The Secret Heiress (19 page)

She nodded, but offered him one of her sourest expressions.

He gestured to Jeff and Bill, and the three of them followed Senor Mori and Luis Perez out of the room. They went down the hallway, and the plant manager opened a steel door that led to a flight of stairs. They rushed up the staircase, at the top of which was another steel door. This one was locked, and Mori extricated a large key chain from his trouser pocket, selected a key, and unlocked it.

The flat roof spread out before them. It was fifty feet to the nearest edge, marked by a three-foot-high wall.

“I’m turned around,” Adrian said. “Which way is the front?”

Mori pointed. “That way.”

Following his directions, Jeff and Bill were the first out on the roof, Jeff going right and Bill left, their revolvers drawn. When they saw that the roof itself was devoid of demonstrators, they motioned for the others to come on out. Adrian came first, followed by Mori and Perez. Adrian walked straight to the edge of the roof and looked out over the crowd.

“Burn down the office building! Burn it down!” The chant was much louder now that they were outside.

Adrian had no way of knowing exactly how many Mother Earth’s Children demonstrators were among the plant workers and their families, but he guessed no more than a few dozen. Still, they had a worthy cause here, and he could kick himself for not intervening in Niki’s management of the facility before. But now was not the time to think about that, he told himself.

He put the bullhorn to his mouth, pressed the ON button, and cleared his throat.
“Señores y señoras,”
he shouted, the bullhorn amplifying his voice. When the crowd saw him, there was a sudden hush, before the chants began again, louder than ever.

Leaning out over the wall, Adrian shouted into the bullhorn again.
“Señores y senoras, por favor. Atención.”

Mori and Perez had drawn up to his side. “Senor Mori,” Adrian said, “would you translate what I say for Senor Perez, then tell him to repeat it to the demonstrators?”

Mori nodded and spoke briefly to Perez in Spanish.

Adrian lifted his bullhorn again. “First,” he shouted, “I want to thank you for being here today to express your displeasure with the terrible explosion that has occurred at this plant.”

The chanting began to die out as Adrian spoke, and when Perez began speaking, complete quiet fell over the crowd. They would listen to their leader.

“Second,” Adrian continued, “I personally want to promise you that we are going to radically improve the working conditions at this plant for everyone.”

He waited for Mori to translate, then listed the points he wanted to cover, allowing Mori time to translate between each point. When he reached his final point, and it was translated—that there would be across-the-board raises to everyone at the plant regardless of their length of employment and that the rest of the week would be a paid holiday—a roar of approval went up from the crowd.

A number of the Mother Earth’s Children militants had attempted to drown out Adrian and Senor Perez from time to time, but the crowd had silenced them. Adrian was gratified by their response and fully intended on carrying out every promise he’d made to them.

Senor Mori turned to him with a serious expression. “I hope you meant what you said.”

“Every word,” Adrian said. “I don’t make idle promises, Senor Mori.”

He turned to Senor Perez and offered the man his hand. At first Perez, his dark face with its Incan features still drawn, refused to take it. Then he took it in his iron clasp and shook it vigorously. “Amigo,” he said in Quechuan-accented Spanish.

“Amigo,” Adrian repeated with a smile. Perez’s features finally relaxed and a semblance of a smile appeared on his lips.

When they reached the office, Nikoletta turned away from the window, where she had been staring out at the crowd. She looked at Adrian questioningly, her arms folded across her chest. “Am I free to go now?”

“Yes,” Adrian said. “I think the situation is defused for the time being.” He glanced at Senor Mori. “Do you think I can take Ms. Papadaki out of here safely now?” he asked.

Mori’s eyes shifted to Perez, and he spoke a few words. Perez nodded solemnly, then spoke to two of his men, who immediately hustled out of the office to the elevators.

“I don’t think you’ll have any problem leaving now,” Senor Mori said, “but if you’ll give these men a couple of minutes, they will speak to the people outside and clear the way.”

“May I go to the restroom?” Nikoletta asked him in a haughty voice.

“Of course, Ms. Papadaki,” he replied. “The closest one is down the hallway to your left. Shall I have one of the secretaries show you the way?”

“I think I can find it by myself,” Nikoletta said with a snarl. She strode out of the room on her stiletto heels.

“I want to thank you for your help and cooperation,” Adrian said to Mori and Perez, “and I want you to know I will personally do everything in my power to see to it that conditions here change very quickly. I won’t pretend that it’s going to be overnight, but I’ll get my people on it right away.”

“Thank you,” Senor Mori said. Then he translated for Senor Perez.

Gazing at Adrian with a serious expression, Perez said, “I believe you, Senor Single, and I will do what is in my power to keep the workers peacefully at their jobs in the meantime.”

So he speaks English, after all,
Adrian thought.
“Gracias,”
he said.

Perez’s men returned to the office, and Nikoletta glided into the room behind them, going to Adrian’s side.

“We’ll be going now,” Adrian said, turning to look at Bill and Jeff, who stepped forward at the ready.

They went down in the elevator and stopped at the glass doors leading outside. The crowd of demonstrators was still milling about, although the chanting had ended.

“You ready?” Adrian asked Nikoletta.

“Yes,” she said nervously, seeing the crowd.

Bill shoved the door open, and he and Jeff went outside first, their hands on their revolvers. Jeff stood to the side, while Bill shielded Adrian and Nikoletta. They hastened to the car, but before they could get inside, a woman rushed from the crowd directly at Nikoletta. Before anyone realized what was happening, the woman, who was wearing huge industrial rubber gloves, shoved a dead piglet in Nikoletta’s face. The woman began shouting in Spanish.

Nikoletta stopped and screamed, throwing her hands up to her face. Jeff quickly shoved the woman away, and she stumbled backward and fell.

“Go, go, go!” he shouted as Adrian pulled Nikoletta toward the car.

They got inside, and Hector shifted into drive and swung the car around toward the driveway, kicking up gravel as he gunned the engine. The crowd parted when they saw the car roaring toward them, and when the gates swung open, Hector picked up speed. Demonstrators rushed out of the car’s path, seeing that Hector wasn’t going to slow down.

When they’d left the plant behind, Adrian squeezed Nikoletta’s hand. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’ve been better,” she said. “That horrible old woman with that . . . that whatever it was didn’t help.”

“What was that woman yelling?” Adrian asked Hector.

“The one with the piglet?”

“Yes,” Adrian said.

“She says half its skin burned off just from lying on the ground.”

Adrian shook his head, trying to clear it of the gruesome image.

“She had some nerve,” Nikoletta said.

“Look,” Adrian said sharply, “you’re lucky to get out of this alive, Niki.”

She responded furiously. “And you are a traitor.”

“A traitor? And how did you come to that decision?”

“Promising the workers changes,” she spit. “You stabbed me in the back.”

“I got you out of there alive!” he exclaimed.

“There’re going to be changes, all right,” Niki said darkly, looking straight ahead, “but they won’t be for the better.”

“Niki,” Adrian reminded her, “do you honestly believe that making things worse for those people is going to get you anywhere?”

“None of this would have happened,” Nikoletta replied, ignoring his remark, “if somebody hadn’t tipped off those crazies from Mother Earth’s Children. And I mean somebody in the highest ranks of PPHL’s management.” She gazed at Adrian with flinty eyes. “How else would they have known I was coming on a surprise inspection? Only the top echelon knew. Even management in Peru had purposely been left out of the loop.”

“I think you may be getting paranoid,” Adrian said. “The workers were already upset about the accident. The strike would have happened whether you were here or not.”

Nikoletta shook her head adamantly. “No,” she said. “They’d been told I was coming and were prepared. What happened wasn’t spontaneous. They were too organized, and you know it.”

“Right or wrong,” he said, “conditions at that plant have to be improved, Niki. There’s no question about that.”

As if he had said nothing of any importance, Nikoletta didn’t respond to him, but began rifling in her handbag. Finally, she said, “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Those people treated me like an animal. Why should they expect better?” She found the bottle of perfume she’d been searching for and lavishly sprayed about her neck and arms. “Pigs,” she said with disgust. “They’re pigs.”

N
ikoletta’s town house was situated in Chelsea on the best end of Cheyne Walk, amid a garden that could exist only in a city like London and only for a person as rich as Nikoletta. Adrian arrived directly from the airport. After the fiasco in Peru, he had made the stopover reluctantly, but he had just learned of Bianca’s trip to Africa and he had to confront Niki directly about this dangerous assignment.

Charles, Nikoletta’s butler, answered the door. Normally as imperturbable a man as could be imagined, he could hardly conceal how flustered he was by Adrian’s unannounced appearance at the grand black lacquered door. He hemmed and hawed, then finally disappeared into the house “to see if madam” was in residence.

Adrian was amused by Charles’s consternation, but at the same time felt sorry for the older man. He could well imagine the iron hand with which Niki ruled the household, not to mention her outbursts and temper tantrums.

In the entry foyer, Adrian couldn’t help but notice the monumental baroque gilt mirror over a marble-topped console of a similar over-the-top design. The better to see herself on the way out, he thought, knowing Niki’s habit of checking herself any chance she got. When she had been younger, he’d thought this habit a cute one. A little girl primping, miming the actions of an older woman. But as she’d grown older, he realized that she had fallen in love with the image that she saw reflected.

His musing was interrupted by Charles, who returned on virtually silent feet and startled him when he cleared his throat. “I’m terribly sorry, sir, to have kept you waiting,” he said formally. “Awful to’ve kept you standing here like this.”

“Don’t give it a thought, Charles,” Adrian said.

“Please,” Charles said stiffly, “follow me.” He shook his head slightly. “An awful state of affairs. Terribly rude to’ve kept you waiting.”

Charles began climbing the gracefully spiraling stairs that led to the upper floors, and Adrian stayed a couple of steps below him, keeping his pace slow so as not to overtake the older man.

On the second floor, Charles ushered him down a hallway to a large door surrounded by heavy carved molding. He tapped on the door lightly with his knuckles.

“Come in,” Niki’s voice called from within.

Charles opened the door a small distance. “It’s Mr. Adrian Single, madam.”

“Yes, Charles,” came the petulant reply. “You just told me that. Send him on in.”

Charles turned to Adrian. “Please, sir,” he said unnecessarily. “Madam says to go on in.”

“Thank you, Charles,” he said.

The butler nodded and went back down the hallway, muttering under his breath as he went.

Adrian was barely a foot inside the bedroom before he stopped abruptly, taking in the scene that greeted his eyes. Nikoletta was spread out naked on her grandly draped, canopied bed. Between her long, tanned legs, a young Jamaican, he supposed, in dreadlocks was on his knees. His hands were massaging Nikoletta’s breasts. Shifting his eyes from her, Adrian gazed at the two younger men—underage by all appearances and Jamaican, he assumed—who were also on the bed. One was on a pillow near Nikoletta’s head, and the other was on the bed’s far side, his hands in her thighs. Looking back at Nikoletta, Adrian saw that her face was flushed bright red and was beaded with sweat, which also trickled down her chest.

She’s high on drugs,
he thought. She hadn’t even noticed him yet, and when she finally looked his way, her eyes looked vacant, if not dead.

Adrian quickly turned back to the door, pulling it nearly closed behind him, and called to Charles, who was making slow progress down the hallway. “Charles,” he said. “Could you hold on a minute, please?”