Dangerous to Know (17 page)

At their approach, the gates swung open and the Rolls swept through. Paige sagged in relief at leaving the narrow cliffside road behind, only to discover a moment later that she'd relaxed too soon. More hairpin turns followed as they climbed even higher. When they finally passed through the arch of what looked like a medieval gatehouse set into a high stone wall, her jaw sagged in sheer astonishment.

Victor Swanset's mountaintop villa looked like something right out of one of his movies. Which one, Paige didn't know, but it was too perfect, too stunningly beautiful, to be real.

A cluster of outbuildings roofed in red Mediterranean tiles circled a wide, cobbled courtyard. At the west end of the yard was a long building that had obviously been a stable in a previous century, but had been converted to a garage for Swanset's collection of vintage luxury automobiles. Another low building,
connected to the central structure by a graceful arched walkway, housed the kitchens. That much Paige remembered from her study of the floor plan.

But it was the main residence that drew her awed gaze. Washed a pale yellow in the moonlight, the red-tiled villa boasted a central tower and two sweeping wings. Light spilled out of the many leaded-glass windows and illuminated a magnificent stone portico that might have been sculpted by Michelangelo himself. Muscular Roman gods stood with one arm upraised, supporting an arched pediment. Beneath the pediment was a set of massive timber doors that looked as though they could withstand any medieval battering ram ever constructed.

When the Rolls purred to a halt at the steps of the portico, the huge doors swung open, and more light cascaded onto the cobbles. A butler or majordomo or whatever the dignified individual in black tails was called came forward with a measured tread to open the Rolls's rear door.

Paige gripped her skirts in one damp palm and took his outstretched hand with the other.

“Good evening, Miss Ames. Mr. Swanset has been eagerly awaiting your arrival.”

Paige wished she could say the same.

She mumbled something she hoped was appropriate and gave David a grateful smile when he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm to escort her inside.

How in the world could he appear so calm? she wondered. As though he were looking forward to nothing more than a pleasant evening with a gracious host.

Paige could only marvel at this David, so handsome in his white shirt and dinner jacket, so sophisticated and self-assured. Drawing in a deep breath, she strolled beside him as he followed the butler into a paneled library.

The huge, barrel-vaulted room took her breath away. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined the length of one long wall and were filled with leather-bound volumes. A fire blazed in a marble hearth at one end of the library, and a larger-than-life portrait of
Victor Swanset dominated the other. Paige's fingers clenched spasmodically on David's arm when she saw the painting.

This one portrayed the film star in perhaps his most famous role, as a swashbuckling Elizabethan pirate who single-handedly sank most of the treasure-laden Spanish galleons plying the seas. One hand rested on his sword hilt with unconscious arrogance, the other held a white rose. He'd presented the rose to a beautiful, titled Spanish captive he'd plucked from one captured ship, Paige recalled, just before he ravished her.

“If Victor Swanset steps out of that portrait, I'm going to embarrass myself and ruin this dress,” she whispered to David, uncaring what listening devices might pick up her comment.

He smiled down at her. “You can't embarrass yourself. Not with me.”

That showed what
he
knew!

To Paige's infinite relief, Victor Swanset's appearance on the scene this time was far more conventional than the last. Leaning heavily on his cane, he entered the paneled library wearing his own body and a gracious smile. Crossing the polished parquet floor, he took her hand and raised it to his papery lips with a courtly flourish.

“Miss Ames! How elegant you look this evening.” His trained, melodious voice rolled over Paige like smooth, dark velvet.

“Thank you,” she murmured, impressed by his charm in spite of herself.

He relinquished her hand with a show of real regret and turned to David.

“I must tell you, Dr. Jensen, that I reread the paper you presented to the symposium earlier this week. I was impressed, most impressed, with your research into improved digital imaging techniques.”

“Thank you. That paper was written some months ago, however,” David commented casually. “We've gone well beyond the research stage, and are now into concept demonstration.”

Swanset paused in the act of directing the butler to the crystal
decanters arrayed on a massive sideboard. He turned back to David, his dark eyes filled with interest.

“You have?”

“We have. In fact, I developed an unclassified version of the concept to demonstrate at the symposium. It's quite simple, really. Basically a variation of the imaging process you yourself introduced a few years ago.”

Swanset folded one hand atop the other on his cane. “My lab downstairs is rather well equipped. Perhaps you might demonstrate this variation after we dine?”

“I'd be delighted.”

The distinguished gray-haired butler, or whatever he was, appeared at Paige's elbow, a gold tray in hand.

“Would you care for a glass of sherry?”

Normally she hated sherry. The few sips she'd tried in the past had been too sweet for her palate and coated her throat with a smoky almond flavor. At this point, however, Paige didn't trust her voice to request anything else. She grasped the fragile crystal stemware in one hand and listened to the increasingly technical exchange between David and Victor Swanset with a growing sense of wonder.

She hadn't expected it to be this easy.

Despite the rehearsals, despite David's endless lists of possible scenarios and Maggie's careful coaching and Adam's quiet observations, Paige really hadn't expected their plan to work so smoothly. Yet they'd been in the villa less than ten minutes, and David had already laid the groundwork for his part of the operation.

Now she had to do hers.

She gulped down a healthy swallow of the sherry, trying not to grimace at the taste, and waited for a lull in the conversation.

“Mr. Swanset…”

“Victor, my dear. You must call me Victor.”

Paige returned his smile. “Victor. Would you and David excuse me for a few moments? I'd like to freshen up before dinner.”

“But of course. How thoughtless of me to keep you standing
here after that long ride. Please, let me show you to the first-floor retiring room. It's outfitted with the exact furniture and fixtures we used in
The Rogue of Versailles.
I think you'll find it quite delightful.”

“I'm sure I will,” Paige returned faintly.

He crooked an arm, inviting her to accompany him.

Clutching her evening bag, with its deadly mascara wand, well-worn switchblade and neatly folded gold halter in one hand, Paige placed the other on his bent arm.

Her heavy satin skirts swished in a hushed counterpoint to the tap of his walking stick on the parquet floor as he escorted her out of the library.

“I
t doesn't feel right.”

Maggie's raspy whisper hung on the cool night air that permeated the small operations hut. One by one, the black-clad team seated at the table turned their attention from the receiver nestled amid a litter of blueprints and scribbled diagrams and focused on their leader.

Maggie shook her head and repeated her murmured worry. “It just doesn't feel right.”

Adam stood in the shadows at the rear of the hut, his arms folded, his expression neutral, as he watched the interplay between Maggie and her team. They were all pros, all highly trained and experienced, the best operatives France and the U.S. had to offer. Several of them had worked together in the past. All of them had volunteered for this mission. They'd assembled at this isolated airstrip outside Cannes earlier this afternoon, bringing with them their individually tailored equipment and their governments' full sanction for whatever action they deemed necessary.

During the long wait for Doc and Jezebel to move into po
sition, they'd reviewed the villa's floor plans, studied ingress and egress points, and confirmed team assignments. Just moments ago, they'd presented their individual plans for Maggie's throaty concurrence.

They were ready.

Adam felt the steady thrum of adrenaline in his veins. It had been a long time, too long, since he'd been in the field, but he understood how this team felt. Controlled. Intent. Edgy with anticipation. Eager to swing into action.

Now Maggie's raspy whisper had given that anticipation a sharper edge.

A small, wiry man with a ginger mustache leaned forward into the light, his eyes narrowed on her face. “What doesn't feel right?”

Brows furrowed, she thrust a hand through hair that gleamed a pale silver.

“It's too easy,” she muttered.

A silence descended, to be broken a few moments later by a gasp. All eyes turned to the receiver.

Her face taut, Maggie planted both palms on the table and leaned toward the source of the sound.

“Is that a throne?” The sensitive device magnified a hundredfold the stunned surprise in Jezebel's voice. “I mean, a real one?”

Victor Swanset's chuckle floated on the still air. “A foolish whim, is it not? But what better use for a discarded movie prop than to grace a bathroom?”

“I can't imagine.”

The dazed reply brought a grim smile to Adam's lips. For all her delicate appearance and thinly disguised nervousness, Paige Lawrence had impressed him with her determination to see this operation through. He'd expected the woman who'd captivated Doc to be special. Paige, he'd decided, was several cuts above special.

A slight movement to his right caught Adam's attention. Henri shifted on the rickety straight chair he'd been banished to earlier and propped his elbows on the knees of his new jeans. His
freckled face scrunched into a scowl as he listened to Jezebel's exclamations over Swanset's majestic retiring room.

The boy still hadn't forgiven Doc for not taking him along tonight. His fertile imagination had come up with a wide assortment of reasons why an engineer out for an evening with his very expensive hired companion would have a small redheaded boy in tow, none of which Doc would listen to. Adam had been forced to bring Henri with him to the team's rendezvous point tonight, sure that he'd slip away and find his own way up to the villa if he wasn't kept under close watch.

“I believe you have something which interests me, my dear.”

Swanset's soft, cultured tones caused a ripple of immediate reactions.

Maggie sucked in a swift breath.

Adam's eyes narrowed to icy blue slits.

Henri hunched his thin shoulders and scowled ferociously.

The rest of the team froze.

 

Several miles away, and several hundred feet up in the rarefied elevations above Cannes, Paige stared at Victor Swanset's wrinkled face with the fascination a mouse might give a patient gray cat. His eyes met hers, as dark as obsidian, as inscrutable as death.

“The microdot? You have it with you, do you not?”

Paige nodded. The movement was reflected a hundred, or perhaps a thousand, times in the tall, gilded mirrors lining this wide antechamber. It was, Victor had told her, an exact, if somewhat smaller, version of Versailles's famed hall of mirrors.

At one end of the corridor was the most sumptuous bedroom Paige had ever seen, furnished as it had been for Louis XVI. At the other was a vast bathroom featuring an eighteenth-century throne with twentieth-century plumbing. Victor had graciously demonstrated the flush mechanism before returning with her to this hall of mirrors.

So nervous she could barely keep from shaking, Paige wanted desperately to banish Victor immediately and retreat to that throne. The knowledge that Maggie and Adam and half a dozen
other assorted individuals were listening to every word of this conversation through the tiny transmitter in her earring held her in place. She couldn't chicken out now and let them all down. She wouldn't disappoint David. Or herself.

“Yes, I have the microdot.”

Resting both gnarled hands on his ivory-headed cane, he regarded her benignly. “May I have it, my dear?”

“Of…of course.”

Paige fumbled with the clasp of her evening bag. Her fingers shaking, she withdrew the slithery halter and passed it to him.

“Ah.”

Intense satisfaction gave his voice a vibrant depth as he lifted the sparkling collar up. The shimmering gold sequins caught the bright glow of the lamps that marched at regular intervals along the hall. Flickering, dancing light swirled around and around in the endless mirrors, until Paige felt dizzy and a little sick. She swallowed hard against the nausea that gripped her stomach.

Just when she thought she might have to beat an undignified retreat to the throne and toss up the thimbleful of sherry she'd allowed herself, Victor lowered the collar. He folded the halter carefully and slipped it into his pocket.

“You will be suitably recompensed, of course,” he murmured absently, as if such mundane matters as money were of little interest to either of them. “Please, take your time, my dear. We'll go in to dinner when you rejoin us.”

The moment the mirrored door closed behind his stoop-shouldered form, Paige slumped against the opposite wall. Her heart was hammering so hard and so fast it hurt. She gulped in several deep breaths and willed her lungs to pump the air to the rest of her body. She was sure they hadn't operated at full capacity since Victor had led her from the library.

Slowly her eyes focused on the image in the opposite mirror. A pale, slender woman in a green-and-gold designer gown and crystal drop earrings stared back at her. A stranger. A sort of secret agent. An almost call girl. An honest-to-goodness, full-fledged adventuress.

She'd done it!

She'd passed the microdot to Victor Swanset!

The heady realization gave Paige the spurt of energy she needed to dash to the throne. Just in time, she rid her heaving, swirling stomach of the damned sherry.

 

Paige passed the next few hours in a blur of unimaginable, unabashedly sybaritic luxury. The butler seated her next to her host and across from David at a polished table half a mile long. She gazed at the forest of sparkling crystal stems in front of her with some consternation. After suffering from the combined effects of the champagne and sherry, she wasn't about to court any more trips to the throne room by working her way through that maze of wineglasses.

A small army of servants set course after course before her, each nestled on a baroque gold charger emblazoned with a scrolled
S.
Paige nibbled at each dish, contributed her share to the wide-ranging conversation, and resolutely stuck to sparkling water. To all intents and purposes, her part in this mission was over, but she didn't intend to start celebrating until she and David were safely back at the Carlton.

Later, she promised herself. They'd celebrate later.

A mental image of a scrap of lemon lace sent a sudden spear of heat through her belly. Half startled, half embarrassed by its intensity, she studied the man opposite her from beneath lowered lids.

If David was the least bit nervous about pulling off his part of this mission, Paige couldn't detect it. He lounged against the high back of his chair, one big hand loosely wrapped around a fragile crystal stem as he conversed with their host. The candlelight hid the subtle red tints in his dark brown hair, but Paige knew they were there. She'd seen them often enough in the bright light of day. She curled her fingers into fists, wishing with all her heart that this dinner was over and she could reach up to disturb the disciplined order of his hair.

She wanted to feel its springy softness. To taste his mouth on hers. To forget these nerve-racking hours and lose herself in the
solid, soaring passion that David brought her.

Later, she promised herself.

 

After what seemed like two dozen courses, the parade of servers bearing new dishes finally dwindled to a trickle, then slowed to a halt. At the butler's murmured query, Victor gave his guests a choice.

“Shall we take coffee in the library, or would you like to see my laboratory first?”

David rose. “Your laboratory, by all means.”

Victor's pleased smile softened as he turned to Paige. “Would you care to wait for us in the library, my dear? My little demonstration at the Palais yesterday was a bit unsettling for you, I'm afraid.”

“A bit,” Paige admitted dryly.

“I wouldn't want to startle you again.”

“Now that I'm familiar with your propensity for stepping through walls, I think I can handle another demonstration.”

He chuckled in delight. “Good. Good. Come with me, please.”

His cane clicking on the black-and-white tiles, Victor led them through the central hallway, toward the rear of the main tower, and ushered them into a paneled elevator. In contrast to the Carlton's clanking wrought-iron cage, the doors to this one slid shut with silent efficiency and the elevator plunged downward.

Victor rested his hands on his cane. “We're descending to what used to be the dungeons. They were quite primitive, originally, as you might expect.” His dark eyes glinted. “I've done some rather extensive modifications.”

Without realizing that she did so, Paige nudged closer to David. For some unexplained reason, her euphoria at having completed her part of the mission dissipated with every foot they dropped downward.

 

“We're descend…what used…to…dungeons.”

Swanset's voice fuzzed.

Maggie shot up out of her chair. “We're losing them!” she said, her voice a rasp.

“Done…mod…”

The entire team stared at the receiver as the broken transmissions degenerated into an indistinct hiss. A second or two later, even the hiss disappeared.

“Dammit, we've lost them.”

Maggie yanked a folded blueprint out of the pile on the table and spread it out in front of her.

“According to these floor plans, the dungeons are approximately forty feet below the villa's ground floor. The communications folks swore that we'd be able to hear all transmissions from them.”

Frowning, she shoved a hand through her hair. “Santorelli, get hold of the technician who inserted that device in Jezebel's earring. I want to know why that transmission failed, and fast!”

Paige held her breath as the elevator door hissed open at last. She expected another fantastic scene from one of Swanset's movies. An early version of
Frankenstein,
perhaps, or
The Prisoner of Zenda.

But Victor's subterranean lair held little resemblance to either a mad scientist's habitat or a medieval dungeon. Bright fluorescent light bathed a large environmentally controlled chamber that contained only a few scattered armchairs with a table between them, a single computer workstation and a bank of small, innocuous-looking white boxes.

Paige had worked for a major defense firm long enough to recognize the logo on those boxes instantly. They were components of the most powerful, most sophisticated supercomputer in the world, one whose sale was rigidly restricted by the United States government and whose price hovered at about a hundred million dollars.

Her disbelieving eyes met David's. She could tell by the set to his jaw that Swanset's acquisition of this computer for private use was an unwelcome surprise to him, too.

“Please,” Victor said, gesturing toward the armchairs, “make
yourself comfortable while I access my latest program. I think you might find the application interesting.”

Interesting
wasn't the word for it.

Frightening
came close.

Terrifying
even closer.

But by the time Paige could recover her power of speech, it was too late to even try to categorize what she'd seen.

 

At Victor's invitation, Doc seated Paige and then himself in an armchair. For long moments, nothing happened. No walls moved. No swashbuckling pirates materialized before them. No sounds disturbed the stillness except the subdued clatter of the keyboard and the discreet whirring of the small white boxes.

When Swanset finished, he swiveled around on his chair and gave them a charming, apologetic smile.

“It takes a few moments to activate. Why don't I ring for coffee while we wait? Or cognac, perhaps?”

Doc eased the slight pressure on his gold cuff link. The tiny device implanted in it had recorded the audible clicks of Swanset's keyboard and translated them into digital impulses. With that translation, Doc could duplicate Swanset's computer access code at will.

“Coffee would be fine,” he replied, his relaxed tone giving no hint of his gathering tension.

This was too easy.

It didn't feel right.

Swanset was playing with them. Had been playing with them all night. Doc knew it with a gut-deep instinct honed by years in the field. What he didn't know was why.