“Oh God, yes,” he groaned.
“Then take a good long look and remember what you see. Because now you see me and now” – she picked up the final scarf and whipped it around the banker’s head, covering his eyes – “you don’t. You’re helpless now, at my mercy. So I ask myself, what am I going to do?”
She placed her forefinger against his lips, teasing him as he desperately tried to suck it. Then she lay flat on top of him and started wriggling downward, down and down until her head was directly above his underpants.
“Mmmm, what have we here?” she said.
She raised herself up onto her haunches again and started to pull the underpants down from his waist.
“Please, please!” he moaned, trying to lift his ass off the bed to make the job easier.
Alix bent forward over Leclerc, lower and lower, till her head was only millimeters above him and…
“Thank you, Miss St. Clair, that will be all,” a harsh, guttural Afrikaans voice said.
Alix climbed off the bed and glared furiously at Carver. “You took your time!” she mouthed at him.
“I’m sorry,” he mouthed back, holding his hands out, palms down in the universal gesture of contrition.
“Who are you? What’s happening?” squealed Leclerc, writhing on the bed.
Carver slapped him once, very hard, on the side of the face.
“Shut up, Mr. Leclerc,” Carver snapped. “If you value your life and your reputation, shut up and listen. Here, let me help you.”
Carver pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and shoved it in the other man’s mouth, gagging him. He took the belt from the trousers lying on the floor and tied it tight around Leclerc’s ankles, rendering him entirely helpless.
“My name is Dirk Vandervart. I am about to ask you a series of simple questions, and you are going to give me honest answers. There are two reasons why you are going to do this. The first is that we have been following your evening with Miss St. Clair. In fact, we have recorded all the most interesting moments on tape. I don’t think your wife would like to hear all the things you said about her, do you? Particularly when she watches you seducing a young woman and letting her tie you to her bed. Wouldn’t reflect well on you, your marriage, or your bank, eh? Right, then, refuse to talk, attempt to mislead us, or reveal anything of what happened in this room this evening, and those tapes will be made very, very public.
“The other reason why you will talk is simple: I will cause you very great pain if you do not. Please be in no doubt about this, Mr. Leclerc. For example…”
Carver took hold of Leclerc’s left hand and started bending back the little finger. Leclerc shook his head from side to side.
“Hurts, doesn’t it? If I keep going, just a little bit more, the bone will snap like a twig. Then the finger will swell like a sausage grilling on a braai. Ach, man, let me tell you, that hurts so much, you’ll wish I’d just cut it right off.”
Leclerc’s whole body was jerking now as if jolted by electric shocks. Carver appeared not to notice and just kept talking.
“And once I’ve done one finger, I’ll do all the rest as well. And your toes. And you don’t even want to think about the rest of your body. So, would you like to talk?”
Leclerc nodded frantically.
“Very sensible decision. Here, let’s make you a little bit more comfortable. Perhaps you could help me, Miss St. Clair?”
Together, they dragged Leclerc up so that his back was resting against the headboard. Alix leaned forward and murmured in his ear. “I’m sorry, Magnus. Just tell Mr. Vandervart exactly what he wants, and you can go home to Marthe. You love her really, don’t you, Magnus?”
Another desperate nod.
“Okay, then.” Alix pulled the gag from his mouth.
Carver spoke, still in character. “I want to know about one of the accounts you control. It’s number 4443717168.”
“But I control hundreds of accounts. How can I remember them all?” Leclerc’s blindfolded head turned from side to side in supplication.
“You’ll remember this one. On Saturday morning, you acknowledged receipt of 1.5 million U.S. dollars into the account and sent a fax to that effect to the account holder. But by Sunday afternoon, you’d made the money disappear. How did you do that? And who gave you the orders? Because I don’t think you’d steal all that money for yourself…”
“No! No!”
“So what happened?”
“I can’t tell you. I can’t! They’d kill me!” His voice was high-pitched, begging for an understanding he knew he would never receive.
“Who are ‘they,’ Magnus?”
“I can’t tell you!”
“Because they’d kill you.”
“Yes!”
“What makes you think that I won’t kill you first? Open your mouth.”
Carver reached around to the small of his back and pulled his SIG-Sauer from the waistband. He jammed the silencer between Leclerc’s teeth.
“Can you guess what that is? Correct, it’s a nine millimeter pistol. Believe me, I won’t hesitate to pull the trigger. It’s what I do. But I can do something else too. I can keep secrets. And no one will ever know anything about this evening, ever, if you just tell me what happened to that account.”
“Nothing happened.”
Carver slapped Leclerc a second time. “I thought we had an understanding here.”
Leclerc moaned. “No, really, nothing happened. No money ever went into that account. None came out. The receipt for the deposit was a fake.”
“So who gave the orders for it to be issued?”
“I can’t tell you… I can’t!”
Carver sighed. He stuffed the gag back into Leclerc’s mouth, then picked up his hand again. “This little piggy went to market,” he said, giving the index finger a sudden, sharp tug. He moved along the hand. “This little piggy stayed at home. This little piggy had roast beef. And this little piggy…”
There was a muffled howl behind the handkerchief. Carver held Leclerc’s little finger for a few seconds longer, forcing it back, letting the pain intensify, then took out the handkerchief.
“Did you want to say something? Or do you want me to prove how serious I am?”
“No, please, I beg you…”
“Then tell me. The orders – where did they come from?”
“From Malgrave and Company. That’s a bank in London.”
“Who sent them? I need a name.”
“I do not know, but I think they must have come from the very top, from someone with great influence. It could not have happened unless my own company’s president had agreed.”
“So, who runs Malgrave and Company? Who’s the boss?”
Leclerc attempted a pained smile. “You don’t need me to tell you that. It’s a family company. The current chairman is Lord Crispin Malgrave.”
“Thank you, Mr. Leclerc. You’ve been very helpful. You’ll be out of here in a moment. Tomorrow morning you will receive an e-mail. Photographs will be attached to it – stills from our videotapes. I hope they will serve as reminders to you to keep quiet. I would not wish any further unpleasantness.
“Now, Miss St. Clair, perhaps you would be so good as to get dressed again and help me tidy up this room.”
Carver turned toward the pack of cigarettes, with its hidden camera, and delivered a message to Thor Larsson, watching the monitor in the other suite.
“You can pack up and get out of there too.”
49
Alix stood in the shower trying to scrub away the memory of Leclerc’s hands on her body. The hotel provided two plastic bottles of mint-flavored mouthwash. She used them both. They had not even kissed, let alone had sex, but still she felt defiled. By the time she walked back into the bedroom, Carver was silently packing away the video gear. Leclerc was sitting on the side of the bed, slumped and deflated.
Alix collected her own possessions, then helped Carver as he untied and dressed Leclerc, though the blindfold stayed on. The banker was led out into the corridor, down the emergency staircase, and out through a door at the rear of the building. Thor Larsson was waiting to greet them in his battered Volvo.