A Death in Geneva (25 page)

New week, Tuesday, I will be with you again. I ache for the moment, for you, my love.

Reservations at Claridges, as usual. I'll pick you up, Madame President, at your office, if I am still considered presentable. Then, the evening is in your lovely hands.

Connie, my love. Do you realize how important it is that you are already a president? Because, I shall be one very soon, it's in the stars, and you will be my guide even, damn it, if you won't say yes to being my wife. Not yet, not yet—rush not, my love.

Connie, do you think about us, how completely superb our life together would be? It would . . . it will. I will continue to propose over dinner, lunch, breakfast, in the theater, in the middle of the night. I do love you so; I respect you as much as I love you and I admire you as much as I adore.

If you still insist on remaining Burdette, I will love you with every ounce of my life, in London and, mark my words, in the White House. Grover Cleveland did, you know, dearest Connie. But! Do not call me Grover, sounds like the family pooch.

Until Tuesday, I dream of you.

All my love to you,

TGG

Sweetman returned the letter to his pocket, waited at the Vauxhall Bridge road for the light. The sky was clearing. Cars hissed along the wet pavement which shone in the evening's sunset.

He frowned; Bromberger was in Rome. Grabner's catch was probably starting to sing. Italians bumped her off. Action's down there—No! He corrected himself, made the turn inland from the river to circumnavigate the Battersea Power Station. It wasn't true. They were still cold as ice. Where in hell did anyone get off signing a letter like that TGG for Christ's sake. But she had kept him on her string, never played his game.

Sweetman sifted through the disconnected evidence. Grabner's blonde male . . . airport . . . Geneva, the name of the American, ticket to Cairo . . . the voice . . . that incompetent bastard Weems . . . second voice, Christ . . . woman, talking English or American, anyone but a goddamned Mongolian could say five words in English! Fisker, the
little prick, had worked the tape inside out with his lab-speak boys . . . the ambassador's name . . . the even tone, no emotion . . . the death shots, then her hand had released its grip on the phone . . .

A man and woman, husband and wife by the looks of them, were on the cinder running track as Sweetman entered the park. A jog, a shower, a couple of gins, roll in bed with honey, not bad. They passed him, chatting as they ran. Connie Burdette had been alright in bed. North, her Brit lover, had his share of space in the TOPIC vault, fawning letters, cards with the gifts, gallery opening announcements, all in the files.

The vault's contents went far beyond her personal life. From Scotland Yard, the reports in response to every threat were comprehensive, professional. The Yard had assumed full responsibility, a single, plainclothes twenty-four-hour-a-day detail had been assigned without publicity because of the national uproar she had created. But the Yard's reports dealt with nuts and hotheads. Only one person had ever been detained.

Connie Burdette had thrived on battle with the British, and on fighting the Labor government and its offshore energy regulations. She had burst out once in an interview, “Socialism is a sickness. It will be the death of you!”
END IS NEAR: ERUPTION FROM MT. BURDETTE
had led that evening's headlines. During the years in London, she had seen eye-to-eye with the government on only one issue, terrorism and the threat to the rigs. The vault's papers revealed a close and continuing liaison with the Yard, the Royal Navy, and the commanding officer of the Special Boat Squadron commandos.

The Navy monitored the TOPIC rigs as part of its North Sea patrols. There were not enough ships, and they could not protect against the underwater threat. On her orders, subsurface inspections were conducted daily. This, too, had been kept from the press, as had all rig security measures.

Each member of each crew had to pass a background investigation. The rigs were not left in isolation, ever. Each carried communications and backup systems. The security teams inspected all incoming supplies. Access from the sea ladders and helicopter decks was sealed, to be opened and manned by security only when a supply ship or flight was scheduled. Even if saboteurs were to make their way aboard, the rigs were as terroristproof as possible—automatic shutoff systems,
dispersal and redundancy of vital gear to minimize the damage from both explosion and fire. Fifteen rigs; big operation; smart lady.

Sweetman crossed the Albert Bridge into Chelsea. Smart lady, but not smart enough to win against seventy-foot waves. Who the hell is? He purchased a bouquet of yellow roses and peach iris from the flower stall on the corner of Royal Hospital Road. The Chinese-red door was ajar when he reached the small, white-brick row house on Radnor Walk.

“Sherri, where the hell are you?” Sherri Easton was on the telephone, pointed at the receiver, gave him a wave from the kitchen door, and continued her conversation. He tossed the white paper cone of flowers on the sofa, engulfed her in his arms, gripping her round bottom, working upward across her hips, along her back to her shoulders, then down again. She wiggled beneath the massage, turned in feigned annoyance as the long fingers continued their travels to her breasts. Divorced, a friend and lover of Hanspeter's from an earlier life, Sherri was arguing with her night city editor.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! The flat was demolished, furniture and paintings smashed . . .” She listened. “Yes, struggle, torn hair, blood everywhere!” She rolled her eyes at Hanspeter, moved the phone away as he pretended to take it. Her voice grew angrier. “Look, lovie; I don't know what's bothering you tonight. The story
is
the way I wrote it, and it is a goddamned exclusive unless you bugger it up!” He was talking again; she broke in. “I was at the side entrance, alone, away from the pack when the coroner came out, was climbing into his car. We know each other; do you hear me? . . . bruises on the neck; the stab wounds probably came after she was dead . . . alright?” She held the receiver away, then close, “Good, good boy, lovie; don't bugger it up.” She hung up with a sigh.

“Sounds like a profitable day.”

“Oh, Hanspeter, that man is suffering from senile dementia. Our resident Balkan duchess managed to have herself splattered about her Regents Park flat this afternoon. The fool at the night desk is in a trance, paralyzed by the finest story he's had in weeks, all but accused me of fanaticizing. We haven't heard the last of him, either—and you?” She put her arms around his neck, rose on her tiptoes, and they kissed a long kiss blending the distant past with the night ahead.

“And me?” He picked her up, strolled around the living room hugging her. “I've been wasting money—a very neat puzzle. We're
dealing with a tight cell, hard to penetrate, modern weapons, good operation; a neat puzzle, but I'm pocketing some pieces, kiddo.”

“Shall we go out to eat?”

“Aren't you afraid your buddy boy is going to call you back?”

“Oh, you're the optimistic chap.” She put the flowers in an empty wine carafe, filled it from the kitchen tap, and returned the bouquet to the living room.

“If you've got a pail, I could get some beer and sandwiches.”

“That's an idea, Hanspeter, a picnic at the foot of our bed!” She smiled a loving smile, snatched her purse from the front hall stand, and trotted up to the second floor. Sweetman followed the outline of the panties beneath the tight cotton-knit dress. “No,” she called down the stairs. “Night desk is under control. It's a gorgeous evening. We're going for a walk.”

It was after midnight. Sweetman's head was propped against a pillow, his pale, muscular shoulders illuminated by moonlight. Sherri raised herself on an elbow in her darkened bedroom to take a sip from the beer he was nursing. She stretched out beside him again. The dinner had been good. They had come home and made love.

“I've been followed from the moment I cleared customs at Heathrow.”

“Rather foolish, isn't it, for anyone here to follow you?”

“Part of the business. They want to know why we're here. We didn't broadcast my arrival. TOPIC must have tipped them off.”

“We've been followed tonight?”

“Right to the doorstep.”

“Not inside—semi-public sex?” She laughed, ran her hands up his hairy thighs, fondled him. “And, why didn't you shake them, Hanspeter? What were you, a commando, a frogman, no—a SEAL.” She gave him a squeeze. He pulled her tight against him. “I remember the night you taught me the proper way to hold a fighting knife, long, long ago when you were protecting me.” She had one arm out of the covers. “Handle reversed, blade pointing back up the arm, purse as a shield in the left hand, the opening—slash, thrust—didn't you, you dangerous SEAL. Why didn't you swim across the Thames submerged tonight, leave them baffled ashore on the South Bank?”

“No need to, not until this morning.”

Sherri brought a cup of coffee to Sweetman at daybreak while he shaved. She left the house first, walking along Kings Road to Sloane Square where she hailed a taxi for her office. Sweetman emerged an hour later, turned up Sydney Street, and slipped into the waiting black American sedan just before Fulham Road. A gray British Rover confirmed its interest in the American party. The two cars pushed through the beginning of the morning's rush toward Grosvenor Square. Sweetman's car disappeared into the embassy's basement garage. At almost the same instant, a black van emerged from the interior garage ramp. The Rover was at the curb, two of its occupants on foot surveilling the main and consular entrances.

Sherri's red Triumph sped through the outskirts of London heading northeast toward Yarmouth. “—And, Mr. SEAL, you guarantee we're not being followed?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Impossible, not a chance with you as wheelman. The black balaclavas wouldn't stand a chance, let alone the Yard.”

“Are you working with our Special Air?”

“Indirectly.” He stroked her shoulder as she drove. “Did you have to take the day off for this?”

“Almost, said I had to have some work done on the car, back by noon, that sort of thing. Did you see the story?”

“Was it okay? Lovie come through?”

“He did, strangely enough, front page, in fact. I do have to be back by two. I have a meeting with another inspector, Hanspeter, a good friend—”

“We're all good friends.”

She yanked the Triumph toward the side of the road in mock anger, sped ahead. “—a good friend who has promised—oops, here we are”—her car bounced through ruts in the gravel outside the car rental agency—“who has promised to fill me in on the autopsy. The car is in my name. Will you be back tonight?”

He shook his head. “At least a couple of days. Send the bill for any damages to my great uncle George, Main Post Office, Anchorage, Alaska.”

“Air mail?”

“Surface mail's fast.”

They kissed. He emerged from the office with the keys, climbed into a green Jaguar coupe. The two cars headed off in opposite directions.