She glanced at Rayner as if to see if there were any objections to her going on with this. She got no reaction. She looked back at Graver.
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do,” she said. “One time he was telling me about how they always make sure he can’t see where they’re going, even though he doesn’t know anything about flying, and the flight’s always at night If he was in one of the smaller planes they’d put him facing backward into the cabin so he couldn’t see, and then they’d put headphones on him and make him listen to Muzak or something so he couldn’t hear the pilot giving his navigating coordinates to the towers. He said the flights were about an hour.”
“Did he ever say what kind of plane he flew in?”
“No, he doesn’t know planes.” She hesitated, thought a second. “But he did say they always landed on water, so I guess it was one of those pontoon planes. They taxied up to a pier and then walked up to the house.”
“What kind of a house?”
“He said it was… just this big white house. Palms in front. A porch… a, uh, veranda he called it.”
“And Kalatis was there?”
“Yeah, on the veranda. Colin said he’d never even been on the inside.”
“Was anyone else there?”
“He said there would be men waiting at the pier to tie up the plane. The pilots would stand around and talk to these guys while Colin went up to the house.”
“You said, “up to the house.’ Was it hilly? A rocky cliff?”
“No, actually, I don’t think so. He described it like… you know, up from the beach to the house.”
“That’s all? No one else there?”
“Well, yeah. There was someone else. Colin said that about half the time this woman would be there. He said she was maybe in her late twenties, a foreign woman, he thought maybe Middle Eastern. He said that on several occasions she would be in the house… naked or with very little on… and as they sat on the veranda he could clearly see her through the windows. He said he thought Kalatis liked that, for Colin to be able to see her naked through the window behind Kalatis’s back. Sometimes she brought them drinks out on the veranda.”
“He didn’t know her name?”
“Kalatis never spoke to her. Just motioned to her to do what he wanted. Bring drinks. Take away drinks. Whatever.”
There was another pause as Graver tried to push his brain in the right directions, tried to probe possibilities, the opportunities that would give him the most advantage with the least expenditure of time.
“Look, uh,” Rayner said, speaking for the first time, glancing at Last with a look of impatience, “what is it, exactly, that you can do for us?”
Graver leveled his eyes on her. “What is it you want me to do?”
Rayner stared at him. She clearly was uncertain whether or how she should describe her plan to him. She seemed to be trying to figure out how to get to the subject without getting to the point She said:
“We want to use the information we’ve obtained to convince Faeber and Kalatis that we need some retirement security.”
“We?”
“Me and Connie,” she said, tilting her head at the other woman. “There aren’t any golden parachutes for wives and secretaries. It would be… only fair for us to have some financial assurance.”
“You mean extortion.”
“I mean,” she said, glancing at Last, “that Victor led me to believe that you knew something about these matters and could help us… inform us how to protect ourselves from… legal complications as we go about doing this. That’s what I mean.”
She was a little testy.
“Well, what you seem to be suggesting might be a little hard to do now,” Graver said.
Rayner frowned at him. Last squirmed in his seat.
“What do you mean, ‘now’?” Rayner asked.
“From the way Connie described this morning’s meeting with your husband,” Graver said, “it sounds to me like he thinks his house of cards is collapsing. And he thinks he’s been left behind to be buried in the rubble. It looks like Kalatis and Strasser are closing down the operation. They’re burning their bridges-Tisler, Besom, Burtell, Hormann, Sheck. And if Kalatis doesn’t kill your husband first, he’ll probably spend the rest of his life in jail. As soon as the police put together all these deaths, it won’t take them long to shut down DataPrint and its ‘intel project’ “He paused, his attention still fixed on Rayner. “I’m afraid your idea is just a little late in coming,” he concluded.
“Jesus Christ” Connie sank back against the door.
“That damn stupid pud,” Rayner said, shaking her head, half-pissed at Faeber, half-pitying him. “He might as well have just waded out into the damn Gulf of Mexico, just kept going until he fell off the damn continental shelf. Wasn’t even smart enough to get himself blackmailed.”
Nobody moved or spoke in the cool, perfumed compartment Graver watched Connie. Something had hit her harder than the other two. She was worried, staring out into the midday glare. Rayner’s mind was churning, though, and it didn’t take her long to come up with the obvious. But Last was there ahead of her, and tried to stop her before she opened her mouth.
“That’s it then,” Last said. “We’d better let this man get on with his business.”
“Wait just a damn minute,” Rayner said to Last “There’s a plan B here, and I think he”-she nodded at Graver-”might be able to help us out on it.”
“I don’t think we ought to worry him about any plan B’s right now,” Last said, trying to cut her off. “He agreed to help us if he could, but it’s clear that he can’t He’s not obligated to anything else.”
“Plan B,” Rayner said forcefully, ignoring Last and speaking directly to Graver, “is that we go after the biggest clients in the ‘intel’ file. These are big people, corporate people, who paid cash for personal intelligence on competitors, political enemies, people they wanted to ruin or outbid or outmaneuver or blackmail. There are politicians on that list, CEO’s, bankers. If it became known what they had done it could ruin careers, bring down corporations, ruin marriages, destroy reputations…” She stopped. “But there’s a small ‘window of opportunity’ here. We’ve got to move in a hurry. Once the police get onto this, once they have the ‘intel’ tapes, we won’t be able to touch these people. It’ll all be over.”
She looked at Last triumphantly. “Hell, that could be the ticket right there. We could tell them up front: Look, the police will be onto this thing in ten days. We have access to the computers. In exchange for a little financial consideration, we can erase your name from the files, and when the investigation breaks your name won’t even exist…”
She stopped and looked at Graver, then back at Last who was slumped against his door, staring at her like he could have strangled her.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
Graver turned to Last. “I’ll let you deal with this,” he said. Then he looked at Connie. “You want to tell me where he is? I could probably get some more information from him that might be useful. That would take the responsibility off you. You wouldn’t have it on your conscience… if something happened to him.”
“What?” Rayner was looking around at everyone, confused that everyone was acting as if she hadn’t said anything at all, that she didn’t exist.
“He’s at my place,” Connie said, and she gave him the address.
“Colin?” Rayner snapped her head around to the secretary.
“Does Kalatis know where you live?” Graver asked.
Connie shook her head. “That’s why I sent him there.” She looked sick.
“Don’t go back there,” Graver said to her. “Not today, not tonight” Her eyes widened. “I’ll call you when it’s all right,” he said. “Stay at a hotel tonight, at a friend’s. Go on to work tomorrow as usual, and when it’s okay I’ll leave a message at your office. It won’t be explicit, but you’ll understand.”
She nodded. Graver knew she would do whatever he said. She had crossed the line from out of control to under control.
“Hello? Hello? Am I missing something here?” Rayner sputtered. “Did anyone hear anything I said?” She had turned around now and was crouching on her knees, facing the back seat, her cleavage well presented.