Lace II

  “No, there’s nothing you can do, Mark,” Judy said quietly, “the police are handling the problem. Would you please go.”

  Mark looked at the group. “Judy, can’t we speak alone? I want to tell you why I’ve come here.”

  She longed to touch him, to smell him, to hold him. But she knew that she dared not invite humiliation. “Mark, I know why you’ve come, but I want you to go. Please.”

  Mark said, “In case you change your mind, I’ll let you know where I’m staying, as soon as I know.”

  Back in the lobby, Mark sat down and checked his cameras. After thirty minutes, the desk clerk discovered that two German tourists were leaving, because they couldn’t stand the pandemonium of police and photographers. So Mark had a room. Again, he climbed up the marble staircase (no elevator), but Gregg, who had been watching him from the floor above, stepped out and barred his way. “No you don’t, chum. Find somewhere else to stay. Judy doesn’t want you here.”

  Angrily, Mark shoved Gregg aside, saying, “What’s it to you?”

  Gregg shoved Mark. Mark lost his footing and grabbed Gregg’s arm, then slipped on the smooth marble staircase. Together, the two men tumbled down the stairs, shouting accusations as they fell, and then continued their fight in the hotel lobby. As Mark struggled to rise, Gregg grabbed Mark’s foot, and again he lost his balance.

  The two men were strangers. Gregg only knew from Lili that Mark fancied her. Mark didn’t know who the hell Gregg was, but knew that he was frustrating Mark’s attempts to see Judy. Had it not been for the tension they both felt because of the kidnapping, they would not have been fighting, but the fight enabled them to externalize their feelings.

  As the two men kicked and punched, grappled and yelled, the pressmen who were hanging around the lobby formed a noisy circle, then started taking pictures, shouting, cheering on their buddy, Mark, and betting on the result of the fight.

  Suddenly, there was silence as Colonel Aziz and his escort entered the lobby.

  “Who is Mr. Eagleton fighting?” the police chief demanded of the nearest cameraman.

  “Mark Scott—a freelancer who works mostly for Time magazine,” the man replied. Colonel Aziz immediately remembered that Mark’s name had been included in the long list of men who were, according to Judy, obsessed by Lili.

  Colonel Aziz pointed to Mark. “Get that man off the floor and arrest him,” he ordered his men.

  Accustomed to being jailed by hostile police officials, Mark knew that he had only to bide his time until his fellow journalists, who had seen the arrest, were able to telephone his editor at Time magazine. His editor would then telephone their man in Washington, who would have a word with the appropriate government department on Capitol Hill; he would send a note, via the U.S. Ambassador in Turkey, to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, and at that point, some Turkish civil servant would lean on the Police Department and secure Mark’s release. It would take less than twenty-four hours, in a trivial case such as this.

  Mark still thought he had been arrested for brawling, and not as a kidnapping suspect.

  At about 3 A.M., Colonel Aziz decided to interrogate Mark. He was brought from his cell and told to sit in front of the police chief’s table.

  Colonel Aziz said, “You have been arrested for causing a disturbance at the Haroun al-Rashid Hotel, and I am holding you to help us with our inquiries into the kidnapping of the French actress, Lili. Tomorrow a lawyer will be appointed for you by the court. You are not obliged to say anything but I strongly advise you to cooperate.”

  “How long am I being held here?” asked the astonished Mark. “I want to telephone my embassy. You have my passport, you can see that I only entered the country yesterday. Surely that’s enough evidence? I can hardly have arranged a kidnap from Nicaragua.”

  “Passports can be falsified. Nobody has accused you of being a kidnapper, but it’s interesting that you should jump to that conclusion. How long have you known Mademoiselle Lili?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Oh, but it is. Be careful, Mr. Scott. You are perfectly qualified to have committed this crime. You are accustomed to procuring illegal services in foreign countries, and you are accustomed to conducting clever, lengthy research investigations. And I am informed by Miss Jordan that you were involved with the victim.”

  “And I’m probably the only suspect you’ve got?”

  “Be careful. You are a long way from home, Mr. Scott. You are clearly capable of being involved with this crime, and you have a motive.”

  “A motive? Why would I do it?” Mark laughed and put his hands behind his head.

  A policeman stepped forward and prodded Mark painfully in the ribs with a truncheon. Sharply, Mark brought his arms down.

  “Your motive might be vengeance. You might have kidnapped Mademoiselle Lili because she would have nothing to do with you.”

  “What a crazy idea! There was never anything between us.” Mark wasn’t worried, but he was irritated and knew he had to hide his irritation. The best thing to do was not to refuse to talk to Old Bootface here, but to say as little as possible, and just put up with the situation for a couple of days.

  “But perhaps you wish there was something between you, Mr. Scott. You are under suspicion because you know Mademoiselle Lili. We have reason to believe that she was abducted by someone she knew. If you had told her a plausible story, she might have left the hotel, accompanied by you, without struggle.”

  “If you look at my passport, Colonel, you’ll see it would be very difficult to fake.” Mark looked at his thick, much-stamped, many-visaed, often-confiscated, dog-eared passport, which was now laying on the Colonel’s table. “You’ll soon receive news of me from your superiors, Colonel. As you also confiscated my accreditation, you’re aware of my connections.”

  Colonel Aziz jerked his head and said to the policeman standing behind Mark. “Take him back to his cell.”

  The next morning, Mark was released and his property was returned. With resignation, he signed for it, knowing in advance that it was unlikely to include most of his cash and his most expensive camera.

  * * *

  In a small park by the edge of the Bosphorus, Curtis Halifax was walking with Judy, who wore large dark glasses. Judy said, “So now you know as much as I do about these weird telegrams, and I’ve told you as much as I’m prepared to tell you about my affair with Angelface Harris, but remember that I only became involved with Angelface because you left me.”

  After so many years of guilt, believing Judy’s child to be his, Curtis had been stunned by the news of Angelface’s ransom telegram, which he had read about in the International Herald Tribune as soon as he stepped into the Istanbul Hilton.

  Honest himself, Curtis found Judy’s deception difficult to understand. Now he said, “But you let me think that Lili was my daughter. You asked me to pay for her care as a child.”

  “Curtis, I’m sorry. I can’t bear to hear myself say this but at the time I didn’t know which of you was Lili’s father. You paid 25 percent of the cost of her care, and there was more than a 25 percent possibility that Lili was your child.”

  “She still might be my child.”

  “No,” Judy was sorrowful but firm. “The grown-up Lili resembles her father, in temperament more than looks. I’m truly sorry that I involved you, but at the time I thought I was doing the best thing for my daughter. You and Angelface both helped to pay for her care, until she was six, when I was told she was dead. There was some surplus money, but not by the time I’d finished searching for Lili in the refugee camps. That trip cost a small fortune and left me in debt.”

  “Nevertheless, I’ve paid for someone else’s child. And why did you lie on TV? Why did you say that Lili’s father was a British soldier?”

  Judy spun round and faced the angry Curtis. “Just be grateful that I didn’t say it was you, Curtis.” Suddenly Judy was equally angry as she demanded, “Do you understand what desperation is, Curtis? You’ve never been
poor, you’ve never been desperate. You’ve never been tempted, you’ve never had to survive by yourself!”

  Judy remembered that bleak winter day in 1956, after the Hungarian uprising, when she had returned to New York from Europe after her unsuccessful search for Lili in those chaotic refugee camps on the Austrian border.

  Returning after a fourteen-hour, overnight flight, Judy had staggered into the hallway of her apartment house on East Eleventh and dumped her shabby suitcase in the hall. She felt desolate and alone. After Lili’s birth, after breast-feeding her for three months, Judy had been forced by poverty to hand her baby daughter to somebody else, and Judy had never seen her again. Now her daughter was dead; Judy would never know her. Judy felt as if the world had turned against her. Everything seemed pointless. She would never achieve anything. Life was going to be one endless struggle, and there was no reason to continue it. Everyone wanted to take, take, take. No matter what talent she had, however hard she worked, Judy was never going to get her head above water in this tough jungle called New York City.

  She checked her mailbox. Bills, bills, bills. And on top of those, she owed Pat Rogers the plane fare. Pat Rogers was the department head of Judy’s office. Pat knew that Judy hated to borrow money, because it made her feel humiliated, but Pat also understood that Judy couldn’t exist in New York City on only stamina, ambition and one hot-dog a day, cut into three pieces.

  Standing beside the dark waters of the Bosphorus, Judy could still remember what it felt like to be hungry, not to be able to afford bus fare, not to be able to afford shoe repairs. Even though she lived and worked in luxury, Judy would always be that young girl who had lived on a hot-dog a day and, at heart, her sympathies would always lie with hopeful young girls who had not yet been kicked in the teeth by fate, or dumped by rich boys with no problems.

  Judy looked at Curtis and suddenly didn’t mind giving him her next bit of information. She said, “I think I ought to warn you that the Turkish police think that your wife may be involved with this kidnapping.”

  Curtis stood still and gaped at Judy. “Debra?”

  Judy nodded. “You know that party I told you about, before Lili’s gala in London. It turns out the anonymous benefactor was Debra. We were only told this morning.”

  Curtis’s neat-featured face seldom registered emotion, but now he looked horrified. Somehow he knew that this time Judy was telling the truth. She said, “The Turkish police got Scotland Yard onto the London hotel; they opened up their books and found that the money for the party had been anonymously paid, but it was traced through the paying bank. It came from Debra’s account in Philadelphia.”

  “My God!” Not for the first time in his life, Curtis wished that he had stayed in Switzerland with Judy, instead of bowing to the family ambition and marrying that bundle of trouble. He said, “But Debra doesn’t need ten million dollars! She’s worth far more.”

  “The Turkish police think that Debra might have arranged to have Lili killed, and that all these mad ransom notes are just a cover-up for the murder.” Judy’s voice cracked, “I’ve already been told that if Lili’s body is found, Debra will be a murder suspect. I’m sorry to distress you, Curtis. It’s obviously untrue and I don’t believe it. Only a crazy person would do a thing like that.”

  Curtis said, “I’ll have to get back home immediately.” He thought, I’ll telephone Harry and Dr. Joseph from the Hilton before I catch the plane. He dared not think further than that.

  * * *

  “Kidnapping insurance?” Hopeful ecstasy was on Judy’s face. “You mean, Omnium took out kidnapping insurance? The insurance company can pay the ransom? Wonderful!” She beamed at the three men who had been waiting for her when she returned from her meeting with Curtis.

  Oscar Sholto was head of the legal department at Omnium Pictures. He was accompanied by a chubby man called Steve Wood, who was from Special Risk, Inc., Omnium’s Parisbased insurance consultants. A weary, pale Colonel Aziz had joined the group and now they sat around the table in a private dining room, which Colonel Aziz had commandeered for his investigations. Around the room, spindly gilt chairs were stacked in fours. The bedraggled decorations from a party were fading and curling.

  Oscar Sholto had been darkly handsome, but it had all dropped a little. He cleared his throat. “As you know, Miss Jordan, it’s not unusual for the star of a major picture to be insured by the backers. Omnium has millions tied up in Helen of Troy.”

  Smiling, Judy sat back in her chair. “I’m thrilled to hear this! I know it’s tough for the insurers but if I get my daughter back…”

  “I must warn you, Miss Jordan,” said Oscar, “that Omnium cannot act in any way against Turkish police policy. And the police don’t want the ransom paid, because it’s against their national policy. No payment for kidnapping, because it only encourages other kidnappers. The main aim of the police is to find the kidnappers, and that will probably take time.” He folded his plump hands on the dust sheet which covered the round table and said, “But the Turkish Police have to decide between two alternatives. They don’t want an international kidnapping to take place in their country, but neither do they want to transgress their own laws by turning a blind eye to ransom payment.”

  “Of course they’ve got to allow payment!” Judy’s smile had disappeared.

  Oscar said, “What we’re telling you is that the Turkish government may not allow us to pay the ransom here.”

  Judy broke in, “What are you going to do, as it’s illegal to pay ransom in Turkey?”

  “We have to work out how to get around the law. Maybe pay it over at sea, outside territorial waters,” said Oscar.

  “All we can do for the moment,” said Steve, the insurer, “is to wait for contact. The kidnappers will probably ask us to set up a safe, untapped telephone, so we can talk to them. Just give us time.”

  “Time!” exclaimed Judy. “How much time? Months? Years?”

  “Two weeks,” said Oscar. “Special Risk also covers Omnium for any other delay in shooting Helen of Troy. We’re due to start shooting in a couple of weeks.”

  “That should be ample time,” Steve confirmed. “But, as you know, we first have to establish contact with the kidnappers, then establish that they really are holding Lili, then establish how we’re going to get her back, then establish the price, then…”

  “But we know the price!” Judy interrupted. “They’ve already asked for ten million dollars.”

  “At Special Risk, we always try to bargain down,” Steve said evenly. “If we draw out negotiations, it gives the police more time to discover where the kidnappers are holding their victim.”

  “And your company saves their cash, of course. So what happens after that?” July had heard enough tactfully understated explanation; she wanted the bottom line on getting her daughter back. She had worked out the insurance company’s old, familiar angle, which was always the same whether you’d had your bicycle or your Lear Jet stolen. Steve was only offering advance justifications for not paying the insurance in full. Judy was unimpressed; she’d used more ingenuity to string along the landlord of her East Eleventh Street studio, in the bad old days when she was starting out in business.

  Smoothly, Steve said, “As soon as we are in communication with the kidnappers, we start stalling. We’ll say that the payment has to be okayed by a lot of people in America, and then paid over discreetly, so we’ll ask for five days’ extension. Then we’ll go back to them and say that we can only raise five million in cash, so we ask for more time. When they see five big ones within their greedy grasp, they’ll give us more time. And then, in the end, we settle for six million.” Steve looked around the table, then added, “And we take as long as we can over the whole business, so that the police and our special contacts can try to find Lili and perhaps obviate the necessity…”

  “Of paying over your money,” Judy angrily interrupted. She turned to Oscar Sholto. “Lili’s made a fortune for Omnium. She won’t be able to make any more
money for you if she’s dead, will she?”

  “Miss Jordan, both you and Omnium want the ransom paid fast,” said Oscar. “That’s why Omnium paid enormous insurance premiums to Special Risk.”

  Steve said, “I’m here to pay the ransom to the right people, provided we get the right results. Of course, we’ll do everything we can to get Lili released as fast as possible.” He saw the panic on Judy’s face. He had encountered parent hostility before, so he emphasized, “Remember, Miss Jordan, as soon as we start to bargain with the kidnappers, Lili’s life is much safer.”

  Judy threw him a flinty stare. “I’m Lili’s mother and the way I see it is that the longer we wait, the more dangerous it is for Lili. I can’t bear to think of her in the hands of those thugs.”

  “They won’t be thugs if this is a terrorist operation.” Steve tried to smooth out the hostile atmosphere. “If we’re dealing with terrorists, they’re not likely to be disadvantaged peasants striking back at society, they’re far more likely to be clever, well-educated, middle-class idealists, and they won’t treat your daughter badly, Miss Jordan. They’ll be in the whole business as much for the sake of their public image as for the money.”

  Colonel Aziz said, “Whoever they are, I don’t understand why the kidnappers haven’t yet been in touch, to instruct us where to pay the money.”

  “The delay makes me think it’s likely that the kidnappers are terrorists,” offered Steve, “because terrorists don’t always want the money, they want the maximum publicity over the maximum time. Terrorists fight dirty because there aren’t many of them, and they haven’t got the money to run the sort of war they want. A kidnap is sometimes a really cheap publicity stunt. You don’t need many people, or much equipment, and you get a nice financial bonus at the end. Their weapon is intimidation—kill one and frighten a million.”