“Wouldn’t it be nice to believe that?” Ty said.
“You’re a goddamned booster rocket, that’s what you are.”
“You made the film. The bows belong to you.”
“So tonight should be pretty swell.”
“By the sound of it,” Ty agreed. “I’ve just been watching boats come and go, wondering which one it might be.”
“‘None’ is the answer. Surpass is still in Monte Carlo. They’ll come this way after lunch.”
“Who did you say it belonged to?”
“Ian Santal.”
“I’ve heard that name. I can’t remember where.”
“Man of mystery! Started out as an academic of some sort, then became, like, the world’s biggest broker or something. I don’t know of what. The important thing is that he’s an old friend of Sid Thrall’s. You know Sid.”
“Who doesn’t?” Ty asked. “He owns the studio. Of course I do—not well, but I know him.”
“Actually, he used to own it. Now he owns a lot of shares in the company that bought it, but you’re right, he still has his job. Sid’s the reason we’ve been asked. He likes to shine in reflected glory. He’ll want to show you off to his glamorous friend. Santal’s goddaughter, who’s English, is a jewelry designer in Rome and pretty good, I hear. The party’s for her, to celebrate her new collection. So we can have a look at that and a longer one around the boat, which should be more interesting. I’ve never been on a three-hundred-sixty-foot yacht before, have you?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Anyway, I’ve got to get going. I have two interviews, a lunch, and meetings at two and four. I’ll show up at your hotel at six, and we’ll go on to the launch together.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Ty said. “Where are you now?”
“At the Carlton,” Greg answered. “Half an hour, three-quarters at most, away.”
“Call me if you need me.”
“Be careful! It’s always possible I will.”
For a moment after he hung up, Ty continued to stare at the sea. He’d first seen the Med as a soldier. Even by stealth, in the twilight-to-dawn regimen of a commando, it had kidnapped his imagination. He’d always been attentive to history, and the lure of a sea that washed upon so many storied shores had immediately intoxicated him.
Ty’s accommodation, befitting his visibility, was a seaside hut of a villa off a private path just east of the grande allée that ascended to the magnificent Napoleon III hotel at the summit of the hill. Polynesian in inspiration, compact yet luxurious, the incongruous villa was a monument to 1950s chic. Returning to it, Ty thought it seemed the sort of place Sean Connery or Cary Grant might have put up. He drew a deep breath of coastal air that was also fragrant with the surrounding pine and roses. For the moment he slipped his BlackBerry into the side pocket of his Vilbrequin swim trunks that featured an almost comical pattern of banana bunches against a powder and steel blue background. The last woman he’d ever loved had bought them for him on Nantucket. In his bathroom he found the waterproof sunscreen he’d come for and, after applying it, placed his wallet, signet ring and the BlackBerry beside his other valuables in the portable safe at the back of the closet. For the safe’s combination, he had, as usual, chosen the unforgettable last four digits of his U.S. Army serial number.
Returning smiles without breaking stride, he made his way across the terrace of chaise longues that were populated this week by movie-industry executives and ingenues, to the Eden Roc pavilion. Just before the changing rooms and lunch café, he turned left and, stepping up his pace, descended the steep staircase that had been cut into the rock. Beside him, the infinity pool beckoned, and he noticed that the name of the magazine that had sponsored last night’s party had already been erased from its floor. When he reached its level, however, Ty chose instead the high diving board that rose over the Med just to his right. He waited behind a trio of ten-year-olds intent on outdoing one another’s cannonballs, then, after a perfect half gainer and another minute or so of the Australian crawl, reached a pontoon from which he could regard the hotel and Cap d’Antibes in the distance, far enough away not to be recognized without binoculars. He wished he could see his own life and future as lucidly. The business had changed. What business hadn’t? He was grateful to have cleared its hurdles when he had, even as he recognized that success was never a passive state for long. One rose or fell. Stars formed or died. Never mind, he told himself; there would be time enough for careful thought once he had a chance to rest. He was sure he’d made the correct decision not to read any of the scripts his agent had been sending on to him, for he was not ready to commit to a new role now. Going into character required reserves of energy and emotion that, after successive films, he had depleted. Although he had no doubt of his ability to replenish both, in the meantime the only part he wished to play was that of Ty Hunter getting on with real life.
Triangulating from landmarks on shore, he drew in his mind a straight line from the bobbing pontoon to the immaculate white house that stood, beyond a tended slope of grass, in isolation on the far point. Slowly, he began to swim this line, to and fro in more-or-less Olympic laps, changing his style with each turn. With his last stroke, which was as forceful as his first, his fingers found the brass hold on the side of the pontoon, and he released himself to its protection, buoyed on a soothing cushion of waves as he regathered his strength. Then he heard voices—two at least, perhaps more. They were feminine voices whose rhythm was familiar but whose language foreign. Listening intently, he decided it must be Russian, which was not a tongue he spoke or understood. Keeping his head just above the surface of the sea, he eventually caught sight of three young women in similarly slinky one-piece bathing suits. All were blond, long-legged, with high, full chests. At first he wondered if they were sisters but then, detecting a lack of sufficient intimacy in their manner, guessed not. Two of the women appeared to be engaged in a sharp exchange. When the third spoke, it was in English, with a pronounced accent but an intonation that suggested she had learned the language from an American. Her voice was higher than the others’, nasal and shrill as if something ugly had been trapped inside a beautiful shell from which it was determined to force its way out. She said, “I can’t wait to see it. I’m told he has the longest one in the world.”
“Once upon a time perhaps,” replied the woman farthest from her, “but no longer. Actually, it’s not even in the top ten anymore. Believe me, I’ve seen them all.”
“We believe you,” replied the woman in the middle. “How long would you say it was, then?”
“Not even four hundred feet. The number three hundred sixty sticks in my mind for some reason, but I’m not sure why.”
“Perhaps from geometry,” said the woman who had switched the conversation into English. “Anyway, what does it matter? The longer the boat, the shorter the owner’s equipment. That’s what they say, isn’t it?”
“As a general rule, it’s true,” one of the women replied.
“Do you know him?”
“Santal? Our paths have crossed, not professionally. Why do you ask?”
“I hear he is very generous.”
“With things, perhaps, but not with his emotions.”
“There’s a girl in Saint-Tropez he gave a pair of earrings from Guardi in Rome. Rubies and marquise-cut diamonds. I happen to know that she had them appraised in Monaco at twenty thousand euros. Not bad! Of course, he paid her fee as well.”
“Word is he wasn’t always so generous. But who’s to say? The man’s a sphinx, simple as that. There has to be more there than meets the eye. Why else would he be thick as thieves with Philip Frost?”
“I know who you mean,” put in the girl who appeared to be the youngest. “He’s very dishy.”
“Tell me that after you’ve fucked him.”
“I wouldn’t have tho
ught he had to pay for it.”
“Men pay for different things. Surely you’ve learned that by now. Some—old-timers like Ian Santal, for example—pay for intimacy, to stay in the game. With Philip’s type it’s just the opposite. What they want is distance and power. Oh, they’ll pay a premium price, that’s true, but they’ll make you grovel for your money. Your very ‘dishy’ Mr. Frost, for example, throws out his wad of notes and makes his girls get down on all fours, like cats or dogs, just to collect them. I’ll grant you he has a pleasant exterior, all very correct. He’s a handsome man, no doubt very professional in bed. But he has ice in his veins, darling, not blood. And Santal dotes on him. Draw your own conclusions.”
Ty smiled to himself. He had no experience of whores and had never overheard their chatter. Amusing and instructive as it was, however, he decided that it would be imprudent—indeed, very likely injurious to his carefully wrought image—to linger. And so he submerged his face and dove away from the pontoon, swimming far enough underwater that by the time he surfaced he and its present inhabitants could not be captured in the same camera shot.
Cliffside at the eastern end of the hotel’s waterfront, an outdoor gym of a sort had been established; a rope ladder descended toward the sea, a trapeze and circus hoops swung above it. Ty made his way to the bottom rung of the ladder, then ascended quickly and jogged overland toward his villa. The hotel phone was ringing when he unlocked the door.
“Hello,” he answered.
“It’s me again,” Greg Logan said. “Where were you? I tried your cell twice and got the same recording.”
“In the sea,” Ty said, “swimming. What’s up?”
“Slight change of plan: Apparently traffic is at a standstill. I’m in the lobby of the Carlton. It’s all anyone’s been talking about for the last half hour.”
“Is there an accident?”
“Don’t really know. It may be there are just too many people. Anyway, pas de problème, really, as Sid Thrall has engaged a tender. So can we meet on Santal’s boat instead?”
“We can, providing someone tells me how to get there.”
“Surpass’s tender will be shuttling guests from Antibes. That much I do know. I’ll find out more and text you the exact time and directions to the pickup point.”
“I’m sure the concierge will know the latter.”
“Why would he?”
“There are other people going from this hotel.”
“Well, why not?” Greg Logan said. “But how do you know? I thought you’d been keeping to yourself.”
“I have,” Ty said.
“Did a little bird tell you?”
“A couple of them,” Ty told him.
Chapter Six
At a quarter past six, on the advice of the hotel’s enthusiastic young concierge, Ty took a car not directly to the southernmost quay, from which Surpass’s tender was to depart thirty minutes later but into the village of Antibes itself, where he strolled the narrow, cobbled main street as many of its shops were closing. With his baseball cap and Ray-Ban Wayfarers on and his pace quick, he was not recognized. He reached a café just short of the harborside parking area. There he took one of the bent-wire chairs at a round table for two near the front. The café’s blue shutters had been folded back, and the salt air and the scent of ripe cheese from the fromagerie across the street were delicious. Lingering over a citron pressé, Ty watched the curious parade of locals and tourists, of French and North Africans, Americans, Russians and more exotic foreign nationals that passed before him. Because no one expected to see him, no one appeared to, which was by now a familiar dynamic as well as one for which he was thankful. Of all the things that had marked his life before he’d become famous, he missed anonymity the most. Not always, but often, certainly now. He missed youth, too, but no man could hold on to that very long. Anonymity was different. You had to give it away, and once you had, the deal could not be undone until time had faded the public’s memory of you or you were no longer, in the flesh, the man the camera had once captured.
He kept an eye on his watch and with ten minutes to spare paid the bill and made his way toward the tender, past the berths of a dozen mega-yachts, each with security men stationed at its stern. Several had welcome mats bearing their ship’s name spread out at the edge of the dock, but there was more suspicion than welcome in these sentries’ gazes as he passed. To Ty’s right, beyond the old stone harbor fortification, the sea was flecked with gold dust as the sun declined toward the Atlantic. At anchor in the distance lay Surpass, its cobalt hull and white bulwarks commanding deference.
To Ty’s surprise there was no one else waiting on the pebbled concrete landing, nor was any tender in sight at a quarter to seven, the time he’d been assured by Greg’s text message that it would depart. He had, he realized, half-expected the prostitutes from the pontoon, with a paunchy, hirsute, balding producer or two in their wake. At the Vanity Fair party, even on lounges beside the pool a few hours earlier, there had been any number of stars and moguls, not to mention eager starlets, who might conceivably reappear, champagne in hand, at a party aboard one of the world’s most formidable motor yachts. But where were they? They couldn’t all be coming directly from Cannes. Beyond the seawall only a few boats were in motion, all too large to function as tenders. Ty studied each one in the distance. Only the longest of them, a streamlined cigarette, appeared headed toward the quay, but it was far way. It was moving fast, though, and he trained his eye on it as it sped across the harbor like a sword upon the water at an incautious, no doubt unlawful rate of speed.
A few minutes later, its captain shut down its engines, and thereafter it seemed to glide alongside the stepped-down landing as if propelled by wind and current alone. The boat was at least fifty feet in length, with a sleek, low cabin beneath its bulletlike bow and a large aft deck. Its captain managed it with single-handed artfulness, looping but one stern line over a weathered cleat to hold it momentarily in place.
“Mr. Hunter?” the captain inquired in a voice—soft, feminine and English—Ty had not anticipated. “Of course you are. Will you come aboard, please?”
No sooner had Ty found his footing in the cockpit than the captain pulled in the line she had so deftly thrown, restarted the high-performance engines, and headed, at a less furious clip, for open water.
“I’m confused,” Ty told her a few seconds later, as he approached the helm. For a craft of its size and power, this one was unnaturally quiet.
The captain turned toward him, a glint in her wide but wily green eyes. “By this boat,” she asked, “by me, or by the fact that there aren’t any other people?”
“All three, but I suppose it might be simplest to start with the last.”
“Everyone else was asked for seven-thirty. Once we’re aboard Surpass, one of the crew will take this boat back to the landing and collect them.”
“One of the crew?” Ty inquired. “The way you say that—”
“Rather than me, though I could be one of them. I’ve certainly had enough experience.”
“If you’re not one of the crew, who are you?”
“Isabella Cavill,” she said as she extended her hand. “In theory, the party you’re on your way to is being given for me.” She removed the captain’s cap she’d been wearing, letting her long, auburn hair fall from it.
“In theory?” Ty repeated, memorizing the scene.
“It’s hardly a secret that my godfather is a man of many simultaneous motives.”
“Your godfather is Ian Santal?”
“He is,” she said. The edges of her hair were now wet with sea spray, and she shook her head, lifting her face to the light.
“You’re the jewelry designer,” Ty inquired, “for Guardi, in Rome?”
“You’ve heard of it.”
“Who hasn’t?”
�
��You’d be surprised. Never mind, Mr. Hunter, you seem very well informed.”
“I’m the curious type.” Ty smiled. “Anyway, Miss Cavill, I look forward to seeing your collection.”
“I look forward to showing it to you.”
“Is that why I’ve been invited ahead of the others? So that you can give me an advance preview?”
“Hardly! You’re the first because I’m a fan and I wanted to meet you. If I’d waited, there was always a chance I wouldn’t. You know how people are at parties, especially when there’s a film star and the festival is on.”
“To tell you the truth, I’m still getting used to it.”
“Good for you,” Isabella said. “Now, tell me something else I’ve been wondering about. In The Boy Who Understood Women—”
“Did I actually lay down my life or was I simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“You’ve been asked the question before?”
“Variations of it,” Ty said. “The director wanted people to decide for themselves.”
“I don’t think you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Something tells me you wouldn’t be capable of that.”
“You’d be mistaken. I’ve been there more than once.”
“When you gave your life for that girl’s, half the world fell in love with you. You must know that.”
“From the cinema to the parking lot,” Ty said. “A very short-lived, one-sided affair.”
“Why are you alone?”
Her question startled him. He could not decide if it was innocent or blunt. He said, “My mother would say I’m particular.”
“You’re Ty Hunter. Surely a man like you can afford to be very particular.”
Ty hesitated. “Can I?”
“I’m sorry,” Isabella said. “I’m out of order.”
“Don’t let it worry you.”
Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen : A Novel (9781101565766) Page 7
