Green Ice (36 page)

Argenti touched the outside corner of one of his eyes with the tip of a little finger, supposedly to prevent a tear.

Wiley nodded once for good-bye.

Even before the limousine pulled away from the steps, Argenti had gone into the villa.

In a half hour Wiley and Lillian were at the airport. Her Gulfstream was checked out, warmed up and waiting. Her luggage was put directly aboard, carted through customs as though it were invisible. She and Wiley went to a terminal newsstand to buy several magazines. On the way to the international departures area Lillian went into the ladies’ room. Wiley went into the adjacent men’s room.

A few moments later, Marianna came out of the ladies’ room wearing tan slacks, blue sweater, blue and beige scarf and silver-rimmed aviator-style dark glasses. Bryan came out of the men’s room in a dark-blue blazer and gray slacks. They walked at a leisurely pace to the international departures area and on to customs, where they produced their passports.

Marianna’s photo, Lillian’s name.

Bryan’s photo, Wiley’s name.

Everything in order. The customs clerk inked his stamp well and used it like punctuation to his
“Buen viaje.”

25

That same night Maret and Astrid were booked on the ten o’clock flight to London, with a connection from there to Copenhagen.

They didn’t have much packing to do. Because they’d been doing it throughout their two-month stay. They had each arrived with one cheap cardboard-type suitcase. As they shopped and accumulated things they stashed them away in Charles Jourdan luggage pieces which they kept out of sight in the deepest part of their closets. So as not to appear obviously greedy and, as well, to lessen the chance of having anything taken back should Argenti suddenly become displeased.

Now, servants came for their luggage. Brown belonged to Astrid, black to Maret. Twenty-eight pieces, requiring a second limousine.

Clementina came to tell them Argenti wanted to say good-bye. They remembered to kick off their shoes before going to his most private study on the second floor.

Clementina stood inside by the closed door.

Maret sat on Argenti’s lap. He kissed her an open kiss while his hand went inside her blouse, so carelessly it ripped off a button. She made little animal sounds and squirmed appropriately. Then he had her stand before him while he felt for proof that she was genuinely aroused.

Astrid was put through a similar test.

Argenti said they were good little girls because they were such bad little girls.

They giggled for him.

He held up identical Piaget wristwatches.

They ran with the proper excitement to get their going-away presents.

They tried to kiss him their thanks.

Instead he had them kiss one another.

They positioned their heads so that he could see their tongues. And without being told, they did a few other things as though they could not help themselves. Just a little to remember them by.

They left the room. Clementina stayed. She told him Maret had recommended her younger sister. Just thirteen, only touched by herself and that only recently.

Argenti’s interest was stirred.

Clementina would accompany the girls to Denmark. From there she would go home to Stuttgart for a week with her mother. Her mother was saving nearly every penny Clementina made. Clementina was a twenty-year-old who looked sixteen. Posing as Argenti’s niece, she had been arranging these matters for him for the past three years. She had a backlog of candidates agreeable to a South American holiday. Most were from large poor families. Throughout Europe, especially in the north, many of the poor seemed to have a practical attitude toward their daughters. Whatever happened was bound to happen to them soon enough anyway, a father usually reasoned, and took the money.

This time Argenti gave Clementina two thousand above her salary for having done so well with Maret and Astrid. And ten thousand more she was to use as needed in her recruiting. He expected her to return within ten days with at least two new friends.

He remained in his study.

Opened a bottle of Le Montrachet Grivelet ’66. He appreciated its color and bouquet before taking a sip.

If things went the way they were headed, he’d have what he wanted.

Lillian was instrumental, the key.

He had invested a great deal of time and patience in her. No doubt, she would marry him. With their interests fused to that extent, it would be in line to have Corey approach Brandon to approach Sir William on his behalf.

Sir William was head of The Consolidated Selling System, the London-based diamond cartel Argenti had once been associated with as a privileged dealer. The System that he had side-dealed on, and been found out by. The System that had spared his life at the last second and imposed exile instead. Their terms had been explicit: restriction to South and Central America and Mexico. If he ever set foot on any other territory he would be killed. The same penalty would be imposed if he ever touched another diamond.

The System.

Brandon was on The System’s board of directors. Recently elected because of the extensive diamond discoveries made and controlled by one of his companies in Western Australia. With the South African and West African situations tenuous and slipping, those Australian finds became all the more important to The System, and Brandon was a man to be heard.

Corey was Brandon’s friend on both a business and a personal level. Corey was chairman of the conglomerate that was the financial web spun out of the Mayo holdings—Lillian’s source of wealth. Several of Brandon’s important companies were dependent upon agreements with Mayo firms. A normal one-hand-washing-the-other relationship; however, Corey had the soap.

Thus, Argenti believed marriage to Lillian was the solution. His influence on her would start the chain reaction. Lillian to Corey to Brandon to Sir William. His exoneration would come, probably in person, politely, from Sir William himself.

Then Argenti would be free to go when and wherever he pleased. For example: the Biffi alla Scala next door to the opera house in Milan. There, most certainly, he would order
risotto milanese con tartufi
—rice seasoned and yellow with saffron, rich sauce ladled over it, and that topped with white truffles from the Valle D’Aosta. The truffles sliced into delicious slivers, before his eyes, with a special silver instrument with razorlike blades.

Many times over the years of exile he’d ached himself sick for such places: La Nosetta, that intimate
taverna
on Lake Como.

Where Karen had gone with him.

The best ever for him, then and still, sweet Karen.

With his usual constant antennae for such things he had noticed Karen at the railway station in Lecco. Just arrived and on her way to Erba to visit her mother’s sister. She took his ride instead of the bus, and he drove slowly to prolong it. She was from Feldkirch in Austria, only five miles from the Rhine. Her eyes sung as she talked, he thought. Such fine features, a slight, very becoming overbite. She noticed when he passed the turnoff to Erba, but she wasn’t alarmed, chose that moment to say she was not expected at her aunt’s until the next day. There had been a mix-up on dates and her aunt did not have a telephone, so she had just come ahead. She was much too choice, he’d decided, for anything usual, such as merely hands, along some back road in the car. He took her to La Nosetta for a late lunch outside, right over the lake. She was awed by the dessert cart. He could tell from her shoes that they were her best only other pair. He excused himself, went into the
taverna
and registered for a room, just in case. No one doubted she was his daughter. He knew that if she was still there when he returned to the table, she would stay. It was an adventure for her that, minute by minute, she allowed to happen. Special Karen. Her hands so clean, the nails pared so the tops of her fingers showed. There had been an apricot tree outside their room, its blossoms pressed against the window screen—he would always remember. She had removed her clothes carefully, folded and hung them with respect. White cotton underpants, as he had hoped. She did not try to conceal anything but her shyness. Her heavy, healthy hair, straw blond, seemed longer down over her bare shoulders. The longest of it tried to hide her breasts. She said she was fourteen. She was thirteen, just turned. She had never felt anything, only wondered. Perhaps that day was her first possible day, that hour or even that minute might have been the first time she was capable. Almost as soon as he touched her she was frightened by sensation. Within moments she thought she was dying. She came into the pleasure he gave her that fresh, that easy. Lipping wet around one of her nipples for a minute was enough to cause her to achieve. She had given him the virginity of her body and her mind, he had always thought.

Sweet exception, Karen.

He never saw her again. She went lightly down the road to her aunt’s house and into his life forever as a fixed impression.

He had never been able to recapture her with anyone else. Either they couldn’t yet or had already, one way or another.

He thought, when his exile was over, soon now, he would go back over some of those roads. It had been more satisfying for him when he’d done his own hunting, and he would again. Perhaps in the railway station at Lecco or Como, Lugano or Varese, he would find another Karen.

One thing was certain: He would never be sexually up to Lillian, no matter what she resorted to. As a matter of fact, the more complex she made it, the more adult, so to speak, the worse it would be. He planned to go through the motions, be perplexed by his failure, act distressed. The question would be, why should such a thing happen to him at that time? She would realize she was the difference in his life, and, therefore, blame herself. He would have her sympathy, and against that emotional background, it would be a small thing for her to speak to Corey on his behalf. Everything would work in his favor.

Didn’t he find Lillian desirable?

Only cerebrally so. She was a beautiful woman by womanly standards, but spoiled. Many times over. Spoiled by experience. Practiced and physically demanding. He had long ago given up trying and failing with her sort. (It made him despondent to think that somewhere Karen was now a thirty-year-old issuing children and sexual directions.)

He no longer had any uncertainty about his libidinal preference, or any misgivings. Over the years, that which pleased him most had determined him. No use fighting it and no shame. But he would never tell Lillian. Somehow he would keep it from her, be more careful, extremely discreet. Until the exile was lifted, until her body ran out of patience.

That was where this Mr. Wiley fit in. That was the reason for having gone through the complications of setting up Mr. Wiley so that he was five million on the down side. That was the only reason Mr. Wiley was not dead by simple elimination. Argenti could have had it done at any time by the point of his finger.

Mr. Wiley would serve.

Evidently, from what he’d gathered, Lillian found Mr. Wiley a fairly good bedfellow. All the better. Argenti wouldn’t begrudge her that. People in their class were always sweeping things under the rug. Well, he, Lillian and Wiley would sweep everything under the rug and all get under there with it.

The telephone. His direct line to Conduct Section was ringing.

Kellerman was on to tell him, “The report is she landed in Mexico City an hour ago and went immediately to her house in the Pedregal section.”

“Wiley was with her?”

“Of course.”

“Good. If he runs out on her, kill him. Did you by chance have that talk with Robayo?”

“The Senator wants a retirement fund,” Kellerman said.

“Wants?”

“Demands.”

“That was not in the original terms.”

“So I reminded him.”

“Doesn’t he realize the new Senator from Boyacá will assume his responsibilities and, as well, his rewards?
Merda
, if he kept only a third of what went to Switzerland for him these past seven years, he is a wealthy man.”

“He gambled.”

“That much of a loser?”

“He seemed to enjoy not winning.”

“Well, we can’t stuff his mouth with money,” Argenti said.

“Unless you’re prepared to keep stuffing.”

“Wait until he is out of office. Meanwhile, go along with whatever he wants.”

“Exactly.”

After the phone call Argenti remained at his desk. He poured more of the Montrachet and moved a paperweight that was one pound of pure platinum, polished and engraved with his three initials in Spencerian script. He took up a letter from the man in Amsterdam, an associate in the international minority organization called The Golden Triangle. Members traded material and local advice. Many prominent men. This man in Amsterdam had some exceptional color snapshots. A sample was enclosed: the girl in a most delightful, gawky stance, hand shielding her eyes from the sun, crotch barely glossed—
the golden triangle
. Not a hint of guile, unless it was her underpants around and under one foot, toes peeking out.

Argenti tried to think what in his collection he might offer in exchange. Something of quality that had used up his interest.

He opened the desk drawer.

There was the red Cartier box.

He placed it on the desk and pressed the lid up.

The ring Lillian would accept.

The diamond, a few points over twelve carats, flared at him, even in that low light.

He got up, bolted the only door. Drew the drapes over all the windows and returned to his chair behind the desk.

Even then he was uneasy, glanced around.

Slowly, he brought the first finger of his right hand to the ring.

Even the slightest change in his point of view caused the diamond to differ in its refractions. It was a round cut, what those in the trade called a brilliant.

The tip of his finger was only a half inch from it.

It would be the first time since.

He dared. Touched the diamond and quickly withdrew his hand, as though to avoid being burned.

He glanced around the room again.