Clang, clang, clang!
He turned away from the mirror. “Bebe?”
Silence.
Was she drunk? He left the bathroom and stepped into the cold hallway, heard nothing, gently stroked his cheek. In front of him, a winding staircase swung down to the sunny foyer. “Bebe!” he called.
Clang, clang, clang!
Clutching the handrail for support, he descended, already knowing that if he found her sprawled beneath van Gogh’s White Roses--as he had so many times before--he would finally have to get professional help for her.
The library was enormous, paneled in dark oak, so dim in the curtain-drawn light that it seemed almost gas lit.
Cole stood in the doorway and took it all in. It was here that he and Babe used to entertain. It was here, as one of Wall Street’s golden boys, that he first supplied Wolfhagen with privileged information on impending takeovers. Now, as Cole looked across the room to the illumined van Gogh, the famous painting Wolfhagen made him buy anonymously at auction, promising Cole that its $40-million price tag would help seal his place in society--which, for a time, it had--he realized once more that Wolfhagen never had been his friend. He had only used him to make himself a billionaire.
The silence was heavy. The room was too dark. Moving tentatively across the Aubusson rug, wondering where his wife could be, Cole turned on a lamp.
He saw his wife first.
Strapped to a Queen Anne chair in the center of the room, her carefully dyed blonde hair tousled and hanging in her face, Bebe was surrounded by video cameras. She was naked, shivering and gagged. Her eyes were wide with horror. There was a scrape on her forehead. She moaned.
Alarmed, Cole took a step back.
Bebe shook her head, tried to spit out the gag, but couldn't. She struggled to release herself from the heavy rope that bound her hands and legs to the antique chair, but it was impossible. She writhed in frustration and looked wildly to her left.
Cole followed her look.
Sitting in the shadows in a matching Queen Anne chair, dressed entirely in black, was a stranger. The man rose from his seat, lifted his eyebrows at Kenneth and started smashing the priceless Tibetan funeral doll in his left hand against an Egyptian brass urn--clang, clang, clang!
He tossed the ruined doll to the floor and stepped beside Bebe, who followed his every move with her terror-filled eyes. “Well,” he said to Cole. “It’s about time you woke up. We’ve been waiting hours for you.” He kissed the top of Bebe’s head. “Haven’t we, dear?”
Bebe jerked away from him. She thrashed in her chair and looked at Cole for help.
Amused, the man leaned forward and removed the gag from Bebe’s lipstick-smeared mouth. He reached behind his back, withdrew a gun and pressed it against her temple. Bebe gasped. Her shoulders drew in and she looked imploringly at her husband, whose own mouth had parted in shock. The gun, Kenneth saw, had a silencer. He looked at the four video cameras surrounding Bebe and could hear them humming.
Cole forced himself to think, willed himself to act. Behind him, in the top drawer of Bebe’s writing table, would be a loaded gun. He took a step back toward the table, his eyes level with Bebe’s, his hand reaching out. But the man was having none of it. He shook his head at Cole and pressed the gun harder against Bebe’s temple, pulling the trigger just as she uttered her last words: “Wolfhagen!” she gasped. “He’s hired--”
The shot was flat, muffled, the sound of steel striking bone. Bebe’s eyes grew huge with sorrow and disbelief, her body jerked from the sudden impact and she slumped slightly forward in the chair, dead.
Kenneth’s knees sagged. Bile rose in his mouth and he gagged.
Suddenly a hand was on his arm, strong and firm. Kenneth turned and saw the woman just as she jammed the gun into the small of his back and urged him forward, toward his bleeding wife, the man in black, the humming cameras. “Fight me and I promise you won’t die as quickly as your wife.”
He was pulled across the library by a hand far steadier than his own. The man had dragged Bebe off to one side and now was placing a matching chair where she had sat. Here the floor was polished oak and it gleamed darkly with his wife’s spilled blood. Cole was led to the middle of it, his bare feet resting in the warm pool that had kept her alive.
Now, the cameras surrounded him.
They’d murdered his wife. They’d do the same to him.
He looked at the woman. Tall and attractive, thick brown hair framing an oval face of cool intelligence, her eyes the color of chestnuts and just as hard. She wore black leggings and a black shirt, no jewelry.
The man moved behind her, his face partly concealed behind the video camera now poised on his right shoulder. “Open his robe,” he said to the woman.
She opened his robe.
“Now get rid of the bandages.”
She ripped them from Cole, who stared straight into the camera’s opaque lens and saw his own bruised, bloated face floating up at him from the dark, rounded glass. The equipment was small and sophisticated and digital. He knew the contents would probably be put on a DVD, and Wolfhagen would view them.
But would he view the other DVD? The one being recorded by the camera hidden in the wall above the fireplace? The one his insurance company demanded he install in the event that someone tried to steal the van Gogh? Would he see that?
The woman took a step back. She looked with revulsion at Cole’s bloody chest and then looked at him. Cole held her gaze and willed himself to remain calm. It wasn’t too late for him. Everyone had a price, everyone could be bought. Hadn’t Wolfhagen taught him that much?
“I have a lot of money,” he said to them both. “Millions. I’ll triple whatever Wolfhagen’s paying you. Both of you can walk out of here right now and never have to do this again. You’ll be set for life. Just let me live.”
The woman’s lips, rouged red, broke into a half-smile.
“Millions,” Cole said.
She lifted the gun.
* * *
Six Months Later
Pamplona, Spain
Ever since he was a child, Mark Andrews wanted to run with the bulls.
As a boy in Boston, he would sit on his grandfather’s lap and listen to the old man’s stories of his days in Spain, when he was still young and single, and had traveled the world on the trust fund his father gave him upon graduating from Yale.
Mark would marvel at the man’s retelling of La Fiesta de San Fermin, the week-long orgy of bull worship that honored Pamplona’s patron saint San Fermin, who was martyred when bulls dragged his body through the city’s narrow, dusty streets. Mark’s grandfather had run with the bulls. He had stood among the thousands of men in white shirts and red sashes impatiently waiting for the first rocket--and then the second rocket--to signal their release.
Even then, some thirty years ago, in his parents’ home, Mark could hear the thunderous clacking of hooves as the twelve beasts came crashing down Calle Santo Domingo, through Plaza Consistorial and Calle Mercaderes, their horns sharp and deadly, their murderous rage focused on those foolish young men running blindly before them.
Now, at thirty-nine, Mark Andrews himself stood among fools in white shirts and red sashes, the early morning sun beating down on his face, the delicious anticipation of the impending event flooding his system.
Pamplona was a city gone mad.
All week long, fifty thousand people from around the world had participated in La Fiesta de San Fermin--known to the locals as Los Sanfermines. They paraded drunkenly through the streets with towering, colorful gigantes, went to the afternoon bullfights, drank gallons of wine, made love in alleyways, and rose each morning from brief catnaps to watch the spectacular running of the bulls.
Earlier in the week, the mayor had kicked off the festivities at noon by lighting one of many rockets from the Ayuntamiento’s balcony. And now, as Mark waited along with nearly a thousand other men for the rocket that would signal the beginning of el encierro, he watched and listened
to the cheering crowd that looked down at him from open windows, wrought-iron balconies, the Santo Domingo stairs and from inside the Plaza de Toros itself.
Never had he felt more alive. He would run as his grandfather had.
A hand was laid on his arm. Mark turned and faced a stranger.
“Do you have the time?” the man asked. “I left my watch at the hotel. They should be firing the first rocket any minute now.”
Mark smiled, delighted to be in the company of a fellow American. He checked his watch and said, “In a few minutes, we’ll be running like hell from twelve very pissed off bulls.” He extended a hand, which the man shook. “I’m Mark Andrews,” he said. “From Manhattan.”
The man’s grip was firm, his teeth bright white when he smiled back. “Vincent Spocatti,” he said. “L.A. What brings you here?”
“My grandfather,” Mark said. “You?”
The man looked surprised. “Hemingway,” he said, in a tone that implied there could be no other reason why he had traveled three thousand miles to be at this event. “I even brought Lady Brett with me.” He pointed down the barricaded street, toward a building where a young woman stood at a second-story balcony, her dark hair and white dress stirring in the breeze. “That’s my wife, there,” he said. “The one with the video camera.”
Mark looked up and caught a glimpse of the woman just as the first rocket tore into the sky to signal that the gates of the corral had been opened.
He felt a rush. The sea of young Spaniards lurched forward. A cheer went through the crowd and rippled down the narrow streets, reverberating off the stone walls, finally blooming in the Plaza de Toros itself. Moments later, a second rocket sounded, warning the crowd that the six bulls and six steers had been released.
The chase--which usually lasted only two minutes--had begun.
Mark ran. He heard galloping behind him, felt the earth trembling beneath his feet, and ran, knowing that if he stumbled, if he fell in the street, he would first be trampled by the men running behind him, and then by the 1,500-pound beasts themselves.
He moved quickly and easily, suddenly euphoric as he shot past the Calle La Estafeta and the Calle de Javier. He thought fleetingly of his grandfather and wished he could have been here to see this.
The crowd of spectators was screaming. Shouting. The terrific pounding of hooves filled the morning air with the intensity of a million small explosions. Mark shot a glance over his shoulder, saw his American friend, saw the crush of young men behind him--and saw the first bull rapidly closing the distance between them all.
He was delirious. He was beyond happy. He knew that not even the day he testified against Maximilian Wolfhagen could compare to the rush he experienced now.
He was nearing the Plaza de Toros when Spocatti, fan of Hemingway’s lost generation, reached out and gripped his arm. Startled, his pace slowing for an instant, Mark looked at the man. He was now running alongside him, his face flushed and shiny, his eyes a shade darker than he remembered. Mark was about to speak when Spocatti shouted, “Got a message for you, Andrews. Maximilian Wolfhagen sends his best. Said he wants to thank you for ruining his life.”
And before Mark could speak, before he could even react, Vincent Spocatti plunged a small knife into his left side. And then he did it again. And then again, sinking the knife close to his heart.
Stunned, the pain excruciating, Mark stopped running. He looked down at the knife jutting from his bloody chest and fell to his knees, watching in dazed silence as Spocatti leaped over one of the barricades and disappeared into the jumping, thrashing crowd.
Mark had fallen in the middle of the street. Hundreds of men were darting past him, jumping over him, screaming as the animals drew near. Knowing this was it, knowing this is how he would die, Mark pulled the knife from his chest, turned and faced the first bull as it loomed into sight and sank its lowered horns into his right thigh.
He was thrown effortlessly into the air, a rag doll tossed into the halo of his own blood, his right leg shattered, the bone jutting from the torn flesh.
He landed heavily on his side, so stunned that he was only dimly aware that he was being trampled. A seemingly never-ending series of hooves dug into his face and arms and stomach.
The men rushing past him tried to move him out of the way, tried to grasp his shirt and pull him to safety, but it was impossible. The beasts were upon them. There was nothing anyone could do but watch in horror as twelve angry bulls and steers ripped apart an innocent man.
When it was over, Mark Andrews lay in the street--his body bruised and broken beyond recognition, his breathing a slow, clotted gasp. He looked up at the narrow slit of blue sky that shined between the buildings on either side of him.
In the instant before his mind winked out, his failing eyesight focused on Lady Brett Ashley herself. She was standing just above him on one of the building’s wrought-iron balconies, smiling as she filmed his death with the video camera held in an outstretched hand.
####
Fifth Avenue Page 45
