Circle of Bones - Kling Christine - Страница 57
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Diggory remembered the first time Yorick had visited him after graduation. The Company had recruited him in the final weeks of his senior year, and he’d moved straight to DC with his few possessions in a cheap suitcase. He hadn’t known what to expect when he heard the three knocks on his door. He’d moved into the rented room in a house on 17th Street SE across from the Congressional Cemetery. The row house was owned by an obese Ukranian woman and the hallways, wallpapered with horrid floral patterns, always smelled like cooked cabbage. But it was the only room he could afford that wasn’t being rented out by blacks, and while he was poor, he wasn’t that desperate.
Opening the door, he first saw the sleeve of the Italian Merino wool navy suit, followed by the striped tie and then Yorick’s puckered countenance as he surveyed the tiny room. He slid his one good eye up and down Diggory’s worn slacks and polo shirt.
“A Bonesman living in squalor,” he said. “It’s a disgrace. You’re a fucking disgrace, Priest.”
“It’s only temporary, sir.”
Yorick pulled out a fat gold money clip and began peeling off the hundred dollar bills and letting them fall onto the threadbare carpet.
“That’s not necessary,” Priest said. “I start on salary next week.”
“Pick it up,” Yorick said.
The older man focused his eyes on Diggory, who glanced back and forth, trying to remember which was the good eye. Then the lazy eye jerked away. The good eye seared into him. Dig dropped to his knees and began collecting the bills.
“It’s going to be a while, Priest, before I can pay you any respect — as long as I have to pay to pull you out of the gutter.”
By the time Dig had collected the last bill, Yorick had started down the stairs. He did not look back.
Diggory sipped from his wine glass, then turned back from the plane window, and sighed. “It’s going to be a long flight, you know,” he said to her. “Do you want to talk? Just to pass the time?”
She didn’t reply. In fact, she’d ignored him so long, he was beginning to think about sleep. The nice pinot noir they served in first class was making him drowsy.
Then the tapping of her nails stopped, and she placed both her hands palms down on the tray table. She faced the seat back in front of him, still not looking at him. “I’ll talk if you’ll give me some answers,” she said.
“All right. What do you want to know?”
“I’ve been thinking about it since we were in the car on the way to the airport. It doesn’t make sense. Why would they send you to find me? Why not have Eleanor Wright contact me?”
“That’s easy. She tried. You weren’t answering your phone. I gather you were outside their signal area. Offshore, perhaps? Anyway, she called the State Department for help locating you. The French authorities had informed our embassy in Barbados when they relieved you of your passport, and since Barbados is my home base these days, they called me. They knew I was in Guadeloupe on company business.”
“And how did you find me?”
He smiled. “That, my dear, comes under the heading of trade secrets.”
She turned to face him for the first time since boarding the plane. He noticed two vertical creases appeared between her eyebrows when she spoke.
“You trusted me in Lima,” she said.
“Ah, well,” he said. “That was different.”
“How so?”
“Things were different then.”
“Between us, you mean?”
“Well, yes.” Sex made all the difference, he thought.
“We knew what we were doing was wrong.”
He ran his finger over the skin on her forearm. “But it was right in so many ways.”
She shivered and drew her arm back. “I wasn’t supposed to know your real job. You were just another trust fund Yank playboy enjoying the lower cost of living south of the border. And yet you asked me to do things for you.” She jerked her head in his direction and flashed him a quick look. “And I’m not talking about those things. I mean work things.”
He chuckled at her discomfort. She never could talk about it. She never wanted to say those things, and that made it all the more interesting to watch her mouth when she tried. She’d done things to please him. “You were a great help to me.” If you only knew, he thought.
“I’d convinced myself I was only doing you favors — but,” she said lifting her eyes to his, “it was more, wasn’t it? That last day.” She turned away and spoke to the back of the seat in front of her. “I want to ask, but I’m afraid of what your answer will be.”
He pasted a wounded expression on his face and leaned forward to try to get into her field of vision. “Riley, how can you think that? Really. I was in —” He stopped. “You’re not going to hit me again if I say that word?”
“I might. Don’t say it. You know you don’t mean it.”
“What makes you so sure?”
She made a noise as though something had caught in her throat. “The flight’s not that long,” she said.
Neither of them spoke again for quite a long time. He ordered another glass of wine. He would answer her questions. Soon. But not here. She was petite, but strong and fit, and he couldn’t afford to have her go ballistic on the plane. She flipped through the pages of the in-flight magazine. She wasn’t even looking at the print on the pages. He could feel her mind crawling all over him.
She startled him when she spoke. “So when we get there, are you going to disappear again?”
That’s it, he thought. He’d won. She wanted to be with him. She wanted him.
“We won’t get in until midnight. I have a car and driver meeting us. The weather forecast is for snow. I’ll drive you home so you can get some rest and change.”
She tugged at her shorts with one hand and felt her tousled hair with the other. “I’m not even dry yet. I’ll freeze dressed like this.”
“My driver will have blankets in the car.”
She bit her lower lip and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The worry lines appeared again between her brows. “If I go with you, Diggory, there won’t be any surprises, right?”
“Absolutely not,” he lied.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
The Atlantic Ocean
February 13, 1942
“Bloody hell,” Woolsey said as he wiped the cold sea water off his face.
Gohin was the first among them to stagger to his feet. Woolsey saw that the muscular French ensign looked dazed, and he was no longer carrying the pistol. As the man standing closest to the rail when the bomb went off, Gohin had been been blown back halfway across the deck and his face was covered with blood. He may have been hit with a large bit of shrapnel or bone, or his nose was just bleeding from the concussion. Either way, he looked a fright.
Michaut was the first man out of the conning tower, but he was followed by a handful of others. Though Woolsey could not understand what they were saying, he was glad to hear Captain Lamoreaux answer them with a steady voice. But when Woolsey looked into the captain’s eyes, he saw they were focused not on Gohin, but on the gun that lay on the deck between the two men — the gun that was closer to Woolsey than to either of the Frenchmen.
The three men on the lower deck moved at once. Woolsey was at a disadvantage because he was sitting on his backside, but he tried to crawl on all fours across the slippery deck. The big French ensign landed on top of him as Woolsey’s fingers closed around the gun, but after receiving a couple fierce jabs to the kidney and a crushing blow to his wrist, Woolsey gave in. He wasn’t much of a fighter. Gohin pulled the gun from Woolsey’s limp fingers and the big Frenchman got to his feet. He delivered one final kick to Woolsey’s ribs as he muttered the word, “Salaud.”
Woolsey lay curled in a ball struggling to breathe. At Gohin’s order, Michaut and one of the deck officers pulled him to his feet while a couple of sailors grabbed the captain’s arms. They half dragged the two of them across the deck to the ladder, then with Gohin pointing the gun and shouting orders, the men herded Woolsey and Lamoreaux up and down the various ladders and back down the long passage to the door to the hold.
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