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’état? 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 Dupré 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.”
Samir hung up stunned, knowing that Gaudet would not be lying. Gaudet’s power was growing. Immediately he dialed the number of Chellis’s offices. When advised Chellis was out, he put one of his men on to getting hold of him.
Gaudet was a predator, and Samir had a growing feeling that he might be on the menu.
Benoit was trying to train the hair on the back of her head into a more perfect wave while she rehearsed exactly what she intended. Marie had gone to Marseille with a friend, probably trying to forget what was happening. Given her knack for reality distortion, she would probably treat the events of this day as one of life’s unforeseen tragedies.
It wasn’t a bad day given the sunny wintertime weather and the elegant simplicity of their plan and the certainty of its execution, but it wasn’t a good day because the most difficult and personal part was yet to come.
Jacques had delivered the aerosol in a container with a crude label indicating that it was roach killer. Fitting, that.
Benoit dressed as if she were going to the company’s annual gala. Elegant and form-flattering, her gown was black, and slit up the front from floor to thigh. Although she wore a garter belt and old-fashioned stockings, she wore no undergarments. At about ten minutes to ten, as she dabbed perfume, the telephone rang.
“Yes,” she said, expecting Gaudet and trying to keep the fear out of her voice.
“How is it going?”
“Fine.”
“Don’t deviate from the plan.”
“I’m not going to give him sex.”
“Unless you have to.” When he said, that it was as if her stomach were on an elevator. Not because she minded at all having sex with Chellis, but because for a few insane moments she had convinced herself that Gaudet cared. If he didn’t, she was in danger and she knew it.
“I won’t have to.”
“Good. Is the room completely ready?”
“Of course.”
“And you’re sure they can restore it to just as it was in a matter of hours?”
“Ten hours. Yes. I’m sure. The metal plates will remain in the walls and floor but nothing will be visible.”
“This is going to be smooth, perfect, actually.”
“How is your other thing going? Are you tracking Jason?”
“It is superb because I am in charge.”
“But you are not saying.”
“I am not. Trust me. I am Gaudet.”
To win Gaudet’s trust she had explained generally about Jacques’s research into the Nervous Flyer profile. It seemed to have worked with the exception of whatever secret angle he had going with respect to tracing Jason. Maybe it was nothing—just a ploy to make him appear invincible.
When Benoit heard the knock she took one last look at herself. As she walked past the Picasso she wondered why she felt no guilt whatsoever—it was, after all, an extraordinary treasure that DuShane had given her, and it was only one among many. Before opening the door she paused for a moment, knowing that nothing would be the same after today. As she unbolted the door for him she acknowledged to herself that it was something of a pity that they couldn’t just kill DuShane and be humane about the whole situation. There were, however, extenuating circumstances that they could not escape.
“Handsome man,” she said softly as he walked through the door.
From his eyes she could tell that he was excited in the way of a child utterly distracted by a rare treat. He wore a traditional deep blue blazer with a black turtleneck, and had been liberal but tasteful in his use of a men’s cologne.
“Wonderful style and very stimulating,” he said as he came through the door, admiring the dress or more probably her form beneath.
They went to the couch, where she poured him a glass of port.
“I can’t get this mess off my mind.” He took a sip. “I try to conceive of R and D without Jason and I can’t do it.”
“Gaudet will fix it. He is hard after them and will have Jason soon. They came to get Nutka as we knew they would.”
“It wasn’t smart of them. And you know our lawyers are going to tell the court that the Americans are trying to steal our scientist pure and simple. He was kidnapped while on a retreat to Fiji. When Anna and Sam disappear and we have Jason, the French court will thumb its nose at any Americans who try to continue. Of course this does depend on Gaudet doing his job.”
“He will do his job.”
“We’ll see. We think Samir has taken Michelle’s boy.”
“Yes, I know.” She kissed him deeply and invited a hand up her leg. “Come, I will make you forget all of this.”
She took him into what had been her spare bedroom. Unlike the rest of the house, it had recently been done mostly in gray and deep red. Heavy draperies hung over every window. The door was massive and out of place for interior use. There was a brass bed with a long scarf affixed to each corner.
“I am going to tie you up so that we can play.”
He looked awkward. They had never done exactly that, but she began kissing him and popping buttons on his shirt, making sport of the garment’s destruction.
“What will I wear home?”
“I have a new one in the closet.”
When he was nude, she got him started on her body and moved him to the bed.
Although he looked a little uncertain, he let her tie his hands and she did so firmly. It was going more smoothly than she had hoped as in her mind there had been a real question about whether she would need to wait for the drugs mixed into the port. Now that it was all ending, she suddenly didn’t want him to touch her any more than absolutely necessary. Once he was tied, she pulled the cuffs from their hiding place under the mattress. Before he knew what was happening the first was locked and closed.
“What are you doing? The scarves are fine. Why the cuffs?”
“It’s a game, DuShane. You’ll like it.”
“Benoit? What are you doing?” She closed the second cuff and went to his feet. At the head of the bed the cuffs were on a chain that was bolted into the wall where metal plates could easily withstand a one-thousand-pound pull and any amount of jerking that a man could generate using nothing but his flesh. At the foot of the bed the cuffs were affixed to the floor. Gaudet had insisted that everything had to be foolproof times four.
As soon as he was secure she told him the facts.
“If you scream no one is going to hear you but as a precaution I have this.” She held up a large can with a label: BEAR GUN. “This is pepper spray of a strength great enough to knock down a grizzly—you know, the big guys in North America. It will choke you down. If that doesn’t work I have a tazer that will knock the dinner from your bowels, and if you foul my bed I will make you suffer.”
“What are you doing?”
From a drawer she retrieved a large mask and tried it on.
“The Nannites are coming, DuShane.”
She took it off and set it aside.
A look of troubled recognition crossed his face followed by outright horror as the facts began to marshal themselves and he became like a mouse facing the talons of an owl.
“Help me,” he shrieked.
She pressed the button on the stereo remote, filling the room with sound, a much better alternative than the pepper spray, which might linger in her apartment. She took a syringe loaded with succino coline and came to the side of the bed. “I’m going to hit you with a tazer. If you shut up and lie quiet I will only do it once.” She hit his chest and he jumped. Quickly she put the drug in a vein in the back of his hand.
Next she went to the closet and removed a foam-filled box that was hinged at the top and opened at the bottom. It was quite heavy, weighing a good fifteen pounds. As she carried it to the bed he shook himself lucid and became nearly hysterical.
“Whatever I did I can make it right,” he shouted. “Whatever I did. Listen, we can talk. This is insanity.” She noticed that he had the look of a beast in his eyes. The whites appeared larger and the eyeballs appeared to rotate inside his head, casting side to side, as if by looking enough he might spy his deliverance. As she sat on the bed to encapsulate his head, he began pulling on his restraints and bouncing up and down, screaming incoherently. At least she didn’t notice any words. It was becoming a primal state.
She had a feeling that twice with the tazer might not be good. He had to live a long life. When she tried to put the back half of the head box under his head, he threw it side to side, making it difficult. Finally she could see that the effort was bruising her arms and he was screaming incessantly so that even the music might not be sufficient to disguise the noise.
This part of the ritual had been prescribed by Gaudet, more, she thought, as a form of torture than anything else. The drugs might take another five or ten minutes or they might not be strong enough for a man wild with panic. Primarily, the succino coline would erase his memory of events in this room. Gaudet had given her another more potent hypodermic but for some reason didn’t want her to use it unless she felt compelled.
“DuShane,” she said calmly.
He stopped his struggling and his screaming. It was a powerful feeling.
“You don’t want me to put you to sleep with a syringe. You’ll be unconscious. I would think you would hate that.”
“Let me up.”
She went back to the closet and took out a black box. In front of Chellis she opened it and took out the second hypodermic.
“One stick and you are floating among the stars without even a memory of what has happened to you. Do you want us to steal some history? And if I have to use it, you never know what I might do.”
The illusion that he might yet hang on to a little power amused her and was like a narcotic for him. Apparently DuShane reasoned that if he was awake he still had some control. “One chance, DuShane. Let me put the box on you and I’ll leave the trapdoor open in the front. I’m not going to bruise my arms playing with this contraption.”
“Damn you.” He began screaming again. “Help, somebody help me.”
Her own miscalculation made her angry. Being very careful with her aim, she took the bear spray and shot it at his screaming throat. Then she stepped way back, her eyes stinging, and opened the bedroom door, retreating into the living room while she watched. The reaction of his body was dramatic. He turned white, then red, and looked as if he were trying to swallow the room.
She wondered why she hadn’t thought to use the gas mask. Holding her breath, she ran to the closet and put it on. Now she could watch the spectacle in comfort. He gasped terribly.
Although she knew he was trying to talk, it was a while before she could read his contorted lips enough to make out his words.
“Take me to the hospital.”
It was becoming tedious.
After a few minutes he appeared paralyzed; all he did was breathe, and he didn’t do that very well. This time she easily slipped the box under the back of his head and closed it. There was a trapdoor in front that she opened.
“There now. That’s much better.”
After a half hour of reading
Cosmopolitan
aloud to him, the English version, he was pretty much back to normal—that is, he was starting another screaming fit.
“Shut up or I’ll close your door.”
He quieted, but he looked so angry she thought he might burst veins in his eyes.
“Just tell me why.”
“It’s simple. I want what you have. If I kill you, then your living trust provides that the trustees for the brat takeover, Marie and I would get a pittance, and we lose the company. Those jackal lawyers of yours would have us escorted off the premises.”
“Marie would get millions.”
“Twenty, dear. Only twenty. What is that compared to the billions you control? On the other hand, if you are incapacitated, then Marie and I are in charge. Surely you remember how and why you set it up that way. You said, I think: ‘I don’t want those bastard lawyers taking over unless I’m dead and stinking.’ Isn’t that what you said? So don’t crap your pants and die, honey.” She closed the door of his head-box and he began his muffled screaming. After a second she opened it. “Look, you get to live. If you are good, we will give you oil and some days, at least Christmas and Easter, you won’t be far off normal. Sort of like Jason. Well, a little more paranoid than Jason, but still alive.” She closed his door again.
As a test she left the room, and noted that his words were unintelligible and the sound not particularly audible even with the bedroom door open. It was time to deliver Jacques’s vector in the manner prescribed. This was definitely an important experiment. It would be the first aerosol use and it was imperative that they know exactly the amount DuShane inhaled and that he inhale the amount prescribed by Jacques. After dosing him she would begin his education.
The phone rang.
She knew it would be Gaudet, and it was one of those rare occasions when he would be gleeful as a schoolboy over their progress.