‘How are you feeling?’
‘ Me? ’ said Carver, surprised.
‘You’re the numero uno now.’
He refused to recognize the real meaning of her question. ‘I’ve been practising for over a year.’
‘Frightened?’ she demanded, openly.
‘Of course I’m not,’ Carver lied, although still not in direct answer to her intended question. ‘Why should I be?’
‘It’s a responsibility. You’ve got an empire to protect and people will expect you to build another, to prove yourself.’
If only she knew what he had to protect! ‘Like I said, I’ve had time to prepare.’
‘I’m going to be right behind you, all of the way.’
At the apartment Jane thanked the senior nurse for their attendance but announced at once that they had been engaged prematurely and wouldn’t be required beyond the contractually agreed first week. She didn’t need painkillers for a headache or any other discomfort, nor would she require sedatives later.
As they ate, Jane said: ‘She patronized me. Expects me to collapse. By the way, I spoke to Paul Newton. Told him I was all right and that it wasn’t necessary for him to come over.’
She would collapse, Carver guessed. Not immediately. For the moment – for the coming days – she was going to be wired by all the things that she’d determined personally to do. The breakdown would come when it all quietened: after the memorial service perhaps. He’d speak to Newton tomorrow. And quietly to the nurses, too.
Carver reached out consolingly to her when they got into bed that night and didn’t anticipate her immediate expectation that they would make love and was even more astonished that he was able to and that it was as good as it was.
Afterwards she said: ‘Dad had a saying, that there’s always a birth to make up for a death.’
Carver shifted, unsure what to say. ‘I never heard it.’
‘We should have a baby, John.’
‘We’ve talked about it,’ reminded Carver. But not recently, he reminded himself. He’d actually put the thought out of his mind and didn’t, in the present circumstances, welcome its return.
‘Not properly. Like we haven’t tried properly. I want to undergo IVF treatment.’ If she could become pregnant she would be continuing her father’s bloodline. She wanted very much to do that.
‘We’ll talk about it later,’ said Carver.
‘You’re patronizing me, like the nurse. This isn’t hysteria. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Now’s the right time.’
It wasn’t, thought Carver. Now wasn’t the right time for anything.
People who deal in them – accountants, financiers, bankers, mathematicians – can see a beauty in figures and the patterns that their controlling logic dictates. But it was not actually a pattern of figures that Alice Belling believed she saw when she began going through the printouts of all the worldwide subsidiaries of Mulder Inc., Encomp and Innsflow International. To confirm it she hauled a world atlas on to her desk and was sure she was right as far as the United States was concerned – which if she were right made them very united indeed – and the templates first of Europe and then of Asia were sufficient further to convince her. The temptation to start at once from her terminal in Princes Street was very strong but prudence won over impatience. Using the cybercafe gave her a second cut-out and considering the organization she believed she had discovered, Alice acknowledged that she needed to continue as carefully and as protectively as possible. Which meant waiting until tomorrow. Even though the cafe didn’t open until ten she was still up by seven, determined not to forget anything because today was going to be a long one.
John Carver was up by seven, too, so he was fully awake when Al Hibbert telephoned from Litchfield. Hibbert said: ‘Everything’s wrecked, John. I’ve never seen a place stripped like it. It’s terrible. Bastards!’
Stanley Burcher was irritated at the need constantly to cross the river to meet the Deliocis but acknowledged that he had to show the respect of going to them, on their territory. He also acknowledged that he’d gone too far, confronting the old man as he had, at the last encounter. He knew the New York Families would back him, if Emilio Delioci protested. But they’d be unsettled by the way he’d spoken to a Don, even a minor one. It was essential that he recover by replacing Northcote with Carver to keep the system working smoothly.
The Thomson Avenue restaurant wasn’t open but they were waiting for him in the back room, the old man, the elder son and Family heir, Enrico Delioci, and Paolo Brescia. Burcher wondered idly if they had cots in a closet somewhere, so that they were able to sleep in the damned place. He said: ‘So what did you find?’
‘Nothing.’ It was Enrico who replied, to spare his father the embarrassment.
‘Nothing!’ echoed Burcher, disbelieving. ‘There must have been something.’ It would be he who switched the operation to John Carver, so there wouldn’t be any need in the future to deal with this amateur crew who believed muscle was the answer to everything: in future it would just be he and Carver and all the power-by-association that the arrangement would give him.
‘I was there,’ said Brescia. ‘We took the place apart, everything. Kept the cash and valuables, to make it look like a burglary. But there was none of the documentation or the names you gave us.’
‘Then who’s got it?’ demanded Burcher.
‘Maybe it wasn’t there,’ wheezed Emilio Delioci.
Burcher looked at the son. ‘You made the call, telling him you were sending collectors, right?’
‘Right,’ agreed the darkly saturnine man.
‘What did he say… the exact words?’
‘That he’d talked it all out with you. That there wasn’t any point in our coming because there was nothing to collect.’
‘What about when your people were trying to persuade him?’
Brescia said: ‘He died without saying anything about documents. But Carver knows. That’s what Northcote said – Carver knows.’
‘Let’s not forget the woman, the personal assistant,’ said Enrico. ‘You want we should ask her?’
A trick, Burcher instantly realized. They were putting the responsibility on to him, covering themselves if anything went wrong as it had up in Litchfield. ‘Not like you asked Northcote. Looks like you got away with it but I don’t want to stretch coincidence unless we have to.’
‘What then?’ demanded the old man.
Another trick, thought Burcher. It really hadn’t been a mistake insisting his word was the word of the Families. Burcher said: ‘I guess I – and the people I speak for – have to get personally involved.’ As much as he wanted to do that and pick up the recognition, Burcher felt a stir of uncertainty as he spoke.
Eight
Jack Jennings flew with them and as they began to descend over the Litchfield estate Carver gazed down at the assembled police vehicles with a feeling of deja vu. The impression was heightened by it being the same pilot in the same helicopter and of their landing almost in the same place as before, to avoid those on the ground being disturbed by the down draught. And as before Al Hibbert was already on his way towards them when they hurried from the machine.
The sheriff said: ‘This sure as hell isn’t what you needed, on top of everything else.’ When he saw Jane he said: ‘Sorry, Mrs Carver. Didn’t realize it was you.’
Jane shook her head impatiently and said: ‘How bad is it?’
‘As bad as I’ve ever seen around these parts. Worse,’ said Hibbert. ‘The place – the house as well as the outhouses, the pool house and all the staff quarters – hasn’t just been turned over, to get anything and everything that’s valuable. It’s been totally trashed.’
It had.
Very little furniture in any of the rooms remained intact. Seats and cushions were slashed apart and the frames and coverings of couches and formal and easy chairs dismembered. Every drawer of every desk and cabinet
