Reap the Wind

by Iris Johansen

  Alex shrugged. “Special escort from the airport to the palace at ten in the morning. Lunch catered under the strict supervision of British security. The meeting is three until seven in the evening. Then the members will be whisked back to the airport at eight that evening. Nothing very original or innovative.”

  “Have you eaten? There’s still a little of the stew I made for the children.”

  “I’m not hungry. Are they still here?”

  Caitlin shook her head. “Chelsea blew in like a hurricane and whisked them off to a welfare shelter.” Her lips twitched as she remembered her last glimpse of Chelsea’s scowling face. “And then Kemal took her back to the hotel on his bicycle.”

  “That must have been an experience for both of them.” Alex picked up the receiver of the telephone. “I have to call Goldbaum. I want him to check on some of the equipment Ledford bought. Where did you put the ledger?”

  “I’ll get it.” Caitlin crossed to the hall closet, slipped the ledger from the shelf, and brought it to him. “Will he still be in his office?”

  Alex nodded as he punched in the number.

  Caitlin sat down on the couch and waited.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Goldbaum demanded irritably. “First you nag me to death, and then, when I do have something, you disappear into—”

  “I’ve been busy. What have you got?”

  “Ledford.”

  “What!”

  “Well, we don’t have him, but we’ve linked him to Krakow. My man, Nesmith, followed Krakow to an apartment sublet by a Daniel Bledsworth in Paris. When Nesmith’s report came in, I told him to check out Bledsworth.” He paused. “Bledsworth’s description matched Ledford’s.”

  “Christ, is he still there?”

  “He left the apartment two days after the meeting with Krakow, but we managed to get hold of the records of his telephone calls for the last three weeks. That’s going to cost you.”

  “Never mind. Were there any calls to Istanbul?”

  “Several. All to the same number. I haven’t been able to trace it. You’re going to have to check that one out on your own. That Istanbul phone company isn’t at all amenable to bribes. I couldn’t even get your number.”

  “Give it to me.” Alex snatched a pen and paper and scrawled down the number Goldbaum gave him. “What else?”

  “The number of a phone in the hallway of a pension in Paris. We’re still checking on the tenants who live there. Another number in Le Havre.” Goldbaum paused. “White Star Shipping Line. Their ships fly a Liberian flag and Daniel Bledsworth is listed as principal stockholder. A ship departed Le Havre the same day Ledford moved out of his apartment in Paris.”

  “So much for Kemal’s man at the airport,” Alex muttered. “What’s the name of the ship?”

  “Argosy.”

  “A passenger ship?”

  “Strictly cargo, until now.”

  “Have you got a description, size, registration number, tonnage, and so forth?”

  “I’ll get it.”

  “Right away. If Ledford left Paris a week ago, he could be here now.”

  “Depends on the route,” Goldbaum said. “And he may have taken time to put into port and have the ship’s name changed.”

  “Maybe.” Alex flipped open the ledger and his finger went down the column. “I have a couple of items I want you to run through your computer for me. I need to know what they are and what the common usage is for both of them. In this ledger I have a ‘black damp’ listed with a question mark after it. Directly underneath it is a Sodium V.”

  “V or C?”

  “V.”

  “Spell black damp.”

  Alex spelled it, then flipped the ledger closed. “Get back to me as soon as you can.”

  “Do I get a telephone number this time, or do I use telepathy?” Goldbaum asked caustically.

  Alex gave him the number and hung up the phone.

  “You’re excited.” Caitlin’s gaze was on his face.

  “We’ve got a break,” Alex said. “I didn’t think it was possible, but we’ve actually got a break. Ledford may be on his way here by ship.”

  “What ship?”

  “The Argosy. A name that would suit Ledford’s passion for antiquities.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Get Kemal to check out dockings. Find a way to get the name and address of these Istanbul telephone calls Ledford placed so that we can be there waiting for him when he walks in the door. We’re going to have him, Caitlin.”

  “Are we?”

  Alex looked at her. “You should be as excited as I am. What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” She tried to smile. “I guess I’ve blown Ledford up into some kind of malevolent superman in my mind.”

  “He’s clever and malicious but he’s human. We can bring him down.”

  She shivered. “Can we? What makes a man like Ledford become what he is?”

  He could see she needed him to make sense of Ledford for her and tried to think of something that would help her. “I don’t know. As far as I can tell, he had a normal childhood. He’s the son of a minister in a small town in Iowa. I remember him calling his mother on her birthday back when we were both in the CIA.”

  “Somehow that makes him worse. What did you ever do to him that he should want to hurt us so badly?”

  “He wanted to be in the same position as McMillan with all the opportunities for perks. When I bolted from the agency, he lost his job. He wasn’t supposed to let me find out what happened in Afghanistan.”

  She looked at him inquiringly.

  “They posed a location problem to me out of context. Just figures and variables and a geographic terrain. They wanted to know where and when a certain army unit would pass. It was an easy puzzle. I had no problem solving it for them.” He smiled bitterly. “McMillan sold the information to the KGB. The supposed army unit was a rebel leader escorting a village of innocent civilians out of the war zone over the Pakistani border. They were butchered.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know.”

  “That didn’t make me sleep any better when Pavel told me what had happened. I was the one who solved the puzzle.” He stood up and pulled her to her feet. “It’s been a hell of a day. Why don’t we go to bed?”

  “Not yet. I’d just as soon not go to sleep thinking about Ledford. I’m going to run the hologram one more time before I go to bed. Coming?”

  God knows, she must have been as tired as he was after the twenty-four hours they had gone through, but she was still forging on. This was how she had been at Vasaro when he first met her, enduring the hardships and still reaching for life. Alex experienced a rush of tenderness so intense, it came close to pain.

  He slipped his arm about her waist. “Coming.”

  It all came together that night.

  “You’ve actually done it?”

  Alex looked at the complex number combination just printed out and smiled. “I’d bet on it.”

  “The base would swing open?”

  “Open sesame.”

  Caitlin laughed shakily. “That’s Aladdin’s cave.”

  “There’s a correlation. As Andros told Paradignes, ‘Treasures greater than you can dream lie in Shardana.’ ”

  Caitlin stared at the emerald eyes of the hologram. “But we won’t know until we have the real thing. We need the Wind Dancer.”

  “Soon. We’re getting closer.”

  “Yes, we’re getting closer.”

  “What do I have to do to keep you in bed? It’s damn chilly out here.” Alex tightened the belt of his terry-cloth robe as he walked down the garden path toward the bench where Caitlin was sitting. “Don’t you know it’s nearly three o’clock in the morning?”

  “I’m not cold. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Ledford? The Wind Dancer?”

  “No, I keep thinking about the children.” Caitlin’s white corduroy robe blurred to soft silver in the moonlight, and her
slender body appeared fragile as the stalk of a tall lily. “I’ve been so lucky, Alex. All my life I’ve felt a little sorry for myself because things weren’t exactly as I wanted them to be, but look what I’ve had.”

  “Vasaro.”

  “Yes.” She added softly, “And the Wind Dancer. Vasaro was the reality and the Wind Dancer was the dream. No matter what happens in the future, I’ll always have those memories. What memories will those children have?”

  “They’ll have to create new memories, better memories.”

  “It won’t be the same.” She looked thoughtfully down at the ground. “Do you suppose Chelsea could persuade those welfare people to let the children come to Vasaro to live for a while? There’s something very healing about working with the flowers.” She went on hurriedly. “Oh, not right away. Perhaps next year, after we’ve cleared away all the rubble and started planting again.”

  He went still. “And are we going to do that?”

  “Of course.” She slipped from the bench to her knees on the ground and scooped up a handful of earth. “Just look at all this sand content. It’s a wonder any flowers at all grow here. Remind me to ask Kemal where I can get some good topsoil.”

  “I will.” His hand reached down and gently stroked the curls back from her face. “Of course, it still won’t be as good as Vasaro earth.”

  “No, nothing could be that good.” She closed her eyes tightly. “I want to go home, Alex. I want this all to be over so that I can go home.”

  “You’re ready to face it?”

  “It’s my home, it’s Vasaro. I want to make it come alive again.”

  “We will.”

  “You were right about me thinking of Vasaro as some kind of trust. I guess I became so involved in Catherine’s journal that I thought the past had to be richer, better.” Her lids opened to reveal eyes shimmering with moist brilliance in the moonlight. “But maybe Catherine and Juliette thought that about Sanchia and Sanchia the same about Andros. It’s like a chain that goes on forever and we all have to forge our own links.”

  “And they’ll be bright, strong links.” He cleared his throat to rid it of the sudden tightness. “But right now we have to get you inside before you freeze.” He lifted her to her feet and kissed her lightly on the tip of her nose. “Why don’t you call Jacques and talk to him tomorrow?”

  “Not yet. Not until this is over. I want to keep Vasaro separate and apart from anything to do with Ledford.”

  “Very well, we’ll wait. It will only be a little while anyway.”

  “No ship by that name or description has docked at Istanbul during the past week,” Kemal said. “Are you sure of your information?”

  Alex frowned. “Yes, Ledford’s got to be here. The meeting is three days from now and Krakow arrived last night in Istanbul. Were you able to check those phone calls Ledford made to Istanbul?”

  Kemal shook his head. “Goldbaum was right. The phone company is very stubborn about giving out information on unlisted numbers. I’m still working on it.”

  “Damn!”

  “Did Goldbaum call back with any information on that number Ledford called just before he left Paris?”

  “No help there. The phone was in the hall of a small pension in the Pigalle section. According to Goldbaum, it’s frequented primarily by whores and their customers.”

  “You don’t know who he was trying to reach?”

  Alex shook his head. “Not for sure. A prostitute by the name of Jeanne Marie Neunier was found stabbed to death in her apartment two days ago, but we can’t find any connection between her and Ledford.”

  Hans wriggled along the narrow ledge on knees and hips, pushing the canvas bag containing the plastique and detonators before him.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  The darkness was closing in on him. He stopped to rest a moment, fighting the strangling fear of the blackness. He had always been afraid of the dark, a weakness he had confessed only to Brian. He remembered how the bastard’s eyes had filled with crocodile tears and he had stroked Hans’s hair and told him he need never be alone again. They would fight the fear together, like father and son.

  Well, Hans was alone in the dark again.

  Just a few more feet . . .

  He got to the end of the ledge and taped the plastique carefully beneath the support beam. He set the timers and began wriggling back.

  Even if Brian stumbled on the other two charges, he’d never find this one, and any one of the charges had the firepower to blow Brian and his precious treasures to kingdom come.

  God, he wished he dared turn on the flashlight. Why not? The cache had seemed deserted when he had entered it. . . .

  No, it wasn’t safe. He couldn’t risk failing now when he was so close to getting the son of a bitch. He had only to get out of the darkness and go up on the plateau and set a similar surprise package for Krakow. Then he could hide out in the trees and settle down to watch the show.

  Five minutes later he jumped the six feet from the ledge and landed in a half-crouch.

  He gasped as pain seared through the scabbed wound on his side. He stood there for a moment, fighting the pain, fighting the bile rising to his throat. The pain diminished and then faded into a dull ache. He moved at a trot through the darkness toward the band of moonlight in the distance.

  He burst through the opening, the chill night air striking his cheeks. He filled his lungs, relief and triumph soaring through him until he was light-headed. He muttered exultantly, “You’re going to blow, you son of a bitch.”

  Ten minutes later he began climbing the steep slope toward the plateau, struggling to keep his balance as his tennis shoes slid on the shale.

  “Hans?”

  Hans went rigid, his gaze lifting to the edge of the plateau.

  Brian stood directly above him, his powerful body in silhouette but his face silvered and illuminated by the moonlight. His mouth was twisted as if he was in pain, and his eyes were filled with sorrow. “What are you doing here, boy?”

  Rage scalded through Hans. He instinctively lurched forward, his hand reaching for his knife.

  Pain!

  His head rocked as if the plastique he had set in the cache had exploded in his brain.

  He fell to his knees, darkness closing around him.

  “I told you not to hurt him,” Brian said sharply to someone behind Hans. “The poor lad’s been hurt enough.” He started down the steep incline toward Hans. “Ah, Hans, what have we done to you?”

  Blackness.

  Brian was gently bathing Hans’s temple with a damp cloth when he opened his lids. He was instantly aware that he was no longer outside but lying on the cot in the storage room in the cache. His gaze passed over the crates and canvases against the wall to the Wind Dancer on the table across the room.

  He’d like to crash the statue against Brian’s head.

  His stare shifted back to Brian. “Bastard,” he whispered.

  Brian flinched. “I deserve that.” His eyes glittered moistly in the lantern light. “I didn’t want to do it. Krakow made me set you up. You knew too much. He was afraid it was too dangerous to have you around after the Smythe bit.”

  “I’m going to kill you.”

  “The first moment I saw you I knew you were on your way to set a charge to take out Krakow at the conference.” Brian added sadly, “There wasn’t enough plastique in your pack to blow both Krakow and me. How were you going to take me out? A knife in the back, Hans? I remember you’re very good with a knife.”

  Brian didn’t know he had already planted the charges in the tunnel, Hans realized. Brian thought he had intercepted Hans before he had a chance to go to the cache. A fierce surge of joy shot through him. He was going to die, but Brian would follow him. “Maybe a few bullets in the gut like you gave to me.”

  “I told you that was unavoidable.” Brian gently smoothed back a golden lock from Hans’s forehead. “You look like a sheared sheep. What happened to all your beautiful hair?”

>   Hans jerked his head sidewise away from Brian’s touch and glared silently at him.

  Brian’s hand fell away from him. “You hate me. And how can I blame you? But it was Krakow, I tell you. God, I hate him for what he made me do to you.”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s true. How can I convince you? You’re like a son to me.” Brian mournfully shook his head. “I held my hand when I could have had you killed out there on the plateau. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I care about you.”

  Hans snorted derisively.

  “I searched all over Paris for you.”

  “To finish the job?”

  “To make amends. And now I can do it. We’ll go away together. Remember all the plans we made? It will be just like it used to be.”

  Brian thought he could fool him again, Hans realized with wonder. Even after all the bastard had done!

  But Brian wanted something. If Hans played it right, there might be a way of saving his neck after all.

  Hans lowered his lids to veil his eyes. “What about Krakow?”

  “You know I never believed that pompous ass could really pull the entire game off. We’ll take the loot and sail off to South America.” Brian was silent a moment. “Krakow would object, of course. I may need your help with him. It should be a pleasure for you. After all, the bastard is to blame for all your troubles. You can still use your plastique, but I think we must refine your plan a bit. Let me guide you in this.”

  Now Hans got the picture. Brian wanted Krakow put down too, and he wanted Hans to do his dirty work for him.

  “You’ve got to let me prove how much I regret hurting you,” Brian said softly. “All I ask is a chance.”

  A chance to use him and then stab him in the back again. Hans could feel the rage and hatred rise and fought it down. He would be the one to use Brian this time. He would let Brian set up the hit on Krakow and then watch Ledford and his precious paintings and statues shatter into a million bloody pieces.

  Brian’s expression held only gentleness and affection as he reached out and touched Hans’s arm. “Will you let me make it up to you?”