She loathed him, she told herself. She did not care one jot how the man reacted. She had nothing to prove to him; she was her own arbiter, proving her worth and her ability to no one but herself.

Without further hesitation she called the front desk and told them to book her on the next flight to Paris. There was one in forty-five minutes. If she hurried, she could catch it. This hotel, part of a large group, also had a branch in Paris. “Fax through a reservation for me, will you?” Gini said. But there she met her first hitch. Unfortunately, that would not be possible, the clerk explained. They had already had this problem earlier: not only their sister hotel, but every other major hotel in Paris was fully booked.

“You see,” said the clerk, “it’s the collections. They start tomorrow, and of course—”

“Forget it,” Gini said. “I’ll fix it myself.”

She dialed the St. Vincent hotel in Paris, where she knew Lindsay and her staff would be occupying several rooms and suites for the duration of the collections. She could not get Lindsay, who was out. After being transferred from phone to phone, and at the point when she was about to hang up, she finally reached Lindsay’s assistant, Pixie: Pixie, who was usually so ebullient and efficient, but who now sounded frantic, inattentive, and distressed. Gini could hear telephones ringing in the background; the noise of people and conversations and running feet. She began to explain her predicament, then stopped.

She realized Pixie was crying.

“I’ll try,” Pixie was saying. “I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise. Hang on—I’m coming. I’m sorry, Gini—Max is on the other line. I’m trying to find Lindsay; she’s out with Markov, and she doesn’t even know yet. It only just came through on the wires. It’s pandemonium here. I don’t know why I’m reacting this way. After all, I never knew her. But I felt as if I did, and—”

“What’s happened, Pixie?”

“You mean you don’t know? I thought that must be why you were calling—”

“What’s happened?”

“It’s Maria Cazarès. She’s dead.”

Chapter 13

GINI RACED FOR THE airport. She caught her plane with five minutes to spare, and it was not until it was airborne that she had time to think. Pixie had known no further details, not how Cazarès died, or where, just that she was dead, had died earlier that day and that it was natural causes—or that seemed to be the case.

“I’ll do my best about the room,” she had finished, “but you can imagine, Gini, right?”

Gini could imagine only too well. She could imagine what might or might not have caused this sudden death; she could imagine the immediate consequences. A second circus would be coming to town. From America, from Britain, from all over Europe: when legends die, the jackals move in.

Her flight left on time; every ten minutes Gini checked her watch. Half an hour to landing, twenty minutes to landing. She had only hand luggage. With luck, she could be in a taxi and at the St. Vincent within thirty minutes of clearing customs.