Masquerade (42 page)

Bremner was the kind you never turned your back on. What was he up to?

Quill prowled the room, flicked on the oversized television, then flicked it off. He paused to stare unseeing at his free weights and Nordic Track. At the jar of steroids. Then he returned to the message: The Languedoc was on the alert, looking all over Paris for Liz's cousin, Sarah Walker. What in hell was Sarah doing here? Some celebrity assignment for
Talk
? Or was Bremner using her somehow?

Then there was that mansion on the rue Vivienne. It appeared to be a place where some kind of cultlike activities took place, involving some of France's top leaders in business, communications, and government. And Quill's informants had recently heard hints of a connection between the mansion and a highly placed CIA chief. Was that chief perhaps Hughes
Bremner? Did he have some private agenda of his own? And if so, did it involve the Carnivore?

Quill paced. He knotted and unknotted his hands. He stared at his fingertips, where the special acid had burned away the prints. He stretched his arms back and forth over his muscular pectorals. To an outsider, he'd look as restless as a caged wild cat, but all he felt was his usual heavy sense of waiting. He'd felt this enormous sense of waiting every day, day after day, from the moment the Carnivore had agreed to come in and Quill's life had been radically curtailed by that decision.

He hated it. The Carnivore should be free.

But the decision had been made, and now his one motivation was Liz. She wanted to live a normal life.

He went to change into a disguise.

The helicopter carrying Hughes Bremner landed atop the Languedoc in golden August light. The pilot killed the engine, and Bremner jumped out, head low beneath the whipping blades. Gordon Taite was waiting, his square face grave. Hell and damnation! What else had gone wrong? Had he made a mistake putting Gordon in charge of M
ASQUERADE
?

As Bremner walked Gordon over to the low wall that rimmed the Languedoc's roof where they could talk privately, he reflected on how his twenty-year relationship with Gordon had changed. It had started simply enough, when he had identified Gordon as a pathological liar, and that trait, in combination with certain others, had indicated he might find the young man useful.

Gordon lied that he'd been an excellent college student, recruited into the CIA by his favorite history professor. Not true. Gordon had been a Ku Klux Klan member who'd carried an illegal pistol, and a loner often on academic probation. But in those days Langley could still order legal assassinations, and so, when a campus recruiter had interviewed and researched Gordon, he'd judged the youth correctly—trainable as a killer.

Like serial murderers Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, Gordon was not only a pathological liar, he was highly intelligent
and, when it suited his purposes, smooth and charming. Parents tended to trust him. But their daughters, if he was seeking excitement, quickly discovered his need for blood.

Bremner had analyzed the youthful Gordon shrewdly: He had an overinflated sense of confidence, with little self-esteem to back it up. He also had such a low level of excitability that, when Bremner first met him, Gordon was having to search harder, work harder, and tread perilously close to murder to get the exhilaration he craved. He had become ruthless.

Bremner prized ruthlessness and intelligence. He needed a man with a great deal of charm and a low level of excitability. He wanted all that, and he wanted it in someone whose desperate needs could no longer be met within the law.

Gordon didn't even try to understand Hughes Bremner, because what was vital to him was that Bremner understood him and, knowing the worst, still give him authority, respect, and a place in the world. Gordon killed for Bremner and thanked him for it. If he had one unfulfilled dream, it was to somehow become Hughes Bremner's son. They both knew that. And after twenty years, Gordon sensed Bremner occasionally did think of him that way.

And so they stopped together on the rooftop, two tall, polished men, athletic beneath tailored suits, each powerful in a different way. Fearless, bold, they gazed down the sheer face of the Languedoc, a seventy-story drop straight to the concrete street, and then out across the vast, undulating city. The boulevards and avenues were quiet. Then church bells rang from every corner. It was eight o'clock.

Bremner said, “Tell me.”

Gordon handed him the
Herald Tribune
. “I'm in this article. The writer, Marilyn Michaels, didn't use my real name, but it's me. Anyone who knows anything will know it's me.”

“It can't be that bad.” Hughes Bremner read. It was that bad. He repressed rage and panic.

Gordon asked, “Who's Marilyn Michaels?”

Bremner said, “It's a pseudonym for Leslee Pousho. Lucas's bitch. She made copies of his documents. But we've got her and the documents. There'll be no more in this series.”

He didn't tell Gordon the woman was alive and might have another copy of the documents. It was immaterial. She'd be dead soon, and so would Bunny. And in two days, after G
RANDEUR
rocked Europe and made him rich beyond imagining, he'd be untouchable in his stronghold—Indigo Reef, his lush atoll south of Pago Pago in the South Seas. Far from Washington, Langley, Arlene Debo, and that yellow turncoat, the President of the United States.

“What if someone finds out?” Gordon asked.

Bremner clapped him on the back, squeezed his shoulder. “They won't. Now fill me in on Sarah Walker.” Behind them, the pilot had finished his work and joined the helipad crew in their office. Bremner's suitcases would be waiting there.

Gordon described Walker's escape from Je Suis Chez Moi, Asher Flores's escape from the alley near the computer shop, and the near-miss early that morning when the pair had almost been captured at the Hotel Aphrodite. “Someone set off an explosion at Je Suis Chez Moi and helped her escape, and someone was in that alley with Flores. We're not sure who it was either time, but it almost looks like it was Walker in the alley. If it was, she's the one who got our agents. Maybe all three of them.”

“You may have taught her too well,” Bremner said dryly. Then softened it: “But perhaps that will help tonight.”

“Yes, it could,” Gordon agreed. “Our people are covering the city. Everyone's out there. We've found her twice, we'll find her again, and this time she won't get away.”

“It's got to be by 6:00
P.M.
Levine needs two hours to get her ready for the coming-in.”

“Everyone knows the time problem, sir. It's made them even more determined, and they're taking Bill Howells's death at the hotel personally. It was unfortunate I had to eliminate him.”

Bremner nodded once. “Unavoidable.”

“Yes. And after Flores and Walker murdered Ed, Steve, and Jasper in the alley last night, our team's blood is really up. Nothing will stop them from getting the woman.”

“Good.” Emotional commitment was the strongest motivation
of all. But Bremner frowned. “You haven't found any indication who set the bomb at Je Suis Chez Moi?”

“We're still looking into it.”

“What about the police?”

Gordon grinned. “Taken care of. I had one of our agents make an anonymous call claiming she represented one of the Basque terrorist groups. She told them a rival clan had done it.”

Bremner smiled his chilly smile, and Gordon felt a surge of pride. “Let's walk.”

Bremner moved off, and within a step Gordon was again at his side. They strolled along the ramparts, each lost in his private thoughts. Gordon felt peace, undisturbed by the usual nagging need for the next thrill. Bremner's presence did that for him.

Halfway around the building, Bremner judged the direction of the wind was right. They stopped. Hughes Bremner climbed up on the wall, balanced above certain death. Gordon hesitated, then did the same. They stood defiant against normal fear. Bremner felt as if he were on top of the highest peak in the world. The blue sky stretched endlessly. Below, the people hurrying to church were the size of ants. He looked up and out and down with the calm certainty of ownership. He understood to his marrow that no cost was too high, no deed too violent to acquire what he wanted. He would always do what was necessary.

“Look at them, Gordon. So content to pass from birth to grave nothing more than ants. Insects. Unseen and unknown in their miserable petty lives.”

Suddenly he reached down and unzipped his pants. With the wind behind him, he urinated in a long yellow stream out past the Languedoc's sharp drop. Bremner laughed into the wind high atop his own mountain. Gordon stared in awe, then followed his master. They watched their urine shatter into drops and fall upon the world of insects far below.

“As you know,” Bremner said, zipping his trousers, “I'm moving permanently to Indigo Reef right after G
RANDEUR
is over. You'll be a rich man, too. Would you like to come with me, Gordon? Would you like to be my number one?”

Gordon's heart seemed to stop. Joy flooded him with the greatest rush he'd ever felt. He would be Bremner's heir, his son in all but name. And, someday, perhaps that, too.

“I'd like that very much, sir.” There was sincere affection in his voice.

Hughes Bremner looked at him with calculating eyes. “Then I must have Sarah Walker by 6:00
P.M.
today.”

Chapter 48

Sarah missed Asher already. If she allowed herself, she could feel him wrapped around her, his warm breath against her ear. As she walked down the street in her Hasidic clothes, wire-rimmed spectacles on her nose, she felt more female than at any time in her life. It was ironic she'd not only become an agent, she was in love with one, too. She remembered an old Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” She felt cursed, but with Asher she was also blessed.

As she turned onto the rue Vivienne, she slowed, wiping from her mind this newfound experience, this love. She thickened her jaw, sobered her face, walked with her shoulders rather than her hips, and felt herself grow heavier, more masculine.

She looked ahead and inhaled sharply, stunned.

The stately Greco-Roman mansion that had been Je Suis Chez Moi was gone. All that remained was smoking rubble. Fire-blackened stones, soot, and ash lay heaped across the property. The conflagration must have been horrible, enormous.

Two fire trucks were still parked in the street. Firemen were retracting ladders and rewinding hoses. On the other side, onlookers filled the outside tables of Café Justine, watching the show. A hundred other spectators lined the rue Vivienne.

Sarah pretended ignorance. She asked a young man with a lion's mane of hair what had happened. He was straddling his bicycle, watching. All he knew was that no bodies had been
discovered. Two older men sat on a bus bench, Gauloises cigarettes drooping from the corners of their mouths. They were arguing about who could have created such a disaster.

A nanny was rocking a baby carriage at Café Justine, observing not only the smoking ruins but the variety of people there to enjoy the show. She was stout, with one of those little white caps pinned to her salt-and-pepper curls, a serviceable dress, thick cotton stockings, and heavy shoes. A classic, no-nonsense nanny straight from the pages of a European photo album. When Sarah asked, she knew no more than the boy on the bicycle.

Sarah turned and pushed into the café. She had an odd feeling she'd seen the nanny somewhere before. Inside, a few heads turned, but there were no significant stares. The man in the straw Panama was nowhere in sight, nor were any of the people she'd seen last night at Je Suis Chez Moi.

She took a seat at the coffee bar and ordered a glass of hot tea in a low voice in her halting French.

“Americain?”
the woman behind the counter asked curiously.

Sarah nodded.
“Oui. étudiant
from California.” She fingered her prayer shawl as the woman struck up a conversation. In between waiting on other customers, the woman told Sarah the fire had started just before daybreak, but because of the bombing, the tenants—whoever they were—had already moved out. And, of course, it was all the doing of the Basques. All that isolation and thin mountain air. The woman twirled her index finger around her ear, indicating her belief in their madness.

Sarah was surprised. So there were two incidents—the bombing last night and a fire this morning. She pondered both as she drank tea and answered the woman's questions about Israel and California. At last she was able to ask about the man in the straw Panama with the red tartan band. But the woman reminded her it was summer and many men wore straw hats. Alas, she had no memory of this one, but that was not to say he didn't come in periodically. She gave a classic Gallic shrug.

Sarah took her tea outside and drank standing up. The youth on the bicycle had gone, but the two men smoking Gauloises
cigarettes were still there. The old-fashioned nanny was still in her chair, still gently rocking the baby carriage. Sarah continued to look for faces from last night—attendants, the masseuse, café patrons, anyone at all. But she recognized none. She thought briefly of Dr. Levine and hoped he was still hallucinating, or if not, at least suffering a severe hangover.

She still had three hours until her noon meeting with Asher. In a nearby phone booth she found a directory and looked up Chantelle Joyeaux. She smiled as she read the address. She'd passed that block this morning. She strode off down the street.

As she turned the corner, leaving behind the crowds and confusion on the rue Vivienne, her gut kicked in—Liz Sansborough's gut: She sensed two men coming up behind her. A door was open to her left. Without consciously thinking about it, she darted inside and along a dim corridor. There was light at the end.

She burst out into a tiny patio ringed by geraniums, jumped over a stone wall, and dropped down into a basement-level passage. As she landed, she could feel her bandage tear loose. Hot blood spread under her black jacket.