Masquerade (44 page)

She turned. The Walther was in Quill's hand, aimed at her heart. With the other hand, he reached down the far side of his chair and pulled up his Uzi.

“You brought them!” he growled.

She knew instantly he must be right. “Not intentionally.”

Think! she told herself. She grabbed her Hasidic jacket from the end of the sofa and frantically searched the pockets.

She spoke rapidly. “The one who had the knife. He must've dropped a homing device somewhere in my clothes!”

“I have no more time.” Quill stood, aimed at her temple.

“Here it is! A nickel, in the pocket!” Her heart pounded. The “nickel” was like those she'd seen at the Ranch, and it held a tracking device. She threw it away.

“I should've searched you, dammit! Getting old.” He tossed her the Walther. “This way. Move!”

She followed him down a dark passageway. Of course, Quill would have another way out. There was an enormous explosion behind them. The floor shook. Quill knew it had to be the heavy steel door to his apartment. They'd blasted it open. In seconds Gordon and his people would be after them.

Quill jumped out a window and onto an asphalt roof. Sarah followed. Hunched low, they tore along the roofline. He stopped at padlocked shutters. Behind them feet thundered but were still not in sight. He unlocked the shutters, opened the tall roof window, and they leaped into a dusty storage room touched with the stale odors of long-ago garlic and onions. He unlocked another door, and now they were in another dimly lit corridor.

They turned right, ran down rickety stairs and through another doorway into a single-car garage. He closed and padlocked that door. The lock wouldn't stop their pursuers, but it would slow them. At this point, that could be enough.

They climbed into a sleek MG and, with a flick of his hand, the engine growled with power. Quill pressed a button, and the garage door opened.

He zoomed out into the quiet street.

Gunfire erupted on Quill's side of the car. A man and a woman with M-16s ran toward them. Gordon's people. Of course, once Gordon had tracked them to this block, he'd ordered the block surrounded. Quill propped his Uzi on his windowsill and fired round after round into them. They erupted in brilliant red tissue and peach-colored bone.

“Quill! They're dead!” She shook his shoulder. “Stop it!”

He grunted and dropped the Uzi to his lap. He drove swiftly out into the street, and as they skidded around a corner, she saw a strange sight—a clown, holding a bouquet of balloons, seemed to be running toward them. Quill floored the accelerator.

She sat unmoving, the stench of death in her nostrils. It wasn't a real smell, she realized. They were too far from the corpses for that. It was her past. The blond boy in Denver. The couple in the trunk of the Cadillac. The guard-attendants at Je Suis Chez Moi. Blount McCaw. The three men in the alley. And now this couple. So many dead.

The MG slowed and weaved erratically. They were a few blocks from the apartment, and Quill's gaze was locked on the quiet street ahead. The car decelerated, veered wildly.

“Sorry, Sarah. Tried to—” His voice was so thick he could hardly talk.

He angled the MG into an empty spot at the curb. In slow motion he gripped his heart, leaned forward onto the steering wheel, gave a huge sigh, and collapsed.

She pulled him back and saw the red river spreading across his chest. One or more of the couple's shots had gotten him. Maybe that's why he'd kept firing until the pair exploded.

He smiled, and the smile was strangely kind, as if from a forgotten past. “Guess my luck finally ran out.”

From where did she know that smile? She searched her memory. The smile was recent—And then it came to her.

It was the smile of Hal Sansborough!

Liz's father, in the Sansborough photo albums. Those albums she'd studied and studied when she'd believed
she
was Liz Sansborough. But Hal Sansborough was dead, killed with his wife in New York City by a mugger—

How could Quill be Harold Sansborough?

“Quill!” She grabbed his chin, made him look at her. He was still smiling. “Quill! Are you Hal Sansborough? Are you my uncle?”

The smile seemed to stretch wider. “Janie's daughter. Tell her I'm proud of you.”

He grimaced and his chest contracted in a sudden spasm of pain. Air gusted from his lungs.

“And tell Liz . . . I love her.”

She put her cheek to his mouth. There was no breath, no life. Without warning, tears rushed down her cheeks.

Chapter 50

The glass-domed tourist boat was one of the many
bateauxmouches
that cruised the Seine between the Pont de l'Alma and the Pont de Sully. On Sunday mornings, the boat offered oven-hot
brioche
, perfectly aged
fromage
, and sun-ripened
fruit
.

Hughes Bremner stood alone, eating from his plate and gazing out at the quay. He pretended to enjoy the sights, but he was really visualizing the triumphant completion on Monday of his two-year, multibillion-dollar operation: G
RANDEUR
. It would crown his career and make a legend of Hughes Bremner. Except no one would ever know.

Before anyone could comprehend what had really happened, he would slip away to the South Seas paradise that awaited him on Indigo Reef. For two years he'd been collecting paintings, ceramics, and sculptures for it. His office there, so very different from his puritanical seventh-floor aerie at Langley, would be richly appointed, with paintings by Braque, Kandinsky, and Soulages. The villa's stonework was by the finest Italian craftsmen. His wine cellar was already filled with the best bottles from France and California. He had a state-of-the-art computerized security system and a communications network that would keep him in touch with the world to whatever degree he wished—

“A Sunday morning in Paris,” said a voice at his elbow. “Nothing quite like it.”

Bremner didn't turn. He continued to survey the riverbank. A mother with two children was buying balloons. Next they'd parade along the quay. He could think of nothing more boring.

Bremner said, “Report.”

Kit Crowther talked in a low, steady tone. He was orchestrating the financial part of G
RANDEUR
, and he stood to make a fortune for his trouble. But he wouldn't live long enough to acquire it. As soon as the transaction was completed, Gordon would eliminate him.

“This is what will happen,” Crowther told him. “When the announcement is made, there'll be a major realignment of European currencies. Interest rates will drop, and so will stock markets. I've shorted the franc and bet that interest rates and securities will be hit by the realignments. I've sold francs short about $10 billion, bought the U.S. dollar, which is very strong right now, for $8 billion. I've also bought nearly $1 billion in French stocks, because equities rise when a currency devalues. With Sterling-O'Keefe's credit, I've been able to maintain these positions with just $1 billion in collateral. You're margined to your Adam's apple. I hope you know what you're doing, or Sterling-O'Keefe could be wiped out.”

Bremner only smiled and watched the river pass.

Crowther had borrowed money in francs and converted the francs into U.S. dollars at the fixed rates. As soon as the franc made its sharp dive, Crowther would buy in the far-cheaper franc to repay the debt, and Hughes Bremner would pocket the rest, as well as the additional profits—after he'd paid off Gordon Taite, Allan Levine, and a few others. His profits would make him the multibillionaire he'd made up his mind to become the moment he'd turned his back on an immoral and ungrateful country and started Sterling-O'Keefe.

Crowther ate from his plate, his gaze safely on the quay. “I'd like to know what information you're working this on.”

“No you wouldn't. You want to make a clean $5 million.”

From the corners of his eyes, Bremner saw Crowther smile and give a slight nod of agreement. For $5 million, he could live without knowing. Except, of course, he wouldn't live long.

“Daddy! Daddy!”

The international currency expert turned and carried his plate away without another word to Bremner. “Coming, honey. Did you lose Mommy?”

Bremner gave a final glance out toward the quay, and for an instant of pure joy he again saw Indigo Reef in his mind. A palm-fringed jewel in an aquamarine sea. Soon he'd be able to tell the whole world to fuck off. He'd walk out of the CIA, disappear, and live life as he'd always dreamed it. Gentle trade winds. Warm nights. Wealth beyond the fantasies of mere kings.

Back in his Languedoc office, Bremner's visions of Shangri-la collapsed into nightmare.

A message from Arlene Debo was waiting on his desk:

I'm flying over, Hughes. Arrive around five o'clock your time. I have a report the Carnivore is coming in to you this evening.

Bremner's chest contracted. Goddamn that woman! What had gotten into her? Had someone warned her—! No. Impossible. No one who knew of the coming-in would tell her. They were
his
people. Loyal to him alone!

With rigorous discipline, he forced himself to calm. Then he turned the problem over in his mind. Had someone betrayed him? He had only a few hours to find out and plan how to handle Arlene. And he still had all the arrangements for the Carnivore's coming-in to deal with.

He needed Sarah Walker, and he needed her
now
.

Bremner reached for his private phone.

Sarah Walker closed her uncle's eyes and wiped tears from her face. He was still smiling. Blood oozed from his chest, down his side, and into the front seat. She remembered those photo albums as if they were open before her now. She'd lived and breathed them until they'd become the past she'd lost. His nose
was flatter, and his chin was smaller, but take off twenty-five years and thirty pounds, and he was Liz's father, Hal Sansborough, as he'd looked in that photo taken outside the house in Chelsea, holding his daughter's hand.

His last words had been, “Tell Liz I love her.”

She jumped out of the MG and looked carefully around. No one was on the street, and no one seemed to be watching from the buildings. She retrieved Quill's Walther and checked the clip. She walked toward the nearest
métro
stop. She was sad and confused and worried. A man she'd never known, but for a while had believed to be her father, was dead. She knew she ought to be furious. She ought to want revenge, but what she longed for was an end to the murders. She wanted to lay it all to rest as permanently as death itself.

And finally, there was one inescapable fact: She was the blood niece of an accomplished, ruthless killer.

Who had said he was proud of her.

It chilled her. She didn't want a killer to be proud of her. Without realizing it, she walked faster, as if by force alone she could speed herself toward resolution.

When Sarah reached the bistro where they had agreed to meet, Asher was waiting at the curb on a low-slung BMW motorcycle. “My God, your head!” He touched the bandage above her temple. “What happened?”

“I'll fill you in later. You look anxious to leave.”

“Right.” He glanced up and down the street. “The photos and story about us have done a good job. I got stopped twice. Third time might not be so lucky.” He handed her a black leather jacket and a helmet with a darkened visor identical to his. “Think you can put this on over your bandage?”

“Sure.” She grimaced at the fast, sharp pain as she eased it down. “Where are we going?”

“That's the good news. Jack O'Keefe's. Christine Robitaille told me where he lives.”

“At last! Now maybe we'll find out what Bremner's up to!”

As she pulled on the leather motorcycle jacket, her white
shirt rode up, and he spotted the Walther in her waistband. “What's happened? Where's your Beretta?”

“It's a long story, Asher. Let's get out of here.”

Christine Robitaille sat on her filigreed balcony in Les Halles and looked out over the bright noontime glow of Paris. Down the center of the great city wove the wide, silvered ribbon of the Seine, glorious at any hour. She smoked her gold-tipped cigarettes and thought about the river, about the past, about history. And about herself.

She knew where she'd come from. Now she wondered whether she was doomed to repeat old mistakes. She'd had a good beginning, growing up among the florists of Paris. In this romantic city, where the three staples were bread, wine, and flowers, she'd loved and understood the importance of the work from a very early age. How better to introduce
amour
than with sixty ruby-red roses? What better gift than a Chinese bowl filled with snowy lilies, satin-white hydrangeas, green artichokes, and emerald ferns and mosses?

In Paris even the poorest areas had their own florists, but the Robitaille shop was in an elite section. The family's ivory-columned store faced the National Assembly on the Place du Palais Bourbon, where nearby embassies and ministries had a great need for fine flowers. The Robitailles were renowned for their elegant, witty, fresh arrangements.

Christine had two brothers and two sisters. As the baby, she was indulged. As the prettiest girl, she was fawned over, clothed in delicate net stockings and frilly dresses, and shown off as yet another exquisite Robitaille creation. She went to school and worked in the shop. She had a flair for arrangement, but her real love was the counter. There she could flirt with the young government clerks and the distinguished gentlemen of state who came by to select a flawless blossom for their latest love.

She was pregnant at fourteen. Her lover was an arranger at a popular artificial-flower shop. Not only her youth, but the work of her young man, caused an uproar in her family. He was the greater problem. As an arranger of fraudulent flowers,
he could have no appreciation for the beauty, fragility, and impermanence of God's own blossoms. Still, he offered to marry her. He was that kind of honorable young man, although both knew theirs was earthy lust, not heavenly
amour
.