Penzler, Otto Ed v2

  Henry jammed his foot on his friend’s instep. “Mac, wait!”

  The gate opened. They drove through. In the service parking area the sultan ripped off the coarse robe, revealing a western business suit. “Let’s go, Henry.”

  A few minutes later, in his magnificent private office, surrounded by officers of the division that was his personal guard, he sent for General al Hez. When the man arrived, confident and with self-satisfaction emanating from every pore, he was astonished to be surrounded by the soldiers.

  “You and your entire staff are under arrest,” the sultan told him. “You are a traitor to your country and your people. For the sake of your ancestors and descendants, the captives had better be safe.”

  Al Hez paled, then gasped as Henry stepped forward. “I know that you have ordered my wife executed in less than an hour. Call it off.”

  Now al Hez smiled. “I know what will happen to me, but it’s already too late for her, Mr. Potter. I have given the final order to proceed. No more communication will be accepted as genuine.”

  The car or van that had arrived had distracted Sayyid. Nearly an hour had passed. What was going on? If only I understood Arabic, Sunday fretted. Cautiously she slipped up to the opening and stood next to it. Clearly some sort of preparations were being made, but for what? She could tell that Sayyid and the driver lapsed into English occasionally. Then she heard Sayyid say, “I can wait for the girl. It’s only fifteen minutes more till ten o’clock. After we get rid of the Potter couple, we can do what we want. The old man is helpless and the other women terrified. At five of ten, tell them to pull open the barrier and drag the first two out.”

  Henry and the sultan were in the first of the armada of helicopters. They had just had their first glimpse of the mountain range where the prisoners were being held. “Almost there, Henry,” the sultan promised.

  “If only we had time to go through the tunnel.” Henry’s throat was closing with tension. It was two minutes of ten.

  “We don’t but Allah is with us. We will be there in time.”

  “They might panic and shoot all of them.”

  “They will know their only hope for mercy is if the hostages remain unharmed.”

  Henry looked back. Two dozen helicopters, each containing six armed men, enough to overpower the kidnapers but too many to surprise them. They’d already be poised to shoot Sunday.

  They were over the cave. Henry looked down, then sickened as he realised there was barely room for one helicopter to land near it. In the important first moments the soldiers would be useless.

  “Put it down,” the sultan commanded the pilot. The descent was rapid. As the wheels touched the rocky surface, both men jumped out. There were only seconds left till ten o’clock.

  “We can’t wait,” Henry snapped.

  “I know it. Stay here,” the sultan ordered the pilot and co-pilot. “It’s too late for guns.”

  The captors had broken the barrier and were coming for her. Lloyd Cameron made a futile effort to stand. Audrey Cameron, Muffie, and Pamela Andrews were shrieking.

  Sunday fought back. She stiffened her palm and cracked it on the throat of the first man who tried to grab her, then attempted to kick the second one. But then her arms were roughly yanked behind her back and Sayyid was in front of her.

  “Get him,” he ordered, nodding to the prone figure that was supposed to be Henry’s body.

  The yelp of surprise from the man who found himself holding an empty blanket and the realisation that Henry was missing stunned Sayyid. He grabbed Sunday by the hair and yanked her face up to his. “Where is he? How did he escape?”

  She did not answer. He yanked again and the black wig came off in his hand. Her blond shoulder-length hair tumbled out.

  His look of astonishment was followed by a shriek from Audrey Cameron. In a trembling voice she cried, “I knew you seemed familiar. You’re Sunday. Then that was the president.”

  The president. Of what? Sayyid stared at Sunday and realisation dawned. He had had the former president of the United States under his control and didn’t even know it. The game was over. But he could still have satisfaction. He’d always had his own contingency escape plan. In two hours he’d be over the border. But first...

  His men, confused, and somewhat frightened, were staring at Sunday. Sayyid shoved her away.

  “Take aim,” he said.

  They pointed their guns at Sunday.

  “All of them,” Sayyid snapped.

  There was a roaring sound outside. A helicopter. Al Hez must have made his escape and come for him.

  He lifted his hand. The men, now frightened and confused by the noise outside the cave, knew to fire when he dropped it.

  He looked at Sunday. “For you I would have given twenty thousand camels.”

  “Stop!” The voice of majesty filled the chamber. Side by side Henry and the sultan stepped through the widened opening.

  Awed, the kidnapers stared at their monarch.

  “Mercy and exile will be given to those who put down their guns,” the sultan said, his tone frightening in its absolute authority.

  The clatter of rifles was followed by the deep, subservient bows of the outlaws.

  “Majesty, your generosity...” Sayyid began.

  As Henry reached for Sunday and running feet signalled the arrival of the royal troops, the sultan addressed Sayyid. “My generosity is not for you. You were not carrying a gun.”

  “So in some ways, the trip was quite successful, was it not, sir?” Sims asked as he presented Henry with a glass of champagne. After staying a night in the palace they were on their way home in Henry’s private jet, which had flown Sims and the Secret Service detail to Ahman.

  Sunday gasped. “How do you figure it was successful, Sims?”

  “Well, from what I understand, madam, you weren’t recognised for days. That must have been refreshing, only I do hope you won’t try it again soon. It was quite distressing for us, oh my, yes.”

  Sunday thought of the moment when she’d been sure she was going to die. “Sims,” she said, “you do have a way with words. It was quite distressing, oh my, yes!”

  When Sims left, she said, “Henry, you had a few last words with the sultan. What did he want to tell you?”

  “It was pretty interesting. When I sympathised with him about Hasna’s death, he told me that one of al Hez’s group at the Taj Mahal has confessed that Hasna was poisoned. But then we talked about the attempted revolution. Mac said that he’s going to make some changes in government, set up ministers who represent the different areas of his country, give the people more of a voice in the government. He asked if I approved. Of course, I did. Then we both quoted an interesting proverb that we used to debate.”

  Sunday waited.

  “No man is wise enough or good enough to be trusted with unlimited power,” Henry said solemnly.

  “I absolutely agree,” Sunday said, “and not the least because if that weren’t true in our country, I’d be out of a job.”

  Thomas H. Cook

  If there have been more beautifully written books in the past three years than Thomas H. Cook’s ‘Mortal Memory’, ‘Breakheart Hill’, and ‘The Chatham School Affair’, I failed to read them. Although his early work was first rate—after all, he received Edgar Allan Poe Award nominations for Sacrificial Ground and Blood Innocents, as well as for a true crime book, Blood Echoes, his more recent, more mature novels are truly distinguished.

  It is always trite to say that a given work transcends its genre (as the Los Angeles Times has said of Cook’s work), because that is inevitably true of superior works of art. It remains, however, impossible not to say it of those books. They are mysteries, of course, in the sense that they contain crime and suspense and murder, but they are firstly poignant, elegant portraits of people and families that remain etched in the consciousness long after the covers have been closed.

  The following tale, conceived almost miraculously in the midst of a conversation,
offers one of the most unexpected twists you are likely to experience—a surprise ending to end surprise endings.

  Fatherhood

  Watching them from a distance, the way she rocked backward and forward in her grief, her arms gathered around his lifeless body, I could feel nothing but a sense of icy satisfaction, relishing the fact that both of them had finally gotten what they deserved. Death for him. For her, perpetual mourning.

  She’d worn a sombre gown for the occasion, her face sunk deep inside a cavernous black hood. She stared down at him and ran her fingers through his blood-soaked hair, her features so hideously distorted by her misery it seemed impossible that she’d ever been young and beautiful, or ever felt delight in anything.

  By then the years had so divided us and embittered me that I could no longer think of her as someone I’d once loved. But I had, loved her, and there were times when, despite everything, I could still recall the single moment of intense happiness I’d had with her.

  She’d been only a girl when we first met, the town beauty. Practically the only beautiful thing in the town at all, for it was a small, drab place set down in the middle of a desert waste. To find something beautiful in such a place was nearly miracle enough.

  She was already being pursued by the local boys, of course. They were dazzled by her black hair and dark oval eyes, skin that gave off a striking olive glow. I yearned for her no less ardently than they, but I kept my distance.

  Looking out my shop window, I would often see her as she swept down the street, heading toward the market, a large basket on her arm. Coming back, the basket now filled with fruit and vegetables, she’d sometimes stop to wipe a line of sweat from her forehead, her eyes glancing briefly toward the very window where I stood, watching her, and from which I always quickly retreated.

  The fact is, she frightened me. I was afraid of the look that might come into her eyes if she saw me staring at her, their pity, perhaps even contempt, for a portly, middle-aged bachelor who worked in a dusty shop, lived alone in a single musty room, had no prospects for the future, and who had nothing to offer a vibrant young woman like herself.

  And so I never expected to speak to her or approach her in any way. To the extent that she would ever know me, it seemed certain it would be as the anonymous figure she sometimes noticed as she made her way to the market, a person of no consequence or distinction, as flat and featureless in her mind as the old stones she trod upon. My fate would be to watch her silently forever, see her life unfold from behind my shop window, first as a young woman hastening to the market, then as a bride strolling arm-in-arm with her new husband, finally as a mother with children following behind her, her beauty deepening with the years, becoming fuller and richer while I kept my post at the window, growing old and sickly, a ghostly, gray-haired figure whose life had finally added up to nothing more than a long and fruitless longing.

  Then it happened. One of those accidents that make a perpetual mystery of life, that bless the unworthy and doom the deserving, and which give to all of nature the aspect of a flighty, cruel, and unloving queen.

  One of my customers had tethered a horse to the post outside my shop. It was sleek and beautiful, and coming back from the market, the girl of my dreams stopped to admire it. First she patted its haunches. Then she moved up the twitching flanks to stroke its moist black muzzle. Finally, she fed it an ear of corn from the overflowing basket she’d placed at her feet.

  “It is yours?” she asked me as I came out the door, my arms filled with the wood I used in my trade.

  I stopped, astonished to see her staring at me, unable to believe that she’d actually addressed her question to me.

  “No,” I said. “It belongs to one of my customers.”

  She returned her attention to the horse, drawing her fingers down the side of its neck, twining her fingers in its long brown mane. “He must be very rich to have a horse like this.” She looked at the wood still gathered in my arms. “What do you do for him?”

  “Build things. Tables. Chairs. Whatever he wants.”

  She offered a quick smile, patted the horse a final time, then retrieved her basket from the street and sauntered slowly away, her brown arms swinging girlishly in the afternoon light, her whole manner so casual and lighthearted that only a sudden burst of air from my mouth made me realise that during the time I’d watched her stroll away from me, I had not released a breath.

  I didn’t talk to her again for almost three months, though I saw her in the street no less often than before. A young man sometimes joined her now, as beautifully tanned as she was, with curly black hair. He was tall and slender, and his step was firm, assured, the walk of a boy who had never wanted for anything, who’d inherited good looks and would inherit lots of money, the sort whose bright future is entirely assured. He would marry her, I knew, for he seemed to have the beauty and advantage that would inevitably attract her. For days I watched as they came and went from the market together, holding hands as young lovers do, while I stood alone, shrunken and insubstantial, a husk the smallest breeze could send skittering down the dusty street.

  Then, just as suddenly, the boy disappeared, and she was alone again. There were other changes too. Her walk struck me as less lively than it had been before, her head lowered slightly, as I had never seen it, her eyes cast toward the paving stones.

  That anyone, even a spoiled, wealthy youth, might cast off such a girl as she seemed inconceivable to me. Instead, I imagined that he’d died or been sent away for some reason, that she had fallen under the veil of his loss, and might well be doomed to dwell within its shadows forever, a fate in one so young and beautiful that struck me as inestimably forlorn.

  And so I acted, stationing myself on the little wooden bench outside my shop, waiting for her hour after hour, day after day, until she finally appeared again, her hair draped over her shoulders like shimmering black wings.

  “Hello,” I said.

  She stopped and turned toward me. “Hello.”

  “I have something for you.”

  She looked at me quizzically, but did not draw back as I approached her.

  “I made this for you,” I said as I handed it to her.

  It was a horse I’d carved from an olive branch.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, smiling quietly. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said and, like one who truly loves, asked nothing in return.

  We met often after that. She sometimes came into my shop, and over time I taught her to build and mend, feel the textures and qualities of wood. She worked well with her hands, and I enjoyed my new role of craftsman and teacher. The real payment was in her presence, however—the tenderness in her voice, the light in her eyes, the smell of her hair—how it lingered long after she’d returned to her home on the other side of town.

  Soon, we began to walk the streets together, then along the outskirts of the village. For a time she seemed happy, and it struck me that I had succeeded in lifting her out of the melancholy I had found her in.

  Then, rather suddenly, it fell upon her once again. Her mood darkened and she grew more silent and inward. I could see that some old trouble had descended upon her, or some new one that I had not anticipated and which she felt it necessary to conceal. Finally, late one afternoon when we found ourselves on a hill outside the village, I put it to her bluntly.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  She shook her head, and gave no answer.

  “You seem very worried,” I added. “You’re too young to have so much care.”

  She glanced away from me, let her eyes settle upon the far fields. The evening shade was falling. Soon it would be night.

  “Some people are singled out to bear a certain burden,” she said.

  “All people feel singled out for the burdens they bear.”

  “But people who feel chosen. For some special suffering, I mean. Do you think they ever wonder why it was them, why it wasn’t someone else?”

  “The
y all do, I’m sure.”

  “What do you think your burden is?”

  Never to be loved by you, I thought, then said, “I don’t think I have one burden in particular.” I shrugged. “Just to live. That’s all.”

  She said nothing more on the subject. For a time, she was silent, but her eyes moved about restlessly. It was clear that much was going on in her mind.

  At last she seemed to come to a conclusion, turned to me, and said, “Do you want to marry me?”

  I felt the whole vast world close around my throat, so that I only stared at her silently until, at last, the word broke from me. “Yes.” I should have stopped, but instead I began to stammer. “But I know that you could not possibly... that I’m not the one who can... that you must be...”

  She pressed a single finger against my lips.

  “Stop,” she said. Then she let her body drift backward, pressing herself against the earth, her arms lifting toward me, open and outstretched and welcoming.

  Any other man would have leapt at such an opportunity, but fear seized me and I couldn’t move.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “That I wouldn’t be able to...”

  I could see that she understood me, recognised the source of my disabling panic. There seemed no point in not stating it directly. “I’m a virgin,” I told her.

  She reached out and drew me down to her. “So am I,” she said.

  I didn’t know how it was supposed to feel, but after a time she grew so warm and moist, my pleasure in her rising and deepening with each offer and acceptance, that I finally felt my whole body release itself to her, quaking and shivering as she gathered me more tightly into her arms. I had never known such happiness, nor ever would again, since to make love to the one you love is the greatest joy there is.

  For a moment we lay together, she beneath me, breathing quietly, the side of her face pressed against mine.