'Remove your shirt.'
Again, he did as he was told.
'Now take off your trousers and then stand perfectly still.'
When he had finished, he watched open-mouthed as Alix undid the buttons of her blouse, discarding it in a flutter of creamy silk. She unzipped her skirt and let it slide to the floor before stepping out of the ring of crumpled fabric.
Alix was wearing white lace lingerie that accentuated the lithe, athletic curves of her body. She still had her high heels on.
Opposite her, Leclerc was in a pair of baggy jockey shorts, their waistband lost in his doughy flesh. He was still wearing his gray woolen socks.
'Lie on the bed, right back against the headboard,' she told him
Leclerc scuttled backward, fell on the bed, and propped himself up against the pillows.
'Soon, very soon, you will have your way with me. But first I am going to have my way with you. Stay there, don't move a muscle, and don't say a word!'
Alix strode around the bed to a chest of drawers. She bent down to open a drawer, making Leclerc groan with pleasure at the view, and pulled out three long, narrow, black silk scarves.
'What…?' Leclerc began.
'Shhhh…'
She walked back to the bed, laid the scarves along the bedspread, and knelt astride Leclerc's chest. Then she reached for his right wrist, expertly knotted one end of the first scarf around it, and tied the other end to the top of the bedpost. Leclerc now had one arm dangling helplessly in midair, but he seemed less concerned by that than his desperate attempts to get his face up to Alix's breasts as she leaned across him. She ignored him, wordlessly grabbing his other wrist and repeating the procedure with the second scarf.
When both arms were secure, she leaned back and ran a hand through Leclerc's chest hair, idly toying with his nipples as she said, 'Do I look good to you?'
'Oh God, yes,' he groaned.
'Then take a good long look and remember what you see. Because now you see me and now'-she picked up the final scarf and whipped it around the banker's head, covering his eyes-'you don't. You're helpless now, at my mercy. So I ask myself, what am I going to do?'
She placed her forefinger against his lips, teasing him as he desperately tried to suck it. Then she lay flat on top of him and started wriggling downward, down and down until her head was directly above his underpants.
'Mmmm, what have we here?' she said.
She raised herself up onto her haunches again and started to pull the underpants down from his waist.
'Please, please!' he moaned, trying to lift his ass off the bed to make the job easier.
Alix bent forward over Leclerc, lower and lower, till her head was only millimeters above him and…
'Thank you, Miss St. Clair, that will be all,' a harsh, guttural Afrikaans voice said.
Alix climbed off the bed and glared furiously at Carver. 'You took your time!' she mouthed at him.
'I'm sorry,' he mouthed back, holding his hands out, palms down in the universal gesture of contrition.
'Who are you? What's happening?' squealed Leclerc, writhing on the bed.
Carver slapped him once, very hard, on the side of the face.
'Shut up, Mr. Leclerc,' Carver snapped. 'If you value your life and your reputation, shut up and listen. Here, let me help you.'
Carver pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and shoved it in the other man's mouth, gagging him. He took the belt from the trousers lying on the floor and tied it tight around Leclerc's ankles, rendering him entirely helpless.
'My name is Dirk Vandervart. I am about to ask you a series of simple questions, and you are going to give me honest answers. There are two reasons why you are going to do this. The first is that we have been following your evening with Miss St. Clair. In fact, we have recorded all the most interesting moments on tape. I don't think your wife would like to hear all the things you said about her, do you? Particularly when she watches you seducing a young woman and letting her tie you to her bed. Wouldn't reflect well on you, your marriage, or your bank, eh? Right, then, refuse to talk, attempt to mislead us, or reveal anything of what happened in this room this evening, and those tapes will be made very, very public.
'The other reason why you will talk is simple: I will cause you very great pain if you do not. Please be in no doubt about this, Mr. Leclerc. For example…'
Carver took hold of Leclerc's left hand and started bending back the little finger. Leclerc shook his head from side to side.
'Hurts, doesn't it? If I keep going, just a little bit more, the bone will snap like a twig. Then the finger will swell like a sausage grilling on a braai. Ach, man, let me tell you, that hurts so much, you'll wish I'd just cut it right off.'
Leclerc's whole body was jerking now as if jolted by electric shocks. Carver appeared not to notice and just kept talking.
'And once I've done one finger, I'll do all the rest as well. And your toes. And you don't even want to think about the rest of your body. So, would you like to talk?'
Leclerc nodded frantically.
'Very sensible decision. Here, let's make you a little bit more comfortable. Perhaps you could help me, Miss St. Clair?'
Together, they dragged Leclerc up so that his back was resting against the headboard. Alix leaned forward and murmured in his ear. 'I'm sorry, Magnus. Just tell Mr. Vandervart exactly what he wants, and you can go home to Marthe. You love her really, don't you, Magnus?'
Another desperate nod.
'Okay, then.' Alix pulled the gag from his mouth.
Carver spoke, still in character. 'I want to know about one of the accounts you control. It's number 4443717168.'
'But I control hundreds of accounts. How can I remember them all?' Leclerc's blindfolded head turned from side to side in supplication.
'You'll remember this one. On Saturday morning, you acknowledged receipt of 1.5 million U.S. dollars into the account and sent a fax to that effect to the account holder. But by Sunday afternoon, you'd made the money disappear. How did you do that? And who gave you the orders? Because I don't think you'd steal all that money for yourself…'
'No! No!'
'So what happened?'
'I can't tell you. I can't! They'd kill me!' His voice was high-pitched, begging for an understanding he knew he would never receive.
'Who are 'they,' Magnus?'
'I can't tell you!'
'Because they'd kill you.'
'Yes!'
'What makes you think that I won't kill you first? Open your mouth.'
Carver reached around to the small of his back and pulled his SIG-Sauer from the waistband. He jammed the silencer between Leclerc's teeth.
'Can you guess what that is? Correct, it's a nine millimeter pistol. Believe me, I won't hesitate to pull the trigger. It's what I do. But I can do something else too. I can keep secrets. And no one will ever know anything about this evening, ever, if you just tell me what happened to that account.'
'Nothing happened.'
Carver slapped Leclerc a second time. 'I thought we had an understanding here.'
Leclerc moaned. 'No, really, nothing happened. No money ever went into that account. None came out. The receipt for the deposit was a fake.'
'So who gave the orders for it to be issued?'
'I can't tell you… I can't!'
