Lovers and Liars Trilogy (50 page)

“Did you believe it really was a practical joke?”

“It could have been. That’s what he said. Frankly, I didn’t much care. Anyway,” she paused, “he came back the next morning with the most incredible fur coat I ever saw in my life, and these unbelievable pearls. The coat was to hide the fact that the Chanel suit didn’t fit too well—he had it all figured out. There’s not much more to tell really. He had a cab waiting downstairs. He drove with me to that courier place, waited in the cab downstairs. I took the packages in, did my number….” She grinned. “Back to Claridges, say farewell to the pearls and the coat. Collect twenty thousand dollars. Go home.”

“You sound as if you enjoyed it”

“Sure. I did. I liked Hamilton. I thought it was fun. No harm done.” A shadow crossed her face.

“Was I wrong?”

“I’m afraid you were.”

“I thought so.” She gave him a shrewd glance. “More than just sending some unwelcome handcuffs, right?”

“Yes. More than that.” Pascal hesitated. “You haven’t discussed this with anyone?”

“No. Only you. Hamilton said not to. So did Appleyard.” She glanced at him again. “You look kind of grim, you know. Is this dangerous in some way? Am I in danger? Are you?”

Pascal signaled to the waiter to bring the bill. He was not sure of the answer to that question, but he was unwilling to say so.

Loma Munro frowned. “Great. I’m
not
all right, in other words. And neither are you.”

“No, no.” Pascal rose and paid for their meal. Loma Munro also rose; together they walked out through the glass-enclosed forecourt of the café onto the sidewalk of the Rue Bonaparte and into the rain.

Lorna Munro shivered, and wrapped her coat more tightly around her. The streetlights were on now, the rush hour just beginning; the daylight was starting to fail. The model braced herself against the wind, then smiled and turned back to Pascal.

“Well, it can’t matter that much,” she said. “All I did was deliver a few parcels. Still, I’ll keep my mouth shut from now on.”

“It might be a good idea.”

“And avoid Appleyard.” She laughed. “Well, I hope I was some kind of help. I have to get back to my hotel now. I fly back to New York tonight. Nice meeting you, Pascal.” They shook hands. Lorna Munro turned away, then turned back. “Hey, one last thing. When I’m famous, don’t creep up and take pictures by my swimming pool, okay?” She grinned. “Let me know in advance. Come right in the front door….”

“I’ll do that,” Pascal replied, and raised his hand in farewell.

Lorna Munro stepped off the sidewalk to the edge of the traffic streaming along the boulevard. She looked to right and left, saw the lights change at the St. Germain intersection, and began to cross. Watching her, Pascal was certain she never saw the car.

It came out of the stream of traffic to his right and accelerated fast. By the time it reached the red light and the intersection, it was traveling at around fifty miles an hour. A black Mercedes sedan with tinted glass, it hit Lorna Munro sideways on, and tossed her body ten feet in the air. She landed across its hood, skewed, then was thrown to the ground.

A cacophony of horns filled the air. Pascal saw other passersby on the sidewalk freeze, as he froze, and stare. The Mercedes sped fast across the intersection and disappeared down the boulevard with screeching tires. Its driver never once touched the brakes; there was no time even to read the license plate. One second it was there, the next it was gone.

Pascal began to run forward into the boulevard. His limbs felt heavy and slow with shock. It seemed to take an immense time to travel twenty yards.

Lorna Munro must have been killed instantly, he knew that as soon as he reached her. Her neck had been broken, perhaps her spine. She lay on her back on the road, in a cluster of gathering people, her beautiful face unmarked, and her blue eyes gazing up at the sky.

A man checked for a pulse at her throat, then shook his head. Pascal hesitated, then turned aside and pushed his way through the crowd. Other witnesses would have seen the car. He could be of no further use here. Police inquiries would hinder, not help her. He stopped. He could still hear her voice, and the frank optimism with which she’d spoken of her future plans.

She’d had less than half an hour to live at the time. He leaned against a wall and pressed his face against its grime. He looked at the question, and then looked at it again: If he had not contacted her, would Lorna Munro still be alive?

“W
HO ELSE KNOWS ABOUT
the Hawthorne story?” Gini said to Nicholas Jenkins.

They were in the back of Jenkins’s chauffeur-driven Jaguar. The car, one of the perks of Jenkins’s job, was speeding south to the Savoy through wet streets. Jenkins seemed distracted and on edge.

“Come on, Nicholas. Someone else knows. Who? Daiches?”

“Will you give me a break? How many times do I have to say it? You, Lamartine, me. That’s it.” He stopped, then glanced at her sharply. “Why?”

“Because I’m getting the strong feeling someone does know, Nicholas. They knew before you even assigned Pascal and me to this.”

“Crap. You’re getting paranoid, Gini.”

“Look, Nicholas, just give me a straight answer, will you? Does Daiches know?”

“No, he bloody well does not. I know Daiches likes to imagine he’s rather better informed than God, but I have news for him. He isn’t.” He glanced at her again. “Why, was he fishing?”

“Not exactly. He made a few remarks about this dinner with Hawthorne tonight.”

“So? I don’t blame him. I made a few myself. Since when have you been so pally with our illustrious proprietor? Hand-delivered invitations—”

“Never mind that now, Nicholas. It’s not important. This is. If Daiches doesn’t know, did Johnny Appleyard? Had you heard any rumors about Hawthorne from Appleyard? Nicholas, did Appleyard give you this tip?”

“I don’t believe I’m hearing this! How many times do I have to spell it out? This is my story, one hundred percent. It has nothing to do with fucking Appleyard, God rest his soul and all that. This was
my
lead, via
my
source, and it’ll be
my
fucking exclusive if you and Pascal come up with the goods.
If
you actually make some progress. Are you making progress?”

“Yes, Nicholas, we are. I worked all damn weekend on this.”

“So? Big deal.”

“And what’s more, it’s a much bigger story than we originally thought.”

“It is?” Interest gleamed in his eyes, then he raised a finger to his lips. “Save the details for later.” He glanced at the glass screen between them and his driver. “After dinner, I’ll drive you home. We can talk then.” He stared out the window at the passing streets. Then he seemed to make an effort to improve his own mood; he turned back to her with a smile. “This should be useful anyway,” he said. “Gives you a chance to see Hawthorne’s public persona. …I must say, Gini, you’re looking very pretty tonight. It makes a change to see you in a dress.”

He eyed her legs as he said this. Gini put another three inches of leather seat between them. The car was slowing. Jenkins peered through the window again.

“Oh, I don’t believe it. What the fuck!”

Approaching Kingsway and Covent Garden, they came to an abrupt halt. Ahead of them, through jammed traffic, Gini could see police cars and flashing lights. They inched their way toward the melee. Security barriers were being erected. All the traffic was being diverted. In the distance a siren wailed.

“Fucking IRA,” Jenkins said. He leaned forward and opened the glass partition. “Just step on it, will you, Chris. Cut through the Garden and go down past the opera house.”

“That’s just what I am doing, sir. So is everyone else.”

“Then use your ingenuity,” Jenkins snapped. “That’s what you’re paid for. I don’t intend to be late.”

The dinner at the Savoy was a large one. It was being held in the River Room, and Gini estimated there were three hundred guests.

The security was tight—because of the current round of bomb scares, Gini assumed at first. Jenkins corrected her on this.

“Nothing to do with the Dublin cowboys,” he said irritably. “This was all laid on weeks ago, Melrose told me. We’ve John Hawthorne’s presence to thank for this.” He gestured toward the throng of people at the entrance to the River Room. Each person had to present a security pass; each pass was laboriously checked. When they finally reached the entrance, Gini’s small evening bag was opened and searched.

“Perhaps you’d like me to turn out my pockets,” Jenkins said in a blustering way.

“That won’t be necessary, sir,” replied a polite American. “Just run your hands under this scanner, front and back. …Thank you, sir. Ma’am.”

Gini held her hands beneath a device the size of a portable phone. A bluish light scanned the backs of her hands, then her palms.

Nicholas took her arm, and they walked through a discreet scaffold device erected in the doorway. Jenkins had keys in his pocket which triggered an alarm. Politely but firmly, he was taken aside behind a screen. He emerged flushed, and spent the next half hour boasting of his experiences there.

“The scanner?” he said jovially to right and left. “The scanner’s nothing. Believe me.
I
had the CIA grope. A testicular thrill. Best sex in years…”

The evening, as Gini had expected, was a high-powered affair. At the dais, some distance from where she and Jenkins were both seated, she counted four serving cabinet ministers, three press barons including Melrose, several well-known television news reporters, the head of the Independent Broadcasting Authority, and no less than four leading newspaper editors. When Jenkins observed these four, his expression became sour.

“Why’s that pompous fart from
The Times
up there?” he said. “And that Scots wanker. Great. Just great. Thanks a bunch, Melrose. …” He began to crumble his roll savagely. Turning his back on Gini, he launched into conversation with the woman seated on his other side.

“Correct. Up a hundred thousand, and still rising…” Gini heard.

She turned her attention back to the head table. John Hawthorne was seated at its center, flanked by Lord Melrose and the chairman of the BBC governors. There were no female faces, and Hawthorne was the youngest person there by at least a decade.

Compared to the powerful but aging men who surrounded him, Hawthorne emanated youth and authority. The later speeches were to be televised, and the lights in the room were already strong. They blanched the skin, and gave several of Hawthorne’s companions an appearance of fatigue. Not the ambassador, however, Hawthorne might have been wearing TV makeup—Gini was too far away to be sure. If so, it had been expertly applied. He looked even more tanned and fit than usual; the tan emphasized the blue of his eyes, the white Hollywood perfection of his smile.

Where were the security men? Gini studied the room. She could see the toastmaster, various waiters, a television crew just to the left of the dais, and another, more centrally placed, just below Hawthorne himself. A floor manager, with headphones, two soundmen…and then she saw them: that Malone man, immediately below the dais, and two more on either side. One was Frank Romero, the other a man she had not seen before.

As she looked she saw Romero turn, scan the room, glance back to the ambassador, then move across and speak to one of the waiters. The man nodded and disappeared. Frank Romero made a movement that was now becoming familiar to her: He raised his arm and appeared to mutter into his cuff. At a distance, the tiny wrist mike was invisible. Romero lowered his arm, made another quick, hard inspection of the room, then crossed to one of the tables nearest the dais. He bent and spoke into the ear of a white-haired man.

Gini stared. He was about forty feet from her, facing in her direction. He was unmistakable: It was the ambassador’s father, S. S. Hawthorne. He listened intently to Romero, then said something. Romero walked swiftly away.

Gini frowned: Hawthorne had told her that his father was coming over for that forty-eighth birthday party—a party that was still more than a week away. She was certain that was how he had phrased it. He had given no indication that his father was arriving this soon.

Strange. She surveyed the other tables. It was difficult to be sure, but she thought Lise Hawthorne was not present. So, the wife was absent, but the father was here: What could that mean?

She looked back at S. S. Hawthorne. She could now see that he was seated in a wheelchair. He was deep in conversation with the woman next to him. He looked much younger than his years. Like his son, he conveyed force and vitality. He had remained handsome; he looked vigorous. She would have put his age at little more than sixty-five, though she knew he was only a year away from his eightieth birthday.

“The Magus,” said the man seated to her left. He spoke suddenly, making Gini jump. Looking around, she saw that he had followed her gaze, and was also looking at S. S. Hawthorne. As she turned, he smiled. A short, gray-haired American, aged about forty. He glanced down at the place card in front of her.

“Genevieve, it
is
you. Sam’s daughter, right? I couldn’t believe it when I saw you. Last time we met—well, I guess you were around four, five years old.” He held out his hand to her. “You won’t remember. I’m Jason Stein.”

“I’m afraid I don’t remember meeting, but of course I know your name.
The New York Times,
yes?”

“Right. I’m head of the London bureau now. For my sins.” He grinned. “Nice to meet you again. So tell me”—he lowered his voice—“why the big interest in the Magus over there?” He nodded in S. S. Hawthorne’s direction.

“That’s what you call him, the Magus?”

Stein gave her a dry look. “It’s one of the terms. One of the more flattering ones, sure.”

Gini glanced back; S. S. Hawthorne lifted his head at that moment. Across the distance separating them he gave their table a hard blue-eyed stare. Gini looked quickly away. “No reason,” she said to Stein. “I was intrigued, that’s all. I’ve read enough about him, I just never saw him before.”

“I wonder what the heck brought him to London.” Stein had also averted his gaze from S. S. Hawthorne’s table. “These days he rarely leaves that place of his in upstate New York. At least, that’s what I always heard.”