than the cloth.
“I will open the champagne,” she said. “It needs two hands.” He wore the brocade gown, with his left arm still in a sling, and they stood and admired each other over the top of the champagne glasses.
“I was right.” She nodded comfortably. “Blue is your colour. You must wear it more often.” And he had to smile at the quaint compliment, and touched her glass with his.
The crystal pinged musically and they saluted each other before they drank. Immediately she set the glass aside, and her expression became serious.
“I spoke with my friends in the Sorete. They agree that it was a kidnap attempt against me, and because I asked it, they will not trouble you to make a statement until you feel better. I told them to send a man tomorrow to speak to you.
There was no sign of the second man you shot at on the edge of the woods, he must have been able to walk or been carried by his friends.” “And the other man?” Peter asked. “The dead one.”
“They know him well.
He had a very ugly past. Algeria with the par as The mutiny.” She spread her hands eloquently. “My friends were very surprised that he had not killed you when he tried to do so. I did not say too much about your own past. It is better, I think?”
“It’s better,” Peter agreed.
“When I am with you like this, I forget that you also are a very dangerous man.” She stopped and examined his face carefully. “Or is it part of the reason I find you so-” she searched for the word ” so compelling? You have such a gentle manner, Peter. Your voice is so soft and-” She shrugged. “But there is something in the way you smile sometimes, and in certain light your eyes are so blue and hard and cruel. Then I remember that you have killed many men. Do you think that is what attracts me?”
“I hope it is not.”
“Some women are excited by blood and violence the bullfight, the prize ring, there are always as many women as men at these, and I have watched their faces. I have thought about myself, and still I do not know it all. I know only that I am attracted by strong men, powerful men.
Aaron was such a man. I have not found many others since then.”
“Cruelty is not strength,” Peter told her.
“No, a truly strong man has that streak of gentleness and compassion. You are so strong, and yet when you make love to me it is with extreme gentleness, though I can always feel the strength and cruelty there, held in hate, like the falcon under the hood.” She moved away across the room furnished in cream and chocolate and gold, and she tugged the embroidered bell-pull that dangled from the corruced ceiling with its hand-painted panels, pastoral scenes of the type that Marie Antoinette had so admired. Peter knew that much of the furnishing of La Pierre Brute had been purchased at the auction sales with which the revolutionary committee dispersed the accumulated treasures of the House of Bourbon. With the other treasures there were flowers, wherever Magda Altmann went there were flowers.
She came back to him as Roberto, the Italian butler, supervised the entry of the dinner trolley, and then Roberto filled the wine glasses himself, handling the bottles with white gloves as though they were part of the sacrament, and stationed himself ready to serve the meal, but Magda dismissed him with a curt gesture and he bowed himself out silently.
There was a presentation-wrapped parcel at Peter’s place setting, tissue paper and an elaborately tied red ribbon. He looked up at her inquiringly as she served the soup into fragile Limoges bowls.
“Once I began buying presents, I could not stop myself,” she explained. “Besides, I kept thinking that bullet might have been in my back.” Then she was impatient. “Are you not going to open it?” He did so carefully, and then was silent.
“Africa, it is your speciality, is it not?” she asked anxiously. “Nineteenth-century Africa?” He nodded, and reverently opened the cover of the volume in its bed of tissue paper. It was fully bound in maroon leather, and the state of preservation was quite extraordinary, only the dedication on the flyleaf in the author’s handwriting was faded yellow.
“Where on earth did you find this?” he demanded. “It was at Sotheby’s in 1971. I bid on it then.” He had dropped out of the bidding at five thousand pounds.
“You do not have a first edition of Cornwallis Harris?” she asked again anxiously, and he shook his head, examining one of the perfectly preserved colour plates of African big game.
“No, I do not. But how did you know that?”
“Oh, I know as much about you as you do yourself,” she laughed. “Do you like it?”
“It is magnificent. I am speechless.” The gift was too extravagant, even for someone of her fortune. It troubled him, and he was reminded of the comedy situation of the husband who brings home flowers unexpectedly and is immediately accused by his wife. “Why do you have a guilty conscience?”
“Do you truly like it? I know so little about books.”
“It is the one edition I need to complete my major works,” he said. “And it is probably the finest specimen left outside the British Museum.” “I’m so glad.” She was genuinely relieved. “I was truly worried.” And she put down the silver soup ladle and lifted both arms to welcome his embrace.
During the meal she was gay and talkative, and only when Roberto had wheeled away the trolley and they settled side by side on the down-filled couch before the fire did her mood change again.
“Peter, today I have been unable to think of anything but this business you and me and Caliph. I have been afraid, and I am still afraid. I keep thinking of Aaron, what they did to him and then I think of you and what nearly happened.” They were silent, staring into the flames and sipping
“JAVA
coffee from the demi-tosses, then suddenly she had changed direction again. He was growing accustomed to these mercurial switches in thought.
“I have an island not one island, but nine little islands and in the cintre of them is a lagoon nine kilometres wide. The water is so clear you can see the fish fifty feet down. There is an airstrip on the main atoll. just under two hours” flying time to Tahiti. Nobody would ever know we were there. We could swim all day, walk in the sand, make love under the stars. You would be king of the islands, and I would be your queen. No more Altmann Industries I would find somebody as good or better than myself to run it. No more danger. No more fear. No more Caliph no more-” She stopped abruptly, as though she had been about to commit herself too far, but she went on quickly.
“Let’s go there, Peter. Let’s forget all this. Let’s just run away and be happy together, for ever.”
“It’s a pretty thought.” He turned to her, feeling deep and genuine regret.
“It would work for us. We would make it work.” And he said nothing, just watching her eyes, until she looked away and sighed.
“No.” She mirrored his regret. “You are right. Neither of us could ever give up living like that. We have to go on but, Peter, I am so afraid. I am afraid of what I know about you and of what I do not know. I am afraid of what you do not know about me, and what I never can tell you but we must go on. You are right. We have to find Caliph, and then destroy him. But, oh God, I pray we do not destroy ourselves, what we have found together I pray we will be able to keep that intact.”
“The best way to conjure up emotional disaster is to talk about it.”
“All right, let’s play riddles instead. My turn first. What is the most miserable experience known to the human female?”
“I
give up.”
“Sleeping alone on a winter’s night.”
“Salvation is at hand, “he promised her.
“But what about your poor shoulder?”
“If we combine our vast talents and wisdom, I am sure we will manage something.”
“I think you are right,” she purred and nestled against him like a sleek and silken cat. “As always.” There is always a delightfully decadent feeling about buying underwear for a beautiful woman, and Peter was amused by the knowing air of the middle-aged sales lady. She clearly had her own ideas about the relationship, and slyly produced a tray filled with filmy lace and iniquitously expensive wisps of silk.
