The Property of a Lady (47 page)

“The baroness is right,” the doctor agreed. “The psychological outlook of a patient, especially a patient of the baroness’s age, is important. If she has family members around her, so much the better. It’s an excellent idea.”

“Then why don’t we all go?” Verity cried, clapping her hands together delightedly. “After all, Eddie, you promised to show Azaylee Paris, didn’t you?”

He glared at her, unable to say no in front of the doctor without looking foolish. “Oh, I suppose so,” he agreed sullenly, as she fled from the room to tell Beulah the good news.

They packed quickly, just enough for a few weeks’ stay in Paris. Eddie left, following his mother in the ambulance,
but they were to travel by train and meet him later at the Hotel Bristol.

When the train drew into Paris, it was an easy matter to take a taxi to the Gare du Nord instead of the hotel. After leaving Azaylee and Beulah at the station, Missie went to the Rue St-Honoré. As she walked into the smartest jeweler’s she could find, she tilted her nose arrogantly in the air, removed the enormous diamond from her finger, and told them she wanted to sell it.

Without batting an eyelid, the worldly-wise Frenchman agreed it was a fine stone and offered her three thousand dollars. She took it with a smile and went immediately across the street to Thomas Cook and bought second-class passages on the liner
America
, sailing for New York that evening. Then she dashed back across Paris to the station and they caught the first train to Cherbourg.

By seven o’clock that night they were on board and on their way to New York. And this time Missie did not even look back. She was afraid to, because she didn’t know what Eddie Arnhaldt would do when he found they had gone.

Istanbul

Gerome Abyss rose early from his bed that morning for the first time in years. He threw off the stale sheet, walked barefoot across the dingy carpet to the bathroom, and inspected himself in the unframed rectangle of mirror. The bright morning light was not flattering. His face was puffy, folded, straining at the seams. His stomach churned and beads of sweat trickled down his back as last night’s alcohol attacked his liver. Suddenly he doubled over with pain. After a few moments the pain lessened and he straightened up and stepped into the shower. Maybe now that he was rich he would go to one of those new clinics, try a cure. “Cure” they called it, as if it were a disease, when any man with any sense knew it was a pleasure: mostly the pleasure of oblivion, but still a pleasure.

As he soaped himself he stared at his body, larded with fat like a white whale’s blubber. Maybe he would lose a few pounds too, now that he was rich, and get himself some smart suits. Like he used to have in the old days when he was Gerome Abyss, the best gem cutter in the world. When companies like Cartier begged for his talents and paid him a fortune. Not as much as he’d gotten for cutting the emerald, of course, but in those days it seemed to go much farther.

And maybe, now that he was rich, he would set himself up in business again. He might let it be known, discreetly of course, to his old contacts at the big jewelers that it was
he who had cut the Ivanoff emerald. It didn’t matter that he had given his word never to tell. After all the excitement the sale of the emerald had caused and the amount of money it had made, that beautiful girl with the long black hair and slanting blue eyes would not be selling anything else for a long time. Leyla Kazahn. He knew her name now, but he didn’t know how she came to have the emerald, and what’s more he didn’t care. Last night a banker’s draft for over $648, 000 had been delivered to him at the Locanta Antalya, the local bar where he did his drinking. He was a rich man.

The open razor drew blood under his unsteady hand as he shaved the five days of gray stubble, and he flinched. He thought about the newspapers again. They paid a fortune these days for an exclusive. With a story like this he could have the whole world competing. He grinned, showing a broken line of dirty yellow teeth. Yes, he could become even richer. More than that—he would be famous.

He took a shirt from the closet, inspecting the grimy band around the collar; it would have to do. The old white sharkskin suit was yellowed with age, sweaty and creased, and it looked ridiculous on this cold spring day. But a white suit had always been his trademark, that and his panama, his lucky hat.

Setting the battered panama with the scarlet band at a jaunty angle, he walked across the room to the door. With his hand on the handle, he stared around. He wanted none of the few miserable possessions that were his. He would never come back here again. He patted the pocket with the bank draft, reassuring himself. He was a rich man now.

The counter clerk at the Banca Stamboul noted the size of the check and the appearance of the client and called the manager. Abyss was uncomfortably aware of his scrutiny as he took in the size of the draft drawn on a reputable Swiss bank, and then his appearance, checking it with
the picture in the passport in the name of Mr. Georges Gerome.

“Of course, Mr. Gerome, we will be delighted to open an account for you,” the manager said at last. “I myself will take care of it. Just tell me what sort of account you would prefer. May I suggest a short-term deposit at our highest interest rate while you make up your mind about investments? And a reasonable current account, for ready cash and so on?”

Abyss nodded. “Put a hundred thousand into a current account and the rest on deposit. And I’ll take ten thousand cash now, in dollars.”

He toyed nervously with the spoon in the Turkish coffee they had given him while he waited. They were taking their time and he sweated, wondering if something had gone wrong.

“Here you are then, Mr. Gerome.” The manager returned, smiling. “We just need your signature here, sir, and here.”

Abyss wished his hand wouldn’t shake so. His scrawled signature looked like a forgery. He glanced up nervously but the manager’s smile seemed glued on.

“And here is your ten thousand dollars, Mr. Gerome. May I welcome you to the Banca Stamboul. If you encounter any problems, or wish to discuss investments, anything at all, I should be pleased to advise you.”

Abyss grinned as he walked through Taksim Square, unaware of the small man in the brown coat ten paces behind. The ten thousand dollars made a satisfying bulge in his jacket pocket and he grinned again. First he was going to check into a suite at the Hilton Hotel, then he was going shopping. Four dozen new shirts, custom-made of course, a dozen nice suits, underwear, socks, shoes … and a new lucky hat. He didn’t need the old one anymore. Laughing, he tossed his old panama at the shoeshine man sitting on the corner of the square and the old boy grinned back, his toothless brown face creasing
like a cracked walnut. Abyss decided that he liked Istanbul. A man was treated like a prince here—
and
he could live like a king.

The neon sign on the bar on the corner caught his eye and he hesitated. Just one drink wouldn’t hurt and after all, there was no hurry, the Hilton would still be there in an hour. He laughed, telling himself it was the same with sex; he could heighten the pleasure by delaying the ultimate event. And that was another thing money could buy, something he hadn’t had in a long time: sex.

He didn’t notice the small shadowy man in the inconspicuous brown jacket slip into the bar after him and take a seat by the door.

Abyss surveyed the array of bottles behind the bar happily. He had never really thought the girl would pay up. He had thought twenty-five thousand was as much as he would get, and that had already slipped through his fingers like water. It had cost him ten thousand alone for the new passport, and then there had been boats, planes, trains, hotels … all the long-drawn-out palaver of hiding. But no more. Now he could have whatever he wanted.

He chose a double-malt scotch, savoring it on his tongue before tossing it back and ordering another. “And one for yourself,” he said magnanimously to the barman. The man nodded, pocketing the money. He’d met a million like Abyss. They came and they went.

Abyss crouched low on the barstool as the pain hit him again.
Merde
, it was really getting bad now. Maybe he really would have to give up the scotch. Sweating profusely, he staggered from the bar.

The little man was beside him in a flash. “Are you all right?” he asked in French.

Abyss stared at him in surprise, then he groaned as the pain hit him again. “I need to get to a hospital.” He gasped, clinging to the man’s arm to stop himself from falling.

The taxi cruising slowly at the sidewalk pulled to a stop and the little man helped him into it, then he climbed in beside him and slammed the door. The taxi took off, its wheels screaming as it lurched around the corner and down Siraselvileh Caddesi, heading back toward the bridge and the old town.

The news merited only five lines in the morning’s newspapers. The body of a man had been found floating in the harbor at Unkapani. He had not drowned, he had been stabbed to death, and the dagger was still embedded in his back. Robbery was not a motive, since the sum of ten thousand American dollars had been found in his pocket. He had been identified as Mr. Georges Gerome and police were investigating further.

Washington

Cal read the morning papers standing by his window overlooking the Potomac and Theodore Roosevelt Island, drinking his breakfast coffee. The hot news was Markheim’s murder. His body had been found by a cleaner, and, because his connection with the sale of the emerald had come out, the papers were having a field day. He wondered if Markheim had told his assassin the identity of the buyer before he was killed, and who the killer was. Maybe Valentin Solovsky?

The cup rattled against the saucer as he put it down, remembering Genie and Solovsky. He had not seen or heard from her since Düsseldorf. She had gone off again without telling him and then he had been called back to Washington.

He remembered Genie’s scared blue eyes and his own voice promising her there was no danger. “There’s really nothing to be afraid of,” he had told her blithely. “It’s the Ivanoff woman they want, not you. Besides, you’re no Mata Hari.” But dammit, Genie had turned out to be just that, determined to do her best for her country, just the way she always did in her job as a reporter. Like a fool he had sent her into a world of danger he had not anticipated.

He glanced worriedly at his watch, reading the date and time as if it might tell him where she was.

After picking up the phone, he called her producer.
“Oh, sure,” he said, “we heard from her this morning. And about time too!”

Cal thanked him—and thanked God at the same time. Genie was okay. She was on her way home. And as soon as she got home he was going to see her and tell her to forget all about it. He wanted her to forget he ever asked her, to forget it ever happened. He just wanted her to be the tough, vulnerable girl reporter again, safe in her own world. He smiled ruefully as he dialed the florist and ordered two dozen cream roses to be sent to Ms. Genie Reese, with a card that said simply “I’m sorry. Love, Cal.”

He hoped she would believe him.

His thoughts turned grimly to Markheim’s murder. He switched on the television, wondering if there might be something more on the early news. Suddenly there was the Russian at Dulles Airport, battling his way through a crowd of reporters and cameramen.

Valentin stared, surprised, into the TV camera, then he turned and scanned the crowd blocking his way. Half a dozen men in dark glasses materialized from nowhere, pushing back the reporters and opening up a channel for him to pass through.

“You were at the sale in Geneva, Mr. Solovsky,” a reporter called, thrusting a microphone at him. “Can you tell us why?”

Ignoring him, Valentin moved forward. “What about Markheim’s murder, sir?” the reporter persisted, but Valentin simply thrust the microphone away and walked on. He glanced angrily at the security men and they closed ranks in front of him, shunting the reporters backward out onto the street. There was no embassy car waiting and Valentin stepped quickly into a cab. The cameras were still flashing as it drove away.