Whiteout (37 page)

TONI sat in the control tower at the flying school. With her in the little room were Frank Hackett, Kit Oxenford, and a local police detective. In the hangar, parked out of sight, was the military helicopter that had brought them here. It had been close, but they had made it with a minute to spare.

Kit clutched the burgundy briefcase. He was pale, his face expressionless. He obeyed instructions like an automaton.

They all watched through the big windows. The clouds were breaking up, and the sun shone over the snow-covered airstrip. There was no sign of a helicopter.

Toni held Nigel Buchanan's mobile phone, waiting for it to ring. The batteries had run out at some point during the night, but it was the same kind as Hugo's, so she had borrowed his charger, which was now plugged into the wall.

“The pilot should have called by now,” she said anxiously.

Frank said, “He may be a few minutes late.”

She pressed buttons and discovered the last number Nigel had dialed. It looked like a mobile number, and it was timed at 11:45 p.m. yesterday. “Kit,” she said. “Did Nigel call the customer just before midnight?”

“His pilot.”

She turned to Frank. “This will be the number. I think we should call it.”

“Okay.”

She pressed “Send,” and handed the mobile to the local police detective. He put it to his ear. After a few moments, he said, “Yeah, this is me, where are you?” He spoke with a London accent similar to Nigel's, which was why Frank had brought him along. “That close?” he said, looking through the window up at the sky. “We can't see you—”

As he spoke, a helicopter came down through the clouds.

Toni tensed.

The police officer hung up. Toni took out her own mobile and called Odette, who was now in the operations room at Scotland Yard. “Customer in sight.”

Odette could not repress the excitement in her voice. “Give me the tail number.”

“Just a minute . . .” Toni peered at the helicopter until she could make out the registration mark, then read the letters and numbers to Odette. Odette read them back then hung up.

The helicopter descended. Its rotors blew the snow on the ground into a storm. It landed a hundred yards from the control tower.

Frank looked at Kit and nodded. “Off you go.”

Kit hesitated.

Toni said, “Just do everything as planned. Say, ‘We had some problems with the weather, but everything worked out okay in the end.' You'll be fine.”

Kit went down the stairs, carrying the briefcase.

Toni had no idea whether he would perform as instructed. He had been up for more than twenty-four hours, he had been in a car crash, and he was emotionally wrecked. He might do anything.

There were two men in the front seats of the helicopter. One of them, presumably the copilot, opened a door and got out, carrying a large suitcase. He was a stocky man of medium height, wearing sunglasses. Ducking his head, he moved away from the aircraft.

A moment later, Kit appeared outside the tower and walked across the snow toward the helicopter.

“Stay calm, Kit,” Toni said aloud. Frank grunted.

The two men met halfway. There was some conversation. Was the copilot asking where Nigel was? Kit pointed to the control tower. What was he saying?
Nigel sent me to make the delivery,
perhaps. But it could just as easily be
The police are up there in the control tower.
There were more questions, and Kit shrugged.

Toni's mobile rang. It was Odette. “The helicopter is registered to Adam Hallan, a London banker,” she said. “But he's not on board.”

“Shame.”

“Don't worry, I wasn't expecting him. The pilot and copilot are employees of his. They filed a flight plan to Battersea Heliport—just across the river from Mr. Hallan's house in Cheyne Walk.”

“He's Mister Big, then?”

“Trust me. We've been after him for a long time.”

The copilot pointed at the burgundy briefcase. Kit opened it and showed him a Diablerie bottle in a nest of polystyrene packing chips. The copilot put his suitcase on the ground and opened it to reveal stacks of banded fifty-pound notes, closely packed together; at least a million pounds, Toni thought, perhaps two million. As he had been instructed, Kit took out one of the stacks and riffled it.

Toni told Odette, “They've made the exchange. Kit's checking the money.”

The two men on the airfield looked at each other, nodded, and shook hands. Kit handed over the burgundy briefcase, then picked up the suitcase. It seemed heavy. The copilot walked back to the helicopter, and Kit returned to the control tower.

As soon as the copilot got back into the aircraft, it took off.

Toni was still on the line to Odette. “Are you picking up the signal from the transmitter in the bottle?”

“Loud and clear,” Odette said. “We've got the bastards.”

LONDON was cold. No snow had fallen here, but a freezing wind whipped the ancient buildings and the curled streets, and people hunched their shoulders and tightened the scarves around their necks as they hurried to the warmth of pubs and restaurants, hotels and cinemas.

Toni Gallo sat in the back of a plain gray Audi beside Odette Cressy. Odette was a blond woman Toni's age, wearing a dark business suit over a scarlet shirt. Two detectives sat in the front, one driving, one studying a direction-finding radio receiver and telling the driver where to go.

The police had been tracking the perfume bottle for thirty-three hours. The helicopter had landed, as expected, in southwest London. The pilot had got into a waiting car and driven across Battersea Bridge to the riverside home of Adam Hallan. All last night the radio transmitter had remained stationary, beeping steadily from somewhere in the elegant eighteenth-century house. Odette did not want to arrest Hallan yet. She wanted to catch the maximum number of terrorists in her net.

Toni had spent most of that time asleep. When she lay down in her flat just before noon on Christmas Day, she felt too tense to sleep. Her thoughts were with the helicopter as it flew the length of Britain, and she worried that the tiny radio beacon would fail. Despite her anxieties, she had dropped off in seconds.

In the evening, she had driven to Steepfall to see Stanley. They had
held hands and talked for an hour in his study, then she flew to London. She slept heavily all night at Odette's flat in Camden Town.

As well as following the radio signal, the Metropolitan Police had Adam Hallan and his pilot and copilot under surveillance. In the morning Toni and Odette joined the team watching Adam Hallan's house.

Toni had achieved her main objective. The deadly virus samples were back in the BSL4 laboratory at the Kremlin. But she also hoped to catch the people responsible for the nightmare she had lived through. She wanted justice.

Today Hallan had given a lunch party, and fifty people of assorted nationalities and ages, all wearing expensive casual clothes, had visited the house. One of the guests had left with the perfume bottle. Toni and Odette and the team tracked the radio beacon to Bayswater and kept watch over a student rooming house all afternoon.

At seven o'clock in the evening, the signal moved again.

A young woman came out of the house. In the light of the street lamps, Toni could see that she had beautiful dark hair, heavy and lustrous. She carried a shoulder bag. She turned up the collar of her coat and walked along the pavement. A detective in jeans and an anorak got out of a tan Rover and followed her.

“I think this is it,” Toni said. “She's going to release the spray.”

“I want to see it,” Odette said. “For the prosecution, I need witnesses to the attempted murder.”

Toni and Odette lost sight of the young woman as she turned into a Tube station. The radio signal weakened worryingly as the woman went underground. It remained steady for a while, then the beacon moved, presumably because the woman was on a train. They followed the feeble signal, fearing it would fade out and she would shake off the detective in the anorak. But she emerged at Piccadilly Circus, the detective still tailing her. They lost visual contact for a minute when she turned into a one-way street, then the detective called Odette on his mobile phone and reported that the woman had entered a theater.

Toni said, “That's where she'll release the spray.”

The unmarked police cars drew up outside the theater. Odette and
Toni went in, followed by two men from the second car. The show, a ghost story with songs, was popular with visiting Americans. The girl with beautiful hair was standing in the queue for collection of prepaid tickets.

While she waited, she took from her shoulder bag a perfume bottle. With a quick gesture that looked entirely natural, she sprayed her head and shoulders. The theatergoers around her paid no attention. Doubtless she wanted to be fragrant for the man she was meeting, they would imagine, if they thought about it at all. Such beautiful hair ought to smell good. The spray was curiously odorless, but no one seemed to notice.

“That's good,” said Odette. “But we'll let her do it again.”

The bottle contained plain water, but all the same Toni shivered with dread as she breathed in. Had she not made the switch, the spray would have contained live Madoba-2, and that breath would have killed her.

The woman collected her ticket and went inside. Odette spoke to the usher and showed him her police card, then the detectives followed the woman. She went to the bar, where she sprayed herself again. She did the same in the ladies' room. At last she took her seat in the front orchestra and sprayed herself yet again. Her plan, Toni guessed, was to use the spray several times more in the interval, and finally in the crowded passages while the audience was leaving the building. By the end of the evening, almost everyone in the theater would have breathed the droplets from her bottle.

Watching from the back of the auditorium, Toni listened to the accents around her: a woman from the American South who had bought the most beautiful cashmere scarf; someone from Boston talking about where he pahked his cah; a New Yorker who had paid five
dollars
for a cup of cawfee. If the perfume bottle had contained the virus as planned, these people would by now be infected with Madoba-2. They would have flown home to embrace their families and greet their neighbors and go back to work, telling everyone about their holiday in Europe.

Ten or twelve days later, they would have fallen ill. “I picked up a lousy cold in London,” they would have said. Sneezing, they would have infected their relations and friends and colleagues. The symptoms would have gotten worse, and their doctors would have diagnosed flu. When they started to die, the doctors would have realized that this was something
much worse than flu. As the deadly infection spread rapidly from street to street and city to city, the medical profession would have begun to understand what they were dealing with, but by then it would be too late.

Now none of that would happen—but Toni shuddered as she thought how close it had been.

A nervous man in a tuxedo approached them. “I'm the theater manager,” he said. “What's happening?”

“We're about to make an arrest,” Odette told him. “You may want to delay the curtain for a minute.”

“I hope there won't be a fracas.”

“Believe me, so do I.” The audience was seated. “All right,” Odette said to the other detectives. “We've seen enough. Pick her up, and gently does it.”

The two men from the second car walked down the aisles and stood at either end of the woman's row. She looked at one, then the other. “Come with me, please, miss,” said the nearer of the two detectives. The theater went quiet as the waiting audience watched. Was this part of the show? they wondered.

The woman remained seated, but took out her perfume bottle and sprayed herself again. The detective, a young man in a short Crombie coat, pushed his way along the row to where she sat. “Please come immediately,” he said. She stood up, raised the bottle, and sprayed it into the air. “Don't bother,” he said. “It's only water.” Then he took her by the arm and led her along the row and up the aisle to the back of the theater.

Toni stared at the prisoner. She was young and attractive. She had been ready to commit suicide. Toni wondered why.

Odette took the perfume bottle from her and dropped it into an evidence bag. “Diablerie,” she said. “French word. Do you know what it means?”

The woman shook her head.

“The work of the devil.” Odette turned to the detective. “Put her in handcuffs and take her away.”

TONI came out of the bathroom naked and walked across the hotel room to answer the phone.

From the bed, Stanley said, “My God, you look good.”

She grinned at her husband. He was wearing a blue toweling bathrobe that was too small for him, and it showed his long, muscular legs. “You're not so bad yourself,” she said, and she picked up the phone. It was her mother. “Happy Christmas,” Toni said.

“Your old boyfriend is on the television,” Mother said.

“What's he doing, singing carols in the police choir?”

“He's being interviewed by that Carl Osborne. He's telling how he caught those terrorists last Christmas.”

“
He
caught them?” Toni was momentarily indignant, then she thought, What the hell. “Well, he needs the publicity—he's after a promotion. How's my sister?”

“She's just getting the supper ready.”

Toni looked at her watch. On this Caribbean island it was a few minutes before six o'clock in the evening. For Mother, in England, it was coming up to ten o'clock at night. But meals were always late at Bella's. “What did she give you for Christmas?”

“We're going to get something in the January sales, it's cheaper.”

“Did you like my present?” Toni had given Mother a cashmere cardigan in salmon pink.

“Lovely, thank you, dear.”

“Is Osborne okay?” Mother had taken the puppy to live with her, and he was now full-grown, a big shaggy black-and-white dog with hair that covered his eyes.

“He's behaving very well and hasn't had any accidents since yesterday.”

“And the grandchildren?”

“Running around breaking their presents. I must go now, the Queen's on the telly.”

“Bye, Mother. Thank you for calling.”

Stanley said, “I don't suppose there's time for a bit of, you know, before dinner.”

She pretended to be shocked. “We just had a bit of
you know
!”

“That was hours ago! But if you're tired . . . I realize that when a woman gets to a certain age—”

“A certain age?” She leaped onto the bed and knelt astride him. “A certain age?” She picked up the pillow and beat him with it.

He laughed helplessly and begged for mercy, and she relented and kissed him.

She had expected Stanley to be fairly good in bed, but it had come as a surprise to her that he was such a pistol. She would never forget their first holiday together. In a suite at the Ritz in Paris, he had blindfolded her and tied her hands to the headboard. As she lay there, naked and helpless, he had stroked her lips with a feather, then with a silver teaspoon, then with a strawberry. She had never before concentrated so intensely on her bodily sensations. He caressed her breasts with a silk handkerchief, with a cashmere scarf, and with leather gloves. She had felt as if she were floating in the sea, rocked gently by waves of pleasure. He kissed the backs of her knees, the insides of her thighs, the soft undersides of her upper arms, and her throat. He did everything slowly and lingeringly, until she was bursting with desire. He touched her nipples with ice cubes, and put warm oil inside her. He carried on until she begged him to enter her, then he made her wait a little longer.
Afterward, she had said, “I didn't know this, but all my life I've wanted a man to do that.”

“I know,” he had said.

Now he was in a playful mood. “Come on, just a quickie,” he said. “I'll let you be on top.”

“Oh, all right.” She sighed, pretending to feel put-upon, as she adjusted her position over him. “The things a girl has to do, nowadays—”

There was a knock at the door.

Stanley called out: “Who is it?”

“Olga. Toni was going to lend me a necklace.”

Toni could see that Stanley was about to tell his daughter to go away, but she put a hand on his mouth. “Just a minute, Olga,” she called.

She detached herself from Stanley. Olga and Miranda were coping well with having a stepmother their own age, but Toni did not want to push her luck. Best if they were not reminded that their father was having hot sex.

Stanley got off the bed and went into the bathroom. Toni pulled on a green silk robe and opened the door. Olga strode in, dressed for dinner in a black cotton dress with a low neckline. “You said you'd lend me that jet necklace.”

“Of course. Let me dig it out.”

In the bathroom, the shower ran.

Olga lowered her voice, an unusual event. “I wanted to ask you—has he seen Kit?”

“Yes. He visited the prison the day before we flew out here.”

“How is my brother?”

“Uncomfortable, frustrated, and bored, as you would expect, but he hasn't been beaten up or raped, and he isn't using heroin.” Toni found the necklace and put it around Olga's neck. “It looks better on you than me—black really isn't my color. Why don't you ask your father directly about Kit?”

“He's so happy, I don't want to spoil his mood. You don't mind, do you?”

“Not in the least.” On the contrary, Toni was flattered. Olga was using her the way a daughter would use a mother, to check on her father without bothering him with the kind of questions men did not like. Toni said, “Did you realize that Elton and Hamish are in the same jail?”

“No—how awful!”

“Not really. Kit's helping Elton learn to read.”

“Elton can't read?”

“Barely. He knows a few words from road signs—motorway, London, town center, airport. Kit is teaching him ‘The cat sat on the mat.' ”

“My God, how things work out. Did you hear about Daisy?”

“No.”

“She killed another inmate of the women's prison, and she was tried for murder. A young colleague of mine defended her, but she was convicted. She got a life sentence added to her existing term. She'll be in jail until she's seventy. I wish we still had the death penalty.”

Toni understood Olga's hatred. Hugo had never completely recovered from the beating Daisy had given him with the blackjack. He had lost the sight in one eye. Worse, he had never regained his old ebullience. He was quieter, and less of a rake, but he was not so funny, and the wicked grin was rarely seen.

“A pity her father is still at large,” Toni said. Harry Mac had been prosecuted as an accomplice, but Kit's testimony had not been enough to convict him, and the jury had found him not guilty. He had gone straight back to his life of crime.

Olga said, “There's news of him, too. He's got cancer. Started in his lungs, but now it's everywhere. He's been given three months to live.”

“Well, well,” said Toni. “There is justice, after all.”

***

MIRANDA put out Ned's clothes for the evening, black linen trousers and a check shirt. He did not expect her to do it but, if she did not, he might absentmindedly go down to dinner in shorts and a T-shirt. He was not helpless, just careless. She had accepted that.

She had accepted a lot about him. She understood that he would
never be quick to enter a conflict, even to protect her; but, to compensate for that, she knew that in a real crisis he was a rock. The way he had taken punch after punch from Daisy to protect Tom proved that.

She was dressed already, in a pink cotton frock with a pleated skirt. It made her look a bit wide across the hips, but then, she was a bit wide across the hips. Ned said he liked her that way.

She went into the bathroom. He was sitting in the tub, reading a biography of Molière in French. She took the book from him. “The butler did it.”

“Now you've spoiled the suspense.” He stood up.

She handed him a towel. “I'm going to check on the kids.” Before she left the room, she took a small package from her bedside table and tucked it into her evening bag.

The hotel rooms were individual huts along a beach. A warm breeze stroked Miranda's bare arms as she walked to the cabin her son Tom was sharing with Craig.

Craig was putting gel in his hair while Tom tied his shoelaces. “Are you boys okay?” Miranda asked. The question was superfluous. They were both tanned and happy after a day spent windsurfing and waterskiing.

Tom was not really a little boy anymore. He had grown two inches in the last six months, and he had stopped telling his mother everything. It made her sad. For twelve years she had been all in all to him. He would continue to be dependent on her for a few more years, but the separation was beginning.

She left the boys and went to the next hut. Sophie was sharing it with Caroline, but Caroline had already left and Sophie was alone. She stood at her wardrobe in her underwear, choosing a dress. Miranda saw with disapproval that she was wearing a sexy black half-bra and matching thong panties. “Has your mother seen that outfit?” Miranda said.

“She lets me wear what I like,” Sophie said sulkily.

Miranda sat on a chair. “Come here, I want to talk to you.”

Reluctantly, Sophie sat on the bed. She crossed her legs and looked away.

“I'd really prefer your mother to say this but, as she's not here, I'll have to.”

“Say what?”

“I think you're too young to have sexual intercourse. You're fifteen. Craig is only sixteen.”

“He's nearly seventeen.”

“Nevertheless, what you're doing is actually illegal.”

“Not in this country.”

Miranda had forgotten they were not in the UK. “Well, anyway, you're too young.”

Sophie made a disgusted face and rolled up her eyes. “Oh, God.”

“I knew you'd be ungracious, but it had to be said,” Miranda persisted.

“Well, now you've said it,” Sophie rejoined rudely.

“However, I also know that I can't force you to do what I say.”

Sophie looked surprised. She had not been expecting concessions.

Miranda took the package out of her evening bag. “So, if you decide to disobey me, I want you to use these condoms.” She handed them over.

Sophie took them wordlessly. Her face was a picture of astonishment.

Miranda stood up. “I don't want you getting pregnant when you're in my care.” She went to the door.

As she went out, she heard Sophie say, “Thanks.”

***

GRANDPA had reserved a private room in the hotel restaurant for the ten members of the Oxenford family. A waiter went around pouring champagne. Sophie was late. They waited a while for her, then Grandpa stood up, and they all went quiet. “There's steak for dinner,” he said. “I ordered a turkey, but apparently it escaped.”

They all laughed.

He went on in a more somber tone. “We didn't really have a Christmas last year, so I thought this one should be special.”

Miranda said, “And thank you for bringing us, Daddy.”

“The last twelve months have been the worst year of my life, and the
best,” he went on. “None of us will ever completely get over what happened at Steepfall one year ago today.”

Craig looked at his father. He certainly would never recover. One eye was permanently half-closed, and the expression on his face was amiably blank. He often seemed just to tune out, nowadays.

Grandpa went on, “Had it not been for Toni, God alone knows how it would have ended.”

Craig glanced at Toni. She looked terrific, wearing a chestnut-brown silk dress that showed off her red hair. Grandpa was nuts about her. He must feel almost the same way I do about Sophie, Craig thought.

“Then we had to relive the nightmare twice more,” Grandpa said. “First with the police. By the way, Olga, why do they take statements that way? They ask you questions, and take down your answers; then they write out something that isn't what you said, and is full of mistakes, and doesn't sound like a human being at all, and they call it your statement.”

Olga said, “The prosecution likes things phrased a certain way.”

“ ‘I was proceeding in a westerly direction,' and so on?”

“Yes.”

Grandpa shrugged. “Well, then we had to live it all over
again
during the trial, and we had to sit and listen to suggestions that somehow
we
were at fault for injuring people who had come into our house and attacked us and tied us up. Then we had to read the same stupid innuendoes in the newspapers.”

Craig would never forget it. Daisy's advocate had tried to say that Craig had attempted to murder her, because he had run over her while she was shooting at him. It was ludicrous, but for a few moments in court it had sounded almost plausible.

Grandpa went on: “The whole nightmare reminded me that life is short, and I realized that I should tell you all how I felt about Toni and waste no more time. I need hardly say how happy we are. Then my new drug was passed for testing on humans, the future of the company was secured, and I was able to buy another Ferrari—and driving lessons for Craig.”