Obsession (Year of Fire) (57 page)

“Take care of Blahetter,” he ordered. “Listen to me carefully, Udo. This tiny pellet”—he held up the tube so that Jürkens could see what looked like the head of a pin lying on the bottom—“contains a lethal dose of ricin, a highly poisonous alkaloid. It’s covered with a sweetened substance to prevent the poison from escaping from inside the pellet. Once inside the human body, the sweetened substance will dissolve and let the ricin out. It kills its victims in two or three days at most.” Gérard went back to the safe and took out another box from which he took a syringe that reminded Udo of the one his dentist used to anesthetize him. “Go to Blahetter’s room,” he said while he sucked up the little pellet with the peculiar point of the syringe, “and press the needle into his skin a little
at the same time as you press the plunger. Just a little. You don’t need to push it all the way in. Do you think you can do that?” Moses asked, fitting a cap onto the syringe.

“Boss, what if I just shot him with a silencer? Nobody would know the difference.”

“Udo, do you think the sayid rais gave me this box of different poisons as a birthday present? We need to test the technology,” he said, waving the strange syringe with its pellet. “Do you think you can do it?” he insisted.

“Yes, boss.”

After the argument with Masséna, Al-Saud returned to the George V offices around noon. Without letting him draw breath, his secretaries bombarded him with messages and requests. Fortunately, Tony Hill had called from Monrovia to say that the situation with President Taylor was under control.

“Mr. Hill,” said Victoire, “has asked you to call him. He has to find a replacement for Markov as soon as possible.” Markov was the bodyguard accused by Taylor of having sex with his niece.

“Prince Abdul Rahman also called,” Thérèse alternated, “and asked you to call him whenever you can, at any hour.”

Al-Saud cursed inwardly. His uncle Abdul, commander of the Royal Saudi Air Force, would be pressuring him to present the training plan for the recruits, just when he had no desire to leave Paris, not with Matilde in danger.

“Inspector Dussollier and your lawyer, Dr. Lafrange, called,” said Victoire, “to tell you the same thing, sir: that the three men were released this morning.”

Amburgo Ferro, Peter Ramsay’s man, would be on their trail.

“Monsieur Lafére called,” Thérèse continued, “about the painting you sent him yesterday.”

“Put me through to him now.”

Lafére was the Al-Sauds’ trusted dealer, the manager of an art gallery that had prospered in the last thirty years thanks to Prince Kamal’s
passion for paintings. Eliah had known him since he was a boy, and so had entrusted him with Matilde’s painting.

“Eliah, do you have any idea what you sent me?”

“You’re asking just because you know how ignorant I am about paintings, aren’t you?” Al-Saud joked.

“You’re not your father, that’s true, but I doubt that many people would know the history of this painting. Did you know that it’s an authentic Martínez Olazábal? She’s a great Argentinean painter, one of the most sought-after living painters in the world.” Al-Saud didn’t say anything, and the dealer continued, “This is Enriqueta Martínez Olazábal’s favorite painting. Lovers of her work have been searching for it ceaselessly for years. But Martínez Olazábal declared that this painting would remain in her family and that she would never sell it to a stranger. And now you send it to me in a terrible state. I got very curious, as you can well understand.”

“I understand. What else can you tell me about the painting?”

“Here, let me read you a paragraph from a book I consulted yesterday…yes, here it is. I marked the page. It’s called
Peintres Latino-américains
. It has biographies and photographs of paintings by the major Latin American painters; there’s even a little interview with each one. In the part dedicated to Martínez Olazábal, the largest, I should add, she says that, of all her work, her favorite oil painting is
Matilda and the Snail
.” Al-Saud overlooked the error. “I’ll read you the artist’s own words. ‘It’s not my best painting if you analyze it with a critical eye; it’s not the best from the technical point of view; it was one of the first. Nonetheless, it’s the one that moves me the most because the sight of my niece is something that moves me deeply.’ So you see, this Matilda is her niece. And she continues, ‘There’s something about that creature, I don’t know what, an ephemeral quality that she was born with and that seems to cover her in light and peace. You can’t help but be hopelessly attracted to her. I draw and paint her tirelessly because I can’t take my eyes off her when she’s near me.’ So you see, Eliah, Martínez Olazábal treasures this painting in a special way. So, if I might so bold as to ask, how did you end up with
Matilda and the Snail
?”

“Matilde.”

“Sorry?”

“The girl in the painting is called Matild
e
, not Matild
a
.”

“Oh, oh…yes, well yes,” Lafére noted, rereading the paragraph. “It’s Matilde, you’re right. I always called it
Matilda and the Snail
and even now with it written correctly I still said Matilda. How do you know that it’s Matilde?” he asked, suddenly surprised.

“Because the little girl in the painting is now my woman.”

A silence fell over the line.

“I see that the painting will stay in the family after all. You can come to get it at closing time today. I’ll have the frame ready.”

“
Merci beaucoup
, Lafére.”

Al-Saud propped his elbows on the desk and rested his head on his hands. The dealer’s voice echoed in his ears: “
…an ephemeral quality that she was born with and that seems to cover her in light and peace. You can’t help but be hopelessly attracted to her. I draw and paint her tirelessly because I can’t take my eyes off her when she’s near me.
” So it was some kind of sorcery—there was no logical explanation for what he had felt in the airport in Buenos Aires when he saw Matilde’s long golden hair. If he were a superstitious person, he would think a spirit had possessed him and had been controlling him since that day. All he wanted was to be with her, in her. The issues at Mercure, previously the great focal point of his life, had lost their importance and disappeared. He yearned to go home and see her. Without a doubt, Matilde held the same fascination for Leila; her magic had even made her speak.

That afternoon, on the way to Lafére’s gallery, he stopped in the WH Smith bookstore on Rue Rivoli and bought the book
Peintres Latino-américains
. On his way out, he passed a jeweler’s window and stopped to admire the rings, necklaces, earrings, bracelets and watches he would have loved to drape over Matilde. She, however, found herself above such worldly things; style left her indifferent. He bought a gold chain for the Médaille Miraculeuse.

When he got out of the Aston Martin, in the garage at the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus, he heard Matilde’s laughter filtering down from the kitchen, and smiled out of relief and happiness. She was putting the nightmare they had experienced outside of the Lycée des Langues Vivantes behind her, and happiness was flowing into her life once more. He found her alone with Leila, still laughing, a wholehearted laugh in
which her eyes brimmed with tears. He knew immediately that Leila had spoken again. He kissed Matilde on the lips, pretending not to have noticed the situation, and kissed Leila on the forehead. He took off his jacket and handed it to her with his briefcase.

“
Ma petite
, take these to my room.”

Matilde looped her arm around Al-Saud’s waist and pressed her cheek against his chest.

“She spoke again, didn’t she?”

“She just said, ‘Matilde,
Eliah est arrivé
.’ I couldn’t control my excitement and started to laugh. She immediately changed back from a woman to a child and tilted her head and smiled, as if she didn’t understand why I was laughing.”

Later, while they were eating dinner, Al-Saud announced to Matilde and Juana that the next day they could resume their classes at the institute. Sándor and Diana would guard them.

“I already assigned you a car from Mercure”—he didn’t tell them that all the windows and bodywork were bulletproof—“and you’ll have to use it to go everywhere, with Sándor and Diana coming along with you. You can
never
go out alone. I know it will be annoying for you.”

“Not for me!” Juana replied. “It makes me feel like a diva!”

Diana and Sándor showed up after dinner, when they were drinking coffee. Eliah bolted down his espresso and ordered them to accompany him to the base. They went into the projection room, where the recording from the apartment on Rue Toullier was frozen on the image of Udo Jürkens.

“Look at this individual carefully. Memorize his face. He goes by the name Udo Jürkens. Protect Matilde from him at all costs.”

Around midnight, Udo Jürkens entered the Hospital Européen Georges Pompidou through the emergency room. He changed in the men’s room and came out dressed in the white nurse’s uniform. The looseness of the garment hid the two devices hanging from his waist: the syringe and the night-vision mono-goggle. He got to the third floor through the service elevator and walked down the empty, half-lit corridor. He passed
the head nurse’s glass office after checking that no one was inside, then slipped into room 304 and closed the door. He put on the mono-goggle and everything around him turned green. Blahetter was sleeping with his leg elevated. He prayed that Blahetter had been drugged, otherwise, after injecting him with the pellet of ricin, he’d have to run. He lifted the blanket and the sheet and found the good leg. He waited for Blahetter to react. Nothing, not even a change in his deep breathing. He brought the syringe to his thigh and pressed the plunger. Blahetter barely moved on the pillow and kept sleeping. They must have given him a very strong sedative.

Jürkens hung the syringe from his belt. He took off the mono-goggle near the door and hid it under the uniform. The he walked calmly out into the hall, not noticing that the head nurse had spotted him from the far end of the corridor.
Was that the new intensive care nurse?
she wondered.
Lilian told me that he was tall.

After overwhelming them with instructions, Al-Saud brought the meeting with Sándor and Diana to a close. Before they left, he told them that Leila had spoken again to Matilde.

“I’ve decided to visit Dr. Brieger,” Al-Saud said, referring to the girl’s psychiatrist. “We have to let him know about this advance. I’ll go with Matilde.”

When he got back from the base, he found the ground floor silent and dark. The servants and the girls had all gone to bed. He bounded up the stairs two at a time, heading toward his bedroom eagerly. Matilde was reading in bed. She had braided her hair to one side. She smiled when she saw him come in. She put the book to one side, got out of bed and ran to him barefoot, wearing a red nightie covered in pandas.

“What were you reading?” he wanted to know.

“Rereading, really.
The Expatriate’s Guide
, from HH. I already mentioned it to you once, do you remember? They’re the rules we have to follow on the ground.” Matilde overlooked the frown that hardened Eliah’s face, grabbed his neck and kissed him on the lips. “Thank you for the painting!” she exclaimed. “You always bring me such beautiful surprises.”

Al-Saud led her by the waist to the flower room, where he had ordered Marie to put the painting.

“The frame is more than pretty. It’s splendid. I wonder how much it cost you.” He said nothing and continued to admire the portrait of Matilde. “Where should we hang it?”

“Here? In this house?” Al-Saud was surprised, and Matilde misinterpreted his reaction.

“Well, yes, here, in your bedroom,” she answered, intimidated, “or somewhere else, if you like. I want to give it to you, Eliah. If you’ll accept it.”

“If I’ll accept it?” he repeated, incredulous. “There’s nothing I want more than to be the owner of this painting. But I can’t accept it. This painting is worth a fortune. The dealer I had repair it told me so.”

“I don’t care how much the painting costs, Eliah. I want to give it to you. If you accept it, of course.”

“Stop saying ‘if you accept it, of course.’ In that offended little voice.” Matilde laughed when Eliah imitated her voice. “I already told you that I’d love to have this painting with me, but I won’t accept it without telling you that it is one of the most sought-after paintings on the market.”

“I want to give it to you,” she insisted.

“Why do you want me to have it? I know what this painting means to you.”

“This painting, Eliah, is worth nothing compared to everything
you’ve
given me. You gave me freedom, and that’s priceless. I want you to have the two things that mean the most to me in the world, my Médaille Miraculeuse and the painting my aunt painted, by way of gratitude and as a token of my love.”

“I don’t want anything material. I just want you,
all
of you.”

“I’m all yours, Eliah. I’ve told you that before. I never lie.”

“But you’re going to the Congo.”

They stared at each other, the breath caught in their throats. As much as they had avoided bringing up the subject of the trip to the Congo, it hung over them like a black, ominous cloud. Finally, Al-Saud had gathered the strength to confront the issue.

Matilde broke eye contact and went over to the curved window. She rested her forehead on the frozen glass and closed her eyes. A few seconds passed before she felt his hands at her waist.

“Matilde, I don’t want you to go. It’s dangerous.”

“I have to go,” she whispered, and turned to face him. “I
have
to go, my love.”

“Why do you say that you
have
to go?”

“Because for years I have lived and studied only to heal the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet. Please, my love, please support me in this. Don’t turn your back on me, Eliah. Not you.”

“Matilde!” he exclaimed passionately, tightening his arms around her tiny torso. “My God, Matilde,” he said in a begging tone. “What are you asking of me?”