‘You have disrupted my plans rather badly,’ Larry admitted. ‘But only temporarily. Would you care for something to drink?’
The bottle of mineral water hadn’t been opened; the seal was intact. Larry watched with unconcealed amusement while I inspected it.
‘You really haven’t much choice,’ he pointed out pleasantly. ‘You might go on a hunger strike, but you can’t do without water long in this climate.’
Courteous as ever, he forbore to add that there were other, less comfortable means of controlling me. ‘So what are your plans?’ I inquired.
Larry settled back in his chair and studied me with an approving smile. ‘You are quite a remarkable woman, Vicky. Would it surprise you to learn that when I informed the Embassy we were engaged to be married, I found the idea not entirely displeasing?’
‘Let’s just be friends,’ I suggested.
Larry laughed. ‘Your heart belongs to another? Think about it Vicky. It would be one way out of our present difliculty.’
‘Where is he?’
He didn’t ask whom I meant. ‘You don’t know?’
‘We separated this morning.’ There was no harm in telling him that much; he must know Feisal and I had travelled together. It was a reasonable assumption that John and Schmidt would have done the same.
‘I thought you might have. You had, of course, arranged a meeting place in Cairo? Never mind, we don’t need that information. We’ve taken the necessary steps to inform him that you are my guest. He should be arriving anytime.’
They hadn’t caught him. My face must have registered relief. Larry shook his head. ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Vicky. There’s a guard under your balcony and every door is being watched.’
So it was to be an exchange – or an offer of one. They couldn’t afford to let me go. John must know that.
‘How did you get in touch with him?’
‘My dear, your lovely face has been on every television programme in the country this evening. I gave out the press release myself. I’m sure he’s seen it, he’ll have been following the news closely. You are suffering from shock and physical and nervous exhaustion at the villa of the chairman of the Egypto-American Trading Company. He spends most of his time in the States, but he was happy to offer a refuge to you and your solicitous fiancé.’
And when I fell off the balcony or slashed my wrists my solicitous fiancé would say I’d committed suicide in a fit of clinical depression. They’d add that to Feisal’s account too.
‘What about Feisal?’ I had to force myself to ask; I dreaded the answer.
Larry dismissed the minor question of a man’s life with a wave of his hand. ‘Forget about him, he’s no longer a factor. Schmidt and Tregarth are the ones who concern me, and they ought to concern you as well; you’re in no danger unless they refuse to cooperate. No, don’t interrupt, let me finish. Why should I want to harm you? Once I’m out of the country there’s no way you can prove anything, and without that pectoral you haven’t a leg to stand on.’
He took my appalled silence as a sign that his arguments were beginning to have their effect. Leaning forward, his eyes intent, he went on, ‘You’ve gone to a great deal of trouble and endured a great deal of danger and distress to stop me. Admirable, no doubt, but very foolish. Why risk your life to prevent me from doing something so harmless? The antiquities I have acquired will be cared for and preserved more carefully than they would have been in their original locations. What I’ve done is an act of rescue, not desecration.’
I knew the arguments. They have been used by every looter, archaeologist, or thief, from the beginning of time, and unfortunately they have some merit. There wouldn’t be much left of the Elgin marbles if they had stayed in the Parthenon. I don’t buy those arguments, but I didn’t feel like arguing with Larry.
I had seen eyes like his once before – in the face of a shabby, shy little man who had tried to smash a statue of Diana in our museum. The guards had got to him before he did much damage, and I had had a chance to talk to him later, when he was in police custody. He had been very polite and soft-spoken when he explained that God had told him to destroy the heathen images. He couldn’t understand why we couldn’t see his point of view.
The little man and Larry had opposite aims, but they had the same mind-set. A kind of mental constipation, if you will excuse the homely metaphor – a block of solid conviction through which no counter argument can pass.
Larry turned with a frown when the door opened. We’d been getting on so well; he felt sure I had been about to agree with him.
Her hair was tied back with a soft scarf that matched her pale blue dress. It was like a child’s pinafore, with wide shoulder straps and big pockets in the gathered skirt, and she looked about sixteen. The Greek earrings shone bright against the masses of her dark hair.
‘Has she got it?’ Mary’s voice was crisp and not at all childish.
‘We haven’t discussed that,’ Larry said. ‘I doubt it, though. Please go.’
‘You promised me . . .’
‘No, I didn’t. Get out and leave this to me.’
She divided a malignant glance between the two of us and slipped out.
‘That woman is getting to be a damned nuisance, Larry muttered. ‘I think she’s a little crazy.’
‘You know, Larry, you might have something there. Why don’t you fire her? You hired her.’
‘No, I didn’t. My original arrangements were made with her brother. A very competent man.’
Competent, sane Leif. I remembered the last sight I’d had of him. The knife with which he’d been slashing at me was still in his hand when John dragged him down under the icy water.
Larry’s frown smoothed out. ‘Well, it won’t be much longer. I will certainly sever my connections with the organization after this. I hate to do it because they’ve done excellent work for me in the past, and at the start she was quite efficient. Some of her ideas were brilliant, in fact – like planting that message with the dead agent to get you on board as a means of making Tregarth behave himself.’
‘Oh,’ I said. He seemed to expect some response, but congratulating him on that brilliant idea was more than I could manage.
‘Her organization handled that matter, and very well, too.’ Larry went on. ‘She’s been acting strangely the last few weeks, though, and one can’t put up with that sort of thing. It’s inefficient.’
‘Right,’ I said, swallowing.
‘I need that pectoral, Vicky,’ Larry went on. ‘Do you have it?’
‘What . . . Oh.’ In the fascination of following Larry’s mind along its monster-haunted byways I had almost forgotten the Tutankhamon jewel. ‘No, I don’t have it. Didn’t you search me?’
Larry looked uncomfortable. ‘Only in the most respectful fashion. Mary wanted to . . . Of course I couldn’t allow that.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. And I meant it. The idea of those soft little hands on me made my skin crawl.
‘It’s a very large object,’ Larry went on. ‘I don’t believe I could have missed it. Anyhow, I didn’t suppose Tregarth would trust you with it. He has it, doesn’t he?’
‘Unless he is a lot dumber than I think he is, he’s stowed it away somewhere safe by now.’
‘So we decided. Well.’ Larry rose. ‘He’ll turn it over to us in exchange for you. So you see, Vicky, you haven’t a thing to worry about. Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?’
His departure would certainly have that effect but it wouldn’t have been tactful to say so. I shook my head.
‘Have a little rest,’ Larry said kindly. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as we hear from him.’
Mary wasn’t the only one who’d gone around the bend in the last few weeks. Or had Larry always been this way, determinedly unconscious of the deadly results of his ‘harmless’ schemes? Maybe they were all like that, the presidents and chairmen and commanding generals who sat in their offices and gave orders to ‘engage targets’ or ‘cut the work force.’ They never saw the suffering, bleeding bodies those orders affected.