Walking in Darkness (3 page)

‘Get off my back!’ Steve coolly said without rising to the bait, although there was a tense line to his mouth and his jaw was tight.

‘Isn’t it true that his wife is a few cents short of a dollar?’ Jack muttered, still trying to catch the eye of the barman.

Steve had already had this conversation with Harry Doberman, the editor-in-chief of the network, at their headquarters in New York, not a stone’s throw from this hotel. Not that he would dream of telling Jack about it. Jack was a good cameraman but you didn’t tell him anything sensitive, anything you did not want repeated to all and sundry the minute Jack had had a few.

‘Any truth in this rumour about Gowrie’s wife?’ Harry had asked, and Steve had looked at him wryly, knowing that Harry knew far more about Gowrie than he did and was just throwing out feelers to see how much Steve had heard.

‘Well, she seems to spend a lot of time out of sight, back home in Maryland, with her parents, and there is something a bit . . . blank . . . about her, as if she isn’t listening, isn’t even aware of what’s going on around her, but since the election started hotting up, she’s been with Gowrie all the time, and she smiles and nods, and says yes and no and maybe, so it may just be that she’s bored by politics. After all, she comes from a political family – she must have had it stuffed into her all her life. Maybe she’s just sick of it, but now Honest John has put it to her that it’s time to do her duty and stand by her man.’

Harry had been chewing the end of his pen the way he did when he was trying to give up smoking for the umpteenth time. It made him bad-tempered and liable to blow up over nothing and he always started to put on weight if he kept it up for long.

When he was smoking he was as thin as a greyhound and twice as nervy, inclined to bite your head off if you said anything out of turn, so on the whole everyone preferred him to smoke.

Screwing up his eyes to stare at Steve, he asked, ‘And what about this other dame? Is there one? Or is it just dirty minds and wishful thinking?’

Even more on the alert, Steve carefully said, ‘If there is, Gowrie has done a brilliant job so far in keeping her hidden away. You know what Washington is like. You can’t keep a secret for five minutes. Eyes and ears everywhere. A lot of people would pay a fortune to get the goods on Gowrie, but he seems to be as clean as a whistle.’ And while he talked he was wondering if Harry knew something he could not openly pass on, was dropping him a hint to dig it out for himself.

Harry chewed on his pen some more. ‘Is that a “Don’t know” or a “Could be but hard to prove”?’

‘Both,’ hedged Steve, then, watching Harry even more closely, said, ‘But I have to admit Gowrie has never struck me as having a poor libido. He’s getting on for sixty, of course, but he’s got a lot of buzz, and some of that energy has to be sexual. It wouldn’t amaze me to find out that he had a woman somewhere, but it isn’t his wife. She’s older than him, for a start, and she’s as plain as a horse. I don’t see her being hot stuff in bed.’

Harry met his eyes, said softly, ‘What about his secretary? In my experience it’s often the secretary. The single ones are the most dangerous – they get possessive if the guy is the only man in their life.’ His eyes glinted and he smirked. ‘I’ve had one or two who got that way.’

Steve knew all about them; everyone had known, you couldn’t hide anything in an office, any more than you could in Washington. Harry had a wife and two expensive kids at good schools but that hadn’t stopped him having the occasional office affair. They always ended the same way: he had to get rid of his secretary when she turned tearful and demanding.

‘Gowrie’s secretary is certainly devoted, runs his office like clockwork, and I wouldn’t find it hard to believe she worshipped the ground he walks on – but she’s no femme fatale. She wears mannish suits and shirts with ties, has horn-rimmed glasses – I don’t see him having a mad affair with her.’

Harry looked disappointed. ‘Well, there’s someone, I’m sure of it.’

Yes, he had been told Gowrie had a woman – but was his source a good one?

‘I’ll keep my eyes open,’ Steve had promised, but he didn’t think for a second that he would catch Don Gowrie out, even if there was a woman somewhere. Gowrie was smart, and careful.

Glancing around the bar now, Steve wondered if anyone else was on to a rumour that Gowrie had a woman.

‘Ready, Steve?’ his producer said, appearing at his shoulder. ‘I had a word with Gowrie’s people, and explained we had a problem getting the tape to the studio in time for the night news, and they’ve shifted your interview tomorrow forward by two hours, which should be just fine.’

‘I’ll look forward to it,’ Steve said, and meant it. He had interviewed Don Gowrie many times before, but not since Gowrie began to get his nose in front in the race for the presidency. There were other leading contenders on the Republican side, but some very big money was going on Gowrie.

By the time Gowrie showed up, the ballroom was packed to the doors and the air was rank with perspiration, bad breath, the smell of beer and whisky and the machine-oil smell of the cameras and sound equipment.

Gowrie took questions from the press in an order laid down in advance by his media people. There was no spontaneity on these occasions: too much was at stake. Any shouted, unagreed questions were ignored. There was an agreement between the sides: play ball with us, we’ll play ball with you. Refuse to play the game our way and you won’t get any time with the candidate, you won’t get an invitation to any of the social events with which the lobby was sweethearted by the party during election year.

In his late fifties, his hair once dark, now powdered with an ashy shade, his expensive suit grey too today, his white shirt striped with a very pale blue, everything about Gowrie was discreet, elegant. There was even something faintly boyish about him – his features had a faintly haggard spareness, but they were chiselled and attractive, his eyes – a pale blue, washed out to grey – had great charm whenever he smiled that boyish smile. He was a good speaker, that came with the territory; he never made the mistake of being too clever, he talked directly, frankly, disarmingly to his audience, looking into their eyes.

Women flipped over him. Men felt they could trust him. A decent guy, they said. Not tough, maybe, but under the elegance there was a steely strength.

This was his honeymoon period with the media; he was new to this level of attention although he had been around for years, a face in the background, a useful man in his party, knowing everybody but not a leader. Now, he was suddenly hot and the press hadn’t yet got around to sharpening their claws. For the moment they loved him because he was new, because he gave them something different to write about, although how long that would last was anybody’s guess.

Steve was one of the first to ask a question. It had been decided on by his producer, Simon, in advance, in discussion with Gowrie’s people, who liked to sow the audience with friendly questions. What would the senator do about street crime in the cities? Did he favour tougher punishment or more police on the streets? Or did he think society was at fault and what could be done about that?

Gowrie went into hyperdrive on that one, talked angrily about crime and its threat to the peace of the decent people of America, said it was time America got the policing it deserved, talked of ways and means by which that could be achieved. You didn’t need to be a genius to work out that that was going to be one of his campaign platforms, but then all the candidates jockeying to be picked to run as president came out with the same promises on crime. Half an hour later Gowrie’s people were signalling him to leave. They all looked very satisfied, the press conference had gone well, he had answered every question ably, fluently.

As he turned to go, a voice came out of nowhere. ‘Senator Gowrie, what do you believe will be the long-time effects in Central Europe of the war in the former Yugoslavia?’

Gowrie stopped in his tracks and turned back. This was one of his specialist interests; he had worked in East Europe while he was in the diplomatic as a young man and was rumoured to speak a number of East European languages. Cleverer than he looked, but good at hiding his brains, thought Steve, which made him even cleverer, because if there was one thing the voters did not like it was a clever politician. They didn’t trust them.

His press officers were hurriedly searching their clipboards of agreed questions. The most senior of them leaned over the battery of mikes and said curtly, ‘That question was not submitted, Miss . . .?’

‘Narodni, Sophie Narodni, of the Central European Press Agency,’ the blonde said, and her voice was as sexy as the rest of her, low and husky, with the faintest foreign lisp to it.

Every man in the room was staring at her by now, and they weren’t thinking about politics. That was not what men thought about when they looked at this girl.

The only man in the room who wasn’t goggling at her was Steve Colbourne. He had happened to be looking at Don Gowrie when he turned and had seen Gowrie’s face turn stiff and white as if he was fighting with shock, frozen on the spot like someone whose worst nightmare has begun. He hadn’t moved or spoken since, he was just staring at the blonde girl, and she was staring back at him.

It wasn’t often that Steve Colbourne was surprised by anything. He had been a reporter for far too long in a corrupt and complex world where almost nothing was what it seemed or what people perceived it to be. He had thought himself shock-proof, but it seemed he wasn’t. Jesus, it couldn’t be. Could it? The air seemed to him to be charged, lightning almost visibly flashed between the two of them. His reporter’s mind crawled with curiosity. Don Gowrie and this girl? It was indecent even to think it: she was young enough to be his daughter, and had that lovely, untouched wide-eyed innocence that went with blue eyes and blonde hair and a certain shape of face in the young. He could not believe she was Gowrie’s mistress.

But there was something. That was for sure. Every instinct warned about that.

Then Gowrie visibly forced himself to break off from her, tore himself out of his trance, turned on his heel and was on his way, surrounded by his entourage, without answering her question. But Steve saw him turn his head to speak to a security man moving at his shoulder.

The other man nodded, spoke in turn to a couple of others, and Steve saw them spin off, and, without running or seeming in a hurry, push their way back towards the blonde girl. Steve was closer; without stopping to think about the wisdom of intervening, he moved like greased lightning to get to her before they could.

He took her elbow and began walking her out, talking rapidly, urgently, while she looked up at him in startled surprise.

‘My name’s Steve Colbourne, I do a weekly round-up of political news on NWTV, you may have seen me, if not I assure you I’m very respectable and trustworthy. Can I buy you a drink, or do you want those very ugly guys behind us to put an armlock on you?’

She stiffened and instinctively started to turn, but he went on softly, ‘No, don’t look back at them, pretend you don’t even know they’re there. It’s called the survival instinct, animals practise it all the time. Haven’t you ever seen a bird freeze and pretend to be a statue? It works, too; the psychology is shrewd. It throws a possible predator off. They aren’t sure what’s going on or what to do so they wait and watch, and that gives the bird time to plan its escape.’

She turned her head to look up at him, and he smiled at her. By then they were engulfed in the departing tide of media flowing through the exit; Steve held on to her arm to make sure she didn’t get away. He was picking up her scent by then, a cool, light fragrance that reminded him of a spring morning. It went with blonde hair and blue eyes and long, long legs. What the hell was going on between her and Gowrie? She had something on the guy, that was certain – and she wouldn’t be the first beautiful young woman to sell herself to a powerful old man. History was littered with them. Steve surprised himself by not wanting her to be one of them.

He could hear her breathing next to him. They were shoved close together by the crush of bodies moving out of the great ballroom, with its chandeliers and high, wide windows framed by heavy red velvet drapes, into the luxurious lobby of the hotel, and Steve felt the warmth of her skin under the cream silk dress she wore, almost felt he heard an over-rapid beating of her heart.

She was scared, he thought, but when he shot a sideways look her profile seemed calm, unflurried. Was she always this tranquil – or did she lose her cool in bed? He frowned, imagining her with Gowrie. Did that sleek blonde hair get rumpled and tousled? Was she hot? She didn’t look as if she was highly sexed, but then with women appearances were always deceptive.

In the hotel lobby the blonde pulled free, glancing back at the same time. Steve looked back, too, and found the two security men right behind them. Their lizard eyes slithered over him, recognized his face, and then ignored him. They were only interested in the girl.

‘Miss, can we have a word? You aren’t wearing an official press badge, Miss . . . what did you say your name was?’

‘Narodni, Sophie Narodni.’ She looked at one, then the other. ‘Who are you?’

‘We work for Senator Gowrie, Miss Narodni. Did you say you worked for a press agency?’

‘Yes, the Central European Press Agency. Have you got any identification on you? I like to know who is asking me questions.’ She smiled sweetly.

‘Certainly, Miss Narodni.’ The taller of the two, a man with very bronzed skin, flipped back his suit collar to show a badge. She leaned forward slightly to read it. He would be getting a nostril full of her delicious scent, thought Steve, watching with amusement.

‘Thank you.’

A little flushed suddenly, the guy lifted the clipboard he held, consulted the sheaf of paper clipped to it, running a finger down a list.

‘Oh, yes, the agency is listed, but we have a Theo Strahov down as their representative.’

‘He couldn’t make it, he was taken ill, so he sent me.’ She pulled out of the small cream leather purse she held in one hand a plastic-enclosed security card and showed it to them. The shorter man took it from her; both stared at it.