A Death in Geneva

by A. Denis Clift

  “I do not share your admiration, Dr. Tooms. Either the man is a megalomaniac squandering millions, or he is engaged in military support.”

  Tooms gave a burst of laughter, “Spoken like a deckhand, Princess. I am increasingly bewitched by your diplomatic lilt.”

  A Maltese customs launch was pulling away from the accommodation ladder as they rounded the starboard side. The president of Malta, a diminutive figure in dark suit with his straw hat crushed in one hand against the rail of the launch, gave a farewell wave in the direction of the catamaran. With the departure of his boat, the Maltese flag was struck from the Towerpoint Octagon’s signal yard. Two ship’s launches and a flock of dghajsas that had been circling off the catamaran moved in to collect the first wave of Oceanic University conferees leaving the reception.

  The sun’s evening rays had turned the walled city of Valletta into soft, glowing amber, a scene framed in the long triangle of signal flags dressing the ship, running from the jackstaff up to the mainmast platform ninety feet above the waterline, aft down to the ensign staff at the fantail. Tooms was struck at once by the spectacle and by the effect it seemed to have on his companion. She was silent, facing the hulking Towerpoint Octagon, deep in thought, slowly turning a fine silver ring on the little finger of her left hand, her expression questioning.

  “Okay. You board now.” The dghajsa skipper maneuvered the taxiboat to the ship. Two deckhands in crisply laundered uniform—white shirts, blue shorts, white calf-length socks, and deck shoes—manned the landing float at the foot of the ladder. The taximan waved off their offer of assistance, allowing his port oar to skim along the top of the float and brake him. He held the boat fast with a sculling motion of the starboard oar.

  “Thanks, Skipper, a fine cruise.” Tooms’s adrenaline was flowing with excitement of the party. He pressed two more notes into the taximan’s hand. “Hope your folks let you stay out after dark, Skipper. Keep a weather eye on that helo pad. When the last cork pops we’ll be needing a return lift, like to give you the business.”

  The taximan laughed, rubbed his gray stubble, “Sahha, sahha, I will be here.”

  At the top of the ladder, they were met by the ship’s second officer. “Mr. Starring has been asking for you, Dr. Tooms. You and your guest are expected on the helicopter deck.” He saluted and turned to pick up the ship’s phone.

  “This way, Princess; Maritime Academy. They don’t teach them how to laugh anymore. You two could have a dandy evening together.”

  She avoided his hand as he guided her aft. In six steps, they were in the waist of the ship. A thirty-six-foot waterjet speedboat rested in a cradle on the starboard side of the center well. Above it, the powerful, girdered structure of the well bridge crane dominated the ship. A teardrop submersible, midnight blue with golden sail and diving planes, hung suspended from the crane, its twin portholes peering down like myopic eyes. She studied the rig. The crane’s controls were forward in a glass-enclosed operator’s booth two levels above them.

  “Like one for the ketch?” Tooms was beside her at the guardrail. “Powerful, built to move the width of the ship, starboard hull, to center well, to port hull and back, with load positioning fore and aft the length of the well.

  “The way Starring operates this ship, one-third yacht, one-third research, one-third commercial operations, she doesn’t carry everything she was built for. If she did, these decks would be packed—two of the deep-rescue minisubs, the personnel capsules, and the new compression chambers. We don’t have the minis; we carry that teardrop, have two good work chariots below decks, one capsule and one decompression chamber. The Octagon has had some major work below decks, work shops, storage compartments reduced, relocated to make space for the boss and his guests. We’ll get to that in good time.”

  From the main deck, they climbed to the 0-1 level, to the helo deck. Starring sprang from a cluster of white deck chairs, “Oats, where in God’s name have you been? You missed a good reception. The conference is a success; your ears should be burning. Your speech was excellent, by all accounts.”

  “Thank you, sir, thank you. This is Leslie Renfro, conferee.” Tooms took satisfaction from Starring’s obvious approval. They joined the circle of chairs. Starring was beginning to relax. For two hours he had stood accepting condolences for his sister and praise for his gifts to Malta. The words had sat well, but the chatter had been a bore. He had accepted each utterance, clasped each hand, his eyes unblinking, locked on each speaker. With the reception over, he was reinvigorated by Tooms’s arrival. “My friends, I believe you all know Dr. Oswald Tooms—Oats, and his lovely guest . . .”

  “Miss Renfro, Tommie, Miss Leslie Renfro, a native, a conferee, a mermaid—”

  “Yes, Leslie, my friend,” Starring continued, “my wife Tina, Dr. Joseph Ghadira of the University of Malta, and Mr. Gus Anderson of Oklahoma City.” The men rose.

  Tina smiled at the newcomer, tapped her ivory cigarette holder into the ashtray at her side, then turned her attention to Tooms who had crossed to her chair. “What have you brought us this time, Oats?” she murmured.

  He chuckled, planted a kiss on her cheek. “Strictly business, madam, strictly business. You’re looking marvelous as always.”

  Tina Starring was a stunning woman. Her well-defined features had pouted from many a magazine cover and billboard poster. Blonde, slender, taller than her husband, with graceful, tanned arms, ankles, and neck at the extremities of her white satin cocktail suit. The flimsiest of extravagant silver-strapped high heels had been chosen for the evening. One heel burrowed into the great Persian rug spread on the flight deck. The other danced on her crossed legs, its performance highlighted by a golden ankle bracelet wrought of links as fine as horsehair.

  Modeling had presented her beautiful face to the world, had led French actor Jean Montpellier to her. Their love affair had been exotic in its passion. His adoration and influence had provided the entree to the setting of her dreams, live theater.

  The beauty, sexiness, and presence of Tina Montpellier leapt from the covers of magazines to the footlights and the growing love of audiences in Europe and America. The crush of so many thousands, their love, took her from Montpellier. His psyche rebelled at such sharing. He sought solace, the beginning of their separation, in four-months’ on-location filming in China. The hurt of his departure was soothed by the excitement of her youthful success. Their final separation was little more than a year old when she won her greatest acclaim in a leading role at the National Creative Arena. The Directors’ Night performance had stunned Tommie Starring. He had returned a second and a third night to watch Tina Montpellier perform, and to decide that she must become Tina Starring.

  Stewards in white linen jackets appeared with additional chairs, and the circle, defined by the rug, was enlarged to admit two more. Starring swept in behind Leslie. “Have a seat, my friend. Relax; enjoy this finest of evenings.”

  Her husband’s hovering over this new girl caused Tina to give Oats Tooms a long stare and a mock, reproving smile. If there was jealousy, the feeling was lost to her, buried deep beneath enduring scars of their marriage. The courtship and wedding had burst on the social pages as the most exciting matchmaking of several years. Their first months together had been a succession of joys culminating in her pregnancy.

  Starring had been crushed, first by concern for her and then by self-pity, when her physicians had advised that the pregnancy was outside the womb, in the fallopian tube, and would have to be terminated. Deep within him, Starring had resented her abortion as an act of failure, an act which mocked his power. He had been white as chalk when she had been wheeled from surgery into the convalescent suite. His journey through the hospital’s corridors, the strong medicinal odors, the sight of so many pale, prostrate forms on stretcher beds, had brought on the uncontrollable reaction of fear and nausea that the world of medicine had always inflicted on him. Weak as she had been, Tina had been alarmed by his appearance. Beneath his pallor, she saw the look o
f betrayal, which was to haunt her for months. The outward tokens of love and affection returned soon enough, a reflection of Sullivan’s—not Starring’s—tasteful hand. Starring had left their marriage bed at the start of her convalescence. Long after she had physically mended, he had not returned. From his rebuff of her first enticements and the predawn tempest of her injured fury and screaming recriminations that had swirled from the master bedroom through two floors of the town house, there had not again been mention by either of the physical estrangement. She had summoned their personal attorney that same day, her mind throbbing with the imperative of divorce. For weeks she had resisted his caring, velveted counsel, had fought against the future often raging aloud during a seemingly endless succession of sleepless nights. For weeks longer, she had measured that counsel, with its powerful underlying argument of ledger, of her remaining Tommie Starring’s wife.

  This personal disharmony at the apex of Towerpoint International had remained beyond the public’s view, but it had troubled Adrian Starring deeply. As did his sister, he accepted his older brother’s leadership eagerly, the springboard for his own comfortable corporate rise. Unlike Connie, he had welcomed, even thrilled to Tina’s celebrity entrance into the family. Her aborted pregnancy had sorrowed him, truly a family loss. Her difficulties with Tommie, whatever their cause, presaged a bleak uncertainty he feared could only play negatively in his and the family’s fortunes.

  Tina had accepted the younger brother’s first overture, an invitation to lunch, with indifference. Without doubt, his solicitude had been heartfelt. They lunched again, some ten days later. With her guarded responses, she had encouraged him to carry the conversations, his flow of words forming an increasingly polished mirror in which to study her future as a Starring. As Adrian had led her out of her dark forest of despair, he grew in confidence and in hope. She was reemerging, her spirit brightening, and in this he took tremendous satisfaction—a subconscious sense of contribution to Towerpoint’s destiny.

  As their meetings continued, there was soon too much to be said over the silver and linens of a restaurant table. He shaped his professional calendar to permit their conversations to extend from luncheons, to the cab back to her house, and through the shifting light of mid-afternoon over drawing room coffees. More than half a year had elapsed when one such afternoon he took her hands to say good-bye and brushed her cheek with his well-practiced brotherly kiss. She had kept his hand gently, told him she needed his advice, and had led him to the master bedroom where she had turned and kissed him with enveloping passion.

  There could be no doubt as to Adrian’s loyalty to his brother, but his eyes over the months of conversation, his physical adoration, had betrayed his weakness. She had made love to him that afternoon with such seeming desire that Adrian, in his dazed excitement, had climaxed almost immediately. She had held him in her. She had run her hands along his aroused flesh until she too trembled in orgasm, shuddering triumphant in victory over Tommie. That same evening, as Tina sat with her husband at the head table of a black tie charity gala, she would sweetly whisper her affair with Adrian into his ears, a message to be permanently submerged by both in silence, her contribution to the revision of their marriage.

  “Oats!” Starring’s voice rose across the circle. “During your truancy, Dr. Ghadira and his houseguest Gus have been regaling us with fascinating tales. They share the rare distinction of having had the George Cross conferred on them by His Majesty George VI at the height of the Second World War. Dr. Ghadira, you Maltese have become legendary as the heroes of sieges. Is there some unique strain of bravery the parents endow to the sons and daughters of each new generation?” Starring retook his seat as he spoke, unbuttoning his green blazer, and accepted a Scotch.

  “Mr. Starring . . .”

  “Tommie. Call me Tommie, my friend.”

  “Well, Tommie, we didn’t think of it as bravery—maybe afterwards but not while we were defending our homes. I was almost seventeen when the Italians started in on us in June of 1940. The first half year was more excitement than hardship. Mussolini’s bombers had an extreme distaste for anti-aircraft fire.

  “The British, while their resources were very limited, had us well organized. My father was a gunnery sergeant, battery northwest of the capital. I was at the aerodrome, totally entranced by the RAF, running errands, anything to be part of the action. It wasn’t too long before there was plenty of it, with the Italians giving way to the Nazi dive-bombers in early ’41. I was with a runway repair crew then. The Nazis would blaze across each day cratering our strips. We would pop out, patch over the holes—”

  “My God, how horribly dangerous. What about your family?” A faint line appeared on Tina’s forehead as the fine brows drew together in a frown.

  Ghadira’s eyes sparkled with the pleasure of his tale. “I had four sisters, two brothers, five of whom are still alive. Our families were strengthened by faith, Mrs. Starring. There were times when I was sure my mother and grandmother carried the entire island on the strength of their prayers. We rode out the worst of the Nazi bombardments in caves. Malta is a rock. And so, we lived in caves, not comfortable but safe.”

  “Sounds like an aunt of mine,” Tooms growled.

  A steward appeared at Leslie Renfro’s side. “I ordered you another wine, my friend,” Starring broke into the conversation, “a splendid Bordeaux just laid in.” In the growing darkness, he was conscious that she had been staring at him from the moment of her arrival. As he had caught her green eyes from time to time, he had been flattered, surprised to find that his mind had drifted from the lilting words of the Maltese professor. The first tinglings of sexual arousal had snapped his mind back to the conversation. He jumped to his feet to regain command. “Dr. Ghadira, what brought you and Gus together? You were a pilot, weren’t you, Gus? I didn’t know we had people here.”

  Anderson shifted in his chair. He was a big man, pale, with light-brown hair growing in profusion from the open neck of his shirt, down along the heavy forearms resting on his knees, ending, a forest’s edge, on the backs of his long-fingered hands. He rolled his pilsner glass between the fingers. “Joe and I are brothers,” he said, winking at the short, bald professor.

  “Now, who is Joe?” Tina recrossed her lovely legs.

  “Tina!” Starring’s voice was firm. “Go ahead, Gus.” With the coming of darkness, the stewards had lit candles in hurricane globes at each of the cocktail tables. Long-poled kerosene torches flamed just beyond the periphery of conversation, the light playing across Anderson’s long facial features. Silver trays of hors d’oeuvres were borne around the circle.

  “Joe? Dr. Ghadira.” Anderson aimed his empty glass toward the professor. “He was my honorary plane captain. We had regular crews, RAF, but Joe was there when we scrambled and ready with the chocks when we landed. At the worst of it, in late ’41, ’42, he slept on a blanket between the plane’s wheels, guarded her like a watch dog. I arrived in Malta in October ’41, came down from the U.K. I had been a mail pilot, Oklahoma, further west, had sensed the war, but couldn’t wait for Pearl Harbor. We had a mixed bag of good pilots down here, Limeys, Aussies, Kiwis, Canadians, Rhodesians. We were flying Hurricanes until the first of the Spitfires joined us in ’42. The Hurricanes were good, had proven themselves against the Luftwaffe’s Messerschmidt 109Es in the Battle of Britain.”

  “Heroic engagement, carved in stone.” Starring directed his words to Leslie Renfro, who continued to watch him like a cat studying the occupant of an adjoining cage.

  Anderson accepted another hors d’oeuvre, downed it in a gulp. “We’d come over this harbor flying out to tangle with the Junkers 88 bombers, their brothers the 87 dive-bombers, and the Messerschmidts. The first Hurricanes were classy birds, old-fashioned, fixed-pitch wooden propellers, fabric wings cradling eight Browning machine guns—”

  “Better armed than some of today’s blowtorches in the Sixth Fleet.” Tooms swirled the ice in the dregs of his bourbon; at the sound, a steward bore
the glass away to the serving bar.

  “You may be right. They were slow, though, three-hundered max. The MEs ran circles around us except in a dive; we could catch them in a dive. The air used to be thick, forty, fifty bombers, twice as many fighters, like clockwork every day, working over Valletta, the airfields, the dockyards—”

  “And the fleet when it was here.”

  “You’re right, there, Mr. Starring. We counted as many as three-hundred bombers and fighters on more than one sortie. They had an easy run, just sixty miles from their fields in Sicily. Now, when the Spitfires came”—Anderson spread a hand across the sky—“what a marvelous fighting machine they were; fast, simple, clean cockpit, no more instruments than a Cadillac, machine-gun firing trigger built right into their joysticks. I was still flying Hurricanes. I envied those boys. Together we took our toll.”

  “And the island held! Magnificent achievement! When did the king actually present the George Cross?”

  “Who can forget that, Tommie? April 14, 1942. He awarded the Cross to the entire population. We were all quite staggered.”

  “And, you have kept this friendship between you. I think that is very lovely.” Tina rose, made her way gracefully to a vase of cut flowers to reseat a dangling anemone. As she bent over the vase, she turned to Leslie. “You’re very quiet, darling. Are you all right? Canapes and catamarans are not everyone’s cup of tea.” Leslie’s cool smile warned her away. She moved along to Tooms, rubbed a hand through his bristly hair. “Tell me again, Oats, where did you and Miss Renfro find each other? She is a most attractive young lady, and I am on the verge of being quite jealous.”

  Tooms leaned back and stretched his arms, allowing one to come to rest on Leslie’s chair. “We just met yesterday, my dear Tina, over a cold beer and a hot, black—”