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Back The Double Save as PDF
Chapters (63)
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  63. Acknowledgements

Vidor felt a stab of joy, now that the tables were turned. ‘The letters I mentioned. The return of my passport, five hundred francs in cash and two plane tickets to London. I will be taking Hélène with me as insurance. After the plane lands in London, she’ll be released unharmed.’

As he listed his demands, the plan seemed clumsy and full of holes. At any time between the clinic’s front gate and Heathrow, the police could swoop in. Though perhaps not. Gessen wouldn’t want to put Hélène at risk. Vidor was harmless as a lamb, but if Gessen wanted to believe he was a murderous thug, let him go on thinking it. It would be an advantage in getting home.

‘All right, Vidor.’ Gessen’s heavy sigh was audible. ‘Though it’s against my better judgement, I’ll do as you ask. The important thing here is that Hélène comes to no harm.’

‘You have thirty minutes.’ Vidor hung up the phone.

Hélène turned her face towards him. ‘Vidor.’ Her eyes were the colour of an autumn meadow. An attractive woman even now, she must have been exceptionally beautiful in her youth. No wonder she’d been prey to fortune hunters and blackguards. Anger at the man who’d caused her so much suffering burned in his throat. Yet here he was, making things worse. Surely, she knew that, whatever happened, he wouldn’t hurt her. He wasn’t a monster. Vidor Kiraly, OBE, Cambridge don and prize-winning scientist, was not responsible for the murders of two people. It was outrageous to even think it.

Hélène lowered herself onto the sofa. She seemed calm enough, but when she lifted the teapot to fill her cup, her hand shook. ‘What happens now?’

A spasm of fear squeezed his heart. Hélène’s eyes were veiled. Could she see into his future? The roiling wave of disasters looming before him, one after another until the grave. He had a strange desire to clasp her knees and rest his head in her lap.

‘Now, we wait.’

57

Hidden in a copse of pines, Gessen trained a pair of high-powered binoculars on Hélène’s home. All was quiet. In defiance of Vidor’s instructions, he had not come alone. Three seasoned members of his security team, dressed as maintenance staff, were staked out at key locations around the chalet.

He mounted the steps and pressed the bell. When no one answered, he tried again. Had they already left the property? His phone vibrated. Hélène. When she spoke, her voice was strained.

‘He says you’re to place the letter, travel documents, and passport on the mat by the door and then back away thirty metres.’

‘Hélène, you’re all right? He hasn’t harmed you?’

‘I’m all right. A little nervous, though.’