by Fritz Galt
“Jesus Christ.” Standing in his underwear, he yanked open the door. “Yeah, what is it this time?”
A floor butler stepped in the doorway and thrust his business card in Fred’s hand. Their business relationship thus cemented by Fred accepting the card, the butler began, “What would you like cleaned or pressed? Do you need your shoes shined, some food, a fax? May I assist you with the telephone?”
Fred stared at the svelte young man blankly.
“Honey, who is it?” Linda’s voice drifted from the back room.
“There’s a man here asking me if we need help with our telephone.”
“No, dear.”
Fred forced a wan smile and shut the door in the man’s face. “These people stick to a guy like a bug to fly paper.”
He entered the back room where Linda was putting on lipstick. He sat on the edge of the bed in a mental fog.
The telephone rang.
“That’s him testing the phone,” he said. “I refuse to answer it.”
It rang ten times.
“Get it, honey,” Linda said.
“Nope. I refuse,” he said.
Finally, when the phone stopped ringing, he rose from the bed and finished putting on his pants.
Lou Potts frowned at the telephone. “There’s no answer in the congressman’s room. I’ll have the receptionist send a bellhop to his door. We’ve got to get his attention.”
“God, I hope they weren’t all abducted,” Natalie said.
Luke Sharp jumped into action. “I can get the local police to raid his room. Maybe the terrorists have him bound and gagged.”
Lou dismissed the impetuosity with a wave of the hand, yet mulled over all the grisly scenarios while he waited for the receptionist to answer the phone.
He looked at Natalie who was holding the travel agent’s envelope in one hand.
“You’re not going anywhere right now,” he said.
The hotel room’s doorbell stopped ringing, and knocking began to resound throughout every room of the suite.
Fred and Linda looked at each other.
“Did you order anything?” he asked.
“No, did you?”
“Not me.”
Linda was dressed in a khaki safari suit with a teal silk scarf. She was ready for shopping. Fred, who had already decided to accompany her, wore a buff leisure suit.
“Won’t you answer the door?” she asked.
“No way in hell. This is my hotel room. I paid for it. I stand on principle. I won’t let just anybody in here. They can kick and holler until the cows come home. I don’t care.”
“Then may we leave?” she asked.
“Not now. I’ll wait for them to go away, then we can slip out.”
“This could take forever,” she warned.
They watched the lock begin to turn. Someone had a key.
Fred jumped to the door and drove home the dead bolt.
“Fred, are you out of your mind?” she said with concern.
He smiled broadly, a mad glint in his eyes.
“They’ll never get us. I swear they won’t.”
Through the solid wooden door, he could hear a man shouting. To his satisfaction, Fred couldn’t make out the muffled words.
Alec heard a Comorian band warming up by his resort’s swimming pool.
He squared his shoulders in front of his hotel room mirror and pressed the lapels of his seersucker suit against his muscular chest. A wholesome, yet solemn face stared back at him.
That night he would have dinner with a killer.
He had come a long way to get to that point. And he could take pride in how he got there.
Stationed on the tiny island nation of Mauritius far south of the Comoro Islands in the Indian Ocean, he suspected that his superiors had sent him as far away from Washington as possible both to punish him for past imbroglios and to keep him out of trouble. The island of Mauritius was both isolated and unknown. It amounted to solitary confinement on a little green dot in the south Indian Ocean. Or, he could see his posting in another way. The island was an exclusive getaway for African royalty and European wealth.
Perhaps the assignment was a reward for past duties well done. Although his means were often messy, he had met with immeasurable success on previous missions, while receiving little recognition for his accomplishments. The nasty atmosphere of resentment building up in the Agency was a world away, and he had taken solace in the pleasant surroundings.
Until he had met her.
He returned to the day he first met her. Her toned legs stretched effortlessly as she had bent to the ground beside his lounge chair. She had let her sweatshirt slip off her shoulders onto the deck, revealing an arched brown back and narrow waist. He could count her vertebrae with precision down to the peak of her tailbone in the valley of her neon blue bikini.
Then she had thrown herself into the adjacent chair with an “oof” that he could still recall.
He had struck up a casual conversation with her over subjects ranging from water sports to the proximity of Antarctica. She was thirty-five. He asked her to explain her unusual French accent and hit a stone wall.
Yet, she had offered him her name. She was Camille Dinad. And she accepted his invitation to visit his apartment on the hilly outskirts of Port Louis.
That first sultry night, she had made love like a schoolgirl discovering her sensuality. Then she had picked her clothes off the unforgiving, government-issue mattress and slipped out the door before daybreak.
Out of one eye, he had watched her go, curious that she left in secrecy. An hour later, just before turning on the shower, he was seized by a moment of doubt. Sniffing the bathroom air, he discerned a faint, bitter almond odor. Upon further investigation, he had discovered a capsule of hydrogen cyanide screwed into his showerhead. If he had turned the shower on, he would have begun a short and agonizing dance of death.
But that was then. And he was still alive. Camille had had numerous other opportunities to knock him off, including on the rim of the volcano, but she had not.
He inclined an ear toward the outdoors. The band had finished warming up and abusing the amplifiers. Waves ruffled on the beach. And the tree scent pervaded his room. Ah, that was Camille’s smell. Would she strike that night?
The morning after that shower incident in Mauritius, Alec had said nothing to the ambassador at their morning meeting. He needed to prove Camille’s guilt before he made the mistake of destroying an innocent life. After the meeting, he entered his office, pounced on his keyboard and began a thorough search of CIA databases linked to the FBI and Interpol.
He plowed through the records of known international criminals and terrorists. Suddenly, her mug shot jumped out at him. Her guileless eyes caught him staring at her.
He looked away from her picture and poured over the details of her dossier. In the end, he could only shake his head and say, “Camille, you’ve been one very naughty girl.”
The record classified her as a professional to be handled with extreme caution. Her rap sheet read like one of the FBI’s Most Wanted. She had murders, bombings, heists and money laundering among her many credits.
Yet she was apolitical. Like any good mercenary, she was opportunistic, willing to fight for the highest bidder.
The report read as such, “A dedicated professional, she switches allegiances easily. In fact, she seems to have a loyalty problem, perhaps stemming from her politically and personally incompatible parents.”
She had past connections with the Red Army Faction, the small, well-disciplined successor to the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany. Then she had participated in activities of the Red Brigade in Italy and the Provos in Northern Ireland. Most recently, her calling had been the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) seeking to overthrow the secular government in Algeria.
“Sorry, Camille,” he had said to his computer screen in the embassy’s CIA Station. “You work for the GIA and I work for the CIA. It’s my job to take you down.”
; But before he ordered the Mauritius police to lock her up, he had a few questions to investigate. The first was why she had surfaced in Mauritius. And the second was why she had tried to murder him. That would take time to find out.
And that was how they had ended up in Comoros. She had invited him there…and now to dinner.
The same day in Mauritius that she had nearly poisoned him in the shower, he had returned to the hotel where they had met. He wanted to see the expression on her face when she saw him alive.
Le Saint Jacques was a five-star hotel catering to people who owned things, such as corporations, or governed things, such as countries.
He had found her dining in the restaurant with a stout, fifty-year-old man.
She had spotted him immediately, but did not react with shock. Instead, her eyes glistened as they lingered on him for a moment.
Her consort turned to look, and Alec recognized him. He was the hotel’s owner, Mr. Multan Malik. Presumably, his wives were otherwise engaged for the evening.
Multan was known not only to Alec, but to the CIA. A renegade tycoon who slipped in and out of countries with no extradition treaties, he had built a resort empire that stretched from Sun City, South Africa, to the Red Sea.
Alec’s training and his raging hormones had moved him to introduce himself to the underworld host and nod toward his date.
Camille’s eyes had remained friendly, her expression cool.
“Alec Pierce is my name,” he had said smoothly. “And investment is my game.”
Moments later, they were sharing drinks and later, dinner.
When he drunkenly agreed to join them on a sightseeing trip to Comoros, alarm bells finally went off in his head. What had he agreed to?
The trip to Comoros, a tiny Muslim country otherwise known as the Federal Islamic Republic of the Comoro Islands, was ostensibly a holiday getaway for the three of them. However, throughout the trip Multan had pressed him on investment matters and business opportunities, topics about which Alec knew relatively little.
Like an onion, Alec existed buried under many layers, of which venture capitalist was the outer and weakest cover. For those who were able to dig beneath the surface, he was officially an economic officer at the U.S. Embassy in Port Louis. That was a deep cover, designed precisely to throw off people like Camille and Multan. Below that, he was the CIA’s station chief, responsible only to the Agency and somewhat beholden to the ambassador. And somewhere under his role as station chief, with all its bureaucratic demands, lay his real self, the hungry, fleshy pulp of a human being.
He stared in the mirror. He was a tall, blond-haired, confident young man. Yet he could see beneath the exterior. And he still liked what he saw: an exuberant youth, unscarred by life.
Although he had continued to play out his cover as an American investor, Camille’s attempted cyanide poisoning in Mauritius and her pulling a pistol on him in Comoros had put a slight strain on their relationship. She had barely spoken to him in the past two days.
Curiously, she may not have informed Multan of Alec’s real identity, revealed at gunpoint on the volcano. If she had, it still didn’t affect Multan’s enthusiastic offer of drinks by the pool.
Alec closed his eyes to concentrate on the task at hand. He had joined Camille Dinad and Multan Malik on the excursion to Comoros with a single purpose. He needed to uncover the exact nature of their business relationship.
Screwing a professional killer was not a normal way for a tycoon to burn off energy.
Nor was it a way for a CIA operative to win over his skeptical bosses in Langley, he reminded himself. He tugged his starched collar tight.
He stepped onto a garden terrace, where he was bathed in the orange glow of a setting sun. He breathed deeply and surveyed the swimming pool where audio technicians still struggled with feedback.
At the near end of the pool, Camille hung on the tycoon’s arm.
Alec felt like throwing a flying wedge between the two.
“There you are, Mr. Pierce,” Multan said. “Do you like our beautiful Itsandra Beach? Here you can see our fine Madagascar Channel.”
“Yes, I like it,” he said. He glanced briefly at Camille. She seemed amused by his presence.
Then he looked at the broad strip of sand tucked against a forest under the island’s western ridge. Swimmers stepped out of the ocean water between dark hulls of fishing boats.
“How do you like our hotel, Mr. Pierce? Over 180 suites.”
“Very nice. Very modern.” The arched stucco façade and blue tile roofs were scattered among swaying palm trees.
“Whirlpools. Water sports. Dive instructors. All for you.”
As a diver, Alec knew that the National Association of Underwater Instructors had given the resort a five-star rating.
They operated excursions to world-class dive sites off the western coast. There was the superb reef at Black Coral Cave, the vertical drop and excellent coral at Hahaya Wall, and Masiwa, a fishing vessel sunk purposely for divers. That morning, he had dived down to Castle Rock and found coral and marine life with colors that were beyond belief.
“The diving is great. You’re well equipped, just like your hotel in Mauritius.”
Multan nodded and smiled. “And ahead, you will find our casino.” He indicated an elegant room, its doors open to the evening breeze. “Make yourself at home.”
“I will.”
Multan reached into his pocket and withdrew a roll of bills. He peeled off twenty 10,000 KMF Comoros francs, the equivalent of $500, and held them out to Alec. “Spend some money. I understand that you can’t blow government money on gaming.”
Alec hesitated and looked at Camille. So she did tell Multan that he was not an investor as he had said in Mauritius.
She smiled broadly.
“I understand it’s strictly against the law,” he said, and took the money.
Multan’s large gray eyes turned toward the beach. The coral sands still gleamed in the setting sun. “Such a beautiful location. Do you know about our beach’s history?”
“No, I don’t.”
Multan spoke deliberately. “It was the landing site of mercenary forces during a coup attempt on the island.”
“And did it succeed?” Alec asked.
The tycoon’s gaze locked on him. “I have yet to fail at anything.”
Camille squeezed Multan’s arm. “Lets dance,” she said, and threw the millionaire an irresistible smile.
“Sadly, I must repair to my room for the night,” Multan said. He pressed his lips against hers, and then unwrapped her arms from around him. “Good evening, my little octopus.”
Alec stepped forward when Multan had left. “My little octopus?”
She gave an embarrassed smile and watched a room on the top floor.
“I’ll bet he’s got quite a place,” he said. “Help me understand this. He’s Muslim. How can he own a casino?”
“He doesn’t gamble,” she replied. “That’s not the same as owning a casino.”
“Splitting Koranic hairs.”
“You should read it someday.”
The room light turned on, and her green eyes finally returned to him. This time, he doubted she was thinking about the Koran.
“May I have this dance?” he requested.
He led her down several steps to the pool terrace. There, the reedy tones of an oboe fluttered above a hard driving beat. The rhythm was syncopated, almost Latin.
He stepped onto the dance floor and glanced at the stage. One of the three dark musicians played percussion. He had drums, a brass gong, a tambourine and maracas at his disposal. The second musician concentrated on his oboe, while the third alternated between a zither and a five-stringed lute called a gam gam.
Alec placed Camille’s hand on his shoulder and guided her into the crook of his arm.
“Why are you really here in Comoros?” he asked directly before beginning to dance.
“I’m getting back in touch with my roots,” she said, a
nd squirmed closer to him.
He felt her begin to sway to the tight beat. Some roots.
“What are you running away from?” he asked.
She spun away from him. He yanked her back in his arms. She looked across the cluster of tables. “I’m shaking off aggressive influences from the West.”
His hand found the curve of her lower back. “Do you think that shaking your tight little tush to an African beat fends off your need for creature comforts?”
“You aren’t making it any easier,” she moaned.
He rocked her closer and offered some more of that comfort.
Chapter 13
The sun was setting behind Bombay’s high-rises, and Fred and Linda had still not answered their door.
The confident knocking had gradually dissipated into a plaintive scratching noise. Fred had long since taken the phone off the hook. Attempts to pass him notes under the door had also failed. He shoved them back.
Then he heard a rapping noise on his windowpane.
He crossed to the back room of the suite and saw a young Indian dangling from the roof by a harness. It was the pool attendant.
“Man, won’t they ever give up?” He calmly closed the drapes.
“Fred. I want to get out of here. Won’t you let me shop?”
“Not today. Not this trip, if that’s what it takes.”
“Honey, didn’t you read to me that if you don’t allow people to do their tasks in India, then they won’t go to heaven?”
“Yeah, something like that. They won’t be reincarnated into a higher caste.”
“So don’t you think you’re preventing these people from doing their duties?”
“Don’t lay a guilt trip on me. I’m the victim here.”
Linda sighed and turned on the television. She pumped up the volume to mask the scratching, the doorbell and the rapping on the window.
The dancing gave Alec confidence that he could draw Camille back into the world of the Western infidels. Perhaps hedonism alone could save her.
Yet, as they swayed together in a dark corner behind the band, he wondered if his motives were less altruistic. Perhaps he merely wanted to wrest her away from the tycoon.