Forever (37 page)

'Lili said . . .' she began quietly. She
glanced momentarily down at her folded hands and then back up at
him.'. . . She said she would like to see you again very soon. Of
course, she did mention that she doesn't get to see any of her
friends as often as she'd like -'

'Well,' he said testily, 'she can't very
well expect to, can she?'

With a sigh, he let the hand clutching the
scarf drop to his lap and his ancient eyes, unblinking as a
lizard's, were moist with tears.

'I warned her in the beginning that the key
to life eternal was a secret she would have to keep at all costs .
. . that she would end up sacrificing everything for it! And do you
know what she did?' His voice trembled. 'She laughed into my face!
Into my face! She said she didn't care what it cost her - career,
friends, fame, her own identity - nothing mattered, so long as she
lived forever! She wanted that worse than anything else in the
world. Worse than other people want love or fame or sex or
money!'

How his emotions tugged her. So pathetic
they were, so misguided, and yet so sweet. Damp trails, like
tadpoles, meandered down his papery sunken cheeks.

Her voice was gentle. 'Still, you are one of
the only people in the world Lili really trusts. You know that.'
She was appalled by how easily and smoothly the lie slid off her
tongue. Like skates across smooth ice.

'Lili and I. . . we go back a long way,' he
said simply. Another strangled wet sob came from the depths of his
throat. 'A long way back.'

'Why, you're in love with her!' Stephanie
exclaimed softly.

'No!' he cried. Then he shut his eyes as
though against unendurable pain. 'Yes, God help me!' he croaked,
his fingers twisting the scarf in agony. 'But how could we ever
love each other as a man and a woman? She perpetually young ... me
ageing into this shrunken, shrivelled old husk!'

He averted his face to hide his overwhelming
misery. Her eyes moved away to give him privacy, and she looked
around the room, at the posters displayed with such pride, at the
young, exceedingly handsome face which had, once upon a time, been
his. Now the photographs of his long-lost youth seemed to mock, as
though berating him for ageing.

'Lili was telling me how much your playing
meant to her,' she said after a while. 'Especially when she sang
along. "
Was ist Silvia
". She loved that!'

His head twisted sharply towards her, his
face shadowed by memories. 'Yes, but does he care. Oh, no!
Business, business! That is all he ever thinks about - business and
money V He rolled the word distastefully off his tongue, as if
ridding himself of something particularly vile and disgusting. 'He
talked all during our little impromptu concert! He never even
listened to us!' The words were accusing, stinging, his expression
that of a petulant child.

Her mind flew. Who was the 'he' Guberoff was
referring to? The background voice on the tape? Ernesto de Veiga?
It had to be! But what had he been talking about? What . . .? And
then suddenly she remembered.

'But the markets in the East were just
opening up,' she said. 'He had to take advantage -'

The way he stared at her. She could see the
slack remnants of muscle tense in his cheeks. And his eyes, they
seemed to have clouded over and had suddenly become frighteningly
remote.

The lengthening silence made her uneasy, and
the ticking of the ormolu clock on the bureau seemed amplified, as
if the metronomic tick-tocks were getting louder and louder, until
they boomed like a heartbeat going out of control.

He leaned towards her. 'But how would you
know what he'd been talking about?' he whispered. 'You were not
even there!'

'On the cruise aboard the
Chrysalis
,
you mean? Of course I wasn't there.' Stephanie forced a laugh. 'You
know I wasn't.'

'Then . . . how? How . . . did . . . you . .
. know . . .?'

'About his conversation? Why, I'm sure Lili
must have told me! Yes. How else would I have known about it?'

Something shrewd shone into his face. 'But
Lili does not talk! Lili. . . never talks!'

Speechless, stunned at the speed with which
the tables had turned, Stephanie sat staring at him.

'You are no friend of Lili's!' he whispered,
aghast. 'Lili did not send you here!'

Her mind was racing, trying to figure out a
way to salvage the situation. She watched him slowly lower his head
and stare in horror down at his lap.

'These . . . these gifts are not from
her!'

She flinched as he abruptly flung the
picture and scarf to the floor.

'Who are you?' he demanded in a shrill,
rising voice.

'I told you, I'm a friend of -'

'You are notY He keened suddenly, like an
animal in its death throes. 'You tricked me!' he moaned. 'You've
tricked me to find out about her!'

Floods of tears were wriggling down his face
unchecked now.

'And I talked!' he groaned. 'Oh God, I
talked!'

Stephanie sat there in miserable silence.
She watched him cry, recover his composure, and finally wipe his
eyes with his fleshless palms. Then he tugged the square of silk
out of his breast pocket and blew noisily into it. With a dignity
that was almost painful to see, he raised his head.

'How can you just sit there?' he whispered,
his eyes accusing. 'Have you no shame? Go! Go!'

Never in her entire life had she felt so
guilty and cheap. And yet she remained seated. It was as though she
had been glued to the fragile chair which had once belonged to
Maria Meneghini Callas.

Now he was pale and sweating. With a
trembling hand he dabbed his upper lip with the handkerchief. 'For
the love of heaven, won't you just go?' he cried. 'Forget the
ramblings of a crazy old man and go!'

She rose carefully to her feet, the creaking
of the prized armchair reflecting the wretchedness inside her. Then
she bent down and retrieved the scarf and Madame Balasz's
photograph from the floor.

She gave the priceless Faberge frame a
cursory check. Miraculously, it seemed undamaged; she would mail it
back to Budapest without feeling more guilt than already burdened
her. She wrapped it in the scarf and stuffed the silken packet
inside her bag. Then she slung the bag over her shoulder and
hesitated. She looked down at him, but he pointedly turned away,
refusing to meet her eye.

She decided against any parting comment. Her
face stretched taut, she walked stiffly over to the door. Quickly,
she pushed down the cool smooth handle, opened the door, and made
her escape. She closed the door quietly behind her and slumped
wearily against a column in the corridor outside.

She was quivering with shame and
indignation. For a moment, she shut her eyes. She deserved his
contempt; it had been a despicable thing to do. Inexcusable -

- no,
excusable
, she told herself
savagely. It had been the only way. And it had succeeded - hadn't
it?

'Home run,' she said to herself.

But she felt no triumph. Victory had not
been sweet. Instead, a filthy aftertaste lingered in her mouth.

Milan, Italy • Barcelona, Spain

He was waiting for her.

Outside, on the grassy island in the middle
of the street. Leaning casually against the pedestal of the Verdi
bronze, to all appearances engrossed in his newspaper. He could
have been a businessman on his lunch break, or a man waiting for
his lover.

Stephanie didn't notice him when she came
out of the arched entrance of the Casa di Riposo. But then, she
hadn't noticed him earlier, when he'd followed her here from the
hotel, either.

But he noticed her, and he waited patiently
until she had a thirty-yard head start. Then he folded the
newspaper, tucked it under his arm, and followed her along the
pavement at a leisurely pace. All the way back to her hotel.

He watched from a chair in the lobby as she
settled her bill at the front desk.

He was waiting in a rental car across the
street when she came out, a porter carrying her three suitcases,
and watched as she climbed into a taxi.

He followed the taxi to the airport, where
he abandoned his car in the No Parking zone in front of the
terminal.

And he followed her, invisible as a ghost,
to the Iberia counter, where she purchased a ticket and checked her
luggage.

Luckily there was no queue. As soon as she
was gone, he walked up to the counter.

'Excuse me,' he said to the ticket agent. 'I
need your help.'

Francesca Maggi was a romantic Italian
first, and an airline ticket agent second. Which was why, as she
listened to the man who was enquiring about the female passenger
she'd just helped, her heart melted.

He looks so miserable! she thought
pityingly. I've got to do what I can for him.

Francesca knew that the fierce passions
aroused by amore were all part of the human condition. Nobody
understood that as well as a romantic Italian.

'I cannot sell you a ticket to Marbella,'
she was explaining to the forlorn-looking man, 'for the simple
reason that there's no airport in Marbella.'

'But you told me that that's where she
wanted to go.'

She smiled. 'That's where she wanted to go,
but that's not where she's going to land. I really shouldn't be
telling you this, but. . . well, since you have such an honest
face. . .

She glanced around and lowered her
voice.

'. . . She is flying to Malaga! It's the
closest airport to Marbella!'

'I see . . .' He frowned, is she on a
nonstop flight?'

She shook her head. 'Her flight lands in
Barcelona, where she has to change planes.' She looked thoughtful.
'She specifically requested a six-hour stopover in Barcelona.'

He thought: She's going to change identities
again!

if you like,' she said helpfully, 'I can put
you on a flight that gets you to Malaga ahead of hers. That way -'
She smiled knowingly, '- you can be waiting for her at the other
end. Doesn't that sound romantic?'

'I don't know how to thank you enough,' he
said.

After Stephanie landed in Barcelona, she
went through customs and repeated her by-now familiar procedure.
She checked two of the suitcases in a baggage locker and changed
personas in the washroom. Off came the red wig and glasses; for
now, she was back to being a strawberry blonde. She tore the
passports of her last three personas into little pieces and flushed
them down the toilet. Then she checked the large suitcase in yet
another baggage locker and, unencumbered by luggage, took a cab
into the city.

An hour later, she was seated in the chair
of an exclusive beauty salon, stoically ignoring the pleas of the
hairdresser.

'But you have such marvellous thick hair!'
the stylist protested, it would be criminal to cut it short!'

Stephanie stared at the hairdresser's
reflection in the mirror.

'I'm bored with it,' she said implacably.
'Cut it like . . .' She twisted around, her eyes scanning the
framed photographs of various hairstyles on the wall. She pointed
at a head with short dark Louise Brooks-style bangs.'. . . Like
that.'

'If you are certain . . .' the man
sniffed.

'I am. Oh, and one more thing.'

'Senorita?'

Stephanie's voice was weary. 'Dye it brown.
Dark brown.'

Marbella, Spain

From a distance, it could have been mistaken
for a blinding white island. Or, at closer range, some rakish,
sharp-prowed intergalactic voyager which had, for mysterious
purposes, put down on water.

It was, in fact, the megayacht M.Y.
Chrysalis, riding at anchor half a mile offshore, stately and
unperturbed, as though aloof to the skipping whitecaps and
challenging the sea to whip up something worthy of its attention. A
smartly uniformed, permanent crew of fifty was on board to dance
constant attendance upon the owner and his guests.

This, the de Veiga yacht, out-Trumped them
all. It was rakishly streamlined, two-hundred-and-eighty-nine feet
long, and had electric propellers in pods that could rotate
three-hundred-and- sixty degrees. With five decks and sixty
thousand square feet of indoor/outdoor deck space, it easily
carried its burden of auxiliary craft: a Bell Jet Ranger
helicopter, two Riva speedboats, an Admiral, a Boston Whaler, and,
in a wetberth on its afterdeck, the
Larva
, a sixty-foot
Magnum Marine muscle boat.

As befitted the mini-ship of one of the
world's richest men,
Chrysalis
's interior was stupendously
opulent. There was the three-storey circular atrium with crystal
columns trimmed in gold. The main salon which was eighty feet long
and the entire width of the yacht: forty-four feet. An elevator, a
garage, and a discotheque complete with strobes, disc jockey booth,
and glass dance floor. And that didn't take into account the
revolving sky lounge, gymnasium, health clinic, operating theatre
and, since price had been no object, and every conceivable
eventuality anticipated, the morgue.

Besides the two owners' apartments on the
fourth deck - his included a panoramic office, hers a complete
beauty salon - there were eight harem-like guest suites below, each
with marble bathrooms, Jacuzzis, and gold fixtures. Genies, in the
persons of crew members, could be summoned at the push of a button
or the pull of a tasselled cord.

And, since no true megayacht is without one,
on the topmost deck - for privacy's sake tucked between the twin
funnels - there was the small freshwater swimming pool. Shaped like
a butterfly and tiled with lapis lazuli. Two wide waterfalls, one
from each funnel, splashed down into it.