Obsession (Year of Fire) (51 page)

Roy’s eyelids eased half-open.

“What are you doing here? Where’s Matilde? I need to see her. She and I need to talk. Tonight. Right now.”

“She doesn’t want to see you. I, on the other hand, have something to show you.” He took a small Sony video camera out of a black case and held it in front of Blahetter’s face. “Recognize anything?”

Roy stared at the images of him with that woman he had met in the
bistrot
Au Bascou, engaged in a sordid and violent sexual act. He turned his head on the pillow to look away. Al-Saud could feel his despair. That wouldn’t work for him. He needed him cornered and furious.

“Good images for a porno film,” he said, with Zoya’s moans and Blahetter’s screaming and cursing in the background. “What would Matilde say if she saw this?”

“What do you want?” he asked, without looking at him.

“Information. Documents. Proof. Your family’s laboratory illegally trades prohibited substances. Dimethyl methyl phosphate and
thionyl chloride, among others. I need you to get the documentation that shows that these substances are exported, the clients they’re sold to, the quantities, the destinations. Everything.”

“Why do you need it? To bring down my grandfather?”

“Your grandfather doesn’t matter to me.”

“So why do you need this information?” Al-Saud obviously had no intention of answering him. “And if I refuse?”

“I don’t think you’d like it if this recording ended up in your wife’s hands.”

“You would never show it to her.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that.”

Blahetter struggled to smile, then grimaced immediately in pain as the cuts on this lips reopened.

“I know Matilde. I know what she provokes, that uncontrollable desire to protect her, to love her. I know that you’re in love with her. You wouldn’t have showed up at my brother’s house and made that scene if you weren’t. I understand. She’s like a fever that takes hold of you.”

Al-Saud suffered a second of uncertainty.

“And yet you caused her unforgivable pain.”

“Believe me, what I did to her ruined my life. And I will always pay for that drunken mistake.” After a silence, he continued, “Do it, Al-Saud. Show her the film. I’ve lost her already. You think I don’t know that? Nothing matters to me now.”

Eliah clicked the camera shut and put it in its case. The beating had demoralized Blahetter. Perhaps he should try in a few days, but he didn’t have that kind of time. The insurance companies were putting pressure on them, and Mercure needed to get payment for the work as soon as possible.

“I could get what you’re asking for money,” Blahetter announced, surprising him. “I would do it for five hundred thousand dollars.” He was asking for significantly more than he would need to construct the prototype of the uranium centrifuge.

Al-Saud looked at him fixedly. Five hundred thousand dollars. He had that money—Bouchiki’s payment had never gone through.

“I want it in cash.”

Al-Saud agreed with a nod.

“I need the information in seventy-two hours. Otherwise, I’ll have no use for it.”

“Okay.”

“Blahetter, I’m not going to pay you five hundred thousand dollars for photocopies. I need documents, inventory records, accounting records, proof of shipment, everything to prove irrefutably that Blahetter Chemicals sells and exports dimethyl methyl phosphate and thionyl chloride.”

Ezequiel came into the room. He carried a bottle of mineral water in one hand and a straw in the other.

“What are you doing here?” he shouted.

“Ezequiel,” Roy intervened, “calm down. Al-Saud just came to talk. And he was just leaving.”

“I’ll be in touch with you within forty-eight hours,” Eliah said, and turned to leave the room.

“Al-Saud,” Roy called. “Take care of Matilde. Protect her. She’s your responsibility now.”

Al-Saud nodded and left.

“What the hell was that guy doing here and what the hell happened to you that you’re talking to him like that? The beating must have left you half-stupid.”

“Shut up, Ezequiel, and give me a sip of water.” Roy drank from the straw his brother held for him. “I need to speak to Pedro Testa. Now.”

“Now? Are you nuts?”

“Don’t argue. Please, do what I ask.”

Their cousin Guillermo Lutzer had won plenty of enemies on his frenzied path to the presidency of the Blahetter Group, including Pedro Testa, an adviser to his grandfather Guillermo who had been with him since before the name Blahetter had meant anything in Argentina. The power struggle between Pedro and the younger Guillermo had become a trial of strength, replete with low blows and dirty schemes, which Lutzer had ended up winning. The elderly German, tired and depressed since his estrangement from his grandson Roy, took the vice-presidency from Testa and awarded it to Guillermo. Testa had been sent to another laboratory in Pilar, outside Buenos Aires, with the same six-figure salary he had received when he held the vice-presidency. Testa’s wife told him that he had come
out on top: he had far fewer responsibilities and continued to receive the same salary. Pedro didn’t see the situation in the same way; he considered it a betrayal and an insult. He had been humiliated and discredited in a business sector where his name had previously been uttered with respect.

“Hello, Pedro. It’s Roy Blahetter calling.”

After a long conversation with the ex-vice-president of the Blahetter Group, Roy hung up and Ezequiel demanded to know what was going on. “What the hell are you getting yourself into?”

“Don’t ask. I want to destroy Guillermo just as much as Testa. And now I know how to do it.”

“It’s not Guillermo’s fault that you raped Matilde.”

“Yes, it is his fault! He filled my head with awful ideas, got me drunk, and he did it to destroy me. He was always jealous of me because I was Grandpa’s favorite.” He rested his neck on the pillow and breathed painfully, tired and devastated. “Ezequiel, brother, I need you to help me, please.”

“You know that I’ll do whatever you ask.”

“I need you to convince Matilde to come see me. It’s imperative. If she doesn’t want to come, tell her to give you the key that I gave her on the night of the party. When are you going to see her?”

“Tomorrow night. I can’t do it any sooner.”

“It has to be sooner! It has to be now!”

“I’m not going now, Roy! It’s too late. For your information, I have a job and engagements that I can’t change. Tomorrow I have to start very early with a photo shoot that’s going to take all day. I’ll go to see her in the evening.”

A nurse entered and injected a dose of medication into Roy’s saline solution to help him sleep. Ezequiel waited for his brother to fall asleep before he left.

Ariel Bergman said to himself that the trips to Paris were becoming an annoying though necessary habit. The turn this Eliah Al-Saud business had taken had disturbed the top brass at The Institute. What had started as mild suspicion and moderate state of alert looked like it might become a catastrophe.

“Were you able to find out if the exchange took place between Bouchiki and that woman in Cairo?” Diuna Kimcha asked.

“We don’t know for sure,” Bergman admitted. “The kidonim who were observing them from the river didn’t witness an exchange. Salvador Dalí didn’t know how the photographs would be exchanged.”

“We’re increasing our surveillance of Al-Saud, Hill and Thorton. All three saw our katsas following them. We’re dealing with professionals.”

“More than professionals. I would say,” Bergman opined. “They’re masters of espionage, assassination and combat reconnaissance. They’re lethal weapons, especially Al-Saud. They’re the best mercenaries on the market. Recent intelligence tells us that they belonged to a secret elite NATO group called L’Agence. They were chosen for their qualifications in their places of origin. For example, Al-Saud was one of the best pilots in the French air force, and speaks several different languages perfectly. Michael Thorton was one of the most skilled SIS spies during the Cold War. They say that he could get in and out of East Germany as if the wall weren’t there. He was a big headache for the Russians. Anthony Hill was a leading member of the SAS. They have several other valuable assets on their payroll, such as Peter Ramsay, who’s also an ex-employee of SIS. He worked for years in the intelligence branch. He’s a genius in his field.”

Mila Cibin let out an impressed whistle.

“Where did you get this information? Al-Saud and his partners don’t exist on the system. We checked everywhere.”

“Al-Saud has an enemy. Nigel Taylor, the head of Spider International, Mercure Inc.’s competition. He gave us the information.”

“What are the next steps?”

“We have no alternative except to watch Al-Saud’s every move. Salvador Dalí will alert us and then we’ll act. The order is to capture him and find out everything he knows. Then he’s to be eliminated.”

On Monday afternoon, Eliah was on the Avenue République, stuck in a huge traffic jam. He stopped at a traffic light and checked his Rolex Submariner. It was already past six thirty in the evening. He muttered a curse and slapped the steering wheel, waiting anxiously for the light to
turn from red to green. He accelerated as soon as he saw the green signal, and the squeals of the Aston Martin’s tires were drowned out by the first chords of the song “The Friends of Mr. Cairo.” His heart pounded to the rhythm of the music and his annoyance. He would get to the institute late; Matilde would be waiting for him alone, on the dark and desolate Rue Vitruve. He prayed that Juana was with her, but lately she had been going out with her classmates. At moments like these he couldn’t stand that Matilde didn’t have a cell phone.

Though the meeting with Shaul Zeevi, the Israeli computer businessman, had gone on longer than expected, he still would have arrived on time at the Lycée des Langues Vivantes if Céline hadn’t had a crying fit over the telephone.

“Come and get me out of this clinic!” she demanded, hysterical. “I can’t stand it here.
C’est terrible!
”

“It’s what’s best for you, Céline,” Eliah tried to reason with her.

“It’s your fault I’m here. I got crazy when I realized that you had left the party without me, and then Jean-Paul sent me here. You left me, you left,” she sobbed.

“I had told you that we were only going to spend a few minutes at the party and then we were going to talk. You were too high and drunk to talk. There was no point in me staying.”

“Liar! You left with Matilde. Oh, what a coincidence it was that she disappeared from the party right when you left!”

“Céline, I have to go. When you calm down, we’ll talk. And the best thing to help you calm down is to stay in that clinic. You have to detox.”

Though in the past Céline’s shameless sexuality and free, unbridled soul, the exact opposite of Samara’s shy, nervous personality, had attracted him—or actually bewitched him as though she cast a spell over him—at that moment he felt real contempt for her. What made Matilde different from the other women he had possessed? He knew that Matilde, like none other, had him wrapped around her little finger; strangely, this idea didn’t make him uneasy. Why not? Maybe because he knew what she was like. She hadn’t tried to trap him, she just wanted him to be happy; that’s what she had said to him.
There wasn’t a second when I stopped thinking about you, praying to the Virgin for your happiness now and forever.
She had no idea what those words had done to him. Why was she different?
He asked himself again. In a sudden revelation, he realized that he had had to fight for Matilde when the rest of them, even Samara, had come willingly. She had subtly provoked his hunter and conqueror’s soul, and she was still struggling, because Matilde had not yet surrendered herself completely. Without any evil intent or duplicity, she had ensnared him in a game of desire that sometimes drove him insane. He treasured her; few things had been as difficult for him as gaining Matilde’s trust.

The Aston Martin turned down Rue Orteaux, and Al-Saud dialed on his cell phone to call Juana’s cell.

“Hello?”

“Juana, it’s me.”

“Hi, stud!”

“Is Matilde with you?”

“Yes. We’re waiting for you outside the institute. Are you coming to get us?”

“I’m a few minutes away. Don’t wait for me on the sidewalk. Go into the institute.”

“The doorman has already locked the door. We’re the last class.”

Merde!

“I’ll be there in five minutes.”

He stepped on the gas and the sports car ate up Rue Orteaux until meeting Rue Vitruve. He turned left illegally and, in the light shining from the door of the Lycée des Langues Vivantes, he immediately saw that three men were circling Juana and Matilde. The blades of their knives glinted in the streetlights. Years of training prevented him from succumbing to panic. He stopped the car on the corner and got out to cross the street to the institute’s sidewalk. He moved stealthily through the shadows that the dim lighting cast down the block. Because he had left the offices at the George V in such a hurry, he had forgotten to take off his Colt M1911, which was still sheathed in its underarm holster. He usually took the precaution of getting rid of the weapon before going to pick up Matilde. And yet, he realized, it wouldn’t be of much use to him. Drawing the Colt could create a shootout, and the victims would be Matilde and Juana.

As he crept toward them, his body edging along the wall, he assessed the situation. The attackers were three young men, none of them older
than twenty-five. They were shouting at the girls in French with heavy Arabic accents that Matilde and Juana wouldn’t be able to understand. There was probably a fourth man waiting for them at the wheel of the Renault Laguna parked in front of the institute, which still had its engine running and doors open.

Matilde let out a shriek and dropped her notebooks when one of the men grabbed her from behind and put the blade of his knife against her throat. He demanded nervously and in bad French that she give him the key. The sound of Matilde screaming hit Al-Saud as though someone had stabbed him in the chest—his heart skipped a beat. Juana started cursing at them in Spanish and received a slap for her troubles.