for them to fail.”

That was the trouble with hiring intelligent people, Hayek reflected. They might just surmise the underlying enigma. He countered with, “Not to mention roughing up my security technician in front of the entire trading floor. Such brutality might work where they come from. But it accomplishes nothing here.”

“The Brazilians won’t agree to pull out their security.”

Not yet, Hayek silently amended. “They’re multiplying like lethal spoors. We really must find a way to contain them.”

“What did you have in mind?”

Hayek was tempted to tell him. Which was genuinely remarkable. He never gave his secrets away to anyone. It was the clearest indication yet of the strain he felt. So many years to arrive at this point, so much riding on each step, each motion, each and every word. The answer to Burke’s question was the same as to them all: find a solution that would turn the liability into his advantage.

He said simply, “Call for my car, will you.”

Burke did so, then helped him on with his coat. “I still don’t have the goods on Colin Ready.”

“No doubt you’ll find them, if they are there to be found.” Lemmings, Hayek thought as he watched Burke spring for the door. A fraternity of highly intelligent, gilded lemmings. That’s all these traders are. They are a breed driven by rumors, he thought, nodding to his aide’s farewell. They prance about like princes, they bray like stallions, but at the first hint of peril they show their true nature. As the world would soon see.

T
HAT EVENING Hayek dined in solitary splendor at Norman’s, not an altogether foul restaurant in Coral Gables. But neither the meal nor the Spanish colonial surroundings held his attention. He found himself given over to another place and different meals, ones shared with his mother at Manhattan’s Russian Tea Room. It had been his mother’s favorite place, the red velvet and brass and padded linen tablecloths all vaguely reminiscent of the grandeur she had once known. One of the waiters of Pavel’s youth had been a minor Hungarian noble, someone his mother would most likely have scorned in another era. Even so, she would always sit at one of his tables. They would say little to one another, and speak only French, the social tongue of the central European aristocracy. And never, ever would they mention the lost realm. There was no need. A subtle shift of one eyebrow, a lingering sigh, a languorous glance at the restaurant’s pedestrian crowd. It was enough. The waiter always called her Principessa and referred to the young Hayek as Monsieur le Comte. In return she had always used the most powerful of his vague connections, just the one word—Romanov. Upon departure, as she offered him a gloved hand, he would give the stiff half-bow of royalty, and she would bestow upon him a second title—that of Cousin. He was long gone now, as was Hayek’s own mother. But the memories made for pleasant company. His mother would no doubt approve mightily of his present strategy.

Afterward he proceeded to the Jackie Gleason Theater of the Performing Arts, known locally as the TOPA. Tonight the full Kirov Ballet was dancing Stravinsky, providing the only reason Hayek had agreed to this journey at all. The director’s box had cost him a twenty-thousand dollar donation. Hayek sat in solitary detachment and watched the dancers take leaps of which even Nijinsky might have approved.

Before the intermezzo applause had died down, a dark-suited young woman appeared at his elbow. “Would you follow me, Mr. Hayek?”

“Everything has been arranged?”

“Just as you requested. This way, please.”

And indeed it was, a remarkable feat in this most variable of towns. The upper floor had a small open mezzanine, guarded now by yet another official. Hayek had ignored the Brazilian banker’s insistence on meeting in their downtown offices, knowing the disadvantage would be too great. Controlling the turf was half the battle won. The young woman opened the door for him, accepted the tip with grave thanks, and shut the door firmly behind him.

“My dear Pavel, this is marvelous. Really.” The Brazilian was portly and wore a saint’s wreath of white hair. He waved his cigar to the balcony, the spring night, the champagne in the beaded silver bucket. “How you find these islands of privacy in the midst of this glorious city is utterly beyond me.”

“There is nothing glorious about Miami,” Hayek replied loftily. “Nothing whatsoever.”

“But it is your closest metropolis, not to mention a place of Latin flavors. Even the crime is served with salsa.” The banker beckoned at a shadow hulking by the balcony railing. Another man stepped from the night and entered the light splashing through the doors behind them. “A new associate of our group, and a new potential investor for you.”

Hayek accepted the absence of name with a sharp nod. The man gave the same back. His face was all angles and danger, his eyes Siberian ice. Hayek shifted to Russian and said, “Will you take champagne?”

The man showed an instant’s ire at being caught out so swiftly. The Brazilian banker poured laughter like oil over the disjointed moment. “Pavel, Pavel, you are too piercing for us. Of course, pour us some champagne, and let us speak of how you will make us all rich.”

Hayek stripped the foil and the wire netting and popped the cork. Russian mafia money buying Brazilian banks, then aiming at an American hedge fund. A world gone truly insane, ripe for its own destruction. “You are already rich.”

“As are you, my dear sir. As are you. But a little less rich than before your Ecuador fiasco.” The Brazilian cut him a scalpel-sharp look, there and gone so swiftly Hayek could pretend to have missed it. The banker accepted the first glass, as was his due. “But there is always more power to be gained, is there not. More power and bigger toys.” He sipped from his glass, nodded approval. “My youngest mistress does so dearly love her helicopter.”

Hayek gave the second glass to the Russian, raised his own, and said, “If you retract your gray-suited dogs, we might just succeed. Given the present circumstances, we risk yet another disaster.”

The dark eyes congealed. “We had nothing to do with the girl’s demise in Washington. As I have repeatedly told you.”

“Washington is history. There have been more incidents, as you well know. Those dolts of yours create havoc wherever they go. Only one of them manages to speak anything resembling English. They endanger everything.”

“Pavel, Pavel, I shall speak frankly. You have the habit of treating other people’s money as your own. We shall therefore have people in place to ensure you follow our agreed-upon policy.”

Hayek bristled. “Nobody regulates me.”

“Ah, but that is precisely what we shall do, if you want our money.” The voice turned soothing. “I have spoken personally with their chief. They shall obey you to the letter from now on.”

Hayek pretended to accept the inevitable with bad grace, and groused, “If there is one more problem, one more failure of any kind, they’re out.”

“Yes. Very well. To that I agree.” He moved the cigar to the hand holding his champagne so that he could pat Hayek’s shoulder. “You should be pleased with the gift, Pavel, not complaining like an old woman. These are highly trained specialists. If they have failed, it is because they are not used to, how shall I say it, handling such minor matters. Their connections cover the globe and are there for you to command.”

Hayek hid his satisfaction with a gambler’s skill. “You just make sure they learn to follow orders.”

“Of course, my dear Pavel. Of course.” The smile returned. “Now let us enjoy this excellent champagne while you explain to my new associate why he should help to finance your little project. What was that remarkable name you gave it?”

Hayek took a long breath, and replied evenly, “Tsunami.”

H
AYEK’S CELLPHONE chimed just as he was ushering his guests back indoors. Burke sounded as frantic as Hayek had ever heard.

Hayek felt a sudden rush of rage at the report, so great he could only manage, “I will call you back in two minutes.”

“But—”

“Two minutes.” He slapped the phone shut, wheeled about, and strode to the balcony’s railing.

Not even the night could mask Miami’s rough edges. South of TOPA rose a ghastly high-rise parking garage, leering at him like a face with rotting teeth. Beyond that, crowds streamed along Lincoln Avenue, a pedestrian mall filled with nightclubs and shops. Hayek grimaced at the sound of Latin rap exploding from a car trolling Collins Avenue below him. Those who found Miami enticing drew their points of comparisons from more barbaric lands, of that he had no doubt. He forced himself to take a slow breath, to relax in stages, to think.

Hayek knew what others did not. There was one path to holding dominion over might and wealth. Just one. He was not referring to what satisfied most people, what passed for achievement. No. To attain the pinnacle, the rarefied heights for which Hayek had been born, there was only one narrow trajectory. There must be a tightening down of all energy, every shred of emotion and force and desire, until all life’s impetus was aimed at the one goal. A hunger so great it redefined the very breath of his body. A motive so strong every action and personal contact must help achieve the goal or be counted as dross to be scattered and forgotten. Aspirations must be honed to such a level that they became fiercer than the sharpest blade, cutting through all of life, carving away everything but the essential kernel. Nothing counted except the goal. Nothing. All else was simply the debris others lived for, what they lied and claimed was enough.