The Snake Flag Conspiracy

Chapter Five

None of the five names was listed as being a resident of 21½ Louisburg Square. Neither the telephone directory nor the reverse directory, which lists by street addresses rather than by names, carried any information about who lived there. All that meant was that whoever it was had an unlisted number. It was too late to check City Hall for the tax records. I’d do that tomorrow.

It had been a pretty full day, considering that at six in the morning I’d boarded an Air Force fighter jet in Marseilles, had lunch and a talk with Hawk in Washington around twelve-thirty, and had almost had my head blown off before six o’clock that same evening in Boston.

There was a message for me in my box when I got back to my hotel. Calvin Woolfolk had called and invited me to dinner. He’d meet me at Gaspar’s, which was thoughtful of him because the restaurant is only about three blocks from the hotel.

I showered and changed and walked up Newbury Street to Gaspar’s. The maitre d’ came up to me before I’d taken half a dozen steps inside.

“Mr. Carter?”

“Yes.”

He smiled his professional greeter’s smile. “Mr. Woolfolk is waiting for you in the other room, sir. If you’ll follow me, please...”

Calvin’s white hair caught my eye as soon as we walked into the far dining room. He looked up and lifted a hand in greeting. There was a woman seated with him, but her back was toward me. When I got to the table, Calvin rose and said, “Nick, I’d like you to meet my niece. Sabrina, this is Nick Carter.”

The woman turned and lifted her face to me, smiling the same kind of smile she’d worn earlier in the afternoon when she’d come up with a camera in her hand at Ben Franklin’s grave and asked me to take her picture with it. Warm and impersonal, a facial gesture polite enough to hide behind with impunity.

She held out her hand. It felt both delicate and strong at the same time.

I smiled back at her.

“Sit down, Nick,” said Calvin Woolfolk. The maitre d’ pulled out the chair between Calvin and his niece. I gave him my order for a drink.

“I thought there’d be just the two of us,” I said to Calvin. “Your message didn’t indicate...”

“...that we’d have the pleasure of Sabrina’s company?” Calvin finished. “No, it didn’t. I wasn’t aware that Sabrina was in town at the time I called you. She stopped by my place as I was leaving. Came as a complete surprise.” He reached over and touched her hand affectionately. “But a pleasant one. I hardly ever see her these days. She’s gadding about the country, flying from one place to another so a body can’t keep track of her.”

I turned to Sabrina. “You must be Mather’s daughter.”

“I didn’t know you knew Father,” she said. Her voice had a husky body to it. Its tone, though, was as reserved as her smile.

“I don’t,” I said. “Calvin’s mentioned him. I’m assuming Calvin has no other brothers.”

“Thank God,” said Calvin. “Mather’s enough!”

The waiter came up with my drink. The three of us touched glasses and made small talk that lasted through the meal.

Sabrina’s poise was perfect. She acted as though I were just another friend of Calvin’s. You’d never guess that only a few hours earlier she’d tried to blow my head off.

Did Calvin know about Sabrina’s attempt on my life? Was he part of the conspiracy? Did she deliberately drop in on Woolfolk because she knew he was having dinner with me, or did that turn of events take her by surprise?

Sabrina. I looked across the table at her. She was completely at ease. It takes a particular kind of murderess to do what she’d done this afternoon and then to act as cool and as poised as she was right now. She knew that I recognized her. Apparently, she just didn’t give a damn. Perhaps she felt so sure I’d be dead within hours that I posed absolutely no threat in her eyes.

Every once in awhile, I’d catch her looking appraisingly at me, though. There was a hint of amusement in her gaze, and mockery, and if I read it right, a touch of scorn.

Calvin insisted on paying the check. We walked out into the street. The night was one of those pleasant New England summer nights, clear and cool, with the wind coming down the street from the north. Calvin stopped on the corner.

“Nick,” he asked, “would you mind taking Sabrina home? I’m heading the other way.”

I looked at his niece.

“Not if she doesn’t mind.”

Sabrina said politely, “I’d appreciate it, Mr. Carter.”

Calvin patted me on the arm. “Talk to you soon,” he said and moved off in that loping, gangly stride that belied his age.

I took Sabrina by the elbow, turning down Newbury Street toward the center of town.

We had walked half a dozen steps before she spoke up. “You seem to know where we’re going. Do you know where I live, Mr. Carter?”

“Beacon Hill.”

“And the street?”

“Louisburg Square.”

Even in the darkness I could see a faint smile on her lips.

“And, of course, you know the number.”

“Twenty-one and a half.”

She put her arm through mine. “You’re quite a man, Mr. Carter, aren’t you?”

“Nick,” I corrected her. “No, it’s just that when someone tries to kill me, I find out as much about him — or her — as I can.”

“Do people often try to kill you?” Still the touch of amusement in her voice.

“Often enough for me to have learned to be careful. And you? Do you often try to kill others?”

Sabrina ignored the question. “It must seem that way to you,” she said thoughtfully. “Looking at it from your point of view, I’m sure it would appear that I did try to kill you.”

“Is there another way of looking at it?”

Who the devil was she trying to con, I wondered. And how would she try to lie her way out of attempted murder?

“Did you ever think that I might have been the intended victim? After all, it was my camera that was tampered with.”

“Is that why you ran?”

“I ran because I can’t afford to be involved in any form of scandal,” she said. “Mr. Bradford will not stand for any publicity about him — or about anyone who works for him.”

“Bradford?”

“Alexander Bradford. I’m his executive secretary.”

Alexander Bradford. Another of the names that Calvin Woolfolk had given me.

“Tell me about him.”

Sabrina shook her head. “That would cost me my job. I shouldn’t even have mentioned that I work for him.”

“You do more than just type and take shorthand. Right?”

“Oh, definitely,” she said, the tone of her voice telling me that she was laughing at me now, and it was as if, in that instant, she’d finally made up her mind about me and decided to put me to the final test. She’d issued a challenge to me, daring me to play the game with her.

In the past I’ve played at the game with other women like Sabrina. They’re a special breed, set apart from most women. For one thing, a woman like her is completely amoral. She won’t conform to the rules of society. She won’t behave like other women. She has a compulsion to be different, to be noticed.

For another thing, she’s intensely feminine, alive with animal vitality. Damned few men, however, can trigger a response in her because she doesn’t think much of men. She despises them as weaklings.

But when she does meet one of the rare men who can turn her on, that’s when she begins to play the game. She’ll use every wile in her repertoire, first to get you interested in her, and then to get you involved with her. It’s a test of strength that can only end in the capitulation and destruction of one of you. Once you start the game, that’s the only way it can end.

We had reached the Public Gardens. We turned into the park without saying a word, the tension between us so high, it was almost palpable. Neither the Public Gardens nor the Boston Common are safe places to walk after dark. Like so many of the once-pleasant parks in cities all over our country, they’ve become hunting grounds for muggers and rapists.

“It’s supposed to be dangerous to walk through here at night,” Sabrina said with pure pleasure in her voice. A swift, cool breeze blew through the park and her flying hair struck me softly across the cheek like the fur of a sleek animal that touches you in the dark and is gone.

“There’s safety in numbers,” I said, lightly placing my hand on her arm as we rounded a corner.

“I often walk here alone at night,” Sabrina responded coolly. “I’m never afraid.”

All the same, she began leaning slightly against me as we walked. Her body was pressed next to mine, warm and savage beneath her clothes.

Overhead the foliage on the trees blocked out the moon and most of the light from the lamps so that we walked together in the dark. There was nothing for us to say. Silently we responded to each other in a way so primitive that speech would have spoiled it.

In the same silence we left the Gardens and walked along Charles Street, turning the corner and striding up the incline of Mount Vernon Street to Louisburg Square. Still without a word, Sabrina unlocked the door to the house and closed it behind us without turning on the lights.

In the dark she turned to me. Her arms came up around my neck. Along the entire length of her, from her neck through her torso to her waist, hips, pubic arch, thighs and legs, she pressed hotly against me.

Her fingernails dug into the nape of my neck, pulling my head down, forcing my mouth against hers. She pried my lips apart, her tongue wildly searching inside my mouth for an instant, and then, like a wild jungle cat, she clamped her teeth into my neck.

I gathered her hair into my hand and closed my fist, pulling her head away from me so I could see her face. Sabrina’s eyes were closed, but I felt that if she opened them, they would be green slits glowing in the dark.

My other hand reached out to catch the soft weave of her silken dress at the throat. In one savage wrench I ripped the material from neckline to waist.

She moaned softly, her throat a pale arch of soft flesh in the dim light that filtered through the windows.

“Oh, yes!”

Acting instinctively, knowing it was what she wanted, I slapped her across the face.

“You tried to kill me this afternoon, you bitch!”

“Yes.” Her breath was coming in gasps. “Yes, I did.” She tried to press her nude torso against me. I held her away.

“Why?”

She shook her head.

I ripped the dress from her completely. Now she was wearing only the smallest of bras and a tiny triangle of silk beneath her sheer pantyhose.

“Why did you try to kill me?”

In answer, her arms came up and her hands beat futilely at my face. I twisted her head savagely from side to side, still gripping her hair in my left hand.

“Why?” I pulled away her bra. A husky moan rose from her throat, a moan filled with pleasure.

“Make love to me!” It was a cry, beseeching and demanding, begging and imperative all at the same time. She fell to her knees, pressing her head into my groin, putting her arms around my waist.

“Damn it, why?”

I could feel her head moving from side to side in a silent ‘no’ that set my groin on fire. Quickly I stripped off my own clothes.

Beneath us the rug was thin, and beneath the thin rug the wooden floor was hard, but Sabrina was soft and full and took me into her quickly. She was my cushion, my toy, my plaything, my animal.

Claws raked my back; fingernails and teeth sank into my flesh; hands, arms, and thighs clutched at me. Her mouth was bloody from biting my shoulder. More than once I had to slap her to make her let go. Her moans turned to snarls. One moment she cringed beneath me, the next she fought me savagely, striking me with her fists in violent fury until I matched it with my own anger, and then she made sounds of delight and pleasure. Finally, after an eternally long spasm that shook her uncontrollably, she collapsed completely. The savagery went out of her.

Her body became langorous; it burned with the warmth of fulfillment In the dark her sigh was like the purring of a cat, deep and full and content.

I groped for my trousers and took out my gold-tipped cigarettes and my lighter. The flare of the flame lit her eyes. In the yellow of the small light they were green slits.

“Give me one,” she said, reaching out I gave her the cigarette I’d lit and took another for myself.

“Why did you try to kill me?” I asked. Her head was on my shoulder. She exhaled, holding the cigarette away to look at its tip glowing in the dark.

“I can’t tell you,” she said.

“I could make you talk.”

“You won’t” Sabrina said, almost casually. “You’d have to hurt me too much.”

“If I have to, I’ll kill you,” I told her.

Sabrina lifted herself on one elbow and tried to look into my face. I flicked the lighter on. The tiny flame was more than enough. She looked deeply into my eyes and touched my cheek with her fingertips. She took her hand away.

“Yes,” she said soberly. “Yes, I think you would.”

“Why did you try to kill me?”

“I was told to.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t know. There was a telephone call.”

“You do things like that when someone calls?”

“I have to,” she said. She turned away slightly. “Put out the light, please.”

I snapped the lighter shut. We were in darkness again, with only the indirect glow of the street fight coming in through the windows to make darker shadows in the gray around us.

I reached up to touch her face. My hand felt her neck. There was a thin chain around it I felt a tiny, flat metal pendant. I moved my hand up to her chin and then to her cheek. It was wet. Sabrina was crying.

“Please don’t make me say any more. I really don’t know any more,” she said, shivering against me.

“What has Alexander Bradford to do with it?” I asked.

“Bradford?”

Sabrina suddenly moved away from me. In the dark I made out her silhouette moving around the room. She went through a doorway and disappeared.

I got to my feet and turned on a lamp. By the time Sabrina came back in a negligee, I was fully dressed, ready to go.

“You’re not leaving now?” She was disappointed.

I nodded.

“Will you come back?”

“Perhaps.”

She came up to me. There was nothing remote about her now, nothing impersonal. The game had been played, and I had won. Sabrina touched me on the cheek meekly.

“Please come back,” she said. And then, as I opened the door to the street, I heard her swear softly, despairingly.