The Other Side of Midnight

by Sidney Sheldon

  "I traced it to a private dealer in Brussels," he replied proudly, "and persuaded him to sell it to me."

  "How much did you pay for it?" Noelle asked.

  "Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds."

  "It's a bargain," Demiris declared.

  Noelle picked up a cigarette, and the young man rushed to light it for her. "Thank you," she said. She looked at Demiris. "It would have been more of a bargain, Costa, if he had bought it from the man who owned it."

  "I don't understand," Demiris said.

  The curator was looking at her oddly.

  "If this is genuine," Noelle explained, "then it came from the estate of the Duke of Toledo in Spain." She turned to the curator. "Is that not so?" she asked.

  His face had turned white. "I--I have no idea," he stammered. "The dealer didn't tell me."

  "Oh, come now," Noelle chided him. "You mean you bought a painting for this amount of money without establishing its provenance? That's difficult to believe. The estate priced the painting at one hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds. Someone's been cheated out of seventy-five thousand pounds."

  And it had proven to be true. The curator and the art dealer were convicted of collusion and sent to prison. Demiris returned the painting. In thinking it over later he decided that he was less impressed by Noelle's knowledge than by her honesty. If she had wished to, she could simply have called the curator aside, threatened to blackmail him and split the money with him. Instead she had challenged him openly in front of Demiris with no ulterior motive. He had bought her a very expensive emerald necklace in appreciation, and she had accepted it with the same casual appreciation with which she would have accepted a cigarette lighter. Demiris insisted on taking Noelle with him everywhere. He trusted no one in business and therefore was forced to make all his decisions by himself. He found it helpful to discuss business deals with Noelle. She was amazingly knowledgeable about business, and the mere fact of being able to talk with someone sometimes made it easier for Demiris to make a decision. In time Noelle knew more about his business affairs than anyone with the possible exception of his lawyers and accountants. In the past Demiris had always had several mistresses at a time, but now Noelle gave him everything he needed, and one by one he dropped them. They accepted the conge without bitterness, for Demiris was a generous man.

  He owned a yacht that was a hundred and thirty-five feet long, with four G.M. diesels. It carried a seaplane, a crew of twenty-four, two speed boats and had a freshwater swimming pool. There were twelve beautifully appointed guest suites and a large apartment for himself, crammed with paintings and antiques.

  When Demiris entertained on his yacht, it was Noelle who was his hostess. When Demiris flew or sailed to his private island, it was Noelle he took with him while Melina remained at home. He was careful never to bring his wife and Noelle together, but he knew of course that his wife was aware of her.

  Noelle was treated like royalty wherever she went. But then it was only her due. The little girl who had looked out at her fleet of ships through the dirty apartment window in Marseille had moved on to the largest fleet in the world. Noelle was not impressed by Demiris' wealth or his reputation: She was impressed by his intelligence and strength. He had the mind and will of a giant and he made other men seem pusillanimous in comparison. She sensed the implacable cruelty in him, but somehow this made him even more exciting, for it was in her also.

  Noelle constantly received offers to star in plays and in motion pictures, but she was indifferent. She was playing the lead in her own life story, and it was more fascinating than anything any scriptwriter could concoct. She dined with kings and prime ministers and ambassadors, and they all catered to her because they knew that she had the ear of Demiris. They would drop subtle hints about what their needs were and they promised her the world if she would help them.

  But Noelle already had the world. She would lie in bed with Demiris and tell him what each man had asked for, and out of this information Demiris would gauge their needs and their strengths and their weaknesses. Then he would put on appropriate pressures, and from this more money would pour into his already overflowing coffers.

  Demiris' private island was one of his great joys. He had purchased an island that was raw land and had transformed it into a paradise. It had a spectacular hilltop villa in which he lived, a dozen charming guest cottages, a hunting preserve, an artificial freshwater lake, a harbor where his yacht could anchor and a landing field for his planes. The island was staffed by eighty servants, and armed guards kept out intruders. Noelle liked the solitude of the island, and she enjoyed it most when there were no other guests there. Constantin Demiris was flattered, assuming that it was because Noelle preferred to be alone with him. He would have been astonished if he had known how preoccupied she was with a man of whose existence he was not even aware.

  Larry Douglas was half a world away from Noelle, fighting secret battles on secret islands, and yet she knew more about him than his wife, with whom he corresponded fairly regularly. Noelle traveled to Paris to see Christian Barbet at least once a month and the bald, myopic little detective always had an up-to-date report ready for her.

  The first time Noelle had returned to France to see Barbet and had tried to leave there had been trouble about her exit visa. She had been kept waiting in a Customs office for five hours and had finally been allowed to place a call to Constantin Demiris. Ten minutes after she had spoken to Demiris, a German officer had rushed in to offer the profuse apologies of his government. Noelle had been issued a special visa, and she had never been stopped again.

  The little detective looked forward to Noelle's visits. He was charging her a fortune, but his trained nose smelled even bigger money. He was very pleased with her new liaison with Constantin Demiris. He had a feeling that in one way or another it was going to be of great financial benefit to him. First he had to make sure that Demiris knew nothing of his mistress' interest in Larry Douglas, then he had to find out how much the information would be worth to Demiris. Or to Noelle Page for him to keep quiet. He was on the verge of an enormous coup, but he had to play his cards carefully. The information Barbet was able to gather on Larry was surprisingly substantial, for Barbet could afford to pay his sources well.

  While Larry's wife was reading a letter postmarked from an anonymous APO, Christian Barbet was reporting to Noelle, "He's flying with the Fourteenth Fighter Group, Forty-eighth Fighter Squadron."

  Catherine's letter read "...all I can tell you is that I'm somewhere in the Pacific, baby..."

  And Christian Barbet was telling Noelle, "They're on Tarawa. Guam's next."

  "...I really miss you, Cathy. Things are picking up here. I can't give you any details, but we finally have planes that are better than the Jap Zeros..."

  "Your friend is flying P-Thirty-eights, P-Forties and P-Fifty-ones."

  "...I'm glad you've been keeping busy in Washington. Just stay true to me, baby. Everything's fine here. I'll have a little news for you when I see you..."

  "Your friend has been awarded the D.F.C. and has been promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel."

  While Catherine thought about her husband and prayed for him to come home safely, Noelle followed Larry's every move and she too prayed for Larry's safe return. The war would be over soon and Larry Douglas would be coming home. To both of them.

  CATHERINE

  Washington: 1945-1946

  11

  On the morning of May 7, 1945, at Rheims, France, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. The thousand-year reign of the Third Reich had come to an end. Those insiders who knew of the crippling devastation at Pearl Harbor, those who had watched Dunkirk narrowly miss going into history as England's Waterloo, those who had commanded the RAF and knew how helpless London's defenses would have been against an all-out attack by the Luftwaffe: All these people were aware of the series of miracles that had brought victory to the Allies--and knew by what a narrow margin it had missed going the other way. The powe
rs of evil had almost emerged triumphant, and the idea was so preposterous, so contrary to the Christian ethic of Right triumphing and Evil succumbing, that they turned away from it in horror, thanking God and burying their blunders from the eyes of posterity in mountains of files marked TOP SECRET.

  The attention of the free world turned now to the Far East. The Japanese, those short, nearsighted comic figures, were bloodily defending every inch of land they held, and it looked as though it was going to be a long and costly war.

  And then on August 6, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The destruction was beyond belief. In a few short minutes, most of the population of a major city lay dead, victims of a pestilence greater than the combined wars and plagues of all the Middle Ages.

  On August 9, three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped, this time on Nagasaki. The results were even more devastating. Civilization had finally reached it finest hour; it was able to achieve genocide that could be calculated at the rate of x number of millions of persons per second. It was too much for the Japanese, and on September 2, 1945, on the battleship Missouri, General Douglas MacArthur received the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Government. World War II was ended.

  For one long moment when the news was flashed, the world held its breath and then let out a grateful heartfelt cheer. Cities and hamlets around the globe were filled with hysterical parades of people celebrating the end of the war to end all wars to end all wars to end all wars...

  The following day, through some magic that he would never explain to Catherine, Bill Fraser was able to get a telephone call through to Larry Douglas on an island somewhere in the South Pacific. It was to be a surprise for Catherine. Fraser asked her to wait in her office for him so that they could go to lunch together. At 2:30 in the afternoon, she buzzed Bill on the intercom system.

  "When are you going to feed me?" she demanded. "It'll be time for dinner soon."

  "Sit tight," Fraser replied. "I'll be with you in a minute."

  Five minutes later, he buzzed her and said, "There's a call for you on line one."

  Catherine picked up the phone. "Hello?" She heard a crackling and a swell of sound like the waves of a distant ocean. "Hello," she repeated.

  A male voice said, "Mrs. Larry Douglas?"

  "Yes," Catherine said, puzzled. "Who's this?"

  "Just a moment, please."

  Through the receiver, she heard a high-pitched whine. Another crackling sound and then a voice saying "Cathy?"

  She sat there, her heart pounding, unable to speak. "Larry? Larry?"

  "Yes, baby."

  "Oh, Larry!" She began to cry and unexpectedly her whole body was trembling.

  "How are you, honey?"

  She dug her fingernails into her arm, trying to hurt herself enough so that she could stop the hysteria that had suddenly swept over her. "I'm f--fine," she said. "W--where are you?"

  "If I tell you, we'll be cut off," he said. "I'm somewhere in the Pacific."

  "That's close enough!" She began to get control of her voice. "Are you all right, darling?"

  "I'm fine."

  "When will you be coming home?"

  "Any second," he promised.

  Catherine's eyes flooded with tears again. "OK, let's sy--synchronize our watches."

  "Are you crying?"

  "Of course I'm crying, you idiot! I'm just glad you can't see the mascara running down my face. Oh Larry...Larry..."

  "I've missed you, baby," he said.

  Catherine thought of the long, lonely nights that had stretched into weeks and months and years without him, without his arms around her, without his strong, wonderful body next to her, without his comfort and protection and love. And she said, "I've missed you, too."

  A man's voice came on the line. "I'm sorry, Colonel, but we're going to have to disconnect."

  Colonel!

  "You didn't tell me you were promoted."

  "I was afraid it would go to your head."

  "Oh, darling, I--"

  The roar of the ocean grew louder, and suddenly there was a silence and the line was dead. Catherine sat at her desk staring at the telephone. And then she buried her head in her arms and began to cry.

  Ten minutes later, Fraser's voice came over the intercom. "I'm ready for lunch when you are, Cathy," he said.

  "I'm ready for anything now," she said joyfully. "Give me five minutes." She smiled warmly as she thought of what Fraser had done and how much trouble it must have cost him. He was the dearest man she had ever known. Next to Larry, of course.

  Catherine had visualized Larry's arrival so often that the arrival itself was almost an anticlimax. Bill Fraser had explained to her that Larry was probably coming home in an Air Transport Command plane or a MATS plane and they didn't run at fixed times like commercial scheduled airlines. You conned a ride on the first flight you could get on--and it didn't matter too much where the plane was headed--just so it was flying in the right general direction.

  Catherine stayed home all day waiting for Larry. She tried to read, but she was too nervous. She sat and listened to the news and thought about Larry returning home to her, this time forever. By midnight, he had still not arrived. She decided he probably would not be home until the next day. At two in the morning, when Catherine could keep her eyes open no longer, she went to bed.

  She was awakened by a hand on her arm and she opened her eyes and he was standing over her, her Larry was standing there, looking down at her, a grin on his lean, tanned face, and in a flash Catherine was in his arms and all the worry and loneliness and pain of the past four years were washed away in a cleansing flood of joy that seemed to fill every fiber of her being. She hugged him until she was afraid that she was going to break his bones. She wanted to stay like this forever, never letting him go.

  "Easy, honey," Larry said finally. He pulled away from her, a smile on his face. "It's going to look funny in the newspapers. 'Flyer comes home safely from the war and gets hugged to death by his wife.'"

  Catherine turned on the lights, every one of them, flooding the room so that she could see him, study him, devour him. His face had a new maturity. There were lines around his eyes and mouth that had not been there before. The overall effect was to make him hand-somer than ever.

  "I wanted to meet you," Catherine babbled, "But I didn't know where. I called the Air Corps and they couldn't give me any information at all, so I just waited here and..."

  Larry moved toward her and shut her up with a kiss. His kiss was hard and demanding. Catherine had expected to feel the same physical eagerness for him and she was surprised to find that this was not so. She loved him very much and yet she would have been content to just sit with him and talk, instead of making love as he so urgently wanted to do. She had sublimated her sexual feelings for so long that they were deeply buried, and it would take time before they could be aroused and brought to the surface again.

  But Larry was giving her no time. He was throwing off his clothes and saying, "God, Cathy, you don't know how I've dreamed about this moment. I was going crazy out there. And look at you. You're even more beautiful than I remembered."

  He ripped off his shorts and was standing there naked. And somehow it was a stranger pushing her down on the bed, and she wished that Larry would give her time to get used to his being home, to get used to his nakedness again. But he was getting on top of her without any preliminaries, forcing himself into her and she knew that she was not ready for him. He was tearing into her, hurting her and she bit her hand to keep from crying out as he lay on top of her, making love like a wild animal.

  Her husband was home.

  For the next month with Fraser's blessing Catherine stayed away from the office and she and Larry spent almost every moment together. She cooked for him all of his favorite dishes, and they listened to records and talked and talked and talked, trying to fill in the gaps of the lost years between them. At night they went to parties or to the theater and when they returned home, they made love. Her
body was ready for him now and she found him as exciting a lover as always. Almost.

  She did not want to admit it even to herself, but there was something indefinably changed about Larry. He was more demanding, less giving. There was still foreplay before they made love, but he did it mechanically, as though it were a duty to be disposed of before he went on to the sexual attack. And it was an attack, a savage and fierce taking, as though his body were seeking vengeance for something, meting out punishment. Each time they finished making love, Catherine felt bruised and battered, as though she had taken a beating. Perhaps, she defended him, it's just because he's been so long without a woman.

  As the days passed, his lovemaking remained the same and it was that fact that finally led Catherine to look for other changes in Larry. She tried to study him dispassionately, tried to forget that this was the husband whom she adored. She saw a tall, well-built, black-haired man with deep dark eyes and a devastatingly beautiful face. Or perhaps "beautiful" no longer applied. The lines around his mouth had added a harshness to his features. Looking at this stranger, Catherine would have thought, Here is a man who could be selfish and ruthless and cold. And yet she told herself that she was being ridiculous. This was her Larry, loving and kind and thoughtful.

  She proudly introduced him to all her friends and the people she worked with, but they seemed to bore him. At parties he would wander off into a corner and spend the evening drinking. It seemed to Catherine that he made no effort to be sociable. "Why should I?" he snapped at her one evening when she tried to discuss it with him. "Where the fuck were all those fat cats when I was up there getting my ass shot at?"

  A few times Catherine broached the subject of what Larry was going to do with his future. She had thought that he would want to remain in the Air Corps, but almost the first thing Larry did when he returned home was to resign his commission.

  "The Service is for suckers. There's nowhere to go but down," he had said.

  It was almost like a parody of the first conversation Catherine had had with him in Hollywood. Only then, he had been joking.

  Catherine had to discuss the problem with someone and she finally decided to talk to Bill Fraser. She told him what was troubling her, leaving out the more personal things.