A Triple Thriller Fest (105 page)

“And leave your artifacts? Or is it all about sticking it to Borisenko?”

She fixed him with a stare. “And what’re the artifacts doing in the Loire, anyway? You knew I was in Arles, why not leave the stuff in the south?”

“I’ve rented a little place on the banks of the Cher. It was easier to bring it there than to warehouse it in Marseille or Arles.”

“Right, I’m not an idiot, Peter.”

“Tess,” Lars said. He reached from his seat and put his hand on her wrist. “It’ll be fine, you don’t work today. We’ll take the train back tonight.” He wanted those goods and worse, she could see, he was curious about Peter and what he was offering.

“Or my guy can fly you back in the morning if the two of you don’t mind spending the night,” Peter said.

Peter’s little place turned out to be a 17
th
 Century Italianate chateau. It sat on an extensive estate next to the River Cher. Poplar-lined footpaths. Formal, walled gardens with fountains and perfectly trimmed hedges. Two horses in a field snorted and galloped across an impossibly green lawn as the helicopter swooped over the estate. The chateau itself was graceful curves and style, as beautiful now as it would have been three hundred years ago. She struggled to hold onto her anger, so tenderly nursed through the flight.

“Wow,” Lars said. “I mean, wow. Wish I had my camera.”

Tess looked back from the window to see Peter watching for her reaction. She returned a look of stone.

#

“It’s a war,” Peter said. “A castle, siege engines, desperate defenders. Sallies, retreats. Casualties.”

“You mean, like a reenactment,” Lars said. He wiped crumbs from his beard and pushed away his empty soup bowl. “Like those people who reenacted the Battle of Hastings for that BBC documentary.”

“You’re underestimating Peter,” Tess said. “Never do that.”

Her onion soup sat in front of her, cooling. To the side, duck pâté and bread, untouched. A woman in a trim suit brought a platter with three plates of croque monsieur. Just a simple sandwich of bread, cheese, and ham, but she had no doubt it would be delicious. She said nothing as the woman took her soup bowl, and refused to look at the food.

They ate lunch in the orangerie, a tiled room with a vast bank of windows that faced the south lawn as it dipped gently toward the river. There was a fountain topped by a cherub in the middle of the room, and potted orange trees dotted the room. A faint citrus smell hung in the air.

“Tess is right,” Peter said. “This isn’t a reenactment. There won’t be spectators, just participants. And the castle is real, no modern technology allowed in or around it. Imagine defenders, food running low, their numbers dwindling, the attackers pound the walls with their trebuchets.”

“Sounds delightful,” Tess said. “Especially the part where we all squat over garderobes and go for weeks without bathing. So what’s the angle?”

“The angle, Tess, is that people are trying to kill you.”

“Really kill you?” she asked. “As in, pitch you from the tower or sever your head between the third and fourth vertebrae?”

“No, of course not. But—”

“Then you’re still just describing a super-elaborate reenactment.”

“No,” Lars said. He shook his head. “I think I see where he’s going with this. It’s something real, isn’t it?”

Peter leaned forward and a glint came to his eyes. “Exactly. Real risk, real rewards. Sure, we’ll put in safeguards to keep it from turning into a bloodbath, but after that, it’s just what you can do with your own strength and wits.”

“How do you keep the police from stopping you, or it turning into a media circus?” Lars asked.

“That’s easy enough,” Peter said. “A bit of money, those things have a way of resolving themselves. The whole thing, including remodeling the castle, won’t cost more than ten, fifteen million dollars.”

“Is that all?” Tess asked. “You could practically dig that out of the couch cushions.”

“Exactly. The cost is trivial.”

“Is this what replaced the ziggurat?” she asked. She turned to Lars. “He had this complaint that the modern world was producing nothing of lasting value. Where is our Parthenon? Our Great Wall? Our pyramids? So he was going to build this six hundred foot ziggurat, in Kentucky, of all places. Put in all sorts of weird symbols and geometric stuff, and he wouldn’t explain what it meant. Kind of like a modern Stonehenge, keep people guessing. What would that cost? A couple of hundred million? His version of ‘turn here to see the world’s largest ball of twine.’”

She purposefully made it sound as silly as possible. Yet, surprisingly, Peter said nothing in defense. Maybe he was letting her exhaust her anger. If so, he underestimated her.

“An authentic battle, huh?” Tess continued. “You know what it reminds me of? You ever see that movie Red Dawn?”

The two men shook their heads. Wasn’t surprising. It was a purely American film.

“It’s about the Soviets taking over the U.S. and a bunch of high school kids wage a guerrilla war. My little brother and his friends used to go into the canyons and play Red Dawn. They planned how they’d wage a brilliant campaign behind enemy lines and bring the Soviet war machine to its knees. This sounds like your version of Red Dawn. Bunch of teenage kids playing at war. Only I bet your friends are all billionaires, aren’t they? I just can’t believe you have enough rich, crazy friends to stage a war.”

“There are only fourteen of us,” Peter said, “the rest I’m paying good money to bring onboard. We’ve got some ex-contractors, bodyguards, medieval experts like you guys, some hardcore hobbyists. There will be roughly 150 participants in all, so it won’t be a big battle.”

“That’s more than enough to keep things exciting,” Tess said.

“I could have had twice that many, easily. It’s dangerous work, but exciting, and I’m paying well. Lars, your offer is seventy-five thousand dollars a week. Tess, you’d get a hundred.”

Tess blinked. “So this is like a job interview? I’m not going to be your employee, Peter. God.”

“I missed you, too, Tess,” Peter said.

“Do you know how much you hurt me? I came home and you were gone. And Nick, too. We had one fight and you just packed up and left the country. One fight.”

“It was a lot more than that, Tess. Of course you know that.”

“Relationships end, I know that. But what about Nick? I loved that boy. And he loved me, too! You brought us together. We didn’t ask for that. But you put us together and then…” Her voice trailed off and she fought to stay in control of her emotions. “What you did, Peter…it was beyond cruel.”

“Nick’s here, Tess, he wants to see you.”

“Oh, god. He is? Oh. No, not yet. No, I have to think about it first. I can’t…not again.”

Tess pushed away from the table and then was out the door and across the lawn. It had looked so warm from inside the orangerie, but a chill breeze swept in from the east. Winter was on its way and would soon overwhelm even the gentle climate of central France.

She imagined Peter’s castle. It would be dark and forbidding. Brooding, even. A defiant wedge of stone, pounded by the elements.

Chapter Twelve:

Nick ran across the lawn, calling, “Tess! Tess!” She looked up, felt something break free inside her and then was running to sweep him up. He was grinning with his big, liquid eyes. His dark hair was curlier than ever.

He gripped her tight and she could feel the furious pounding of his heart from the run. A bit of snot on her neck from an un-wiped nose.

“Oh, you look so big. You’re six now. I can’t believe it.”

He’d preferred English just six months ago, but now he answered in French, though he seemed to understand what she’d said well enough. “You missed my birthday party, why didn’t you come? We had ice cream in the
Tour Eiffel.”

“Papa and I had a fight.”

“Why? Was it about the puppy?”

“The what?” She remembered something about a puppy and a discussion of housebreaking and who would be responsible for taking care of it when they were both gone. Nothing like a fight, but hadn’t that been just a day or two before she came back from school to discover the place empty?

“No, it wasn’t that silly puppy.”

“You know what I told Papa Noël to bring me for Christmas?” he asked.

“A puppy?”

“A what? No, a new engine for my train.”

“Do you have a train?” she asked. “Here at the chateau?”

“You didn’t see it? They have a real train here, it’s little and I can drive it myself, a real train. Didn’t you see it?” Nick squirmed and she had to put him down.

“You’ll have to show me. Is it big enough that I can ride, too?”

“Oh, yes. It has ten, no, eleven cars. But you might have to ride on top, that’s what Papa does. He says he doesn’t fit inside, but maybe you’re not as tall as he is.”

Peter crossed the lawn from the same direction that Nick had run. Such a handsome man, and totally unselfconscious about it, too. He was lazy about haircuts and shaving and you’d never catch him preening or taking note of his looks in any way. Of course, he was self-possessed in other ways.

“He talking about that train again?” Peter asked. “That’s all we did yesterday, ride it around and around. The track is maybe fifteen hundred meters and runs through the woods and meadows on the north side.”

“Sounds perfect for a boy.” Tess wanted to hold Nick, but he was already running off to look at something on the riverbank.

Nick squatted by the riverbank. “Want me to catch you a frog, Tess? There are green frogs, and snakes.”

“Sure, catch me one, if you can, but I don’t have anywhere to keep it.”

“Just put it in your pocket.”

Peter said, “He keeps putting frogs in the orangerie fountain, but the housekeeper throws them outside just as fast. I told him no water snakes or we’ll soon enough be short staffed.” His eyes focused and he looked her in the eyes. “Are you in, Tess?”

“I don’t know, I just don’t. What were you and Lars talking about back there?” She looked away, back to Nick. “Lars is usually so cautious, wants to understand every angle before he jumps in.”

“I’ve unleashed his inner Viking.”

“Is that what this is about, Peter? Bored, rich guys, playing Dark Ages?”

“You stand in a place like this, you think it will last forever,” Peter said. “This chateau, the rich people who own it. They’ll always be around.”

“What is that, a non-sequitor?”

Peter looked across the river and the distant look returned. “Americans are the worst. Four hundred years of nearly unbroken progress. The last war in your country was a hundred and fifty years ago.”

“It’s not just us, the whole world is on a good run,” Tess said. “Few hiccups, but it’s been sixty years since the last big war. No famines at the moment, no plagues. I like our odds.”

“You’re kidding yourself if you think modern civilization is a steady state system. We’re on a good run now, but what happens when some terrorist gets a nuke? Or when global warming spawns a major hurricane that knocks out, say, Manhattan? A nasty case of avian flu that kills tens of millions of people.”

“None of that will end the world. Might set us back a few years.”

“You know my biggest fear. It’s the thing that made me rich.”

“You mean oil,” Tess said.

“These high prices might be the first hint of something big to come. I’m not sure, but I know that even my friends in the industry are scared. They’re shoveling up money as fast as they can, mind you, so a little scarcity makes them happy. But not the kind of permanent, declining oil production that we’re facing.”

“So the price of oil goes up,” Tess said, “and people take the bus or the train. The price goes back down. Econ 101. Even I know that much.”

“That’s what happens when the price of chewing gum goes up, Tess. The entire global system is built around oil. Transportation. Plastics. Even agriculture is impossible without tractors and fossil fuel fertilizers. Those aren’t clothes you’re wearing. That’s half a liter of petrol.”

“It’s not like there aren’t substitutes,” Tess said. “What about coal and natural gas? The trains in France are run on electricity from nuclear power plants. It’s not all oil.”

“That’s like saying the human body is only seventy percent water, so what’s the harm if you lose a liter or two?” He shrugged. “I don’t know, it’s all just speculation, could be we’ll make a transition without problems. I do know there are a lot of people rubbing their hands together, delighted at the prospect of the collapse of human civilization.”

“So you think we’re doomed? Do you think we deserve it?”

“Of course not.” He looked back at her and the distant look faded. “The Twentieth Century was good for my family. In 1900, my great-grandfather was a goat-herder in Normandy. My Mom’s grandfather owned one donkey and an olive press in some dusty corner of Algeria. My parents went to college. My dad made a chunk of change in the Middle East exploring for oil. Me? In 2000, I earned my first billion. Seemed like a lot of money at the time.” He gave her a half-smile. “Twenty-first century is off to a fine start. It’s a good time to be rich.”

“Well, then, why are you so pessimistic?”

“My family also narrowly escaped Algeria. An entire French veneer peeled away in a few years. Hundreds of thousands of French who’d only known North Africa, forced to flee. And what happened afterward? A million Algerians killed? Things look wonderful until they turn to shit.”

This was not so different from the ziggurat in Kentucky. Peter wasn’t satisfied with the toys and goodies that kept most rich people occupied. Mentally, he was on the fringe and had the money to pursue his manias. Tess didn’t want to touch it.

“What about Lars and Dmitri?” she asked.

“What about them?”

“Are they going to your castle to fight in your war?”

“Only if you do,” Peter said. “They’ll be useful, but I need your knowledge of medieval warfare. I want you to lead my army.”

“Me, lead? What about Niels Grunberg? Why don’t you call him instead?”

“He’s already onboard. Niels is leading the other army.”