Prologue
June 23, 9:53 p.m.
Somewhere in the Pyrenees Mountains
Kidnapped!
Maggie Lawton offered sincere apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson as she assessed her situation. She watched with a weird sort of disassociation as the leader of the Basque separatists who’d ambushed her party of six on a hiking trail in the Parc National des Pyrenees spoke to his small army of men gathered around the campfire. They all wore the red boina or beret that was a political statement and a badge of pride for the movement.
To distract herself from the nighttime chill, she remembered that she’d played a kidnapped Arabian princess years ago in her one and only foray into musicals. It had run just fourteen months, and she’d been glad when it was over. Her costume had been skimpy and the theater cold.
She tried to remember the lyrics of the number she sang when captured by Bedouins and held for ransom. It had been jaunty and heroic and she’d sung it loudly and with broad gestures, hoping her enthusiasm would disguise the fact that she had a poor voice.
“Why, for God’s sake, are you humming?” Baldrich Livingston, her costar in several long runs at London’s Old Vic, and the grumpiest man in Europe, glowered at her in the light of the campfire. “There’s no audience beyond the lights, dear heart, and no intermission in fifteen minutes! This is real! Our pal le compte has gotten us into it this time!”
Gerard Armand, Compte de Bastogne, leaned around Glen and Priscilla Thicke to defend himself. Maggie and her companions sat side by side on the cold ground, their wrists tied behind their backs. “Oh, certainement! Blame me! Celine and I had plans to go to Monte Carlo for the weekend, but the four of you barge into my villa uninvited!”
Glen, who was Maggie’s agent, a practical man in his early fifties, took exception to that. “It was your birthday, Jerry. We came to surprise you and help you celebrate.”
“You came,” he returned, “because my servants spoil you and you are able to bask in my reflected glory. You theater people have wealth but no style, unless you borrow it from your royal friends!”
Baldy rolled his eyes. “Please don’t say bask.”
“Yes,” Prissie added while adjusting the sleeves of her chic little hiking jacket. “And you know very well you could not have taken your chère aimée to Monte Carlo, Jerry. She may be old enough for your bed, but I’m sure she’s far too young to gamble.” That observation made, Prissie turned her attention to the Basque leader. “Monsieur! Monsieur! May we have water, please? We have been sitting here in the cold for hours! I’d like something sparkling, not still.”
Baldy rolled his eyes again and even Glen said under his breath, “Priss, shut up.”
She bristled indignantly. “Why? If they want to hold us for ransom or to make some political point, that’s fine. I’m sure the publicity won’t hurt. But I don’t intend to die of thirst or starvation while we wait for rescue.”
“Do you know nothing?” Gerard demanded. “These people are not playing! They are terrorists! Murderers! They would kill us in a heartbeat if—”
“Monsieur le Compte!” The leader of their kidnappers, a muscular man of average height and considerable presence, paced in front of them, an Uzi hooked over his shoulder. He was handsome, but there was a zealot’s fever in his eyes.
Maggie felt a chill trickle down her spine as his gaze touched each one of her companions, rested on her a moment, then focused on Gerard. “You malign me,” he said in an amiable tone that was eerie for all its gentleness. “I fight for my people, though my French Basque brothers are more passive and peaceful than our cousins in Spain, whom I prefer to emulate. We are descendants of the original Iberians and have lived here since before the Celts arrived thirty-five hundred years ago, yet every civilization to live here has preferred to pretend we do not exist. They’ve pushed us higher and higher into the mountains. I am not a murderer, monsieur. I’m simply trying to find a place for my people.”
“What do you think we can do for you?” Baldy asked in a voice slightly thinner than his usually commanding center-stage tones.
The man smiled and took several steps to stand in front of Maggie. “Your designer clothes highlight rather than disguise who you are. Maggie Lawton, American-born star of the British stage. Baldrich Livingston, son of a Liverpool dockworker, former star of London Weekend Television and now Miss Lawton’s leading man. Glen and Priscilla Thicke, powerful theatrical agent and his Long Island society wife, and le compte de Bastogne, toast of every social affair in Europe, and his lover, the daughter of French businessman Etien Langlois and his fashion designer wife, Chantal.”
He paced a little and drew a deep breath.
“I believe the London Mail calls you The Wild Bon Vivants because of your penchant for parties.”
“One is here,” Prissie said, “to have a good time.”
The leader nodded. “Here I have had it all wrong,” he said, as though her words were a revelation. “I thought we were here to ease the plight of our fellow man.”
“And yet your actions,” Maggie said, “have increased our plight.”
“It will be over soon, madame,” he said genially. “I have just spoken to your State Department. Either your ransom will bring us a small fortune with which to continue our work, or your deaths will make a strong statement about our dedication to our cause.”
Prissie gasped, and Celine began to sob. The men subsided in the face of the grim truth Maggie suspected but hadn’t been anxious to say aloud.
The leader raised an eyebrow at Maggie’s continued calm.
“You doubt my commitment, Mrs. Lawton?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I do not,” she replied, thinking how liberating it was to have no fear of death. For two years she’d carried the burden of having to go on living. But now her fearlessness might finally stand her in good stead. “Early in my career I was in a film about Miguel Angel Blanco.” He’d been a Basque politician murdered by ETA, a radical group dedicated to securing a united Basque state.
He nodded. “Basta Ya. I saw it.” He studied her with sudden intensity. “Was that beautiful blond girl you?”
She had to smile at his sincere surprise. Apparently, the past two years had not been kind to her. “You are no gentleman, sir. That was more than twenty years ago, and my makeup man was not along on this hike.”
A subtle change took place in his expression, and he sat down on a flat rock opposite her. “Yes,” he said slowly. “You have had a tragedy. I seem to remember the headlines. Something to do with a rail accident just outside of Paddington Station.”
The need to curl into the fetal position tried to take control of her. She fought it.
He nodded, as though he suddenly remembered. “My mother,” he said with a curiously gentle smile, “thinks