Chapter Forty-one

The train clanged over the antiquated bridge spanning the Rhone River, into the Geneva station. Elizabeth Scarlatti sat in her compartment looking first down at the river barges, then at the rising banks and into the large railroad yard. Geneva was clean. There was a scrubbed look about it, which helped to hide the fact that scores of nations and a thousand score of business giants used this neutral city to further intensify conflicting interests. As the train neared the city, she thought that someone like herself belonged in Geneva. Or, perhaps, Geneva belonged to someone like herself.

She eyed the luggage piled on the seat facing her. One suitcase contained the clothes she needed, and three smaller bags were jammed with papers. Papers that contained a thousand conclusions, totaling up to a battery of weapons. The data included figures on the complete worth of every man in the Zunich group. Every resource each possessed. Additional information awaited her in Geneva. But that was a different sort of musketry. It was not unlike the Domesday Book. For what awaited her in Geneva was the complete breakdown of the Scarlatti interests. The legally assessed value of every asset controlled by the Scarlatti Industries. What made it deadly was her maneuverability. And opposite each block of wealth was a commitment to purchase. These commitments were spelled out, and they could be executed instantaneously by a cable to her attorneys.

And well they should be.

Each block was followed—not by the usual two columns designating assessed value and sales value—but three columns. This third column was an across-the-board cut, which guaranteed the buyer a minor fortune with each transaction. Each signified a mandate to purchase that could not be refused. It was the highest level of finance, returned through the complexities of banking to the fundamental basis of economic incentive: Profit.

And Elizabeth counted on one last factor. It was the reverse of her instructions but that, too, was calculated.

In her sealed orders sent across the Atlantic was the emphatic stipulation that every contact made—to complete the task teams of administrators had to work twelve-hour shifts night and day—was to be carried out in the utmost secrecy and only with those whose authority extended to great financial commitments. The guaranteed gains absolved all from charges of irresponsibility. Each would emerge a hero to himself or to his economic constituency. But the price was consummate security until the act was done. The rewards matched the price. Millionaires, merchant princes, and bankers in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Palm Beach found themselves quartered in conference rooms with their dignified counterparts from one of New York’s most prestigious law firms. The tones were hushed and the looks knowing. Financial killings were being made. Signatures were affixed.

And, of course, it had to happen.

Unbelievable good fortune leads to ebullience, and ebullience is no mate for secrecy.

Two or three began to talk. Then four or five. Then a dozen. But no more than that—The price.

Phone calls were made, almost none from offices, nearly all from the quiet seclusion of libraries or dens. Most were made at night under the soft light of desk lamps with good pre-Volstead whiskey an arm’s length away.

In the highest economic circles, there was a rumor that something most unusual was happening at Scarlatti.

It was just enough. Elizabeth knew it would be just enough.

After all, the price—And the rumors reached the men in Zurich.

Matthew Canfield stretched out across the seats in his own compartment, his legs propped over his single suitcase, his feet resting on the cushions facing him. He, too, looked out the window at the approaching city of Geneva. He had just finished one of his thin cigars and the smoke rested in suspended layers above him in the still air of the small room. He contemplated opening a window, but he was too depressed to move.

It had been two weeks to the day since he had granted Elizabeth Scarlatti her reprieve of one month. Fourteen days of chaos made painful by the knowledge of his own uselessness. More than uselessness, more akin to personal futility. He could do nothing, and nothing was expected of him. Elizabeth hadn’t wanted him to ‘work closely’ with her. She didn’t want anyone to work with her—closely or otherwise. She soloed. She soared alone, a crusty, patrician eagle sweeping the infinite meadows of her own particular heaven.

His most demanding chore was the purchase of office supplies such as reams of paper, pencils, notebooks, and endless boxes of paper clips.

Even the publisher Thomas Ogilvie had refused to see him, obviously so instructed by Elizabeth.

Canfield had been dismissed as he was being dismissed by Elizabeth. Even Janet treated him with a degree of aloofness, always apologizing for her manner but by apologizing, acknowledging it. He began to realize what had happened. He was the whore now. He had sold himself, his favors taken and paid for. They had very little use for him now. They knew he could be had again as one knows a whore can be had.

He understood so much more completely what Janet had felt.

Would it be finished with Janet? Could it ever be finished with her? He told himself no. She told him the same. She asked him to be strong enough for both of them, but was she fooling herself and letting him pay for it?

He began to wonder if he was capable of judgment. He had been idle and the rot inside of him frightened him. What had he done? Could he undo it? He was operating in a world he couldn’t come to grips with.

Except Janet. She didn’t belong to that world either. She belonged to him. She had to!

The whistle on the train’s roof screeched twice and the huge metal-against-metal slabs on the wheels began to grind. The train was entering the Geneva station, and Canfield heard Elizabeth’s rapid knocking on the wall between their compartments. The knocking annoyed him. It sounded like an impatient master of the house rapping for a servant.

Which is exactly what it was.

‘I can manage this one, you take the other two. Let the redcaps handle the rest.’ Dutifully Canfield instructed the porter, gathered up the two bags, and followed Elizabeth off the train.

Because he had to juggle the two suitcases in the small exit area, he was several feet behind Elizabeth as they stepped off the metal stairway and started down the concrete platform to the center of the station. Because of those two suitcases they were alive one minute later.

At first it was only a speck of dark movement in the corner of his eye. Then it was the gasps of several travelers behind him. Then the screams. And then he saw it.

Bearing down from the right was a massive freight dolly with a huge steel slab across the front used to scoop up heavy crates. The metal plate was about four feet off the ground and had the appearance of a giant, ugly blade.

Canfield jumped forward as the rushing monster came directly at them. He threw his right arm around her waist and pushed-pulled her out of the way of the mammoth steel plate. It crashed into the side of the train less than a foot from both their bodies.

Many in the crowd were hysterical. No one could be sure whether anyone had been injured or killed. Porters came running. The shouts and screams echoed throughout the platform.

Elizabeth, breathless, spoke into Canfield’s ear. The suitcases! Do you have the suitcases?’

Canfield found to his amazement that he still held one in his left hand. It was pressed between Elizabeth’s back and the train. He had dropped the suitcase in his right hand.

‘I’ve got one. I let the other go.’

‘Find it!’

‘For Christ’s sake!’

‘Find it, you fool!’

Canfield pushed at the crowd gathering in front of them. He scanned his eyes downward and saw the leather case. It had been run over by the heavy front wheels of the dolly, crushed but still intact. He shouldered his way against a dozen midriffs and reached down. Simultaneously another arm, with a fat, uncommonly large hand thrust itself toward the crumpled piece of leather. The arm was clothed in a tweed jacket. A woman’s jacket. Canfield pushed harder and touched the case with his fingers and began pulling it forward. Instinctively, amid the panorama of trousers and overcoats, he grabbed the wrist of the fat hand and looked up.

Bending down, eyes in blind fury, was a jowled face Canfield could never forget. It belonged in that hideous foyer of red and black four thousand miles away. It was Hannah, Janet’s housekeeper!

Their eyes met in recognition. The woman’s iron-gray head was covered tightly by a dark green Tyrolean fedora, which set off the bulges of facial flesh. Her immense body was crouched, ugly, ominous. With enormous strength she whipped her hand out of Canfield’s grasp, pushing him as she did so, so that he fell back into the dolly and the bodies surrounding him. She disappeared rapidly into the crowd toward the station.

Canfield rose, clutching the crushed suitcase under his arm. He looked after her, but she could not be seen. He stood there for a moment, people pressing around him, bewildered.

He worked his way back to Elizabeth.

‘Take me out of here. Quickly!’

They started down the platform, Elizabeth holding his left arm with more strength than Canfield thought she possessed. She was actually hurting him. They left the excited crowd behind them.

‘It has begun.’ She looked straight ahead as she spoke.

They reached the interior of the crowded dome. Canfield kept moving his head in every direction, trying to find an irregular break in the human pattern, trying to find a pair of eyes, a still shape, a waiting figure. A fat woman in a Tyrolean hat.

They reached the south entrance on Eisenbahn Platz and found a line of taxis.

Canfield held Elizabeth back from the first cab. She was alarmed. She wanted to keep moving.

‘They’ll send our luggage.’

He didn’t reply. Instead he propelled her to the left toward the second car and then, to her mounting concern, signaled the driver of a third vehicle. He pulled the cab door shut and looked at the crushed, expensive Mark Cross suitcase. He pictured Hannah’s wrathful, puffed face. If there was ever a female archangel of darkness, she was it. He gave the driver the name of their hotel.

‘ll n’y a plus de bagage, monsieur?’

‘No. It will follow,’ answered Elizabeth in English.

The old woman had just gone through a horrifying experience, so he decided not to mention Hannah until they reached the hotel. Let her calm down. And yet he wondered whether it was him or Elizabeth who needed the calm. His hands were still shaking. He looked over at Elizabeth. She continued to stare straight ahead, but she was not seeing anything anyone else would see.

‘Are you all right?’

She did not answer him for nearly a minute.

‘Mr. Canfield, you have a terrible responsibility facing you.’

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

She turned and looked at him. Gone was the grandeur, gone the haughty superiority.

‘Don’t let them kill me, Mr. Canfield. Don’t let them kill me now. Make them wait till Zurich—After Zurich they can do anything they wish.’