quietly, covering every detail of her arrangements, and he could find no emissions. She was interrupted by a soft hail from out of the darkness and Hapiti throttled the diesels back to idle. They drifted down closer to the loom of the island. A canoe bumped against the side, and Magda turned quickly in his arms, reaching up for his mouth with hers.
“Please be careful, Peter,” was all that she said, and then she broke away and stepped down into the canoe as Hapiti handed down her single valise. The canoe pushed away immediately, and was lost in the dark. There was nothing to wave at, and Peter liked it better that way, but still he stared back over the stern into the night as the
Chriscraft groped blindly for the channel again.
There was a hollow feeling under his ribs, as though part of himself was missing; he tried to fill it with a memory of Magda that had amused him because it epitomized for him her quick and pragmatic mind.
When the news of your death hits the market, the bottom is going to drop out of Altmann stock.” He had realized this halfway through their final discussion that morning. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He was troubled by the complication.
“I had,” she smiled serenely. “I estimate it will lose a hundred francs a share within the first week after the news breaks.”
“Doesn’t that worry you?”
“Not really.” She gave that sudden wicked grin. “I
telexed a buying order to Zurich this morning. I expect to show a profit of not less than a hundred million francs when the stock bounces back.” Again the mischievous flash of green eyes “I do have to be recompensed for all this inconvenience, tu the senses pas?” And although he still smiled at the memory, the hollow place remained there inside him.
ierre flew the Tahitian police out to Les Neod Poissons in the
Tri-Islander, and there followed two days of questions and statements.
Nearly every member of the community wished to make a statement to the police, there had seldom been such entertainment and excitement available on the islands.
Nearly all of the statements were glowing eulogies to To Baronne”
delivered to the accompaniment of lamentation and weeping. Only Hapiti had first-hand information and he made the most of this position of importance, embroidering and gilding the tale. He was even able to give a positive identification of the shark as a “Dead White’ The
English name startled Peter until he remembered that the movie Jaws was in the island’s cassette video library and was undoubtedly the source of the big boatman’s inspiration.
Hapiti went on to describe its fangs as long and sharp as cane knives, and to give a gruesome imitation of the sound they made as they closed on “La Baronne” Peter would willingly have gagged him to prevent those flights of imagination, which were not supported by
Peter’s own statement, but the police sergeant was greatly impressed and encouraged Hapiti to further acts of creation with cries of astonishment.
On the last evening there was a funeral feast on the beach for
Magda. It was a moving ritual, and Peter found himself curiously affected when the women of the island, swaying and wailing at the water’s edge, cast wreaths of frangipani blooms onto the tide to be carried out beyond the reef.
Peter flew back to Tahiti-Faaa with the police the following morning, and they stayed with him, flanking him discreetly, on the drive to the headquarters of gendarmerie in the town. However, his interview with the Chief of Police was brief and courteous clearly
Magda had been there before him and if there was no actual exchange of winks and nudges, the commissioner’s handshake of farewell was firm and friendly.
“Any friend of La Baronne is a friend here.” And he used the present tense, then sent Peter back to the airport in an official car.
The UTA flight landed in California through that sulphurous eye-stinging layer of yellow air trapped between sea and mountains.
Peter did not leave the airport, but after he had shaved and changed his shirt in the men’s room he found a copy of the Wail Street Journal in the firstclass Pa nAm Clipper lounge. It was dated the previous day, and the report of Magda Altmann’s death was on Page Three. It was a full column, and Peter was surprised by the depth of the Altmann
Industries involvement in the American financial scene. The complex of. holdings was listed, followed by a resume of Baron Aaron Altmann’s career and that of his widow. The cause of death as given by the
Tahitian police was “Shark Attack” while scuba diving in the company of a friend General Peter Stride Peter was grimly satisfied that his name was mentioned. Caliph would read it, wherever he was, and draw the appropriate conclusion. Peter could expect something to happen now; he was not quite sure what, but he knew that he was being drawn closer to the centre like a fragment of iron to the magnet.
He managed to sleep for an hour, in one of the big armchairs,
before the hostess roused him for the Pan-Am Polar flight to London’s
Heathrow.
He called Pat Stride, his sister-in-law, from Heathrow Airport.
She was unaffectedly delighted to hear his voice.
Steven is in Spain, but I am expecting him home tomorrow before lunch, that is if his meetings go the way he wants them. They want to build a thirty-six hole golf course at San Istaban-” Steven’s companies owned a complex of tourist hotels on the Spanish coast ” and Steven had to go through the motions with the Spanish authorities. But, why don’t you come down to Abbots Yew tonight? Alex and Priscilla are here, and there will be an amusing house party for the weekend-” He could hear the sudden calculating tone in Pat’s voice as she began instinctively to run through the shortlist of potential mates for
Peter.
After he had accepted and hung up, he dialled the Cambridge number and was relieved that Cynthia’s husband, George Barrow, answered.
Give me a Bolshevik intellectual over a neurotic ex-wife any day,
he thought as he greeted Melissa-Jane’s stepfather warmly. Cynthia was at a meeting of the Faculty Wives Association, and Melissa-Jane was auditioning for a part in i a production of Gilbert and Sullivan by the local drama society.
“How is she?” Peter wanted to know.
“I think she is well over it now, Peter. The hand is completely healed. She seems to have settled down.-They spoke for a few minutes more, then ran out of conversation.
The two women were all they had in common.
“Give Melissa-Jane my very best love,” Peter told him, and picked up a copy of The Financial Times from a news, stand on his way to the
Avis desk. He hired a compact and while waiting for it to be delivered he searched swiftly through the newspaper for mention of Magda Altmann.
It was on an inside page, clearly a followup article to a previous report of her death. There had been a severe reaction on the London and European stock exchanges the hundred4raric drop in Altmann stock that Magda had anticipated had already been exceeded on the Bourse and again there was a brief mention of his own name in a repetition of the circumstances of her death. He was satisfied with the publicity,
and with Magda’s judgement in buying back her own stock. Indeed it all seemed to be going a little too smoothly. He became aware of the fateful prickle of apprehension down his spine, his own personal barometer of impending danger.
As always Abbots Yew was like coming home, and Pat met him on the gravel of the front drive, kissed him with sisterly affection and linked her arm through his to lead him into the gracious old house.
“Steven will be delighted,” she promised him. “I expect he will telephone this evening. He always does when he is away.” There was a buff cable envelope propped on the bedside table of the guest room overlooking the stables that was always reserved for Peter. The message originated at BenGurion Airport, Tel Aviv, and was a single word the code he had arranged with Magda to let him know that she arrived safely and without complication.
