monopoly on the terror

Chapter 1
It was a miserable day for flying. To be up in that weather at the controls of a single engine lightplane, either you had to love flying or have some very important business somewhere. That day both "either" and "or" were operative.
Don't mind me. Fliers have been complaining about weather ever since Icarus sent out history's first MAYDAY shortly after takeoff from Crete. The weather having caused unforeseen structural difficulties – both wings dropped off – and with no ditching procedures in those days, he never lived to tell the guys back home what had happened. His old man Daedalus had that particular job, thereby starting the tradition that no matter how good the weather is for everyone else, it's lousy for the pilot.
The sun's heat wasn't exactly my problem that day. What was falling was rain like out of the Old Testament, not hot wax and feathers out of Greek mythology. The met service at Nice Airport had warned of a très actif cold front moving west to east across central and southern France. And by golly, so it was. And I was out in it.
I didn't have to know the heights of the anvil-shaped thunderclouds to assume there was no point trying to get over them without oxygen and a second engine, neither of which I happened to have along. On the other hand, the cloud bases were so low that the peaks of the Massif Central were dug deep in them.
Flying down the convenient valley between Lyons and Saint-Etienne dodging around apartment houses, I watched nearby lightning bolts stab the dark, wet hills, sucking the electrical charge out of the ground like some ravenous vampire. My ADF needle, trying to hold onto the Saint-Etienne beacon, would point nervously toward the lightning then back to the beacon, then swing around again to indicate the next flash.
Passing Roanne I headed toward Moulins avoiding the St. Yan zone where training flights are usually in progress. This route would also avoid Autan, which the charts showed deep in crosshatching and labeled D for dangereux. I doubt that any country in the world not actually at war is as visibly military as France, making it the responsibility of every lightplane pilot to mind his navigation and not accidentally destroy the force de frappe.
I slogged on. A Helio Courier, the type of plane I was flying, isn't one of the fastest aircraft aloft. Its virtues lie at the other end of the scale. It's one of the slowest. When necessary, like when landing and taking off on a short, rough field. Or when used for aerial photography. Or for following a car along a winding road.
The mountains past, the storms were more isolated. I could see the white box containing the Moulins beacon sitting by the river in a shaft of sunlight. I aimed directly over it, watching the TO-FROM indicator change from TO to FROM with hardly a flicker of the needle. Life has its minor satisfactions, too. The trick is to take advantage of them.
Passing Moulins, I proceeded northwest toward what was shown on my chart as a green, hilly area, labeled the Forest of Othe. Later, the hills in sight, I put aside the chart and took out a piece of writing paper with a crudely sketched map. The drawing, done in pencil, had reached me the day before, in Nice, where I'd just finished an assignment tracking down the papa of all bill-evaders-cum-credit-card-spree-flingers.
Badly drawn as the map was, I could still make out a small lake or pond, a stretch of high tension line, and, in the center of the sheet, a shaded rectangle labeled "chateau." Radiating out like spokes from the chateau were lines indicating alleys that had been cut through the forest to facilitate hunting.
The Forest of Othe, situated on high ground, was predictably sitting under a monster thunderstorm. According to my penciled map the chateau was just under the part of the stormcloud where the rain was falling. No sense trying to go in there. I'd just wait until the storm center moved on—a matter of about ten or fifteen minutes at most.
Throttling back, as the airspeed fell and the angle of attack increased, the huge leading edge slats of the Helio came hesitantly forward. Go on, I told them, and to convince them I meant business whirled the overhead coffee-grinder-type handles to lower the flaps, then ground out some trim. The Helio settled into its new attitude like an old, dependable rodeo pony.
One thing that intrigued me about the drawing I was studying was that it showed no road leading to the lodge. Whoever had done the sketch could have purposely left it out because, after all, I was arriving by plane, not car. On the other hand, there was no mistaking the place I was to land. On the map, a big arrow indicated the landing spot, which was small and round like a helicopter pad. I hoped it was somewhat larger.
The storm moved on, and I drew nearer. In the middle of the forest a building came into view. Yes, that was the lodge all right. No road – the map was drawn correctly. The electric wires and telephone line came down one of the spoke-like hunting alleys, but there was no paved road. Either folks flew in or used jeeps or horses. I wouldn't be doing any sightseeing on the motorcycle I carried aft in the fuselage. Whoever the owner was here, he liked quiet and privacy.
Since no Rolls could be parked down below, I looked for some sign of a gold-plated chopper, but all I saw was a very ordinary-looking Bell 206 Jet Ranger off on one side. Except for a red-and-white striped air sock and smoke coming out of some of the chimneys, the place looked as dark and cheerless as a Transylvanian cemetery.
To warn the inhabitants in advance so they'd get the ice and whiskey ready, I made a low, slow, 360-degree turn over the lodge, then headed downwind. The field was long enough for the Helio, but tall trees surrounding it necessitated a steep descent with full flaps. I was hoping the field would be smooth enough, because the afternoon was too dark to examine it for stones and bumps from the air. To lose your tailwheel or bend your prop as you arrive on an assignment echoes dully of lack of professionalism.
Touching down I could feel the strip had been prepared more for vertical landing than for fixed wing aircraft, though it was okay for planes designed for working in the bush, such as the Helio. As I swung around on the crosswind gear and searched the borders of the field for signs of human life, I saw that my buzzing had brought results.
Near the wind sock a man with raised arms was beckoning me. Standing next to him was a plump woman wearing a brown raincoat over a long blue dress. Thinking that she looked familiar, I taxied toward them in the seemingly drunken manner used by pilots who can't see over the noses of their aircraft when on the ground.
"Chet!" cried the plump woman as I got out of the plane. "Hi, Chet."
"Good grief. Terry." I couldn't believe my eyes. A second later I was nearly bowled over as she threw herself into my arms. Terry Jones. I hadn't seen her for at least ten years. The last time was on a boat somewhere between Los Angeles and Catalina Island.
"What are you doing here, for chrissake? Are you the mysterious T. Rolland who wrote to me?"
"My maiden and professional name. Come inside, Chet. It's going to rain."
I looked up. Sure enough there was another storm about to arrive on us. "Hang on. I'll just tie down the plane."
Working fast I drove some spikes at angles into the earth and soon had the wings attached to them by means of nylon cables. The first large drops were falling as I finished.
"Give your bags to Aristophanes," Terry told me. I started to hand my suitcase to the dark, muscular individual who'd helped me park, then hesitated. With his thick, arching brows, his unfriendly face covered with a stubble of beard, and his eyes like pools of mud, I didn't feel I could trust him with my bags as far as the edge of the field.
"Hurry," she urged me. "Ari's the helicopter pilot." Opening a large umbrella, she started toward the house.
I figured in that case I'd carry my own bag, because even if he looks like a bear, a chopper pilot is no lackey. Closing and locking the Helio doors I started after the retreating figure in blue. The way led along a path through the forest toward what seemed to be the back door of the chateau, earlier hidden by the trees.
Through the door was the pantry and a large kitchen. "Forgive the informality," Terry said. "Otherwise we'd have to go all the way around to the front. Ari, the cook, and I are here alone at the moment. Everyone else has left, so we keep the other doors locked."
She paused in the middle of the kitchen, where I was happy to see preparations in progress for a meal. Skewered pigeons wrapped in strips of lard lay on a table near the blazing hearth. Mountains of fresh lettuce and vegetables, recently pulled from the earth, waited to be washed and prepared. I'd seen a kitchen garden from the air, bordered with glass vegetable frames. And now here was the confirmation of that fact. As always, this linkage between aerial and earthly perceptions boggled my flier's mind.
"I'll show you to your room," Terry told me. "There's no central heating, but I've given you one of the smaller rooms with both an electric radiator and a wood fireplace, so you'll be warm enough. Have a wash and then come back down. I'll get the drinks."
Whatever the craft's many virtues, the noise level of my Helio is about twenty decibels above the pain threshold. So it felt good listening to the normal human sounds that feet made climbing carpeted stairs, the crackle of the wood fire in my bedroom, the patter of the rain on the windowpanes as I washed up in the bathroom. Even the sight of the lightning flashing across the treetops and the sound of rolling booms of thunder seemed soothing now.
Feeling refreshed, I joined Terry downstairs in the winter living room which was a comfortable lounge-cum-gaming room with a pool table as well as chess and card tables. At the end of the room, near the large fireplace, were deep leather armchairs. The walls at that end were lined with books. I took a look at some of the titles. Instead of the leatherbound sets of Hugo, Dumas, and Proust you might have expected, it looked like a Book-of-the-Month-Club rummage sale. Best sellers from the past several years were there, as well as an atlas collection, almanacs, crime thrillers in various translations, and a pile of dog-eared U.S. comic books.
"This place lacks nothing to make it an ideal weekend hideout," I told Terry as she handed me a Scotch on the rocks.
"A votre santé," she smiled, raising her glass.
"A la votre."
We drank, then sat down in the armchairs whose leather upholstery had been warmed by the fire. It was good Scotch, probably Chivas. As it went through me I could feel myself beginning to unwind agreeably. You're looking good," I said to Terry. "You haven't changed at all."
She threw back her head and laughed at the obvious lie. No woman looks the same between thirty-five and forty-five, and she knows it. Besides, the way her long dyed-black hair was piled on top of her head showed she was making no effort to look modern, chic, or young. It reminded me of the years I'd spent in Los Angeles where the styles and the seasons show little or no evolution.
All the same, my compliment pleased her. In the light from the fire Terry's plump cheeks glowed. "Aren't you going to ask me what I'm doing over here?"
"What are you doing over here?" I said obediently.
"Don't you remember what you once told me?"
"Go ahead."
"That day on the deep sea fishing boat, when you all were fishing and I was sitting down in the cabin because I couldn't stand seeing them put the live bait on the hooks. Don't you remember? I think what you said changed my entire life. Two weeks later I started divorce proceedings against John."
"Jesus. What did I say? I can't even recall."
"You came down into the cabin and saw me sitting there looking fat and miserable…"
"I remember. And covered with jewelry and makeup…"
"And you said, ‘What the hell are you doing on this boat? You should be a madame in a whorehouse, not a passenger on a stinking fishing boat.’"
"I never said that," I protested, laughing. "I never would have said it. I was just a kid then. It was before Vietnam."
"Word for word. I recall it perfectly because it changed my life."
"You should have kicked me in the teeth."
"Not at all. In fact I realized that you were absolutely right. The thing I'd always wanted to do deep down was run a bordello. You remember the parties I used to give?"
"Rumored to be the best in Hollywood."
"Well, you see? It's the same thing. Only with the other you can make money."
"Okay," I said, looking around. "So where's Fifi? Cubicle six?"
"Not so fast." She laughed, getting up and crossing the room toward the bar. I watched her corseted waddle. In a way Terry really hadn't changed. Seeing her again, I began to remember the little things about her that I'd forgotten: the narrow lips, the hard, beady eyes like the eyes of hawks. I must have sensed even way back then that she was more a shrewd business-woman than a Hollywood matron.
As Terry leaned over to pour me another drink from the crystal decanter, I could smell her heavy perfume. Diamond earrings glistened on her earlobes. I was suddenly very curious why she'd sent for me.
"Later, later," she said. "We have the whole evening to talk business. First, I want to tell you about me, and then hear what you've been up to for the past ten years." She settled back down into her chair. "So, after I divorced John on grounds of mental cruelty…"
"You bitch!"
"I took the alimony money...."
"You really are a bitch." I laughed.
"Not at all," she replied with mock indignity. "I can only receive alimony as long as I don’t remarry. You can imagine what a sacrifice that is." She laughed, choking a little on her drink. I reached over and patted her lightly on her soft back.
"So," she continued, "unable to stand the painful memories of my former married life, I decided to move to France, and in no time at all had met all the right people and had started my discreet establishment in Paris."
"And now you've got yourself a chain of discreet establishments?" I asked, indicating the chateau around us with a wave of the hand.
"A chain?" she mused thoughtfully. "No, but it wouldn't be a bad idea, would it? Like McDonald's or Wimpy's. I could sell the concessions."
"This isn't Wimpy's," I remarked.
"No, it's not. Actually it's owned by a Greek, but he's put me in charge. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure I'm going to keep the job. It's all right when there's action, but most of the year it’s pretty quiet. It’s not public-oriented. I mean, you don't exactly get customers off the street."
"I'm sure you don't in Paris either."
"No, of course not. Even there it's on a higher level than a common whorehouse. You need an introduction and a high credit rating to get past the bouncers at the front door. The girls are trained to handle any request put to them from British members of Parliament to Arab sheiks. Still, here it's even more demanding as far as I'm concerned. But I'll tell you about that later. Now I want to hear about Brian and Alice Tschetter."
"Alice?" The name surprised me. Alice and I had been divorced for several years and most of my friends knew this. Then there had been my second wife, Jeanne. She was partly of French origin and her name had been pronounced in the French way, sounding like John except with a soft "j."
"Jeanne died four months ago," I told Terry.
"Oh, I'm so sorry. She must have been very young. Was it an accident?"
"Not really. It was an accident of fate, perhaps, if you want to call it that."
I reached over and poured myself another drink from the decanter on the table in front of me. I knew that Terry was curious to know what had happened to my wife. It was only a morbid curiosity, but I was going to satisfy it. Scotch works in strange and miraculous ways, loosening tongues and emotions. I'd never spoken of Jeanne's death to anyone before. This seemed an opportunity to get some things off my chest.
"When I last saw you, on that fishing boat off Catalina, I guess I'd been married to Alice for about a year. You never really knew her, but she was the kind of gal who liked nice things—meaning expensive things. I'd just graduated from college where I'd majored in journalism. Alice and I had been expecting immediate success, but my first job was on a small newspaper outside of Los Angeles. The pay was minimal, and Alice wasn’t prepared to wait for me to work my way up to the big time.
"For her sake, to earn money, I got a job crop dusting. I used to do that back home in Ohio while I was earning money to go to college. It wasn't hard finding work, because I knew how to fly helicopters as well as fixed wing. It paid well but not well enough for Alice. About that time things were hotting up in Vietnam. A buddy of mine talked me into signing up with an outfit he flew for called Air America."
"I've heard of them," said Terry.
"Most people have today, but at that time nobody had. Even Alice didn't know I was working for the CIA, but the money was good and she didn't ask questions.
"Well," I continued, "during those years Alice lived in Hong Kong while I was stationed in Saigon, and we visited each other whenever we could. Then one day I got a chance to go to Hong Kong for three days and walked into our apartment without any prior notice to my wife. She was in bed with one of my buddies. I was so disgusted I didn't even bother to break his neck. I just turned around and walked out. By the way, when you get a divorce over there, the husband isn't automatically the loser."
"Remind me never to get a divorce in Hong Kong," remarked Terry dryly.
"That was in 1969. By 1970 I'd about had it with the war. I was starting to think the Americans had no business being there at all. This idea wasn't very popular with my buddies, and when I came home to the States on leave my family didn't want to hear about it either. My family are patriots from way back.
"In 1970 I met Jeanne. Her father, a French diplomat, had just died and she was on her way to France after having spent most of her life in the Middle East. On her way she was making some stops, one of which was in Saigon where an aunt was living.
"I guess I fell in love with her at first sight. It seemed to be mutual. I think it happened so fast because both of us had just had big losses in our lives – I'd lost my wife, so to speak, and she'd lost her father. A few months later we settled in California and were married.
"The following couple of years were pretty good. I bought the Helio and did free-lance aerial photography. Photography had always been a sort of hobby before. But Jeanne couldn't adjust to life in Los Angeles, and I have to admit it wasn't easy for me either. The years in Vietnam had changed me. People in L.A. seemed so wrapped up in their personal lives and problems. Then Jeanne got word that a Paris apartment formerly owned by her father but tied up in litigation after his death, was available to her. We decided to ship the Helio to France and try living in Paris."
I paused and took a sip of Scotch. I was getting to the hard part, the part I'd never told anyone. I don't know why I was going to tell it now, to Terry. Maybe it was because of the attention she was giving to the tale. She appeared to be listening to every word, and her intense interest seemed to draw the story out of me.
"So we moved to Paris, took over the apartment, and settled down. Jeanne found a part-time job with a boutique ... and we should have been very happy because we liked living in Paris. Only, shortly after we moved there a change seemed to come over Jeanne. She became withdrawn and moody." Pausing, I took another drink from my glass. The pain of that time was returning, as real now as it had been then.
"I suspected she had a lover. She was vague about where she went and what she did. About twice a week she'd tell me she was going to visit a girlfriend. I believed her, but one day when she was supposed to be with her friend I saw her in a cafe with a man."
I heard Terry murmur sympathetically.
"That evening when Jeanne came home I couldn't bring myself to say anything to her. She seemed very sad, and I thought that maybe her romance, if that's what it was, was breaking up. I thought I'd just wait a while."
Terry, seeing that my glass was empty, got up and started to pour me more Scotch, but I stopped her. "I did enough drinking four months ago," I told her. "I don’t want to get into it again."
She didn’t insist. Setting the decanter on the table, she knelt down and started poking at the fire with large tongs.
"So one evening I was deep in m'cups at Harry's Bar, when I met this chap. I was drunkenly telling him me tale of woe and what-ho, and it turns out he's a private eye, a veritable dick. He says he’s taken pity on me and if I want he’ll follow my wife and see where she really goes. I told him I didn’t want to know where she was going. I didn’t want to know she was cheating on me. I told him that maybe it would disappear if I didn't think about it.
"Well, to make a long story short, he said he'd just see if he could learn something, because maybe it wasn’t at all what I thought and I was just miserable for nothing. I told him that if he found out anything bad not to tell me. Of course, this was a lie because deep down I knew whatever he learned I'd tear out of him if necessary. It was just a way of not doing my own dirty work. But after walking in on Alice that way...
"And did he learn something?"
"Learn something? God, yes." Without thinking, automatically, I reached over and poured myself a shot. "He even showed me a photograph he'd taken. Only it wasn't the kind you'd expect, taken through a hotel transom. It was Jeanne ... my wife..."
I could feel the maudlin tears coming to my eyes and took another drink of Scotch, hoping to drive them back into their ducts. "It was Jeanne walking out the front door of the American Hospital. So I said dumbly, 'You mean she's screwing a doctor?’ and he said – and I'll never forget his voice and his words – 'No, I think she’s a patient. You'd better check.'
"I grabbed a cab and shot home, but Jeanne wasn't there. I remembered she'd said she'd be out late, but by three in the morning I was scared. I think I knew then that I'd never see her again. I called the American Hospital but couldn't get any information out of them. They told me to call back after nine o'clock.
"I thought I'd never live until nine, but as it turned out I didn't have to wait that long. About five thirty the phone call I'd been dreading came. The police had found Jeanne in her car, dead from an overdose of barbiturates. They wanted me to come down to the morgue and identify the body."
"That must have been awful for you," said Terry softly.
"It was. It was. They pulled back the sheet and it was my wife. It was Jeanne. But I couldn't believe it. I touched her lips with my fingers. They were cold, so cold those lips."
"But why had she done it?"
"There was a note in her handbag addressed to me. You see, she was dying."
"Of what?"
"Leukemia. The autopsy confirmed it. Jeanne knew she had maybe six months, a year to live. Her note said she was worried about, the great expense of the treatments and the suffering she would have to undergo. Her father had died of the same disease."
"And so the detective who'd helped you discover all this is now your business partner."
I was grateful to Terry for changing the subject. "Yes. He felt sorry for me and offered me a job working with him since he had too much business to handle all himself. I needed a change from the life I'd been leading and jumped at the chance, though I hadn't been doing badly by then with the aerial photography."
"Do you have any photographs of your wife?" Terry asked.
"Just one very bad one. Ironically for me, she had a thing about being photographed. It dated back to her childhood in the Middle East, where for a while she had some very orthodox old woman taking care of her. She instilled in Jeanne a deep fear of graven images and they used to hide their faces when even a tourist with a camera came by."
"But you must have a photo," Terry insisted oddly. "Even a snapshot that you carry in your wallet." In the firelight her beady eyes glinted. She reached forward to pour me another drink, but I put my hand over my glass.
"There's a picture of her in my suitcase," I admitted, thinking it must seem strange to someone like Terry that a man would carry a picture of his wife around with him months after her death.
"May I see it?"
It was a peculiar request. "If you want. But it isn't a very good shot. She was turning her head, so it's blurry. But it's all I have.
"I'd like to see it, but there's no hurry."
Dinner, as the locals say, was magnifique. For a French chef of that class to be hanging around out there in the sticks, he must have been getting a good exchange for his services.
Terry and I ate at a small table by the fire in the game room, the main dining room being too large to heat up just for us. We started with a hot, thick vegetable soup tasting of garlic with gobs of fresh cream melting in it. Then we savored fresh trout meunière followed by the pigeons, a selection of very good local cheeses, and for desert slices of apple tart which some French mom would have been proud to take credit for. All this was hosed down, as the French say, with white and red wines of such caliber that it raised visions of a labyrinthine wine cellar.
After dinner, but before the cognac, I took a turn outside to see that no bears were playing see-saw on the prop. Also, I wanted to get an idea of the weather. Although the lodge was on a slight rise of ground, the forest around spoiled the view, but I could see enough stars to suspect that the front had passed over.
When I returned to the house Terry called to me from upstairs that she was telephoning and would rejoin me in a few minutes by the fire. That reminded me I ought to call Richards, my partner, and tell him I'd arrived and ask if he had anything for me.
"Has she told you what she wants?" Richards asked, shouting over the poor connection. In the background I could hear the TV going, shots being fired.
"Not yet. What do you know?"
"Something about missing persons. She wasn't very clear. She'd seen the article they did on you and your plane in the Trib. She sent me that map which I presume was adequate since you got there okay. What's it like at Othe?"
"Sort of a French suburb of Athens. Did she send the retainer?"
"A telex arrived just before we closed the office this evening. Two thousand dollars have been deposited in our Barclays account."
"Well, I guess that's that. We're just about to have a cognac and I'll find out what this is all about. Oh, by the way, the gal who runs this place turns out to be an old friend of mine. Did she tell you?"
"No."
"I used to know her years ago in L.A. Listen, I'll call you tomorrow."
"Okay. Keep in touch. And take care. Don’t fly high. Or fast."
I had to laugh. "Where did you learn that?" High and fast is actually the safest way for a pilot to fly. "Ciao."
Returning to the fire I saw Terry sitting there looking thoughtfully into the flames. Her expression was troubled.
I poured us a couple of cognacs and brought them over. She took hers absently and started swirling the glass in jerky motions. She had short, plump fingers with pointed, crimson nails. Looking at her profile against the fire I realized she was wearing false eyelashes. They seemed to make her eyes smaller instead of larger.
Then suddenly Terry's mood passed and she turned toward me like an actress, all graciousness. "It was that phone call," she apologized. "I must tell you, Chet, I'm in very deep trouble and that call didn't help things any. I wish people would just..." She broke off wistfully, then gave a little laugh. "Well, I guess people are only human, aren't they? You can't blame them for that."
As this wasn't one of the deeper observations on the Human Condition I'd ever heard, I let it pass without comment. We could spend the whole evening without getting down to the reason that had brought me here. "What trouble are you in?" I asked her. "And why did you call in a private detective?"
"Well, Chet, here's the story." With a sigh Terry settled back in her chair, crossing her plump legs under the long blue skirt. "You see this place? It used to belong to some Frenchman, but about two years ago he died and it was bought by a Greek. A shipping tycoon."
"Naturally."
"Naturally. Anyway, this Greek, Koundiotes, is very well connected with the jet set and at some point it was suggested to him that what was needed was a discreet place in the countryside where married people, of both sexes, could come for rest and relaxation far from the cares and responsibilities of married life. It eventually sorted itself out as a place where the wives of well-known dignitaries and rich businessmen came to screw around with various wealthy Greeks and Arabs."
"Sounds wild."
"Well, I guess it was a change for them from their stuffy husbands and narrow social existence. Most of the women are between thirty and forty-five and quite elegant. Some are personally ambitious in business, and they make good contacts for themselves. The men may not be prince charmings..."
"Princes charming."
"Princes charming," she nodded, "but they're an intelligent bunch on the whole, good senses of humor usually, and give the women fantastic gifts, mainly gold and diamonds." She touched her earlobes absently.
"And how did you get to be queen bee?"
"No special talent. Being in the right place at the right time. And I suppose it helped to look the part." Nodding toward me she raised her glass in a mock toast to my perceptions. "You were the first to see in me the makings of a professional madame."
"Then what went wrong?" I asked her. "I presume I'm here because something went very wrong in this ideal setup."
"Yes. It's terrible. Two of my girls are missing."
"Two girls?"
"Well, I call them ‘girls’, but actually they're not girls at all. One is the wife of a French minister, the other the young wife of a very rich German businessman. That was him on the phone just now, hence my recent anxiety. Chet, you've got to find them and bring them back. Otherwise I'm in deep trouble."
"Fine, but first I want to know what happened. You don't just lose women like that from a place like this."
"Not every day," she admitted, laughing. "And I must say there’s no one to blame but myself. It's partly got to do with my love for the game, Monopoly. Ever play it?"
"Monopoly? Sure."
"Then you know how it goes. Well, I keep two boards here for rainy days, though most of my guests prefer other pastimes. But even screwing can need a little spicing up, which is part of my job. So the other day I got the idea to combine the two—monopoly and sex. It was a difficult day because I had seven men here and only four women, and it was raining non-stop.
"So I combined the two boards, one French and one American, into a single track and all the men sat down to play. The point was that instead of buying hotels, they could trade four houses in on one woman. That woman was then their property and they could ... um ... honor her. And then, whoever landed on their property could, if they had the rent money, rent the lady for twenty minutes.
"So you can imagine the excitement of the game. To begin with, since we had to combine the banks and play with both French money and U.S. money, just to get them to agree on the relative parities of the franc and the dollar involved incredible negotiations. It was like a meeting of OPEC and the IMF rolled into one. The Arabs behaved terribly. And then, you know, by the time in the game that houses and hotels were being bought we had the problem that some players hadn't gotten a set of colors yet, so they couldn’t purchase houses. And others didn't have enough money left to pay the rent when and if they did land on someone else's property."
"It must have been pure panic."
"International cartels were formed. There was enormous pressure on each man to succeed economically and go off to the next room with his prize. Since they'd all had these women at one time or another, or could have had, it was clearly more the achieving than what was achieved."
"Just like real life."
"That's right. Real life from the pages of fiction. At one moment we nearly had a duel over a lady on Park Place. A Kuwaiti who owned Park Place had gone broke and needed to borrow from The Bank. Under the rules he should have divested himself of Madame, who was a knockout, but absolutely refused to do so.
"The situation became very tense. When eventually a sheik from a nearby Emirate landed on Park Place he said not only did he have the right to visit the lady but to do it for ten cents on the dollar since the property was mortgaged."
"They must have thought she was the community chest."
Terry groaned. "Anyway, at this, the Kuwaiti, with everyone shouting, tore up the rule book and threw it in the fire. A moment later both men had grabbed epees from the wall. It would have ended in bloodshed if the sight of them waving their weapons hadn't been so ridiculous that everyone burst out laughing.
"Well, by the time the game ended everyone was pretty exhausted mentally and physically. Most of the Arabs were leaving for home that evening before dark, and their helicopter was taking them to Paris to catch the plane. They offered to give a ride to two of the female guests who lived in Paris."
"And those two disappeared?"
"No, the other two. They'd only just arrived and were to have stayed on about one more week. With half the guests leaving, the others decided to accept the Greek's invitation to go to a party on his island. He owns a small island somewhere between Corfu and Athens. I can show you later on the map.
"In any case, the ladies were to go just for two nights and then return. Only now it's been nearly a week and no word from anyone. Ari, who took them away in the helicopter, returned here yesterday but refuses to tell me anything. I've tried calling the island, but I can't get through to anyone."
Terry reached over and put her hand on mine. "Frankly, my friend, I'm worried. Neither of the women was in what you'd call a good mental state. The French minister’s wife was – I suspect – taking some sort of drug, and the German girl has already attempted suicide three or four times. Chet, you've got to find them and bring them back or I'm in deep trouble with a lot of people."
"Do you think they're on that island?"
"Io Sirena? They were on it, I think, but may have left it by now. I just don't know. I'll give you a thousand dollar bonus for each woman if you find them and bring them back."
"I can try. Do you know whether I can land on the island?"
"I'm sure of it. I was there once and they have a sort of landing place, but it certainly isn't for jets."
"I don't have a jet."
"No. And one more thing. You'll have a passenger."
"Who?"
"The German girl's husband. He's very upset. Tomorrow he’s flying to Nice from Germany. I told him you'd meet him tomorrow night at the Negresco Hotel. Your rooms have already been reserved. The next day you can fly to Greece."
We'd come to the one part of the business that I didn't like. The idea of flying to Greece with an angry and perhaps vindictive husband didn't grab me at all.
"Look, Terry," I said, "I'd rather you told this guy not to bother. If his wife is on the island I'll find her and bring her back. I like traveling light, as the saying goes."
Terry's lips tightened into a thin line. My words had obviously not pleased her. "He's agreeing to pay half your fee and the bonus for finding his wife," she told me. "You have to take him. That's his condition."
I'd come too far to back out of the job now. Anyway, it would only take a day to fly to Greece and then I'd be rid of my passenger.
"You're on," I said to Terry and was relieved to see her mouth relax into a smile. "I'll have to get hold of some maps. I don't think they sell them at Nice Airport, but I should find some at Cannes."
"I have them already." Terry went out and to my surprise came back a moment later with three, large 1:1,000,000 Operational Navigation Charts and a couple of Jeppesen airways charts.
"Hey, you know something about flying?"
"Nothing at all. Your partner in Paris sent these to me. They're your own."
I looked at them more closely. Sure enough, they were mine. I could tell from a few pencil scribbles. "These go all the way to the Middle East," I told Terry.
"I have a terrible hunch you may need them. Will your plane go that far?"
"Not in one hop. But it'll get there if necessary." The prospect of flying to the Middle East didn't bother me. For the moment the area was relatively calm. There was a U.N.-enforced truce between Israel and the Arab countries, and the civil strife that was soon to engulf Lebanon hadn't yet exploded.
Terry squeezed my hand. "I can't tell you how much this means to me, Chet. And you know, it has to be done as quickly as possible. You have one week – perhaps even less."
"I'll do my best."
She got to her feet. "I'm sorry I have no partner to offer you for tonight, but I suppose you'll be wanting some sleep."
I kissed her forehead and went up to my room. No need telling her that since Jeanne died I couldn't get it on for any other woman. Unpacking my bag I came across the photograph of my wife. The face was just a blur, but I didn't need to see her face to remember just how she looked. I carried her photograph in the same way some primitive nomadic tribes carry a totem. Where they put the totem down, that is their home.
As I set the picture on the night table, I noticed something was wrong. The picture was turned upside down in the frame as if someone had taken it out and put it back incorrectly. Who could have done that? Terry? She'd shown a strange interest in seeing a photo of my wife. But why? Odd.
I put the photograph back in my bag. Five minutes later I was asleep.