Duel of Assassins (26 page)

Charlotte Walsh lay supine on the beach of Le Lavandou,
surrendering herself to the Mediterranean sun. She wanted it not only to bronze
her body, but to cauterize certain emotional wounds and to burn the insidious
Washingtonian fog out of her brain. It was the Fourth of July, not a red-letter
day in the South of France, and certainly not here. She had deliberately
bypassed her favorite spots along the Côte d’Azur—Villefranche, Nice,
Antibes—and come farther west to this less than trendy resort unfrequented by
American tourists.

But Le Lavandou was far from deserted. French holidaygoers
flocked to the place, staking out early claims on its fine sand beach and
staying past sundown. Windsurfers dashed back and forth across the sparkling
bay. From the adjoining marina, boatloads of tourists were ferried out to the
offshore islands, the Iles d’Hyères. And the beachfront boulevard teemed all
day with a bright, motley parade. Little cars and motor scooters snarled
endlessly around the corners from the perpendicular access streets, dueling for
parking places. An open-sided tram snaked routinely through this melee,
blatting its horn, flashing its red roof light, stopping at all the bayside
hotels. Half a dozen tacky carnival booths along the harborside did a steady
business, as did the sidewalk T-shirt, souvenir and snack shops. Teens and
preteens clattered by on skateboards, older townfolk in shorts and sandals were
pulled past by straining poodles and shepherds.

Charlotte found it all refreshing. The erstwhile sleepy
fishing village had turned itself into a bustling beach town devoid of glitzy
pretense or cultural cachet. As far as she could glean from the tourist
brochures, neither Picasso nor Matisse had ever loaded a brush in Le Lavandou,
Maugham and Fitzgerald had neither one written a line, and Mick Jagger didn’t
have a villa in the vicinity. Further isolating the spot from the hordes of
Eurailpassing wayfarers, the train entirely disregarded the Massif des Maures,
this petite bulge in France’s celebrated southern littoral. Charlotte had
arrived on a bus from Toulon. She had preferred not to rent a car. Once here,
everything was walkable.

She had settled in a white and pastel blue room whose
private tiled terrace overlooked the marina and afforded a grand view of the
beach and the circling Bay of Bormes all the way to Cape Bénet. On her second
full day she still knew no one except the startlingly attractive young people
who staffed her hotel. And so far, even John Tully was being
très
sympathique
about not disturbing her.

The deluge would come soon enough, as she joined the legions
of the fourth estate converging on Berlin and Potsdam, all in the earnest guise
of Delphic Oracles for their respective constituencies. In fact, the hype and
handouts were already clogging Charlie’s in basket and the mainframe’s foreign
wire queues the day she’d escaped her desk in DC. Well, she’d survive Potsdam,
and maybe even find something worth writing about it—and inflicting on the
readers of her home paper and the eighty-three others which, her syndicate
assured her, subscribed to her twice-weekly columns. But it was increasingly
obvious that, like Super Bowls, these international conferences had become
almost incidental to the surrounding media event, serving only to provide the
initial spark for self-feeding firestorms of reportage and punditry. Of course,
she knew she’d enjoy herself once she got in journalistic harness, but she
wasn’t eager to be off just yet. Another few days of sunshine, salt air and
tranquility would do her just fine.

They would also give her a chance to shape up her psyche
along with her physique, to unwind her nerves as she tanned her hide and toned
her muscles with a daily seaside jog. The day after Taras left, Charlotte had
gone back to the gym and repped herself ragged. She had chickened out on a
further angry resolve—to spread the word among selected friends that she just
might—deep breath—be back in the market for any available—and
marriageable—males. There was no point in kidding herself. She was still hung
up on her dark-eyed Slav. She wanted him back, dammit! But a week had passed
without a word from Taras, and now anger and frustration were building up
again. She deserved a hell of a lot better, and if Taras couldn’t see that,
maybe she’d have to find somebody who could.

Her body, approaching forty, was still damn good. Tall,
long-legged and hyper, Charlotte had never succumbed to sedentary spread. And
her intermittent exercises manias over the years had maintained her assets with
a certain buoyancy. Not that she could compete with the
crème
of the
jeune
filles
who habituated the Lavandou seaside, abundantly or boyishly topless,
and some wearing only
le minimum
below. Charlotte had seen several girls
who were breathtaking, and when one of these tawny young lionesses rose up from
the sand to prance toward the water for a splash, all eyes followed—and not
infrequently a zoom lens or two from the bordering sidewalk.

But Charlotte definitely held her own with the older
ingenues. She had, for instance, bravely abandoned her trusty one-piece in
favor of a skimpy black bikini from a local shop suggestively called
Kocaïne
.
She still hadn’t summoned the nerve to unfasten the tiny halter while
sunbathing, or to frequent the sidewalks without her extra-large T-shirt
coverup. But she might yet. The resort atmospherics were definitely
uninhibiting. Under no circumstances, however, could she see herself entering
the pageant being advertised by a beachfront nightclub to select
“La Plus
Gros Poitrine de la Région”
—a title which Charlotte translated succinctly
as “Biggest Tits in Town.”

Of course, she wasn’t really trying to draw the focus of
local males. She was only on reconnaissance, not combat maneuvers. Anyway, she
couldn’t quite get used to European men in bikini briefs—what one woman friend,
who did fancy them, playfully called “banana huggers” and “marble bags.”
However, Charlotte’s morning jogs took her past a pair of appealing
hunks—rugged-looking Swedish windsurfers day-camping out of an old VW microbus
farther down the beachfront toward Port de Bormes-les Mimosas. Had she been
seriously stalking, they would certainly have merited consideration. But so far
her passages had elicited no signs of interest; the blue-eyed squints of both
young men remained fixed seaward.

She turned onto her tummy, checking her watch to make sure
she didn’t overdo and burn her back, especially those tender derriere portions
newly exposed by the bikini. She gave herself a half hour more and picked up
the paperback she’d bought that morning in a beachside
librairie
. It was
an Agatha Christie in French, something to while away the sun-dazed minutes
while refreshing her
grammaire
and
vocabulaire
. After fifteen
minutes she made the vexing discovery that she’d read the damn thing in English
under a title that bore not the slightest resemblance to the one on this French
edition. She shut the book with an expletive, which she quickly emended to
merde
;
there was no point in wading through pages of Gallicized British chitchat when
she knew damn well who’d done it!

She’d just have to put up with her own thoughts for a while.

But
merde
squared! She didn’t
want
to be stuck
with them.

She snatched up her beach things, stuffed them in her tote
bag and hiked across the sand to the little card- and bookstore on the
tamarisk-lined Avenue Général Bouvet. The proprietress would happily exchange
it, and Charlotte could be back in her spot in five minutes with her nose in a
fresh paperback.

As she was browsing, a tanned, fair-haired man was suddenly
beside her at the paperback kiosk. For an instant, gathering a peripheral blur of
rugged features, blue eyes and muscular, blond-thatched forearms and legs, she
thought it was one of the Scandinavian windsurfers—and was embarrassed how
girlishly her pulse quickened. Then, as the kiosk squeaked around and they
moved in opposition, she got a good look at him. He was older than the Swedes,
but her heartbeat didn’t diminish. On the contrary. He was terribly good to
look at. She traced a sensual curve that repeated in the line of his jaw, in
his cheekbones, at the corner of his mouth and feathered eyebrow. He seemed to
emit a kind of constant, low-intensity masculine assurance even when, as now,
he was obviously unaware of doing so.
He’s always gotten whoever and
whatever he wanted,
she thought.
The star athlete. No wonder he looks
arrogant
.

What nationality? she mused further. In what language was he
thinking behind those Arctic eyes? If not Scandinavian, perhaps German or
Austrian? A Teutonic name would definitely fit him, something harsh like Horst
or Gunther. The rotating book titles blurred as she browsed him further—his
hands, tanned and veined and covered with golden hair like his forearms; strong
legs swelling under mid-length khaki shorts; well-shaped feet in Mexican-style
huaraches; a sculpted, pectoral slab visible through a half-unbuttoned Madras
shirt...

Let’s stop right there, shall we, Charlotte?
she told
herself.

The man turned to the woman behind the counter, who was
reading a Maigret. “Excuse me. Don’t you have anything in English?”

“Ah, dommage, mais non, monsieur
. Very sorry.”

“They don’t seem to get many English or American tourists
here,” Charlotte said.

“Thank God, a fellow American!”

They exchanged names. His was Jack Sanderson. And he, too,
just wanted something to read on the beach. “They got plenty of American
authors, I see, only in the wrong language. Judith Krantz, Jackie Collins.
Harold Robbins is still big over here, I see.”

Charlotte laughed. “What about
Martin Chuzzlewit?”

“I’m kind of partial to thrillers and westerns. What’s he
write?”

“He doesn’t. It’s one of Dickens’ novels. I’ve got a copy
back at my hotel you could have. I finished it on the plane.”
Christ, that
just came out, didn’t it? What adolescent subtlety was she going to blurt out
next?

“Thanks, but I’m kind of a hopeless lowbrow. Move my lips
when I read, you know what I mean? Got any Alistair Maclean, Louis L’Amour,
Mickey Spillane type of thing, about a hundred fifty pages, big type?”

Sanderson was grinning, enjoying his self-putdown.

She shook her head. “No, but I think there’s a place on
Avenue de Gaulle where you might find something.”

“I don’t know the layout yet. Could you, uh, maybe point me
in the right direction?”

“Better let me show you. It’s not far. Come on.” She
gestured toward the door, her Agatha Christie exchange utterly forgotten.
Dear
Diary, am I imagining this or is something starting to happen here?

Sanderson had fallen in beside her, and they followed the
curving sea frontage past the little town hall with its tricolor flag and
bunting, then turned up a narrow walkway to Avenue du Général de Gaulle, one of
the main shopping streets. The bookstore had some British paperbacks, including
a couple of old James Bonds that Sanderson hadn’t read. Charlotte picked out a
Delderfield saga. On the way back to the beach they detoured into a glass-enclosed
brasserie with a view of the bay through palms and parked cars. Sanderson
ordered a Beck’s, then switched to join Charlotte in her choice of a local
wine, a Côte de Provence.

“So what do we toast?” he asked.

“For starters,” she suggested, “how about happy birthday,

America?”

“Christ, it’s the Fourth! I completely forgot!”

Their eyes met as they touched glasses, and Charlotte felt
slightly flushed. Which was, of course, absurd. It had been a while, perhaps,
but she’d had more than her share of affairs before Taras. She could certainly
handle this without getting the schoolgirl wobbles. Be in control of it. She
glanced deliberately away from Sanderson, watching the sunlight gloss the edges
of the swishing palm fronds, the same sun that was bathing the bay beyond. The
tension wouldn’t go away.

“So, what do you do?” he asked. She told him, and he
brightened. “I’ve seen your by-line. Doesn’t the
Herald Tribune
run you
sometimes?”

“On occasion. Which one did you see?”

“I don’t remember. Actually, like I said, I just remember
the by-line, Over here I mostly just check out the baseball scores a day or so
late. And lately I’ve been picking up
USA Today
. More my speed, I
guess.”

“Don’t put yourself down, Jack. It makes me suspicious,
since you strike me as a pretty bright guy. Which brings us to your turn. What
do you do?”

“Lately I go to trade fairs. Not a bad deal, driving all
around Europe, tax deductible. Actually, what I do, I look for products, things
that these people I represent back home—I work out of an office in Chicago, the
Merchandise Mart—can license and sell. Mail-order gadgets. Damnedest stuff you
ever saw. Toy solar-power dirigibles. Floating sunglasses, don’t ask me why.
Underwater magnets, for picking up beer cans from docks, I guess, quarters from
swimming pools. Backyard geodesic domes. Alpha-state stimulators. Personally, I
like the toys best.”

“Sounds like a perfectly wonderful way to make a living.
Have you been doing it long?”

“Couple three years now.”

“That explains your accent.”

“What accent?”

“Your vowels are kind of roundish for a real American, if
you know what I mean, especially a Middle Westerner. For instance, you just
said
‘ahk
-sent,’ instead of
‘axe
-sent.’”

   “Did I? I guess I’m sort of a chameleon. Maybe they
better send me home before I start putting my fork in the wrong hand. Anyway,
the present deal is, I have a few weeks off and I’d never seen the Riviera, so
I drove down from the toy fair at Nuremberg. I was heading for St. Tropez
today, but I took a wrong turn, wound up here and liked it. I like it even
better now. I rented a room up on the hill. Hotel California, like the old
Eagles song. Pretty nice.”