For an instant, the two women stared in surprise at Jason as Pangloss wriggled his way past and into the house.
“Pangloss!”
Too late.
The dog gave a massive shake, spraying the room with water and melting snow.
“A trick I taught him,” Jason said, his eyes leveled at Mrs. Prince. “He only does it in front of uninvited company.”
Indifferent to the puddle on the gray stone floor, Pangloss crossed the room to sit beside the visitor’s chair, lavishing her with adoring eyes.
“I’m sorry if I done wrong,” Mrs. Prince said, rising from her chair. “But this lady here said as how you was old friends an’ bein’ as how it were snowin’ outside…”
Her voice trailed off as though fully aware her employer was not as angry as he sounded.
“I understand,” Jason said. “Our guest here has the ability to charm the meanest of spirits.” He pointed to the ball of fur in the massive lap. “When is the last time you saw Robespierre do that?”
The cat, normally scornful of affection, turned yellow eyes on Jason at the mention of his name, a possessive look that clearly said he and the woman had formed some sort of bond.
The woman stood, placing the resentful cat on the floor. “Now admit it, Jason, you be glad to see Momma.”
Momma, the only name Jason knew for the woman who owned and operated the secretive Narcom. With a quickness that belied her bulk, she grasped him in a near suffocating bear hug that smelled of tropical flowers and charcoal, the odors Jason associated with her native Haiti. There, she had been the second in command of the dreaded Tonon Macoute, the Duvalier secret police whose record for brutality put Hitler’s Gestapo in a favorable light by comparison.
Jason managed to free himself. “I suppose the yacht outside the harbor is yours.”
“Not mine. Belongs to a friend.”
The first indication Jason ever had that she had one.
“Not using it right now,” she continued as she looked around as though seeing the cottage’s interior for the first time. “You sure manage to find hard-to-get-to places.”
“It keeps away people I don’t want to see. Doesn’t always work.”
Mrs. Prince’s hands were clasping and unclasping, a pair of birds mating in midair. Her eyes flicked from one to the other, a spectator in a verbal tennis match. “With your permission, Mr. Peters, I’ll be putting the tea things away, make your supper. Will our guests be joining us?”
“Definitely not.”
Without waiting for further response, Mrs. Prince fled to the kitchen, pushing the trolley ahead of her. Jason was sure she intended the clatter of crockery to curtain her from further conversation.
Momma resumed her seat, motioning Jason to the one vacated by Mrs. Prince. Like she was a hostess in her own house. In a single leap, Robespierre was back in her lap, eyes on Jason, daring him to take the territory away.
“Older you get, Jason, the less hospitable you become,” she said amiably. “Almost give me the impression you don’t ’preciate all I done for you.”
“Like damn near getting me killed?”
“You ain’t dead, but you sure rich.”
There was no arguing with that. “You didn’t come all the way to Sark to discuss either status.”
Momma gave a single nod of the head, her turn to concede a point. “That pretty little gal of yours, Dr. Bergenghetti, she not here.”
A statement, not a question.
“Why do I think you knew that before you came?”
“She’s over in…”
“Indonesia.”
“Indonesia, checking out one of them volcanoes she like so much. I had to guess, I’d say she be there ’nother couple months at least.”
“That was what she said in the e-mail I got a few hours ago. So now you’re reading my mail, too.”
Momma shrugged her shoulders, an earthquake of mountains. “She stayin’ ’cause she got an additional grant, one over what the Italian government willing to pay.”
“I can’t imagine where that came from.”
Momma ignored the sarcasm. “So, I figured since you’ll be leaving this here island…”
Jason held up a hand, stop. “Leaving? Who says?”
Momma crossed arms the size of legs of mutton. “Well, I just thought…”
“Thought what?”
“You just now coming back from that little country…”
“Liechtenstein.”
Momma knew his every move. Annoying as it was, what could he do? Devices that tracked cell phones, spy satellites, hacking into airline reservations. Privacy was as obsolete as the buggy whip.
“Yeah,” Momma nodded, seeming to relish the name, “Liechtenstein. Little bird tell me you got into trouble.”
“Your little bird must be a dodo. Trip went smooth as glass.”
Momma pursed her lips, an expression almost coquettish. “You weren’t running that Porsche up them hills for the fun of it.”
She pronounced the marque without the uh sound for the final e.
How the hell could she have known about that? Must have a really good observation team for him not to have noticed. Either that or there really was substance to her claim of being a Hounan, a voodoo priestess.
Damned if he was going to give her the satisfaction of asking. “I don’t see the correlation between what might have been trouble and leaving Sark.”
Actually, he saw it with the clarity of a photograph, a very ugly photograph.
“Don’ much think them fellows in the other car were chasing you for your autograph. They know you in Liechtenstein; they sure know you here. Just a matter of time.”
He watched her for a moment as she used one massive hand to scratch Pangloss between the ears, the other to rub Robespierre’s belly. The domesticity of the tableau would make it difficult for a stranger to believe this woman ran what was probably the most efficient covert organization in the world, undoubtedly the most efficient in private hands.
He was tired from travel, his stomach sounded like there was a really unhappy animal inside, his feet were wet and cold, and his immediate future included going to bed alone. He was in no mood for Momma’s games. “Let me guess: Since I may be in some danger here, I need to leave. Since I need to leave anyway, you just happen to have a little job that needs tending to.”
At first, Momma didn’t reply. Instead, she gently placed the cat on the floor and stood, to Pangloss’s evident disappointment. Stepping across the room, she stopped before a pair of Jason’s paintings.
“Sunset and sunrise from the same vantage point. I like the way the reddish tones of morning and late afternoon contrast with the gray of the ocean, particularly the reflection on the water and the wet rocks.”
Jason felt his anger seep away like water from a cracked cup. It’s hard to be mad at someone who both admires and understands your work.
But he said, “I’m retired, remember?”
“That’s what you said last time. You was bored to death with your woman gone then and you’re bored to death with her gone now.”
Not only did Momma keep track of his whereabouts, she read his mind, too.
Momma glanced at the gold Cartier on her wrist, a tiny button attached to the trunk of a mighty oak. “Tell you what: It’s late. We can carry this on in the morning.”
“Nothing to ‘carry on.’ ” Jason made quote marks with his fingers.
Momma made a motion with one catcher’s mitt-size hand, and Samedi soundlessly stepped from the shadows. The man creeped Jason out with his dead, corpselike eyes and the way he had of simply appearing like a spirit summoned from Hades. Jason couldn’t remember him ever speaking, either. There was something in his hand… a book.