left Ireland. Schiff was being difficult. After the aborted attack at his trainer’s,
the financier had gone to the Curragh to see his horse run in the big stakes. He exposed himself to all kinds of risks in
spite of the best efforts of Dartley and his two bodyguards. He even stood in the middle of the parade ring with other owners
and trainers. A child could have shot him.
When he saw the look on Dartley’s face, he smiled and said, “I like risks.”
“These aren’t calculated risks you’re taking,” Dartley said. “I could admire you for that. This is just reckless bravado.
If you don’t get yourself killed, you’ll get me or your bodyguards hurt. I don’t admire that. If you did what you’re doing
here on the stock exchange, you’d lose a lot of money.”
Schiff quieted down and said, “People don’t often talk to me like that.”
“I don’t work for you and I never will.”
The Wall Street man’s caution lasted until his horse won the big race. After that there was no holding him. Dartley quit looking
out for him and hoped only to pick off any attacker after the first shot. The Palestinians did not materialize.
Schiff stayed on in his castle. The Irish police were notified only after the big race that a body had been found. The burned
Audi was disposed of by the trainer’s men, and nothing was said of the attack earlier in the day.
“I’m sure it’s them,” Dartley said to Schiff, who was sipping a sherry and watching the television news between phone calls
to New York and Tokyo.
Schiff nodded. “Better take my plane,” he said.
The pilot was summoned, and Dartley was at Le Bourget airport outside Paris that night. There were a lot of things to be said
for the way Morton Schiff lived.
Dartley stayed at a small hotel on the rue de Rennes, not far from Montparnasse. First thing next morning, he headed for Père
Lachaise cemetery. He knew that the police would still be watching there and that he could not risk showing up too many times
at the scenes of massacres. However, he expected a big crowd of morbidly curious people to show up, so he would be only one
of many. He really had no other choice but to go. He needed something to connect him with these two terrorists. Why had they
struck at Père Lachaise? Perhapssomething might occur to him while he was there. He doubted it. Yet he had to try since he had nothing else to go on.
The area was taped off by the police who were still doing forensic lab work on the ground. The onlookers were mostly French,
with a sprinkling of English and German speakers. Dartley listened to the French. The general opinion was that this had been
done by Arabs trying to frighten off the government from signing the Ostend Concordance. The European governments could play
pretend and control the media all they liked, but they were not fooling the people.
Dartley asked some questions. Had they heard what the survivors had seen? Two Arabs, definitely. That had not been stated
openly in the French newspapers that morning. It was the confirming detail that Dartley needed to be sure he was on the right
track. He talked for a while with a pretty woman dressed in a pale blue suit. She was very nervous and knew next to nothing,
so he left before his questioning of people became too obvious. This had been a dead end. It seemed like he would have to
sit and wait for the crazy bastards to strike again.
He headed for the nearest exit. Catching a glimpse of someone walking through the monuments some distance behind him, he turned
into a path to the left instead of going straight on to the exit. Pretending to find a tomb of sudden interest, he looked
to one side and glimpsed the pale blue back in some trees. He turned left once more, heading back now in the oppositedirection to which he had been going originally. He looked at another tomb and caught the pale blue in his peripheral vision.
Dartley walked on a piece, then slipped
Enid Blyton
MacKenzie McKade
Julie Buxbaum
Patricia Veryan
Lois Duncan
Joe Rhatigan
Robin Stevens
Edward Humes
MAGGIE SHAYNE
Samantha Westlake