Bloodline
Bloodline
Sidney Sheldon
One of Sidney Sheldon’s most popular and bestselling titles, now available as an ebook.The daughter of a rich and powerful father, Elizabeth Roffe is young, beautiful – and sole heir to a billion dollar fortune.Then tragedy strikes. Her father is killed in a freak accident and Elizabeth must take command of his mighty global empire, the pharmaceutical company Roffe and Sons. It makes Elizabeth the richest girl in the world. But someone, somewhere, is determined that she must die.From the backstreets of Istanbul to the upmarket offices of New York, Bloodline is a hypnotic tale of love and ambition, danger, intrigue and death.
SIDNEY SHELDON
BLOODLINE
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_538501ea-ace8-5423-bb87-285b6f18a4b6)
HarperFiction
An imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1978
Copyright © Sheldon Literary Trust 1978
Sidney Sheldon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Source ISBN: 9780006175018
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2012 ISBN 9780007380893
Version: 2014-12-10
DEDICATION (#ulink_2ebd9353-90fc-5dd2-99a5-ca1b6cc0e489)
For Natalie with love
EPIGRAPH (#ulink_433c0d71-b173-5f46-91b9-fcfa97753ed1)
The physician will carefullyprepare a mixture of crocodiledung, lizard flesh, bats’ bloodand camels’ spit …
from a papyrus listing
811 prescriptions used
by the Egyptians in
1550 BC
CONTENTS
Title Page (#u8667829e-53cf-5f94-89bb-9798f859aa43)
Copyright (#u39e208af-6083-505e-acc1-9fd5894c58e8)
Dedication (#ua7ea9b0b-ba62-5103-965d-118d7e8c49d4)
Epigraph (#u346e4904-95ec-53e8-ab87-d4c0c668812b)
PART ONE (#u03632ed8-fda7-58ca-a429-2227d5f36eeb)
CHAPTER ONE (#ua3d1d55e-3dec-56cc-8ca0-d9772367eda6)
CHAPTER TWO (#u4e2aa969-ca9f-56f6-ad49-e8dabb28af75)
CHAPTER THREE (#ub6577673-1e02-5b6c-938d-9cb553d215eb)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u4c68d2da-e167-5708-9ea2-05e6ed4f1e6c)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u83d70b86-3f64-55e2-a407-e7bd8ecb553a)
CHAPTER SIX (#u6b001765-4e0b-533e-92f7-482d6a6d7228)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u71ef9f99-8bfb-56af-ab3f-0f3ce22f7ed5)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#u8475a344-80c8-5fed-aa01-ac5a1c4198bb)
CHAPTER NINE (#u5b150115-3ddf-5bdc-8c09-51102f45abd0)
CHAPTER TEN (#u3d2a55ce-0cfb-5399-8b40-c9e1d96c43a2)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#u96c7b9a8-e8c2-538e-8f11-535a89102821)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#uc7e585f2-c176-56c0-98ce-c7a8d883b129)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#uc705681a-d0c4-573d-86b7-189f27b9f771)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#u18bcfe99-aeaa-59bb-86f3-1ae316570312)
PART TWO (#ucf7045fb-879a-583d-afd4-a38edef1a0a6)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#ub8ec2844-5591-5054-90da-2a9876a9bc94)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#u9ec7212b-3426-5da5-af16-0a6b1c7caa1c)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#u0483273b-0270-5a07-a6ec-cae535d0a09d)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#u107ab05b-9a94-57ed-becc-934dee337099)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#ub7c2e985-64e8-57f0-ba37-61648791152b)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#uf169ec2a-8851-5de6-af95-2b99f6a43230)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#u51fafd77-0537-55ce-9333-9e4ffa9aab13)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#ua11db0ff-ce10-5738-a2b0-06ef1920b584)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#ub5d9c9da-1f8e-517d-9268-d346066c3288)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#ue09c8ede-f09a-53c5-89a4-37f3e0fbf7d3)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#u88101674-ab52-541c-b64c-f1ee80d2cc5d)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#u6ccfc5e5-44ff-566f-a24d-bff5487f4b29)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#u84fb8f4a-c80c-5672-a24c-9962fd895b27)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#ub181937c-097e-57b5-abb7-876087b04860)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#u4add8165-6322-55cd-bcef-e9e33bbd057f)
CHAPTER THIRTY (#u10a28996-9a42-54d4-86d9-855e8962a60e)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#uecfa310d-d55d-568e-ba88-220b1f62ef35)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO (#u1d3ee5de-b185-5be7-9368-d66a6af2c5b2)
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE (#u02449957-15de-59b0-b398-0e41aca55cc5)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR (#uc392d15e-bee5-5097-a36d-e093698a0964)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE (#udf7f0df4-35b1-5bf4-8d75-c280b2e886cd)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX (#u29929a39-f3ad-590b-a1a8-3b3b77d8d39f)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN (#ua7192e3f-f194-5bd7-8408-c9c044873cb4)
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT (#u0f40cf1c-38c9-554c-b125-0323712f8263)
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE (#u4d53dea6-e20a-50a3-9efe-29af702d70dd)
CHAPTER FORTY (#u1557caa9-e10a-5aea-9296-534af856d5c4)
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE (#u5444e429-4fb4-534f-a610-9e4ab634f89a)
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO (#u65dd5c3f-f83f-5440-9183-77dff6fa83cb)
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE (#u2faefffa-7806-55ad-bf71-99c1793eda59)
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR (#uacfc4833-11d4-5ee8-8de4-1840e4edb07f)
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE (#u7d43788a-cd16-5d89-b64b-45cad6948c17)
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX (#u8298c0da-a357-57af-9985-c6d0944c11bd)
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN (#ud1cca6df-2731-5975-aa24-d4559856e4a8)
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT (#uf189fc45-749d-5ee7-bc84-6fc7af685a0f)
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE (#u03918a31-6922-5982-a05a-b86bb7a3df9b)
CHAPTER FIFTY (#u6f371f03-ced2-5094-abdc-1e4e37690874)
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE (#u87aa665b-3825-5aa5-8bb3-b7df275b6d8c)
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO (#u0e7f0878-2769-5529-887e-1f9826fd869f)
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE (#u7439565a-67b3-5666-a830-49a650d2df8a)
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR (#u650d0e14-baa4-54df-ba2c-592a3f23c257)
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE (#uaa73ad7d-e8f9-56c8-b141-a6e9ffc8a753)
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX (#u4894352e-58b7-563a-bbd6-f8db3b5db276)
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN (#u49770e46-6816-5361-9bd6-c4b57335d729)
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT (#u2d9252b6-9f7b-5b1e-899c-f1d81e6b406f)
Keep Reading (#u8b9bfe18-09dd-58dd-b367-4cb624bf4893)
Acknowledgements (#ue852b25a-62da-5e23-aabb-2c0e1b4fc08c)
About the Author (#u0e4256c2-d50c-57bf-8217-ad7bd90afd50)
Also By Sidney Sheldon (#u4be9b7c2-787d-5ecc-b66b-b8c4bffe4f01)
About the Publisher (#u30d108ab-c09d-5b20-88f8-62c4c97ef0bb)
PART ONE (#ulink_80f37b76-f1dc-5f0c-9421-950bfd29193b)
Chapter One (#ulink_9a48ffa3-d400-5a60-8fc2-75938bfbf5db)
Istanbul Saturday, September 5 10 p.m.
He was seated in the dark, alone, behind the desk of Hajib Kafir, staring unseeingly out of the dusty office window at the timeless minarets of Istanbul. He was a man who was at home in a dozen capitals of the world, but Istanbul was one of his favourites. Not the tourist Istanbul of Beyoglu Street, or the gaudy Lalezab Bar of the Hilton, but the out-of-the-way places that only the Moslems knew: the yalis, and the small markets beyond the souks, and the Telli Baba, the cemetery where only one person was buried, and the people came to pray to him.
His waiting had the patience of a hunter, the quiet stillness of a man in control of his body and his emotions. He was Welsh, with the dark, stormy good looks of his ancestors. He had black hair and a strong face, and quick intelligent eyes that were a deep blue. He was over six feet tall, with the lean, muscular body of a man who kept himself in good physical condition. The office was filled with the odours of Hajib Kafir, his sickly sweet tobacco, his acrid Turkish coffee, his fat, oily body. Rhys Williams was unaware of them. He was thinking about the telephone call he had received from Chamonix an hour earlier.
‘… A terrible accident! Believe me, Mr Williams, we are all devastated. It happened so quickly that there was no chance to save him. Mr Roffe was killed instantly …’
Sam Roffe, president of Roffe and Sons, the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world, a multi-billion-dollar dynasty that girdled the globe. It was impossible to think of Sam Roffe as being dead. He had always been so vital, so full of life and energy, a man on the move, living in aeroplanes that raced him to company factories and offices all over the world, where he solved problems others could not deal with, created new concepts, pushed everyone to do more, to do better. Even though he had married, and fathered a child, his only real interest had been the business. Sam Roffe had been a brilliant and extraordinary man. Who could replace him? Who was capable of running the enormous empire he had left? Sam Roffe had not chosen an heir apparent. But then he had not planned to die at fifty-two. He had thought there would be plenty of time.
And now his time had run out.
The lights in the office suddenly flashed on and Rhys Williams looked towards the doorway, momentarily blinded.
‘Mr Williams! I did not know anyone was here.’
It was Sophie, one of the company secretaries, who was assigned to Rhys Williams whenever he was in Istanbul. She was Turkish, in her middle twenties, with an attractive face and a lithe, sensuous body, rich with promise. She had let Rhys know in subtle, ancient ways that she was available to bring him whatever pleasures he wished, whenever he desired them, but Rhys was not interested.
Now she said, ‘I returned to finish some letters for Mr Kafir.’ She added softly, ‘Perhaps there is something I can do for you?’
As she moved closer to the desk, Rhys could sense the musky smell of a wild animal in season.
‘Where is Mr Kafir?’
Sophie shook her head regretfully. ‘He has left for the day.’ She smoothed the front of her dress with the palms of soft, clever hands. ‘Can I help you in some way?’ Her eyes were dark and moist.
‘Yes,’ Rhys said. ‘Find him.’
She frowned. ‘I have no idea where he could –’
‘Try the Kervansaray, or the Mermara.’ It would probably be the former, where one of Hajib Kafir’s mistresses worked as a belly dancer. Although you never knew with Kafir, Rhys thought. He might even be with his wife.
Sophie was apologetic. ‘I will try, but I am afraid I –’
‘Explain to him that if he’s not here in one hour, he no longer has a job.’
The expression on her face changed. ‘I will see what I can do, Mr Williams.’ She started towards the door.
‘Turn out the lights.’
Somehow, it was easier to sit in the dark with his thoughts. The image of Sam Roffe kept intruding. Mont Blanc should have been an easy climb at this time of the year, early September. Sam had tried the climb before, but storms had kept him from reaching the peak.
‘I’ll plant the company flag up there this time,’ he had promised Rhys, jokingly.
And then the telephone call a short while ago as Rhys was checking out of the Pera Palace. He could hear the agitated voice on the telephone. ‘… They were doing a traverse over a glacier … Mr Roffe lost his footing and his rope broke … He fell into a bottomless crevasse …’
Rhys could visualize Sam’s body smashing against the unforgiving ice, hurtling downward into the crevasse. He forced his mind away from the scene. That was the past. There was the present to worry about now. The members of Sam Roffe’s family had to be notified of his death, and they were scattered in various parts of the world. A press announcement had to be prepared. The news was going to travel through international financial circles like a shock wave. With the company in the midst of a financial crisis, it was vital that the impact of Sam Roffe’s death be minimized as much as possible. That would be Rhys’s job.
Rhys Williams had first met Sam Roffe nine years earlier. Rhys, then twenty-five, had been sales manager for a small drug firm. He was brilliant and innovative, and as the company had expanded, Rhys’s reputation had quickly spread. He was offered a job at Roffe and Sons and when he turned it down, Sam Roffe bought the company Rhys worked for and sent for him. Even now he could recall the overwhelming power of Sam Roffe’s presence at their first meeting.
‘You belong here at Roffe and Sons,’ Sam Roffe had informed him. ‘That’s why I bought that horse-and-buggy outfit you were with.’
Rhys had found himself flattered and irritated at the same time. ‘Suppose I don’t want to stay?’
Sam Roffe had smiled and said confidently, ‘You’ll want to stay. You and I have something in common, Rhys. We’re both ambitious. We want to own the world. I’m going to show you how.’
The words were magic, a promised feast for the fierce hunger that burned in the young man, for he knew something that Sam Roffe did not. There was no Rhys Williams. He was a myth that had been created out of desperation and poverty and despair.
He had been born near the coalfields of Gwent and Carmarthen, the red, scarred valleys of Wales where layers of sandstone and saucer-shaped beds of limestone and coal puckered the green earth. He grew up in a fabled land where the very names were poetry: Brecon and Pen-y-fan and Penderyn and Glyncorrwg and Maesteg. It was a land of legend, where the coal buried deep in the ground had been created 280 million years before, where the landscape was once covered with so many trees that a squirrel could travel from the Brecon Beacons to the sea without ever touching the ground. But the Industrial Revolution had come along and the beautiful green trees were chopped down by the charcoal-burners to feed the insatiable fires of the iron industry.
The young boy grew up with the heroes of another time and another world. Robert Farrer, burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Church because he would not take a vow of celibacy and abandon his wife; King Hywel the Good, who brought the law to Wales in the tenth century; the fierce warrior Brychen who sired twelve sons and twenty-four daughters and savagely put down all attacks on his kingdom. It was a land of glorious histories in which the lad had been raised. But it was not all glory. Rhys’s ancestors were miners, every one of them, and the young boy used to listen to the tales of hell that his father and his uncles recounted. They talked of the terrible times when there was no work, when the rich coalfields of Gwent and Carmarthen had been closed in a bitter fight between the companies and the miners, and the miners were debased by a poverty that eroded ambition and pride, that sapped a man’s spirit and strength and finally made him surrender.
When the mines were open, it was another kind of hell. Most of Rhys’s family had died in the mines. Some had perished in the bowels of the earth, others had coughed their blackened lungs away. Few had lived past the age of thirty.
Rhys used to listen to his father and his ageing young uncles discussing the past, the cave-ins and the cripplings and the strikes; talking of the good times and the bad, and to the young boy they seemed the same. All bad. The thought of spending his years in the darkness of the earth appalled Rhys. He knew he had to escape.
He ran away from home when he was twelve. He left the valleys of coal and went to the coast, to Sully Ranny Bay and Lavernock, where the rich tourists flocked, and the young boy fetched and carried and made himself useful, helping ladies down the steep cliffs to the beach, lugging heavy picnic baskets, driving a pony-cart at Penarth, and working at the amusement park at Whitmore Bay.
He was only a few hours away from home, but the distance could not be measured. The people here were from another world. Rhys Williams had never imagined such beautiful people or such glorious finery. Each woman looked like a queen to him and the men were all elegant and splendid. This was the world where he belonged, and there was nothing he would not do to make it his.
By the time Rhys Williams was fourteen, he had saved enough money to pay for his passage to London. He spent the first three days simply walking round the huge city, staring at everything, hungrily drinking in the incredible sights and the sounds and the smells.
His first job was as a delivery boy at a draper’s shop. There were two male clerks, superior beings both, and a female clerk, who made the young Welsh boy’s heart sing every time he looked at her. The men treated Rhys as he was meant to be treated, like dirt. He was a curiosity. He dressed peculiarly, had abominable manners and spoke with an incomprehensible accent. They could not even pronounce his name. They called him Rice, and Rye, and Rise. ‘It’s pronounced Reese,’ Rhys kept telling them.
The girl took pity on him. Her name was Gladys Simpkins and she shared a tiny flat in Tooting with three other girls. One day she allowed the young boy to walk her home after work and invited him in for a cup of tea. Young Rhys was overcome with nervousness. He had thought this was going to be his first sexual experience, but when he began to put his arm around Gladys, she stared at him a moment, then laughed. ‘I’m not giving none of that to you,’ she said. ‘But I’ll give you some advice. If you want to make somethin’ of yourself, get yourself some proper clothes and a bit of education and learn yourself some manners.’ She studied the thin, passionate young face and looked into Rhys’s deep blue eyes, and said softly, ‘You’re gonna be a bit of all right when you grow up.’
If you want to make somethin’ of yourself … That was the moment when the fictitious Rhys Williams was born. The real Rhys Williams was an uneducated, ignorant boy with no background, no breeding, no past, no future. But he had imagination, intelligence and a fiery ambition. It was enough. He started with the image of what he wanted to be, who he intended to be. When he looked in his mirror, he did not see the clumsy, grubby little boy with a funny accent; his mirror image was polished and suave and successful. Little by little, Rhys began to match himself to the image in his mind. He attended night school, and he spent his weekends in art galleries. He haunted public libraries and went to the theatre, sitting in the gallery studying the fine clothes of the men seated in the stalls. He scrimped on food, so that once a month he could go to a good restaurant, where he carefully copied the table manners of others. He observed and learned and remembered. He was like a sponge, erasing the past, soaking up the future.
In one short year Rhys had learned enough to realize that Gladys Simpkins, his princess, was a cheap Cockney girl who was already beneath his tastes. He quit the draper’s shop and went to work as a clerk at a chemist’s shop that was part of a large chain. He was almost sixteen now, but he looked older. He had filled out and was taller. Women were beginning to pay attention to his dark Welsh good looks and his quick, flattering tongue. He was an instant success in the shop. Female customers would wait until Rhys was available to take care of them. He dressed well and spoke correctly, and he knew he had come a long way from Gwent and Carmarthen, but when he looked in the mirror, he was still not satisfied. The journey he intended to make was still ahead of him.
Within two years Rhys Williams was made manager of the shop where he worked. The district manager of the chain said to Rhys, ‘This is just the beginning, Williams. Work hard and one day you’ll be the superintendent of half a dozen stores.’
Rhys almost laughed aloud. To think that that could be the height of anyone’s ambition! Rhys had never stopped going to school. He was studying business administration and marketing and commercial law. He wanted more. His image in the mirror was at the top of the ladder; Rhys felt he was still at the bottom. His opportunity to move up came when a drug salesman walked in one day, watched Rhys charm several ladies into buying products they had no use for, and said, ‘You’re wasting your time here, lad. You should be working in a bigger pond.’
‘What did you have in mind?’ Rhys asked.
‘Let me talk to my boss about you.’
Two weeks later Rhys was working as a salesman at the small drug firm. He was one of fifty salesmen, but when Rhys looked in his special mirror, he knew that that was not true. His only competition was himself. He was getting closer to his image now, closer to the fictitious character he was creating. A man who was intelligent, cultured, sophisticated and charming. What he was trying to do was impossible. Everyone knew that one had to be born with those qualities; they could not be created. But Rhys did it. He became the image he had envisaged.
He travelled around the country, selling the firm’s products, talking and listening. He would return to London full of practical suggestions, and he quickly began to move up the ladder.
Three years after he had joined the company, Rhys was made general sales manager. Under his skilful guidance the company began to expand.
And four years later, Sam Roffe had come into his life. He had recognized the hunger in Rhys.
‘You’re like me,’ Sam Roffe had said. ‘We want to own the world. I’m going to show you how.’ And he had.
Sam Roffe had been a brilliant mentor. Over the next nine years under Sam Roffe’s tutelage Rhys Williams had become invaluable to the company. As time went on, he was given more and more responsibility, reorganizing various divisions, troubleshooting in whatever part of the world he was needed, coordinating the different branches of Roffe and Sons, creating new concepts. In the end Rhys knew more about running the company than anyone except Sam Roffe himself. Rhys Williams was the logical successor to the presidency. One morning, when Rhys and Sam Roffe were returning from Caracas in a company jet, a luxurious converted Boeing 707–320, one of a fleet of eight planes, Sam Roffe had complimented Rhys on a lucrative deal that he had concluded with the Venezuelan government.
‘There’ll be a fat bonus in this for you, Rhys.’
Rhys had replied quietly, ‘I don’t want a bonus, Sam. I’d prefer some stock and a place on your board of directors.’
He had earned it, and both men were aware of it. But Sam had said, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t change the rules, even for you. Roffe and Sons is a privately held company. No one outside the family can sit on the board or hold stock.’
Rhys had known that, of course. He attended all board meetings, but not as a member. He was an outsider. Sam Roffe was the last male in the Roffe bloodline. The other Roffes, Sam’s cousins, were females. The men they had married sat on the board of the company. Walther Gassner, who had married Anna Roffe; Ivo Palazzi, married to Simonetta Roffe; Charles Martel, married to Hélène Roffe. And Sir Alec Nichols, whose mother had been a Roffe.
So Rhys had been forced to make a decision. He knew that he deserved to be on the board, that one day he should be running the company. Present circumstances prevented it, but circumstances had a way of changing. Rhys had decided to stay, to wait and see what happened. Sam had taught him patience. And now Sam was dead.
The office lights blazed on again, and Hajib Kafir stood in the doorway. Kafir was the Turkish sales manager for Roffe and Sons. He was a short, swarthy man who wore diamonds and his fat belly like proud ornaments. He had the dishevelled air of a man who had dressed hastily. So Sophie had not found him in a nightclub. Ah, well, Rhys thought. A side-effect of Sam Roffe’s death. Coitus interruptus.
‘Rhys!’ Kafir was exclaiming. ‘My dear fellow, forgive me! I had no idea you were still in Istanbul! You were on your way to catch a plane, and I had some urgent business to –’
‘Sit down, Hajib. Listen carefully. I want you to send four cables in company code. They’re going to different countries. I want them hand-delivered by our own messengers. Do you understand?’
‘Of course,’ Kafir said, bewildered. ‘Perfectly.’
Rhys glanced at the thin, gold Baume & Mercier watch on his wrist. ‘The New City Post Office will be closed. Send the cables from Yeni Posthane Cad. I want them on their way within thirty minutes.’ He handed Kafir a copy of the cable he had written out. ‘Anyone who discusses this will be instantly discharged.’
Kafir glanced at the cable and his eyes widened. ‘My God!’ he said. ‘Oh, my God!’ He looked up at Rhys’s dark face. ‘How – how did this terrible thing happen?’
‘Sam Roffe died in an accident,’ Rhys said.
Now, for the first time, Rhys allowed his thoughts to go to what he had been pushing away from his consciousness, what he had been trying to avoid thinking about: Elizabeth Roffe, Sam’s daughter. She was twenty-four now. When Rhys had first met her she had been a fifteen-year-old girl with braces on her teeth, fiercely shy and overweight, a lonely rebel. Over the years Rhys had watched Elizabeth develop into a very special young woman, with her mother’s beauty and her father’s intelligence and spirit. She had become close to Sam. Rhys knew how deeply the news would affect her. He would have to tell her himself.
Two hours later, Rhys Williams was over the Mediterranean on a company jet, headed for New York.
Chapter Two (#ulink_2b134c42-5dc0-542c-89a3-915a6688ed87)
Berlin Monday, September 7 10 a.m.
Anna Roffe Gassner knew that she must not let herself scream again or Walther would return and kill her. She crouched in a corner of her bedroom, her body trembling uncontrollably, waiting for death. What had started out as a beautiful fairy-tale had ended in terror, unspeakable horror. It had taken her too long to face the truth: the man she had married was a homicidal maniac.
Anna Roffe had never loved anyone before she met Walther Gassner, including her mother, her father and herself. Anna had been a frail, sickly child who suffered from fainting spells. She could not remember a time when she had been free of hospitals, nurses, or specialists flown in from far-off places. Because her father was Anton Roffe, of Roffe and Sons, the top medical experts flew to Anna’s bedside in Berlin. But when they had examined her and tested her and finally departed, they knew no more than they had known before. They could not diagnose her condition.
Anna was unable to go to school like other children, and in time she had become withdrawn, creating a world of her own, full of dreams and fantasies, where no one else was allowed to enter. She painted her own pictures of life, because the colours of reality were too harsh for her to accept. When Anna was eighteen, her dizziness and fainting spells disappeared as mysteriously as they had started. But they had marred her life. At an age when most girls were getting engaged or married, Anna had never even been kissed by a boy. She insisted to herself that she did not mind. She was content to live her own dream life, apart from everything and everyone. In her middle twenties suitors came calling, for Anna Roffe was an heiress who bore one of the most prestigious names in the world, and many men were eager to share her fortune. She received proposals from a Swedish count, an Italian poet and half a dozen princes from indigent countries. Anna refused them all. On his daughter’s thirtieth birthday, Anton Roffe moaned, ‘I’m going to die without leaving any grandchildren.’
On her thirty-fifth birthday Anna had gone to Kitzhübel, in Austria, and there she had met Walther Gassner, a ski instructor thirteen years younger than herself.
The first time Anna had seen Walther the sight of him had literally taken her breath away. He was skiing down the Hahnenkamm, the steep racing slope, and it was the most beautiful sight Anna had ever seen. She had moved closer to the bottom of the ski run to get a better look at him. He was like a young god, and Anna had been satisfied to do nothing but watch him. He had caught her staring at him.
‘Aren’t you skiing, gnädiges Fräulein?’
She had shaken her head, not trusting her voice, and he had smiled and said, ‘Then let me buy you lunch.’
Anna had fled in a panic, like a schoolgirl. From then on, Walther Gassner had pursued her. Anna Roffe was not a fool. She was aware that she was neither pretty nor brilliant, that she was a plain woman, and that, aside from her name, she had seemingly very little to offer a man. But Anna knew that trapped within that ordinary façade was a beautiful, sensitive girl filled with love and poetry and music.
Perhaps because Anna was not beautiful, she had a deep reverence for beauty. She would go to the great museums and spend hours staring at the paintings and the statues. When she had seen Walther Gassner it was as though all the gods had come alive for her.
Anna was having breakfast on the terrace of the Tennerhof Hotel on the second day when Walther Gassner joined her. He did look like a young god. He had a regular, clean-cut profile, and his features were delicate, sensitive, strong. His face was deeply tanned and his teeth were white and even. He had blond hair and his eyes were a slate grey. Beneath his ski clothes Anna could see the movement of his biceps and thigh muscles, and she felt tremors going through her loins. She hid her hands in her lap so that he could not see the keratosis.
‘I looked for you on the slope yesterday afternoon,’ Walther said. Anna could not speak. ‘If you don’t ski, I’d like to teach you.’ He smiled, and added, ‘No charge.’
He had taken her to the Hausberg, the beginners’ slope, for her first lesson. It was immediately apparent to them both that Anna had no talent for skiing. She kept losing her balance and falling down, but she insisted on trying again and again because she was afraid that Walther would despise her if she failed. Instead, he had picked her up after her tenth fall and had said gently, ‘You were meant to do better things than this.’
‘What things?’ Anna had asked miserably.
‘I’ll tell you at dinner tonight.’
They had dined that evening and breakfasted the next morning, and then had lunch and dinner again. Walther neglected his clients. He skipped skiing lessons in order to go into the village with Anna. He took her to the casino in Der Goldene Greif, and they went sleigh-riding and shopping and hiking, and sat on the terrace of the hotel hour after hour, talking. For Anna, it was a time of magic.
Five days after they had met, Walther took her hands in his and said, ‘Anna, liebchen, I want to marry you.’
He had spoiled it. He had taken her out of her wonderful fairyland and brought her back to the cruel reality of who and what she was. An unattractive, thirty-five-year-old virginal prize for fortune-hunters.
She had tried to leave but Walther had stopped her. ‘We love each other, Anna. You can’t run away from that.’
She listened to him lying, listened to him saying, ‘I’ve never loved anyone before,’ and she made it easy for him because she wanted so desperately to believe him. She took him back to her room, and they sat there, talking, and as Walther told Anna the story of his life, she suddenly began to believe, thinking with wonder, It is really the story of my own life.
Like her, Walther had never had anyone to love. He had been alienated from the world by his birth as a bastard, as Anna had been alienated by her illness. Like her, Walther had been filled with the need to give love. He had been brought up in an orphanage, and when he was thirteen and his extraordinary good looks were already apparent, the women in the orphanage had begun to use him, bringing him to their rooms at night, taking him to bed with them, teaching him how to please them. As a reward the young boy was given extra food and pieces of meat, and desserts made with real sugar. He received everything but love.
When Walther was old enough to run away from the orphanage, he found that the world outside was no different. Women wanted to use his good looks, to wear him as a badge; but it never went any deeper than that. They gave him gifts of money and clothes and jewellery, but never of themselves.
Walther was her soul-mate, Anna realized, her doppelgänger. They were married in a quiet ceremony at the town hall.
Anna had expected her father to be overjoyed. Instead, he had flown into a rage. ‘You’re a silly, vain fool,’ Anton Roffe screamed at her. ‘You’ve married a no-good fortune-hunter. I’ve had him checked out. All his life he’s lived off women, but he’s never before found anyone stupid enough to marry him.’
‘Stop it!’ Anna cried. ‘You don’t understand him.’
But Anton Roffe knew that he understood Walther Gassner only too well. He asked his new son-in-law to come to his office.
Walther looked around approvingly at the dark panelling and the old paintings hanging on the walls. ‘I like this place,’ Walther said.
‘Yes, I’m sure it’s better than the orphanage.’
Walther looked up at him sharply, his eyes suddenly wary. ‘I beg your pardon?’
Anton said, ‘Let’s cut out the Scheiss. You’ve made a mistake. My daughter has no money.’
Walther’s grey eyes seemed to turn to stone. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’
‘I’m not trying to tell you anything. I’m telling you. You won’t get anything from Anna because she hasn’t got anything. If you had done your homework more thoroughly, you would have learned that Roffe and Sons is a close-held corporation. That means that none of its stock can be sold. We live comfortably, but that’s it. There is no big fortune to be milked here.’ He fumbled in his pocket, drew out an envelope and threw it on the desk in front of Walther. ‘This will reimburse you for your trouble. I will expect you to be out of Berlin by six o’clock. I don’t want Anna ever to hear from you again.’
Walther said quietly, ‘Did it ever cross your mind that I might have married Anna because I fell in love with her?’
‘No,’ Anton said acidly. ‘Did it ever cross yours?’
Walther looked at him a moment. ‘Let’s see what my market price is.’ He tore open the envelope and counted the money. He looked up at Anton Roffe again. ‘I value myself at much higher than twenty thousand marks.’
‘It’s all you’re getting. Count yourself lucky.’
‘I do,’ Walther said. ‘If you want to know the truth, I think I am very lucky. Thank you.’ He put the money in his pocket with a careless gesture and a moment later was walking out of the door.
Anton Roffe was relieved. He experienced a slight sense of guilt and distaste for what he had done and yet he knew it had been the only solution. Anna would be unhappy at being deserted by her groom, but it was better to have it happen now than later. He would try to see to it that she met some eligible men of her own age, who would at least respect her if not love her. Someone who would be interested in her and not her money or her name. Someone who would not be bought for twenty thousand marks.
When Anton Roffe arrived home, Anna ran up to greet him, tears in her eyes. He took her in his arms and hugged her, and said, ‘Anna, liebchen, it’s going to be all right. You’ll get over him –’
And Anton looked over her shoulder, and standing in the doorway was Walther Gassner. Anna was holding up her finger, saying, ‘Look what Walther bought me! Isn’t it the most beautiful ring you’ve ever seen? It cost twenty thousand marks.’
In the end, Anna’s parents were forced to accept Walther Gassner. As a wedding gift they bought them a lovely Schinkel manor-house in Wannsee, with French furniture mixed with antiques, comfortable couches and easy chairs, a Roentgen desk in the library, and bookcases lining the walls. The upstairs was furnished with elegant eighteenth-century pieces from Denmark and Sweden.
‘It’s too much,’ Walther told Anna. ‘I don’t want anything from them or from you. I want to be able to buy you beautiful things, liebchen.’ He gave her that boyish grin and said, ‘But I have no money.’
‘Of course you do,’ Anna replied. ‘Everything I have belongs to you.’
Walther smiled at her sweetly and said, ‘Does it?’
At Anna’s insistence – for Walther seemed reluctant to discuss money – she explained her financial situation to him. She had a trust fund that was enough for her to live on comfortably, but the bulk of her fortune was in shares of Roffe and Sons. The shares could not be sold without the unanimous approval of the board of directors.
Anna told him. Walther could not believe it. He made her repeat the sum.
‘And you can’t sell the stock?’
‘No. My cousin Sam won’t let it be sold. He holds the controlling shares. One day …’
Walther expressed an interest in working in the family business. Anton was against it.
‘What can a ski bum contribute to Roffe and Sons?’ he asked.
But in the end he gave in to his daughter, and Walther was given a job in administration with the company. He proved to be excellent at it and advanced rapidly. When Anna’s father died two years later, Walther Gassner was made a member of the board. Anna was so proud of him. He was the perfect husband and lover. He was always bringing her flowers and little gifts, and he seemed content to stay at home with her in the evening, just the two of them. Anna’s happiness was almost too much for her to bear. Ach, danke, lieber Gott, she would say silently.
Anna learned to cook, so that she could make Walther’s favourite dishes. She made choucroute, a bed of crunchy sauerkraut and creamy mashed potatoes heaped with a smoked pork chop, a frankfurter and a Nuremberg sausage. She prepared fillet of pork cooked in beer and flavoured with cumin, and served it with a fat baked apple, cored and peeled, the centre filled with airelles, the little red berries.
‘You’re the best cook in the world, liebchen,’ Walther would say, and Anna would blush with pride.
In the third year of their marriage, Anna became pregnant.
There was a great deal of pain during the first eight months of her pregnancy, but Anna bore that happily. It was something else that worried her.
It started one day after lunch. She had been knitting a sweater for Walther, day-dreaming, and suddenly she heard Walther’s voice, saying, ‘My God, Anna, what are you doing, sitting here in the dark?’
The afternoon had turned to dusk, and she looked down at the sweater in her lap and she had not touched it. Where had the day gone? Where had her mind been? After that, Anna had other similar experiences, and she began to wonder whether this sliding away into nothingness was a portent, an omen that she was going to die. She did not think she was afraid of death, but she could not bear the thought of leaving Walther.
Four weeks before the baby was due, Anna lapsed into one of her day-dreams, missed a step and fell down an entire flight of stairs.
She awakened in the hospital.
Walther was seated on the edge of the bed, holding her hand. ‘You gave me a terrible scare.’
In a sudden panic she thought, The baby! I can’t feel the baby. She reached down. Her stomach was flat. ‘Where is my baby?’
And Walther held her close and hugged her.
The doctor said, ‘You had twins, Mrs Gassner.’
Anna turned to Walther, and his eyes were filled with tears. ‘A boy and a girl, liebchen.’
And she could have died right then of happiness. She felt a sudden, irresistible longing to have them in her arms. She had to see them, feel them, hold them.
‘We’ll talk about that when you’re stronger,’ the doctor said. ‘Not until you’re stronger.’
They assured Anna that she was getting better every day, but she was becoming frightened. Something was happening to her that she did not understand. Walther would arrive and take her hand and say goodbye, and she would look at him in surprise and start to say, ‘But you just got here …’ And then she would see the clock, and three or four hours would have passed.
She had no idea where they had gone.
She had a vague recollection that they had brought the children to her in the night and that she had fallen asleep. She could not remember too clearly, and she was afraid to ask. It did not matter. She would have them to herself when Walther took her home.
The wonderful day finally arrived. Anna left the hospital room in a wheelchair, even though she insisted she was strong enough to walk. She actually felt very weak, but she was so excited that nothing mattered except the fact that she was going to see her babies. Walther carried her into the house, and he started to take her upstairs to their bedroom.
‘No, no!’ she said. ‘Take me to the nursery.’
‘You must rest now, darling. You’re not strong enough to –’
She did not listen to the rest of what he was saying. She slipped out of his arms and ran into the nursery.
The blinds were drawn and the room was dark and it took Anna’s eyes a moment to adjust. She was filled with such excitement that it made her dizzy. She was afraid she was going to faint.
Walther had come in behind her. He was talking to her, trying to explain something, but whatever it was was unimportant.
For there they were. They were both asleep in their cribs, and Anna moved towards them softly, so as not to disturb them, and stood there, staring down at them. They were the most beautiful children she had ever seen. Even now, she could see that the boy would have Walther’s handsome features and his thick blond hair. The girl was like an exquisite doll, with soft, golden hair and a small, triangular face.
Anna turned to Walther and said, her voice choked, ‘They’re beautiful. I – I’m so happy.’
‘Come, Anna,’ Walther whispered. He put his arms around Anna, and held her close, and there was a fierce hunger in him, and she began to feel a stirring within her. They had not made love for such a long time. Walther was right. There would be plenty of time for the children later.
The boy she named Peter and the girl Birgitta. They were two beautiful miracles that she and Walther had made, and Anna would spend hour after hour in the nursery, playing with them, talking to them. Even though they could not understand her yet she knew they could feel her love. Sometimes, in the middle of play, she would turn and Walther would be standing in the doorway, home from the office, and Anna would realize that somehow the whole day had slipped by.
‘Come and join us,’ she would say. ‘We’re playing a game.’
‘Have you fixed dinner yet?’ Walther would ask, and she would suddenly feel guilty. She would resolve to pay more attention to Walther, and less to the children, but the next day the same thing would happen. The twins were like an irresistible magnet that drew her to them. Anna still loved Walther very much, and she tried to assuage her guilt by telling herself that the children were a part of him. Every night, as soon as Walther was asleep, Anna would slip out of bed and creep into the nursery, and sit and stare at the children until dawn started filtering into the room. Then she would turn and hurry back to bed before Walther awoke.
Once, in the middle of the night, Walther walked into the nursery and caught her. ‘What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?’ he said.
‘Nothing, darling. I was just –’
‘Go back to bed!’
He had never spoken to her like that before.
At breakfast Walther said, ‘I think we should take a holiday. It will be good for us to get away.’
‘But Walther, the children are too young to travel.’
‘I’m talking about the two of us.’
She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t leave them.’
He took her hand and said, ‘I want you to forget about the children.’
‘Forget about the children?’ There was shock in her voice.
He looked into her eyes and said, ‘Anna, remember how wonderful it was between us before you were pregnant? What good times we had? How much joy it was to be together, just the two of us, with no one else around to interfere?’
It was then that she understood. Walther was jealous of the children.
The weeks and months passed swiftly. Walther never went near the children now. On their birthdays Anna bought them lovely presents. Walther always managed to be out of town on business. Anna could not go on deceiving herself for ever. The truth was that Walther had no interest in the children at all. Anna felt that perhaps it was her fault, because she was too interested in them. Obsessed was the word Walther had used. He had asked her to consult a doctor about it, and she had gone only to please Walther. But the doctor was a fool. The moment he had started talking to her, Anna had shut him out, letting her mind drift, until she heard him say, ‘Our time is up, Mrs Gassner. Will I see you next week?’
‘Of course.’
She never returned.
Anna felt that the problem was as much Walther’s as hers. If her fault lay in loving the children too much, then his fault lay in not loving them enough.
Anna learned not to mention the children in Walther’s presence, but she could hardly wait for him to leave for the office, so that she could hurry into the nursery to be with her babies. Except that they were no longer babies. They had had their third birthday, and already Anna could see what they would look like as adults. Peter was tall for his age and his body was strong and athletic like his father’s. Anna would hold him on her lap and croon, ‘Ah, Peter, what are you going to do to the poor fräuleins? Be gentle with them, my darling son. They won’t have a chance.’
And Peter would smile shyly and hug her.
Then Anna would turn to Birgitta. Birgitta grew prettier each day. She looked like neither Anna nor Walther. She had spun-gold hair and skin as delicate as porcelain. Peter had his father’s fiery temper and sometimes it would be necessary for Anna to spank him gently, but Birgitta had the disposition of an angel. When Walther was not around, Anna played records or read to them. Their favourite book was 101 Märchen. They would insist that Anna read them the tales of ogres and goblins and witches over and over again, and at night Anna would put them to bed, singing them a lullaby:
Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf,Der Vater hüt’t die Schaf …
Anna had prayed that time would soften Walther’s attitude, that he would change. He did change, but for the worse. He hated the children. In the beginning Anna had told herself that it was because Walther wanted all of her love for himself, that he was unwilling to share it with anyone else. But slowly she became aware that it had nothing to do with loving her. It had to do with hating her. Her father had been right. Walther had married her for her money. The children were a threat to him. He wanted to get rid of them. More and more he talked to Anna about selling the stock. ‘Sam has no right to stop us! We could take all that money and go away somewhere. Just the two of us.’
She stared at him. ‘What about the children?’
His eyes were feverish. ‘No. Listen to me. For both our sakes we’ve got to get rid of them. We must.’
It was then that Anna began to realize that he was insane. She was terrified. Walther had fired all the domestic help, and except for a cleaning woman who came in once a week, Anna and the children were alone with him, at his mercy. He needed help. Perhaps it was not too late to cure him. In the fifteenth century they gathered the insane and imprisoned them for ever on houseboats, Narrenschiffe, the ships of fools, but today, with modern medicine, she felt there must be something they could do to help Walther.
Now, on this day in September, Anna sat huddled on the floor in her bedroom, where Walther had locked her, waiting for him to return. She knew what she had to do. For his sake, as well as hers and the children’s. Anna rose unsteadily and walked over to the telephone. She hesitated for only an instant, then picked it up and began to dial 110, the police emergency number.
An alien voice in her ear said, ‘Hallo. Hier ist der Notruf der Polizei. Kann ich Ihnen helfen?’
‘Ja, bitte!’ Her voice was choked. ‘Ich –’
A hand came out of nowhere and tore the receiver from her, and slammed it down into the cradle.
Anna backed away. ‘Oh, please,’ she whimpered, ‘don’t hurt me.’
Walther was moving towards her, his eyes bright, his voice so soft that she could hardly make out the words. ‘Liebchen, I’m not going to hurt you. I love you, don’t you know that?’ He touched her, and she could feel her flesh crawl. ‘It’s just that we don’t want the police coming here, do we?’ She shook her head from side to side, too filled with terror to speak. ‘It’s the children that are causing the trouble, Anna. We’re going to get rid of them. I –’
Downstairs the front doorbell rang. Walther stood there, hesitating. It rang again.
‘Stay here,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll be back.’
Anna watched, petrified, as he walked out of the bedroom door. He slammed it behind him and she could hear the click of the key as he locked it.
I’ll be back, he had said.
Walther Gassner hurried down the stairs, walked to the front door and opened it. A man in a grey messenger’s uniform stood there, holding a sealed manila envelope.
‘I have a special delivery for Mr and Mrs Walther Gassner.’
‘Yes,’ Walther said. ‘I will take it.’
He closed the door, looked at the envelope in his hand, then ripped it open. Slowly, he read the message inside.
DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT SAM ROFFE WAS KILLED IN A CLIMBING ACCIDENT. PLEASE BE IN ZURICH FRIDAY NOON FOR AN EMERGENCY MEETING OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS.
It was signed ‘Rhys Williams’.
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Sidney Sheldon
One of Sidney Sheldon’s most popular and bestselling titles, now available as an ebook.The daughter of a rich and powerful father, Elizabeth Roffe is young, beautiful – and sole heir to a billion dollar fortune.Then tragedy strikes. Her father is killed in a freak accident and Elizabeth must take command of his mighty global empire, the pharmaceutical company Roffe and Sons. It makes Elizabeth the richest girl in the world. But someone, somewhere, is determined that she must die.From the backstreets of Istanbul to the upmarket offices of New York, Bloodline is a hypnotic tale of love and ambition, danger, intrigue and death.
SIDNEY SHELDON
BLOODLINE
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_538501ea-ace8-5423-bb87-285b6f18a4b6)
HarperFiction
An imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1978
Copyright © Sheldon Literary Trust 1978
Sidney Sheldon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Source ISBN: 9780006175018
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2012 ISBN 9780007380893
Version: 2014-12-10
DEDICATION (#ulink_2ebd9353-90fc-5dd2-99a5-ca1b6cc0e489)
For Natalie with love
EPIGRAPH (#ulink_433c0d71-b173-5f46-91b9-fcfa97753ed1)
The physician will carefullyprepare a mixture of crocodiledung, lizard flesh, bats’ bloodand camels’ spit …
from a papyrus listing
811 prescriptions used
by the Egyptians in
1550 BC
CONTENTS
Title Page (#u8667829e-53cf-5f94-89bb-9798f859aa43)
Copyright (#u39e208af-6083-505e-acc1-9fd5894c58e8)
Dedication (#ua7ea9b0b-ba62-5103-965d-118d7e8c49d4)
Epigraph (#u346e4904-95ec-53e8-ab87-d4c0c668812b)
PART ONE (#u03632ed8-fda7-58ca-a429-2227d5f36eeb)
CHAPTER ONE (#ua3d1d55e-3dec-56cc-8ca0-d9772367eda6)
CHAPTER TWO (#u4e2aa969-ca9f-56f6-ad49-e8dabb28af75)
CHAPTER THREE (#ub6577673-1e02-5b6c-938d-9cb553d215eb)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u4c68d2da-e167-5708-9ea2-05e6ed4f1e6c)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u83d70b86-3f64-55e2-a407-e7bd8ecb553a)
CHAPTER SIX (#u6b001765-4e0b-533e-92f7-482d6a6d7228)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u71ef9f99-8bfb-56af-ab3f-0f3ce22f7ed5)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#u8475a344-80c8-5fed-aa01-ac5a1c4198bb)
CHAPTER NINE (#u5b150115-3ddf-5bdc-8c09-51102f45abd0)
CHAPTER TEN (#u3d2a55ce-0cfb-5399-8b40-c9e1d96c43a2)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#u96c7b9a8-e8c2-538e-8f11-535a89102821)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#uc7e585f2-c176-56c0-98ce-c7a8d883b129)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#uc705681a-d0c4-573d-86b7-189f27b9f771)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#u18bcfe99-aeaa-59bb-86f3-1ae316570312)
PART TWO (#ucf7045fb-879a-583d-afd4-a38edef1a0a6)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#ub8ec2844-5591-5054-90da-2a9876a9bc94)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#u9ec7212b-3426-5da5-af16-0a6b1c7caa1c)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#u0483273b-0270-5a07-a6ec-cae535d0a09d)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#u107ab05b-9a94-57ed-becc-934dee337099)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#ub7c2e985-64e8-57f0-ba37-61648791152b)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#uf169ec2a-8851-5de6-af95-2b99f6a43230)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#u51fafd77-0537-55ce-9333-9e4ffa9aab13)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#ua11db0ff-ce10-5738-a2b0-06ef1920b584)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#ub5d9c9da-1f8e-517d-9268-d346066c3288)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#ue09c8ede-f09a-53c5-89a4-37f3e0fbf7d3)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#u88101674-ab52-541c-b64c-f1ee80d2cc5d)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#u6ccfc5e5-44ff-566f-a24d-bff5487f4b29)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#u84fb8f4a-c80c-5672-a24c-9962fd895b27)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#ub181937c-097e-57b5-abb7-876087b04860)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#u4add8165-6322-55cd-bcef-e9e33bbd057f)
CHAPTER THIRTY (#u10a28996-9a42-54d4-86d9-855e8962a60e)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#uecfa310d-d55d-568e-ba88-220b1f62ef35)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO (#u1d3ee5de-b185-5be7-9368-d66a6af2c5b2)
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE (#u02449957-15de-59b0-b398-0e41aca55cc5)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR (#uc392d15e-bee5-5097-a36d-e093698a0964)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE (#udf7f0df4-35b1-5bf4-8d75-c280b2e886cd)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX (#u29929a39-f3ad-590b-a1a8-3b3b77d8d39f)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN (#ua7192e3f-f194-5bd7-8408-c9c044873cb4)
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT (#u0f40cf1c-38c9-554c-b125-0323712f8263)
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE (#u4d53dea6-e20a-50a3-9efe-29af702d70dd)
CHAPTER FORTY (#u1557caa9-e10a-5aea-9296-534af856d5c4)
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE (#u5444e429-4fb4-534f-a610-9e4ab634f89a)
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO (#u65dd5c3f-f83f-5440-9183-77dff6fa83cb)
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE (#u2faefffa-7806-55ad-bf71-99c1793eda59)
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR (#uacfc4833-11d4-5ee8-8de4-1840e4edb07f)
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE (#u7d43788a-cd16-5d89-b64b-45cad6948c17)
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX (#u8298c0da-a357-57af-9985-c6d0944c11bd)
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN (#ud1cca6df-2731-5975-aa24-d4559856e4a8)
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT (#uf189fc45-749d-5ee7-bc84-6fc7af685a0f)
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE (#u03918a31-6922-5982-a05a-b86bb7a3df9b)
CHAPTER FIFTY (#u6f371f03-ced2-5094-abdc-1e4e37690874)
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE (#u87aa665b-3825-5aa5-8bb3-b7df275b6d8c)
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO (#u0e7f0878-2769-5529-887e-1f9826fd869f)
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE (#u7439565a-67b3-5666-a830-49a650d2df8a)
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR (#u650d0e14-baa4-54df-ba2c-592a3f23c257)
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE (#uaa73ad7d-e8f9-56c8-b141-a6e9ffc8a753)
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX (#u4894352e-58b7-563a-bbd6-f8db3b5db276)
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN (#u49770e46-6816-5361-9bd6-c4b57335d729)
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT (#u2d9252b6-9f7b-5b1e-899c-f1d81e6b406f)
Keep Reading (#u8b9bfe18-09dd-58dd-b367-4cb624bf4893)
Acknowledgements (#ue852b25a-62da-5e23-aabb-2c0e1b4fc08c)
About the Author (#u0e4256c2-d50c-57bf-8217-ad7bd90afd50)
Also By Sidney Sheldon (#u4be9b7c2-787d-5ecc-b66b-b8c4bffe4f01)
About the Publisher (#u30d108ab-c09d-5b20-88f8-62c4c97ef0bb)
PART ONE (#ulink_80f37b76-f1dc-5f0c-9421-950bfd29193b)
Chapter One (#ulink_9a48ffa3-d400-5a60-8fc2-75938bfbf5db)
Istanbul Saturday, September 5 10 p.m.
He was seated in the dark, alone, behind the desk of Hajib Kafir, staring unseeingly out of the dusty office window at the timeless minarets of Istanbul. He was a man who was at home in a dozen capitals of the world, but Istanbul was one of his favourites. Not the tourist Istanbul of Beyoglu Street, or the gaudy Lalezab Bar of the Hilton, but the out-of-the-way places that only the Moslems knew: the yalis, and the small markets beyond the souks, and the Telli Baba, the cemetery where only one person was buried, and the people came to pray to him.
His waiting had the patience of a hunter, the quiet stillness of a man in control of his body and his emotions. He was Welsh, with the dark, stormy good looks of his ancestors. He had black hair and a strong face, and quick intelligent eyes that were a deep blue. He was over six feet tall, with the lean, muscular body of a man who kept himself in good physical condition. The office was filled with the odours of Hajib Kafir, his sickly sweet tobacco, his acrid Turkish coffee, his fat, oily body. Rhys Williams was unaware of them. He was thinking about the telephone call he had received from Chamonix an hour earlier.
‘… A terrible accident! Believe me, Mr Williams, we are all devastated. It happened so quickly that there was no chance to save him. Mr Roffe was killed instantly …’
Sam Roffe, president of Roffe and Sons, the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world, a multi-billion-dollar dynasty that girdled the globe. It was impossible to think of Sam Roffe as being dead. He had always been so vital, so full of life and energy, a man on the move, living in aeroplanes that raced him to company factories and offices all over the world, where he solved problems others could not deal with, created new concepts, pushed everyone to do more, to do better. Even though he had married, and fathered a child, his only real interest had been the business. Sam Roffe had been a brilliant and extraordinary man. Who could replace him? Who was capable of running the enormous empire he had left? Sam Roffe had not chosen an heir apparent. But then he had not planned to die at fifty-two. He had thought there would be plenty of time.
And now his time had run out.
The lights in the office suddenly flashed on and Rhys Williams looked towards the doorway, momentarily blinded.
‘Mr Williams! I did not know anyone was here.’
It was Sophie, one of the company secretaries, who was assigned to Rhys Williams whenever he was in Istanbul. She was Turkish, in her middle twenties, with an attractive face and a lithe, sensuous body, rich with promise. She had let Rhys know in subtle, ancient ways that she was available to bring him whatever pleasures he wished, whenever he desired them, but Rhys was not interested.
Now she said, ‘I returned to finish some letters for Mr Kafir.’ She added softly, ‘Perhaps there is something I can do for you?’
As she moved closer to the desk, Rhys could sense the musky smell of a wild animal in season.
‘Where is Mr Kafir?’
Sophie shook her head regretfully. ‘He has left for the day.’ She smoothed the front of her dress with the palms of soft, clever hands. ‘Can I help you in some way?’ Her eyes were dark and moist.
‘Yes,’ Rhys said. ‘Find him.’
She frowned. ‘I have no idea where he could –’
‘Try the Kervansaray, or the Mermara.’ It would probably be the former, where one of Hajib Kafir’s mistresses worked as a belly dancer. Although you never knew with Kafir, Rhys thought. He might even be with his wife.
Sophie was apologetic. ‘I will try, but I am afraid I –’
‘Explain to him that if he’s not here in one hour, he no longer has a job.’
The expression on her face changed. ‘I will see what I can do, Mr Williams.’ She started towards the door.
‘Turn out the lights.’
Somehow, it was easier to sit in the dark with his thoughts. The image of Sam Roffe kept intruding. Mont Blanc should have been an easy climb at this time of the year, early September. Sam had tried the climb before, but storms had kept him from reaching the peak.
‘I’ll plant the company flag up there this time,’ he had promised Rhys, jokingly.
And then the telephone call a short while ago as Rhys was checking out of the Pera Palace. He could hear the agitated voice on the telephone. ‘… They were doing a traverse over a glacier … Mr Roffe lost his footing and his rope broke … He fell into a bottomless crevasse …’
Rhys could visualize Sam’s body smashing against the unforgiving ice, hurtling downward into the crevasse. He forced his mind away from the scene. That was the past. There was the present to worry about now. The members of Sam Roffe’s family had to be notified of his death, and they were scattered in various parts of the world. A press announcement had to be prepared. The news was going to travel through international financial circles like a shock wave. With the company in the midst of a financial crisis, it was vital that the impact of Sam Roffe’s death be minimized as much as possible. That would be Rhys’s job.
Rhys Williams had first met Sam Roffe nine years earlier. Rhys, then twenty-five, had been sales manager for a small drug firm. He was brilliant and innovative, and as the company had expanded, Rhys’s reputation had quickly spread. He was offered a job at Roffe and Sons and when he turned it down, Sam Roffe bought the company Rhys worked for and sent for him. Even now he could recall the overwhelming power of Sam Roffe’s presence at their first meeting.
‘You belong here at Roffe and Sons,’ Sam Roffe had informed him. ‘That’s why I bought that horse-and-buggy outfit you were with.’
Rhys had found himself flattered and irritated at the same time. ‘Suppose I don’t want to stay?’
Sam Roffe had smiled and said confidently, ‘You’ll want to stay. You and I have something in common, Rhys. We’re both ambitious. We want to own the world. I’m going to show you how.’
The words were magic, a promised feast for the fierce hunger that burned in the young man, for he knew something that Sam Roffe did not. There was no Rhys Williams. He was a myth that had been created out of desperation and poverty and despair.
He had been born near the coalfields of Gwent and Carmarthen, the red, scarred valleys of Wales where layers of sandstone and saucer-shaped beds of limestone and coal puckered the green earth. He grew up in a fabled land where the very names were poetry: Brecon and Pen-y-fan and Penderyn and Glyncorrwg and Maesteg. It was a land of legend, where the coal buried deep in the ground had been created 280 million years before, where the landscape was once covered with so many trees that a squirrel could travel from the Brecon Beacons to the sea without ever touching the ground. But the Industrial Revolution had come along and the beautiful green trees were chopped down by the charcoal-burners to feed the insatiable fires of the iron industry.
The young boy grew up with the heroes of another time and another world. Robert Farrer, burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Church because he would not take a vow of celibacy and abandon his wife; King Hywel the Good, who brought the law to Wales in the tenth century; the fierce warrior Brychen who sired twelve sons and twenty-four daughters and savagely put down all attacks on his kingdom. It was a land of glorious histories in which the lad had been raised. But it was not all glory. Rhys’s ancestors were miners, every one of them, and the young boy used to listen to the tales of hell that his father and his uncles recounted. They talked of the terrible times when there was no work, when the rich coalfields of Gwent and Carmarthen had been closed in a bitter fight between the companies and the miners, and the miners were debased by a poverty that eroded ambition and pride, that sapped a man’s spirit and strength and finally made him surrender.
When the mines were open, it was another kind of hell. Most of Rhys’s family had died in the mines. Some had perished in the bowels of the earth, others had coughed their blackened lungs away. Few had lived past the age of thirty.
Rhys used to listen to his father and his ageing young uncles discussing the past, the cave-ins and the cripplings and the strikes; talking of the good times and the bad, and to the young boy they seemed the same. All bad. The thought of spending his years in the darkness of the earth appalled Rhys. He knew he had to escape.
He ran away from home when he was twelve. He left the valleys of coal and went to the coast, to Sully Ranny Bay and Lavernock, where the rich tourists flocked, and the young boy fetched and carried and made himself useful, helping ladies down the steep cliffs to the beach, lugging heavy picnic baskets, driving a pony-cart at Penarth, and working at the amusement park at Whitmore Bay.
He was only a few hours away from home, but the distance could not be measured. The people here were from another world. Rhys Williams had never imagined such beautiful people or such glorious finery. Each woman looked like a queen to him and the men were all elegant and splendid. This was the world where he belonged, and there was nothing he would not do to make it his.
By the time Rhys Williams was fourteen, he had saved enough money to pay for his passage to London. He spent the first three days simply walking round the huge city, staring at everything, hungrily drinking in the incredible sights and the sounds and the smells.
His first job was as a delivery boy at a draper’s shop. There were two male clerks, superior beings both, and a female clerk, who made the young Welsh boy’s heart sing every time he looked at her. The men treated Rhys as he was meant to be treated, like dirt. He was a curiosity. He dressed peculiarly, had abominable manners and spoke with an incomprehensible accent. They could not even pronounce his name. They called him Rice, and Rye, and Rise. ‘It’s pronounced Reese,’ Rhys kept telling them.
The girl took pity on him. Her name was Gladys Simpkins and she shared a tiny flat in Tooting with three other girls. One day she allowed the young boy to walk her home after work and invited him in for a cup of tea. Young Rhys was overcome with nervousness. He had thought this was going to be his first sexual experience, but when he began to put his arm around Gladys, she stared at him a moment, then laughed. ‘I’m not giving none of that to you,’ she said. ‘But I’ll give you some advice. If you want to make somethin’ of yourself, get yourself some proper clothes and a bit of education and learn yourself some manners.’ She studied the thin, passionate young face and looked into Rhys’s deep blue eyes, and said softly, ‘You’re gonna be a bit of all right when you grow up.’
If you want to make somethin’ of yourself … That was the moment when the fictitious Rhys Williams was born. The real Rhys Williams was an uneducated, ignorant boy with no background, no breeding, no past, no future. But he had imagination, intelligence and a fiery ambition. It was enough. He started with the image of what he wanted to be, who he intended to be. When he looked in his mirror, he did not see the clumsy, grubby little boy with a funny accent; his mirror image was polished and suave and successful. Little by little, Rhys began to match himself to the image in his mind. He attended night school, and he spent his weekends in art galleries. He haunted public libraries and went to the theatre, sitting in the gallery studying the fine clothes of the men seated in the stalls. He scrimped on food, so that once a month he could go to a good restaurant, where he carefully copied the table manners of others. He observed and learned and remembered. He was like a sponge, erasing the past, soaking up the future.
In one short year Rhys had learned enough to realize that Gladys Simpkins, his princess, was a cheap Cockney girl who was already beneath his tastes. He quit the draper’s shop and went to work as a clerk at a chemist’s shop that was part of a large chain. He was almost sixteen now, but he looked older. He had filled out and was taller. Women were beginning to pay attention to his dark Welsh good looks and his quick, flattering tongue. He was an instant success in the shop. Female customers would wait until Rhys was available to take care of them. He dressed well and spoke correctly, and he knew he had come a long way from Gwent and Carmarthen, but when he looked in the mirror, he was still not satisfied. The journey he intended to make was still ahead of him.
Within two years Rhys Williams was made manager of the shop where he worked. The district manager of the chain said to Rhys, ‘This is just the beginning, Williams. Work hard and one day you’ll be the superintendent of half a dozen stores.’
Rhys almost laughed aloud. To think that that could be the height of anyone’s ambition! Rhys had never stopped going to school. He was studying business administration and marketing and commercial law. He wanted more. His image in the mirror was at the top of the ladder; Rhys felt he was still at the bottom. His opportunity to move up came when a drug salesman walked in one day, watched Rhys charm several ladies into buying products they had no use for, and said, ‘You’re wasting your time here, lad. You should be working in a bigger pond.’
‘What did you have in mind?’ Rhys asked.
‘Let me talk to my boss about you.’
Two weeks later Rhys was working as a salesman at the small drug firm. He was one of fifty salesmen, but when Rhys looked in his special mirror, he knew that that was not true. His only competition was himself. He was getting closer to his image now, closer to the fictitious character he was creating. A man who was intelligent, cultured, sophisticated and charming. What he was trying to do was impossible. Everyone knew that one had to be born with those qualities; they could not be created. But Rhys did it. He became the image he had envisaged.
He travelled around the country, selling the firm’s products, talking and listening. He would return to London full of practical suggestions, and he quickly began to move up the ladder.
Three years after he had joined the company, Rhys was made general sales manager. Under his skilful guidance the company began to expand.
And four years later, Sam Roffe had come into his life. He had recognized the hunger in Rhys.
‘You’re like me,’ Sam Roffe had said. ‘We want to own the world. I’m going to show you how.’ And he had.
Sam Roffe had been a brilliant mentor. Over the next nine years under Sam Roffe’s tutelage Rhys Williams had become invaluable to the company. As time went on, he was given more and more responsibility, reorganizing various divisions, troubleshooting in whatever part of the world he was needed, coordinating the different branches of Roffe and Sons, creating new concepts. In the end Rhys knew more about running the company than anyone except Sam Roffe himself. Rhys Williams was the logical successor to the presidency. One morning, when Rhys and Sam Roffe were returning from Caracas in a company jet, a luxurious converted Boeing 707–320, one of a fleet of eight planes, Sam Roffe had complimented Rhys on a lucrative deal that he had concluded with the Venezuelan government.
‘There’ll be a fat bonus in this for you, Rhys.’
Rhys had replied quietly, ‘I don’t want a bonus, Sam. I’d prefer some stock and a place on your board of directors.’
He had earned it, and both men were aware of it. But Sam had said, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t change the rules, even for you. Roffe and Sons is a privately held company. No one outside the family can sit on the board or hold stock.’
Rhys had known that, of course. He attended all board meetings, but not as a member. He was an outsider. Sam Roffe was the last male in the Roffe bloodline. The other Roffes, Sam’s cousins, were females. The men they had married sat on the board of the company. Walther Gassner, who had married Anna Roffe; Ivo Palazzi, married to Simonetta Roffe; Charles Martel, married to Hélène Roffe. And Sir Alec Nichols, whose mother had been a Roffe.
So Rhys had been forced to make a decision. He knew that he deserved to be on the board, that one day he should be running the company. Present circumstances prevented it, but circumstances had a way of changing. Rhys had decided to stay, to wait and see what happened. Sam had taught him patience. And now Sam was dead.
The office lights blazed on again, and Hajib Kafir stood in the doorway. Kafir was the Turkish sales manager for Roffe and Sons. He was a short, swarthy man who wore diamonds and his fat belly like proud ornaments. He had the dishevelled air of a man who had dressed hastily. So Sophie had not found him in a nightclub. Ah, well, Rhys thought. A side-effect of Sam Roffe’s death. Coitus interruptus.
‘Rhys!’ Kafir was exclaiming. ‘My dear fellow, forgive me! I had no idea you were still in Istanbul! You were on your way to catch a plane, and I had some urgent business to –’
‘Sit down, Hajib. Listen carefully. I want you to send four cables in company code. They’re going to different countries. I want them hand-delivered by our own messengers. Do you understand?’
‘Of course,’ Kafir said, bewildered. ‘Perfectly.’
Rhys glanced at the thin, gold Baume & Mercier watch on his wrist. ‘The New City Post Office will be closed. Send the cables from Yeni Posthane Cad. I want them on their way within thirty minutes.’ He handed Kafir a copy of the cable he had written out. ‘Anyone who discusses this will be instantly discharged.’
Kafir glanced at the cable and his eyes widened. ‘My God!’ he said. ‘Oh, my God!’ He looked up at Rhys’s dark face. ‘How – how did this terrible thing happen?’
‘Sam Roffe died in an accident,’ Rhys said.
Now, for the first time, Rhys allowed his thoughts to go to what he had been pushing away from his consciousness, what he had been trying to avoid thinking about: Elizabeth Roffe, Sam’s daughter. She was twenty-four now. When Rhys had first met her she had been a fifteen-year-old girl with braces on her teeth, fiercely shy and overweight, a lonely rebel. Over the years Rhys had watched Elizabeth develop into a very special young woman, with her mother’s beauty and her father’s intelligence and spirit. She had become close to Sam. Rhys knew how deeply the news would affect her. He would have to tell her himself.
Two hours later, Rhys Williams was over the Mediterranean on a company jet, headed for New York.
Chapter Two (#ulink_2b134c42-5dc0-542c-89a3-915a6688ed87)
Berlin Monday, September 7 10 a.m.
Anna Roffe Gassner knew that she must not let herself scream again or Walther would return and kill her. She crouched in a corner of her bedroom, her body trembling uncontrollably, waiting for death. What had started out as a beautiful fairy-tale had ended in terror, unspeakable horror. It had taken her too long to face the truth: the man she had married was a homicidal maniac.
Anna Roffe had never loved anyone before she met Walther Gassner, including her mother, her father and herself. Anna had been a frail, sickly child who suffered from fainting spells. She could not remember a time when she had been free of hospitals, nurses, or specialists flown in from far-off places. Because her father was Anton Roffe, of Roffe and Sons, the top medical experts flew to Anna’s bedside in Berlin. But when they had examined her and tested her and finally departed, they knew no more than they had known before. They could not diagnose her condition.
Anna was unable to go to school like other children, and in time she had become withdrawn, creating a world of her own, full of dreams and fantasies, where no one else was allowed to enter. She painted her own pictures of life, because the colours of reality were too harsh for her to accept. When Anna was eighteen, her dizziness and fainting spells disappeared as mysteriously as they had started. But they had marred her life. At an age when most girls were getting engaged or married, Anna had never even been kissed by a boy. She insisted to herself that she did not mind. She was content to live her own dream life, apart from everything and everyone. In her middle twenties suitors came calling, for Anna Roffe was an heiress who bore one of the most prestigious names in the world, and many men were eager to share her fortune. She received proposals from a Swedish count, an Italian poet and half a dozen princes from indigent countries. Anna refused them all. On his daughter’s thirtieth birthday, Anton Roffe moaned, ‘I’m going to die without leaving any grandchildren.’
On her thirty-fifth birthday Anna had gone to Kitzhübel, in Austria, and there she had met Walther Gassner, a ski instructor thirteen years younger than herself.
The first time Anna had seen Walther the sight of him had literally taken her breath away. He was skiing down the Hahnenkamm, the steep racing slope, and it was the most beautiful sight Anna had ever seen. She had moved closer to the bottom of the ski run to get a better look at him. He was like a young god, and Anna had been satisfied to do nothing but watch him. He had caught her staring at him.
‘Aren’t you skiing, gnädiges Fräulein?’
She had shaken her head, not trusting her voice, and he had smiled and said, ‘Then let me buy you lunch.’
Anna had fled in a panic, like a schoolgirl. From then on, Walther Gassner had pursued her. Anna Roffe was not a fool. She was aware that she was neither pretty nor brilliant, that she was a plain woman, and that, aside from her name, she had seemingly very little to offer a man. But Anna knew that trapped within that ordinary façade was a beautiful, sensitive girl filled with love and poetry and music.
Perhaps because Anna was not beautiful, she had a deep reverence for beauty. She would go to the great museums and spend hours staring at the paintings and the statues. When she had seen Walther Gassner it was as though all the gods had come alive for her.
Anna was having breakfast on the terrace of the Tennerhof Hotel on the second day when Walther Gassner joined her. He did look like a young god. He had a regular, clean-cut profile, and his features were delicate, sensitive, strong. His face was deeply tanned and his teeth were white and even. He had blond hair and his eyes were a slate grey. Beneath his ski clothes Anna could see the movement of his biceps and thigh muscles, and she felt tremors going through her loins. She hid her hands in her lap so that he could not see the keratosis.
‘I looked for you on the slope yesterday afternoon,’ Walther said. Anna could not speak. ‘If you don’t ski, I’d like to teach you.’ He smiled, and added, ‘No charge.’
He had taken her to the Hausberg, the beginners’ slope, for her first lesson. It was immediately apparent to them both that Anna had no talent for skiing. She kept losing her balance and falling down, but she insisted on trying again and again because she was afraid that Walther would despise her if she failed. Instead, he had picked her up after her tenth fall and had said gently, ‘You were meant to do better things than this.’
‘What things?’ Anna had asked miserably.
‘I’ll tell you at dinner tonight.’
They had dined that evening and breakfasted the next morning, and then had lunch and dinner again. Walther neglected his clients. He skipped skiing lessons in order to go into the village with Anna. He took her to the casino in Der Goldene Greif, and they went sleigh-riding and shopping and hiking, and sat on the terrace of the hotel hour after hour, talking. For Anna, it was a time of magic.
Five days after they had met, Walther took her hands in his and said, ‘Anna, liebchen, I want to marry you.’
He had spoiled it. He had taken her out of her wonderful fairyland and brought her back to the cruel reality of who and what she was. An unattractive, thirty-five-year-old virginal prize for fortune-hunters.
She had tried to leave but Walther had stopped her. ‘We love each other, Anna. You can’t run away from that.’
She listened to him lying, listened to him saying, ‘I’ve never loved anyone before,’ and she made it easy for him because she wanted so desperately to believe him. She took him back to her room, and they sat there, talking, and as Walther told Anna the story of his life, she suddenly began to believe, thinking with wonder, It is really the story of my own life.
Like her, Walther had never had anyone to love. He had been alienated from the world by his birth as a bastard, as Anna had been alienated by her illness. Like her, Walther had been filled with the need to give love. He had been brought up in an orphanage, and when he was thirteen and his extraordinary good looks were already apparent, the women in the orphanage had begun to use him, bringing him to their rooms at night, taking him to bed with them, teaching him how to please them. As a reward the young boy was given extra food and pieces of meat, and desserts made with real sugar. He received everything but love.
When Walther was old enough to run away from the orphanage, he found that the world outside was no different. Women wanted to use his good looks, to wear him as a badge; but it never went any deeper than that. They gave him gifts of money and clothes and jewellery, but never of themselves.
Walther was her soul-mate, Anna realized, her doppelgänger. They were married in a quiet ceremony at the town hall.
Anna had expected her father to be overjoyed. Instead, he had flown into a rage. ‘You’re a silly, vain fool,’ Anton Roffe screamed at her. ‘You’ve married a no-good fortune-hunter. I’ve had him checked out. All his life he’s lived off women, but he’s never before found anyone stupid enough to marry him.’
‘Stop it!’ Anna cried. ‘You don’t understand him.’
But Anton Roffe knew that he understood Walther Gassner only too well. He asked his new son-in-law to come to his office.
Walther looked around approvingly at the dark panelling and the old paintings hanging on the walls. ‘I like this place,’ Walther said.
‘Yes, I’m sure it’s better than the orphanage.’
Walther looked up at him sharply, his eyes suddenly wary. ‘I beg your pardon?’
Anton said, ‘Let’s cut out the Scheiss. You’ve made a mistake. My daughter has no money.’
Walther’s grey eyes seemed to turn to stone. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’
‘I’m not trying to tell you anything. I’m telling you. You won’t get anything from Anna because she hasn’t got anything. If you had done your homework more thoroughly, you would have learned that Roffe and Sons is a close-held corporation. That means that none of its stock can be sold. We live comfortably, but that’s it. There is no big fortune to be milked here.’ He fumbled in his pocket, drew out an envelope and threw it on the desk in front of Walther. ‘This will reimburse you for your trouble. I will expect you to be out of Berlin by six o’clock. I don’t want Anna ever to hear from you again.’
Walther said quietly, ‘Did it ever cross your mind that I might have married Anna because I fell in love with her?’
‘No,’ Anton said acidly. ‘Did it ever cross yours?’
Walther looked at him a moment. ‘Let’s see what my market price is.’ He tore open the envelope and counted the money. He looked up at Anton Roffe again. ‘I value myself at much higher than twenty thousand marks.’
‘It’s all you’re getting. Count yourself lucky.’
‘I do,’ Walther said. ‘If you want to know the truth, I think I am very lucky. Thank you.’ He put the money in his pocket with a careless gesture and a moment later was walking out of the door.
Anton Roffe was relieved. He experienced a slight sense of guilt and distaste for what he had done and yet he knew it had been the only solution. Anna would be unhappy at being deserted by her groom, but it was better to have it happen now than later. He would try to see to it that she met some eligible men of her own age, who would at least respect her if not love her. Someone who would be interested in her and not her money or her name. Someone who would not be bought for twenty thousand marks.
When Anton Roffe arrived home, Anna ran up to greet him, tears in her eyes. He took her in his arms and hugged her, and said, ‘Anna, liebchen, it’s going to be all right. You’ll get over him –’
And Anton looked over her shoulder, and standing in the doorway was Walther Gassner. Anna was holding up her finger, saying, ‘Look what Walther bought me! Isn’t it the most beautiful ring you’ve ever seen? It cost twenty thousand marks.’
In the end, Anna’s parents were forced to accept Walther Gassner. As a wedding gift they bought them a lovely Schinkel manor-house in Wannsee, with French furniture mixed with antiques, comfortable couches and easy chairs, a Roentgen desk in the library, and bookcases lining the walls. The upstairs was furnished with elegant eighteenth-century pieces from Denmark and Sweden.
‘It’s too much,’ Walther told Anna. ‘I don’t want anything from them or from you. I want to be able to buy you beautiful things, liebchen.’ He gave her that boyish grin and said, ‘But I have no money.’
‘Of course you do,’ Anna replied. ‘Everything I have belongs to you.’
Walther smiled at her sweetly and said, ‘Does it?’
At Anna’s insistence – for Walther seemed reluctant to discuss money – she explained her financial situation to him. She had a trust fund that was enough for her to live on comfortably, but the bulk of her fortune was in shares of Roffe and Sons. The shares could not be sold without the unanimous approval of the board of directors.
Anna told him. Walther could not believe it. He made her repeat the sum.
‘And you can’t sell the stock?’
‘No. My cousin Sam won’t let it be sold. He holds the controlling shares. One day …’
Walther expressed an interest in working in the family business. Anton was against it.
‘What can a ski bum contribute to Roffe and Sons?’ he asked.
But in the end he gave in to his daughter, and Walther was given a job in administration with the company. He proved to be excellent at it and advanced rapidly. When Anna’s father died two years later, Walther Gassner was made a member of the board. Anna was so proud of him. He was the perfect husband and lover. He was always bringing her flowers and little gifts, and he seemed content to stay at home with her in the evening, just the two of them. Anna’s happiness was almost too much for her to bear. Ach, danke, lieber Gott, she would say silently.
Anna learned to cook, so that she could make Walther’s favourite dishes. She made choucroute, a bed of crunchy sauerkraut and creamy mashed potatoes heaped with a smoked pork chop, a frankfurter and a Nuremberg sausage. She prepared fillet of pork cooked in beer and flavoured with cumin, and served it with a fat baked apple, cored and peeled, the centre filled with airelles, the little red berries.
‘You’re the best cook in the world, liebchen,’ Walther would say, and Anna would blush with pride.
In the third year of their marriage, Anna became pregnant.
There was a great deal of pain during the first eight months of her pregnancy, but Anna bore that happily. It was something else that worried her.
It started one day after lunch. She had been knitting a sweater for Walther, day-dreaming, and suddenly she heard Walther’s voice, saying, ‘My God, Anna, what are you doing, sitting here in the dark?’
The afternoon had turned to dusk, and she looked down at the sweater in her lap and she had not touched it. Where had the day gone? Where had her mind been? After that, Anna had other similar experiences, and she began to wonder whether this sliding away into nothingness was a portent, an omen that she was going to die. She did not think she was afraid of death, but she could not bear the thought of leaving Walther.
Four weeks before the baby was due, Anna lapsed into one of her day-dreams, missed a step and fell down an entire flight of stairs.
She awakened in the hospital.
Walther was seated on the edge of the bed, holding her hand. ‘You gave me a terrible scare.’
In a sudden panic she thought, The baby! I can’t feel the baby. She reached down. Her stomach was flat. ‘Where is my baby?’
And Walther held her close and hugged her.
The doctor said, ‘You had twins, Mrs Gassner.’
Anna turned to Walther, and his eyes were filled with tears. ‘A boy and a girl, liebchen.’
And she could have died right then of happiness. She felt a sudden, irresistible longing to have them in her arms. She had to see them, feel them, hold them.
‘We’ll talk about that when you’re stronger,’ the doctor said. ‘Not until you’re stronger.’
They assured Anna that she was getting better every day, but she was becoming frightened. Something was happening to her that she did not understand. Walther would arrive and take her hand and say goodbye, and she would look at him in surprise and start to say, ‘But you just got here …’ And then she would see the clock, and three or four hours would have passed.
She had no idea where they had gone.
She had a vague recollection that they had brought the children to her in the night and that she had fallen asleep. She could not remember too clearly, and she was afraid to ask. It did not matter. She would have them to herself when Walther took her home.
The wonderful day finally arrived. Anna left the hospital room in a wheelchair, even though she insisted she was strong enough to walk. She actually felt very weak, but she was so excited that nothing mattered except the fact that she was going to see her babies. Walther carried her into the house, and he started to take her upstairs to their bedroom.
‘No, no!’ she said. ‘Take me to the nursery.’
‘You must rest now, darling. You’re not strong enough to –’
She did not listen to the rest of what he was saying. She slipped out of his arms and ran into the nursery.
The blinds were drawn and the room was dark and it took Anna’s eyes a moment to adjust. She was filled with such excitement that it made her dizzy. She was afraid she was going to faint.
Walther had come in behind her. He was talking to her, trying to explain something, but whatever it was was unimportant.
For there they were. They were both asleep in their cribs, and Anna moved towards them softly, so as not to disturb them, and stood there, staring down at them. They were the most beautiful children she had ever seen. Even now, she could see that the boy would have Walther’s handsome features and his thick blond hair. The girl was like an exquisite doll, with soft, golden hair and a small, triangular face.
Anna turned to Walther and said, her voice choked, ‘They’re beautiful. I – I’m so happy.’
‘Come, Anna,’ Walther whispered. He put his arms around Anna, and held her close, and there was a fierce hunger in him, and she began to feel a stirring within her. They had not made love for such a long time. Walther was right. There would be plenty of time for the children later.
The boy she named Peter and the girl Birgitta. They were two beautiful miracles that she and Walther had made, and Anna would spend hour after hour in the nursery, playing with them, talking to them. Even though they could not understand her yet she knew they could feel her love. Sometimes, in the middle of play, she would turn and Walther would be standing in the doorway, home from the office, and Anna would realize that somehow the whole day had slipped by.
‘Come and join us,’ she would say. ‘We’re playing a game.’
‘Have you fixed dinner yet?’ Walther would ask, and she would suddenly feel guilty. She would resolve to pay more attention to Walther, and less to the children, but the next day the same thing would happen. The twins were like an irresistible magnet that drew her to them. Anna still loved Walther very much, and she tried to assuage her guilt by telling herself that the children were a part of him. Every night, as soon as Walther was asleep, Anna would slip out of bed and creep into the nursery, and sit and stare at the children until dawn started filtering into the room. Then she would turn and hurry back to bed before Walther awoke.
Once, in the middle of the night, Walther walked into the nursery and caught her. ‘What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?’ he said.
‘Nothing, darling. I was just –’
‘Go back to bed!’
He had never spoken to her like that before.
At breakfast Walther said, ‘I think we should take a holiday. It will be good for us to get away.’
‘But Walther, the children are too young to travel.’
‘I’m talking about the two of us.’
She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t leave them.’
He took her hand and said, ‘I want you to forget about the children.’
‘Forget about the children?’ There was shock in her voice.
He looked into her eyes and said, ‘Anna, remember how wonderful it was between us before you were pregnant? What good times we had? How much joy it was to be together, just the two of us, with no one else around to interfere?’
It was then that she understood. Walther was jealous of the children.
The weeks and months passed swiftly. Walther never went near the children now. On their birthdays Anna bought them lovely presents. Walther always managed to be out of town on business. Anna could not go on deceiving herself for ever. The truth was that Walther had no interest in the children at all. Anna felt that perhaps it was her fault, because she was too interested in them. Obsessed was the word Walther had used. He had asked her to consult a doctor about it, and she had gone only to please Walther. But the doctor was a fool. The moment he had started talking to her, Anna had shut him out, letting her mind drift, until she heard him say, ‘Our time is up, Mrs Gassner. Will I see you next week?’
‘Of course.’
She never returned.
Anna felt that the problem was as much Walther’s as hers. If her fault lay in loving the children too much, then his fault lay in not loving them enough.
Anna learned not to mention the children in Walther’s presence, but she could hardly wait for him to leave for the office, so that she could hurry into the nursery to be with her babies. Except that they were no longer babies. They had had their third birthday, and already Anna could see what they would look like as adults. Peter was tall for his age and his body was strong and athletic like his father’s. Anna would hold him on her lap and croon, ‘Ah, Peter, what are you going to do to the poor fräuleins? Be gentle with them, my darling son. They won’t have a chance.’
And Peter would smile shyly and hug her.
Then Anna would turn to Birgitta. Birgitta grew prettier each day. She looked like neither Anna nor Walther. She had spun-gold hair and skin as delicate as porcelain. Peter had his father’s fiery temper and sometimes it would be necessary for Anna to spank him gently, but Birgitta had the disposition of an angel. When Walther was not around, Anna played records or read to them. Their favourite book was 101 Märchen. They would insist that Anna read them the tales of ogres and goblins and witches over and over again, and at night Anna would put them to bed, singing them a lullaby:
Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf,Der Vater hüt’t die Schaf …
Anna had prayed that time would soften Walther’s attitude, that he would change. He did change, but for the worse. He hated the children. In the beginning Anna had told herself that it was because Walther wanted all of her love for himself, that he was unwilling to share it with anyone else. But slowly she became aware that it had nothing to do with loving her. It had to do with hating her. Her father had been right. Walther had married her for her money. The children were a threat to him. He wanted to get rid of them. More and more he talked to Anna about selling the stock. ‘Sam has no right to stop us! We could take all that money and go away somewhere. Just the two of us.’
She stared at him. ‘What about the children?’
His eyes were feverish. ‘No. Listen to me. For both our sakes we’ve got to get rid of them. We must.’
It was then that Anna began to realize that he was insane. She was terrified. Walther had fired all the domestic help, and except for a cleaning woman who came in once a week, Anna and the children were alone with him, at his mercy. He needed help. Perhaps it was not too late to cure him. In the fifteenth century they gathered the insane and imprisoned them for ever on houseboats, Narrenschiffe, the ships of fools, but today, with modern medicine, she felt there must be something they could do to help Walther.
Now, on this day in September, Anna sat huddled on the floor in her bedroom, where Walther had locked her, waiting for him to return. She knew what she had to do. For his sake, as well as hers and the children’s. Anna rose unsteadily and walked over to the telephone. She hesitated for only an instant, then picked it up and began to dial 110, the police emergency number.
An alien voice in her ear said, ‘Hallo. Hier ist der Notruf der Polizei. Kann ich Ihnen helfen?’
‘Ja, bitte!’ Her voice was choked. ‘Ich –’
A hand came out of nowhere and tore the receiver from her, and slammed it down into the cradle.
Anna backed away. ‘Oh, please,’ she whimpered, ‘don’t hurt me.’
Walther was moving towards her, his eyes bright, his voice so soft that she could hardly make out the words. ‘Liebchen, I’m not going to hurt you. I love you, don’t you know that?’ He touched her, and she could feel her flesh crawl. ‘It’s just that we don’t want the police coming here, do we?’ She shook her head from side to side, too filled with terror to speak. ‘It’s the children that are causing the trouble, Anna. We’re going to get rid of them. I –’
Downstairs the front doorbell rang. Walther stood there, hesitating. It rang again.
‘Stay here,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll be back.’
Anna watched, petrified, as he walked out of the bedroom door. He slammed it behind him and she could hear the click of the key as he locked it.
I’ll be back, he had said.
Walther Gassner hurried down the stairs, walked to the front door and opened it. A man in a grey messenger’s uniform stood there, holding a sealed manila envelope.
‘I have a special delivery for Mr and Mrs Walther Gassner.’
‘Yes,’ Walther said. ‘I will take it.’
He closed the door, looked at the envelope in his hand, then ripped it open. Slowly, he read the message inside.
DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT SAM ROFFE WAS KILLED IN A CLIMBING ACCIDENT. PLEASE BE IN ZURICH FRIDAY NOON FOR AN EMERGENCY MEETING OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS.
It was signed ‘Rhys Williams’.
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Сидни Шелдон
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Триллеры
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: One of Sidney Sheldon’s most popular and bestselling titles, now available as an ebook.The daughter of a rich and powerful father, Elizabeth Roffe is young, beautiful – and sole heir to a billion dollar fortune.Then tragedy strikes. Her father is killed in a freak accident and Elizabeth must take command of his mighty global empire, the pharmaceutical company Roffe and Sons. It makes Elizabeth the richest girl in the world. But someone, somewhere, is determined that she must die.From the backstreets of Istanbul to the upmarket offices of New York, Bloodline is a hypnotic tale of love and ambition, danger, intrigue and death.