13

There was a knock at the door.

Manville looked at it more in irritation than surprise. “You’re the ones who locked it,” he called. “What do you want me to do?”

The key was already turning in the lock, with a loud snick, before he was finished speaking, and then the door opened and a young woman entered, in a tan pantsuit, smiling apologetically, saying, “I did not want to startle you.” A pile of clothing was over her arm. “If I may?”

He stepped to the side. She’d left the door open, and the hall looked empty from where he stood, but he didn’t doubt one of the men who’d brought him here was out there, or some other goon of Curtis’s, leaning against the wall, casual but making damn sure Manville stayed where they wanted him.

The young woman laid the clothing on the bed, neatening it, smoothing out wrinkles, then turned to smile at Manville again and say, “Mr. Curtis asks you to come to dinner in thirty minutes. You may refresh yourself in the bathroom there, and here are garments that we hope will fit you. The door will not be locked now, sir. In thirty minutes, if you would go out and to your right, and at the end of the hall turn left, that is the dining room. Thank you.”

She dipped her head and left, closing the door behind her. There was no sound of the key turning in the lock.

Manville guessed he’d been in this room now no more than fifteen or twenty minutes. He hadn’t looked at his watch when he’d first come in, assuming they’d be leaving him in here overnight.

They’d driven directly into the garage inside this building, and as they’d gotten out of the Daimler, all of them stiff, stretching, a young man in the same kind of tan pantsuit as this woman had opened an interior door at the left end of the garage, stepped forward through it, and called, “This way, please.”

Manville had paused to note the other two vehicles parked there, a tan Land Rover and a kind of dune buggy made mostly out of chrome pipe, and then he’d followed the man, while the leader of the thugs who’d captured him—Morgan, he’d called himself—had followed Manville into that broad low-ceilinged hall outside, with what looked like Navajo carpets on the red tile floor and framed aboriginal art on both walls. At the first open door on the right the man in the pantsuit had turned and made a please-enter gesture.

“That means you,” Morgan had said, and Manville had stepped into this room, and the door had shut behind him, with the unmistakable scrape of the key being turned in the lock.

This was normally a guestroom, apparently, with only the vertical bars outside the one window to suggest a prison; but probably all the ground floor windows were barred in a building as remote as this. The room contained a double bed, more native-looking throw rugs on the floor, a dresser and an easy chair beside a round table bearing a reading lamp. The compact bathroom next to it had an extremely small window, not barred, a telephone-booth-type shower, and more than enough towels.

Manville had expected to be left here by himself, locked in, to brood and worry and be the subject of psychological warfare. But now, to be suddenly presented with a change of clothes and a dinner invitation, threw him off; which might have been the idea.

Still, he should take what comfort he could. The shower was fine, with a clear lucite door and plenty of hot water and a big white bar of soap. Standing in there, letting the spray roll over him, easing the stiffness in his joints, he wondered again, for the thousandth time, what had happened to Kim. Those three had seen her—accidentally? somehow on purpose, following them?—and she’d escaped, and then they’d come back to the cafe to pick him up, and he’d walked right into it. So what would Kim have done next?

She might have gone to the police. Presumably there was a report somewhere that she was dead, so when she turned up alive, even without identification, it might force the authorities to take notice; though not necessarily to believe her fantastic accusations against a rich and respectable businessman.

Or she might have called the Planetwatch people, that guy Jerry Diedrich she’d mentioned a number of times.

He turned off the water, and stepped out of the shower.

The clothing he’d been given provided everything but shoes, and it all fit very well. Underwear, socks, dark gray slacks, pale blue buttoned shirt but no necktie, light gray sports jacket. The left pocket of the sports jacket contained two three-year-old tickets to La Bohème at the Sydney Opera House, suggesting this jacket had been left behind, forgotten by some houseguest, and never retrieved.

At the appointed time, Manville left his no-longer prison and followed the woman’s directions. Down the hall he went to the right, then a left, and there was the dining room.

Low ceilings seemed to be the norm here, but otherwise the place was lavish. The dining room was actually one end of a very long room that was a parlor at the farther end, all deep sofas and chairs on animal skin rugs, with a broad gray-stone fireplace taking up much of the far wall. There was no fire lit at the moment, but the room was comfortably warm. A pair of refectory tables, dark wood, bearing muted lamps, stacks of magazines, framed photos, marked the dividing line between parlor and dining room.

Four people were seated, very low, in the sofas down there; Richard Curtis, and three others Manville didn’t recognize, two women and a man. One of the women saw Manville enter and said something to Curtis, who immediately looked over, waved a hand over his head, and called, “There you are! Be right there.”

Manville waited. Closer to him was a long dark wood dining table, big enough to seat twelve. Five elaborate place settings took up the left half of the table. Apparently Morgan and his friends would eat somewhere else; in the kitchen, maybe, or out back with the dogs.

The four people approached, Curtis smiling like a host. Saying, “Well, George, you look rested. Good. A hell of a long drive, isn’t it?”

“Not too bad, in that car,” Manville said. He was surprised at the calmness of his response, but could see nothing else to do. It’s a natural instinct, apparently, to be polite to somebody who’s being polite to you, return friendliness with friendliness, good manners with good manners.

Curtis went so far as to make introductions: “George Manville, may I introduce Albert and Helen Farrelly, they run Kennison for me, and Cindy Peters, an old friend visiting for the weekend. George,” he told the others, “is a brilliant engineer, absolutely brilliant. We’ve been working together for a year and a half now, haven’t we, George?”

“About that,” Manville agreed. Not so long ago, he wanted to say, while everybody exchanged friendly greetings, you were sending people to kill me, then to kidnap me, imprison me. Has one of us lost his mind? But dinner party politeness was just too strong a force; he couldn’t say a word.

Curtis even rubbed it in, saying, “It’s too bad your friend Kim couldn’t be with you, George, we’d make an even number. Well, we’ll do what we can. I’ll be father at the head of the table here, George, you take that place there on the right, Helen, you between George and me, Cindy, you on my left, and Albert, if you’d sit across from George?”

Everybody did, and Manville saw Curtis extend his foot toward what must be a call button in the floor, because almost immediately two servers in the tan pantsuits came out with plates of crisp green salad.

Manville said to Helen, on his left, “Kennison?”

Surprised, she said, “The station. This place, you’d call it a ranch. And the house. This is Kennison. You didn’t know that?”

“I came here unexpectedly,” Manville said.

Wine was being poured. Around the server’s arm, Curtis said to Manville, “Kennison’s a great place, George, I wish I could be here more often myself. I’ll show you around, I think you’ll be surprised and pleased.”

“I’m already surprised,” Manville told him, and Curtis laughed.

When the five glasses had been filled with an Australian white wine, a chardonnay, Curtis proposed a toast. “To the good life, in a good place, to getting it and keeping it.”

They all drank to Curtis’s toast, Manville last and only a sip. It was a good clean wine, nicely cold. He would have to be alert not to drink too much of it.

As they started their salads, Manville looked more carefully at these three new people. He might be needing allies soon; would any of them fit the bill?

Albert and Helen Farrelly were a middle-aged, comfortable-looking couple, both overweight, both with the leathery cheeks of people who spend a lot of time outdoors, as they would do if they were the overseers of a large ranch. They were Australian, by their accents, and they seemed on very easy terms with their employer.

Would the Farrellys help? They came across as decent people, not criminals, but Captain Zhang was a decent man, too, and look at what he had been prepared to do. How vital was this job, this life, to the Farrellys? Helen Farrelly spoke of Kennison as though it were heaven on earth, and her husband smiled and nodded in agreement; how willing would they be to risk it, or lose it, for a stranger?

Cindy Peters was about thirty, a poised girl, pleasant, well-spoken, also Australian. An old friend of Curtis, visiting for the weekend.

There’s no comfort here, Manville told himself, as the salad plates were removed, replaced by plates of a butterflied boneless chicken breast with lightly sauteed vegetables. And more wine. I have to count on nobody but myself.

Manville turned to Curtis. “How long have you had this place? Kennison.”

“Seven years. It was my second wife’s idea. She’s Australian, she wanted a footprint in her homeland, so we bought this. She’d have liked to keep it after the divorce, but by then I was in love with it. And not with her, you know?”

“I didn’t know you were ever married,” Manville said. He wanted to encourage this new friendliness in Curtis, this companionship, until he could find a way to escape.

“I was married twice,” Curtis told him. And sounding more grim than before: “The second one was the mistake.” Then he lightened again, and turned to rest his hand on Cindy Peters’s, saying, “You don’t mind if I talk about my wives, do you?”

“Just so you don’t bring them around,” she said.

“No fear,” he told her, and turned back to Manville to say, “My first wife died at thirty-nine of leukemia.”

Cindy Peters looked shocked and embarrassed, as Curtis had no doubt intended, and Manville said, “I’m very sorry.”

“So was I, George, so was I. Isabel was my life to me. She got me started in business, what a team we were going to be.” His jaw set and his eyes looked angry, and he said, “Isabel would have known how to deal with the goddam mainlanders. She was Hong Kong born and bred, she’d have tied them in knots, not run around wasting time and money like me.”

Manville said, “She was Chinese?”

“No, a Brit,” Curtis said. “Her background was. Her grandfather came out, started a construction company on the island, over a hundred years ago. Called it Hoklo Construction, which was a joke, because the Hoklo were 17th-century pirates from China that settled in Hong Kong and then assimilated and disappeared, so anybody could be Hoklo. Anybody could be a pirate, you see?”

Manville said, “It’s an interesting point.”

“One Isabel’s grandfather always kept in mind,” Curtis said, “as should have his successors. Anyway, the grandfather built the business, and went back to England to marry, and had children, and his first two sons took over the business, and Isabel was a daughter of the second son. I was just a roustabout from Oklahoma, my father was in construction but in a small way, little tract houses in developments in the dirt around Tulsa, not like Hoklo. They were big, always, from the beginning, building the big godowns the Chinese used for waterfront warehouses, putting up office buildings, apartment houses. I was always interested in travel, seeing something other than the tan dirt of Tulsa, and when I got to Hong Kong I took a job for a while with Hoklo, and met Isabel, and that’s where it all started.”

Manville said, “You went into the firm.”

“I became the firm,” Curtis said, and his voice was harsh again, but then it softened as he said, “The difference between the first generation and the third, you see, the first generation has to work for it, and the second generation at least gets to see their parents work for it, but the third generation gets it handed to them on a plate, with no idea there’s any work involved. Isabel’s brother and two of her cousins were supposed to take over the company, and it would have been like having the company taken over by the Pillsbury Doughboy.”

“You took it away from them.”

Curtis smiled. If tigers smiled, it would look like that. “I showed them what it was like to be in a fight,” he said.

“And lose,” Manville suggested.

“I was always the one to bet on,” Curtis said. “And then, no sooner was it mine, mine and Isabel’s, than it hit her.”

Cindy Peters put a sympathetic hand on his forearm. “That must have been horrible.”

He nodded at her, “It killed me, Cindy. I was dead before she was, and she was dead in five months.”

“Oh, Dick. I don’t know what to say.”

“Thank you, Cindy.”

Manville noticed, but thought that Cindy did not, that his smile to her was patronizing, that it said, thank you for your sympathy, but you’re too shallow to know what I really went through. He holds himself aloof from the human race, Manville thought, and that’s why he can be so dangerous.

Curtis turned back to Manville to say, “It was because I missed Isabel so much that I married again, which was probably the biggest mistake of my life, and I know you know I’ve made a number of mistakes.”

“We all do,” Manville said.

“But I don’t get mad at other people’s mistakes,” Curtis said. “Not the way I get mad at my own. The thing is, George, it’s too goddam easy for a man to be an idiot. I married Rita because she looked like Isabel. Looked like. They couldn’t have been more different, they— I’ll let it go at that. When I realized— Well. I’ll let it go at that.”

Manville said, “Is Rita still alive?”

Curtis laughed. He seemed genuinely amused. He said, “I’m not Henry the Eighth, George. Rita and I divorced, seven months into the marriage. She got a damn good settlement. She doesn’t think so, of course, but she did.”

Curtis turned away, the veneer of friendliness gone, his attention back on the food on his plate, and Manville picked up his knife and fork as well; it was time to quit, while he was ahead.

* * *

At the end of the meal, as though a sudden gong had gone off, though in fact there had been no signal at all that Manville could see, both Farrellys thanked their employer, told Manville and Cindy how lovely it had been to meet them both, patted their mouths with their napkins, rose, said good night, and left the room, through a wide doorway down at the living room end.

Manville, starting to rise, said, “I should go, too. Thank you—”

“Wait, George,” Curtis said. “Cindy, George and I have a little boring business to talk over, and then I’ll be up.”

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll be reading.” And she too on her way out assured Manville it had been a pleasure to meet him.

Once they were alone, Curtis gestured toward the living room. “Let’s get comfortable over there, let them clear this away.”

“All right.”

As they walked across the long room, Curtis said, “Brandy? A cordial? After-dinner drink?”

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

Curtis patted Manville’s shoulder. “Come on, George, you don’t have to be wary with me.”

Manville looked at him, astonished. “Of course I do.”

Curtis shrugged and shook his head, as though abashed. “Well, I suppose you do,” he said. “Or you have reason to think you do, which is the same thing. Take that chair, it’s comfortable and it isn’t impossible to get out of.”

They sat at right angles, and Curtis seemed to be thinking for a minute how to phrase himself. Then he said, “I owe you an apology, George. And I offer it.”

“Thank you,” Manville said, wondering what on earth was coming next.

“With an explanation,” Curtis said, and grinned at him. “Mea culpa, but with an explanation. Okay?”

“Fine,” Manville said.

“You know the situation I’m in, I told you some of it.”

“You told me some,” Manville agreed. “I guess you thought you told me too much.”

“I was running on panic, George,” Curtis said, “what should have been a perfect day was completely destroyed. Your technique on Kanowit Island was perfect, it showed me I can do it again when I need to. My investors were happy, very impressed. But all of a sudden there was Jerry Diedrich, that son of a bitch, spoiling my day yet again. And I realized, the man would find some way to trip me up when I was ready to make the move, the real move. Don’t worry, George, I’m not going to tell you any more about that move. I maybe didn’t tell you too much, out there on the Mallory, but I almost did. It’ll be better for both of us if you don’t know any more than you know now.”

“Fine by me.”

“The thing is, I panicked,” Curtis said. “And then one damn thing led to another. First, Diedrich is going to destroy me. But no, he killed a diver and I can destroy him. No, the goddam girl’s alive, I’m back to square one. But she should be dead, She’s beat up enough, maybe she’ll die. Maybe there’s no reason for her to live. And you know, if you hadn’t intervened, between us, Captain Zhang and me, we would have finished her off.”

“I know you would.”

“And we would have been wrong. I would have been wrong, completely wrong. But I didn’t realize that then. And I was damn angry at you when you interfered, as you know.”

“You made it pretty plain,” Manville said. “The people you sent out made it plain.”

“You astonished me, George,” Curtis said. “I admit it, I was astonished. You’re a handier man than I gave you credit for. But the point is, you did handle it. You handled me, and you handled the men I sent out, and now you and the girl are both still alive, and I realize I’m in no worse shape than I was before, I can still go ahead the same as ever. I can defuse Jerry Diedrich some other way, and I’ve got nothing to get in my way except my own damn foolishness. I didn’t have to panic, I didn’t have to make you an enemy, it was foolish of me, and I regret it. When I was trying to do you harm, George, you knew I wasn’t in my right mind, didn’t you?”

“I suspected,” Manville said.

“All right, George,” Curtis said. “I’d like us to start all over, from now. And I have a deal to offer.”

“A deal?”

“I’d like you to stay here a few days,” Curtis said. “A week or two at the most. Think of it as a vacation.”

“Why?”

“So I can find you if I need you.” Now Curtis was intense again, leaning forward in his own soft low chair, saying, “George, you know I’m going to do something big, and you know it’s going to be soon, and you know I’m going to use the soliton.”

“That’s what you told me.”

“I felt I could trust you, George. In a funny way, I still do.” He gave Manville a keen look, and a rueful smile, and said, “You probably think the question of trust goes the other way.”

“If it’s a question,” Manville said.

“Oh, it is, George, it is. But here’s the thing. I think I can pull this off on my own, but there may be questions I can’t answer. The people I’m working with aren’t your caliber, George. I’d like to think, if I got stuck, I could give you a call, right here, and ask you a question in a general way, not too specific, nothing that makes you a collaborator or an accessory or any of that, and you would answer it.”

“For the ten million in gold, again?”

Curtis shook his head. “I don’t know why money doesn’t interest you, George, that’s one thing I can’t figure out.”

“It interests me,” Manville said.

“Then there’s hope. Look, George, if you stay here, no more than two weeks, I promise, probably a lot less, I’ll give you whatever it is you want. Money, no money, that’s all right with me. The first thing, though…” His smile this time was sly, pleased with itself. “You know about the industrial espionage?”

“I’ve been in a number of newspapers,” Manville told him. “Yes, I know about it.”

“I’ll get rid of it,” Curtis said. “Guaranteed. I’ll explain it was my error, you weren’t the guy, sorry I blackened your name, a public apology and you’re cleared and as good as new. All right?”

This was important. If Curtis did this, whatever else happened, Manville would be able to get on with his life. As it now stood, no one on earth would hire him. He said, “When?”

“Tomorrow,” Curtis told him. “Saturday isn’t a problem, with news. I’ll get it on CNN International by tomorrow night.” Pointing generally away at the interior of the house, he said, “We’ve got dish reception here, you’ll see it for yourself.”

“It would be good. If you did that,” Manville agreed.

Curtis said, “George, you see now how easy I can knock you down, and how easy I can pick you up again.”

“Yes.”

“So I’m just asking you to help me, in a small way. And otherwise I’m only asking you to keep out of the way. Because believe me, I don’t need Pallifer and his friends—”

“Who?”

Curtis laughed, surprised. “No formal introductions, eh? The people who brought you here.”

“Pallifer. He’d be the one I met on the ship. Morgan?”

“The same. And you don’t ever have to meet him again, George. And you don’t have to read about yourself in the newspaper, either. Just take a little vacation, right here at Kennison. Do you ride?”

“Horses? No, I never have.”

“We have horses here, you could learn,” Curtis offered. “Albert taught me to ride, and if he could teach somebody like me, he can teach anybody. It’s a relaxing place, George, a beautiful time out from the cares of the world. I envy you, I honestly do, ten days or two weeks in this place, no worries, no problems.”

Manville said, “And Kim?”

Curtis looked blank. “What about her?” Then he suddenly seemed to understand. “Oh, what am I going to do about her!”

“Yes.”

“Nothing, George, why should I? If she was dead on the ship, then she’s a club I can beat Jerry Diedrich with. Now she doesn’t mean a thing, and I’ll get at Diedrich some other way.”

“But what if she went to the police?”

“And said what, George? That I did something to her? I saved her life, that’s all, rescued her from the sea, carried her safe to shore in my own yacht. If somebody tried to harm her in any way, what does that have to do with me?” Curtis leaned closer to say, “George, if I could swat you down without half-trying, what sort of threat is this girl?”

“You’re not afraid she’ll raise questions.”

“About what? No, George, I’m safe from her, and therefore she’s safe from me.”

Was that true? Curtis was so devious, yet so apparently straightforward, that Manville had constant trouble figuring out what the man really wanted, what he really meant, what was lie and what was truth. “Your people were after her today,” he said.

“To find you,” Curtis told him. “That was the only reason. Then they did find you, so they weren’t looking for her anymore.”

Again, what Curtis said was plausible, without being quite persuasive. Manville brooded on it, trying to think his way through Curtis’s words, while the man watched him, half-smiling. He said, “What if I don’t want to stay here? What if I want to leave, tomorrow?”

Curtis sat back, but didn’t lose the half smile. “I hope you won’t feel that way, George. I hope we don’t have to deal with it. I tell you what.” He sat up again. “Sleep on it. We’ll talk again tomorrow morning, Cindy and I aren’t leaving until after lunch. Think it over, and we’ll talk, and as soon as we’ve reached an agreement you can sit there and watch me get on the phone to get rid of that espionage story. Immediately. All right?”

There was nothing to be gained by arguing. “All right,” Manville said.

“Fine.” Curtis got to his feet, and so did Manville. “We’ve worked well together, George,” Curtis said. “I’m sorry it turned bad for a while.”

“So am I.”

Curtis put his hand out. Hiding his surprise, Manville took it, and Curtis shook his hand with self-conscious pomp, as though some important international treaty had just been signed. “I’m glad we had this talk, George,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Good night.”

“Good night,” Manville said, and turned away.

As he walked back down the long room toward the dining area, its table now cleared, headed back toward his no-longer prison, or possibly prison again, Manville was very aware of Curtis behind him, standing as Manville had left him, unmoving amid the low sofas, the great gray stone wall of fireplace behind him, watching Manville recede. He’s wondering if he’s pulled it off, Manville knew. He’s wondering if he has me fixed in place, or if I’m going to go on being a pest. And I’m wondering the same thing myself.

If I tell him no tomorrow, I’ve thought it over, and I don’t want to stay here, beautiful and restful though Kennison might be, what then? Will he just allow me to leave, like that? Unlikely. If I don’t give him my parole, what else would he do but simply make me a prisoner?

What was it that Curtis was going to attempt, sometime in the next ten days or two weeks? If Manville did nothing about it, would he regret that? Would people be hurt, or even killed? What is Richard Curtis up to?

Should he try to escape tonight? Assuming the door to his room was left unlocked, should he try to get out of here? It was impossible to believe they would have left any of the vehicles where he could get at them, but even if they did, which way would he drive? The road into here was barely a track in the dirt, difficult enough for Curtis’s own chauffeur to find at night, and constantly blocked by stray cattle. Kennison was who knew how many thousands of acres in size. There was no way to get off it tonight.

Tomorrow? Were Pallifer and the other two still around? Manville for a giddy second visualized Albert Farrelly teaching him to ride a horse and then, magically, Manville atop the horse, racing over the downs to freedom.

He left the dining room, and started down the empty hall toward his room. Curtis had been ingratiating tonight, persuasive, reasonable, plausible; but Manville wanted none of it. He wanted nothing but to leave this place. For now, he entered the small neat guestroom and shut the door. Richard Curtis is at his most dangerous, he thought, when he seems the most sane.