Assassin ah-2

by Ted Bell

  “Why are you wearing pajamas, Nicky?” Francesca asked.

  “I was cold.”

  “But it’s so warm in here.”

  “It will be,” Nick said, pulling back the covers and making room for her.

  She padded across the carpeted compartment, taking only three or four small steps before she reached him. She sat on the edge of the fold-down berth and stroked his cheek. In the bluish-purple light, the small crescent of the scar on his cheekbone appeared luminous.

  “So many scars, caro, for a doctor. Your patients, they cut you, Dottore?”

  He smiled and stroked one silk covered breast, cupping his hand under it, feeling the weight.

  “That’s a physician, darling,” Nick said. “I’m a physicist. A doctor of physics.”

  “But you are a spy, too, no?”

  “We’re both spies. We just don’t know yet who’s spying for whom. That’s why this honeymoon will be so interesting.”

  “Nicky, caro, is not a honeymoon, this trip. Non sposato, mi amore, we’re not married.”

  “We’re having the honeymoon first. Much more sensible.”

  Francesca laughed, leaning over to kiss him on the mouth, her heavy breasts resting softly upon his chest. It was a hard, brief kiss and when she felt his probing tongue she sat upright and turned her gaze to the window.

  “You will never marry someone like me. But, va bene, it doesn’t matter. I love you anyway. And, I love this old train. It doesn’t go to the Orient, it’s not an express, it doesn’t matter. Still they call it the Orient Express.”

  “A long time ago, it went to Belgrade and Istanbul. It was the fastest way to get there from Paris.”

  “He knows everything, my darling dottore pericoloso,” she said, bending over to kiss him again, “Someday, Doctor Dangerous, when we are old and grey and have made all the love we can make, you will tell me the secrets of the universe?”

  “I’ll tell you one now,” he said smiling up at her. “There’s a lot more love out there than we can ever make. But, that doesn’t mean we can’t try.”

  His hand moved under the hem of her negligee, tracing his fingers along the warm skin of her inner thigh, desperate to touch her. She caught his wrist in a surprisingly strong grip and pulled his hand away. “No, caro, not yet,” she said.

  He reached up to pull her to him, but she pulled back, laughing. “No, Nicky, you must wait. I want to see all these scars you want to hide from me. I want to kiss every one and learn its secret. Then we make l’amore.”

  She unbuttoned his blue silk pajama top and ran her hands over the thick cords of his heavily muscled chest, her fingers pausing to entwine themselves in the thatch of curly dark hair that began at the base of his throat. Then her hands moved down over his taut belly, quickly undoing the strings and pulling the silk down over his thighs to his knees.

  “Now,” she said, surveying the pale landscape of skin, “No more secrets, Nicky.”

  “No secrets,” he said as she pressed her lips to the long weal that began at his left shoulder and ended just below his left nipple.

  “Tell me about this one,” she said, her lips trailing along the length of angry scar.

  “Well. That was a bad one, I’ll tell you. An arrow got me,” Nick Hitchcock said. “Cowboys and Indians, St. Louis, Missouri. Nineteen seventy-five. I was only ten years old when that Apache brave sneaked up and got the drop on me.”

  “And this one,” she said, her lips traveling downwards across his hard, flat belly.

  “Self-inflicted. I was up in the attic playing ‘Doctor’ with my cousin and she bet me I couldn’t take out my own appendix.”

  “Liar,” she said. She reached between his legs and gripped him hard in her fist. She bent her head to him and her tongue darted about, causing him to moan and arch upwards involuntarily. “What about this one? Right here on the tip? A naughty old girlfriend bit my Nicky?”

  “Cub Scouts,” Hitchcock said, his breathing rapid and shallow. “I was late putting on my uniform for a Cub pack meeting and caught myself in my zipper. And that one, darling, is the truth. Now, enough!”

  “No, caro, not enough. Be still, I must do something.”

  He saw her hand disappear between her thighs and the breath caught in his throat.

  “I have something for you,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, closing his eyes.

  “It is not what you think,” she said and he heard a distinct metallic click between her legs. What the—

  She held up a small silver switchblade that gleamed in the violet light. “I keep this hidden inside me, Nicky, just for times like this.”

  “What? This is a joke, right? Some sick game?”

  He twisted violently away, but she still had him gripped in the vise of her fist and now she squeezed cruelly enough to make him cry out.

  “Nicky?” she said, her voice still warm and seductive.

  He felt the cold sharp edge of the blade at the base of his scrotum. She stretched the skin of the sac out even further.

  “No secrets, Caro,” she said, “no more secrets…”

  “Good God, are you mad? What is this?”

  “Have you ever seen a human testicle?” she asked softly. “They pop out very easily, all shiny and pink. Attached by only one thin white tube. One snip of my little coltello is really all it takes.”

  “You are insane! Stop this! What do you want?” Hitchcock cried, his voice thick with fear, choking back the sick tide rising in his throat.

  “I’ve already told you, Nicky. I want no more secrets.”

  A scream had already wholly formed in his mind and now he opened his mouth wide to give voice to it when she…

  “Cut! Cut! Cut and print!” Vittorio de Pinta screamed and, leaping down from the boom crane of the big Panavision 35mm motion picture camera, he rushed to embrace her. “Francesca, my angel, this, it was brilliant! This was transcendent! Magnifico!”

  The director clapped his hands as the sound stage lights came up on the Orient Express set. The entire crew burst into applause as Francesca gave her costar a perfunctory kiss on the forehead and rose to her feet, a broad smile on her beautiful face.

  Vittorio, a tall, elegant man with soft brown eyes and shoulder-length white hair, turned to his crew and bowed deeply. The Italian film crew, some of whom had worked with de Pinta in early days, before he went to Hollywood, applauded wildly as the now-famous director spread his arms wide as if to embrace all of them. He began smacking his hands together at arm’s length, clapping for his cast and crew. It had been a grueling twelve months. The shoot had taken them to locations around the world; from Washington to the Great Barrier Reef where they’d shot all the shark footage, to Hong Kong, Venice, and the Alps where the second unit had shot all the exteriors for the Orient Express sequence just completed.

  And now, this final month at the old Cinecittà Studios in Rome shooting interiors for the completion of this latest and perhaps boldest of the Nick Hitchcock spy thrillers, Body of Lies. Back on the lot in Culver City, it was the executive producer’s fondest wish that the steamy love interest brought to the screen by this Italian bombshell would lift this pic above the wooden special effects–laden epics of the last few Nick Hitchcock spy thrillers.

  It was also Vittorio’s fondest wish. His career had been dead in the water ever since his bloated costume drama, Too Much Too Soon, had spun wildly out of control, late and over budget, and ended up released as a network Movie of the Week. Body of Lies, he knew, was his last shot, his una ultima probabilità as Francesca had called it.

  “That’s a wrap, ladies and gentlemen,” Vittorio said, still applauding all the grips and gaffers up amidst the forest of klieg lights mounted high above on the studio catwalks. “Grazie mille a tutto, mille grazie!”

  A small army of production assistants and caterers appeared, setting up craft services tables full of caviar and crab, carrying trays of glasses and magnums of cold champagne onto the Orient Express set. Vitt
orio splashed some into a glass, first for Francesca and then one for superstar Ian Flynn, the ruggedly handsome Irish actor who played Nick Hitchcock, currently busy pulling his pajama bottoms up, eager to hide the fact that he had not much to hide.

  Raising his own glass to the assembled, the director said, “To the legendary Ian, brilliant as always, for a magnificent performance! And, to our newest Hitchcock girl, the talented and beauteous Signorina Francesca d’Agnelli!”

  She raised her glass, then tipped it back and downed it quickly. She had a plane to catch.

  Some eight hours later, Francesca heard a light tapping on the cabin door. She sat up in bed in the darkness, heard a dull roaring noise and wondered where she was. The door cracked open and she saw a girl framed in the soft light from the corridor. The girl was wearing a snow-white apron over a black dress. The uniform of all the female staff aboard the Pasha’s private 747.

  “Signorina d’Agnelli?” It was the perky English one named Fiona.

  “Sì?” she said, sitting up and rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Che cosa, Fiona?”

  “So sorry to disturb you, Signorina, but First Officer Adare in the cockpit informs me we will be landing in approximately one hour. I thought perhaps you might like some breakfast? Some time to freshen up?”

  “Sì, some tea and toast, e il bagno, per favore.” The girl pulled the door closed and Francesca lay back against the pillows. A hot bath. Delicious.

  The Pasha had been extremely generous, she thought, sending his plane to Rome for her as soon as the production had shut down. It was the first time he’d done it. He was pleased with her. Her last assignment had been carried out flawlessly. Pleased, his generosity knew no bounds. But then, neither did his brutality when you incurred his displeasure.

  It was one of the reasons she was so strangely attracted to the man, despite his recent increase in belt size. She’d always had a taste for the unusual.

  She rose from her bed and padded across the thick carpet to the marble-clad bathroom. She twisted the gold spigots, and the tub began filling with water. She poured oils and salts and flower petals from the crystal containers and bowls into the steaming water. She smiled. Air Pasha was certainly an upgrade over first class on Alitalia.

  Two staff girls appeared with a tea tray and a stack of luxurious white towels.

  “Grazie,” Francesca said, as the pretty blonde one poured her a cup of herbal tea while the other one tested the water temperature, then turned off the golden spigots. Francesca nodded and smiled, clearly waiting for them to leave. They bowed, and were gone.

  Dropping her robe to the floor, she caught herself smiling in the mirror; she was still aglow with champagne from the wrap party and in the limo on the way to the airport. It was an amusing distraction being a movie star. It allowed her to move freely about the globe, come into contact with whomever she wished, exert her will. No one in this world, she’d learned, was fully immune to the star-fucker syndrome.

  But this particular star fucked back.

  She raised her right foot up onto the wide green marble lip of the deep tub. Using her right hand, she reached into the curly blonde thatch between her legs and removed the porcelain sheath and the dagger it contained. She held it up admiringly. How she would have enjoyed using her piccolo coltello, her little knife, on that arrogant Hitchcock. The Irish prick.

  An imaginary tabloid headline floated across her mind as she stepped into the steaming hot water.

  “Hitchcockless.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Nantucket Island

  SOME FOUR HOURS AFTER THEIR BRUSH WITH DEATH, HAWKE and Ambrose were joined by Stokely and Sutherland in Blackhawke’s library, a fire going against the late June chill. Hawke was sitting cross-legged on the floor before the fire, his parrot Sniper perched on his shoulder. Feeding the feisty bird pistachio nuts from a bowl he held in his lap, he seemed lost in his thoughts.

  Oh nuts! Damright! Sniper shrieked, and Hawke gave the old girl a few more. Congreve was regaling everyone with the tale of the perilous flight, delighted to recount the chilling death spiral, how they’d been near as dammit to crashing into the sea when Ambrose himself had jammed down the left rudder pedal and put the plane into a left-handed nose dive that stabilized the aircraft.

  “Quite remarkable, Chief,” Sutherland said, “Considering your complete lack of flying experience.”

  “How did Holmes himself put it?” Ambrose asked, puffing away. “ ‘I am the most incurably lazy devil who ever stood in shoe leather, but when the fit is on me, I can be spry enough at times.’ ” The man was clearly still flying high, even after his near-disastrous flying lesson. Alex smiled at this, but his mind was elsewhere.

  His plane had been moored at the end of the Slades’ dock in Dark Harbor all night. It had never occurred to Alex to post a guard, so somebody had all the time in the world to hack away at the aileron cable. And there was something else nagging at his memory. He remembered what Chief Ellen Ainslie had said about the murderous babysitter: “Father’s a mechanic…over to the airport.”

  Texas Patterson needed to know that at least one member of the Adjelis family had stuck around Dark Harbor long enough to sabotage Hawke’s airplane. Patterson was catching a ride on a Coast Guard chopper and was scheduled to arrive shortly for a meeting aboard Blackhawke. His boss, Secretary of State de los Reyes, had already asked for Alex’s help. Now, Tex was coming down to seal the deal.

  As always, Alex had told Conch on the phone that morning, he’d do whatever he could. He’d just have to postpone recharging his batteries until the thing was over. Hell, he said, as the old American expression had it, you can sleep when you’re dead.

  Congreve was quietly bringing Sutherland and Stokely up to speed on the recent events in Maine when Pelham wafted in with the tea service. He set the silver salver down on a velvet ottoman next to Alex. Alex noticed a small black velvet box on the tray beside his china cup.

  “This is a bit sudden, isn’t it, old boy?” Hawke said to Pelham, picking up the velvet box. “I mean, we hardly know each other.”

  Pelham smiled, said nothing, and withdrew.

  “What on earth’s wrong with him?” Alex asked, as Pelham pulled the door closed after him.

  “Embarrassed is all. Something the boy meant to give you long time ago, Boss,” Stoke said. “Better open it.”

  “Really?” Alex said, “How odd.”

  He opened the box and saw the gold medallion and chain. He lifted it out and dangled it before his eyes. “Unbelievable,” Hawke said. “My St. George’s medal. Stoke, you remember. That night in Cuba. That guard who—”

  “Stuck his knife in your neck and cut the chain. Yeah, I remember that.”

  “How did Pelham come by it after all these years?”

  “Some Spanish-sounding guy apparently showed up with it on your doorstep late one night and told Pelham to give it to you. Boy stuck it somewhere and plain forgot all about it. He feels bad ’cause then you’d have had a heads up. About somebody being on your case.”

  “Most unfortunate,” Hawke said, examining the medal. “His memory is less than…”

  “He’ll be all right,” Stoke said, seeing Hawke’s wan expression.

  “My mother gave me this,” Hawke said, slipping it over his head, “the day before she died.” He cut his eyes away, pretending to study a picture on the wall, a small marine painting by James Buttersworth.

  “Yeah. That’s another reason why Pelham feels bad, boss,” Stoke said.

  “Your notion that Vicky’s murderer may be Cuban was spot on, Alex,” Sutherland said. “We have considerable evidence pointing that way.”

  “Vicky’s murderer,” Hawke said getting to his feet. He threw another log on the fire, sending a shower of sparks shooting up the chimney, and then sank into one of the armchairs near the hearth. His face ashen, he looked like someone had just taken a razor to the carefully stitched sutures of his heart. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me what’s happened,” H
awke said softly.

  “Two things, sir,” replied Sutherland. “The cigar stub found at the base of the tree was Cuban. Domestic. Never sold for export.”

  “Bought in Cuba,” said Alex. “Go on.”

  “Two,” Sutherland continued. “Stokely determined the murder weapon left at the scene was Russian, but the scope was American. Very limited production. U.S. armed forces and law enforcement account for all of them. One such scope was stolen six weeks ago in Miami.”

  “Good work, Stoke,” Alex said.

  “Scope belonged to a murdered Dade County SWAT guy,” Stoke said. “Serial number on the stolen scope matches our murder weapon. Last thing, that guy who delivered your medallion? Pelham got a look at his eyes that night. Says he ain’t got no color in them.”

  “Scissorhands,” Hawke said, anger flaring up in his eyes. “The bloody bastard in Cuba. The one who interrogated Vicky after she was abducted. What was his name, Stokely?”

  “Rodrigo del Rio.”

  “Del Rio. Right. Castro’s former Chief of State Security, until the coup.”

  “That’s the one. The man with no eyes, boss,” Stoke said. “Just may be we got our shooter.”

  “Not yet we don’t. But we will.”

  “I got an idea,” Stoke said, “If he’s slipped back into Cuba, I know someone who would just love to tack his testicles to a palm tree. And that someone owes me a favor.”

  “Who, Stoke?”

  “Fidel damn Castro, that’s who. The rebel generals was fixing to murder his tired old Communist ass, you remember, and I got him out of there. El Jefe himself sent me this goddamn medal round my neck.”

  “Yes, yes,” Hawke said. “The irony of your saving the skin of one of the last great Communist dictators on earth has not been lost upon me.”

  “Well, hell, Alex, what was I s’posed to do? I know an evil dictator when I see one. But, them drug dealers were going to shoot that sick old fool just lying there in his bed. Cop instinct took over.”