One Way or Another(21)
He acquired an apartment, the first place of any substance he had ever lived in. It was on the third floor, at the top of the building because the ground floor was dangerous; a gun could be poked through your window, a machete could break down your door, a fire could be set to smoke you out and rob you. All anyone wanted from him was his money, hard-earned, by the skin of his teeth—now better thanks to a cut-rate dentist he had done a drug favor for. And all he wanted was to earn more. To get it. To keep it. To be a rich man.
It didn’t happen overnight.
He was eighteen, thick dark hair, burning dark eyes, olive-skinned, a lure for women on the loose and men on the prowl. Whatever, it was always his choice. But the women paid better. As he found out when he met Fleur.
And that was the real beginning of everything.
First, he opened a small café as a front for money laundering, did well at that. He found an old tanker for sale, a rustbucket but still usable if you could find men desperate enough to sail it, filled with cut-price oil that threatened to explode at the drop of a careless cigarette. It was a risk that paid off. He bought more tankers, losing only one, and that went right to the bottom along with its men but without any evidence of exactly why. Insurance paid mightily on that one, gave him his first real push upward, in the right direction.
He bought an apartment in Cairo, custom-tailored suits, ventured into the smarter cafés for a drink in the evening.
Insurance was where he’d really taken off, small, private insurance. He found shady men only too willing to be protected, found also the chink in their armor was that they needed the security he offered. He was better than they were, cleverer, a sharper businessman.
And so it went. And here he was now. Ahmet Ghulbian, reputed billionaire, which, if you counted his real estate assets, his oil business, his banking, might not amount to that, but throw in the loan-sharking and the gambling game and he was surely it.
He was a king amongst men, a god women aspired to know and the world envied. To himself he was still Ahmet Ghulbian, whose real name had been buried along with his mother—a kid in the Cairo bazaar, looking for a life.
16
The gray wooden house on the Romney marshland in England was Ahmet’s hideout, his special place where he could be completely alone. Its previous owner was a newspaper tycoon who’d met a sad end in a fight with his lover involving a knife with which he was about to carve the Sunday roast, an ample side of beef, locals remembered admiringly; enough to feed twenty, yet they were only the two. The place had remained empty for many years with stories of haunting and unexplained mists surrounding it on moonlit nights.
When he first inspected it Ahmet’s comment was that at least there were no hounds baying at that moon. Still, he liked the location on the edge of the marshes where the grass was greener than normal grass, a vibrant, dazzling, wet green that changed abruptly to deep dark brown mud which sucked in any wild creature unfortunate enough to make the mistake of alighting on it. The house was remote yet accessible from London, a secret kind of place with no locals loitering curiously. In fact they kept away, put off by the legendary murder and rumored haunting.
And that was the reason Ahmet was able to purchase the house for a minimal sum, the estate being only too glad to finally unload it. And, since local men were reluctant to set foot in the place, Ahmet brought in his own workforce, Italians and Croats mostly, whom he housed in temporary prefabricated buildings with the minimum amenities, but who were anyway glad of the job.
The gray wood was strengthened with stone, the roof retiled in a darker gray, windows double-sealed against the prevailing wind and winter storms. The inside was made luxurious with paneling taken from older houses, with probably better histories and reputations. In the grand hall there was a crystal chandelier, musically and permanently aflutter in the also prevailing draft, no matter how his experts tried to find its source and seal it. Silk rugs covered the gray stone floors, which were heated electrically, and the heavy-looking furnishings came from the most expensive antique stores in Paris and London. A complete restaurant-size kitchen with stainless equipment, black granite counters, and six ovens awaited a chef, a man Ghulbian imported on the rare occasions he occupied the house. Or sometimes not, when he needed to be completely alone. As he did now.
He sat in front of the fire in what used to be called the drawing room, sipping red wine, a Pétrus of noble vintage, from a glass so fine it seemed the mere touch of his teeth might shatter it. The log fire smelled of pine, the grate was aglow, flames edged with blue licked gently. The cushioned red leather chair was soft, there was the sound of the wind outside, the shift of logs in the grate, the aroma of the wine in his nose. Its exquisite flavor on his palate gave Ahmet no pleasure. He was consumed with the image, not of the redheaded girl, who was already his, but of the small blonde, of her delicate features, the wide forehead from which she pulled back her hair severely, of her almost blue eyes. Were they blue, were they gray? He could not decide. And the image of her lips as she’d pouted, wondering beneath a flutter of lashes whether to join him for that drink at the Ritz bar. Lucy.
He knew he must be patient. He had learned how to make a woman his own. He would groom her. “Groom” was the phrase he used when he thought about how to make a woman his, readying her with small gifts along with handwritten notes saying how much he had enjoyed her company. Then flowers, of course, always long-stemmed white roses, even in the depths of winter. He would suggest she might enjoy dinner again sometime. He always left the ball in the woman’s court, knowing she would be intrigued and would agree. He was so confident she would accept, he’d even make a reservation at a top restaurant in anticipation.