Wilbur Smith - C08 Golden Fox

by C08 Golden Fox(Lit)

  "We are making paella, not Irish stew.' Adra held her ground, and then the telephone rang and Isabella dropped the spoon with a clatter and knocked over the chair in the hall in her haste to reach it.

  "Ramsey darling, I was so worried. I missed your call." 'I'm sorry, Bella.' The rich dark tones of his voice soothed her, so her own voice became a purr.

  "Do you still love me?" 'Come to Paris, and I will prove it to you." "When?" 'Now. I have made a reservation for you on the Air France flight at eleven o'clock. They are holding your ticket at the airport. You'll be here by two o'clock." 'Where will I meet you?" 'At the Plaza Athdnee. We have a suite.' 'You spoil me, Ramsey darling." 'No less than you deserve." She left the flat immediately. However, the Air France take-off was delayed by forty minutes. In Paris the baggage-handlers were working to rule, so she stood fuming and fretting at the baggage-carousel for almost an hour before her overnight case made its leisurely appearance. It was after five o'clock in the evening before her taxi pulled up in the Avenue Montaigne before the elegant facade of the Plaza Athen&e with its scarlet awnings.

  She half-expected Ramsey to be waiting for her in the marbled and mirrored foyer and looked about eagerly as she came in through the revolving glass doors. He was not there. She paid no heed to the gaunt figure who sat in one of the gilt and brocade armchairs opposite the reception7desk. The man lifted his head of lank white hair and for a moment regarded her with strangely lifeless tar-black eyes. Then he coughed harshly and returned his attention to the newspaper he was reading.

  Isabella crossed quickly and expectantly to the concierge's counter.

  "You have a guest, the Marques de Santiago y Machado. I am his wife." 'A moment, madame.' The uniformed concierge consulted the guest-list, and then shook his head and frowned as he started again at the head of the list.

  "I'm sorry, Marquesa. The Marquds is not staying with us at the moment." "Perhaps he has registered as Monsieur Machado." 'I'm afraid not. We have nobody of that name." Isabella looked confused. 'I don't understand. I spoke to him this morning." 'I will make further enquiry." The concierge left her for a moment to consult the booking-clerk, and returned almost immediately. 'Your husband is not with us, and there is no reservation for him." 'He must have been delayed.' Isabella tried to look unconcerned. 'Do you have a room for me?"

  "The hotel is fully booked.' The concierge spread his hands apologetically.

  "It's spring, you understand. I am desolated, Marquesa. Paris is overflowing." 'He must be coming,' Isabella insisted brightly. 'Do you mind if I wait for my husband in the gallery?" 'Of course not, Marquesa. The waiter will bring you coffee and whatever refreshment you wish. The porter will guard your baggage in his store." As she moved towards the long gallery, which at the cocktail hour was the fashionable meeting-place for 'le tout Paris', the white-haired gentleman rose from his armchair. He moved stiffly with the gait of a frail and sick old man, but Isabella in her consternation did not even glance in his direction. Cicero went out into the street, and the doorman hailed a taxi for him and it dropped him in rue Grenelle. He walked the last block to the Soviet embassy, and the guard at the night-desk recognized him as he approached.

  From the office of the military attachd on the second floor, Joe Cicero phoned a number in Mdlaga.

  "The woman is waiting at the hotel,' he whispered huskily. 'She cannot return before noon tomorrow. You may proceed as planned." A little before seven o'clock, the concierge came and found Isabella in the gallery.

  "There has been a cancellation, Marquesa. We have a room for you now. I have already sent your baggage up." She could have kissed him, but instead tipped him a hundred francs.

  From the room, she rang the flat in Mdlaga. She hoped that Ramsey might have left a message with Adra, now that the arrangements had so obviously gone awry. Although she let the telephone ring for a counted one hundred peals, there was no reply. That truly alarmed her. Adra should have been there; the telephone was in the hallway just outside her bedroom door. Isabella telephoned again twice more during the night, each time without success.

  "The telephone is out of order,' she told herself with conviction, but she hardly slept at all.

  As soon as the airline reservations office opened, she booked a flight back to Mdlaga, and despite her distress she managed to sleep for an hour during the journey. It was after midday when they landed at MAlaga airport.

  The taxi dropped her at the front door of the apartmentblock, and she dragged her bag to their front door. With fingers that shook with fatigue and agitation she finally got the key into the lock.

  The apartment was strangely silent, and her voice rang through the open doorway.

  "Adra, I'm back. Where are you?" She glanced into the kitchen as she hurried to Adra's room. The room was empty, and she started up the stairs at a run, and then stopped abruptly at the door to her bedroom. It was wide open.

  Nicky's cot still stood in the alcove opposite the window. It was stripped of sheets and pillows and blankets, that exquisite layette that Michael had sent her from home. The table beside the cot, on which had stood Nicky's platoon of soft toys, the teddies and bunnies and Disney creatures which she had showered on him, was bare.

  She stepped to the terrace door and glanced out. His pram was gone.

  "Adra!' she cried, and heard the high thin tone of panic in her own voice.

  "Where are you?" She raced through the other rooms. 'Nicky! My babyl Oh God, please. Where have you taken Nicky?" She found herself back in the main bedroom beside his empty cot.

  "I don't understand,' she whispered. 'What has happened?" On a sudden impulse, she whirled and jerked open the drawers of Nicky's bureau. They were all empty. The nappies and vests and jackets were all of them gone.

  "The hospital.' Her voice was a sob. 'Something has happened to my baby!" She rushed down the stairs and seized the telephone and then froze as she saw the envelope taped to the cradle of the instrument.

  She dropped the telephone receiver and ripped open the envelope. Her hands shook so that she could barely read the words on the single sheet of note paper However, she recognized Ramsey's handwriting instantly and felt a treacherous rush of relief, which evaporated swiftly as she read the words:

  Nicholas is with me. He is safe for the time being. If you wish to see him again, you must follow these instructions exactly. Do not speak to anybody in Mdlaga. I repeat do not speak to anybody. Leave the flat immediately and return to London. You will be contacted at Cadogan Square. Tell nobody what has happened, not even your brother Michael. Follow these instructions implicitly. Your disobedience will have dire consequences for Nicky. You may never see him again. Destroy this note.

  Her legs went soft and boneless under her, and she sank down against the wall and sat on the tiled floor with them sprawled out loosely in front of her as though they were disjointed at the hips. She read the note again, and then again, but it didn't make sense.

  "My baby,' she whispered. 'My little Nicky.' And then she read the terrible words aloud. ' "Your disobedience will have dire consequences for Nicky.

  You may never see him again." I She let the hand holding the note drop into her lap and she stared at the wall opposite. She felt as though the world and her entire existence had been swept away. It left her as blank and meaningless as that empty expanse of brickwork in front of her.

  She did not know how long she sat there, but at last with a supreme effort she roused herself. Using the wall as a support, she regained her feet.

  Once more, she climbed the stairs to their bedroom and went directly to Ramsey's cupboard. She threw the doors open, and found that it also 152 was empty. Even the coat-hangers were gone. She moved listlessly to his chest of drawers, and opened each empty drawer. Ramsey had left nothing.

  She wandered back to Nicky's alcove, moving like the survivor of a bomb blast, dazed and unco-ordinated, and knelt beside the empty cot.

  "My baby,' she whispered. 'What have they done with you?" Then she saw that somethin
g had slipped down between the baby mattress and the wooden bars of the cot. She eased it free, and held it in both hands.

  Kneeling at the cot as though it were the high altar, she held the sacrament in her hands. It was one of Nicky's bootees, a scrap of soft knitted wool with a blue satin ribbon as the drawstring for his chubby pink ankle. She lifted it to her face and inhaled the perfumed baby-smell of her son.

  Only then she began to weep. She wept with a bitter ferocity that drained her strength and left her exhausted. By that time, the terrace and the bedroom were filled with the shades of evening and she had only the strength left to crawl to the double bed and curl up on it. As she fell asleep she held the woollen bootee pressed to her cheek.

  It was still dark when she awoke. She lay for long seconds with the dark sense of doom overpowering her, uncertain of its origin or cause. Then suddenly it all came back to her and she struggled upright and looked about her with horror.

  Ramsey's note lay on the table beside the bed. She took it up and reread it, still trying to make sense of it.

  "Ramsey my darling, why are you doing this to us?' she whispered. Then, obedient to his instructions, she carried the note to the bathroom and standing over the toilet-bowl tore it into tiny scraps. She dropped these into the bowl and flushed them away. She knew that every word would be graven on her mind for ever; she had no need nor wish to conserve that dreadful sheet of paper.

  She showered and dressed and made herself a slice of toast and a pot of coffee. They were without taste. Her mouth felt numb as though it had been scalded with boiling water.

  Then she set herself to search the apartment thoroughly. She began in Adra's room. There was no trace left of Adra Olivares, not a shred of clothing, not a pot or a tube of ointment or cosmetics in her bathroom, not even a single hair from her head on the pillow of her bed.

  Then she went over the living-room and kitchen; again there was nothing, except the hired furniture and crockery and the remains of food in the refrigerator.

  She went up to the bedroom. There was a small wallsafe in the back of Ramsey's cupboard, but the steel door was ajar and all the documents were missing. Nicky's birth certificate and adoption papers were gone with them.

  She sat down on the bed and tried to think clearly, attempting desperately to find a reason for this madness. She went round and round, trying to examine it from every possible angle.

  She was driven remorselessly to a single conclusion. Ramsey was in deep trouble. It was some horror from his clandestine life which had overtaken them. She knew that under extreme duress he had been forced to leave with Nicky. She understood that she must do everything in her power to help them, Ramsey and Nicky, the two most important elements in her life. She knew that she must do as he ordered her. Their safety and possibly their lives depended upon it. Yet she could not leave it like that. She had to learn more; any morsel of knowledge might be of value.

  She left the apartment and went downstairs. There was a small bakery shop across the street, an dover the months Isabella had become friendly with the baker's wife. The woman was opening the shutters over the shop window as -Isabella hurried across the road.

  "Yes,' the baker's wife told her, 'after you left on Thursday, Adra went out with Nicholas in the pram. They went down towards the beach and returned just before I closed the shop. I saw them go up to your apartment, but I didn't see them again, not after that." Isabella went up the street, stopping to question all the tradespeople whose businesses were within sight of the apartment-block. Some of them had seen Adra and Nicky return on Thursday evening, but not one of them had seen them again since then. Her last resort was the shoe shine urchin on the comer of the park. Ramsey always allowed the lad to polish his shoes an dover-tipped him exorbitantly. He was one of Isabella's favourites on the street.

  "Si, sehora,' he grinned at Isabella, as he squatted over his box. 'On Thursday night I work late, because of the cinema and the arcade. At ten o'clock I see the ma ques. He came in a big black car with two men. They park in the street and go upstairs." 'What did the other men look like, chico? Do you know them? Had you see them before?" 'Never. They two tough hambres - policemen, I think. Much trouble. I don't like police. They all go upstairs, and then soon they come down. They all carry suitcases, big suitcases. Adra come with them. She carry baby Nico; they get into the car, all of them, and they drive away. That is all. I don't see them again." The two tough hombres confirmed what Isabella had suspected: that Ramsey was acting under coercion. She realized that the only source of action open to her was to follow the instruction that Ramsey had given her in the note. She went back to the apartment and began to pack up. Her redundant maternity clothes she left lying on the bedroom floor, and her good clothes filled only two cases.

  When she came to the drawer that contained her cosmetics she found that the fat album of snapshots that she had accumulated since Nicky's birth was missing, together with the envelopes of negatives. It came as a shock to realize that she had no record of her baby, no photograph or souvenir, apart from the single woollen bootee that she had retrieved from his cot.

  She lugged her bulging cases downstairs and packed them into the back of the Mini. Then she crossed the street and spoke to the baker's wife.

  "If my husband comes back and asks for me, tell him I have gone back to London." 'What about Nico? Are you all right, sefiora? The woman was sympathetic, and Isabella smiled brightly.

  "Nico is with my husband. I'll meet them in London soon. Much as gracias por su ayuda, seflora. Adies."

  The drive northwards seemed endless. Each episode of the last few days since last she had seen her son played over an dover in her mind until she felt that she was going slowly mad.

  On the cross-Channel ferry, she forsook the loud bonhomie of the crowded saloon and went up on to the boatdeck. It was a cold grey day, with the north wind kicking the tops off the swells in dashing white spurts of spray. The wind and her despair chilled her through, until she was shivering uncontrollably even in her padded anorak. However, in the end it was the ache in her swollen breasts that drove her below. In the women's toilet she used the express pump to draw off the flow that should have been for her son.

  "Oh, Nicky, Nicky!' she cried silently, as she discharged the rich creamy liquid into the toilet-bowl, and she imagined once again his hot little mouth on her nipples and the smell and the feel of him against her breast.

  She found herself weeping, and with a huge effort controlled herself.

  "You're losing your grip on reality,' she warned herself. 'You've got to be strong now. You can't let go. For Nicky's sake, you must be strong. No more crying and moping - no more." It was raining when she drove into Cadogan Square, and the flat seemed chilly and uninviting. While she unpacked she thought about the promise that she had made her 15e father. Suddenly she threw down the dress that she held and ran through to the drawing-room.

  "International, I want to place a call to Cape Town, South Africa." At this time of night, the delay was less than ten minutes, and she heard the peals of the telephone at the other end. One of the servants answered it, and as she opened her mouth to ask for her father Ramsey's strict injunction came back to her with all its force and threat. 'Your disobedience will have dire consequences for Nicky." She replaced the receiver on its cradle without speaking, and resigned herself to wait for the promised contact.

  Nothing happened for six days. She never left the flat, not daring to put herself beyond the reach of the telephone. She rang nobody, spoke to nobody except the housekeeper, and tried to keep herself occupied by reading and watching television. The uncertainty aggravated her despair, and she found that, although she stared at the pages of her book or at the small flickering screen of the television set, the printed words and the images were meaningless. Only her agony was real. Only her loss had poignant meaning. Only her pain abided.

  She could barely bring herself to eat, and within three days her milk-flow had dried up. She lost weight dramatically. Her hai
r, which was one of the high points of her beauty, turned dull and dry. Her face in the mirror was gaunt, her eyes sank into bruised-looking cavities and her golden amber Mediterranean tan became sallow and yellow like the skin of a malaria sufferer.

  She waited, and the waiting was torture. Each hour was an insupportable eternity. Then, on the sixth day, the telephone rang. She snatched it up with desperate haste, before the second peal.

  "I have a message from Ramsey.' It was a woman's voice with an elusive accent, probably mid-European. 'Leave now, immediately. Take a taxi to the junction of Royal Hospital Road and the Embankment. Walk down the Embankment towards Westminster. Somebody will greet you with the name Red Rose. Follow their orders,' said the caller. 'Repeat these instructions, please." Breathlessly Isabella obeyed. 'Good,' said the woman, and broke the connection.

  Isabella had not walked further than a hundred yards along the Embankment above the Thames when a small unmarked van passed her, travelling slowly in the same direction. It pulled into the kerb ahead of her, and as she drew level with it the rear door opened to reveal a middle-aged woman in grey overalls sitting on the sidebench of the body of the van.