Power Games (28 page)

‘I’ll get you more.’

‘Don’t,’ Jacob reached out, ‘wait. Stay. Stay and talk to me a while. Please. I can’t … I don’t want to be alone.’

Celeste sat back down. ‘What do you want to talk about?’ she said.

‘Anything. You. Tell me about you.’

42

E
ve sank beneath the surface of the water. It was a clear pool bordered by soaring rock, making it safer than the sea or the lagoon. The cliffs offered shade, but where they broke pockets of sunlight shone through and danced on the ripples. At one end a waterfall crashed lusciously into the glittering sheet, throwing up spray.

She floated on her back, listening to the sharp caw of tropical birds, the flutter of high branches as they swayed and bucked under the leaps and dives of wild things.

Her baby’s heart was beating. A drum within a drum, a rhythm within a rhythm: a part of her. How strange that she had come close to extinguishing it. Even now, against the severity of this place, she would not retract that decision. It had been right then and it was right today.

Who’s the father?

Perhaps she should tell. She and Angela had been through enough: what they had seen and heard and been forced to do over the last two days meant surely they could never be shocked again. What did it matter anyway? It wasn’t as if she and Orlando were together. Angela would be surprised; maybe she’d be disappointed. Eve wasn’t the sort of girl he normally went for. She might even be branded a liar.

Knowing Angela made better sense of Orlando. Arrogant,
selfish Orlando: Orlando who smelled of expensive cologne and wore suits that cost more than she earned in a year. Orlando who had challenged in her London flat and at their table the night they’d fought, and told her he wanted nothing to do with the life he had made. Orlando who had lost his father, and now his sister, and now the mother of his child, though how much he cared for the last was hard to say. Angela had that same streak of belligerence. She would be tough to argue with. Orlando was the only man against whom Eve’s sharp tongue had been blunted: she sensed it ran in the genes.

What was going through his mind? What was going through any of their minds? Had the group been written off? Had they been deemed a lost cause? What if, for all their hopes and prayers, no one was looking for them?

No. Any second now, the boats would sweep in. They would return to their lives, the incident carried with them, and, in a year, maybe two, maybe ten, it would start to fade. It would become part of a long-forgotten dream. Imagined. Impossible.

Eve swam to the ridge, scooping her arms through the radiant lake. Opening her eyes underwater she saw shoals of brightly coloured fish—pink, purple, gold and green—darting this way and that, their metallic stripes shimmering.

Reaching the side, she hauled herself out. The jungle pulsated with hidden life.

She checked she was alone. Her bump was modest and beneath clothes could still be concealed, but naked there was no denial. Angela was right, the group would find out soon enough. Perhaps she had already told (though Angela didn’t seem one to disclose other people’s secrets). Eve could hear the accusations—why had she come? Why had she flown? How could she have been so irresponsible? She had already
thrown all she could at herself and didn’t need anyone else’s input.

They would assume she had accepted for the bloodlust. All they knew of Eve Harley was as a story-hungry jackal. The lure of celebrity, another ego-fuelled set ripe for the pickings, whose jaunt halfway across the world would make front-page news.

They would assume she had put her job before her unborn child.

Had she?

Tawny hated her. Kevin hated her. Mitch Corrigan hated her worst of all.

She didn’t care. These people meant nothing.

Before she left London, Eve had completed the Veroli piece, sending it to her editor with one important omission: Corrigan’s name. If they could hold out just a few more weeks, she promised, it would spell the ultimate exclusive. After the trip to Indonesia, Eve would have the definitive Senator Corrigan exposé, the kind of up close and personal that money couldn’t buy.

While the paper had been persuaded, they had insisted on publishing parts of what they had. The item made no mention of Corrigan, but it remained clear the writer knew exactly whom
Mr X
was. Judging by Corrigan’s reluctance to give Eve a second of his time, she was confident he had seen it.

Corrigan knew she was on to him. He knew it had been her who’d trailed him in Italy. He would know better than to think he had escaped. She would wait, that was what she did, lying low in the grass. Angela Silvers might not be one to disclose other people’s secrets—but Eve was. She hadn’t got this far by nursing a conscience.

She was pulling on clothes when, from the corner of her
eye, she detected something move: an outline, solid yet liquid, pouring from a tree branch.

A fat black snake was coiled round the limb, about a foot from where she stood. Its scales were jet, apart from the rings of bright, fierce yellow that were splashed down its length. Against the foliage the serpent’s marks were dagger-points, spooling and writhing. Its head, the underside a same vivid canary, dripped down to her level.

Its tongue darted out. It eyed her beadily, its tight reptilian skull leading a weapon of brutal muscle and fatal efficiency. She dared not move. The snake’s head dipped from side to side, a queasy pendulum, before, silent and smooth, it slinked back onto the branch, unfurled itself and slipped soundlessly from sight.

43

Las Vegas

T
en thousand miles away, on a terrace outside the Parisian, Dino Zenetti released an anguished shout and kicked the top of a mock-stone fountain.

He turned on his father.

‘She’s
my
prize!’ he yelled. ‘Get her back!’

‘It ain’t that easy, D,’ Carmine Zenetti replied.

He let his only son play out the tantrum. Dino had always been hot-headed. He always reacted badly to news. Sometimes he needed just a little time to think it over, before he saw the advantages. For a man like Carmine, there were always advantages.

‘We’re supposed to be gettin’ married! Holy crap, I waited long enough.’ Dino’s face was puce. Spit pellets flew from his mouth. Angela was a hot piece: he had been champing to nail her his whole life and, just as he got within reach, she went and got herself killed. ‘She never even put out!’ he complained.

Carmine took a seat. As usual, he waited for the penny to drop.

‘An’ what’s that jackass Lawson thinking, jumpin’ in on
my parade? Angela’s mine, goddamnit! I oughtta floor the guy!’

‘You would if he was worth it,’ said Carmine.

‘Fuckin’ damn straight I would.’ Though Dino had never been in a fight in his life. ‘Acting like he’s Indiana fuckin’ Jones—y’know they’re saying he got with Angela one time? Makin’ out like it’s a big fuckin’ love story and what am I s’posed to do with that? Fuck him. Fact is she’s
engaged.
To
me
.’

Carmine narrowed his eyes. He didn’t give a crap whatever stories came out, except for the one where they all got found someplace, which, while nobody wanted to say so, was never going to happen. Jeez, it was getting boring! Nobody talked about anything else.

If just one VIP had carked it, the reaction would be bad enough, but stick a load of them at the bottom of the ocean and things got out of hand. After a time it became nothing but white noise, shock piled on shock piled on shock. There was no upward scale, no escalation. It reminded Carmine of his ex-wife, who had used to scream at him at equal volume whether he left a clump of hair in the shower drain or nailed six hookers in a night and blew three million dollars on the craps table.

Carmine tuned out. He had higher matters on his mind.

‘Exactly,’ he said.

‘Exactly what?’

‘You’re engaged. You and Angela.’

‘Yeah? What about it?’

‘Think it through, D.’ Carmine stood. ‘The contract we signed entitles us to half the Silvers fortune. That sum’s trebled since the engagement got announced.’

‘And?’

‘And in turn Angela gets half of the Zenettis’.’ Carmine
paused, licked his lips. ‘But what if there is no Angela?’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Until the marriage got stamped, the whole deal rests with her, right? My little slice of insurance pie—in case she had a wise idea and decided to back out.’

‘She wouldn’t have.’

‘It don’t matter if she would or she wouldn’t,’ Carmine said. ‘What matters is that
the Silvers don’t see a dime.
Orlando, Gianluca, kaput. Now she’s gone, it all comes to us, kid—the mother ship! That’s what I’ve been tryin’ to tell you …’

‘But she
is
coming back. We’re getting married.’

Carmine pursed his lips. He approached his son, held him by his shoulders and abruptly drew him into an embrace. Carmine was not a man who often showed affection, and Dino stood limply, his arms hanging down by his sides.

‘Let it go,’ Carmine murmured. ‘It’s over.’

‘But—’

‘But you and me are richer than we’ve ever been.’ Carmine drew back, holding Dino at arm’s length. ‘Every business cloud has a silver lining, my friend.’

44

Day 3

A
nother day came. Nothing changed. No sign of home.

LA, Boston, San Fran, New York; London, Tokyo, Lagos … They flicked through Jacob’s mind like shadows on a wall. Make-believe cities unfeasible in their light and sound, their movement. The clubs he had partied in, the music he had danced to, the shots he had drunk, the women he had kissed, the parties he had crashed, the sunsets he had seen: so much to see and so many colours.

Heat alone separated day from dusk. Behind his bandages, everything was dark. Celeste came to unwrap him. The red glow on his lids blazed. She held up fingers, asked him to count how many. He started to see glimmers, sometimes wrong, mostly wrong, but he tried and when he got it wrong they tried again.

Later, he went to the pool with Tawny. She kept charging off ahead and having to come back and haul him up when he stumbled. He hated it. He had never felt so powerless. Here was the woman he had spent weeks trying to impress, and this was the result.

Since they had no clothes to change into, the same set had to be washed. Jacob heard her undress, and pictured it: the material gathered at her feet, her skin brown, her blonde hair lightened in the sun. Of all his companions, hers was the face he remembered most clearly. Tawny’s beauty had been etched onto his mind since the moment they had met. He pictured her breasts, the nipples pink and delicate. Her bush, honey-coloured, damp in the heat. Tawny’s body was here, finally right next to him, close enough to touch—and Jacob couldn’t see a thing.

He thought of the girls on his tapes, their eyes looking past the camera but never into it, glazed and vacant. Images played on a twisted loop. All of them, looking at him—and he couldn’t look back.

Tawny was wringing her clothes. She didn’t stop talking. She seemed to have two modes, verbal splurge or hysterical tears. They all had their way of dealing.

‘… It was the freakiest thing,’ Tawny was saying. ‘Cacatra Island, you know? Reuben van der Meyde’s place—that über-exclusive spa rehab; I was going to say you must have been, but then you probably haven’t because
most
people haven’t. Anyhow I went last summer—and when we came here I thought at first, Shit, this is it! Just a different bit … And when we went to the top, I don’t know, maybe the sun fried my brain, but I could swear we were going over the hill and there it would be—all the huts dotted on the water and the helicopter pad and everything … but of course there wasn’t—just more cliffs, and more sea, and more heat, and more jungle. Maybe the next ridge, I thought, maybe then, but we could see the whole island by then …’

Jacob imagined their position on a map, a giant map of Indonesia and the Banda Sea. If it were Jacob he would call
it without hesitation: the passengers had died. The plane had crashed. Game over.

‘… I guess Angela wants me to be grateful, and I mean don’t get me wrong or anything, it’s not like I’m
not
grateful, but then it
was
her fault in the first place that we went anywhere near that stupid swamp. Look, talk to me once you’re in that position ‘cause I’m telling you, it’s like the worst thing ever. And I thought the mudpacks at the Monterey were bad! Anyhow now it’s like she wants me to kiss her ass. It’s like we have to do things
her
way because
she’s
the only one who knows what she’s talking about or whatever. Who made her chief? I didn’t.’

There was a neat splash, and Jacob’s face was spattered with water. He heard her swimming and inched towards the rim of the pool, hands discovering the earth, positioning himself on the ledge and dangling his legs in.

‘Promise me you’re not peeking?’ said Tawny.

‘I’m not.’

‘Promise you can’t see a thing?’

‘Just a blur.’

‘Can you see this?’

There was an upsurge of water. He envisaged her breasts on the surface.

‘How about this?’

He wished he could.

‘Celeste has got the hots for you, you know,’ said Tawny. ‘It’s obvious. She’s hardly had much practice with men—you can tell. Well, not
you
, because you can’t see, but to me it’s painful. Maybe she’s got a thing for blind people. Ha! Sorry—lame joke.’ She swam closer. Jacob felt her put her hands on his knees.

‘Do you like Celeste?’ said Tawny softly. ‘Do you think she’s pretty?’

‘I don’t remember what she looks like.’

‘Liar.’

‘I don’t.’ It was the truth. Celeste had been tending to him more than anyone else, but he couldn’t even recall setting eyes on her in Jakarta. She must have been there, but he had been so wrapped up in Tawny he hadn’t noticed.

‘It’s your turn,’ said Tawny.