Reap the Wind

by Iris Johansen

  Her gaze followed his. A man was running toward a Mercedes parked in the trees. “Ledford?”

  Alex nodded.

  Ledford was now in the car and careening down the road.

  He was getting away!

  “No!” She darted to the left, through the trees toward the road. “We can cut him off at the bottom of the hill.”

  Alex was pounding after her. “Caitlin.”

  “Give me that gun.”

  “Not yet. We’re not close enough.”

  “Then let’s get in range.” She had reached the road and could see the Mercedes barreling down the hill. “He’s coming toward us.”

  She could see Ledford’s face behind the wheel. His expression was twisted with anger.

  Her mother. Vasaro.

  “Give me that gun, Alex.”

  “Have you ever fired a Uzi?”

  “No. Show me.”

  “This is no time for lessons. Allow me.” He lifted the Uzi and the bullets exploded from the weapon.

  The windshield of the Mercedes shattered.

  And so did Ledford’s skull.

  Those stupid soldiers were running around the ruins like chickens with a fox let loose among them, Hans thought gleefully.

  And he was the fox.

  He leaned back against the rock, watching them for a moment, and then looked down at the second switch box. By then Brian knew he was no longer the man at the helm. He was probably scrambling desperately to get himself and his pretty statue out of the tunnel.

  Hans hesitated, enjoying the moment, savoring the heady, godlike power.

  “Good-bye, Brian,” he said softly.

  He pressed the red button to detonate the plastique in the tunnel.

  The first charge didn’t sound like an explosion at all, more like a loud whump that whispered through the hill. Ten seconds later the second and third charges went off and the top of the hill blew off like an erupting volcano.

  Chelsea and Jonathan whirled around to see trees, rocks, and earth catapulting high into the air.

  “Dear God!” Chelsea whispered in horror. “Who could live through that?”

  “No survivors,” Colonel Severn said in his crisp British accent as he looked down at the gaping hole that once had been the trapdoor leading to the tunnel. He turned to face Jonathan and Alex. “We’ll conduct a search, of course, but no one could possibly have lived through that blast. We picked up Hans Brucker an hour ago, and he told us he set three charges with enough firepower to blow up half of London.” He shrugged. “If the explosion didn’t blow Kemal Nemid to bits, he would still have been crushed by the falling rock. The ground is so unstable here, it may take years to dig out the remains.”

  “Did you check with the guards at the checkpoints?” Alex asked.

  “It’s been over five hours and no cars have passed in or out after the first explosion. Accept it, he’s dead.” Severn went on briskly, “We’ll need statements from all of you.”

  “The ladies have been through a great deal,” Jonathan said. “Can’t you send them back to the hotel to rest and let Alex and me fill you in? You can get a statement from them later.”

  “After all, I’m the one who actually shot Ledford,” Alex added.

  Severn hesitated, glanced back at the yawning hole in the earth, and then shrugged and nodded. “Tomorrow will do as well. I’ll assign someone to drive Ms. Benedict and Ms. Vasaro back to Istanbul. Tell them they’re not to leave the city. We’ll start with your statement,

  Andreas.”

  “Let’s get this over with.” Jonathan turned away from Severn and said to Alex, “Tell Chelsea I’ll see her at the hotel.”

  Alex didn’t reply, and Jonathan noticed he was staring thoughtfully at the thicket of pines a hundred yards away. “Alex?”

  Alex glanced away from the thicket. “Oh, yes, sure.” He started for the jeep where Chelsea and Caitlin were sitting.

  The jaw of the doorman at the Hilton dropped in shock as he opened the door for Chelsea and Caitlin.

  Who could blame him, Caitlin thought wearily. They were so dirty and bloodstained, they looked as if they had been through a war.

  And so they had.

  “You should have those feet looked after by a doctor,” Caitlin said dully as they were going up in the elevator. “I know I didn’t get all the glass out.”

  “I’ll call down to the desk and get them to send someone.” The door slid open as the elevator stopped on Chelsea’s floor and Chelsea straightened away from against the wall. “I’ll phone you later.”

  She left the elevator and limped down the corridor.

  The telephone was ringing when Caitlin unlocked the door of her own room a few minutes later.

  As soon as Caitlin picked up the receiver, Chelsea said, “Melis is gone. There was a message from the matron of the welfare home when I got to my room. They think she ran away.”

  “Oh, no, have they called the police?”

  “An hour ago. Christ, what a hell of a day.”

  And when they did find Melis, they would have to tell her the only anchor she had in the world had been blown to bits. Chelsea was right. What a hell of a day.

  “Is the matron going to call you when they find her?”

  “Yeah, cross your fingers.” Chelsea hung up the phone.

  Caitlin walked slowly into the bathroom and turned on the shower. As she undressed she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror over the washbasin and flinched. She looked even worse than she had thought possible. A huge bruise discolored her swollen left cheek, and the purple shadows under her eyes looked almost as livid.

  She stepped into the shower stall and let the hot water run over her, taking away some of the ache of her muscles, if not of her spirit. She should be feeling satisfied. Ledford was dead. Justice had been done. Yet the satisfaction was bitter, for Kemal Nemid had died with him.

  Kemal. Strange, funny, complex Kemal, who had touched her and healed her . . . and betrayed her. Yet Alex had told her he had saved them all in the end. She could feel the warm tears run down her cheeks, and she didn’t know if they were just a release from the tension of the day or for that wicked, undeserving scamp Kemal.

  It was after midnight when Alex came back to the hotel. He looked as exhausted and disheveled as Caitlin had been earlier.

  “Any news?” When he walked into the bedroom Caitlin sat up in bed and pressed the off switch on the remote control for the television set. “I mean besides us? Evidently the British delegation has been talking to the press. What happened at Troy is all over the networks.”

  “It’s front-page stuff.” Alex shook his head wearily. “They’re scouring the coastline but they haven’t discovered where the Argosy is docked, and Severn is still convinced that no one could have survived the blast. Severn’s men tried to do some digging to retrieve possible remains, but they had to stop when the ground gave away beneath them. As far as they’re concerned, the matter is closed.”

  “And the Wind Dancer?”

  “Severn said it had to have been destroyed in the blast.”

  Sadness swept through Caitlin. She felt as if she had lost an old friend, an integral part of her life. “All that knowledge and beauty gone.”

  Alex nodded and then was silent a moment. “Sorry about Ledford. I had to take the shot. I didn’t mean to cheat you.”

  “You didn’t cheat me. It didn’t matter who pulled the trigger as long as he was destroyed. You had debts to settle too.” She smiled. “We did it together.”

  “Yeah, together.” Alex turned and moved toward the bathroom. “I’ll be with you in a few minutes. I have to shower.”

  She nodded. “You’ll feel better.”

  “I couldn’t feel much worse.”

  “I’m afraid you can. Melis is gone.”

  Alex stopped in midstride. “What?”

  “Melis ran away from the home this afternoon. The police are searching the city, but they haven’t found her yet.”

&nb
sp; “Oh.”

  Caitlin frowned. “You don’t seem very upset.”

  Alex nodded. “Oh, I’m upset, but maybe . . .” He trailed off as he entered the bathroom and shut the door. The phone rang a moment after Caitlin heard the shower start and she reached out for it on the nightstand.

  Caitlin was just hanging up the phone when Alex came back into the bedroom ten minutes later. He looked at her inquiringly. “About Melis?”

  “That was Chelsea to say they still haven’t found her.”

  Alex came toward the bed. “Istanbul is a big city.”

  “For God’s sake, I know it’s a big—” Caitlin broke off as she realized how sharp she sounded. “Sorry. I’m upset.”

  “About Melis?”

  “About everything,” she said. “But yes, about Melis. I can’t do anything about the rest of this hellishness, but Melis . . . I want . . .” She looked up at him, trying to blink back the tears that had been hovering. “I want her to be safe. She’s just a child. I don’t want her to be hurt anymore. There’s been too much pain for all of us. I want it to be over.”

  “Yes.” He reached out and gently touched her hair. “Caitlin—” He hesitated. “I don’t think they’re going to find Melis.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “No.” He sat down beside her on the bed and pulled her into his arms. “It’s all variables.”

  “Variables?” She pulled back to look up at him. “What are you talking about?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. “What if Kemal’s alive?”

  Her eyes widened in shock. “Severn said there was no chance.”

  “Severn doesn’t realize how resourceful Kemal can be.”

  “You think he got out?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No one passed the checkpoints.” Caitlin’s gaze searched his face. “But that’s not all, is it?”

  “I found bicycle tracks in the pine thicket. I caught a glimpse of them when Jonathan and I were wandering around, waiting to talk to Severn, and I went back to get a closer look after you left.”

  Excitement stirred within her. “A bicycle!”

  “It’s only a chance.” He held up his hand to stop the eager flow of words. “The ground was so ripped up by the explosion, I couldn’t tell if the tracks were fresh or not.” He frowned. “But it set me to thinking. We know Kemal never intended to go to South America with Ledford and that he meant from the beginning to steal the art treasures for himself. Kemal knew if he put a spoke in Ledford’s works, he’d have to have a safe way out. He told us no one knew those tunnels like he did, and it seems odd he didn’t know about the charges Hans Brucker had set. The Kemal we know would have made it his business to know everything about both Ledford and Brucker’s plans.”

  “So you think he knew about the plastique?”

  “It’s a possibility. But Kemal has no taste for killing. He told me so himself. He’d want the diversion of the explosion at the ruins, but he’d need to bring in another element to foil the assassination attempt.”

  “Us,” Caitlin said. “And he planned to use parts of Ledford’s scheme to disappear from sight with the paintings as his own.”

  “We all knew there were only two cars in the thicket, and Kemal moved the jeep down to the tunnel opening. But suppose Kemal did hide a bicycle in the underbrush. Remember how he was dressed? Brown corduroy trousers, heavy shoes, jacket, that red wool sweater, he could have been taken for any farm boy in the area. I mistook him for a young boy myself when I first met him. He could hide in the hills until the soldiers left the ruins and then cut over the plain toward one of the farms that borders the Aegean.”

  “With a speedboat waiting on the shore,” Caitlin said. “To take him—” She paused. “Where?”

  “Wherever the Argosy is docked,” Alex said. “He wouldn’t overlook distributing generous bribes to the ship officers to allow him to be accepted in Ledford’s stead as master of the ship.”

  “So he sails away with no ties and a cargo of the most priceless art treasures in the world.”

  “Perhaps one tie.”

  “Melis?” Caitlin tried to remember what Chelsea had told her about Melis that morning. It seemed a thousand years since Chelsea had breezed into the room to tell her Alex had gone to the embassy without her. “The matron told Chelsea that Melis was very upset last night, but after Kemal paid her a visit she settled down and seemed content. But Chelsea said Melis was having a problem with nerves again this morning.”

  “Nerves . . . or anticipation?”

  “Kemal told Melis last night he was going to take her with him?”

  “He could have had her picked up by one of his cohorts and driven to wherever the Argosy was docked.” Alex lifted the coverlet, slid into bed beside her, and leaned wearily back on the pillow. “Jesus, how do I know? Turn out the light.”

  She reached over and switched off the light before lying down again. “Did you tell Colonel Severn?”

  “What could I tell him? It’s all supposition.”

  She was silent. “If he did escape, he might have the Wind Dancer.”

  “If he chose to risk being caught with it. How can you hide a statue on a bicycle? It would have been smarter for him to leave it.” He stirred restlessly. “But I don’t have any pieces to put together. All I have is some damn bicycle tracks. It’s all variables and guesswork.”

  “But you want it to be true?”

  He was silent for so long, she thought he wasn’t going to answer, and when he finally did speak, the words were nearly inaudible. “Yes, I do want it to be true.”

  That admission had not been easy for Alex. Neither of them trusted easily, and he had felt the same sense of betrayal as she had regarding Kemal. No doubt existed Kemal was lethal, brilliant, and manipulative, but he was many other things as well. She had a sudden memory of his dark face lit with tenderness as he had spoken to Melis in the garden.

  Caitlin moved into Alex’s arms and nestled her cheek in the hollow of his shoulder. She whispered, “So do I.”

  Alex was gone when Caitlin woke up near noon the next day.

  At first she thought he was merely in the bathroom, until she saw the note on the nightstand.

  Caitlin,

  I’ve left for Nice. After you went to sleep I started thinking and it suddenly occurred to me we could use all this hoopla with the press as a tool to introduce the perfume. But we’ll have to move fast with the arrangements if we’re to take maximum advantage of the situation. Refuse all interviews regarding what happened at Troy and tell Chelsea and Jonathan to do the same. Tell the press, if they want a statement or interview, to be at the Negresco Hotel in Nice on December tenth for the introduction of Vasaro.

  When Severn releases you, come to Nice. I’ll need you.

  Alex

  Caitlin read the letter again, stunned. The past night Alex had been weary, dispirited, and vulnerable, yet sometime during the night the metamorphosis had occurred. He was moving again, thinking, shaping events to suit himself.

  Give them what they want.

  But it seemed the press was going to have to wait two weeks, until December 10, to be given what they wanted.

  And in return Vasaro was going to be given news coverage never before seen in the world of perfume.

  22

  Chelsea caught sight of Caitlin waiting by the elevator and gave her a wave over the heads of the mob of journalists in the lobby of the Negresco. Then she turned and smiled brilliantly while cameras whirred and clicked and questions were fired at her.

  “Is it true you were kidnapped by the Black Medina?”

  “What have you been doing in Paris for the last week?”

  “Have you signed to do a docudrama of the—”

  “No questions.” Chelsea held up her hand to stop the verbal barrage. “You know the deal. You show up at the presentation tonight with cameras rolling and we have a joint press conference directly afterward and talk about whatever you like.”
She started pushing her way through the crowd. “Now I need to get upstairs and kick off my shoes. I’ll see you all tonight.”

  The assistant manager of the hotel, whose startling good looks rivaled those of Tom Cruise, quickly inserted himself between Chelsea and the reporters, clearing a path toward the elevators.

  “Quite a show.”

  Chelsea turned at the familiar voice to see an equally familiar face among the crowd of reporters. “Fancy seeing you here, Tyndale. I thought you’d have more social consciousness than to show up for a philistine extravaganza like this. Aren’t you afraid of being contaminated?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be here?” Tyndale’s big-jowled face remained expressionless. “The bait was irresistible. No one can say you’re not good at what you do, Ms. Benedict.”

  He turned and slipped away into the crowd.

  Chelsea felt a flicker of annoyance mixed with grudging respect for the newsman as she continued toward the elevator. The assistant manager whisked Chelsea and Caitlin into the elevator and closed the glass door, standing guard before it as Caitlin pressed the button.

  Chelsea gave Caitlin a quick hug. “How are you?”

  “Fine. Run off my feet, but fine.”

  “Christ, crystal chandeliers in the elevator?” Chelsea tilted her head to stare up at the ceiling. “Your Negresco Hotel sure knows how to put on the dog.” Her glance traveled to the plush red-velvet-padded walls. “And all those sexy Latin bellboys running around in eighteenth-century knee pants hugging those fantastic asses. Pure decadence.” She sighed contentedly. “I love it.”

  A smile tugged at Caitlin’s lips. “The eighteenth-century livery isn’t intended to stir your libido. The hotel opened in 1912, and it’s supposed to provide a historic atmosphere.”

  “Then I was right the first time,” Chelsea said. “If they wanted to be historically authentic, why dress in eighteenth-century clothes when the hotel was built in the twentieth century?” She shook her head. “Sex makes the world go round. Men’s dress was much sexier in the eighteenth century, and that’s why those bellboys’ world-class buns are encased in knee pants.”