The Other Side of Midnight (23 page)

Catherine read word for word the newspaper reports of every battle and then asked William Fraser to get her further details. She wrote to Larry daily, but it was eight weeks before she received his first letter. It was optimistic and full of excitement. The letter had been heavily censored so Catherine had no idea where he had been or what he was doing. Whatever it was she had a feeling that he seemed to be enjoying it, and in the long lonely hours of the night Catherine lay in bed puzzling over that, trying to figure out what it was in Larry that made him respond to the challenge of war and death. It was not that he had a death wish, for Catherine had never known anyone more alive and vital; but perhaps that was simply the other side of the coin, that what made the life-sense so keen was constantly honing it against death.

She had lunch with William Fraser. Catherine knew that he had tried to enlist and had been told by the White House that he could do more good by staying at his post. He had been bitterly disappointed. He had never mentioned it to Catherine, however. Now as Fraser sat across from Catherine at the luncheon table, he asked:

“Have you heard from Larry?”

“I got a letter last week.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, according to the letter, the war is a kind of football game. We lost the first scrimmage, but now
they’ve sent the first team in, and we’re gaining ground.”

He nodded. “That’s Larry.”

“But that’s not the war,” Catherine said quietly. “It’s not a football game, Bill. Millions of people are going to be killed before this is over.”

“If you’re in it, Catherine,” he said gently, “I imagine it’s easier to think of it as a football game.”

Catherine had decided that she wanted to go to work. The Army had created a branch for women called the WACs, and Catherine had thought of joining but had felt she might be more useful doing something more than driving cars and answering telephones. Although from what she had heard, the WACs were pretty colorful. There was so much pregnancy among them that there was a rumor that when volunteers went in for their physical examination, the doctors pressed their stomachs with a tiny rubber stamp. The girls tried to read the words but were unable to do so. Finally one of them hit upon the idea of getting a magnifying glass. The words read: “When you can read this with the naked eye, report to me.”

Now as she sat lunching with Bill Fraser, she said, “I want to work. I want to do something to help.”

He studied her a moment, then nodded. “I may know just the thing for you, Catherine. The Government’s trying to sell War Bonds. I think you could help coordinate it.”

Two weeks later Catherine went to work organizing the sale of War Bonds by celebrities. It had sounded ridiculously easy in concept, but the execution of it was something else again. She found the stars to be like children, eager and excited about helping the war effort, but difficult to pin down about specific dates. Their schedules had to be constantly juggled. Often it was not their fault, because pictures were delayed or schedules ran over. Catherine found herself commuting from Washington to Hollywood and New York. She
got used to leaving on an hour’s notice, packing enough clothes to last the length of each trip. She met dozens of celebrities.

“Did you really meet Cary Grant?” her secretary asked her when she returned from a trip to Hollywood.

“We had lunch together.”

“Is he as charming as they say?”

“If he could package it,” Catherine declared, “he’d be the richest man in the world.”

It happened so gradually that Catherine was almost unaware of it. It had been six months earlier, when Bill Fraser told her about a problem that Wallace Turner was having with one of the advertising accounts that Catherine used to handle. Catherine had laid out a new campaign using a humorous approach, and the client had been very pleased. A few weeks later Bill had asked Catherine to help on another account, and before she realized it she was spending more than half her time with the advertising agency. She was in charge of half a dozen accounts, all of them doing well. Fraser had given her a large salary and a percentage. At noon on the day before Christmas Fraser came into her office. The rest of the staff had gone home, and Catherine was finishing up some last minute work.

“Having fun?” he asked.

“It’s a living,” she smiled and added warmly, “and a generous one. Thanks, Bill.”

“Don’t thank me. You’ve earned every penny of it—and then some. It’s the ‘then some’ I want to talk to you about. I’m offering you a partnership.”

She looked at him in surprise. “A partnership?”

“Half the new accounts we got in the last six months are because of you.” He sat there looking at her thoughtfully, saying nothing more. And she understood how much it meant to him.

“You have a partner,” she said.

His face lit up. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am.” Awkwardly, he held out his hand. She shook her head,
walked past his outstretched arm, hugged him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“Now that we’re partners,” she teased, “I can kiss you.” She felt him suddenly hold her tighter.

“Cathy,” he said, “I…”

Catherine put her finger to his lips. “Don’t say anything, Bill. Let’s leave it the way it is.”

“You know I’m in love with you.”

“And I love you,” she said warmly.
Semantics,
she thought. The difference between “I love you” and “I’m in love with you” was a bridgeless chasm.

Fraser smiled. “I won’t bother you, I promise. I respect the way you feel about Larry.”

“Thank you, Bill.” She hesitated. “I don’t know whether this helps any, but if there ever were anyone else, it would be you.”

“That’s a great help,” he grinned. “It’s going to keep me awake all night.”

During the past year Armand Gautier had ceased broaching the subject of marriage. In the beginning he had felt himself in a superior position to Noelle. Now, however, the situation was almost reversed. When they gave newspaper interviews, it was Noelle to whom the questions were directed, and wherever they went together, Noelle was the attraction, he was the afterthought.

Noelle was the perfect mistress. She continued to make Gautier comfortable, act as his hostess and in effect make him one of the most envied men in France; but in truth he never had a moment’s peace, for he knew that he did not possess Noelle, nor ever could, that there would come a day when she would walk out of his life as capriciously as she had wandered into it and when he remembered what had happened to him the one time that Noelle had left him, Gautier felt sick to his stomach. Against every instinct of his intellect, his experience and his knowledge of women he was wildly, madly in love with Noelle. She was the single most important fact of his life. He would lie awake nights devising elaborate surprises to make her happy and when they succeeded, he was rewarded with a smile or a kiss or an unsolicited night of love-making. Whenever she looked at another man, Gautier was filled with jealousy, but he knew better than to speak of it to Noelle. Once after a party when she had spent the entire evening talking to a renowned doctor, Gautier had been furious with her. Noelle had listened to
his tirade and then had answered quietly, “If my speaking to other men bothers you, Armand, I will move my things out tonight.”

He had never brought up the subject again.

At the beginning of February, Noelle began her salon. It had started as a simple Sunday brunch with a few of their friends from the theater, but as word about it got around, it quickly expanded and began to include politicians, scientists, writers—anyone whom the group thought might be interesting or amusing. Noelle was the mistress of the salon and one of the chief attractions. Everyone found himself eager to talk to her, for Noelle asked incisive questions and remembered the answers. She learned about politics from politicians and about finance from bankers. A leading art expert taught her about art, and she soon knew all the great French artists who were living in France. She learned about wine from the chief vintner of Baron Rothschild and about architecture from Corbusier. Noelle had the best tutors in the world and they in turn had a beautiful and fascinating student. She had a quick probing mind and was an intelligent listener. Armand Gautier had the feeling that he was watching a Princess consorting with her ministers, and had he only been aware of it, it was the closest he would ever come to understanding Noelle’s character.

As the months went by Gautier began to feel a little more secure. It seemed to him that Noelle had met everyone who might matter to her and she had shown no interest in any of them.

She had not yet met Constantin Demiris.

Constantin Demiris was the ruler of an empire larger and more powerful than most countries. He had no title or official position, but he regularly bought and sold prime ministers, cardinals, ambassadors and kings. Demiris was one of the two or three wealthiest men in the world and his power was legendary. He owned the
largest fleet of cargo ships afloat, an airline, newspapers, banks, steel mills, gold mines—his tentacles were everywhere, inextricably woven throughout the woof and warp of the economic fabric of dozens of countries.

He had one of the most important art collections in the world, a fleet of private planes and a dozen apartments and villas scattered around the globe.

Constantin Demiris was above medium height, with a barrel chest and broad shoulders. His features were swarthy, and he had a broad Greek nose and olive black eyes that blazed with intelligence. He was not interested in clothes, yet he was always on the list of best-dressed men and it was rumored that he owned over five hundred suits. He had his clothes made wherever he happened to be. His suits were tailored by Hawes and Curtis in London, his shirts by Brioni in Rome, shoes by Daliet Grande in Paris and ties from a dozen countries.

Demiris had about him a presence that was magnetic. When he walked into a room, people who did not know who he was would turn to stare. Newspapers and magazines all over the world had written an incessant spate of stories about Constantin Demiris and his activities, both business and social.

The Press found him highly quotable. When asked by a reporter if friends had helped him achieve his success, he had replied, “To be successful, you need friends. To be
very
successful, you need enemies.”

When he was asked how many employees he had, Demiris had said, “None. Only acolytes. When this much power and money is involved, business turns into religion and offices become temples.”

He had been reared in the Greek Orthodox Church, but he said of organized religion: “A thousand times more crimes have been committed in the name of love than in the name of hate.”

The world knew that he was married to the daughter of an old Greek banking family, that his wife was an
attractive, gracious lady and that when Demiris entertained on his yacht or on his private island, his wife seldom went with him. Instead, he would be accompanied by a beautiful actress or ballerina or whoever else struck his current fancy. His romantic escapades were as legendary and as colorful as his financial adventures. He had bedded dozens of motion picture stars, the wives of his best friends, a fifteen-year-old novelist, freshly bereaved widows, and it was even rumored that he had once been propositioned by a group of nuns who needed a new convent.

Half a dozen books had been written about Demiris, but none of them had ever touched on the essence of the man or managed to reveal the wellspring of his success. One of the most public figures in the world, Constantin Demiris was a very private person, and he manipulated his public image as a facade that concealed his real self. He had dozens of intimate friends in every walk of life and yet no one really knew him. The facts were a matter of public record. He had started life in Piraeus as the son of a stevedore, in a family of fourteen brothers and sisters where there was never enough food on the table and if anyone wanted anything extra, he had to fight for it. There was something in Demiris that constantly demanded more, and he fought for it.

Even as a small boy Demiris’ mind automatically converted everything into mathematics. He knew the number of steps on the Parthenon, how many minutes it took to walk to school, the number of boats in the harbor on a given day. Time was a number divided into segments, and Demiris learned not to waste it. The result was that without any real effort, he was able to accomplish a tremendous amount. His sense of organization was instinctive, a talent that operated automatically in even the smallest things he did. Everything became a game of matching his wits against those around him.

While Demiris was aware that he was cleverer than
most men, he had no excess vanity. When a beautiful woman wanted to go to bed with him, he did not for an instant flatter himself that it was because of his looks or personality, but he never permitted that to bother him. The world was a market-place, and people were either buyers or sellers. Some women, he knew, were attracted by his money, some by his power and a few—a rare few—by his mind and imagination.

Nearly every person he met wanted something from him: a donation to a charity, financing for a business project or simply the power that his friendship could bestow. Demiris enjoyed the challenge of figuring out exactly what it was that people were really after, for it was seldom what it appeared to be. His analytical mind was skeptical of surface truth, and as a consequence he believed nothing he heard and trusted no one.

The reporters who chronicled his life were permitted to see only his geniality and charm, the sophisticated urbane man of the world. They never suspected that beneath the surface, Demiris was a killer, a gutter-fighter whose instinct was to go for the jugular vein.

To the ancient Greeks the word
thekaeossini
, justice, was often synonymous with
ekthekissis
, vengeance, and Demiris was obsessed with both. He remembered every slight he had ever suffered, and those who were unlucky enough to incur his enmity were paid back a hundredfold. They were never even aware of it, for Demiris’ mathematical mind made a game of exacting retribution, patiently working out elaborate traps, spinning complex webs that finally caught and destroyed its victims.

When Demiris was sixteen years old, he had gone into his first business enterprise with an older man named Spyros Nicholas. Demiris had conceived the idea of opening a small stand on the docks to serve hot food to the stevedores on the night shift. He had scraped together half the money for the enterprise, but when it had become successful Nicholas had forced
him out of the business and had taken it over himself. Demiris had accepted his fate without protest and had gone ahead to other enterprises.

Over the next twenty years Spyros Nicholas had gone into the meat-packing business and had become rich and successful. He had married, had three children and was one of the most prominent men in Greece. During those years, Demiris patiently sat back and let Nicholas build his little empire. When he decided that Nicholas was as successful and as happy as he was ever going to be, Demiris struck.

Because his business was booming, Nicholas was contemplating buying farms to raise his own meat and opening a chain of retail stores. An enormous amount of money was required. Constantin Demiris owned the bank with which Nicholas did business, and the bank encouraged Nicholas to borrow money for expansion at interest rates that Nicholas could not resist. Nicholas plunged heavily, and in the midst of the expansion his notes were suddenly called in by the bank. When the bewildered man protested that he could not make the payments, the bank immediately began foreclosure proceedings. The newspapers owned by Demiris prominently played up the story on the front pages, and other creditors began foreclosing on Nicholas. He went to other banks and lending institutions, but for reasons he could not fathom, they refused to come to his assistance. The day after he was forced into bankruptcy Nicholas committed suicide.

Demiris’ sense of
thekaeossini
was a two-edged sword. Just as he never forgave an injury, neither did he ever forget a favor. A landlady who had fed and clothed the young man when he was too poor to pay her suddenly found herself the owner of an apartment building, without any idea who her benefactor was. A young girl who had taken the penniless young Demiris in to live with her had been given a villa and a lifetime pension anonymously. The people who had had dealings with the ambitious young Greek lad forty
years earlier had no idea how the casual relationship with him would affect their lives. The dynamic young Demiris had needed help from bankers and lawyers, ship captains and unions, politicians and financiers. Some had encouraged and helped him, others had snubbed and cheated him. In his head and in his heart the proud Greek had kept an indelible record of every transaction. His wife Melina had once accused him of playing God.

“Every man plays God,” Demiris had told her. “Some of us are better equipped for the role than others.”

“But it is wrong to destroy the lives of men, Costa.”

“It is not wrong. It is justice.”

“Vengeance.”

“Sometimes it is the same. Most men get away with the evil they do. I am in a position to make them pay for it. That is justice.”

He enjoyed the hours he spent devising traps for his adversaries. He would study his victims carefully, analyzing their personalities, assessing their strengths and their weaknesses.

When Demiris had had three small freighters and needed a loan to expand his fleet, he had gone to a Swiss banker in Basel. The banker had not only turned him down but had telephoned other banker friends of his to advise them not to give the young Greek any money. Demiris had finally managed to borrow the money in Turkey.

Demiris had bided his time. He decided that the banker’s Achilles’ heel lay in his greed. Demiris was in negotiation with Ibn Saud of Arabia to take over leases on a newly discovered oil development there. The leases would be worth several hundred million dollars to Demiris’ company.

He instructed one of his agents to leak the news to the Swiss banker about the deal that was about to take place. The banker was offered a 25-percent participation
in the new company if he put up five million dollars in cash to buy shares of the stock. When the deal went through, the five million dollars would be worth more than fifty million. The banker quickly checked the deal and confirmed its authenticity. Not having that kind of money available personally, he quietly borrowed it from the bank without notifying anyone, for he had no wish to share his windfall. The transaction was to take place the following week, at which time he would be able to replace the money he had taken.

When Demiris had the banker’s check in his hand, he announced to the newspapers that the arrangement with Arabia had been canceled. The stock plummeted. There was no way for the banker to cover his losses, and his embezzlement was discovered. Demiris picked up the banker’s shares of stock at a few cents on the dollar and then went ahead with the oil deal. The stock soared. The banker was convicted of embezzlement and given a prison sentence of twenty years.

There were a few players in Demiris’ game with whom he had not yet evened the score, but he was in no hurry. He enjoyed the anticipation, the planning and the execution. It was like a chess game, and Demiris was a chess master. These days he made no enemies, for no man could afford to be his enemy, so his quarry was limited to those who had crossed his path in the past.

This, then, was the man who appeared one afternoon at Noelle Page’s Sunday salon. He was spending a few hours in Paris on his way to Cairo, and a young sculptress he was seeing suggested that they stop in at the salon. From the moment Demiris saw Noelle, he knew that he wanted her.