A Tangled Web (6 page)

Stephanie and Max were flung across the lounge by the force of the explosion. Stephanie's head struck a corner of a steel-and-glass cocktail table, and she lay beside it like a rag doll. Max was thrown against the end of the mahogany bar, and he huddled there, trying to catch his breath, the words the
bomb, too early, the bomb, too early . . .
pounding through his head.

He heard no screams or cries for help, only an eerie silence broken by the angry slapping of waves against the
ship as it rocked and shuddered beneath him.
Christ, blew the whole thing . . .
He forced himself up on all fours and shook his head like a dog shaking off water. Pain shot through his left shoulder, and he shifted his weight to his right arm as he tried to stand. He fell back and, muttering a steady stream of curses, crawled across the room to the high, wide window, not thinking of anything now but getting away. He pulled himself up to the windowsill, grunting, swearing, soaked with sweat. The glass was shattered; he had a clear way out.

With his right arm he pulled himself up to the sill, then he swiveled and swung one leg out. And as he turned, he saw Stephanie on the floor, her eyes closed, blood running down her face.

“Sabrina—” It came out as a gasp.
My God, they've killed her.
He wiped away the sweat running into his eyes and thought he saw her move. Or it might have been the rocking of the ship. “Christ!” he burst out. He swung his leg back into the lounge to go to her, then stopped. He couldn't wait; he had to get away. She was dead and he was alive; his men would be waiting for him, and he had to get the hell out of here before the ship went down. He pushed his other leg through the window and tensed to leap into the water.

But he could not stop himself from taking one quick look back, and when he did he saw Stephanie's head roll to the side into a thin stream of water trickling in beneath the door. As he watched, the water flowed faster and then the force of it burst the door open and a torrent gushed in. Max knew he could not leave her like that. He had to know if she was alive, and if she was. he had to keep her with him.

He swung his legs around and dropped back into the room, gasping with the pain. Broke something, he thought. No, probably not that bad. He knelt in the water beside Stephanie. “Sabrina! God damn it, Sabrina, wake up, help me . . .

“
Merde.
” He was cursing now in whatever language
broke through the panic building inside him. He held his fingers against Stephanie's neck and found the thread of a pulse. Alive. God damn, she's alive. A wellspring of joy sprang up within him, so powerful it stunned him. Wait. Think about it later. Got to get us out of here.

He gripped Stephanie's hands and, crawling backwards through the water, dragged her to the window, fighting dizziness and the pain in his leg and left shoulder. She was deadweight, and he slipped on the wet floor as he struggled to push her up until she lay over the windowsill like a burlap sack. Gasping, coughing, he pulled himself up to sit beside her and catch his breath. No time, he thought; no time to breathe. He pulled off his shoes, and Stephanie's, then lifted her and shoved her through the window and into the sea. And as she dropped, he dove in, just behind her.

It had been two minutes since the explosion.

He hit the water clumsily and fought his way to the surface. Debris churned around him in the waves rolling outward as the ship went down; he felt a piece of metal cut his hand, another struck his thigh. Treading water, he looked around. He was on the side of the ship away from shore, and except for some small boats speeding in his direction, he seemed to be alone. “Sabrina! Sabrina, for Christ's sake . . .” Sputtering, coughing, he took a few lurching sidestrokes, favoring his bad shoulder, and found himself at the stern of the ship. He saw the hole in its side—
the bomb, the fucking bomb, wasn't supposed to go off until—
and then he saw Stephanie, floating face down in water red with her blood, shards of wood and metal swirling around her.

He reached her in an instant and twined his fingers in her thick hair to yank her head back and out of the water. He rolled her over, then hooked his left arm beneath her chin and swam with his other arm away from the ship. His clothes dragged him down, the water was colder than he had imagined, his head and shoulder throbbed, and he had to force his legs to keep moving. “
Bastardos,
fucking
bastardos,
” he said aloud, meaning all of them, the ones who had set the bomb to kill him, and his own men who should have been there by now to pick him up.

Stephanie floated, her face colorless, pale veins tracing across her dead white eyelids. Max could see the gash in her forehead now; he thought it was not as bad as all the blood had made it seem. She'll be all right, he thought. She'll be fine. She's tough; I always liked her toughness.

But he was so tired he could barely stay afloat. It would be easier without her. Easier alone. He'd known that all his life: it was easiest to go alone. But he held on to her. He remembered that spurt of joy when he knew she was alive, though he could not recapture it now.
Verfluchen,
he swore wearily. Sons of bitches. Said they'd be close by . . .

The motorboat was beside him before he saw it; the men had cut the engine and maneuvered through the debris to come close without setting up high waves. “Sorry, boss,” one of them said. “Didn't think it'd go off this early. You want her, too?”

“Fuck it!” Max exploded.

“Okay, right.” The two men reached down and dragged Stephanie into the boat. “Grab my arm,” the first one said to Max, and pulled him in as the other man started the engine. The small boat leaped away, its prow high out of the water. Max lay beside Stephanie in the bottom of the boat, out of sight, while the men kept fishing poles and nets raised high and looked straight ahead as they tore through the water.

Max slid a life preserver beneath Stephanie's head, then ripped off his shirt and pressed it to the bleeding gash in her forehead. Holding it there, he lay back again, breathing deeply. Now, he thought; now I can breathe. But then he heard one of the men say, “She's gone,” and he raised himself and looked behind them. He stared at the widening circle of debris and the motorboats bobbing a little distance away. Rescue boats were approaching from shore. That was all he saw. The
Lafitte
was gone.

“A beaut, that bomb,” one of his men said cheerfully.

Max looked at him until the man's cheer faded. “Why the fuck did you wait so long to tell me about it?”

“I didn't wait! I told you as soon as I knew! I didn't hear word one about a bomb, about any
plans
for a bomb, until today. I don't know; maybe they were starting to wonder about me—”

“I pay you so they don't wonder about you. I pay you to make them trust you. I pay you to get information to me in time for me to use it.”

“Well, you did; you got out in—”

“None of us should have been on board in the first place.”

“I didn't hear a thing until this afternoon, boss, honest to God. I called you on your plane, but you'd landed and the pilot said you'd just left for the dock. I got down there as soon as I could, but you were gone, so I called you on the ship's radio; what else could I do?” There was a silence. “So you went forward, right? I mean, when you knew the bomb was under your stateroom . . .”

“We went forward.”

The others had been unpacking in their rooms, but Max had insisted on going to the lounge. “You can unpack later, Sabrina,” he had said. “I want a drink; I want you to see Monte Carlo in this light.” And they had gone forward.

In fact, he'd thought he had plenty of time. His man, who had worked his way into Denton's organization, had told him the bomb was set to go off at seven, when everyone was dressing for dinner. But Max was not one to sit calmly on top of a bomb without doing something about it. He had planned to leave the lounge after a few minutes and get the engineer to go with him to find the bomb. But then it had occurred to him that the engineer could be part of the plot. Whoever brought the bomb on board and found a place to hide it and then left the ship without anyone being suspicious . . . whoever did that couldn't have managed it without help from someone on the crew.

He had been thinking about that while pouring drinks in the lounge. “It looks like a little girl's birthday cake,” Stephanie had said, looking at the pastel colors and rococo designs on the buildings of Monte Carlo, stepping up the hill from the shore.

Max brought her a drink and saw the sudden cloud that shadowed her face. “What is it?”

“I was thinking about little girls' birthdays,” she said, and he grasped her hand, angry at her for letting her thoughts take her away from him. He put her glass in her hand and curved her fingers around it. And then the bomb went off.

In the small motorboat, Max cradled Stephanie's head against him to protect her from the pounding vibration of the engine. They were racing west, toward Nice, the beaches and harbors of the Côte d'Azur on their right. The sun was still bright, but the beach was emptying as bronzed men and women gathered possessions, packed them into brightly striped raffia bags, and strolled to the hotels lining the shore.

“Almost there, boss,” said the man at the wheel. “Burt's waiting at the dock; he took care of the helicopter. Trouble is, we didn't know you'd need a stretcher or an ambulance or, you know, so there won't be anybody waiting when we get to Marseilles.”

“Burt can call from the helicopter. An ambulance and a hospital.”

“Right; he'll know where to go; he's lived there all his life.”

Nice was a jumble of buildings behind the forest of ships' masts in the harbor; the cafés on the Promenade des Anglais were crowded with people settling in for late afternoon drinks. Max looked at them, thinking that that familiar life was closed to him for a long time. Then he turned away as his small boat chugged slowly to a deserted part of the harbor near a cluster of squat warehouses, and eased into place at the far end of the dock.

A black Renault was parked close to the dock; beside it
stood a short, slender priest with a brown beard. He squatted as Max's men tied the boat to the dock. “I heard you were coming in today; I came to greet—
Mon Dieu,
Max, you're hurt!” He leaned into the boat, his hand extended. “But who is this? She's bleeding . . . Max, what happened?”

“An explosion; the ship went down.” Max grasped the priest's hand and clambered out of the boat, gritting his teeth against the pain that shot through his arm. “I'm glad to see you, Robert. We'll need a hospital in Marseilles.”

“You need one now. We'll forget Marseilles for today; it can wait—”

“It can't wait. Another half hour, Robert, that's all. Do you know a doctor in Marseilles?”

“Of course. But, Max, this is not wise; we don't know how badly she—” He saw Max's face darken. “Well, then, to Marseilles. Gently, my friends!” he said as the men in the boat lifted Stephanie's inert form and laid her on the dock. The gash on her head was bleeding again, her sodden hair dripped water mixed with blood, and bruises and small cuts covered her swollen face and arms. “Into the car. Max, you first, the back seat, and hold her when we put her in . . . Now, my friends, lift her gently but speedily; the helicopter is waiting.”

Stephanie lay against Max, her head rolling from side to side as Robert careened around corners until Max held her tightly to his chest. He watched the buildings that seemed to race past on both sides, the palm trees and flower gardens and policemen directing traffic, but his eyes were dulled by exhaustion and a low, throbbing anger that held him in its grip.
Fool, fool, to let them get ahead of me.

They had never been able to do it before; they'd never been able to touch him. I got lazy, he thought, stupid, let down my guard; didn't give a damn about anything but—he looked at the woman in his arms—about anything but Sabrina.

It wasn't quite true: he had conducted his business and made careful plans to wind up his activities in England and
disappear when the time was right, but for the past few weeks he had let himself be distracted from business and the survival and prosperity of Max Stuyvesant; he had been absorbed by thoughts of this woman, so different from the Sabrina he had known years before, when she was married to Denton.

As if she mesmerized me, he thought: Max Stuyvesant so mesmerized by Sabrina Longworth that I forgot to keep looking over my shoulder, forgot to watch and wait and listen . . . and so the bastards almost killed me. Almost killed both of us.

He tightened his hold. She was alive. He let himself recapture the joy he had felt on the ship when her pulse had fluttered beneath his fingers. She was alive and she was his. And he knew he was more than mesmerized. He was fiercely, possessively in love with her.

“All right, Max,” said Robert, and they pulled up beside the helicopter. Two men were waiting; they helped Max and Robert bring Stephanie inside, and in a moment the blades were spinning in the muggy air, singing a high, sustained pitch and lifting the helicopter from the ground.

They flew low, over the hotels and villas of the Côte d'Azur, one of the great playgrounds of the world, to the dense, industrialized sprawl of Marseilles and, directed by Robert, to the roof of a hospital built in the shape of a cross. The helicopter door was opened and a team of men and women in white coats took Stephanie from Max, lifting her onto a stretcher. He did not see her again until the next day.

She lay in a narrow bed in a narrow whitewashed room, with the morning sun streaming in. She wore a white gown beneath a white coverlet; a wide white bandage was wound around her forehead; a clear, shiny ointment and small white patches were on the cuts and bruises all over her face and arms. Her eyes were closed, the eyelids quivering as she slept. Her magnificent hair had been cut short; it was a curly halo, chestnut gleaming red and gold in the sun, the only color in the room.