The Eden Inheritance

by Janet Tanner

  ‘Otto!’ Ingrid screamed, almost beside herself. ‘Where are you, going?’

  ‘Get out of the way!’ He slammed the lever into drive and pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator. The car shot forward as a half-hysterical Ingrid threw herself clear and he turned the wheel in the direction of the airstrip. The headlamps cut a broad path of brightness through the dark; moths and mosquitos smashed into the windscreen in kamikaze flight. He felt no pain now, was aware of nothing but the all-encompassing sense of urgency. Get to Lilli. Save Lilli. Nothing else mattered.

  Otto prayed to a God he had long since stopped believing in that he would be in time.

  When Guy had landed on the tiny airstrip he taxied slowly towards the office buildings and commenced his shut-down checks. But tonight, instead of putting the baby to bed as quickly as possible, he found himself lingering over the procedure. Even when he was all through he made no move to get out of the aircraft, but sat holding the yoke between his hands, staring into the soft dark and wondering what the hell was the matter with him.

  It wasn’t just the unexpected turn of events over the last few days or the way his priorities had changed that was bemusing him, it was the change in himself that was throwing him into a state of utter confusion. He had always been such a decisive character before – the ability to think quickly and clearly, select a course of action and act upon it, was one of the things that made him a good pilot. Waffling, as he called it, annoyed him. It was a total waste of time. Yet here he was doing the very same thing himself. And for what reason? He had made up his mind to terminate his contract and return to England for all the reasons he had enumerated, and he knew, deep down, that it was the only course he could take. But he had put off actually doing anything about it and in odd moments, whenever his mind was not actively occupied with something else, he found himself going over it all again as if he was still clinging to the hope that this time he might come up with a different answer. It was stupid, he told himself, to go on tossing it round and round, stupid and unproductive. There wasn’t another answer and he might as well accept it. But he couldn’t. And he knew the reason was that he could not bear the thought of never seeing Lilli again.

  To Guy, this in itself was deeply unsettling. He’d never felt this way about a woman before, and being at the mercy of his emotions was an experience he wasn’t sure he cared for. Yet another reason to go – and go quickly, especially since she was refusing to speak to him for some reason he could not fathom. But still he delayed the moment of final decision – and despised himself for what he saw as his own weakness.

  Guy sighed, reaching for his soft leather pilot bag, and began packing his equipment away in it. Then he tidied the cabin, locked the plane and tied it down, and walked back across to the little office building, somehow summoning up the energy to move at his usual brisk pace.

  The office was in darkness. Guy turned on the lights, dumped his pilot bag on the desk and went to the shelf to fetch the box file in which the tech log was kept. Funny – it wasn’t there. Somebody must have moved it. Guy suppressed a feeling of irritation. He liked everything in his working life to be methodical and tidy and expected his colleagues to behave with the same professional efficiency. He cast his eye around the office and spotted the dark-grey box on a lower shelf, laid flat instead of stacked upright as it usually was, beside a pile of flight magazines.

  He fetched it, set it on the desk and opened his flight bag, extracting the clipboard bearing the details he needed to make up the flight log. He sorted them, made a few quick calculations and reached for the box file, pulling it closer. As he did so a sound from behind him made him turn, and he saw a slim figure, dressed in floaty cream cheesecloth, in the doorway.

  ‘Lilli!’ he said, pleasure as well as surprise in his tone. ‘What are you doing here?’

  A slight flush of colour rose in her cheeks and she raised a hand to push her hair back behind her ear, a self-conscious gesture which betrayed her nervousness.

  ‘I heard the plane go over. I guessed you’d be here.’

  ‘A fair assumption.’ He said it with throwaway sarcasm to cover the fact that he too felt self-conscious. Something else he was not used to! He guessed it was because she had occupied his thoughts so exclusively these last days; now, face to face with her, it was as though he was afraid she might realise it. ‘I didn’t think you wanted to speak to me though. That was the message I was given the other evening.’

  Her colour deepened.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry … I shouldn’t have done that. That’s really why I’m here now – to apologise.’

  ‘That’s all right. Apology accepted. You had some problem with your father, did you?’

  ‘Not exactly. I guess I got things out of proportion again. Could we … do you think we could forget what happened and just … well, take up where we left off?’

  He could see what it was costing her and he was melting inside. But he still couldn’t understand why she seemed to behave so irrationally. She was upset, about her father’s terminal decline, obviously, but even so, surely there was no need to be quite so neurotic. And the fact that she had come to apologise for cutting him dead could make no difference to his decision to leave Madrepora. The basic problems were still unchanged. It simply meant he would have to tell her himself instead of leaving her to find out from someone else.

  ‘I’m not sure that will be possible,’ he said. ‘I might not be here for much longer.’

  Her face fell.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m probably going back to England.’

  ‘When? Why?’

  ‘I’m not sure when – I haven’t actually told Manuel yet that I want to terminate my contract. As to why – I came here for a specific reason – something I had to do. Now it’s done there’s no reason for me to stay.’

  The colour left her cheeks, then returned again to burn dully, not from embarrassment now but from shocked disbelief that not only had Jorge been right about him but also that he should admit it so freely.

  ‘So it’s true then,’ she said dully. ‘ You did come here to spy on my father.’

  It was Guy’s turn to experience shock. How did she know what he had been doing?

  ‘I haven’t been spying on anybody,’ he said evenly. ‘There were some facts I wanted to establish, that’s all.’

  ‘And in order to establish them you made use of me!’ Lilli’s eyes were blazing with anger as well as unshed tears. ‘How could you do that?’

  ‘Lilli, I didn’t …’ But a thought had occurred to him. If Lilli knew about her father and about the treasures, then there was really no need for him to leave at all! Perhaps there was still something to be salvaged from this whole mess.

  ‘Lilli, I promise I haven’t used you,’ he said.

  ‘I trusted you, Guy. I really trusted you.’ Her eyes were glittering. ‘How could you do it?’

  ‘I had my reasons and I’d like the chance to explain. Just let me finish up here and we’ll go and have a drink and talk about it.’

  ‘Is there anything to talk about?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said firmly, reaching for the box file. ‘I just have to do the tech log.’

  His hand was on the box file, his eyes on Lilli, when they heard the sound of a car approaching at speed. Startled, he straightened.

  ‘What the hell …?’

  The car came to a halt outside with a screech of brakes. And then the door of the hut burst open and Guy found himself face to face with the man he had chased halfway across the world but never now expected to meet.

  Gaunt, white-faced, the unmistakable scar etched down his sweat-beaded cheek, he stood there, and though he held on to the door frame for support it seemed to Guy he still retained something of the powerful presence which had once been his.

  Otto von Rheinhardt. The monster who had terrorised his family and stolen his inheritance. Otto von Rheinhardt. Lilli’s father.

  As he flung the door open
with a strength born of desperation Otto’s fevered brain registered two things.

  The first was the box file which he knew contained Jorge’s letter bomb, less than two feet away from his beloved Lilli and about to be opened.

  The second was the man whose hand lay on the file, and the sight of him was somehow even more of a shock to Otto than the file itself.

  In a brief timeless moment it seemed that the years had melted away. He was back in France, scene of the excursions to the past which he had been making mentally these last days, only this time he was looking into the face of the man whose death he had ordered.

  Charles de Savigny.

  A cry gurgled in his throat and in that second he wondered wildly if he was dead already and this was a ghost come to greet him. Then, as swiftly, the illusion passed and he was totally lucid once more. This was no ghost. It was the pilot Lilli had come to see. But not just any pilot. Guy. Guy de Savigny. The child of the château. Charles’ son.

  The knowledge was upon him in a flash, the truth illuminated in his fevered brain like a scene made clear suddenly by an explosion of forked lightning.

  Guy de Savigny. Would he have recognised the name if he had heard it? He did not know and in any case it did not matter now. This was the man Jorge bad denounced as an agent of the DEA. But he was not an agent of the DEA. The reason he was here had nothing whatever to do with drug-trafficking. He had come in search of Otto von Rheinhardt. And he had found him.

  Otto gasped again, shock immobilising him momentarily. Then Lilli moved towards him, her lovely face the picture of bewilderment, and that other part of his brain, the part that knew about the bomb in the box file, activated again. The pilot’s hand was on the box – one small move and both he and Lilli would be blown to pieces.

  ‘Stay back, Lilli!’ Otto ordered.

  Collecting what was left of his wasted strength he grabbed the box file before the startled pilot could stop him.

  Into the night he stumbled, holding the box in front of him like a sacred offering, forcing his weak legs to a run. He threw the box into the passenger seat of the car, threw himself in after it and slammed the gear lever into drive. The car shot forward and beads of sweat gleamed on Otto’s forehead.

  He had done it. He had saved Lilli.

  But there was no way he could prevent her discovering the truth about him. Guy de Savigny would certainly tell her. Emptiness and despair yawned in Otto as he remembered the distance that had begun to open up between them when he had told her the truth about her mother. That was nothing to the way she would react when she knew the truth about him, particularly if she learned it from the man she was so obviously in love with, son of the man whose death he had ordered.

  Lilli would never forgive him – or at least, not in the little time that was left to him. She would despise him – and he could not bear it. To have her look at him and see the accusation in her eyes, to sense her horror at what he had been, what he had done, to feel her revulsion … no, he couldn’t bear it. Better that he should die …

  Otto slowed the car, reaching for the box which lay on the seat beside him, and opened the lid.

  The resultant explosion shattered the night and turned the car into a ball of flame.

  ‘He died to save me,’ Lilli said. She was pale, her eyes red-rimmed from crying, but Guy thought she looked quite beautiful. ‘Oh, I know he should never have been mixed up with Uncle Fernando and Jorge and the others. I know drug-trafficking is terribly wrong, but I’m sure he had his reasons. And in the end he was a hero, wasn’t he?’

  She pressed her hand over her mouth, choking over the words.

  ‘Damn Jorge,’ Ingrid said. ‘ I hope he rots in hell!’

  ‘He will certainly rot in prison,’ Guy said.

  Since the explosion had rocked the night, killing Otto and totally destroying the car, it had all come out. Lilli, in total shock, might have said nothing, but Ingrid was made of sterner stuff. She knew that Jorge had been responsible for the bomb and she was determined he would not get away with it. Denouncing him to the authorities might mean she would be arrested as an accessory to the drug-trafficking to which Madrepora had been home for years – Ingrid no longer cared. Her life had ended, she felt, with Otto’s death, and that death had to be avenged.

  Besides, she knew that as long as Jorge was free there might be more blood spilled. He would undoubtedly try again to kill the man he believed to be a DEA agent and she was not prepared to allow that. Enough was enough. A telephone call to the appropriate quarter had alerted the authorities; they had arrived on the island in force. Jorge had fled back to South America but his minions had all been arrested and Ingrid fervently hoped it would be only a matter of time before they caught up with Jorge too. It wouldn’t be easy – the basis of the empire in Venezuela was a stronghold and too many of those in power were part of the enterprise. But they’d get him eventually, she was certain of it, and in any case, the chain was broken. Never again would the undersea passages on Madrepora’s shores be used for their wicked illicit purpose.

  ‘Guy – I’m so sorry I doubted you,’ Lilli said. ‘Honestly, so sorry. Do you really have to go?’

  Guy looked at her and felt sick at heart. She knew now that he was not a DEA agent, but she did not know the truth about his mission here and Guy knew that he could never tell her. Lilli had suffered enough. She had taken on board the unpalatable facts about her father’s life on Madrepora and somehow managed to make excuses for him. She had accepted his death, inevitable yet premature, with a courage that shone from her dark eyes along with her inconsolable grief. He could not do anything to destroy her last precious illusions. Loving her was both a prize and a penance. The price of it was his silence.

  ‘Yes, Lilli, I have to go,’ he said, steeling himself.

  ‘Couldn’t you stay … for me?’

  I’m going for you, he wanted to say, and knew he could not.

  ‘What will you do?’ he asked, changing the subject.

  ‘I don’t know … go back to New York, I suppose. Life has to go on, doesn’t it?’ But her expression was bleak.

  ‘I shall go home to Germany,’ Ingrid said.

  But neither of them was looking at her. Guy was absorbing the last minutes with Lilli, locking them in his heart for the lonely days he knew lay ahead, she was gazing at him, loving him, blaming herself for all that had happened, and still praying that even at this late stage he might relent and stay.

  But why should he? He was a pilot – he had a job to do and there was no longer an Air Perpetua to employ him. Besides, who would stay with a girl whose father was a drug-trafficker, a girl who had mistrusted him, on an island where he had come so close to meeting a violent death at the hands of those who had shared her suspicions?

  ‘At least it was a good way to die,’ she said, returning to the subject of her father and comforting herself with the one good thing that had come out of all this, ‘It was better, I suppose, than failing day by day. Daddy always said he wanted to die with his boots on. I don’t know how he found the strength to do what he did, though.’

  ‘Desperation lends people incredible strength,’ Ingrid said. ‘He was a hero, Lilli. Be proud of him.’

  ‘Oh, I am – I am!’

  And that, thought Guy, was the heart of the matter. There was really nothing else to be said.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  KATHRYN DE SAVIGNY carried the tray of tea and biscuits into her tiny living room and looked at her son sitting sprawled in front of the roaring fire. There was something different about him, she thought, something she could hot put her finger on, and wondering about it was mitigating the fierce relief she felt at seeing him back in England.

  ‘So,’ she said quietly, setting down the tray on a low table and pulling it up to her chair so that she could pour. ‘I take it the German you went to investigate turned out not to be von Rheinhardt after all.’

  For a moment Guy did not reply. He sat staring at the sparks showering up
the chimney from the split log and again she felt a qualm of misgiving. What had he learned out there in the Caribbean that had wrought this change in him? Had he, after all, discovered the full truth of what had happened in occupied France after all these years? Then he turned, his eyes, dark and full of secrets, meeting hers.

  ‘Oh, it was von Rheinhardt all right. Without a doubt the same man who was the cause of so much suffering. I’ve even seen the treasures – the family heirlooms. They are all there, in his villa.’

  Kathryn frowned.

  ‘Really? Then why? What changed your mind about handing him over to the authorities?’

  ‘He’s dead.’ Guy’s voice was curiously flat. ‘He was already dying when I got there – of cancer.’

  ‘Oh.’ Kathryn’s eyes went very far away. In spite of herself, in spite of her hatred for von Rheinhardt, she was experiencing a sense of shock. It was difficult to picture the man she had known, strong and cruel, on his deathbed. Destruction was what von Rheinhardt brought to others. Associating it with him required a total turnaround in conception.

  ‘What about the treasures then?’ she said. ‘Didn’t you try to claim them and bring them back with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But why not? If they really were the family heirlooms. You were so set on getting them back, Guy.’

  He sighed, sipped his tea and took a biscuit, twisting it between his fingers but making no attempt to bite into it. ‘It’s a very long story.’

  ‘And I’m waiting to hear it.’ She sat back, curling her feet beneath her. ‘I’ve shut up the shop for the day. There’s no hurry.’

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  And he began to tell her.

  Lilli was helping Ingrid sort through her father’s possessions ready to vacate the villa and leave Madrepora for ever.

  It was a heart-rending task – every item held memories for her and made her want to weep not only for her father but for the happy days of her lost childhood. But it had to be done. Ingrid was going home to Germany and Lilli knew that she would never again live in the villa that had been her home. There was nothing here for her now. Madrepora was to be sold – to a legitimate buyer this time, it was expected, who would develop the hotel and the marina and turn the island into a holiday paradise for those able to afford the luxuries it would be able to offer.