be landing in Athens in three minutes, and the excitement of the anticipation of seeing
Noelle again made Armand Gautier forget his airsickness.
Dr. Israel Katz was flying to Athens from Capetown, where he was the resident
neurosurgeon and chief of staff at Groote Schuur, the large new hospital that had just been
built. Israel Katz was recognized as one of the leading neurosurgeons in the world.
Medical journals were filled with his innovations. His patients included a prime minister, a
president and a king.
He leaned back in the seat of the BOAC plane, a man of medium height, with a
strong, intelligent face, deep-set brown eyes and long, slender, restless hands. Dr. Katz
was tired, and because of that he began to feel the familiar pain in a right leg that was no
longer there, a leg amputated six years earlier by a giant with an ax.
It had been a long day. He had done predawn surgery, visited half a dozen patients
and then walked out of a Board of Directors’ meeting at the hospital in order to fly to
Athens for the trial. His wife, Esther, had tried to dissuade him.
“There is nothing you can do for her now, Israel.” Perhaps she was right, but Noelle
Page had once risked her life to save his and he owed her something. He thought of Noelle
now, and he felt the same indescribable feeling that he had felt whenever he had been with
her. It was as though the mere memory of her could dissipate the years that separated
them. It was romantic fantasy, of course. Nothing could ever bring those years back. Dr.
Israel Katz felt the plane shudder as the wheels were lowered and it started its descent. He
looked out the window and spread out below him was Cairo, where he would transfer to a
TAE plane to Athens, and Noelle. Was she guilty of murder? As the plane headed for the
runway he thought about the other terrible murder she had committed in Paris.
Philippe Sorel stood at the railing of his yacht watching the harbor of Piraeus moving
closer. He had enjoyed the sea voyage because it was one of the rare opportunities he had
to escape from his fans. Sorel was one of the few sure box-office attractions in the world,
and yet the odds against his ever rising to stardom had been tremendous. He was not a
handsome man. On the contrary. He had the face of a boxer who had lost his last dozen
matches, his nose had been broken several times, his hair was thin and he walked with a
slight limp. None of these things mattered, for Philippe Sorel had sex appeal. He was an
educated, soft-spoken man, and the combination of his innate gentleness and truck-
driver’s face and body drove the women frantic and made men look up to him as a hero.
Now as his yacht approached the harbor, Sorel wondered again what he was doing here.
He had postponed a movie that he had wanted to make in order to attend Noelle’s trial. He
was only too well aware of what an easy target he would be for the press as he sat in the
courtroom every day, completely unprotected by his press agents and managers. The
reporters were certain to misunderstand his attendance and think that it was a bid to reap
publicity from the murder trial of his former mistress. Any way he looked at it, it was
going to be an agonizing experience, but Sorel had to see Noelle again, had to find out if
there was some way in which he could help her. As the yacht began to slide into the white-