“No doctors,” Tracy whispered.
There will be a plane ticket for Geneva waiting for you at the Swissair counter. Get out of Amsterdam as fast as you can. As soon as the police learn of the robbery, they’ll close up the city tight. Nothing will go wrong, but just in case, here is the address and the key to a safe house in Amsterdam. It is unoccupied.
The airport. She had to get to the airport. “Taxi,” she mumbled. “Taxi.”
The woman hesitated a moment, then shrugged. “All right. I will call one. Wait here.”
She was floating higher and higher now, ever closer to the sun.
“Your taxi is here,” a man was saying.
She wished people would stop bothering her. She wanted only to sleep.
The driver said, “Where do you wish to go, mademoiselle?”
There will be a plane ticket for Geneva waiting for you at the Swissair counter.
She was too ill to board a plane. They would stop her, summon a doctor. She would be questioned. All she needed was to sleep for a few minutes, then she would be fine.
The voice was getting impatient. “Where to, please?”
She had no place to go. She gave the taxi driver the address of the safe house.
The police were cross-examining her about the diamonds, and when she refused to answer them, they became very angry and put her in a room by herself and turned up the heat until the room was boiling hot. When it became unbearable, they dropped the temperature down, until icicles began to form on the walls.
Tracy pushed her way up through the cold and opened her eyes. She was on a bed, shivering uncontrollably. There was a blanket beneath her, but she did not have the strength to get under it. Her dress was soaked through, and her face and neck were wet.
I’m going to die here. Where was here?
The safe house. I’m in the safe house. And the phrase struck her as so funny that she started to laugh, and the laughter turned into a paroxysm of coughing. It had all gone wrong. She had not gotten away after all. By now the police would be combing Amsterdam for her: Mademoiselle Whitney had a ticket on Swissair and did not use it? Then she still must be in Amsterdam.
She wondered how long she had been in this bed. She lifted her wrist to look at her watch, but the numbers were blurred. She was seeing everything double. There were two beds in the small room and two dressers and four chairs. The shivering stopped, and her body was burning up. She needed to open a window, but she was too weak to move. The room was freezing again.
She was back on the airplane, locked in the crate, screaming for help.
You’ve made it! You’re a marvel. Let’s have the box.
Jeff had taken the diamonds, and he was probably on his way to Brazil with her share of the money. He would be enjoying himself with one of his women, laughing at her. He had beaten her once more. She hated him. No. She didn’t. Yes, she did. She despised him.
She was in and out of delirium. The hard pelota ball was hurtling toward her, and Jeff grabbed her in his arms and pushed her to the ground, and his lips were very close to hers, and then they were having dinner at Zalacaín. Do you know how special you are, Tracy?
I offer you a draw, Boris Melnikov said.
Her body was trembling again, out of control, and she was on an express train whirling through a dark tunnel, and at the end of the tunnel she knew she was going to die. All the other passengers had gotten off except Alberto Fornati. He was angry with her, shaking her and screaming at her.
“For Christ’s sake!” he yelled. “Open your eyes! Look at me!”
With a superhuman effort, Tracy opened her eyes, and Jeff was standing over her. His face was white, and there was fury in his voice. Of course, it was all a part of her dream.
“How long have you been like this?”