Masquerade (30 page)

“Yessir. Anything else?” The voice was almost mechanical, trained to dispassion. But the operator had worked with Bremner for nearly twenty years, and Bremner knew he could trust him.

“Sarah Walker and Asher Flores are probably on their way to Paris. Inform all our special people they're likely to arrive shortly.” Bremner hung up and sat back to think.

Bunny was staring at him, looking almost frightened. He was accustomed to anger and hate, but not fright. What had scared her? With Scotch regularly flooding her blood, her brain
had to be more a pickled lab specimen than an operating mind. Yet she seemed to be suddenly afraid of . . . what?

“Hughes!” Bunny glared at him. “Who is Sarah Walker?”

He was startled. She must have heard him use the woman's name over the telephone, but why would that bother her? Then it struck him. She was jealous. She thought he was going to Paris to meet a woman. He hadn't thought she was capable of even that much rationality. The ridiculousness of it pleased him.

“No one you know, my dear,” he said soberly. “No one you need to know.”

Chapter 33

Saturday

It was early morning and the Virginia countryside glowed with dew and vigor. The timbered shoulders of the Blue Ridge Mountains stood sharp against the cloudless sky. Leslee Pousho stared out through the window of a small market as she waited for the clerk to fax the first Sarah Walker story to Washington.

She'd been up all night writing it, and she was tired. But she was also elated at what she felt was a good beginning to the series she and her editor envisioned about the rise, decline, and ruthless transformation of Sarah Walker into Liz Sansborough. Tonight she'd write the second part and fax it off tomorrow morning. But now she wanted to sleep, and she would be able to do that once she returned to the isolated cabin she'd rented in the mountains some ten miles above here. She felt moderately safe in this backwater of vineyards, horse farms, and hunt clubs.

She'd chosen the area not only for safety, but also because Hughes Bremner and his socialite wife lived somewhere among these thoroughbred estates. Lucas had told her they owned a landmark manor and a thousand acres of pristine forest.

For Lucas, she'd do a series on Hughes Bremner, a man without a shadow. A professional spy who managed a secret global corporation from the bureaucratic safety of Langley with the
adroitness of a Lee Iacocca and the ruthlessness of an Idi Amin.

It was a dangerous idea. If they realized who she was or what she was doing, they'd kill her. But they'd kill her if they found her now anyway. She wanted to kill them first, if only metaphorically. Reveal them. Ruin them. Destroy them.

It was dangerous, yes, but the only way she knew to survive was to fight back. Besides, where would a criminal be safer than across the street from the police station? The last place Hughes Bremner would look was under his nose.

“I'm finished.” The young man offered Leslee Pousho a nervous smile. “Sorry it took so long. My first time.”

As she slid her originals back into their folder, she noticed a classic red Mercedes 450 SL pull up to the market. A sixtyish woman with bleached platinum hair, too much makeup, and a silk Town & Country dress emerged from the Mercedes with a flash of thigh. She teetered up the stairs on too-high heels.

Pousho thanked the clerk, paid him, and accidentally brushed past the woman. The air of the chic market was heavy with olive oil and fragrant potpourri, but she could still smell last night's liquor on the woman's breath.

“Cup of coffee, Buddy. Black.” The woman's voice was faint and wavery, like an old, worn 78 rpm record.

“Trial still going on, Mrs. Bremner?” the boy asked.

Leslee Pousho looked back.

The perfectly coiffed platinum head nodded. “There's a special session today.” She paid and headed toward the door.

Pousho held it open for her.

“Thanks, dear.” Bunny Hartford Bremner smiled her capped teeth in Pousho's direction, held her big Styrofoam cup in both hands, and stepped outside. She headed across the town square toward the Federalist-style county courthouse.

Pousho hurried after her. “Mrs. Bremner?”

The woman looked at her pleasantly, but her high heels kept up their resolute march. “Not now, dear. I have jury duty.”

“May I buy you lunch when you break?”

Bunny Bremner looked startled, like a cat disturbed from a nap. It appeared to Pousho few people asked the alcoholic socialite out to lunch, much less offered to pay.

“Well, I don't really know you—”

“I'm a newspaper reporter doing a series about this area. I was hoping you'd let me interview you. I've been told you're one of the county's most respected citizens.”

Bunny Bremner perked up at the idea of being respected. She agreed, set a time and place, and traipsed on into the courthouse without spilling a drop.

Leslee smiled for the first time since Lucas was killed. One way or another, no matter what it cost, she'd expose Hughes Bremner—not to avenge Lucas's death, but to vindicate his life. Few of us walk through the valley of the shadow and emerge triumphant on the other side. Lucas nearly had.

“I don't know, dear. Hughes is like most husbands, I suppose. He wanted my money. You won't put that in your article, will you?” Bunny Bremner nervously fingered her egg-salad sandwich and glanced around the café. Many of the diners still wore their leather-and-felt riding clothes.

As Leslee Pousho had expected, the café was small and modish, with blue-checked tablecloths, fresh carnations, and bottles of wine from local Meredyth and Piedmont vineyards.

“Of course not,” Leslee said. “This is just background. But what I don't understand is why Mr. Bremner bothered to take a job at all.”

She ordered Bunny Bremner's water glass refilled.

The older woman shot her a weak smile and drank the water. “Partly it was because he loved the work. I can't reveal which agency he's in, but you don't need that for ‘background,' I'm sure. He never could get himself promoted to the top though. He's good, you know. So three years ago I pulled a few strings. I'd never done that, but I thought, well, if he becomes head of the agency, that's better than inheriting my money, isn't it? But there was nothing I could do. Either they didn't like him, or he did his job so well they wanted to keep him in it.”

She picked up her sandwich and put it down again. She had an alcoholic's meager appetite. What surprised Leslee was that she ignored the bar in the corner, which was already doing a
brisk business. Obviously, she still had some control over her drinking.

“It must be hard to see him so unhappy.” Leslee ate her sandwich, Swiss cheese on rye, although a combination of fear and excitement had stolen her appetite, too. This woman could be a gold mine of information.

Bunny frowned, and her sun-weathered face spread in a pond of wrinkles beneath her platinum hair. “That's what bothers me most. He's not miserable. In fact, he seems happy most of the time. But he's got no reason for it. We have a . . . less-than-perfect marriage. Sometimes I wonder whether he's planning to run away. I shouldn't be telling you this, should I?”

“Of course you should. You need to talk, and I'm not taking a single note. Women understand these things.” It was sexist and simplistic, and she regretted using such low-down tactics, but she felt Bunny Bremner would connect this way in a world dominated by unspeaking, unfeeling, insensitive males.

“Yes, we do.” Bunny's pink-rimmed little blue eyes grew moist. “Last night I ignored most of the conversation he was having on the phone. Well, actually, I'd been drinking a tiny bit. Anyway, at the end I couldn't help hearing him mention some friends' going to Paris. A Sarah Walker and an Asher something. What kind of name is Asher? Anyway, I could tell Hughes wanted to go with them. I think he may meet them there. He's been flying to Paris an awful lot lately. He wouldn't tell me who Sarah Walker was. Do you know them? Sarah Walker and this Asher person? Are they rich? Glamorous? Is she young and beautiful?”

Leslee Pousho forced herself to chew normally. “At this point, if he's happy as you say, I doubt he'll run away. And I don't know any Sarah Walker. Asher is a biblical name.”

Her mind grabbed the information and worked it over. Sarah Walker was going to Paris! But who was “Asher”? Nowhere had that name appeared in Lucas's files. If “Liz Sansborough” was taken to Paris, it would be by her handler, Gordon Taite. Something must have happened at the Ranch to change M
ASQUERADE
.

The older woman continued, “You have to understand, once
the Bremners were as wealthy as my family. There's this silly secret about their money coming from some black-birder. That's a sea captain who imported slaves. This was back in the early 1700s—”

Leslee listened with half attention as the older woman detailed the Bremners' and Hartfords' ancestry. Then she rattled off the genealogy of the rest of the county's prominent families. By the time Bunny needed to return to the courthouse, her wan cheeks had flushed and she'd eaten most of her sandwich. There was something about her that was forlorn, Leslee decided. She was like a piece of fine china brought out only to impress others, never to be enjoyed or used for herself.

As Leslee paid the bill, Bunny Bremner said, “Well, I have a little secret, too, don't I? You. What's your name, dear?”

“Marilyn Michaels.”

It was the pseudonym she'd put on her Sarah Walker article. But when she said the name, an idea struck her. Could Sarah Walker, aka Liz Sansborough, have escaped? Is that why she was headed to Paris?

As they walked out, Bunny Bremner said, “Because it's a special Saturday session, we're going to be let out early. Maybe we'll even come to a decision. Anyway, would you like to meet for coffee at three o'clock? It's been so pleasant chatting with you.”

Leslee eagerly accepted, and the older woman smiled and teetered back to the courthouse. As Leslee watched, she had a sudden insight: Bunny Bremner was greatly underrated, not only by her husband, but by herself. She wondered what it would take for Bunny to be who she really was.

Leslee returned to the market and faxed her editor a note making a few changes in her article to reflect Sarah's possible escape. She also asked her to fax the Sarah Walker series on to a friend at the
International Herald Tribune
, a global newspaper written and edited mostly in Paris.

At lunchtime Hughes Bremner was eating from a plate of Brie, Gala apples, and water crackers at his Langley desk when his
telephone rang. It was a trusted computer operator at Sterling-O'Keefe headquarters in downtown Washington.

“Sir, we have an entry on that woman—Leslee Pousho?”

“Yes. What is it?” Good. Progress at last!

“Gold Star Credit Resources okayed her credit last night to use her card to rent a cabin in Virginia for a month.”

Bremner smiled. “Exactly where in Virginia?”

“We're having a bit of a problem with that, sir. We've been unable to reach the realtor. He's supposed to be back soon.”

“What's his name?”

Bremner recognized it: James Carr. How strange. Mentally he shrugged. The location was immaterial. Leslee Pousho's freedom—and her life—were as good as over.

Chapter 34

Sarah Walker crossed the tree-lined Boulevard St.-Germain under the hot Paris sun and pushed through a crowd of noisy students protesting yesterday's Banque de France announcement of higher interest rates. The students carried signs and shouted for everyone to join them. Towering overhead were the regal eighteenth-century homes of European nobility. Only in France did the two extremes meet with such regularity: A heritage of aristocracy and an enthusiasm for revolution.

Sarah stopped at a newsstand and bought an
International Herald Tribune
. She flipped through the English-language paper, looking for her and Flores's photos. But they appeared nowhere, and neither did a headline heralding the arrival in Paris of two killers from Denver. Relieved, she walked off, just another Parisian in jeans, Western shirt, and day pack. For a city notoriously snobbish about
couture
, she found it amusing that American Western clothes remained a perennial favorite.

Neither she nor Flores had changed since their arrival an hour ago. After two nights of little rest, they'd slept heavily on the jet to Copenhagen. By the time they'd taken high-speed trains, rental cars, and had finally arrived in Paris, it was 5:00
P.M.
Checking into a hotel under the names on their fake passports was risky, since a tracking device had likely been planted on the Gold Star car Flores had rented in Denver, which meant the car would also have been tracked to the forger. If so, Gordon knew their cover identities.

Asher had a backup passport, but Sarah didn't, so he was checking himself into a hotel he'd used once before when he was undercover, but of which Langley had no knowledge. He'd have to sneak her in. Meanwhile, he planned to dig into Gold Star.

Sarah had her own quest. She stepped into a phone booth and dialed her old friend Blount McCaw, who free-lanced for U.S. and European magazines and who had published kiss-and-sell blockbusters on everyone from Princess Grace's gossip-plagued children to the licentious Count of Paris, pretender to the French throne. As a result of these successes, he'd earned a reputation as Europe's Sultan of Scandal.

“Allo? Allo? Allo?”
he answered.

“I'd recognize your sweet-talking voice anywhere, Blount.”

“Sarah? Good lord, is it you? Where are you calling from?”

“Los Angeles.” A useful lie to avoid showing him her face.

“Get out of that hellhole right now. How can you stand all those tiresome palms?”

Outside the phone booth the students stripped off their clothes. A demonstration, Paris style. For a moment Sarah smiled, thinking what a great piece this would make for
Talk
. She knotted her fist and pressed it into the telephone, but her voice showed none of her frustration: