Wild Justice (23 page)

Authors: Wilbur Smith

BOOK: Wild Justice

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âThe police at Rambouillet had a report of a car smash â they knew the Maserati, and the inspector rang La Pierre BÃ©nite immediately. I guessed something badâ'

At that moment they reached the gates at the main road. The remains of the Maserati lay smouldering on the side of the road; around it like boy scouts around a camp fire were half a dozen gendarmes in their white plastic capes and pillbox kepis. They seemed uncertain of what they should do next.

Carl slowed the limousine and Magda spoke tersely through the window to a sergeant, who treated her with immense respect. â
Oui,
madame la Baronne,
d'accord Tout Ã fait vraiâ'
She dismissed him with a final nod, and he and his men saluted the departing limousine.

âThey will find the body at the bridgeâ'

âThere may be another one on the edge of the forest thereâ'

âYou are very good, aren't you?' She slanted her eyes at him.

âThe really good ones don't get hit,' he said, and smiled at her. The whisky had taken some of the sting and stiffness out of the wound and unknotted his guts. It was good to still be alive, he started to appreciate that again.

âYou were right about the Maserati then â they were waiting for it.'

âThat's why I burned it,' he told her, but she did not answer his smile

âOh, Peter. You'll never know how I felt. The police told me that the driver of the Maserati was still in it and had been burned. I thought â I felt as though part of me had been destroyed. It was the most terrifying feelingâ' She shivered. âI nearly did not come, I didn't want to see it. I nearly sent my wolves, but then I had to know â Carl saw you in the river as we turned onto the bridge. He said it was you, I just couldn't believe itâ' She stopped herself and shuddered at the memory. âTell me what happened, tell me
all of it,' she demanded and poured more whisky into his tumbler.

For some reason that he was not sure of himself, Peter did not mention the CitroÃ«n that had followed him out of Paris. He told himself that it could not have been relevant. It must have been a coincidence, for if the driver of the CitroÃ«n had been one of them he would have been able to telephone ahead and warn the others that Baroness Magda Altmann was not in the Maserati, so that would have meant that they were not after her â but after him, Peter Stride, and that didn't make sense because he had only set himself up as bait that very morning, and they would not have had time yet. He stopped the giddy carousel of thoughts â shock and whisky, he told himself. There would be time later to think it all out more carefully. Now he would simply believe that they were waiting for Magda, and he had run into their net. He told it that way, beginning from the moment that he had seen the police van parked in the road. Magda listened with complete attention, the huge eyes clinging to his face, and she touched him every few moments as if to reassure herself.

When Carl parked under the portico of the emergency entrance of the hospital, the police had radioed ahead and there were an intern and two nurses waiting for Peter with a theatre trolley.

Before she opened the door to let them take Peter, Magda leaned to him and kissed him full on the lips.

âI'm so very glad to have you still,' she whispered, and then with her lips still very close to his ear she went on. âIt was Caliph again, wasn't it?'

He shrugged slightly, grimaced at the stab of pain, and answered, âI can't think of anyone else offhand that would do such a professional job.'

Magda walked beside the trolley as far as the theatre doors, and she was beside his bed in the curtained cubicle
as he struggled up through the deadening, suffocating false death of the anaesthetic.

The French doctor was with her, and he produced the gruesome blood-clotted souvenir with a magician's flourish.

âI did not have to cut,' he told Peter proudly. âProbe only.' The bullet had mushroomed impressively, had certainly lost much of its velocity in penetrating the bodywork of the Maserati, âYou are a very lucky man,' the doctor went on. âYou are in fine condition, muscles like a racehorse that stopped the bullet going deep. You will be well again very soon.'

âI have promised to look after you, so he is letting you come home now.' Magda hovered over him also. âAren't you, doctor?'

âYou will have one of the world's most beautiful nurses.' The doctor bowed gallantly towards Magda with a certain wistfulness in his expression.

T
he doctor was right, the bullet wound gave him less discomfort than the tears in his thighs from the barbed wire, but Magda Altmann behaved as though he were suffering from an irreversible and terminal disease.

When she did have to go up to her office suite in the Boulevard des Capucines the next day, she telephoned three times for no other reason than to make sure he was still alive and to ask for his size in shoes and clothing. The cavalcade of automobiles carrying her and her entourage were back at La Pierre BÃ©nite while it was still daylight.

âYou are keeping civil service hours,' he accused when she came directly to the main guest suite overlooking the terraced lawns and the artificial lake.

âI knew you were missing me,' she explained, and kissed
him before beginning to scold him. âRoberto tells me you have been wandering around in the rain. The doctor said you were to stay in bed. Tomorrow I will have to stay here to take care of you myself.'

âIs that a threat?' he grinned at her. âFor that sort of punishment I would let Caliph shoot another holeâ'

Swiftly she laid her fingers on his lips. âPeter,
chÃ©ri,
don't joke like that.' And the shadow that passed across her eyes was touched with fear, then immediately she was smiling again. âLook what I have bought you.'

Peter's valise had been in the trunk of the Maserati, and she had replaced it with one in black crocodile from Hermes. To fill it she must have started at the top end of the Faubourg St HonorÃ© and worked her way down to the Place VendÃ´me.

âI had forgotten how much fun it is to buy presents for one who youâ' She did not finish the sentence, but held up a brocade silk dressing-gown. ââ Everybody in St Laurent knew what I was thinking when I chose this.'

She had forgotten nothing. Shaving gear, silk handkerchiefs and underwear, a blue blazer, slacks and shoes from Gucci, even cufflinks in plain gold, each set with a small sapphire.

âYou have such blue eyes,' she explained. âNow I will go and make myself respectable for dinner I told Roberto we would eat here, for there are no other guests tonight.'

She had changed from the gunmetal business suit and turban into floating cloud-light layers of gossamer silk, and her hair was down to her waist, more lustrous than the cloth.

âI will open the champagne,' she said. âIt needs two hands.'

He wore the brocade gown, with his left arm still in a sling, and they stood and admired each other over the top of the champagne glasses.

âI was right.' She nodded comfortably. âBlue is your
colour. You must wear it more often.' And he had to smile at the quaint compliment, and touched her glass with his. The crystal pinged musically and they saluted each other before they drank. Immediately she set the glass aside, and her expression became serious.

âI spoke with my friends in the SÃ»retÃ©. They agree that it was a kidnap attempt against me, and because I asked it, they will not trouble you to make a statement until you feel better. I told them to send a man tomorrow to speak to you. There was no sign of the second man you shot at on the edge of the woods, he must have been able to walk or been carried by his friends.'

âAnd the other man?' Peter asked. âThe dead one.'

âThey know him well. He had a very ugly past. Algeria with the paras. The mutiny.' She spread her hands eloquently. âMy friends were very surprised that he had not killed you when he tried to do so. I did not say too much about your own past. It is better, I think?'

âIt's better,' Peter agreed

âWhen I am with you like this, I forget that you also are a very dangerous man.' She stopped and examined his face carefully. âOr is it part of the reason I find you soâ' she searched for the word' â so compelling? You have such a gentle manner, Peter. Your voice is so soft andâ' She shrugged. âBut there is something in the way you smile sometimes, and in certain light your eyes are so blue and hard and cruel. Then I remember that you have killed many men. Do you think that is what attracts me?'

âI hope it is not.'

âSome women are excited by blood and violence â the bullfight, the prize ring, there are always as many women as men at these, and I have watched their faces. I have thought about myself, and still I do not know it all. I know only that I am attracted by strong men, powerful men. Aaron was such a man. I have not found many others since then.'

âCruelty is not strength,' Peter told her.

âNo, a truly strong man has that streak of gentleness and compassion. You are so strong, and yet when you make love to me it is with extreme gentleness, though I can always feel the strength and cruelty there, held in bate, like the falcon under the hood.'

She moved away across the room furnished in cream and chocolate and gold, and she tugged the embroidered bell-pull that dangled from the corniced ceiling with its hand-painted panels, pastoral scenes of the type that Marie Antoinette had so admired. Peter knew that much of the furnishing of La Pierre BÃ©nite had been purchased at the auction sales with which the revolutionary committee dispersed the accumulated treasures of the House of Bourbon. With the other treasures there were flowers, wherever Magda Altmann went there were flowers.

She came back to him as Roberto, the Italian butler, supervised the entry of the dinner trolley, and then Roberto filled the wine glasses himself, handling the bottles with white gloves as though they were part of the sacrament, and stationed himself ready to serve the meal, but Magda dismissed him with a curt gesture and he bowed himself out silently.

There was a presentation-wrapped parcel at Peter's place setting, tissue paper and an elaborately tied red ribbon. He looked up at her inquiringly as she served the soup into fragile Limoges bowls.

âOnce I began buying presents, I could not stop myself,' she explained. âBesides, I kept thinking that bullet might have been in my back.' Then she was impatient. âAre you not going to open it?'

He did so carefully, and then was silent.

âAfrica, it is your speciality, is it not?' she asked anxiously. âNineteenth-century Africa?'

He nodded, and reverently opened the cover of the volume in its bed of tissue paper. It was fully bound in
maroon leather, and the state of preservation was quite extraordinary, only the dedication on the flyleaf in the author's handwriting was faded yellow.

âWhere on earth did you find this?' he demanded. âIt was at Sotheby's in 1971. I bid on it then.' He had dropped out of the bidding at five thousand pounds.

âYou do not have a first edition of Cornwallis Harris?' she asked again anxiously, and he shook his head, examining one of the perfectly preserved colour plates of African big game.

âNo, I do not. But how did you know that?'

âOh, I know as much about you as you do yourself,' she laughed. âDo you like it?'

âIt is magnificent. I am speechless.' The gift was too extravagant, even for someone of her fortune. It troubled him, and he was reminded of the comedy situation of the husband who brings home flowers unexpectedly and is immediately accused by his wife. âWhy do you have a guilty conscience?'

âDo you truly like it? I know so little about books.'

âIt is the one edition I need to complete my major works,' he said. âAnd it is probably the finest specimen left outside the British Museum.'

âI'm so glad.' She was genuinely relieved. âI was truly worried.' And she put down the silver soup ladle and lifted both arms to welcome his embrace.

During the meal she was gay and talkative, and only when Roberto had wheeled away the trolley and they settled side by side on the down-filled couch before the fire did her mood change again.

âPeter, today I have been unable to think of anything but this business â you and me and Caliph. I have been afraid, and I am still afraid. I keep thinking of Aaron, what they did to him â and then I think of you and what nearly happened.'

They were silent, staring into the flames and sipping
coffee from the demi-tasses, then suddenly she had changed direction again. He was growing accustomed to these mercurial switches in thought.

âI have an island â not one island, but nine little islands â and in the centre of them is a lagoon nine kilometres wide. The water is so clear you can see the fish fifty feet down. There is an airstrip on the main atoll. Just under two hours' flying time to Tahiti. Nobody would ever know we were there. We could swim all day, walk in the sand, make love under the stars. You would be king of the islands, and I would be your queen. No more Altmann Industries â I would find somebody as good or better than myself to run it. No more danger. No more fear. No more Caliph â no moreâ' She stopped abruptly, as though she had been about to commit herself too far, but she went on quickly. âLet's go there, Peter. Let's forget all this. Let's just run away and be happy together, for ever.'

âIt's a pretty thought.' He turned to her, feeling deep and genuine regret.

âIt would work for us. We would make it work.'

And he said nothing, just watching her eyes, until she looked away and sighed.

âNo.' She mirrored his regret. âYou are right. Neither of us could ever give up living like that. We have to go on â but, Peter, I am so afraid. I am afraid of what I know about you and of what I do not know I am afraid of what you do not know about me, and what I never can tell you â but we must go on. You are right. We have to find Caliph, and then destroy him. But, oh God, I pray we do not destroy ourselves, what we have found together â I pray we will be able to keep that intact.'

âThe best way to conjure up emotional disaster is to talk about it.'

âAll right, let's play riddles instead. My turn first. What is the most miserable experience known to the human female?'

âI give up.'

âSleeping alone on a winter's night.'

âSalvation is at hand,' he promised her.

âBut what about your poor shoulder?'

âIf we combine our vast talents and wisdom, I am sure we will manage something.'

âI think you are right,' she purred and nestled against him like a sleek and silken cat. âAs always.'