Too Damn Rich (84 page)

"Yes, Your Highness. I quite agree."

"Perhaps I should be there," Karl-Heinz said
softly.

"Of course you are welcome to come," Dr.
Rantzau said. "But why don't you give it twenty-four hours? He will
either pull through, or he won't."

What he's really saying, Karl-Heinz thought,
is I'll either be too late, or else he'll continue to hang on.

"You will keep me informed, Doctor?"

"Of course, Your Highness."

"I can be reached at my cellular number."
Karl-Heinz hung up.

Zandra was staring up at him, her green eyes
wide. "I'm so sorry, Heinzie," she said softly.

"I know," he said quietly. "Not that this
should come as any surprise. Still, the shock—"

"I can imagine. Come on, darling." She took
his arm and started to lead him back to the apartment.

"No." He shook his head. "It won't matter
where I'll be. I'll take the Concorde in the morning." He raised
his voice. "Josef?" he called.

His valet hurried out of the apartment. "Yes,
Your Highness?"

"Take this," he said, handing him the phone.
"Bring me the cellular."

Zandra looked stunned. "You mean... we're
still going to the auction?"

"Why not?" Karl-Heinz smiled grimly. "Perhaps
it will be a momentary diversion."

In her suite at the Carlyle, Sofia had old
August Meindl on the telephone.

"I want you and your son Klaus to go to that
clinic immediately," she was saying. "I don't trust the staff.
Should my father pass away tonight, you are to witness the exact
time of his death."

"Yes, Your Highness."

"And you are to call me at once. I will have
the telephone with me."

"Yes, Your Highness."

"And Herr Meindl?"

"Highness?"

Sofia's voice was quiet with menace. "Do not
fail me."

"No, Your Highness."

Sofia broke the connection and stuffed her
cellular phone into her beaded bag. With luck, she thought, with
just a little bit of luck ...

"Erwein!"

"
Ja
, Sofia?" He was sitting right
behind her on the sofa.

She turned around in a swirl of celadon
chiffon and ostrich feathers. "Are you ready? We are leaving for
Burghley's."

"I'm ready," he said, getting to his
feet.

"You have our invitations?"

"
Ja
. Right here." He patted his breast
pocket.

She cocked her arm to link it through his and
smiled. "Who knows? Perhaps I shall even buy a painting. Tonight, I
feel like celebrating!"

"Can you believe this turnout?" Kenzie
whispered to Arnold from the sidelines. Her eyes were continuously
roving the second-floor gallery like an alert hostess's.

"You should see outside," he said. "There are
more spectators than at a Hollywood premiere. The only thing
missing's the searchlights. Oh-oh. Annalisa's motioning to me. Be
right back." He slipped into the crowd of champagne-sipping
tycoons, celebrities, film stars, and their spouses and
companions.

"Kenzie?" warbled a thin familiar voice.

Kenzie looked around, and there he was: tall,
cadaverous, and stooped, with warm topaz eyes regarding her over
the tops of his half lenses.

"Mr. Spotts!" she cried. "Oh, but it's good
to see you!" She flung her arms around him in a welcoming hug.

"Now, now," he chided. "If you're going to
continue calling me Mr. Spotts, I shall have to revert to calling
you Ms. Turner."

"Just a slip of the tongue, Dietrich," she
said happily, "just a slip of the old tongue. God, Arnold's going
to flip when he sees you! Oh, I'm so glad you could make it!"

"How could I possibly stay away?" He gestured
around with a palsied hand and smiled. "This is, after all, the
auction of a lifetime."

Out front on Madison Avenue, Lord Rosenkrantz
was helping Suzy de Saint-Mallet out of his vintage
Rolls-Royce.

Next to his Pickwickian proportions, Becky's
twin sister looked particularly wraithlike and fragile. She was
wearing a black Valentino toga which left one skeletal arm and
shoulder bare, and the other completely draped.

"I wish you weren't putting yourself through
this, my dear," he murmured, eyeing the crowds of photographers and
celebrity-watchers with distaste. "You know you don't have to be
here."

Her chin went up. "Nonsense, cheri! Of course
I must. This occasion needs that old Cornille-Saint-Mallet-de la
Vila magic. People are expecting me to be here. Besides, it's
probably good for me. Perhaps this will help give the entire
nightmare a sense of closure."

He shook his head. "Anyone else in your shoes
would gladly stay away from this circus."

"Perhaps." She took his arm. "But what about
yourself?"

He looked at her. "What about me?"

"This cannot be easy for you, either," she
said huskily. "I know what Becky meant to you."

He smiled sadly. "Perhaps I am hoping for a
sense of closure also."

She patted his hand. "You're a good man," she
told him. "You brought Becky so much happiness."

He shrugged. "It was mutual. She made me very
happy, too."

"Suzy! Darling!" a female voice called
out.

For one split second Suzy's face froze; then
she turned up the dazzling public smile she had long ago
perfected.

"Charley?"

The word seemed to be snatched from thin air
by the mini-receiver in his ear. The transmitted background noise
of chatter and billowing laughter was a hivelike buzz. Charley let
his roving, trouble-shooting gaze sweep the auction gallery proper,
where a few scattered, red plush seats had already been taken. He
wiggled a finger inside his constricting shirt collar, obviously
uncomfortable in his rented tux.

"Charley?" he heard repeated.

He turned toward the wall to conceal his
movements and lifted his right arm to his mouth. "I read you,
Hannes," he said into his wrist transmitter.

"There are no problems here in the lobby,
Charley. Only people setting off the metal detectors. Twelve were
carrying guns, but they had permits. The police chief persuaded
them to check their weapons."

"Good. Everything's cool up here, too. I'm
going to check out the temporary painting storeroom once more.
Over."

He turned around to find a few more seats
filled. All men, he noticed now. All in choice—

—
strategic?
—

—aisle seats.

Why? the suspicious cop in him wondered.

Probably because they don't want to be
hemmed in
, he answered himself, suppressing a niggling sense of
uneasiness.
Not that I blame them. I'd want the most legroom,
too.

Such an innocent explanation. And how like
him to overreact. But then, letting his imagination get the better
of him was an occupational hazard, and one not helped any by the
heightened security measures.

They were enough to make anyone paranoid.

Better check on the paintings
, he told
himself.

The seven men in their predetermined aisle
seats waited patiently, studiously ignoring each other. Pressure
applied in two spots under their seats would release the
spring-loaded bottoms. The weapons clipped there could be grabbed
in an instant.

All were loaded.

And ready to fire.

Watching the seats fill up with the
world's richest and most powerful people, he felt a supercharged
rush of adrenaline. They were coming in like lambs to the
slaughter—smug and insular, like superior beings who thought they
owned the planet. But that feeling would not persist for long, he
knew. Soon they would be terrified and cowed. Soon more than a few
would soil themselves. And soon, at least a few of them would
die
.

The auction was underway. In the rows of
plush seats, the secure, satisfied faces of the rich and powerful
had given way to bright-eyed tension and excitement.

On the block was Lot 17,
The Infanta,
Margarita, in Red
, by Velazquez. Displayed on the easel of the
revolving platform, as well as projected onto the back wall, it had
hung above the mantel in Becky V's Fifth Avenue living room, and
bidding was hot.

From behind his lectern, Sheldon D. Fairey
orchestrated his audience like a veteran symphony conductor,
coaxing them to bid higher, higher, ever higher.

"Twenty-two million, one hundred thousand
dollars," he announced.

Kenzie, Arnold, and Annalisa whispered
hurriedly into their telephones, listened to their absentee
bidders, and lifted their pencils like wands.

Fairey acknowledged them with a nod, his eyes
everywhere at once. "Twenty-two million, two hundred thousand ...
twenty-two million, three hundred thousand—"

Kenzie's bidder dropped out. She hung up the
phone and glanced around.

On the far side of the gallery, Hannes was
patrolling the aisle, and on this side, Charley was doing likewise.
In front of each of the three sets of double doors stood a pair of
armed, uniformed guards, hands clasped behind their backs.

Her eyes skimmed over Zandra and Karl-Heinz,
Dina and Robert Goldsmith. In the back row, she caught sight of her
old nemesis, Bambi Parker.

"Thirty million dollars."

Kenzie realized that during the minute she'd
permitted her mind to wander, the bids had shot through the roof,
and the atmosphere had reached that supercharged moment during
which no one dared breathe.

"Thirty million, one hundred thousand ...
thirty million, two hundred thousand ..."

A handful of numbered paddles went up and
down, up and down; discreet signals were semaphored: the Middle
Eastern sultan rubbing his chin, the Hong Kong banker tapping the
side of his nose.

And still Fairey kept the bids coming,
playing to his audience and cajoling, exhorting, inciting them on,
the astronomical numbers swirling hypnotically, spiraling up like
some magical genie.... This was auction at its finest—equal parts
shopping, high-stakes gambling, and theatrical drama.

"Forty million dollars!"

Forty—?

Kenzie snapped her head toward the lectern,
where Sheldon D. Fairey surveyed the electrified room.

Surely there's some mistake! she thought. I
couldn't—could not!— have heard right!

The hushed silence was broken when Arnold,
telephone to his ear, gave a signal.

"Forty-two million."

Kenzie's involuntary gasp of shock joined the
others which rolled, like an ocean swell, along the rows of
seats.

Forty-two million dollars?
Appalled,
fascinated ... then feeling a burgeoning sense of triumph, she
glanced at the easel on which the target of this bidding was
displayed.

The gilt-framed portrait of the infanta
stared out of the canvas with a child's seventeenth-century hauteur
while, overhead, like a departures and arrivals board at a busy
airport, the bright LED numbers rippled, instantly converting the
latest bid from dollars to six other currencies:

BURGHLEY S

FOUNDED 1719

LOT 17

US $ $42000000

BR POUND 24990000

FR FRANC 268443000

D MARK 79422000

LIRA '000' 58096500

SW FRANC 70896000

YEN '000' 5628000

All conversions approximate

The expectant hush grew, the tension now a
living entity, so real one could almost see it stretching the room
like elastic. Kenzie had to consciously will herself to
breathe.

God in heaven
, she wondered.
How
much higher can the bids go?

But even she, veteran of countless auctions,
had no idea. Quality, scarcity, and market value aside, one
overriding wild card made conjecture impossible. It had been owned
by Becky V.

What that's worth is anybody's guess.
We'll just have to wait and see
.

Charley turned to the wall and spoke quietly
into his wrist transmitter. "Hannes? You read me?"

Static crackled, then Hannes's murmur burst
in his ear. "Yes, Charley."

"I'm going to check out the security-control
room. Keep your eye on things, will you?"

"No problem."

"Over and out." Charley turned around,
adjusted his cuff, and glanced across the sea of heads to the far
side of the gallery. He exchanged nods with Hannes, then glanced up
at the dais.

For the moment, at least, he might as well
have been invisible. Kenzie's attention, like everyone else's, was
riveted on the skyrocketing bids. He felt a pluck of resentment,
then shook his head with irritation.

"Forty-four million," Fairey was saying. "Do
I have a bid for forty- four million, one hundred thousand?"

The outrageous sums seduced, cast a hypnotic
spell.

Jesus H. Christ!
Charley thought
.
You'd think these people would be inured to these numbers. But
they're as entranced as any audience watching a game show
.

Abruptly disgusted, he strode rapidly toward
the nearest exit, bestowing glares at the two overweight security
guards who were following the bidding as avidly as anyone else.
"Look alive!" he snapped, forcing them aside to push on the heavy
steel swinging doors.

Walking swiftly down the corridor, he shook
his head in exasperation. The guards' inattention nagged at his
sense of well-being. Dumb, dim-witted simpletons! Didn't they
realize they were supposed to offer protection?

He had a good mind to beef up security by
pulling some seasoned cops in off the street... but their job was
outside, patrolling the perimeter of Burghley's. That was where
their presence was really required. If worse came to worst, danger
would come from without, not from within.

Even so, once he got to the security control
room, it wouldn't hurt to rattle the cage. Raise a little hell.