Emerald Fire, page 11
‘It was what?’ he said.
Brionny sighed. ‘It was you,’ she murmured, unwilling to give voice just yet to that last, confusing thought.
Slade kissed her and rolled on to his side, still holding her close.
‘Shut your eyes, sweetheart, and sleep. We’ll need all the rest we can get before morning.’
Brionny’s smile dimmed. For just a little while, she’d forgotten their situation.
‘Slade? Do you really think we’ve lost the Mali-Mali?’
Maybe, he thought.
‘I hope so,’ he said.
‘What—what if we haven’t? What if they come after us again?’
It was a good question, and it needed a good answer.
‘Then I’ll do everything in my power to protect you,’ he said.
He kissed her, then drew her head into the crook of his shoulder. Brionny snuggled against him. She was almost asleep when Slade whispered her name.
‘Bree?’
‘Mmm?’
‘You never did tell me where you hid the Eye of God.’
She hesitated. She knew what he was asking. Do you trust me now? he was saying. Do you trust me with your secret, now that you’ve trusted me with your body?
She took a deep, deep breath. ‘It’s in the box of tampons. I didn’t think you’d look there.’
He smiled, and then he laughed softly. ‘No. It’s the one place I’d never have checked.’ His arms tightened around her. ‘Go to sleep now, sweetheart.’
It took a while. She felt strangely uneasy. But, eventually, she did.
She dreamed she was entering a great hall, one that looked like the museum’s but was a hundred times bigger. People were rising to their feet and applauding—the Mayor, the director, the members of the board—but she brushed past them, looking for just one face.
‘Señorita?’
She was mounting the steps to the podium now, where the Eye of God waited, glowing like emerald fire.
‘Señorita. Habla usted español?’
The audience was waiting for her to speak but she couldn’t, not until she found Slade.
But it wasn’t Slade she saw as she came abruptly awake. There was a stranger standing over her, a tall, cadaverous-looking man in a black suit. Heart racing, she clutched the tattered blanket to her throat and sat up.
‘Wh-who are you?’ she stammered. ‘What do you want?’
The man raised his hands, as if in benediction. ‘Do not be afraid, señorita. I am Father Ramón, of the Mission of San Luis.’
‘The mission of…?’ She could see his clerical collar now, and the cross swinging from his neck. Brionny blew out her breath. ‘You scared the life out of me, Father.’
‘That was surely not my intention,’ he said solemnly.
‘But-where did you come from?’
‘Our mission is just upriver, señorita. Some of my flock were out hunting. They stopped here, as they have done before, and found something most unexpected.’ Father Ramón came closer, his eyes politely fixed on a point just beyond Brionny’s shoulder. ‘How have you come to be here, señorita?’
‘It’s a long story, Father, and we’ll be happy to tell it to you as soon as—’
‘We, señorita?’
‘Could you just turn your back for a minute, Father? I’d like to-to dress before—’
The missionary turned away. ‘Of course. Forgive me for intruding upon you, but when my people said there was a gringa here—’
‘Don’t apologize, please.’ Brionny dressed quickly, ran her hands through her hair, and cleared her throat. ‘You can turn around now.’
‘We thought you might be ill,’ he said as he swung toward her.
‘No, no, I’m fine.’ She peered past him, trying to see outside. ‘Didn’t Slade answer any of your questions?’
‘Who?’
‘The man—’ She felt her cheeks pinken. ‘The man I’m traveling with. We had no idea we were so close to civilization, and… Where is he, anyway? Oh, he must have been so pleased to see you!’
‘There is no one here but you, señorita.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ Brionny brushed past Father Ramón and stepped into the sunlight. An handful of Indians dressed in Western clothes stared at her. ‘Slade?’ She frowned as she turned in a little circle. ‘Slade, where are you?’
‘Señorita,’ the missionary said firmly, ‘you are alone here.’ He hesitated. ‘Perhaps you have been ill. There are some jungle fevers that cause hallucinations and—’
‘The Mali-Mali! They must have taken him!’
‘The headhunters?’ Her made the sign of the cross. ‘They have not raided for years, thanks be to God.’
Brionny turned toward him, her face flushed. ‘I’m telling you, they’ve taken Slade! Your men must go after them!’
‘Señorita, calm yourself. Had the savages been here, they would have left signs to inspire fear in others. It is their custom.’
‘To hell with their custom! If Slade’s gone, it’s because they took him!’
‘Blasphemy will not help, señorita.’
‘Neither will sanctimony! I saw them, I tell you.’
‘What did you see, señorita?’
‘Indians. Well, an Indian, but—’
‘Why would you not see an Indian?’ the priest asked with a little smile. ‘There are many of them who live here, in the Amazon.’
‘Father, please. While you stand around insisting nothing’s happened to Slade, the Mali-Mali could be—’
‘If there had been a man with you, and if the savages had taken him, do you think it likely they would have left you behind?’
Brionny’s mouth opened, then closed. There was logic in his argument. But if Slade hadn’t been taken away…
A coldness crept around her heart, squeezing it like an icy fist. She spun toward the door and flung it open.
Hours ago, a million years ago, Slade had undressed her and then himself. He’d flung his clothing into the corner.
Now that corner was empty. Slade’s shirt, his jeans, his shoes—everything was gone. All that remained was her gun and her backpack. It lay upended, the tampon box ripped open and the contents a spill of white across the dirt floor.
With a cry of despair, Brionny buried her face in hands,.
‘You see?’ she heard the missionary say gently. ‘It is as I suspected. You are ill, señorita. Let me help you.’
But no one could help her, Brionny thought as Father Ramón led her from the shack.
Slade was gone, and so was the Eye of God.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BRIONNY SAT sat in her stuffy basement office, her fingers resting lightly on her computer keyboard, her eyes scanning the pages of her report as it flashed across the monitor.
…set within a niche on what had been an altar in the Forbidden City…
…smaller than the size we’d imagined but larger than…
…deep green in color, with no imperfections or striations visible to the naked eye…
The words blurred together. She muttered under her breath, hit a key, and the screen went blank.
The report was no good. She had an appointment with the museum director in less than an hour and what would she hand him? Surely not this piece of fluff.
She’d been writing the thing for days, and it still sounded more like a travelog than a scientific rendering of how she and Professor Ingram had found the Eye of God.
No. No, that wasn’t really true. The report was perfectly fine—to a point. She’d had no trouble describing what had led up to their locating the emerald, nor had it been difficult to depict the stone.
The problem had started when she’d tried to explain what had happened to it after that.
‘How could you, of all people, have been such a fool?’ her father had said, when she’d told him what had happened—and she hadn’t told him anything but the essentials: that she’d thrown in her lot with a stranger, and that he’d ultimately made off with the treasure she and Professor Ingram had found.
Her mother had hushed him, pointing out that Brionny’s only choice had been to combine forces with the stranger, that she’d been left alone in the jungle and that there’d been headhunters pursuing her—
‘You mean,’ Henry Stuart had said, displeasure thinning his lips, ‘she thought there were headhunters pursuing her.’
‘That’s enough, Henry,’ Eve Stuart had said, her eyes snapping out a warning—but it really hadn’t mattered.
Her father was right. The story about the Mali-Mali had been an outright lie, nothing but the cheapest fiction—and she’d fallen for it. She’d let Slade McClintoch spin a web of deceit that a child could have seen through. He had turned her to clay in his treacherous hands and then he had stripped her of her dignity as a scientist—and as a woman.
If only she could forget that long, humiliating night she’d spent in his arms, the things she’d done, the things she’d let him do…
Brionny shoved back her chair and jumped to her feet.
‘Damn the heat in this place!’
She glared at the ancient air conditioner, chugging away uselessly in the wall, as if the machine were to blame for her mood. He couldn’t fix it, the janitor had said when she’d complained; there was no money for buying new units for the basement.
And the basement, Brionny suspected, was where she and her career were going to stay—unless she lucked into a miracle.
Maybe she could force the window open. It was hot outside, but hot air that was fresh would be better than the recirculated stuff that was pumping through her office.
The window wouldn’t budge. Layers of paint had mixed with years of soot to form an impenetrable bond. She gave the sash a last, angry thump with the heel of her hand.
‘Damn,’ she said. Her shoulders slumped. ‘Oh, hell,’ she muttered, and she gave a tired little laugh and plopped herself down on the wide sill.
Was this really what she’d been reduced to? Cursing windows and air conditioners and storming around her steamy cubicle of an office like a frustrated rat in a maze?
None of that would put her career back on track.
‘What happened was not your fault,’ her mother kept saying.
But it was.
She was already being talked of as the woman who’d let the Eye of God slip through her fingers.
Yesterday the girl in the next office—a graduate student in geology—had introduced Brionny to her boy-friend.
‘This is Brionny Stuart,’ she’d gushed, ‘the-girl-who-lost-that-fabulous-emerald-in-the-Amazon.’
It had been said just that way, all in one breath, as if the designation were part of her name, as if she had no other identity and never would have.
Even that had been an act of kindness, because saying she’d ‘lost’ the stone was a polite euphemism for the truth, which was that she’d been stupid enough to let an opportunistic stranger steal it—and nobody even knew exactly how he’d managed that.
Not yet, anyway.
Brionny shuddered. Would she ever live down the disgrace? Maybe not, but she wouldn’t go down without a fight. She’d take Slade with her, see to it that he was caught and tossed into prison for a long, long time.
‘It’s just too bad they don’t guillotine people for what you did, McClintoch,’ she muttered, her flushed face taking on a look of grim determination.
She’d tried taking the first step. She’d gone straight to the police after she’d finally reached Italpa in a dug-out paddled by Father Ramón’s Indians. Unfortunately, the lone policeman on duty had seemed more interested in admiring her legs than in taking notes—but surely things would get moving now.
This morning she was meeting with Simon Esterhaus, the director of the museum. He’d been away when she’d returned from the Amazon, so there’d been no one to take her official report, but he was back now, and, as his secretary had made clear, this meeting with Brionny was at the top of his agenda.
Brionny glanced at her watch, then rose from the sill and dusted off her skirt. Ten minutes to zero hour, she thought, and tried to calm her suddenly racing pulse.
‘The director will expect you at ten-thirty,’ Esterhaus’s secretary had said crisply. ‘He wishes to talk with you privately before his eleven o’clock appointment arrives.’
‘Someone will be joining us, you mean?’
‘That is correct, Miss Stuart. Please be prompt.’
The woman had broken the connection before Brionny could ask any questions, but it hadn’t really been necessary. She could make a pretty good guess at who the third party at the meeting would be. Esterhaus had obviously contacted the authorities—the New York police, perhaps, or a firm of private investigators. They’d expect her to tell them everything.
Her stomach clenched as she closed her office door behind her. She would do that, she thought, her heels clicking sharply against the tile as she made her way to the stairs to the Great Hall. She would tell them everything—everything but the final, ugly truth: that she’d gone willingly into Slade’s arms, that he’d made love to her, that she’d told him—told him!—where she’d hidden the Eye of God.
Brionny’s face flamed scarlet.
There was no need for anyone to know those details.
No need at all.
‘Be prompt’, the secretary had warned, but Brionny was kept cooling her heels in the waiting room for more than half an hour.
An act of intimidation, she decided. Not that any was necessary. She was nervous to begin with, and the director had a formidable reputation. The staff joked that he had a calculator where he should have had a heart.
Now, as she finally entered his office, she saw that it had all the trappings of power. The room was enormous, its furnishings elegant. Choice relics from the museum’s vast collection adorned the walls and tables, and what seemed like an acre of magnificent Persian carpet stretched between the door and his Queen Anne desk.
Esterhaus smiled politely.
‘Come in, Miss Stuart.’ He waved a bony hand to a chair opposite his desk. ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting.’ He tilted back his chair and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. ‘Well, let’s get right to it, shall we? I know the basics of what happened in Peru. What I need now are the details.’
Brionny nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘How unfortunate, my dear, that your very first expedition for us should have ended so badly for you.’
A good shot, Brionny thought. In one sentence Esterhaus had established both her guilt and the tenuousness of her position.
‘I myself have never had the pleasure of going into the field.’ He smiled, showing feral white teeth. ‘But then, my area of expertise is so dull compared to the exotic nature of yours.’
Shot two, and straight across the bow. Esterhaus had neatly pointed out that it was administrators such as he who kept scientists such as she in business.
Cut to the chase, Brionny told herself. She cleared her throat and shifted forward in the chair.
‘Mr Esterhaus, I know how distressed you must be at the loss of the Eye of God. Exhibiting it would have brought us great prestige.’
‘You are direct, Miss Stuart. I admire that. Yes, you’re quite right. An exhibit of the emerald would have brought us prestige, and a lot of money—surely enough to have justified the cost of the expedition.’ Esterhaus’s chair tilted forward, and he tapped a finger against a stack of papers on his desk. ‘Professor Ingram was so sure he would be bringing the stone back that I’d indulged myself in a little judicious daydreaming.’ His teeth glinted again in a rapacious smile. ‘You’d be amazed at the admission fees the public’s willing to pay to see something so ancient.’
‘Sir, no one is sorrier than I for what happened, but—’
‘What did happen, pray tell? As you said a moment ago, you lost the stone.’ Esterhaus smiled again, but his eyes were flat and cold behind his spectacles. ‘Such a quaint way of putting it, don’t you think? One may lose a pen, or a wallet, but losing a priceless relic—well, it’s not quite the same thing, is it?’
‘I assure you, Mr Esterhaus, I safeguarded the stone as best I could, but circumstance—’
‘Your rescuer, that missionary—what was his name?’
‘Father Ramón.’
‘Father Ramón. Yes. I’m afraid the message he sent us was not terribly clear.’ Esterhaus moistened the tip of his index finger and began shuffling through his papers. ‘I have a transcript of it here somewhere…’ He looked up, frowning. ‘I’m sure you know what he said, Miss Stuart. Ramón thought you might have been delirious. He said you were raving about headhunters, and about a man who was supposedly with you.’
Brionny swallowed. ‘I wasn’t delirious. I— I’d had reason to believe there were headhunters after us, and—and there was a man with me.’
Esterhaus’s brows arched. ‘Indeed?’
She hesitated, wondering if Esterhaus could hear the pounding of her heart. ‘He was the one who—who stole the emerald from me.’
The director took off his rimless eyeglasses, held them to the light, then popped them back on his nose.
‘I must say, Miss Stuart, I’m delighted you’ve decided to be up front about this.’
‘Sir?’
‘Taking up with a strange man, letting him get a priceless relic in his hands—those were very poor decisions to have made. I admire your honesty in admitting your errors.’
His tone, and his smile, made it clear that the only thing he admired was the swiftness with which they’d come to what had to be the heart of the interview.
‘That isn’t exactly accurate, sir. I didn’t “take up” with this man. Professor Ingram was dead, my guides had abandoned me, and a tribe of headhunters was—’
‘There was never any danger from headhunters. Father Ramón’s message makes it clear that he explained that to you.’
‘I know that now, Mr Esterhaus. But at the time I thought—’
‘How did this man take the stone from you, Miss Stuart?’
‘He—he just did.’
‘By force?’
Brionny flushed. ‘No. Not—not by force.’
‘By intimidation?’
‘No, sir. He—uh—he simply found it, and—’
Brionny sighed. ‘It was you,’ she murmured, unwilling to give voice just yet to that last, confusing thought.
Slade kissed her and rolled on to his side, still holding her close.
‘Shut your eyes, sweetheart, and sleep. We’ll need all the rest we can get before morning.’
Brionny’s smile dimmed. For just a little while, she’d forgotten their situation.
‘Slade? Do you really think we’ve lost the Mali-Mali?’
Maybe, he thought.
‘I hope so,’ he said.
‘What—what if we haven’t? What if they come after us again?’
It was a good question, and it needed a good answer.
‘Then I’ll do everything in my power to protect you,’ he said.
He kissed her, then drew her head into the crook of his shoulder. Brionny snuggled against him. She was almost asleep when Slade whispered her name.
‘Bree?’
‘Mmm?’
‘You never did tell me where you hid the Eye of God.’
She hesitated. She knew what he was asking. Do you trust me now? he was saying. Do you trust me with your secret, now that you’ve trusted me with your body?
She took a deep, deep breath. ‘It’s in the box of tampons. I didn’t think you’d look there.’
He smiled, and then he laughed softly. ‘No. It’s the one place I’d never have checked.’ His arms tightened around her. ‘Go to sleep now, sweetheart.’
It took a while. She felt strangely uneasy. But, eventually, she did.
She dreamed she was entering a great hall, one that looked like the museum’s but was a hundred times bigger. People were rising to their feet and applauding—the Mayor, the director, the members of the board—but she brushed past them, looking for just one face.
‘Señorita?’
She was mounting the steps to the podium now, where the Eye of God waited, glowing like emerald fire.
‘Señorita. Habla usted español?’
The audience was waiting for her to speak but she couldn’t, not until she found Slade.
But it wasn’t Slade she saw as she came abruptly awake. There was a stranger standing over her, a tall, cadaverous-looking man in a black suit. Heart racing, she clutched the tattered blanket to her throat and sat up.
‘Wh-who are you?’ she stammered. ‘What do you want?’
The man raised his hands, as if in benediction. ‘Do not be afraid, señorita. I am Father Ramón, of the Mission of San Luis.’
‘The mission of…?’ She could see his clerical collar now, and the cross swinging from his neck. Brionny blew out her breath. ‘You scared the life out of me, Father.’
‘That was surely not my intention,’ he said solemnly.
‘But-where did you come from?’
‘Our mission is just upriver, señorita. Some of my flock were out hunting. They stopped here, as they have done before, and found something most unexpected.’ Father Ramón came closer, his eyes politely fixed on a point just beyond Brionny’s shoulder. ‘How have you come to be here, señorita?’
‘It’s a long story, Father, and we’ll be happy to tell it to you as soon as—’
‘We, señorita?’
‘Could you just turn your back for a minute, Father? I’d like to-to dress before—’
The missionary turned away. ‘Of course. Forgive me for intruding upon you, but when my people said there was a gringa here—’
‘Don’t apologize, please.’ Brionny dressed quickly, ran her hands through her hair, and cleared her throat. ‘You can turn around now.’
‘We thought you might be ill,’ he said as he swung toward her.
‘No, no, I’m fine.’ She peered past him, trying to see outside. ‘Didn’t Slade answer any of your questions?’
‘Who?’
‘The man—’ She felt her cheeks pinken. ‘The man I’m traveling with. We had no idea we were so close to civilization, and… Where is he, anyway? Oh, he must have been so pleased to see you!’
‘There is no one here but you, señorita.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ Brionny brushed past Father Ramón and stepped into the sunlight. An handful of Indians dressed in Western clothes stared at her. ‘Slade?’ She frowned as she turned in a little circle. ‘Slade, where are you?’
‘Señorita,’ the missionary said firmly, ‘you are alone here.’ He hesitated. ‘Perhaps you have been ill. There are some jungle fevers that cause hallucinations and—’
‘The Mali-Mali! They must have taken him!’
‘The headhunters?’ Her made the sign of the cross. ‘They have not raided for years, thanks be to God.’
Brionny turned toward him, her face flushed. ‘I’m telling you, they’ve taken Slade! Your men must go after them!’
‘Señorita, calm yourself. Had the savages been here, they would have left signs to inspire fear in others. It is their custom.’
‘To hell with their custom! If Slade’s gone, it’s because they took him!’
‘Blasphemy will not help, señorita.’
‘Neither will sanctimony! I saw them, I tell you.’
‘What did you see, señorita?’
‘Indians. Well, an Indian, but—’
‘Why would you not see an Indian?’ the priest asked with a little smile. ‘There are many of them who live here, in the Amazon.’
‘Father, please. While you stand around insisting nothing’s happened to Slade, the Mali-Mali could be—’
‘If there had been a man with you, and if the savages had taken him, do you think it likely they would have left you behind?’
Brionny’s mouth opened, then closed. There was logic in his argument. But if Slade hadn’t been taken away…
A coldness crept around her heart, squeezing it like an icy fist. She spun toward the door and flung it open.
Hours ago, a million years ago, Slade had undressed her and then himself. He’d flung his clothing into the corner.
Now that corner was empty. Slade’s shirt, his jeans, his shoes—everything was gone. All that remained was her gun and her backpack. It lay upended, the tampon box ripped open and the contents a spill of white across the dirt floor.
With a cry of despair, Brionny buried her face in hands,.
‘You see?’ she heard the missionary say gently. ‘It is as I suspected. You are ill, señorita. Let me help you.’
But no one could help her, Brionny thought as Father Ramón led her from the shack.
Slade was gone, and so was the Eye of God.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BRIONNY SAT sat in her stuffy basement office, her fingers resting lightly on her computer keyboard, her eyes scanning the pages of her report as it flashed across the monitor.
…set within a niche on what had been an altar in the Forbidden City…
…smaller than the size we’d imagined but larger than…
…deep green in color, with no imperfections or striations visible to the naked eye…
The words blurred together. She muttered under her breath, hit a key, and the screen went blank.
The report was no good. She had an appointment with the museum director in less than an hour and what would she hand him? Surely not this piece of fluff.
She’d been writing the thing for days, and it still sounded more like a travelog than a scientific rendering of how she and Professor Ingram had found the Eye of God.
No. No, that wasn’t really true. The report was perfectly fine—to a point. She’d had no trouble describing what had led up to their locating the emerald, nor had it been difficult to depict the stone.
The problem had started when she’d tried to explain what had happened to it after that.
‘How could you, of all people, have been such a fool?’ her father had said, when she’d told him what had happened—and she hadn’t told him anything but the essentials: that she’d thrown in her lot with a stranger, and that he’d ultimately made off with the treasure she and Professor Ingram had found.
Her mother had hushed him, pointing out that Brionny’s only choice had been to combine forces with the stranger, that she’d been left alone in the jungle and that there’d been headhunters pursuing her—
‘You mean,’ Henry Stuart had said, displeasure thinning his lips, ‘she thought there were headhunters pursuing her.’
‘That’s enough, Henry,’ Eve Stuart had said, her eyes snapping out a warning—but it really hadn’t mattered.
Her father was right. The story about the Mali-Mali had been an outright lie, nothing but the cheapest fiction—and she’d fallen for it. She’d let Slade McClintoch spin a web of deceit that a child could have seen through. He had turned her to clay in his treacherous hands and then he had stripped her of her dignity as a scientist—and as a woman.
If only she could forget that long, humiliating night she’d spent in his arms, the things she’d done, the things she’d let him do…
Brionny shoved back her chair and jumped to her feet.
‘Damn the heat in this place!’
She glared at the ancient air conditioner, chugging away uselessly in the wall, as if the machine were to blame for her mood. He couldn’t fix it, the janitor had said when she’d complained; there was no money for buying new units for the basement.
And the basement, Brionny suspected, was where she and her career were going to stay—unless she lucked into a miracle.
Maybe she could force the window open. It was hot outside, but hot air that was fresh would be better than the recirculated stuff that was pumping through her office.
The window wouldn’t budge. Layers of paint had mixed with years of soot to form an impenetrable bond. She gave the sash a last, angry thump with the heel of her hand.
‘Damn,’ she said. Her shoulders slumped. ‘Oh, hell,’ she muttered, and she gave a tired little laugh and plopped herself down on the wide sill.
Was this really what she’d been reduced to? Cursing windows and air conditioners and storming around her steamy cubicle of an office like a frustrated rat in a maze?
None of that would put her career back on track.
‘What happened was not your fault,’ her mother kept saying.
But it was.
She was already being talked of as the woman who’d let the Eye of God slip through her fingers.
Yesterday the girl in the next office—a graduate student in geology—had introduced Brionny to her boy-friend.
‘This is Brionny Stuart,’ she’d gushed, ‘the-girl-who-lost-that-fabulous-emerald-in-the-Amazon.’
It had been said just that way, all in one breath, as if the designation were part of her name, as if she had no other identity and never would have.
Even that had been an act of kindness, because saying she’d ‘lost’ the stone was a polite euphemism for the truth, which was that she’d been stupid enough to let an opportunistic stranger steal it—and nobody even knew exactly how he’d managed that.
Not yet, anyway.
Brionny shuddered. Would she ever live down the disgrace? Maybe not, but she wouldn’t go down without a fight. She’d take Slade with her, see to it that he was caught and tossed into prison for a long, long time.
‘It’s just too bad they don’t guillotine people for what you did, McClintoch,’ she muttered, her flushed face taking on a look of grim determination.
She’d tried taking the first step. She’d gone straight to the police after she’d finally reached Italpa in a dug-out paddled by Father Ramón’s Indians. Unfortunately, the lone policeman on duty had seemed more interested in admiring her legs than in taking notes—but surely things would get moving now.
This morning she was meeting with Simon Esterhaus, the director of the museum. He’d been away when she’d returned from the Amazon, so there’d been no one to take her official report, but he was back now, and, as his secretary had made clear, this meeting with Brionny was at the top of his agenda.
Brionny glanced at her watch, then rose from the sill and dusted off her skirt. Ten minutes to zero hour, she thought, and tried to calm her suddenly racing pulse.
‘The director will expect you at ten-thirty,’ Esterhaus’s secretary had said crisply. ‘He wishes to talk with you privately before his eleven o’clock appointment arrives.’
‘Someone will be joining us, you mean?’
‘That is correct, Miss Stuart. Please be prompt.’
The woman had broken the connection before Brionny could ask any questions, but it hadn’t really been necessary. She could make a pretty good guess at who the third party at the meeting would be. Esterhaus had obviously contacted the authorities—the New York police, perhaps, or a firm of private investigators. They’d expect her to tell them everything.
Her stomach clenched as she closed her office door behind her. She would do that, she thought, her heels clicking sharply against the tile as she made her way to the stairs to the Great Hall. She would tell them everything—everything but the final, ugly truth: that she’d gone willingly into Slade’s arms, that he’d made love to her, that she’d told him—told him!—where she’d hidden the Eye of God.
Brionny’s face flamed scarlet.
There was no need for anyone to know those details.
No need at all.
‘Be prompt’, the secretary had warned, but Brionny was kept cooling her heels in the waiting room for more than half an hour.
An act of intimidation, she decided. Not that any was necessary. She was nervous to begin with, and the director had a formidable reputation. The staff joked that he had a calculator where he should have had a heart.
Now, as she finally entered his office, she saw that it had all the trappings of power. The room was enormous, its furnishings elegant. Choice relics from the museum’s vast collection adorned the walls and tables, and what seemed like an acre of magnificent Persian carpet stretched between the door and his Queen Anne desk.
Esterhaus smiled politely.
‘Come in, Miss Stuart.’ He waved a bony hand to a chair opposite his desk. ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting.’ He tilted back his chair and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. ‘Well, let’s get right to it, shall we? I know the basics of what happened in Peru. What I need now are the details.’
Brionny nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘How unfortunate, my dear, that your very first expedition for us should have ended so badly for you.’
A good shot, Brionny thought. In one sentence Esterhaus had established both her guilt and the tenuousness of her position.
‘I myself have never had the pleasure of going into the field.’ He smiled, showing feral white teeth. ‘But then, my area of expertise is so dull compared to the exotic nature of yours.’
Shot two, and straight across the bow. Esterhaus had neatly pointed out that it was administrators such as he who kept scientists such as she in business.
Cut to the chase, Brionny told herself. She cleared her throat and shifted forward in the chair.
‘Mr Esterhaus, I know how distressed you must be at the loss of the Eye of God. Exhibiting it would have brought us great prestige.’
‘You are direct, Miss Stuart. I admire that. Yes, you’re quite right. An exhibit of the emerald would have brought us prestige, and a lot of money—surely enough to have justified the cost of the expedition.’ Esterhaus’s chair tilted forward, and he tapped a finger against a stack of papers on his desk. ‘Professor Ingram was so sure he would be bringing the stone back that I’d indulged myself in a little judicious daydreaming.’ His teeth glinted again in a rapacious smile. ‘You’d be amazed at the admission fees the public’s willing to pay to see something so ancient.’
‘Sir, no one is sorrier than I for what happened, but—’
‘What did happen, pray tell? As you said a moment ago, you lost the stone.’ Esterhaus smiled again, but his eyes were flat and cold behind his spectacles. ‘Such a quaint way of putting it, don’t you think? One may lose a pen, or a wallet, but losing a priceless relic—well, it’s not quite the same thing, is it?’
‘I assure you, Mr Esterhaus, I safeguarded the stone as best I could, but circumstance—’
‘Your rescuer, that missionary—what was his name?’
‘Father Ramón.’
‘Father Ramón. Yes. I’m afraid the message he sent us was not terribly clear.’ Esterhaus moistened the tip of his index finger and began shuffling through his papers. ‘I have a transcript of it here somewhere…’ He looked up, frowning. ‘I’m sure you know what he said, Miss Stuart. Ramón thought you might have been delirious. He said you were raving about headhunters, and about a man who was supposedly with you.’
Brionny swallowed. ‘I wasn’t delirious. I— I’d had reason to believe there were headhunters after us, and—and there was a man with me.’
Esterhaus’s brows arched. ‘Indeed?’
She hesitated, wondering if Esterhaus could hear the pounding of her heart. ‘He was the one who—who stole the emerald from me.’
The director took off his rimless eyeglasses, held them to the light, then popped them back on his nose.
‘I must say, Miss Stuart, I’m delighted you’ve decided to be up front about this.’
‘Sir?’
‘Taking up with a strange man, letting him get a priceless relic in his hands—those were very poor decisions to have made. I admire your honesty in admitting your errors.’
His tone, and his smile, made it clear that the only thing he admired was the swiftness with which they’d come to what had to be the heart of the interview.
‘That isn’t exactly accurate, sir. I didn’t “take up” with this man. Professor Ingram was dead, my guides had abandoned me, and a tribe of headhunters was—’
‘There was never any danger from headhunters. Father Ramón’s message makes it clear that he explained that to you.’
‘I know that now, Mr Esterhaus. But at the time I thought—’
‘How did this man take the stone from you, Miss Stuart?’
‘He—he just did.’
‘By force?’
Brionny flushed. ‘No. Not—not by force.’
‘By intimidation?’
‘No, sir. He—uh—he simply found it, and—’
