His face had turned white. "I--I have no idea," he stammered. "The dealer didn't tell me."
"Oh, come now," Noelle chided him. "You mean you bought a painting for this amount of money without establishing its provenance? That's difficult to believe. The estate priced the painting at one hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds. Someone's been cheated out of seventy-five thousand pounds."
And it had proven to be true. The curator and the art dealer were convicted of collusion and sent to prison. Demiris returned the painting. In thinking it over later he decided that he was less impressed by Noelle's knowledge than by her honesty. If she had wished to, she could simply have called the curator aside, threatened to blackmail him and split the money with him. Instead she had challenged him openly in front of Demiris with no ulterior motive. He had bought her a very expensive emerald necklace in appreciation, and she had accepted it with the same casual appreciation with which she would have accepted a cigarette lighter. Demiris insisted on taking Noelle with him everywhere. He trusted no one in business and therefore was forced to make all his decisions by himself. He found it helpful to discuss business deals with Noelle. She was amazingly knowledgeable about business, and the mere fact of being able to talk with someone sometimes made it easier for Demiris to make a decision. In time Noelle knew more about his business affairs than anyone with the possible exception of his lawyers and accountants. In the past Demiris had always had several mistresses at a time, but now Noelle gave him everything he needed, and one by one he dropped them. They accepted the conge without bitterness, for Demiris was a generous man.
He owned a yacht that was a hundred and thirty-five feet long, with four G.M. diesels. It carried a seaplane, a crew of twenty-four, two speed boats and had a freshwater swimming pool. There were twelve beautifully appointed guest suites and a large apartment for himself, crammed with paintings and antiques.
When Demiris entertained on his yacht, it was Noelle who was his hostess. When Demiris flew or sailed to his private island, it was Noelle he took with him while Melina remained at home. He was careful never to bring his wife and Noelle together, but he knew of course that his wife was aware of her.
Noelle was treated like royalty wherever she went. But then it was only her due. The little girl who had looked out at her fleet of ships through the dirty apartment window in Marseille had moved on to the largest fleet in the world. Noelle was not impressed by Demiris' wealth or his reputation: She was impressed by his intelligence and strength. He had the mind and will of a giant and he made other men seem pusillanimous in comparison. She sensed the implacable cruelty in him, but somehow this made him even more exciting, for it was in her also.
Noelle constantly received offers to star in plays and in motion pictures, but she was indifferent. She was playing the lead in her own life story, and it was more fascinating than anything any scriptwriter could concoct. She dined with kings and prime ministers and ambassadors, and they all catered to her because they knew that she had the ear of Demiris. They would drop subtle hints about what their needs were and they promised her the world if she would help them.
But Noelle already had the world. She would lie in bed with Demiris and tell him what each man had asked for, and out of this information Demiris would gauge their needs and their strengths and their weaknesses. Then he would put on appropriate pressures, and from this more money would pour into his already overflowing coffers.
Demiris' private island was one of his great joys. He had purchased an island that was raw land and had transformed it into a paradise. It had a spectacular hilltop villa in which he lived, a dozen charming guest cottages, a hunting preserve, an artificial freshwater lake, a harbor where his yacht could anchor and a landing field for his planes. The island was staffed by eighty servants, and armed guards kept out intruders. Noelle liked the solitude of the island, and she enjoyed it most when there were no other guests there. Constantin Demiris was flattered, assuming that it was because Noelle preferred to be alone with him. He would have been astonished if he had known how preoccupied she was with a man of whose existence he was not even aware.
Larry Douglas was half a world away from Noelle, fighting secret battles on secret islands, and yet she knew more about him than his wife, with whom he corresponded fairly regularly. Noelle traveled to Paris to see Christian Barbet at least once a month and the bald, myopic little detective always had an up-to-date report ready for her.
The first time Noelle had returned to France to see Barbet and had tried to leave there had been trouble about her exit visa. She had been kept waiting in a Customs office for five hours and had finally been allowed to place a call to Constantin Demiris. Ten minutes after she had spoken to Demiris, a German officer had rushed in to offer the profuse apologies of his government. Noelle had been issued a special visa, and she had never been stopped again.
The little detective looked forward to Noelle's visits. He was charging her a fortune, but his trained nose smelled even bigger money. He was very pleased with her new liaison with Constantin Demiris. He had a feeling that in one way or another it was going to be of great financial benefit to him. First he had to make sure that Demiris knew nothing of his mistress' interest in Larry Douglas, then he had to find out how much the information would be worth to Demiris. Or to Noelle Page for him to keep quiet. He was on the verge of an enormous coup, but he had to play his cards carefully. The information Barbet was able to gather on Larry was surprisingly substantial, for Barbet could afford to pay his sources well.
While Larry's wife was reading a letter postmarked from an anonymous APO, Christian Barbet was reporting to Noelle, "He's flying with the Fourteenth Fighter Group, Forty-eighth Fighter Squadron."
Catherine's letter read "...all I can tell you is that I'm somewhere in the Pacific, baby..."
And Christian Barbet was telling Noelle, "They're on Tarawa. Guam's next."
"...I really miss you, Cathy. Things are picking up here. I can't give you any details, but we finally have planes that are better than the Jap Zeros..."
"Your friend is flying P-Thirty-eights, P-Forties and P-Fifty-ones."
"...I'm glad you've been keeping busy in Washington. Just stay true to me, baby. Everything's fine here. I'll have a little news for you when I see you..."
"Your friend has been awarded the D.F.C. and has been promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel."
While Catherine thought about her husband and prayed for him to come home safely, Noelle followed Larry's every move and she too prayed for Larry's safe return. The war would be over soon and Larry Douglas would be coming home. To both of them.
CATHERINE
Washington: 1945-1946
11
On the morning of May 7, 1945, at Rheims, France, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. The thousand-year reign of the Third Reich had come to an end. Those insiders who knew of the crippling devastation at Pearl Harbor, those who had watched Dunkirk narrowly miss going into history as England's Waterloo, those who had commanded the RAF and knew how helpless London's defenses would have been against an all-out attack by the Luftwaffe: All these people were aware of the series of miracles that had brought victory to the Allies--and knew by what a narrow margin it had missed going the other way. The powe
rs of evil had almost emerged triumphant, and the idea was so preposterous, so contrary to the Christian ethic of Right triumphing and Evil succumbing, that they turned away from it in horror, thanking God and burying their blunders from the eyes of posterity in mountains of files marked TOP SECRET.
The attention of the free world turned now to the Far East. The Japanese, those short, nearsighted comic figures, were bloodily defending every inch of land they held, and it looked as though it was going to be a long and costly war.
And then on August 6, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The destruction was beyond belief. In a few short minutes, most of the population of a major city lay dead, victims of a pestilence greater than the combined wars and plagues of all the Middle Ages.
On August 9, three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped, this time on Nagasaki. The results were even more devastating. Civilization had finally reached it finest hour; it was able to achieve genocide that could be calculated at the rate of x number of millions of persons per second. It was too much for the Japanese, and on September 2, 1945, on the battleship Missouri, General Douglas MacArthur received the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Government. World War II was ended.
For one long moment when the news was flashed, the world held its breath and then let out a grateful heartfelt cheer. Cities and hamlets around the globe were filled with hysterical parades of people celebrating the end of the war to end all wars to end all wars to end all wars...
The following day, through some magic that he would never explain to Catherine, Bill Fraser was able to get a telephone call through to Larry Douglas on an island somewhere in the South Pacific. It was to be a surprise for Catherine. Fraser asked her to wait in her office for him so that they could go to lunch together. At 2:30 in the afternoon, she buzzed Bill on the intercom system.