The Secret Agent

by Francine Mathews

  10

  Max sat alone reading the private investigator’s file. It was all there, as Knetsch had said—the dirty laundry of a forty-year-old woman’s life, arranged in clinical order and looking all the more sordid for it. He digested detail after detail: names of husbands, boyfriends, doctors, attorneys; the dates of her detox treatment following the cocaine bust; items in society columns that suggested highly public rampages; car accidents; affairs. The worst time had been seven years earlier, when nothing but wild living seemed to matter, when even her image in newsprint photos looked blurred and indistinct.

  He read in the brutal hope that the file would make it easier for him to sever his connection with Stefani Fogg. He read to justify his trust in Jeff Knetsch—and at the end of the exercise, he had achieved no resolution.

  He’d skied with her, watched her outrun an avalanche and judged her accordingly. Were his instincts so wrong?

  He slapped the file closed. There was nothing in Jeff’s report of the woman who had conquered the financial canyons of New York. Nothing of the brilliant mind and the canny judgment he was certain she possessed. Nothing of the courage that sang in her veins—unless it was the sort of bravado that tells the world to go to hell and lives with the consequences.

  That, he understood.

  “Jeff!” he shouted toward the downstairs passage where the hilarity, now, was at frat-house pitch and the slosh of water set his teeth on edge. “Get the hell out of my house! And take that woman with you!”

  He was used to the pitch of Jean Blanc, the 3000-foot vertical drop between Courchevel 1850 and Le Praz; and at this time of evening it was utterly empty. He crouched low over his tips, turning with the curve of the terrain, at a speed that might have been clocked at sixty-five miles an hour, had anybody cared. All his life he had thrown himself down the sides of mountains; it was the surest antidote to pain he knew. Here he could be precise, powerful, focused, clean. Trust your training, trust your equipment, he heard his old coach say; nothing else matters. Nothing else is real.

  He reached Stefani’s villa at the end of one of the town’s narrow, twisting streets just as most of Le Praz was settling down to dinner.

  The house lights etched oblongs of orange on the snow packed around the entrance. He stared for an instant through the undraped window. She sat by a crackling hearth, a glass of wine in one hand. Unconscious of being observed, her eyes and mouth shadowed in the firelight, she looked older than the flirt he had taken to lunch. It was a hard, watchful face, he realized—a secretive face that she ruthlessly composed for public view.

  He rang the bell.

  She set down the wineglass before glancing toward the window. He knew from her look that she understood he’d been watching her. She did not move for the space of several seconds. As though a sort of menace would enter the house if she let him in. But her head was up, her eyes fixed on the window-He rang the bell again.

  “You’re in time for a drink,” she told him as she opened the door. “I’m serving white tonight. It pairs well with avalanches.”

  He stamped the snow off his boots and snapped open the clasps. “I never drink when I’m skiing.”

  “And you have miles to go before you sleep?”

  “Something like that. I’ll leave these outside.”

  Her dark eyes came up to his, openly assessing. “You’ve been talking to your lawyer.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Oliver told me.”

  “Told you what, exactly?”

  “That you’d ordered Knetsch to poke around my past. The people he hired—the methods they used—were appallingly obvious.”

  Was this mere bravado? A bald attempt to make him believe she was in Krane’s confidence, when in fact she was out for her boss’s neck?

  “What Jeff did, he did on his own.”

  “How comforting.” She held the door wider. “I’d offer you dinner, but I’m the sort of person who keeps nothing in her refrigerator but champagne and caviar.”

  “I didn’t come for dinner.”

  “But you did ski all the way down here for some reason, and it’s freezing. Come inside.”

  He stepped into the room. “Stefani, why did you leave your last job?”

  “Surely Knetsch could find that out.”

  “I want to know if his story’s true.”

  “There are always stories, Max.” She said it quietly. “Jeff has a story—I have a story—but you’ll still have to decide whom to believe. A woman you’ve known for days? Or a friend you’ve had all your life?”

  “You want me to take you on faith, is that it?”

  She shrugged and retrieved her wineglass. “Faith is just a word we use to legitimate gut instinct. I’ve acted on gut for years. A trader lives and dies by it. So does a downhill racer.”

  “Were you fired for insider trading?”

  “Yes.” She looked amused. “See what I mean? You’re not much more advanced in your decision.”

  They eyed each other wordlessly. What impulse urged her to dodge the truth? He had the background report on his kitchen table. Her sole hope lay in pleading her case—persuading him to trust. Instead, she’d flipped him off.

  Did she care so little?

  Or too much?

  She leaned back against her sofa, one cognac-colored boot propped on the table. Her legs were sheathed in velvet, and every honed muscle was outlined against the firelight.

  “You should have asked a different question, you know. Something like: ‘Stefani, did you use privileged information to buy and sell specific shares? And did you and your fund-holders benefit from that information?’ To which I could have answered: No.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Why is it so difficult to get the simple truth?”

  “You want the truth about your grandfather. The truth about me. The truth, even, about your friend Knetsch. Truth is, Max, that the truth is what we make it.” Her eyes never left his face, but her expression was too indolent, too careless of the situation. Her sweater was made of some soft, caressing stuff the color of spilled wine and he wanted, suddenly, to take her shoulders in his hands and shake her.

  “Then you can leave Courchevel tomorrow.” He turned for the door.

  “I hear some pretty interesting stories about you,” she said thoughtfully to his back. “There’s Yvette Margolan, for instance, and her story of Madame Renaudie—a pretty woman, from her picture. And then there’s the story of the daughter, Sabine, who’s pining for you and going down on the entire Austrian Ski Team. The whole thing sounds too much like a remake of The Graduate for my taste, but I’m not one to judge.”

  “No,” Max said bitterly, “having failed twice at marriage and three times at motherhood.”

  He had opened the door and nearly stepped into the night when he caught sight of her face. She had gone dead white, her eyes blazing as though he had slapped her.

  “You bastard,” she said through her teeth. “What do you know about me?”

  The simple truth.

  Only the truth is never simple.

  Faith is a word we use to legitimate gut instinct, she’d said. But was it gut, this time—or something else?

  He walked back across the room, his legs stiff and ungainly as though still encased in ski boots; and when he stood over her, all the doubt and indecision and passion in his face, she reached up with both hands and pulled his mouth down to hers.

  Violence in the parted lips, the taste of wine elusive on the tongue. Violence and challenge and rage at the stupidity of men—himself in particular—who should know better than to slam her for the sins of youth. Her fingers tore at his hair, at once claiming and fighting him, and he remembered what he’d said to her, one day on the lift.

  … pursue a man whose strength matches yours. An equal. What might happen then?

  And she’d replied: A fight to the death.

  He felt the force of desire like a physical blow, and sank down between her knees—Max Roderick, who needed and wanted nobo
dy very much. The tangle of emotion he’d kept at bay since outpacing the avalanche—the adrenal rush of risk, the fury of a threatened animal—torched like a flame inside him. A fight to the death. He cupped her face and forced her chin upward, his mouth at the hollow of her throat.

  “God damn you, Max,” she breathed. “God damn you.”

  She arched away from him, as though she would claw her way to freedom if she could.

  “Stop fighting me.”

  “I can’t. If I give way to you—”

  I’ll have nothing left? Was that the end of her desperate sentence? He slid both hands under the cashmere sweater and in one impatient movement pulled it over her head.

  “It’s always about winning, for you,” she said. “Dominance.”

  “No, it’s not. Most of the time, my darling, it’s about fighting off fear.”

  He stared into eyes dark with comprehension—with the naked bruising of lost years—and his breath was suddenly shallow. “I don’t want to be alone any longer.”

  “Alone’s the only place I feel safe.”

  “You’re too brave to settle for that. Safety’s not worth a damn.”

  She closed her eyes, an expression of pain on her face.

  “You know why I want the house on the khlong— what it means to me. The past regained. The wrongs set right. I want you in the same way. We need to take our happiness. I can’t envision the future without you in it.”

  “Max—”

  “You said something the first day we met. A challenge before you jumped. Say it again.”

  She lowered herself until her skin was flush with his, melting in the firelight.

  “Say it again, Stefani.”

  Her mouth was against his ear, the words so faint he might have imagined them. “Follow me, Max. Follow me—”

  Much later, when she dreamed again, it was of a house made entirely of snow, the windows blank and the door sealed shut. She was fighting to get out.

  11

  She slipped away from Max early the next morning and sat out alone on the freezing terrace, hoping the icy air and fathomless quiet would slap some sense into her skull.

  The world at this hour was monochrome: black knives of fir thrust deep into the sky, white snow lapping at their roots. When the first sun slid through the woods, jumping from tree to tree like a spreading flame, the landscape surged into color.

  A pad of paper and a felt-tip pen sat on the table before her. On the pad she’d written: You’ve been a very bad girl. Whatever will Oliver say?

  It was not, perhaps, the sort of thing she ought to tell her boss—that she’d slept with a client—but then again, it was precisely the sort of outcome Oliver Krane might have planned. What had he said to her, a few weeks before? You want to strap on crampons and climb all over him, Stef. Admit it.

  Oliver had seen more than she had, from the moment he’d sent her Ski magazine. She felt a sudden and hot resentment toward him for throwing her into Max Roderick’s lap. Then anger gave way to the desire to run.

  It won’t last, she wrote as the sun fired the fir trees. A hell of a good time, a few sleepless nights, and then—

  The memory of his mouth on the flesh of her inner thigh. His voice in her ear. The surging power of a body honed by years of punishing will. Max in the night was a kind of demon—controlling, demanding, impossible to deny. Even if she’d wanted to.

  She dropped her pen, overcome by a wave of feeling so sharp and unexpected it was painful. It gathered her up in its velvet claws, tumbled her to the ground; she was gasping for air—

  The avalanche.

  What was it about Max she found so compelling?

  The distance he kept from every living being—or the way he invited her suddenly into his soul? The doubts she still kept about his motives—or the absolute certainty she felt in his touch?

  What did he find in her to love? She was cynical, tough, solitary, afraid. He challenged her to take herself as seriously as he did. If she accepted that challenge, she would get badly mauled. She had never allowed herself to feel deeply without facing significant pain.

  Maybe I should just head back to New York right now.

  She had thought to find a simpler man when she flew into Courchevel: one who’d liked speed and danger as a kid and had never grown up. But she understood, now, that Max had grown up way too soon. Death had snatched everyone he’d loved, and so all trust in love had deserted him. Was he asking her to save him? Did she want that burden?

  He tells me he can’t live alone anymore, she wrote on her sheet of paper, but is he capable of anything else? He’ll use his detachment—his perfect control—to learn the truth about the past. Will he use it against me, if I get too close?

  Was his lovemaking just a game, as deliberate as every other contest in his life? Had he studied her weaknesses—gauged her doubts—and outplayed her in the most brilliant way possible? Did he think he could win her absolute loyalty, and thus divide her from Oliver Krane? And would he drop her in the snow once he had what he really wanted—his Thai house, the key to his past?

  At the bottom of the page she wrote in slashing script: Remember: Not even Oliver is sure who Max really is. Trust nobody but yourself.

  “Coffee?”

  She lifted her head and saw him framed in the villa’s doorway. A sleek and compelling animal, even in repose. Eyes the color of moss. The hawkish molding of brow bone and temple, the willful set of the mouth. Had she been a fool or a child she would have worshipped him. Instead, she recognized him as the enemy.

  “I’d love some.”

  His eyes lingered on the bright mask of her face. “Don’t worry. I won’t take over your house.”

  “It’s not mine. I’m only using it for a while.”

  He ignored the implied insult and handed her a mug.

  She drank deeply, hoping the coffee would steady her. He leaned on the deck railing and stared out at the firs. “It’s a good house, borrowed or not.”

  With effort, she said, “I think I’d like to be alone today.”

  “I’m going to hit the backcountry again. While there’s still powder.”

  “One avalanche wasn’t enough?”

  The corners of his mouth lifted. “As you said: It’s a hell of a ride.”

  “Jesus, you’re bad for me. You reinforce every reckless impulse I’ve ever had.”

  “You like danger.” Gently, he took the mug from her hands and set it on the table. Traced the neck of her terrycloth robe with his fingers.

  “I like peace and quiet. I like to be alone.”

  “Liar.”

  The cocaine belonged to Dennis, she had told him impatiently somewhere around three A.M., “who was a complete prick and a fuck-off and a guy who could disappear for a week every time I sent him out to buy milk. He left a little bag of powder in the glove compartment of my Audi and the cop who stopped me for speeding couldn’t help but see it. Dennis should have been killed by the Colombians years ago and saved us all grief. I married him in my party phase—”

  “Just a phase?” Max quipped dryly.

  “—and he took me for everything I was worth. He lied about his job, he defaulted on his taxes, he screwed around with anything in a skirt, and twenty-six months after our wedding left me holding the bag he’d stuffed with his credit card receipts while he emigrated to Brazil. I spent five weeks in rehab I didn’t need, sharing the denial I didn’t feel. My wages were garnisheed by the IRS for three years, but I never declared personal bankruptcy.”

  Max finished the pâté she’d fed him in lieu of dinner and asked, “What about Tad?”

  “Tad,” she’d told him steadily, “was a mergers-and-acquisition guy who was worth roughly the yearly budget of the Three Valleys put together. He never moved without his cell phone, he was on call twenty-four/seven, he had one great passion in life and he respected my brains. I thought after Dennis, he’d give me stability.”

  They were camping in the middle of the living room floor, foo
d and wine spread out around them, the fire nothing but a mass of embers. Max stroked her hair from her cheek. “And?”

  “Tad had a different habit. When the pressure got to him—and it got to him every three or four days—he liked to practice kick-boxing on his wife.”

  The fingers curled convulsively at her temple and then relaxed—a movement so faint she might have imagined it.

  “Max, I’m a lousy judge of character.”

  “Go with your instincts, perfect your technique.”

  The skier’s mantra, the trader’s ethic. Sometimes his comprehension of her thoughts was unnerving.

  The miscarriages, he’d said somewhere near dawn. Was Dennis responsible for those? Or Tad?

  She had pretended to be asleep. She never spoke of the lost children to anyone.

  “Oliver,” she said into the telephone receiver two hours later, “I’m going to Bangkok with Max the day after tomorrow.”

  “Are you indeed, Hazel my girl? And are you booking two rooms at the Oriental? Or one?”

  “I always have my own room, Oliver,” she replied succinctly, “in case I need to sleep.”

  “Bravo, ducks. And the sniper on the mountaintop?”

  “—Could be anyone who learned where we skied from a woman grocer in Le Praz,” she murmured with a glance at Renaudie’s gray head across the pub. “The field is no longer narrow. Did you receive my fax yesterday?”

  “And read it,” Oliver said. “I have one thing only to tell you: Friend Max sends Claudine Renaudie a tidy sum of five thousand francs each month, paid into an account in Paris. Is it from charity? Guilt? Or simply to keep her quiet?”

  A chill curled along Stefani’s spine. “Paying her to stay away, you mean? But why, Oliver?”

  “No idea. Time may tell. Although time has a way of exploding our best prospects: until a few hours ago, Mr. Knetsch was emerging nicely as a villain.”