Hostage Tower by John Denis Read Free Book Online

scintillating night. She distanced herself by about three yards from two quite beautiful young men, scions of top Roman families, close friends both of each other and of Sabrina, who were trying to settle a tactful argument as to which of them should go home with her.
    The discussion did not interest Sabrina. She would have been tolerably happy with either, or neither.
    Guilio and Roberto had reached a temporary accomodation, based on an apportionment of past rewards for Sabrina’s favours, and future opportunities, when the parking attendant pulled up in Sabrina’s Alfa Romeo. A portly, excitable little man with a waxed moustache and a too-large, braided cap, the attendant jumped out, held the door open for Sabrina, and bowed low over her generous tip. That way, he could also peer into her generous cleavage without seeming forward.
    She settled herself into the driving seat, and the attendant leaned in again, adopting the sort of confidential air at which Italian operatic tenors excel. He handed her a small, plain box, tied with pretty white ribbons.
    â€˜Someone left this for you, Signorina Carver,’ he whispered through an effluvium of garlic.
    â€˜Who?’
    He shrugged extravagantly, using most of his upper body and the ends of his moustache.
    â€˜Thank you,’ she said, and made with the lire again. The attendant decided not to push his luck with the décolletage, and backed away obsequiously. As Sabrina pulled apart the ribbons, the entente of Guilio and Roberto fractured, and they decided to settle the matter like gentlemen with the toss of a coin.
    Signorina Carver’s educated fingers coped busily with the wrapping. The attendant sighed, dramatically. ‘Bella, bellissima,’ he murmured; and withgood reason. She was classically, breath-catchingly lovely, with a cascade of hair shaded now to russet-brown, falling on her bare shoulders, framing a face that had more than once peered wistfully out from the front covers of
Vogue
and
Woman’s World
. Gone was the saintliness of childhood, but not to give way to artfulness or knowingness. Her brow was deep, her eyes wide-spaced and round, her nose and mouth in exquisite proportion, her chin cheekily dimpled.
    How such a flower of Grecian beauty could ever have been the product of that dour, grain-encrusted Middle Western state of Iowa had baffled Fort Dodge. Sabrina had agreed, and settled the matter by leaving. Now her voice, like her face and body, was international, and she kept nothing of her childhood but her name, and her high regard for the stones which, as she could abundantly testify, were indeed a girl’s best friend.
    Inside the box, in a bed of cotton wool and wrapped in tissue paper, were five one thousand US dollar bills, and a first-class airline ticket to Paris. The flight was in three days’ time. There was no explanatory note.
    She stared at the money and the ticket, blinked, and then grinned as she noticed in the top left-hand corner of the ticket cover, the scrawled initials ‘L. van B’.
    A coin was duly borrowed from the parking attendant, and flipped by Roberto, as Sabrina throttled warningly and released the hand-brake. Giulioshouted ‘Ciao’ while the coin was still in the air, hurdled over the back of the growling little car, and landed in the seat next to Sabrina. The Alfa screamed away and Giulio fastened his safety belt. He had never before ridden with Sabrina, but he was aware she had a reputation for a certain nonchalance at the wheel.
    Upper Madison Avenue, New York City, like Fifth Avenue, is stacked with discreet, bijou little shops and boutiques catering for expensive and often esoteric tastes. There is also a sprinkling of way-out art galleries on Madison, to take advantage of the carriage trade’s lust for artifacts that no-one else possessed, nor indeed would wish to. ‘PRIMITIVES INC.’, which the elegant and faultlessly dressed black man with the pencil-thin