The door crashed open behind her. She spun around, flattening her back against the wall beside the window. The two men came in, and one of them stood in the middle of the room while the other one came over and shut the window. He smiled crookedly at her. “Not in New York,” he said. “It is well known no one listens in New York.”
He had blood on his face, on one sleeve, on the knee of his trousers. She stared at him in horror.
He continued to smile. “You have nothing to fear from us,” he said. His voice was insinuating, like a seducer’s. “Just tell us where the diamonds are,” he said.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. My husband kept them; I don’t know what he did with them.”
He stopped smiling. Mocking her, he looked troubled. As though he really worried about her, he said, “We aren’t going to have to force you to tell us, are we? We don’t want to have to hurt you.”
She looked at the other one still in the middle of the room, his machine gun pointed at her head. He looked so young, so much more innocent than the other one. Would he stand by and let her be tortured?
He’d have to, of course. The older one must be in command here.
She wouldn’t be able to stand torture, she knew that.
It was all over now, all Joseph’s plans, just as she’d feared. Even if she didn’t tell them, even if she let them kill her without telling them, they wouldn’t have to search very hard to find the diamonds. So it was all over, no matter what she did.
The important thing was to stay alive. For her own sake, and the sake of the children.
She said, “You won’t kill me?”
“Why should we kill you?” It was the same seducer’s voice he used, and it made her know he did intend to kill her. But the other one? Would he stand for it if she cooperated, if she pleaded with him, mentioned the children, did whatever they asked?
She said, “Down to the right. The last room on the left. In the closet. There’s a pair of overshoes in there.”
“In the overshoes?”
She nodded. “In two cloth bags inside the overshoes.”
He said to the younger one, “Watch her,” and left the room.
She looked at the younger one. Wasn’t his face familiar? She felt as though she’d seen him somewhere. At some diplomatic function perhaps, or some social occasion in Tchidanga.
She tried to smile at him, but it didn’t work very well. She said, “You don’t have to kill me, you know. I won’t cause you any trouble.”
He didn’t say anything, but she thought she detected sympathy in his expression. She said, “I have three children, you know. They’re all I care about, not the diamonds or politics or anything else. I wouldn’t want to leave them alone, with no one. So you don’t have to kill me, you can leave me here, and I promise you I’ll never”
The other one came back in. He nodded to the younger one and patted the pocket of his jacket. “Got them,” he said. He turned and looked at Lucille and said, “I’m sorry.”
Looking at him, meeting his eye, she realized with a shock that he wassorry. It wasn’t mockery after all; he was deeply troubled by what he was doing here tonight.
Too late she understood she’d made her appeal to the wrong one.
7
Aaron Marten stood at the window looking out over Riverside Drive and the Hudson toward New Jersey. A few lights defined buildings over there even at this hour of the morning.
Jock Daask said, “It’s the woman I’m thinking about.”
“I’m sure you are,” Bob Quilp said.
Marten listened to the voices behind him and looked at the lights across the river.
Jock was saying, “How do we know she isn’t in trouble with the police herself? She’s traveling with a wanted man; they could be after her, too. And here we are giving her to them.”
Still facing New Jersey, Marten said, “Can’t be helped. We warned them to stay out of it.”
Bob said sarcastically, “You could go on up there tomorrow and untie her if you wanted. Untie her legs, anyway.”
Marten did look around then, frowning at Bob. “That will be enough of that,” he said.
Bob shrugged, a sardonic smile on his face. “Just trying to be helpful.”
Jock came walking across the room toward Marten, a pleading expression on his face. “Aaron,” he said, “what difference does it make? Why can’twe let him live? We’ll be in Africa, for heaven’s sake. He’ll have his woman back. Why kill him?”
Marten shrugged. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for him,” he said. “It’s as simple as that.”
Bob said, “He must have impressed you tonight.”
“He did.”
Jock said, “Why? Why is it all different now? Why change the plans at all?”
“I don’t want him alive,” Marten said, and turned his back and looked out at the river again.
Was this the first time in his life he had actively desired the death of another man? Marten thought it was. There had been other moments when the death of this one or that one, known or anonymous, was necessary to the completion of something else that Marten wanted, but this was the first time that the death itself was the goal.
He thought it was Parker’s eyes, or perhaps the bone structure of his face. He didn’t know what it was exactly, but talking with Parker tonight, listening to his voice, looking at his eyes, watching him move, he understood that Parker was the most dangerous man he had ever met, and that he had made himself Parker’s enemy, and that he would not sleep securely at night so long as Parker was still alive. He had had the irrational urge to pull out his pistol and kill Parker right then, almost as a nervous tic, but he had controlled it. Not until afterwards, he had thought, not until we have the diamonds. We need him alive until we have the diamonds.
But afterwards he must die.
Bob broke the silence behind him at last, saying, “Shouldn’t we be on our way?”
Marten turned around again. The clock on the mantel said not quite two fifty. “Not yet,” he said. “We don’t want to be there too early.”
“I don’t understand that,” Bob said. “We’d do better to be there ahead of them, that’s what I say.”
Marten shook his head. “We wouldn’t. Parker was right about that. If we get there first, we’re likely to leave traces when we break in. Then Gonor and the others come along, they see marks on the door or whatever, and they don’t come in at all.”
Bob shook his head and started to pace around the room. “I don’t trust Parker,” he said. “I don’t like doing things to hissuggestions.”
“Why not?” Marten spread his hands, saying, “If there’s something I’m not seeing, Bob, I’m willing to listen.”
Bob made an angry gesture and kept pacing.
“Parker wantsto tell us the truth,” Marten said. “He wantsus to get the diamonds, because he wants his woman back. After that he may be dangerous, but not before.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“Bob, there’s nothing he can do to us. There’s no way he can get at us. He doesn’t know where the farm is and he doesn’t know about this apartment. He can’t find his woman without our help and he can’t find us.”
Jock said doubtfully, watching Bob pace back and forth, “But what if he’s guessed we mean to kill him?”
“Then he wouldn’t tell us anything. It doesn’t do him any good to send us on a wild-goose chase. Say this museum isn’twhere they’re taking the diamonds. Say we go there at five o’clock and break in and the place is empty. What good does that do him?”
“He might have warned the police,” Bob said. “It could be a trap.”
Marten shook his head. “What good does it do him? He wants his woman. If we don’t get the diamonds we don’t call him; we don’t tell him where she is. Believe me, he’s sitting in his hotel room right now next to the phone waiting for us to call, hoping we don’t lose out to Gonor and his people.”