Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Topaz Tango

“You don’t suppose Max went off to work on that front?” Temple asked with a shudder.

“Wouldn’t seem his culture, but he is a chameleon of sorts. No, there’s something rotten going on in Vegas tied into all this, but I have no idea what it is.”

“So,” said Temple, finishing her martini and actually debating ordering another. “Matt will be okay now that you told me it looks like Max stage-managed his own vanishing act and is alive and well and somewhere far away?”

“He didn’t want to be the one to tell you he knew Max had pulled another now-you-see-him, now-you-don’t. But he didn’t want to be the one to keep you in the dark, either.”

“Matt has a pretty fine meter on his conscience, doesn’t he?”

Molina nodded. “Yes, he does. An excellent thing in a man.” She drained her glass. “You do realize that Max made it look like he was gone to end any hope you might have of a relationship.”

“He’d been . . . drawing away lately. In a way, I wasn’t surprised.”

“Or . . . he could have known that he was again the target of some nasty international assassins and he wanted you out of the way forever.”

“Possible. Max takes his personal responsibilities seriously.”

“Or, to be totally realistic, he may have been taken out by those same shadowy figures and the scene set up to convince the one constant in his life that any search for him was futile.”

Temple would not tear up in front of Molina. Or choke on her words. “Yes, that too.”

There was a pause. Was it possible that Molina was choking on something too, like regret?

She finally spoke again. “What say we get another round and toast your fiancé.”

Temple assumed she shouldn’t ask which one, the old or the new.

Maybe this round they could discuss the possible sins and saving graces of Rafi Nadir and Dirty Larry Podesta. Who would ever have thought?

“Where’s that pesky cat of yours, anyway?” Molina asked as they returned from the bar.

“Louie seems to have made some new friends at the Oasis. It’s always good to have connections in this town.”

“Skoal,” said Molina, lifting her glass.

“Cheers,” said Temple, wondering how Molina was ever going to sort out the guys in her life without one of them proving to be crooked or going AWOL.

Meanwhile . . .

Max of Arabia, swarthy in desert burnoose, lurking near some ancient market.

No, the land of IEDs and suicide bombers made the IRA look like Boy Scouts by comparison. Temple hoped Max was on a cushy assignment in the Caribbean, chasing tax evaders.

Cane Dance

The hotel was within walking distance of more than shops and restaurants. He was heading for the Bahnhof train station, one of the busiest in Europe. It was an imposing nineteenth-century building as sleek and remodeled inside as a modern airport, with yet more shopping on a lower level. And where there was shopping, there were pockets to pick.

He needed to ditch the credit cards after each use in an urban area, and Zurich was unusually small and insular even for a European city. He couldn’t bury them in anything here but refuse, which was regularly accumulated and could be searched, unlike endless alpine meadows.

He rubbed his chin as he thought, surprised by the scrape of his own carefully cultivated stubble across his palm. Revienne hadn’t complained, but he wanted to kick himself for forgetting about it during the heat of their moments. So, more data to process. Thoughtful lover. Usually. Add that to the list of attributes he was compiling about his habits and likes and dislikes. Faithful? Apparently. That was inconvenient.

So. What was the verdict on Revienne? If he’d truly trusted her, he’d have used her given name in bed, he’d sensed that much. Yet the honorifics were inciting in a Victorian pornography way. Close, but not completely close. Unrestrained but still restrained.

As his memory was: still restrained, in a straitjacket.

He’d been constantly and unconsciously scanning the street and pedestrians. He stopped at a shop window to examine the reflection of a slow-moving silver Audi that seemed inclined to window shop too. It moved on, and after a couple of minutes he did too.

The railway station’s looming bulk was only three blocks away. It would present an array of problems for him, but mass ground transportation was safer than the airport.

A portly fellow in a homburg hat gazing too intently at the footpath brushed by. His cane tangled with Max’s ankle.

Like most street mix-ups, it quickly became a bungled Fred Astaire routine. Max grabbed the cane and spun out of the way, but the man’s cane slipped to the street. The old fellow was tilting off balance with no support.

Where the devil had the fellow’s cane gone?

Max bent to help him look for it. Then the cane reappeared between his ankles, knocking him off balance. He fell back against the rear fender of a stopped car.

He was perfectly placed to tumble inside an open backseat car door.

Oh, no, they didn’t. His arms grabbed each side of the frame as he prepared to thrust himself back onto the sidewalk and freedom.

“Max, you ass,” the old man hissed, “get in and make no more fuss about it. We’re attracting attention.

“Sorry, young fellow,” Garry Randolph added loudly in German. “Many thanks for catching me. Come, my car will take you where you were going.”

By then Max had managed to draw his long legs inside without too much pain as Garry pushed into the backseat after him and pulled the door shut.

The car eased back into traffic.

“Where’s—?” Max started to ask.

Randolph snapped his wrist and a telescoping cane unfurled in the space between them.

“I don’t need a cane anymore, but my fingerprints are on the one you left behind,” Max complained.

Garry Randolph jerked his head behind them.

Max rubbernecked backward. A teenage boy was bending to retrieve the cane.

“He’s mine.” Garry said. “I knew I could lose the walking stick in the confusion of the moment. The boy’s been paid to burn it.”

Max eyed the driver, who had never looked back.

“Doesn’t speak English and wears earphones playing Vivaldi anyway. A long-ago associate. How is the lovely doctor?”

“Wearing a lovely new suit and en route back to the clinic.”

“Do you trust her?”

“No. She did help me escape the place.”

“After the attempt on your life with the hypodermic needle.”

“What was in it?”

“Phenobarbital.”

“Know why I’m worth so much dead?”

Gandolph scratched the bristly gray mustache, then pulled it off. “No. You’re walking well. I’m amazed.”

“The bones were healed, so my atrophied muscles were the problem. Running for your life makes for very motivated physical therapy. How did you find me?”

“You had to pass through Zurich. I actually located you yesterday, but the lights in your room burned all night and I was reluctant to be seen in the hotel anyway. Had a siege of sickness, did we?”

Max cleared his throat. “That was actually Dr. Schneider’s room.”

“I see. A rather different kind of siege.” Garry shook his head. “Max, Max, Max. A deceptive woman got you into this whole counterspy mess twenty years ago. Boys will be boys, I suppose.”

“Is there some reason I shouldn’t have been doing what I was doing?”

“She may be employed by an enemy.”

“Beyond that.”

“Any reason why you should have slept alone last night, you mean?”

He nodded.

“You left the love of your life behind in Las Vegas when you crashed into the wall of a nightclub during an airborne magic act.”

Max stared at this man he was supposed to know, and trust.