The Vanishers (16 page)

She was playing femme-fatale games with me, and I was tired of her games. I was tired of acting the grim menace to her playful mystery; the moth-eaten saber-toothed tiger she kept poking with a stick because she liked to hear it growl, but not too loudly. I’d been a very good boy as long as she’d indicated her desire to remain a very good girl; but now that she’d decided that we must indulge in a little genteel sex to sidetrack my curiosity, I didn’t feel obliged to follow her carefully written script. In fact I was damned if I was going to act it all out with her: the laughing hand-in-hand romp up the stairs, the breathless disrobing scene, and the final, slightly embarrassed—at least at first—nude encounter between the sheets. Cutie pie stuff.

I reached for her instead. I’d promised I wouldn’t take anything that wasn’t offered; but now the offer had been made, and I hadn’t promised to be a gentleman when the time came. My crude intentions were obvious, and she stepped back quickly, but not quickly enough.

“No, Matt!” she protested as I pulled her to me. “Matt, not like that, please don’t—”

She got no further, because I’d already swept her up all entangled in her bedroom finery; and I was carrying her across the living room. I was trying to make it look easy, of course: the masterful male to whom a hundred-and-thirty-pound female was a mere feather. But I must admit I was glad to deposit her, not very gently, upon the antique sofa, which, I suspected, had over the centuries had other ladies in long, flowing gowns planted on it for purposes strictly immoral. I didn’t think it accidental that some ancestral baron had picked it long enough even for us tall Stjernhjelms; and I didn’t think the old living room was seeing anything new as I skipped the cutie-nudie scene and merely displaced enough clothing, male and female, to expose what needed exposing. Then I did what needed doing, rather competently if I do say so myself. I hadn’t realized how much tension had built up in me during the days I’d spent in her company pretending to be a gentleman.

There was some token early resistance; but it quickly turned into willing cooperation—so much willing cooperation, in fact, that afterwards, when pulse and respiration had had time to return more or less to normal, I sat up to look at her warily. I was beginning to realize that this rude exercise in passion had not, after all, been entirely my idea. She’d been playing a game, all right; but it had not been quite the polite bedroom game I’d thought she was playing.

Astrid sat up beside me and pushed the tangled hair back from her face and patted it into some kind of order. She tugged and hauled her lingerie back to where it would again meet the basic demands of modesty. Well, if the light wasn’t behind her and you didn’t look too hard.

“I thought you were ripping me to shreds,” she said after making a thorough inspection. “But I guess it’s more durable than it looks; there doesn’t seem to be any damage. Except, of course, to my dignity.” She looked at me at last. She giggled abruptly, a rather girlish sound to come from a mature and experienced married lady. “You were being much too good to be true, darling. I had to see how far you would let yourself be teased. I am happy to know that you are human, after all.”

“And that you can still drive a man slightly haywire,” I said dryly.

“That, of course,” she said. “I was beginning to feel like an old, untouched hag.” Then she leaned over to kiss me lightly on the cheek. “But we must not spoil it by analyzing it, darling. It was really rather… nice, wasn’t it? Primitive but nice.”

The following day the clouds broke up and the snow melted rapidly in the sunshine—rather cool and pale sunshine by the standards of my native New Mexico, but I could imagine what it meant to the local people after their endless dark winter. There was some activity up at the big house, but it could be perfectly normal. I had no idea what their day-to-day routines were up there, or how many visitors they usually had. Down in our guest villa there was considerable awkwardness. Our old relationship, all of three days old, had been shattered, and we were fumbling around to get comfortable in our new one.

“I wish you’d got me at least one attractive dress,” Astrid said irritably after lunch. “That skirt you bought is much too big—you must have been thinking of the fat lady in the circus—and I can hardly have tea at the mansion house in jeans. I guess I’ll have to press my good slacks and wear those; but I just know our hostess will be all done up in a dress and nylons and high heels, even just for afternoon tea.”

There was that uncharacteristic hint of insecurity again. I’d judged her as a woman who could attend a formal ball in shipwrecked rags without turning a hair, but obviously I’d been wrong. Even though the
Adelskalender
had told me she’d married a Swedish aristocrat, it seemed that afternoon tea at an obscure baronial mansion house had her badly worried.

I said, “Hell, I might as well be married again. She hasn’t got a
thing
to wear, she says. Where have I heard that one before?”

Astrid made a face at me and scurried off to find an electric iron. When I helped her out of the car in front of the big house a couple of hours later—we could have walked up, of course, but we’d have had to wade through a lot of melted snow—she looked very good to me, in her neat slacks and jacket and tailored silk blouse; but her nervousness was still apparent. She stood there for a moment uncertainly, looking at the other cars: two sizable Volvos and a Mercedes, not the economy-model Mercedes that had shadowed us for a while but a large luxury job.

I said, “I don’t have anything to worry about, you said. They aren’t laying for me behind the door with tommy guns, right? You’re not leading me to my execution, so what’s bugging you?”

She said, “It’s not that; it is merely… I think I am just an Indiana country girl at heart, Matt. All these barons and baronesses…” She squared her shoulders. “That is stupid; why should I care what they think of me? To hell with all of them, right?”

“That’s my girl,” I said, guiding her up the front steps of the house.

Margareta Stjernhjelm opened the door for us herself. As Astrid had predicted, she’d dressed for the occasion, in a smart blue dress; and she had the slightly awkward, coltish look of any modern young outdoors woman who doesn’t find herself in a silk dress and high-heeled pumps very often. Behind her was a tall man who was too old to be her husband—anyway, I thought I would recognize Torsten, since I’d met him the last time I was here. However, this man had to be related to me also. He was almost as tall and bony and ugly as I was.

He didn’t like me. We’d never seen each other before, but he made it quite clear that he wasn’t ever going to be a bosom pal of mine. For a start, he let me know by his contemptuous scrutiny that he thought I looked pretty damned ridiculous in this northern climate in the light slacks and seersucker jacket I’d worn for the Mexico job. Of course he was perfectly right, but it seemed unnecessary to make a point of it. While the strange Stjernhjelm was giving me the evil eye, our hostess was greeting Astrid; then she shook hands with me.

“It is a great pleasure to have you visiting us, Matthew,” she said. “Torsten has told me much of you. You do not mind that I call you by your first name? We are very informal within the family. Anyway, we are delighted that you have come to Torsäter again; and we are only sorry that we must take advantage of your visit like this. Mrs. Watrous will have told you?”

I noted that Astrid was not yet included in the informality of the family; and I could see that she realized it, too. Then I understood that it was a matter of protocol. By the rules, it was okay for Margareta, a lady, to suggest to me, a gentleman, that first names were acceptable here; however, between two ladies, the initiative had to come from the older.

I said, “Mrs. Watrous doesn’t tell much. I do get the impression that it’s not entirely a social gathering.”

“I am afraid not. But let me introduce Baron Olaf Stjernhjelm… I believe you are already acquainted with Countess Watrous, Olaf. And this is our relative Matthew, from America.”

The tall man bowed formally to Astrid and turned to me. I can spot a knuckle-grinder a mile away on a dusty New Mexico day; but while there are responses that will preserve your finger joints and even make the other guy a little unhappy, I saw no reason to give anything away to this hostile character, not even how strong my grip really was, or wasn’t. I let him knead away painfully, telling myself that I shouldn’t judge my family, or the land of my forebears, by one macho creep; we’ve got them on the western shore of the Atlantic, too.

“I, too, have heard much of you,” Cousin Olaf said, releasing me at last. His eyes were very blue, I noticed; a china-blue shade that was disconcerting. There was something familiar about them, but I couldn’t place it at once. He went on: “The black sheep of the family. The sinister American expert who calls himself Helm. Some people await you in the living room, Mister Helm. If the ladies will excuse us… Come this way.”

“There will be tea, as promised, when you have finished, Matthew,” Margareta said. “Or something stronger if you prefer.”

When I glanced towards Astrid, she said, “Do not worry about me, Matt. I am certain Margareta will take very good care of me… You do not mind if I call you Margareta, do you, my dear; and I hope you will call me Astrid.” She winked at me as I turned away to let me know that she could play this game as well as anybody. Obviously, now that the initial suspense was over, she was no longer taking this noble gathering so seriously.

Cousin Olaf managed to bump me slightly or, rather, brush me with his arm as he made the gesture of showing me the way. It told him I was carrying a gun in my waistband—one of the silenced .22 automatics—but it told me something about him, too. He’d been just a bit too slick about checking out the local artillery. He was not a gentleman farmer, nor had he gone into one of the other peaceful occupations adopted by most of my Swedish relatives when the baron business became unprofitable. The army, maybe, since the family history showed a lot of military Stjernhjelms including the previous master of this house; but if so, I would have bet on one of the darker branches of military intelligence.

But I thought it quite possible that, with some early military training perhaps—they all have to put in some army time in that country—Cousin Olaf had been a roving mercenary fighting any way that was handy. These days there are plenty to choose from. At least I’d identified what it was I’d recognized in his eyes. They were killer eyes. As they say, it takes one to know one. But I hadn’t expected to find one in these fine surroundings.

Under the circumstances, it was no fun turning my back on him; but I let him be polite and usher me into the living room ahead of him. I was a little startled to find six men waiting for us there, dressed in sober business suits complete with vests and ties. They were standing to greet us, all except old Colonel Stjernhjelm, who was in a wheelchair, with his son pushing him towards me. He’d been a tall, straight old gentleman when I’d seen him last, but he was bowed and shrunken now—he had to be well up in his eighties. His eyes were still clear, however, although his hand felt very fragile in my grasp.

“It is good to see you again, Matthew,” he said. “I am pleased that you remembered us when you needed a place to stay here in Sweden. That is what the family is for. I trust you are finding the little villa comfortable.”

“Thank you, sir, we couldn’t be more comfortable,” I said. “And we certainly appreciate the hospitality.”

“You remember my son Torsten,” the colonel said.

I shook hands with the tall young man behind the chair, blond and blue-eyed; but no killer eyes here.

“And here is someone who wishes much to make your acquaintance, Matthew,” said the old man. “The original plan was that you should be invited to his estate down in Skåne for this meeting; but before those arrangements could be made, you made things easy for us by asking to be allowed to come here. So the plan was changed, and we are all meeting here at Torsäter instead… Axel, this is Matthew, from America.”

The man who had come forward was in his fifties. He did not have my height, or the blond hair of Olaf and Torsten; but there was no mistaking the family features. I was glad I’d done my homework last night. This was the man whose name appeared in capital letters at the beginning of the Stjernhjelm section of the fat little book I’d studied. This was the chief of the clan, as my mother’s Scottish ancestors would have put it. In Swedish: the
huvudman.

I told myself what the hell, it was just another Swede in a good dark suit of European cut. Okay, a relative; but I’d lived most of my life without much contact with my relatives, and I could have made it the rest of the way alone quite comfortably. This guy meant nothing to me, although he was a competent-looking character I wouldn’t have minded doing business with, if I’d had any business to transact. Brown hair. Gray eyes. No Stjernhjelm beanpole, he was actually a little on the stocky side.

Still, we shared something; we all shared something in this room, something old and once considered very important. Something in the blood or, if you wanted to be scientific, the genes. I couldn’t even disown Cousin Olaf, behind me. Often, looking in the mirror, I’d seen the same eyes there. Not quite the same porcelain-blue color, of course, but the same. I took the hand the headman offered me.

“A pleasure, sir,” I said.

“Perhaps,” he said with a faint smile. “That remains to be seen, does it not? But we are very glad to welcome you here, Matthew. We have gone to considerable trouble to bring you to Sweden. It was young Torsten’s suggestion, as a matter of fact. He remembered you from your visit here when he was a boy; he seems to have been impressed by you. He suggested to his father that, since there was a specialist of sorts in the family, it might be well to make use of him in this crisis, if he was willing.”

I thought it over for a moment. Apparently I’d been correct when I accused Astrid of leading me on a wild-goose chase into darkest Sweden, except that the goose to which she’d led me wasn’t very wild and the region wasn’t very dark. Somehow she’d talked Mac into dispensing with my services temporarily, or had she? Was he? Or had he taken advantage of the family’s request for my help, and used it, and me, for purposes of his own—purposes involving a place called Lysaniemi?