“So all the guards went that way?”
“Uh-huh. All those guards did. We have others.”
“And was I the last person to find out what’s going on?”
“Oh, no. The crew and all those men were planning for us to be on the yacht. They had no idea we were getting off.”
“When did you tell them?”
“I told only T.J.”
“God, you are paranoid. What is this costing?”
“I’ve learned through hard, sad experience that a ruse works better if everyone involved actually believes it. People act according to their expectations. I pulled in some chits to rent the place we’re going for less than two hundred thousand dollars. A bargain for a woman worth two hundred fifty million.”
They traveled through the fog and mist to a long, slender harbor at the very end of the bay. There a passenger van waited, cloaked in the night, its engine running and lights off.
Anna knew only that they were winding up the side of a mountain, the headlights flashing on the green of trees, grasses, and ferns, a few aluminum mailboxes on white wood posts, grass a foot tall clumped at the bases. There were no streetlights and, after a time, no houselights, only the black illuminated to gray, and then it became so thick that they crawled up the road clinging to the center strip. Billions of tiny droplets grabbed headlight beams and spread them to a halo of rainbows-the result of driving in a cloud.
Finally, after going higher on an island than Anna would have thought possible, they came to a wide drive with beautiful iron gates. The driver pushed a button and the gates trundled on steel wheels.
Devan Gaudet’s mind was like a free-flowing river finding its way down a familiar canyon. Within ten minutes of leaving Taveuni, using a cell phone shipped out of the U.K., he was talking to his travel agent in Geneva. Fifty minutes after his arrival at Nadi Airport, he was on a jet to Sydney, Australia. Given years of discipline, he was able to sleep the entire flight. Upon his arrival in Sydney he went to work. First he would get control.
In a safe house in Sydney established the week prior, Benoit had seen to it that the GE phone costing about $50 was replaced by a scrambler phone built by Grace technicians at a cost of about $150,000.
“I’m afraid that moron, your boyfriend, will screw up our lives,” Gaudet began when he got her on the line. He liked to bring up that she had sex with Chellis, hoping that if he rubbed it in, her hatred for the man would continue to grow. “We need to move up the timetable. Doing nothing is not an option. We’ve got to move fast and hard or we’re going to lose this. Chellis will get too aggressive or talkative, so it’s time to proceed as I have laid out. You’d better call your friend Jacques.”
“Okay,” she said, exhaling a bit too long.
“Did you send a man to Grady’s apartment?”
“Of course.”
“And?”
“She had a cat.”
“So?”
“She boards it when she’s gone. A place called the Critter Sitter. She also has a computer. We’ve got the password and total access. Our guys have also broken into the Critter Sitter’s computer and written a program to divert any incoming mail from Grady. We will get it instead, and she’ll think she’s talking to the Sitter. We’re hoping she’ll use her e-mail account from the road to check on her cat.”
“Long shot,” Gaudet said. “Sam wouldn’t let anyone use a local computer to send anything. She would have to break the rules, and I wouldn’t count on that. It nearly killed her the last time. I’ve got another way. They need Nutka and the oil. She had a supply. I’m working with Samir. Some strangers came for Nutka in the night and I’m sure it was the Sam group. But we were faster, we have a radio transmitter in her bag, and more important, Samir has men in a cabin with her family. If she doesn’t tell us where they take her, Samir makes AK-47 stew. And I have other means.”
“Samir would do that?”
There was a quiet that made Gaudet smile and the quiet spoke more than words. Even with their love-making, she didn’t trust him.
“I didn’t know you talked with Samir,” she continued.
“Did I forget to mention that?”
“You’re an aloof bastard.”
“Don’t you suppose that’s how it is with most people who kill others for a living? The real standout here would be the personal assistant who screws everybody for a living.”
“You’re talking your way out of my bed.” The ice over the line pleased him. He liked sex with the rebellious ones.
“A woman of great poise can take a small joke.”
“Soon you’ll be no fun.”
“I will make it up to you.” It galled him to say it, but he wanted this woman. Apparently there were lines that he could not cross. Maybe in the end killing her would provide his only complete satisfaction.
“You mentioned other means of finding them.”
“Nothing is certain. It is, shall we say, a real coup d’etat? Something that is working out very well. You can trust me. We needn’t go into it.”
Samir Aziz paced in the waiting room of the laboratory, ignoring the magazines, Le Monde, and the receptionist. It seemed small and chintzy for such a prestigious lab. It irritated him that these people, on whom he had pinned his hopes, had cheap furniture and cheap paintings.
Michelle sat on a chair and clasped his hand as needed. He was extremely anxious to know what was in the oil, why it worked, and whether it could be duplicated. He was not sure that he could stand to live without it in the shadow of an anxiety so powerful that it sapped all satisfaction from his life.
At last the door to the working portion of the lab opened and Monsieur Dupre entered and offered a firm handshake.
“I’m afraid we still can’t tell you much. There are organics. Complex molecules that are very hard to figure without a clue. There is nothing that would affect your state of mind by itself, so it must be working in combination with something else, and right now neither the lab nor your neurologist can imagine what that might be. Maybe they have genetically altered your brain, but we have no details. We don’t know how they would do that. The note is not enough. It could be anything. In that oil there is every herbal remedy known to man. There are trace molecules. It’s a stew. Eventually we’ll get it if we don’t run out of material.”
“So you will keep looking.”
“Oh, yes. But it would be helpful if you could talk with the manufacturer of the oil.”
“Yes,” Samir said.
“What are we going to do?” Michelle asked on the way out the door.
“My men have taken your son. That is a first step.”
Obviously shocked, she threw her arms around him in the parking lot. It was the desired reaction.
“When, where is he?”
“On his way to Lebanon. It was a bitch getting him into the country without a passport. But in three hours when we arrive back in my country he will be at your apartment in Beirut. I wanted to surprise you.”
“How did you do it?”
“By promising them I would deliver some software that Chellis won’t. The software will be no more difficult to obtain than the oil recipe. I had to get your son because Chellis and company are apt to suppose that you have turned on them.”
“You are not the man I thought you were,” she said. “Not at all.”
“No, I am that man. But you could say that I am adapting to your kindnesses. Or maybe that where you are concerned I envy all other men their power, and so I have moved to diminish it in order to enhance my own.”
“It is necessary for you to portray yourself so harshly?”
Samir’s cell phone rang.
“Yes?” he said, expecting one of his men.
“This is your new friend.”
“What new friend?”
“You know what new friend. The friend that will have the recipe to the oil and all you need of it for the rest of your life. And not the crap you’ve been getting, but good stuff that will get you back to normal. I know exactly what’s going on, and soon I will control Grace Technologies and all that it possesses.”