The Secret Heiress (37 page)

Everywhere she looked caterers, decorators, and florists, all coordinated by Lawrence, were frenziedly adding last-minute finishing touches. Musicians, from the string quartet to the two dance bands and the DJ, were warming up, testing instruments and electronic equipment. Waiters and waitresses circulated among the round tables, using measuring tapes to make certain the settings were perfectly aligned. Everywhere, everyone was making certain everything was just so.

For Nikoletta had demanded perfection, and she could see that she was receiving it. In abundance, the way she liked it. As she wandered through the vast space unrecognized by all but a few of the army of people readying for the party, she looked out toward Forty-second Street.

Butch followed her gaze. “The police have already cordoned off the two lanes of Forty-second closest to the building,” he said, pointing toward the main entrance doors.

“I see,” Nikoletta said, gratified that she got such cooperation from New York’s Finest.

“Security’s going to be extra tight tonight,” he went on. “A private security firm is screening all staff as they get here. When the guests arrive, their credentials and invitations will be screened, too. Their invitations warned that everyone would need a picture ID, no exceptions, and the invitations also have a special mark embedded in the paper that can only be read by ultraviolet light.”

Nikoletta nodded. She was accustomed to such precautions, especially for large events, but she didn’t recall them using the special mark in invitations before. “That sounds like a very good idea.”

“They’re so easy to copy nowadays,” he said. “Crooks can get the same paper and use computers, but they’d be hard put to know about the mark or what it was, much less duplicate it.”

“Damn,” Nikoletta said under her breath.

“What?”

“I see some of those Mother Earth’s Children protesters across the street,” she murmured.

“The police are keeping them and all the rubberneckers, even the pedestrians, on the far sidewalk across the street, so I think it’ll be all right.”

“I wish they could get rid of them altogether.”

Butch shrugged. “It’s a free country,” he said. “But I wouldn’t let it worry me too much. They’re across several lanes of traffic, cordoned off, and there’ll be a big police presence besides our own plainclothes security.”

Nikoletta turned back to the lobby for another look-see. It would be crowded with hundreds of important people tonight in their finest apparel and most exquisite jewels.
All for me,
she thought.
Even if they aren’t all necessarily my friends or allies, they’ll be here.
Her mind wandered to the board of advisers, who were supposed to be both. They would all be here tonight, even though they were scheming against her in what had once been secrecy. Their secret was out, of course, as was hers. They knew it, and she knew it. After the recent failed attempt on the impostor, there was no question that they were working against each other.

The impostor. Will she be here tonight?
Nikoletta wondered.
I wouldn’t be surprised. She’ll surely turn up soon.

“Let’s go,” she said to Butch. She quickly headed toward the elevator banks with him at her side. “I don’t think any of that scum’s going to ruin my party, but I want you to do me one very special favor tonight.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Keep an eye out for anyone who looks like me.”

“Looks like you?” he said, staring at her quizzically.

“Yes. And alert the others. I want to know the instant she shows up, if she does.”

 

Despite the small army of guards and guns for hire, Kees Vanmeerendonk had already gained entrance to the building. He wasn’t exactly the spitting image of security expert H. Richard Pipe, but some mustache and eyebrow dye had fashioned him into a reasonable enough facsimile. And the various forms of documentation he carried passed muster.

Dressed in the high-level security executive’s uniform of a Brooks Brothers suit and silk tie, with an all but invisible earphone planted in one ear and a miniature microphone pinned to his lapel, the fake H. Richard Pipe patrolled the tarted-up lobby of the new PPHL International Headquarters with a show of reassuring professionalism.

He couldn’t help but feel a frisson of excitement. Nikoletta Papadaki was here, in this very building, soon to make a sweeping entrance to her own party—

—soon to
die
.

For the first time since his amateurish failed attempt on her life in St. Barth’s, he felt a peculiar intimacy with her. The intimacy a hunter felt with his prey, he thought.

Indeed, Nikoletta Papadaki was so close in proximity that Kees Vanmeerendonk could practically smell her. He could also virtually taste the blood that would shortly pump, unchecked, out of her deceptively fragile-looking body.

What a pity she’s so beautiful,
he thought.

On the other hand, her beauty would make her all the more an appropriate sacrifice to mother earth.

 

Frans, who still had trouble forcing himself to leave the safe but lonely confines of his downtown loft, had been persuaded to venture uptown for the grand opening of the PPHL headquarters.

“Bianca would’ve wanted you to, Frans,” Nikoletta had told him. “After all, you have to remember that she spent her entire working life at PPHL. She was devoted to the company, and the things we do to try to help people.”

Frans, who in reality knew almost nothing about the company and didn’t care one way or the other about it, had finally agreed to go, but not only for Bianca. He felt that he owed Nikoletta, even if the sex for him had been no more than a release. An enjoyable release, but not like making love to Bianca.

Now, dressed in white tie and devastatingly handsome, he sprawled across the bed in Nikoletta’s room, sipping bourbon, bored as he watched her being pampered. He thought of a thousand places he might be instead, but he knew that he was incapable of enjoying them anyway. What was the use of going someplace if Bianca couldn’t go along? The emptiness he had felt after her death remained the only constant in his life.

Nikoletta was not insensitive to his mood, but she thought the best policy regarding Frans was to cajole him into action, especially activity that revolved around her. Dismissing her hair stylist and makeup artist, she stepped into her gold python sheath and turned around.

“Zip me up, darling, will you?” she asked Frans.

He dutifully pushed himself up off the bed and obliged her.

“Now, how about popping the cork on a bottle of champagne, hmmm? I have plenty of time for a celebratory drink or two.”

“You’re in an awfully good mood,” Frans remarked.

“It wouldn’t do to arrive too early for my own party, now, would it?” she said. “I mean, that’s definitely not the way to make a grand entrance. What do you think, Frans, darling? Hmmm?”

Frans didn’t care before, and now he cared less than ever. The bourbon was taking him down. Down to a dark, unhappy place inside that her chirping was beginning to antagonize.

 

On West Forty-third Street, after being ensnarled in Manhattan gridlock, a black stretch limousine with diplomatic plates finally arrived at the rear garage entrance of the new PPHL International Headquarters. A uniformed security guard with a roster on a clipboard, as well as the candy-striped steel barrier that stretched across the entrance, halted the limousine’s progress. The guard on duty went to the driver’s window to check him out.

A tinted rear window slid open and Angelo Coveri, smoking a noxious cigar, thrust out his invitation, as well as his PPHL ID. A second guard rushed from the garage and took Angelo’s invitation and ID, then leaned down to peruse the second passenger. Angelo partially obscured his view by exhaling a dense cloud of smoke. But through it the guard made out a beautiful young woman with waist-long platinum hair, wearing big sunglasses. She was dressed in a lavish red satin floor-length cape that was pinned together with a massive diamond brooch.

Had the guard had a better view, he might have noticed the gold python shoes she wore, pointy-toed, backless, and held in place with ankle straps. But he didn’t have the opportunity, nor would the shoes have meant anything to him.

In rapid-fire Italian, Angelo said something to the platinum-haired woman, and she sighed tiredly in response. She opened a red satin purse and handed him an Italian diplomatic passport. Angelo had borrowed it from a friend at the consulate who had long blond hair, and although she was much older and less glamorous-looking than the woman beside him, he was certain the ruse would work. After all, he was on the board of PPHL. Besides, passport photos never looked flattering. Most of them looked like mug shots.

He handed the passport to the guard, who perused it with a frown, compared it with the blonde in the limousine, then gestured for the other guard to take a look.

Now it’s time to pull rank,
Angelo thought. Pretending to be fed up with the delay, he brandished his PPHL ID in their faces. “Didn’t you see this?” he asked in an irritated voice. “I’m on the board of PPHL, for God’s sake, and I don’t have all night to sit here.”

The guards took a second look at his ID. “Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” one of them said.

“I should hope so,” Angelo said. “You should be fired for keeping me and the marchesa waiting. If you value your jobs, you won’t let this happen again.”

“I’m new, sir,” the guard said in his defense, “and I—”

“Never mind,” Angelo said impatiently. “We have a party to go to.”

The guard holding the passport handed it back to him. Then they both stepped aside. One of them pushed the button on an electronic opener, and the steel barrier across the garage entrance lifted. The driver maneuvered the big limousine down into the multistory underground parking garage.

“Whew!” Ariadne exclaimed, releasing a pent-up breath. “That was a close call. For a moment there, I felt like giving myself up.”

“There, there,” Angelo said. Using a handkerchief, he dabbed perspiration from her forehead.

“Thank you, Angelo,” Ariadne said. “I guess my nervousness made me break out in a sweat. Well, that and the wig and the big cape. I feel almost smothered by them.”

“Try to relax,” he said in a soothing voice.

“Relax!”

“Well, we smuggled you inside, didn’t we? The worst is over.”

She lowered her sunglasses, and the look she shot him over the rims let him know that they both knew better. Gaining entry into the building was only the first step of many more to come.

As if reading her mind, Angelo said, “Don’t think beyond the moment. The immediate moment. We will cross each bridge as we come to it. We can handle that, can’t we?”

“Yes.” Ariadne nodded. Actually, she wasn’t really certain that they could pull it off, but she didn’t want to tell Angelo that.

He squeezed her hand and smiled. “That’s more like it.”

The driver walked around to the rear of the limousine and held the door open for Ariadne. “Marchesa?” he murmured.

Marchesa!
she thought. She scoffed.
I’m not only a phony marchesa. I’m a phony Nikoletta, too. God help me, I’m a phony everything!

The driver helped her out, and she smiled. “Thank you, Marchese,” she said.

Matt smiled. “My pleasure, Marchesa.”

With Angelo on one arm and the marchese on the other, the marchesa was led into the elevator and up to the party.

 

Despite the blue wooden barriers, the battery of policemen, and the traffic cops directing motorists, the entire area was madness. Searchlights crisscrossed the sky as at a film premiere, and the new PPHL International Headquarters was awash in floodlights, the latest testament to architectural genius and a worthy addition to the city’s skyline. It glowed brighter than any other building in Manhattan.

At street level, the cavalcade of limousines, town cars, and even the occasional taxi spilled out the high and mighty, including several former world leaders, powerful politicians, captains of industry, the titled and the talented—members of those parallel and sometimes overlapping universes, the A-lists of both international high society and café society—plus movie stars, recording artists, and various and sundry celebrities. In short, the most select from every sphere of influence were let out directly at the red-carpeted entrance to the new building.

The men were primarily in white tie, although a few chose the less formal black tie, and the women disproved the old adage about the extravagant plumage of the male peacock. Bedecked with jewels, they seemed to float above the carpet, held aloft by billowing gowns of unimaginable lushness, color, and beauty.

Across the street, mere passersby caught up in the crowd, as well as spectators who’d come specifically to see who could be seen, watched enthralled. The fans of the stage, screen, and music luminaries created such hysteria that for much of the time their screams drowned out the chants of the demonstrators from Mother Earth’s Children.

High above the hubbub, like a remote goddess atop Mount Olympus, Nikoletta Papadaki welcomed three visitors. Percy, her butler, had admitted them into her futuristic triplex penthouse in the sky.

“Honor,” Nikoletta said, “how lovely to see you.”

They exchanged air kisses. “Yes,” Honor Hurlstone murmured. She wore a smile that seemed to have been set upon her face with cement. She had come out of a sense of duty to the company, but her heart was not in it.

Nikoletta greeted Adrian Single with a hug. “How nice to see you,” she said acidly. “You’ve been spending so much time in the country that it’s been a while.”

“Well . . . yes,” Adrian said.

“But you no doubt met my emissary?” she asked with an arched brow.

“Your . . . emissary?” Adrian paused for a moment, then realized whom she was talking about.
She sent the assassin,
he thought,
and now she’s boldly telling me as much.