A Death in Geneva (17 page)

“Don't misunderstand me. I'm talking about closet foes, not homicidal enemies—men and women she had injured, damaged, swept aside—who suffered their bitterness and their defeats quietly. I could give you a hundred names if you really wanted me to.”

“You're saying that you are unaware of any explicit threats?”

“None that ring out. You see, we might run into each other in New York, in London. We were not together that often, Mr. Sweetman; our careers were usually on different sides of the Atlantic. She ridiculed mine, told Tommie that he had married a sex object with a little girl's mind trapped in a worthless, make-believe world. Goodness. We didn't speak for two or three years after that. She broke the ice with a long, intelligent, thoughtful letter tinged with apology. I had my agent reply.

“A few months later, I sent her tickets, a box, to one of my performances, my biggest Broadway opening.
Her
secretary sent an acknowledgement”—Tina laughed softly, resettled herself on the sofa—“saying that the tickets had been given to some deserving younger employees, My, my . . .

“The closest to a threat that I can recall, Mr. Sweetman”—his thumb flipped open the cover of a small notebook he had been holding in his left hand, causing her to hesitate—“was from Arthur Jenssen.” She watched him write. “A double ‘s'—N-S-S-E-N. God; it must have been ten years ago in New York. He had learned that Connie was engineering his removal from the board, one of those situations where he was up for reelection, you know.” The circular gesture of her hand left a corkscrew of smoke between them. “He cornered her in an alcove, yelled, told her she'd rue the day, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”

“Jenssen of the Alabama division?”

“Yes—you have been investigating—told her to stay away. Tommie told me this; I wasn't eavesdropping . . . told her that shipyards were dangerous places. I have never followed the Towerpoint business, Mr. Sweetman. But . . . I was aware at the time, and that meant that Jenssen was aware, of the plans to bring in a new man. It was Connie's idea to cut him off completely, even deny him his consolation prize on the board.”

“Where is he now, Mrs. Starring?”

“Oh, I have no idea. Someone told me that he was breeding boxers, dogs.” She leaned across, touched his arm. “He's retired, well-off, of course, quite old, not your murderer.

“Really, I am sorry—and, I'm relieved that I can't be more helpful.” Her shoulders hunched in a shudder that rippled through her body. She caught his eyes watching the movement of her breasts. “In a way, Connie was right in her criticism of me . . . living, imperfect people, not money . . . not power, are my life. It hurts me to talk about flaws. There isn't time. I cringe at death, block it out, a can of black paint hurled against a delicate, wondrous canvas.” She paused, her lips apart, her eyes questioning him. “You are an admirable man . . . in the service of the United States. Your business is death, something that I can understand but not accept. Do our rules permit me at ask you a question?”

“Damn right, go ahead.” He put the empty glass down.

“Are you armed? Do you carry a gun?”

His right leg was crossed above his left. One hand rested on the polished mahogany boot disappearing beneath the trouser leg concealing the pistol lodged in its holster. “I carry a gun.”

“I won't ask if you have ever killed. Obviously, you can kill, swiftly. The man outside the door is armed. He can kill—the squeeze of a finger, the blink of an eye; a growing stem is cut, life gone. Shouldn't there be fewer guns, a better way to deal with each other as
living,
imperfect beings? Tommie doesn't agree with me . . . but, we are seeing violence run amok, finding it harder and harder to distinguish between civilization and savagery. I have always been so struck, Mr. Sweetman, by the British bobbies—unarmed, unique really, aren't they, willing so bravely to shape their protection of the British people on the principle of civilization, not savagery, life not death?”

“More Brits are armed than you'd like to think, a necessity unless you move to Masada. I don't want to take up too much of your time, Mrs. Starring, just a couple of more points.”

“Connie and the president?”

“No.” The simple negative. She relaxed. The light shifted and softened in the suite with the back and forth of the questions and answers in the lengthening afternoon. “You mentioned being with your sister-in-law in London. Those were controversial years for her?”

“Dear, dear man, that was Connie at her zenith, her most notorious. She was in the news more that
I
was, but, really, I didn't follow it. I have left the lucrative, boring affairs of Towerpoint and Towerpointees in Tommie's very capable hands—so much so, that I presently
am studying Arabic—Ar-r-abic!” Her professional voice played with the word; Sweetman's pen had stopped.

The maid emerged to answer a gentle knocking at the door, the security guard, a few whispered words. “Hairdresser, signora.”

“Oh . . . lovely. Well, Mr.
Sweet
man, the curtain falls on my bedraggled head. I don't envy you, and I do hope that you are as capable as you look. . . . Helicopters terrify me.” Her eyes were wide; she had taken one of his hands. “This morning at Malta's airport I saw two small children standing, gripping their father's hands, enthralled by the sight of a bristly, noisy helicopter preparing to take off—those terrifying blades. We're a resilient bunch, aren't we? The young aren't afraid. If only we could crossbreed courage and curiosity with greater love and humanity.”

“I'm afraid you're dealing with oil and water there, Mrs. Starring.”

Still keeping a firm grip on his arm, she accompanied him to the door. “That precisely is my hairdresser's problem. Do you know Italy? Your face says ‘no'—neither do I, and I want to know. A lady friend is going to show me one day—Ancona, Ravenna, Verona, Vicenza, Venice. You are invited.”

“I'll leave a couple of numbers with the front desk for Mr. Starring's secretary. You're a lovely lady, Mrs. Starring, not my place to say so. Thanks for your time today.”

“My time? Ha ha. I thank you. You're the one who is doing the important work, and,” she released him, “if you can't do it in Italy, in two weeks, we have the return to the States on Tommie's favorite toy, the flagship
Octagon
.” She followed him a step into the hall, watched him bypass the elevator and disappear at a silent lope down the hotel stairs.

Like other American wars of the twentieth century, Vietnam and the U.S. military adjustments that followed had produced new bonds among the world's fraternity of warriors, firmest among them within the secret societies of special forces—contingency planning, training—bonds based on formal responsibility and personal respect and admiration. Ze'ev Shostak greeted Sweetman with an expressionless nod and firm handshake, showed him into the worn, windowless interior of his cover air-shipping office tacked onto the side of a freight hangar on one extremity of Rome's Ciampino Airport. Shostak was with Israel's General Staff
Reconnaissance Unit, part of the antiterrorist network his nation continued to build throughout the world, with the dual assignment of monitoring Italy and contributing to the security force's responsibility for El Al flights transiting Ciampino.

A message from Fisker via double-link communications in Jerusalem had alerted the Israeli to Sweetman's coming. Shostak was eight years Sweetman's senior; from the lines in his face he could as easily be twice those years. The U.S. experience in war could be studied in its separate chapters. For Israel, the first chapter of its history as a nation had begun almost forty years ago. The fighting had continued and would continue, he knew, long beyond the contributions of his lifetime. Israel—smashed schools, the broken forms of schoolchildren, including his own—was the eternal target. He was part of the shield. Any human being, any ship, aircraft, or vehicle moving to or from Israel was the target. With his expertise in the terrorist's ways—the training, methods of attack, the flow of arms, false documents, laundered money, and laundered killers—Shostak was part of the shield.

Together they reviewed the patterns of ingress and egress that terrorists on the attack in Switzerland, or using that nation as a sanctuary, had developed over the years. In clipped, carefully chosen words, the Israeli provided a neatly catalogued review of terrorist developments in Italy and the region, dwelling in particular on the theft of NATO munitions, given its implications for Israeli security. He tapped a wall-mounted air route map of the Mediterranean with a one-meter metal ruler.

“Based on what has been pieced together so far, really just monitoring what you have underway with the authorities here, I believe we can anticipate a new base of operations . . . very special mines, and unless they are just to be discarded, a new base of operations specializing in their use. We have tracked the shipment to Naples. They could be enroute to Sicily, Palermo perhaps, could be enroute to Greece, to Syria, possibly Libya.

“If they have these mines, they want shipping. Cyprus would have them at our throats, but they know that we know that. By the time you are out here”—the tip of the ruler was on Crete, jerking along the coast from Iraklion to Khania—“you are already at a point where the Mediterranean is so broad that you would have to mount a major seaborne expedition—really, beyond any known group's capabilities—unless you
are content to hunt the Aegean.” The ruler continued west. “They might be going here. These little islands, Malta, the historic choke point, but unless Maltese are actually in on the planning, a most unlikely prospect, there is not much cover for an extranational terrorist operation.”

During their brief Rome meeting, Sweetman was to make a deep, extremely favorable impression on the Towerpoint chairman. A week later, Starring recounted the conversation to Oats Tooms on the owners deck of the
Towerpoint Octagon
in the Grand Harbor. The agent had made no promises, but he had shown confidence, the mind of an expert. He had told Starring that people too often magnify the skill and operations of the terrorists, that they are criminals, nothing more, that they leave a trail of clues like every other criminal.

“A powerful man, Oats; he gave the impression he wanted Connie's killers physically in his hands, to wring the life out of the bastards there and then.” Starring picked up the deck telephone, rang Sullivan, and dictated a message to the White House, let the president know he thought he had a good man on the job.

Tooms had just returned from his hastily arranged trip to the United States, and reported to Starring that key pieces were falling neatly into place. They would be set for crew, set for gear, vehicles, habitat, and full political support from the Chesapeake Bay research community. “They snapped at it faster than a blue can hit cut bait. Research money is scarcer than hens' teeth. The folks back there are half starved, a mite overwhelmed by your generosity. And, best yet, our mermaid, Leslie Renfro—you remember, the reception a few days back—and her partners, two good young divers, have taken the research crewing offer.”

“Confirmed? Superb work, Oats.”

“Confirmed.” He checked the calendar on his watch. “Today's the eleventh of June. They'll be tying up a few loose ends and should be aboard by the sixteenth or seventeeth. If the Maltese tugboat and yard unions will oblige, we'll already have the habitat swung aboard and set to work.”

“When did the
Pacer
arrive?”