T. Bunn - Drummer in the Dark

She glanced about, then reached over and took his arm. “Come, dear Wynn. We are entertaining the staff.”

Valerie led him back into the bar, a darker alcove off the main salon. She wore gray slacks of Shantung silk and a matching blouse with four seed pearls for buttons. A gray silk jacket hung from the back of a chair by the corner table. “What will you have?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

She waved the bartender away. “And just precisely what enemy might this be?”

“I have no idea.” When she looked at him askance, he added, “To be honest, I don’t think Esther knows either. Not for certain.”

“Esther Hutchings belongs in the bed beside her husband.” Valerie swept her hair back, using both hands to smooth the auburn flow. She eyed him in a coquettish fashion. “You’re certain this was all that was at work back there in the lobby?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well Jackie, is that what you said her name was? She seemed a very nice young lady, but operating utterly out of her league.”

Wynn knew she was waiting and expecting him to agree, to close the distance and speak words of invitation. Yet her magic, however potent, was not working. Though she belonged to this moneyed world, though he had always thought this was the class of woman he sought, still his mind remained captured by the day and by the silent word spoken from the recesses of a departing elevator. “I have to leave tomorrow.”

She crossed her arms. “That is not funny.”

“Sybel is no longer in Rome.”

“So just where, pray tell, has your errant sister strayed now?”

He found himself not wanting to tell her. An utterly illogical response, but strong enough to keep him from speaking. The sound of approaching footsteps came as a welcome interruption. The late-night concierge took great pride in announcing, “I have managed to book you on the first flight to Cairo tomorrow morning.”

Valerie repeated, “Cairo?”

“Excellent,” Wynn said, though it was anything but. “Thank you.”

“It leaves at six forty-five, I’m afraid.”

Which gave him the perfect excuse to rise and say, “I’m so very sorry, Valerie.”

She remained where she was. “You can’t be serious.”

He chose to misunderstand. “I’m still jet-lagged from the trip here. I’ve got to get some rest.” He reached down, took both her hands in his, squeezed hard. “Enjoy Rome for me. Will you at least do that?”

He followed the concierge back across the lobby, traded a tip for his booking confirmation, and waved back to where Valerie still sat. He entered the elevator and punched his button, sighing as the doors closed. He felt a sibilant hush of confirmation, bubbles rising from his gut to the mental recesses where logic held no sway.

When he entered his room, he walked to the telephone and asked to be connected with Jackie.

She answered with the guarded alertness of having been half-expecting this call. “Yes?”

He knew what she both anticipated and dreaded. Which was why he spoke as briskly as he did. “Something’s come up. We have to talk. Now.”

To her credit, she did not play coy or feign sleepiness. “I’m in 601.”

He copied out his travel details, walked down the hall, and waited without knocking for Jackie to open the door. The face beneath her tousled hair showed wary caution. So he started in while still standing in the corridor. “You remember the woman who came with me to Esther’s that evening?”

“The lobbyist.”

“Her name is Valerie Lawry. She’s here.”

“In Rome?”

“Downstairs. Right now.”

Jackie pulled open the door, revealing an oversize Orlando Magics T-shirt tucked into jeans. Bare feet. An athlete’s taut, balanced stance. Still cautious, but willing to accept him at face value. “Come in.”

He took the seat by the open French doors, feeling mocked by laughter rising from the plaza and steps below. “My sister has gone to Cairo. Bringing me to Rome was just a ploy to get me started. She’s wanted me to travel down there since before I was elected to Congress. Why, I can’t say. But I’m pretty certain it has something to do with a conference I heard about at the White House. You know the one?”

Jackie lowered herself to the edge of the bed. “Kay Trilling is going. And Nabil, the Egyptian who invited you here.”

“I want you to find somebody who will track Valerie. Find out where she goes. Who she reports to.” He handed over a sheet of paper. “Travel details and my hotel in Cairo, according to the woman at Sant’Egidio. Talk to somebody at the church. Maybe they can help you find a PI. The bottom number is my credit card. Charge everything.”

Hair the color of winter wheat spilled across her face, hiding everything but her voice. “I can do that.”

Suddenly the distance between them did not seem so great. An arm’s reach across the expanse, a single step, and he would be seated there beside her. Jackie sensed the sudden change as well, for she looked up, revealing a woman who had come to expect little of life. And men. But not refusing him. Just waiting.

At that moment, however, Wynn desired nothing more than to elevate himself in her eyes. “I’m not the enemy, Jackie.”

“No,” she said softly. “I don’t think you are.”

He watched her waiting still, but perhaps hoping he was more than just another guy. Or maybe it was just him. So when he rose to his feet, it was to aim toward the door. “I guess I better do a few hours of jet-lag coma.”

She followed him over, asked, “What is happening here?”

He shook his head, not at her question, but rather at how easy it had been to leave the woman downstairs. The one who belonged, who invited. And how hard to depart from the one who offered nothing but a mirror of his own sad state. “I’m getting tired of being played like a puppet. More than that, I can’t say.”

Tuesday

Pavel Hayek was not a traveler. He preferred to sit in his castle and command the world to come and bend the proper knee. But this journey to Miami was unavoidable. People with the kind of money he was after expected him to appear, if not at their doorstep, then at least at a suitable middle ground. As the Biltmore’s presidential suite was already booked, he was ensconced in the Coconut Grove Ritz-Carlton’s penthouse, as far from the tawdry glitz of South Beach as he could manage. Beyond his window, evening graced the Intracoastal basin with a quilt of subtle greens and golds and blues. The doors to his private balcony were open, admitting the sweet-scented breeze and a vague discord from streets far below. Hayek breathed in the myth of a gentle season and tried to keep his anger from showing. “I had expected to have Duclos himself here to speak with me.”

“Monsieur le Chairman sends his sincerest regrets. He was unavoidably detained.” The woman was a product of generations of French overbreeding, no doubt a graduate of one of their top echelon schools-INSEAD or the Ecole Nationale or somewhere equally pompous. She was not utterly without charms but her hair was overly foppish, her clothes far too modern, and her perfume just hideous. “He has asked me to obtain the further information required to reach our decision.”

Hayek waved an irritated hand, motioning for Burke to respond. This really was too much. Duclos was either not going to invest, or he was expecting further concessions. This young woman was sent as an excuse for Duclos to avoid making a decision. And of course she was too full of herself to understand. The French were detestable creatures to do business with. Not for the first time Hayek regretted contacting them.

His search for coconspirators had been meticulous. From Switzerland had come NBS, runner-up to Credit Suisse for years. Nine months earlier, the bank had begun leaking institutional investors. Eleven billion dollars had flowed in the wrong direction in as many months, enough to have the senior directors quaking. The staid Swiss conservatism had been chucked, replaced by a frantic search for anything that would put them back in good stead with the money crowd. Hayek’s proposal was clutched in a two-fisted panic.