Deception (25 page)

The man who emerged was short—perhaps five foot seven—wearing a blue business suit, a mustache and goatee, and tinted glasses. He looked familiar. Then Henri had it. Put the man in Bedouin garb and he would have been instantly recognizable from the media: flamboyantly spending his millions with hollow-cheeked models on hundred-foot yachts, winning Kentucky Derbies, making conspicuous investments in American high-technology companies. Yet now he was dressed like any other businessman, and seemed very much at ease.

“Welcome,” Henri said, not certain if he should address himself to the man or to his driver, instead sending his words directly between them.

The man in the blue business suit gave a slight but cordial bow.

The driver preceded his charge into the house. He stepped over the threshold and peered left, toward the kitchen, then right, toward the sunken living room. Henri stood to one side, waiting. When the man had satisfied himself that no ambush was waiting, he nodded at the prince, who stepped forward with a pleasant half smile on his face.

“A beautiful house,” he said. He was soft-spoken, almost shy, and surprisingly young. His English was excellent, with an added trill. “How long have you been here?”

“Only since the beginning of the season. I'm looking after it for a friend.”

The man kept smiling, but looked vaguely disappointed.

They moved into the living room. The driver—who doubled as a bodyguard, Henri was gathering—positioned himself by the entrance, where he stood ramrod straight. The prince walked around the space leisurely, examining the sculptures and the paintings on the walls, inspecting the solidly wrought antique poker by the fireplace.

“Wine?” Henri said, moving toward the table.

“Absinthe martini, please. Thank you.”

Henri detoured to the bar. As he splashed vodka into a glass, he heard the hum of another engine. He quickly added vermouth and absinthe, then handed over the drink before returning to the front patio.

This car was a black Mercedes: polished to a high shine, engine murmuring. Vladimir Ismayalov's car. It pulled up beside the Rolls, moving slowly, and the engine died.

As Henri waited for the door to open, his right eyelid began to twitch. What if Madeleine had been right? What if Ismayalov had orchestrated this evening as part of some complicated revenge?

No. Ismayalov didn't know.

He hoped.

He recognized the man from Madeleine's photographs: hunched, dark, beetle browed. He had driven himself. He stepped out of the car and looked at Henri. “You're the house-sitter,” he said.

Henri drew himself up a little straighter, and nodded. “Henri Jansen.”

“Vladimir Ismayalov. Madeleine's husband.”

The handshake was all too strong; Ismayalov made a point of taking Henri's hand slightly off center, and then squeezing the bones together.
He knows
, Henri thought.

Ismayalov crunched Henri's bones together for a few seconds, then took his hand back. “My friends are a minute behind,” he said.

Henri led Ismayalov inside. The bodyguard/driver was still positioned by the entrance to the living room, his arms folded imperiously. The prince was sitting on a low couch. As Ismayalov entered the room, he stood. “Vladimir!”

Ismayalov grinned. “There you are! Recovered yet?”

“Halfway,” the young prince said. He turned to Henri. “Most people go for a walk. Vladimir goes for a marathon.”

“He complains, but he loves it. He needs the exercise.”

“He's full of shit. Look at us. Which one needs exercise?”

Henri smiled. His eyelid was still twitching. “What are you drinking?” he asked Ismayalov.

“Whatever he's having.”

Henri went to fix the drink. Once again, the sound of an engine caught his ear. That would be the friends—the last to arrive.

He handed the glass to Ismayalov and went to meet them.

The final car was a Mini, small and cheap and cramped. A rental, Henri thought. A man was behind the wheel, a woman in the passenger seat. As they parked, the wind gusted strongly. Henri's hands went to his hair, trying to pat it back into place.

The man was a typical oversized American, both wide and tall. The woman was pretty and poised, a few years younger than Henri, dressed well. His eyes ran up and down her body of their own accord. “Welcome,” he said.

Neither answered. Henri gestured them inside.

Before following, he paused to look up at the sky.

The sun hung low, like an overripe plum. The sky was clear; there would be no rain tonight. Yet the wind was blowing harder than ever.

He looked up for another moment, and then followed his guests into the house.

2.

“Ever fire a gun?”

Keyes, who had been watching the pastures outside his window turn orange, looked over. “No,” he said. “Well—at summer camp, once. When I was a boy. A twenty-two.”

“Reach into my bag, there.”

Keyes turned to the back seat of the 4X4. He found Brown's bag and dragged it around into his lap. He opened it and found a tangle of leather harnesses. Attached to the harnesses were holsters; instead the holsters were guns, black and squat and ugly.

“Your basic Glock,” Brown said, keeping his eyes on the road. “Easy to shoot. Internal safety, so you don't need to worry about that. Seventeen rounds in the clip.”

Keyes turned the weapon over in his hands, surprised at its weight.

“Just point and squeeze. But be ready for the recoil; use both hands. Your hands are going to be shaking anyway. And be prepared for the noise. It's loud.”

Keyes slipped his finger over the trigger, and practiced sighting on a tangle of passing brush.

“Aim for the body,” Brown said. “Two shots at a time. Keep shooting until he goes down.”

Keyes grunted acknowledgment.

He returned the gun to his lap, and returned his attention to the view outside his window. They passed vineyards and fields, shallow wandering creeks, climbing rock formations. Every quarter mile or so, a smaller road led off into wilderness.

Five minutes passed. “Think we missed it?” Brown asked then.

The road on which Ismayalov had his house, he meant. Keyes didn't think they had. But he opened the glove compartment and took out the map as Brown eased the 4X4 to the side of the road.

They both bent over the crackling paper, studying the web of roads in the dimming light. “We're here,” Brown said, pointing. “And we want to be …”

“Up here.”

Less than a quarter mile away, if he read the key correctly. Suddenly he felt slack inside, and hot; his chest tightened painfully.

Brown leaned back into his seat and resumed driving.

When they reached the driveway, Brown pulled over again. They left the car and checked their weapons. Then they took off toward a distant colonial-style mansion. Keyes limped along without the help of a cane. The ground was muddy, sucking at his shoes. The night breeze smelled of eucalyptus and lilac.

Aim for the body
, he thought.
Aim for the body. Two shots at a time.

A single car was parked outside the house, an Audi. The two men paused, listening. The front door of the house, between trellises of ivy, was cracked open. A radio was playing something gnawingly familiar—Billy Joel.

Brown looked at the door, looked at Keyes, and began to move again. He put himself to one side of the cracked-open door and peered inside the house. He pushed the door open another inch. Then he was gone, leaving Keyes alone on the patio.

Keyes found his courage. He followed, clutching the Glock tightly with both hands.

A dim, damp foyer. Van Gogh and Chagall on the wall—originals, Keyes sensed. Several arched doorways opened off this front hall. All were dark except the last doorway on the left. The same doorway from which the music was coming.

Brown moved toward it, cautiously.

Two shots
, Keyes thought.
Aim for the body.

The room was a kitchen.

A woman sat at a low table, crying. On the table before her was a half-empty bottle of wine and an overflowing ashtray. On the counter, a bowl of fruit and the radio. Hanging from the ceiling were heavy skillets and pots. Nestled beside the refrigerator was a cat, who looked back at Keyes jadedly.

When the two armed men stepped into the kitchen, the woman looked up. She wiped a hand across her nose. A bitter smile crossed her face.

“You're looking for Vladimir?” she asked.

3.

Once again, Brown pulled to the side of the road.

Twilight whispered around them as a strong wind stirred the fields. Brown had taken a pair of binoculars from his bag; now he was training them to the east, the direction in which the long driveway led.

Keyes, with his bare eyes, could make out the house that the woman had described. There were smaller structures around the house—bungalows, or outbuildings. Past the house were more vineyards, purple with lavender.

“Three cars,” Brown said. “One's a Rolls, I think.”

“Let me see.”

Brown handed over the binoculars. It took Keyes a moment to find the cars and focus on them. One was a station wagon, parked almost behind the house, looking unoccupied. Another was a black Mercedes. Beside the black Mercedes, as Brown had reported, was a silver Rolls-Royce.

“Don't look now,” Brown said softly. “Company.”

Keyes swept the binoculars to the right. Another car was heading down the driveway, raising dust. For a moment, he thought it would be the Audi; the woman had managed to escape from her bonds, and had come to warn her husband. But it was a Mini. He followed it, his thumb working on the focus wheel. As the car parked, a man came out of the house to greet it. Keyes didn't recognize the man: in his mid-thirties, handsome and confident of carriage, nattily dressed.

But he recognized the people who came from the Mini to meet the man. One was the woman. The other was Dietz.

He lowered the binoculars, and looked over at Brown.

4.

As the sun went down, the windows turned into mirrors.

Henri watched as the swimming pool, by degrees, became a reflection of the sunken living room. The process took about twenty minutes, and was not really all that interesting. But he focused on it anyway, because he didn't want to hear what the people around him were saying. To hear what they were saying seemed like a very bad idea.

Hosting this event in the first place was starting to seem like a very bad idea.

But it was too late to back out. He couldn't suddenly refuse his hospitality; nor could he leave the room, not when he was required to empty ashtrays and refill drinks. All he could do was stand, staring fixedly out the window, pretending not to hear.

“—a variety of offers,” the American was saying. “I'm a pragmatist, gentlemen. It makes no difference to me where this ends up. But I do prefer to conduct business with trustworthy people, and Vladimir assures me that you qualify. So I'm glad to have the opportunity to give you this chance …”

He was standing before the fireplace, hands folded behind his back, making his pitch. His voice was confident, low, almost musical. Vladimir and the woman and the prince sat on the low couches, listening attentively. The bodyguard/driver stood in the doorway, motionless.

“Of course I understand the need for prudence. Yet time is of the essence. We have another meeting in forty-eight hours, with certain parties who shall remain nameless. What I'd like to do is write down a figure …”

He was looking around for a piece of paper. Henri moved to the piano, reached behind a songbook on the shelf, and found a pad. He carried it to the American. At the same time, Ismayalov reached into a pocket and produced a ballpoint pen.

“… and we can go from there.”

The American took the pad, took the pen, and wrote down his figure. He took two steps and set the pad, facedown, on the table. The Saudi reached forward and picked it up. He read it, his face expressionless.

A moment passed, and then another.

He was opening his mouth to speak when suddenly a dog began to bark, from very close to the house.

The prince looked at his bodyguard, then at Henri.

“It's the neighbor's dog,” Henri said. “It's nothing.”

Nobody seemed reassured.

“I'll take care of it,” Henri said, and slipped out of the room past the bodyguard, heading for the front door.

5.

It was the wind, he thought as he stepped outside; nothing more.

But the little terrier's timing couldn't have been worse. Tensions were running high. The evening had been moving along nicely, drawing toward a close. And now Sylvie, with a single string of hoarse barks, had put everybody on edge.

For some reason, she had stopped barking. Because the wind was dying down again, Henri guessed. But he would find her anyway, and shoo her back to her own property. For the wind might pick up again, and if the dog started barking every time that happened, these people would never finish their goddamned business …

He moved around the house, approached the swimming pool. From here he could see inside the brightly lit living room, although they couldn't see out. The living room looked like a fishbowl; five pairs of eyes stared blindly at the glass.

“Sylvie,” he called. He snapped his fingers, peering into the night. “Come here, girl.”

A movement from the far side of the pool—a short rustling. He walked in that direction.

“Don't be that way,” he said. “It's me. Henri.”

There she was—standing in tall grass, her tail wagging.

Somebody was standing behind her. Two somebodys.

As he looked at them, his mouth went dry.

One was raising a gun.

After that, things happened very quickly.

TWENTY-FIVE

1.

Keyes raised the gun with shaking hands.

If he fired, he would give away their presence. But their presence would be given away anyway; for the man was looking right at them.