The Charmers: A Novel(59)

I said, “Then I’ll go on alone.”

He looked sharply at me. “I can’t let you do that. It’s dangerous.”

“My friend’s in danger. It’s what I have to do.”

I probably sounded as though I were putting him on the line for not going, but that was not what I’d intended. “She’s all alone,” I said, suddenly remembering how alone Verity had seemed when I met her on that Paris-to-Nice train, when she did not really even know where she was going, and certainly not why. Simply escaping, she had thought, only to end up in more danger than she would ever have faced from the cheating husband.

Chad nodded; of course he understood, and he really wanted to go with me. But he shrugged again. “What choice do I have?”

He sounded resigned, he had to do what he had to do, and right now his priority was to attempt to save a small child’s life putting a broken head back together as only a brilliant surgeon like him could.

He grabbed my shoulders, pressing me tightly to him as though afraid I might disappear right that minute and only he could keep me there.

I gently disengaged him, took a step back, gave him a good-bye wave, hoping I was as brave as my words. I was quite suddenly terrified of the Boss, and of the fact that my friend was there alone with him, that she might be in his power, and I was the only one that could help her. Save her, more likely, because I knew somehow that the Boss had the kind of power over life and death that we, mere mortals, do not. I knew in my bones, as I usually did, that behind that charming facade was a man capable of anything.

As though he had read my thoughts, Chad said, “He’s capable of anything.” He grabbed my arm again as we left the café and he flagged a taxi down.

We looked into each other’s eyes. There were no smiles. Deadly serious, he said, “I’m calling the Colonel. He’s the only one that will understand. I’ll tell him you’re on your way and that he must protect Verity. I don’t know what he can do, with a man that powerful. The Boss has committed no crime, there’s nothing to accuse him of. I just want the Colonel to be aware.”

With a final hug, I got into the taxi. “You know what?” I said. “I think the Colonel is already aware. He is far more clever than he lets on. He doesn’t miss a thing.”

“But I’ll miss you,” Chad said.

They were the last words I heard as the taxi sped away.





49

The Colonel

The Colonel did not understand what it was that drew him to Verity, but it was certainly more than her blond good looks, her pert nose with the bump in it that made it look a bit off-side, her wide blue eyes, and a mouth that might almost, in another era, have been called “rosebud.” But no, it was too large for rosebud, too vulnerable with its soft underlip that she had the habit of catching in her teeth when she was worried. Which, in fact she’d appeared to be much of the time. And the Colonel believed she had good reason. No one came that close to being eliminated, not once, but twice, within a couple of weeks, without there being good reason. Hers was, he was sure, that she was friends with the wrong people. In particular, right now, the Boss.

His research into the Boss delivered no more than he already knew: that the Boss was a self-made man; that he made his money mostly from property and mostly in far-flung locations, where the rules governing such transactions were not regulated and also where, for certain large sums, men might be bought. The Boss had moved on, of course, to more respectable places and people, and now a sort of cloud of goodwill surrounded him that guaranteed access to solid financial institutions as well as that part of society, that while not exactly “high,” was certainly celebrity-and money driven. You had only to attend his party to notice who was there, and to understand. Money talked, that was why. And this man had more money than Rockefeller, or so it was said.

What was also apparent to the Colonel, when he was checking this information, was that dates and times and places were not mentioned. In fact it was impossible to know where the Boss was born. Sometimes it was said the Ukraine, while an alternative version claimed the Big Island of Hawaii, or even in the gambling center of Macau, off the coast of China. No interview the Boss had given ever raised the question of his beginnings, because he always laid down the rules of what questions might be asked and what subjects might not even be approached, which made it easy for him to have the appropriate answers to hand. In fact, the Colonel thought, reading through some of those interviews on Google, the man was a complete mystery. He was only ever exactly what he wanted to be right there and then.

The Colonel did not consider this normal. He told himself everyone had parents, everyone had a past, which might include wives and children, and probably brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and grandparents. Nobody came into this life alone. So, where was the Boss’s mother? His family? Did the Boss have a wife somewhere, kept out of sight, out of his social whirl?

Yet, to all intents and purposes, the Boss was a single man who lived alone, had no close personal friends, and maintained a staff that protected him like the Secret Service and who all had signed a pledge of nondisclosure, even the chefs who’d cooked the stupendous food for that party. Even, dammit, the bartenders.

From his long career as a gendarme, starting at street level and working his way up over the years to the top of his profession, the Colonel had learned never to believe in coincidence. If something bad happened, a murder for instance, there was never any “coincidence.” It was purely and simply a criminal act.