A Death in Geneva

by A. Denis Clift

  The door closed. Two agents remained outside at the head of the steps. The detectives returned to their car to wait for the departure. The curious thinned. The roadblock was removed, and yellow cabs resumed their flow along the city street.

  Chapter 11

  The light was as soft as the evening rain when Sweetman emerged from the TOPIC skyscraper on the south bank of the Thames. Straggler river boats swept past him speeding up-river, home, on the incoming tide. The raindrops felt refreshing after the stale air of the sealed building. He creased the papers in his hand, tucked them into a breast pocket, and, paralleling the Thames, lengthened his stride toward Battersea Park.

  The letter from the president, then congressman; the terrorist threats against the off-shore rigs; the loss of the driver; the hate mail, hiss and cry of the press, strikes threatened and real, raced through his mind after a full day, locked in a vault, submerged in Constance Starring Burdette’s most private files. One letter, almost corny, stuck in his mind: “An eye for an eye Burdette. Their murders shall be avenged.” Words and letters cut from newsprint and glued to the inside of an air-letter form postmarked Amsterdam. It had been sent to Scotland Yard along with the rest, returned—dead end, inconclusive analysis. The thread of Amsterdam, not limey hate mail, too many players moving through Amsterdam—could be a visceral threat, just for the principle of the thing, no intention of action—maybe not, a thread worth hanging onto.

  And there was that other correspondence. He pulled the papers from his pocket, kept them partially folded against the rain, and again read the top letter.

  Darling, dearest Connie,

  New week, Tuesday, I will be with you again. I ache for the moment, for you, my love.

  Reservations at Claridges, as usual. I’ll pick you up, Madame President, at your office, if I am still considered presentable. Then, the evening is in your lovely hands.

  Connie, my love. Do you realize how important it is that you are already a president? Because, I shall be one very soon, it’s in the stars, and you will be my guide even, damn it, if you won’t say yes to being my wife. Not yet, not yet—rush not, my love.

  Connie, do you think about us, how completely superb our life together would be? It would . . . it will. I will continue to propose over dinner, lunch, breakfast, in the theater, in the middle of the night. I do love you so; I respect you as much as I love you and I admire you as much as I adore.

  If you still insist on remaining Burdette, I will love you with every ounce of my life, in London and, mark my words, in the White House. Grover Cleveland did, you know, dearest Connie. But! Do not call me Grover, sounds like the family pooch.

  Until Tuesday, I dream of you.

  All my love to you,

  TGG

  Sweetman returned the letter to his pocket, waited at the Vauxhall Bridge road for the light. The sky was clearing. Cars hissed along the wet pavement which shone in the evening’s sunset.

  He frowned; Bromberger was in Rome. Grabner’s catch was probably starting to sing. Italians bumped her off. Action’s down there—No! He corrected himself, made the turn inland from the river to circumnavigate the Battersea Power Station. It wasn’t true. They were still cold as ice. Where in hell did anyone get off signing a letter like that TGG for Christ’s sake. But she had kept him on her string, never played his game.

  Sweetman sifted through the disconnected evidence. Grabner’s blonde male . . . airport . . . Geneva, the name of the American, ticket to Cairo . . . the voice . . . that incompetent bastard Weems . . . second voice, Christ . . . woman, talking English or American, anyone but a goddamned Mongolian could say five words in English! Fisker, the little prick, had worked the tape inside out with his lab-speak boys . . . the ambassador’s name . . . the even tone, no emotion . . . the death shots, then her hand had released its grip on the phone . . .

  A man and woman, husband and wife by the looks of them, were on the cinder running track as Sweetman entered the park. A jog, a shower, a couple of gins, roll in bed with honey, not bad. They passed him, chatting as they ran. Connie Burdette had been alright in bed. North, her Brit lover, had his share of space in the TOPIC vault, fawning letters, cards with the gifts, gallery opening announcements, all in the files.

  The vault’s contents went far beyond her personal life. From Scotland Yard, the reports in response to every threat were comprehensive, professional. The Yard had assumed full responsibility, a single, plainclothes twenty-four-hour-a-day detail had been assigned without publicity because of the national uproar she had created. But the Yard’s reports dealt with nuts and hotheads. Only one person had ever been detained.

  Connie Burdette had thrived on battle with the British, and on fighting the Labor government and its offshore energy regulations. She had burst out once in an interview, “Socialism is a sickness. It will be the death of you!” END IS NEAR: ERUPTION FROM MT. BURDETTE had led that evening’s headlines. During the years in London, she had seen eye-to-eye with the government on only one issue, terrorism and the threat to the rigs. The vault’s papers revealed a close and continuing liaison with the Yard, the Royal Navy, and the commanding officer of the Special Boat Squadron commandos.

  The Navy monitored the TOPIC rigs as part of its North Sea patrols. There were not enough ships, and they could not protect against the underwater threat. On her orders, subsurface inspections were conducted daily. This, too, had been kept from the press, as had all rig security measures.

  Each member of each crew had to pass a background investigation. The rigs were not left in isolation, ever. Each carried communications and backup systems. The security teams inspected all incoming supplies. Access from the sea ladders and helicopter decks was sealed, to be opened and manned by security only when a supply ship or flight was scheduled. Even if saboteurs were to make their way aboard, the rigs were as terroristproof as possible—automatic shutoff systems, dispersal and redundancy of vital gear to minimize the damage from both explosion and fire. Fifteen rigs; big operation; smart lady.

  Sweetman crossed the Albert Bridge into Chelsea. Smart lady, but not smart enough to win against seventy-foot waves. Who the hell is? He purchased a bouquet of yellow roses and peach iris from the flower stall on the corner of Royal Hospital Road. The Chinese-red door was ajar when he reached the small, white-brick row house on Radnor Walk.

  “Sherri, where the hell are you?” Sherri Easton was on the telephone, pointed at the receiver, gave him a wave from the kitchen door, and continued her conversation. He tossed the white paper cone of flowers on the sofa, engulfed her in his arms, gripping her round bottom, working upward across her hips, along her back to her shoulders, then down again. She wiggled beneath the massage, turned in feigned annoyance as the long fingers continued their travels to her breasts. Divorced, a friend and lover of Hanspeter’s from an earlier life, Sherri was arguing with her night city editor.

  “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! The flat was demolished, furniture and paintings smashed . . .” She listened. “Yes, struggle, torn hair, blood everywhere!” She rolled her eyes at Hanspeter, moved the phone away as he pretended to take it. Her voice grew angrier. “Look, lovie; I don’t know what’s bothering you tonight. The story is the way I wrote it, and it is a goddamned exclusive unless you bugger it up!” He was talking again; she broke in. “I was at the side entrance, alone, away from the pack when the coroner came out, was climbing into his car. We know each other; do you hear me? . . . bruises on the neck; the stab wounds probably came after she was dead . . . alright?” She held the receiver away, then close, “Good, good boy, lovie; don’t bugger it up.” She hung up with a sigh.

  “Sounds like a profitable day.”

  “Oh, Hanspeter, that man is suffering from senile dementia. Our resident Balkan duchess managed to have herself splattered about her Regents Park flat this afternoon. The fool at the night desk is in a trance, paralyzed by the finest story he’s had in weeks, all but accused me of fanaticizing. We haven’t heard the last of him, either—and you?�
�� She put her arms around his neck, rose on her tiptoes, and they kissed a long kiss blending the distant past with the night ahead.

  “And me?” He picked her up, strolled around the living room hugging her. “I’ve been wasting money—a very neat puzzle. We’re dealing with a tight cell, hard to penetrate, modern weapons, good operation; a neat puzzle, but I’m pocketing some pieces, kiddo.”

  “Shall we go out to eat?”

  “Aren’t you afraid your buddy boy is going to call you back?”

  “Oh, you’re the optimistic chap.” She put the flowers in an empty wine carafe, filled it from the kitchen tap, and returned the bouquet to the living room.

  “If you’ve got a pail, I could get some beer and sandwiches.”

  “That’s an idea, Hanspeter, a picnic at the foot of our bed!” She smiled a loving smile, snatched her purse from the front hall stand, and trotted up to the second floor. Sweetman followed the outline of the panties beneath the tight cotton-knit dress. “No,” she called down the stairs. “Night desk is under control. It’s a gorgeous evening. We’re going for a walk.”

  It was after midnight. Sweetman’s head was propped against a pillow, his pale, muscular shoulders illuminated by moonlight. Sherri raised herself on an elbow in her darkened bedroom to take a sip from the beer he was nursing. She stretched out beside him again. The dinner had been good. They had come home and made love.

  “I’ve been followed from the moment I cleared customs at Heathrow.”

  “Rather foolish, isn’t it, for anyone here to follow you?”

  “Part of the business. They want to know why we’re here. We didn’t broadcast my arrival. TOPIC must have tipped them off.”

  “We’ve been followed tonight?”

  “Right to the doorstep.”

  “Not inside—semi-public sex?” She laughed, ran her hands up his hairy thighs, fondled him. “And, why didn’t you shake them, Hanspeter? What were you, a commando, a frogman, no—a SEAL.” She gave him a squeeze. He pulled her tight against him. “I remember the night you taught me the proper way to hold a fighting knife, long, long ago when you were protecting me.” She had one arm out of the covers. “Handle reversed, blade pointing back up the arm, purse as a shield in the left hand, the opening—slash, thrust—didn’t you, you dangerous SEAL. Why didn’t you swim across the Thames submerged tonight, leave them baffled ashore on the South Bank?”

  “No need to, not until this morning.”

  Sherri brought a cup of coffee to Sweetman at daybreak while he shaved. She left the house first, walking along Kings Road to Sloane Square where she hailed a taxi for her office. Sweetman emerged an hour later, turned up Sydney Street, and slipped into the waiting black American sedan just before Fulham Road. A gray British Rover confirmed its interest in the American party. The two cars pushed through the beginning of the morning’s rush toward Grosvenor Square. Sweetman’s car disappeared into the embassy’s basement garage. At almost the same instant, a black van emerged from the interior garage ramp. The Rover was at the curb, two of its occupants on foot surveilling the main and consular entrances.

  Sherri’s red Triumph sped through the outskirts of London heading northeast toward Yarmouth. “—And, Mr. SEAL, you guarantee we’re not being followed?”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Impossible, not a chance with you as wheelman. The black balaclavas wouldn’t stand a chance, let alone the Yard.”

  “Are you working with our Special Air?”

  “Indirectly.” He stroked her shoulder as she drove. “Did you have to take the day off for this?”

  “Almost, said I had to have some work done on the car, back by noon, that sort of thing. Did you see the story?”

  “Was it okay? Lovie come through?”

  “He did, strangely enough, front page, in fact. I do have to be back by two. I have a meeting with another inspector, Hanspeter, a good friend—”

  “We’re all good friends.”

  She yanked the Triumph toward the side of the road in mock anger, sped ahead. “—a good friend who has promised—oops, here we are”—her car bounced through ruts in the gravel outside the car rental agency—“who has promised to fill me in on the autopsy. The car is in my name. Will you be back tonight?”

  He shook his head. “At least a couple of days. Send the bill for any damages to my great uncle George, Main Post Office, Anchorage, Alaska.”

  “Air mail?”

  “Surface mail’s fast.”

  They kissed. He emerged from the office with the keys, climbed into a green Jaguar coupe. The two cars headed off in opposite directions.

  An unreasonable chill blowing off the North Sea had the gold-and-crimson sign of the Lord Nelson swinging from its hinges when Sweetman pushed his way through the double doors of the waterfront pub on the evening of June 29. The loss of the oil rig Topic Universe had pointed him to Great Yarmouth. The London files had been far more detailed than the information scratched together by Fisker. It had been rough, and Connie Burdette had been in the bull’s-eye, loss of the rig, loss of the diver, several injuries, work stoppage, then the unsolved death of the rig crew chief.

  “Over here!” A cane jabbed into the smoky haze. Sweetman spotted it over the capped heads and made his way through the jabbering crowd to a booth in the far corner. “You told me you’d be tall and bald, and that you are. Sit down.” The old union leader, crippled with arthritis, used both damaged hands to lift the pint to his lips. “Throat still works, God be praised. You want to talk about the wreck of the Topic Universe? A bloody, sorrowful business.” He set the mug down, his weathered face looking hard at Sweetman through watery eyes. “A villainy, death brought on by greed!” His voice, a shout, was lost in the din of the pub.

  “Harry? . . . ”

  “That’s right, Harry.”

  “What can you tell me about those two deaths, the diver and the rig chief?”

  “Two? . . . In good time, Sweetman. Here!” He poked a hole in the smoke again. “Two pints—two!” He caught the barmaid’s eyes. “Now, these are very unhappy times, Sweetman. For all the talk of progress, the working bloke gets shoved further and further to the rear. And”—his head trembled as he framed his thoughts—“this is not something that has come on us overnight! Nor is it unique to that one rig!”

  He batted at the empty mug. “Go to the west; ask the miners. Take a look at the idle cranes, the empty building ways on the Clyde. Ask the factory sods in Glasgow and Clydebank. They’ll tell you, Sweetman, tragic unemployment, in the double digits.”

  “Come down the coast a wee bit. Stick that fine nose of yours into Hull. This nation, you know”—he paused to hoist the fresh pint to his face for a long, slow pull—“this nation is no more than a lump of coal surrounded by fish! The Hull fishing fleet was the finest. But, stick your nose in there today and you will see a tragedy, a dying city, closed factories, rusted, idle ships, empty of catches, an entire fishing industry vanishing—mismanagement and the curse of government!”

  “Drink up, Sweetman . . . and, who suffers? You know before I tell you . . . I like your look . . . and it’s the likes of you and me. The blokes who work the foredecks, the nets, the flaming engine rooms—the blokes who work the wharves, the waterfront, the freezer works. God help us. The wives, the aged grandparents, the wee boys and girls, the worker and his family suffer.

  “And then, you continue south to Yarmouth”—he cleared his throat, spat on the wood floor—“the great boom city of North Sea energy—oil and gas flowing like liquid gold—rubbish! Another tragedy, not a boom, Sweetman, another pustule of worker exploitation.

  “Hear these blokes?” He glared into the mass of bodies. “The bloody laughter of despair, half of them unemployed, on the dole, unable to look their families in the eye.” He drank again, clanked his pint with the American. “Now the crime of the Topic Universe. What brings you from the States to the Lord Nelson these years later—still settling insurance claims, lawsuits, is that your business?�
�

  “On May thirtieth, the former president of TOPIC, Constance Burdette, was murdered.”

  “Aye. The news flowed like quicksilver through this wretched port.”

  “Harry, I don’t know what if anything the loss of that rig had to do with her death. I am an investigator—”

  “So you said.”

  “I need you to tell me, Harry.” Sweetman pushed his mug forward for another clank. “I need to know as much as possible.” The empty pint in his upraised arm brought two more.

  “There were no tears, Sweetman. God rest her soul, there were no tears. She was a greedy bitch, a foreigner—unlike yourself, concerned only with profit.” He rubbed the wrinkled brow beneath his shaggy yellow-white hair. “Profit to the exclusion of all else—including human life!

  “She has gone to her grave, Sweetman, with the blood of Yarmouth on her hands—and the hatred of those of us still living within us.” He thumped his heart with a gnarled paw.

  “This is where you can help me, Harry.”

  “What do you want to know about the Topic Universe?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Right.” Harry Jones steered the mug to his mouth. “The Universe was a four-legger, a jack-up rig about thirty-eight miles out.” Sweetman knew the off-shore business. He let Jones talk. “The jack-ups, the semisubmersibles, the drill ships, the fixed platforms each have their uses. The jack-up, you see, gives you the benefit of feet on the ground, so to speak, stability when she’s on site with her legs planted in the seafloor. And, she lets you raise the legs and float her away to a new site when the first job is done. Simple enough, and very nice, if you know what you’re doing.”

  “The jack-up has her drawbacks, too. Those long legs, some three hundred to four hundred feet you know, can lead you into a tremendous thicket of troubles. Each of the legs bears a tremendous weight, which pushes them into the muck, down into the seafloor. When it comes time to pack up and move, if you’ve sunk too deep you must fight a terrible suction—fight with the risk of one or more of those spidery legs crumpling!