For a few moments, Arthur let her rant. Then she felt his arms around her. He held her so close she could hardly breathe. When the tears came, he kissed them away.
When they stopped, he led her to the corner table markedReserved .
“Would you give me a chance to apologize? To explain,” he said, holding her hand across the white linen tablecloth.
“Do I have a choice?”
“I had to do it,” Arthur said. “Ray helped me. We faked the whole thing.”
Peta’s mind flashed back to the bloody fragments on the men’s-room floor. “If it wasn’t you—”
“I assure you it wasn’t.” Arthur accompanied his weak attempt at humor with a kiss on her hand. “When I went out there, I opened a door near the bathrooms for Ray to bring in a body he’d ‘borrowed’ from the morgue’s John Doe slab. We’d figured any male would do, given that he was about to be blown to bits.”
“So you locked the corpse, with explosive attached, into the bathroom, and slipped out the rear door?”
“Right.”
“But why, Arthur? And where have you been all this time?”
A part of their conversation a year ago struggled into Peta’s consciousness.There’s new trouble brewing in the Middle East, big trouble. After the meeting, I’m going to Israel. I’ll be teaching medics about frontline emergency burn treatment .
There had been trouble all right, and it wasn’t over yet. “It was the Israel thing, wasn’t it?” she said.
He nodded. “That was part of it. But also, there was no other way I could properly investigate Frik. He’s dangerous, Peta. It’s not just the artifact. I still have to find proof, but I can tell you that he has his hands in a lot of other dirty business.”
“Seems to be a proliferation of that around here,” Peta said.
“Of what?”
“Dirty business. My guess is, it’s reached epidemic proportions.” She told him about her experience that afternoon with New York’s finest. “They knew it was a setup, didn’t they? The police.”
“Yes. But not until the people I work for squashed the investigation.”
“How long have you—?”
“Been back? Long enough to have my contacts retrieve my piece of the artifact.”
She pulled her hand away from him. “Why didn’t you get in touch with me? I’ve been through hell—”
“Orders. There’s still too much going on. My silence is part of the deal. I’ve already said too much.”
“Will they ever let you tell me?”
“I’m working on it. That’s all I can say—for now.”
“I can be trusted to keep my mouth shut. You know that.”
“That’s not the point.”
She looked him straight in the eye. In a monotone which held no vestige of emotion she said, “Tell me, Arthur. Whatis the point.”
He leaned forward so far that his face was almost touching hers. “The point, my darling Peta, is that once I tell you…ifI tell you…you’ll be as involved as I am.”
Give it up, girl, she thought. At least for now. Leave the recriminations alone and delight in the gift of his presence. “Have you seen Ray?” she asked, making an enormous effort to appear normal.
“I was with him when you called to tell him you were coming to Danny’s. I booked a seat here right away, and another back to Vegas on the flight with you. The plan now is to test the whole artifact’s capabilities at the meeting, where we can keep Frik under wraps.” He glanced at her neck. “I heard about the stunt he pulled in Grenada. And that you had to give him your pendant.”
“Sadly, yes.”
Saying nothing about the switch she had made with the pendant, Peta raised her glass. You want closemouthed. I’ll give you closemouthed. “Happy birthday, Arthur Marryshow,” she said. “Happy birthday to us.”
41
“Josh.” Ray Arno shook Keene’s hand as he stepped off the private elevator into his penthouse. McKendry followed on Keene’s heels. “Terr. I tell you, I could hardly believe it when I heard the message on my machine, saying that you’d both be here. Good to see you both alive.”
“Good to be seen,” McKendry said.
Ray had to work to maintain his smile. Both men seemed to have aged a decade in the past year. McKendry, especially, must have shed another ten pounds since Ray had last seen him. Both men carried grim, haunted looks, as if they’d been through hell and had not quite made it all the way back.
Ray offered drinks and showed them around the penthouse. When he’d given them the inside tour, he hit a switch that automatically drew all of the curtains, revealing picture windows which overlooked the panorama below.
“Behold. My own private playground,” he said, pointing out the various hotels along the strip. Naming the mountains. Taking what was almost an owner’s pride in Red Rock Canyon and snowcapped Mount Charleston.
The visitors took in all the grandeur without much reaction. Keene’s usual ebullience was conspicuously absent. He had moved to a window and stood gazing out at the glittering panorama.
“Is Van Alman coming?” he said finally.
The tight voice and the use of the last name instead of “Frik” were not lost on Ray.
“He’s due any minute.”
“Lots of good people are dead because of his little treasure hunt.”
“And because of us,” McKendry said. “We’ve been over all this, Josh—”
“I know, I know, but I detest him and his goddamn device. If he’d letitbe…” He took a deep breath and turned from the window. “We got our piece, didn’t we? Like good little errand boys we went and found it, and we’re here to deliver it. But at what cost? If it had been up to me I’d have tossed it into the Cayman Trench and told Frik to go dive for it himself.”
The Cayman Trench…hundreds of miles long, five miles deep. Ray shook his head. No one would ever have found it there.
“Why didn’t you?” he asked.
“Because I needed to know that the past year wasn’t for nothing. And because I promised someone that if this device could be put to good use, I’d see to it that it was. I also promised that if it was going to be used for wrong, I’d prevent it. By any means necessary. Otherwise this is the last place I want to be.”
“I’m glad you came,” Ray said softly, sensing Keene’s pain. He’d never imagined the man could be this bitter. “We’re dwindling in number.”
McKendry shook his head. “Yeah, I keep trying to figure out what’s happening. Arthur last year. Now Simon’s gone. This goes on, there won’t be anyone left.”
“Fine with me,” Keene said.
Ray stared at him. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Not a bit. I picked up a new perspective on a lot of things in the past year…what’s important, what’s not. And you know what’s last on the list? This idiotic club. How’d I ever get involved with such a bunch of arrested adolescents?” Keene made a disgusted sound. “What could I have been thinking?”
“Let me remind you. You were thinking, Life’s too short to play it safe,” said a new voice.
They all turned. Frikkie stood in the doorway, a shiny titanium briefcase dangling from his good hand.
“Well, well,” Keene muttered. “If it isn’t Mr. Teen America himself.”
Frik either didn’t hear the remark or chose to ignore it. “And you were thinking you didn’t want to miss what could be an historic moment. Truly adefining moment in history. For all we know,A.D. may come to mean ‘anno device’ instead of anno Domini.”
Ray saw Keene set his jaw and knew what he was thinking: no one could mix grandiosity and arrogance like Fredrick Van Alman and, yes, sometimes you wanted to punch out his lights. But Keene only dropped into a chair and swiveled it toward the window; he went back to staring silently at the bedizened desert, effectively removing himself from the room.