Hot Streak

CHAPTER 29

W hile Ceci and his team were inside their plane, reassessing their options in a mission gone bad, Sylvie von Mansfeld's private jet touched down on a nearby runway at Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport. The man she'd sent ahead to locate Carey met her as she descended from the plane.

“Come along,” she said, and walked briskly toward the Mercedes limousine parked conveniently near. “You can give the address to the driver,” she added, stepping through the chauffeur-opened doorway into the car. After listening to Egon's recital of Rifat's handiwork, she had ordered a bullet-proof car, though she had little faith in such precautions. Sylvie was not only a bold woman, but a fatalist, as well. Men like Rifat didn't strike terror in her soul as they did in Egon's. She'd always been able to manipulate men, and even Shakin Rifat was a man under his formidable reputation.

When the investigator she'd hired attempted to join her in the backseat, she indicated with the merest nod that he should sit up front with the driver. When one's family owned the second-largest munitions works in the world, one learned the rudiments of authority in the nursery. And Sylvie had been born to command. “I'm in a hurry,” she said to her driver. “This man will tell you where to go.” And, leaning back into the plush seat, she crossed one leather-clad leg over the other, closed her eyes, and mentally rehearsed her dialogue with Carey.

Egon had received a phone call two days ago-a call from one of Rifat's minions, warning Egon not to leave the villa. Since then Egon had fallen off the wagon and started taking heroin again. Devious by necessity, he'd obtained the drugs without leaving the premises. Now Sylvie was here to try to talk Carey into coming back to help him. No one else could reach Egon when he was on drugs, and she knew a phone call to Carey would have been unsuccessful. He'd been adamant last time that it was his last time.

Should she plead, demand, reason? How best to approach Carey? she mused. A few years ago she would have been more certain, but he wasn't the same Carey Fersten any longer. He was serious, noticeably serious, a quality that hampered her familiar overtures. Thank God he cared for Egon. If all else failed, she'd resort to tears. Rasinsky had praised her dramatic weeping scene in the small Balzac film they'd done years ago. Now what were those lines… As she recalled first one phrase, and then another, the sentences began falling into place.

“He needs you, Carey, now more than ever. He's alone, desperately alone and in despair. If you don't care, I'm afraid this time he's going to slip away.” The words began tumbling through her mind, with the pauses for effect, the exact moment the first tears welled up into her eyes, the gulping swallow to stanch the flood of weeping.

Her eyes opened, and she smiled.

Why hadn't she remembered the Balzac play sooner?