“Are you so sure?”
McGarvey nodded, “Yes. But you got part of why I’m here right.” He walked back to the strip. “Revenge.” He came to attention, his left foot at a ninety-degree angle directly behind his right foot, his left hand at his side, the épée pointed at the floor to his right.
Salman was mildly amused and it showed on his face. “Do you mean to fence me in street shoes?” he asked. He had a slight smile at the corners of his broad mouth. “No masks? Could be a dangerous game, if this is how you mean to kill me. I’m quite a good fencer.”
McGarvey wasn’t surprised that Salman was keeping up his act. He’d have to be good to have eluded detection all these years. “Actually my wife was in love with Darby Yarnell, or thought she was, and I suspect that you took advantage of her like you probably do with all your women. What do you prefer: booze, drugs, intimidation, rape?”
Salman’s face darkened with a sudden anger that passed as quickly as it formed. He laughed. “You’re trying to get me mad by insulting me.” He shrugged. “That’s a valid approach. Some fencers might fall for it. Get mad, make a mistake. But look here, are you sure that you don’t want to at least put on some decent shoes? I’m sure we have your size.”
McGarvey brought his épée straight up, the shiny bell guard just in front of his mouth, and then with a crisp movement snapped it to the right in the traditional salute before a bout. “I’m curious about how much your uncle, the crown prince, knows. The family has to be walking a very fine line between supplying us with oil while funding the terrorists trying to bring us down. If they go too easy on us, their neighbors will hate them, but they openly support scumbags like bin Laden. Riyadh might become our next Baghdad.”
Salman returned the salute. “What do you have?” he asked. “Where’s your proof?”
McGarvey moved his left foot back a half step, flexed his knees slightly, and brought his épée loosely on guard. “I know you. We faced each other when you tried to kidnap Don Shaw.”
“I’ve never been to Alaska in my life,” Salman said. He too came on guard, his stance relaxed, almost nonchalant.
“You were in Vancouver.” McGarvey moved forward, feinting to the left. Salman moved back easily, not accepting the feint so when McGarvey presented his blade in six, Salman parried it lightly, not bothering to riposte.
“If you know that much, you must also know that all of my time was accounted for.”
“There were gaps,” McGarvey said. He leaped forward explosively in a perfectly executed advance ballestra, taking Salman’s blade in a counter six. When the prince disengaged, he returned with a strong opposition in four in order to open a line of attack, but then retreated out of distance when Salman disengaged again with lightning speed.
Salman didn’t bother to follow up with a counterattack. It was obvious that he was the superior fencer, or thought he was, because he was toying with McGarvey, not really taking the bout seriously.
“When I was in bed asleep,” Salman said.
McGarvey moved to the left edge of the strip and lowered the tip of his blade as if he were angling for an attack to the foot, leaving his own unprotected face open. The épée tips were equipped with buttons that, when pressed against a target would close an electrical circuit, thus registering a score. The tips were not sharp, but they were small enough in area that the blades would easily penetrate an eyeball and stab a fatal wound six inches inside the brain. Or, with enough pressure, the tip could be forced through an unprotected throat.
“There were longer periods than that when you were unaccounted for.”
“What am I accused of doing?” Salman asked mildly. “Sneaking out the back exit of my hotel, flying up to Alaska, perhaps parachuting down to the boat to face a couple hundred crew and passengers, plus you, and then when it was all over somehow fly back to Vancouver, sneak up to my hotel room, and order breakfast?”
With lightning fast speed, moving nothing but his hand and arm, he thrust his point at McGarvey’s face, leaving his own left flank open, figuring that it wouldn’t matter because even an extremely hard touch there would do him little or no harm.
It was exactly what McGarvey had hoped the superior fencer’s arrogance would lead him to do. At the last possible moment, the épée less than an inch from his right eye, McGarvey reached up with his left hand, slapped the blade away, and drove his own épée upward to Salman’s exposed neck, stopping just short of a penetrating thrust.
For several long moments the two men stood in tableau, neither moving, until finally Salman let his épée drop to the floor and slowly spread his hands. “It would seem that the director of Central Intelligence does not play by the rules. But what now? His hand is stayed. Why?”
McGarvey was back on the stern deck of the Spirit, and he could hear Khalil talking to Katy. You will look good in black, madam.
He’d been too formal, as if he hadn’t known her, or hadn’t remembered.
His voice had been different.
McGarvey stepped back, studied Salman’s amused expression for a second, then saluted.
He wanted this. For the young mother and infant, for the other passengers and crew, for what had been done to Katy aboard the cruise ship and twelve years ago in Washington.
But he couldn’t be sure.
Salman’s sardonic grin widened. “What is it, Mr. McGarvey? Has your taste for blood left you? Or were the tales of your adventures in the Alaska wilds, coming to the rescue of women and children, mere public relations?”
“I owe you an apology,” McGarvey said.
Salman laughed. “Get off my boat while you’re still able. If ever we meet again, my hand will not be stayed. I will kill you.”
McGarvey tossed his épée aside, and walked out the way he had come in, conscious that Salman had come to the door to watch him leave.
He couldn’t be sure. Not one hundred percent.
Inge Poulsen, now wearing a sarong, a rose in her hair, waltzed down from the sundeck, her pretty face lit up in a bright smile that immediately faded when she spotted McGarvey at the gangway. “Arrêtez. You can’t leave yet. I must know about the flowers.”
McGarvey could see Salman at the door to the aft passageway, but the young woman could not. “Je suis désolé, Mademoiselle. But I must go.”
“Non—” she protested, but Salman cut her off almost as if he were mildly reprimanding a naughty child.
“The monsieur is leaving, Inge. Now I want you to return to your cabin, like a good girl, or I’ll have you tossed overboard tonight.”
McGarvey turned slowly to look at Salman standing in the doorway. Toss the woman and child overboard. They were Khalil’s words aboard the cruise ship. And now they were Salman’s words. Same inflection, same voice.
FORTY
Day or night no longer had any significance for Liese, so that even now driving toward the chalet in the bright early afternoon, she was having trouble coming away from the erotic dreams she’d been having about Kirk. She could feel his body next to hers, hear his voice in her ear, feel his breath on her neck. She felt disconnected from reality.
The small boats with their brightly colored spinnakers were back on the lake, and as she came up the gravel driveway she spotted Gertner’s car along with several others parked beside the chalet. It looked as if someone was throwing a party, or a conference, and the worry that something had happened to Kirk spiked.
Gertner’s call had come a few minutes before noon while she has having lunch in her apartment. McGarvey was in Monaco. He and the prince had actually come face-to-face at the casino, where McGarvey publicly insulted the man. And this morning McGarvey was actually aboard the prince’s yacht.