Forever (29 page)

Holy mother of God! he thought. A patrol
car!

He could hear the blood rushing madly around
inside his head and, breath held, mentally counted off the passing
seconds: One and two and three and . . .

. . . The cops drove by without slowing
down, the chatter of their radio fading, their red taillights
receding before disappearing around yet another bend.

He relaxed but forced himself to remain in
place a few minutes longer. Waiting for his night vision to
readjust and to make absolutely certain his presence hadn't been
suspected and the police wouldn't return to investigate. Then, and
only then, did he resume his stealthy prowl.

W-what -

The wildlife preserve ended so abruptly that
he'd stumbled out of the trees before he'd even realised it.

Damn!

Swiftly he drew back into their protective
cover, and without rush, studied the terrain.

He was at the edge of a meadow, fifty feet
from the west side of the main house. Behind it and to his left was
the ghostly Greek temple he correctly assumed was the guesthouse.
Below, to the right, the ribbon of dark country road was without
traffic.

All was dark at the main house. All was
quiet at the temple. Nothing stirred but the shrill nocturnal
insects.

Keeping in a low crouch, he crept through
the sloping meadow towards the house. Once he reached it, he
flattened himself against the wall and listened intently.
Nothing.

Keeping close to the building, he did a
complete circumference, his ears keen, alert to the slightest
sounds coming from within. There were none.

Still, better safe than sorry. At the front
entrance, he did the obvious. Rang the buzzer several times and
waited in the shadows.

Nothing barked; no one came to answer the
door. It was as he had thought: there was nobody at home.

He returned to the back of the house and
chose one of the French doors. A ghostly decal on a pane of glass
warned of an ADT alarm - as if that would scare him off.

He unzipped his canvas carryall, took out a
penlight, and shone it along the window frame. Aha. There it was -
a small square on the door, and another on the doorframe. A
vibration sensor alarm, for guarding against vandals and untrained
thieves.

He smiled. Talk about a piece a cake, he
thought.

Working swiftly and with confidence, he held
the penlight in his mouth and took two magnetised Slim Jims, a
small pair of wire cutters, and a short length of wire with an
alligator clip attached to each end out of the carryall.

He put the cutters and the length of wire
down on the top step. One of the Slim Jims he stuck between the two
square alarm units. He used the other to jimmy the lock.

It took minutes. There was a click as the
tumblers turned.

Now came the trickier part. Still holding
the magnetised Slim Jim between the two units, he used his other
hand to pick up the wire cutters, snipped the alarm wire, and
swiftly attached an alligator clip to each of the cut ends.

There. Now for the moment of reckoning.

Despite his self-confidence and the
simplicity of the alarm system, his heart sped as he slid the Slim
Jim out of the door. He was prepared for the piercing alarm - which
was probably hooked up to the local police station - to go off and
send him scurrying back into the safety of the woods.

But there was no sound. Only silence. And
the silence was very, very sweet.

Putting his tools back in the carryall, he
zipped it closed, picked it up, and opened the door. After feeling
his way through the blue brocade curtains, he stepped into the
living room, shut the door behind him and locked it from the
inside.

He played the penlight around the grand,
high-ceilinged room, illuminating part of a treasure-laden table
here, the fine veneer of an antique chair there. Gilt-framed
mirrors reflected the blinding pinpoint of light right back at
him.

Quickly he went from room to room, but he
didn't bother to stop and search them. He knew that would be a
waste of time. He wouldn't find anything here. He could sense that
the house had been unused for weeks; months, even: it was pervaded
by that closed-up, stifling smell that is the hallmark of places in
which no one has lived for a while.

Returning to the living room, he pushed his
way through the heavy curtains, went back outside, and pulled the
French door shut. He disconnected the alligator clips, reconnected
the alarm, and returned the tools to the carryall. Then he stood
up, his eyes sweeping the hill.

The ghostly pillared portico of the temple
was just visible in the night, like something ethereal and
other-worldly hovering in mid-air.

He hiked briskly but unhurriedly up the
steep incline, going the long way round in order to remain in the
shelter of the trees. He approached the building from the rear,
sprinted towards it in a crouch, and squatted below the nearest
window. Putting the carryall down on the ground, he placed his
hands on the sill and carefully inched up to have a look-see.

The place was dark, and without using his
flashlight, he couldn't tell whether it was occupied or not.

Keeping close to the building, he continued
moving in a crouch along one of the side walls, stopping again to
peer into another window.

There was still no sign of habitation, but
he knew that didn't prove it was uninhabited, either. In the
country, people went to bed early, and someone could very well be
asleep in there.

He climbed the shallow steps to the portico
and knocked loudly on the front door. Waited. Knocked again. Waited
some more.

It was just as he had thought. There was no
one here.

He switched on his penlight and moved it
around the door. Saw that it was thick and sturdy, made of solid
oak and fitted with good Medeco locks.

Well, there's more than one way to skin a
cat, he thought, and went back to the side of the house, where he
ran the penlight beam along a window.

As with the main building below, it was
fitted with vibration sensor alarms - just as he'd expected. And
the locks were child's play - as he'd expected, also.

He shook his head at the folly of
homeowners. It never failed. People barricaded themselves behind
expensive front doors and felt deceptively safe while the hardware
on their windows was cheap and flimsy.

Humming to himself, he stuck the penlight in
his mouth, unzipped the carryall, and got busy. Within three
minutes, he had the window open and was inside, playing the thin
beam of light around the huge library/guestroom.

'Well, well, well,' he said to himself.
'What do you know

Because there was no one here now, but there
had been recently. The lingering smells of food and perfume still
hung faintly in the air.

This time, he decided to risk turning on the
lights. After making sure all the curtains were tightly drawn, he
found a wall switch and flipped it on.

Setting his carryall down, he looked around
and let out an impressed whistle. Everything, from the two lavishly
canopied beds down to the smallest bibelot, looked as though it
belonged in a museum. There's a fortune here, he thought. Luckily
for the owner, I'm not a thief I'm just tracking somebody who's
supposed to be dead . . .

Save for the green hills and onion-domed
churches of Mittel-Europa, there is something distinctly Parisian
about Budapest which, until 1872, had been three independent
communities - Buda and Obuda on the west bank of the Danube, and
Pest on the east. On this early afternoon the sky was cloudless,
but the air pollution was so bad that the horizon was obscured, and
a greyish-blue haze shrouded the imperial architecture, grand
monuments, boulevards, and verdigris bridges, making them seem
somehow vague, as though viewed through gauze.

It was nearing 2 p.m. when the taxi dropped
Stephanie in front of the elegant rococo facade of a six-storey,
turn-of-the-century apartment house on the Buda side of the city.
Once elegant, the riverside building had long since gone to seed, a
sad grimy remnant of the grand and splendid past.

Standing on the bristly second-floor
doormat, she reached up and wound the old-fashioned brass bell. It
emitted a grating noise, more like an old bicycle bell than chimes.
She waited. There were slow footsteps and the tap of a cane on the
other side of the door, and then she was aware of an eye surveying
her through the peephole.

She stepped back and smiled reassuringly to
show that she was harmless. After a few seconds, locks turned, and
then the panelled door creaked open about six inches.

'I
gen?
' said an exquisite, ancient
woman, surveying Stephanie suspiciously.

Stephanie took a deep breath.
'Beszel
angolul?
' she asked haltingly.

The woman frowned.
'Sajnalom
, she
said.
'Nem ertem
.' She started to close the door.

'Wait wait wait!' Stephanie cried quickly in
English, and then enunciated slowly: 'Bae . . . sayl
on . . .
gaw . . . lool?
'

Now the enormous eyes lit up with
understanding. 'Ah!
Beszel angolul!
' The woman laughed and
opened the door wider. 'Of course,' she said with an unmistakable
pride in her voice. 'I speak English.'

I should have known, Stephanie thought
wryly. Instead of making an ass of myself by butchering a few
simple words of Hungarian, I might as well have started off by
speaking my native tongue. Then she held out her hand and
introduced herself. 'My name is Amanda Smith, and I've come from
the United States to see Madame Balasz.'

'I am Madame Balasz.' The woman stepped
aside and indicated with a gesture that Stephanie should enter.

'This way. Please.' Leaning on her cane, the
short old lady led the way down the hallway, which was quite grand,
if rather shabby, and stifling - hot, dim, airless, and stuffy -
and pervaded by that peculiarly sour smell of being inhabited by a
person of extreme old age.

At the far end of the hall, Madame Baldsz
pushed open an etched glass door and stepped aside. 'Please,' she
invited, gesturing Stephanie inside a gloomy formal salon which,
upon first glance, was missing only the decaying wedding cake;
otherwise, Miss Haversham would have felt completely at home. You
will make yourself comfortable. I will return in a few
moments.'

Left alone, Stephanie looked around. The
room looked as though it hadn't been used in years. The walls were
covered in a faded, once-rich blue damask which showed stains from
multiple leaks; above the cornice, the ornate plaster ceiling was a
road map of cracks. Heavy velvet curtains, drawn tightly across
three tall French doors, were frayed and moth-eaten. The carved
white marble fireplace mantel was intact, but the opening had long
been sealed off, and a magnificent fantasy of a gilt-and-tile stove
stood on the hearth in front of it. In one corner lurked an antique
gramophone, complete with gigantic horn speaker; in another, an old
Bosendorfer grand piano, its top draped with a tattered
silver-fringed shawl. Displayed on it were dozens of old
photographs in enamel and ormolu and tarnished silver frames.

One of the pictures caught her eye. Drawn
towards it, she picked it up and used her palm to wipe the thick
layer of dust off the glass.

Holding it up to the little light there was,
she studied it closely.

The faded, cracked photograph showed two
young women in ubiquitous operetta regalia: lavish gowns with
hooped underskirts, elbow-length gloves, fans, tons of costume
jewellery, and towering white wigs sprouting ostrich plumes.

One was a woman she had never seen before;
the other was a very beautiful and very young Lili Schneider.

She stared intently at Lili's face. Under
the stage makeup, intended to make the young singer look older and
more sophisticated, the photographer had caught a young woman who,
at first impression, seemed to give off an air of great
vulnerability. But when Stephanie concentrated on the eyes, she saw
that the exact opposite held true. Though memorable and
mesmerising, there was something oddly cold and disturbingly
calculating about Lili's pale eyes, and the warmth of the sweet
smile curving her lips never reached them.

"Ahem!" Someone in the doorway cleared their
throat noisily.

Startled, Stephanie guiltily put the frame
back down and turned around. The old lady, leaning on her cane,
stood there. 'Now then,' she said. 'About what did you wish to see
me?'

Budapest, Hungary

Madame Balasz was the most peculiar woman
Stephanie had ever seen. Short, thin, and to say the very least,
more than a bit eccentric, she was determined to make up for her
eighty-three years by projecting an imperious strength and a
formidable, almost aggressively French sense of style.

From a distance and in dim lighting, she
could have passed for no more than forty. She wore a snappy red
military-style tunic with gold braid and buttons and big epaulets,
along with tight black pants, red shoes, and bright-red leather
gloves which hid her aged hands. Her head of thick youthful brown
hair was cut in bangs and she had big Betty Boop stars for
eyes.

The starry eyes were the result of spidery,
black-mascared false lashes she'd glued to both the upper and the
lower lids, and the youthful hair was - what else? - a wig,
unabashedly anchored in place by a thick black rubber band under
her chin, which did double duty as a kind of surgery-free facelift,
and thus left her features miraculously devoid of deep
wrinkles.

They sat outside, on rusty green bistro
chairs on the balcony overlooking the Danube, sipping Aszu wine. A
fat black Persian cat purred contentedly on Madame's lap, its eyes
sleepy slits as its mistress stroked it with a red-gloved hand;
another black Persian lay curled at her feet, delicately licking
its privates.