by Fritz Galt
And yet she danced. She held him lightly and allowed him liberties he might not otherwise pursue on a dance floor. Was she just indulging herself?
The longer they remained intertwined, the more easily he could imagine himself in her shoes.
He let the drumbeat, the oboe and the zither transport him to the back alleys of Zanzibar.
The hotel staff whispered to each other in Comorian. To his ear, it sounded like Swahili. It would have been the language that Camille’s father had spoken every day of her childhood.
Around the pool, hotel guests chatted in French, her mother’s native tongue.
For an instant, he could understand why she felt comforted, even sheltered, on Grande Comore.
There was such a vast cultural divide between the rigors of Islamic ritual and the live-and-let-live attitude of the French. Surely Camille had trouble reconciling the two.
Then his memories returned to his computer screen. Good God, he was dancing with a former member of the Red Army Faction, an ultra-disciplined handful of Marxist-Maoist radicals. She had eluded the world’s most professional counter-terrorist unit, the German GSG-9, by living a secret life while carrying out kidnappings, bombings and assassinations.
But did she have the moral fiber required for a life of Islamic fundamentalism? He took her hand and tucked it between their chests and nestled his fingers deep in the valley of her cleavage. Her reflexes were smooth and fast. She adjusted to his new position by spinning away in a pirouette.
He pulled her toward him and she submitted, backing in tight against his chest and groin.
His lips found her ear. “Do you really have the stomach for Islam? You’re a woman, for God’s sake.”
Her eyes gleamed. “You haven’t seen the real me.”
“Could you settle for life as just another of Multan’s wives?”
“He hasn’t asked me.”
“Then why all this schmoozing with the guy?”
He watched her inhale with annoyance. Just like when they were on the volcano, they were engulfed in a fresh wave of her sweet fragrance.
“Do you love him?”
A small laugh erupted within her. Then he felt her shiver.
“So why Multan?”
“We’re partners,” she said at last. “Business partners.” She turned in his arms to face him. “But don’t underestimate me. I’m no Frenchie. I’m no party girl. And I’m certainly no damn Yankee.”
“Then what are you? A mercenary?”
She stared at him hard. “Why do you use that word?”
“You do it for the glory, don’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Or is it the money?”
“Why are you asking me this?”
He came to a standstill. “I know. You’re with him because you believed in something long ago. And now you believe even more strongly in it because you’re afraid you don’t really believe in it at all.”
She held him at arm’s length, but tenderly.
“You’re good, aren’t you,” she said with a faint smile.
“You’re good, too,” he said.
Her lips closed around his, and he bore the full weight of her kiss.
“Take a look at this, sweetie,” Linda said.
It was dinnertime and the room in which Fred stood was pitch black. He would have felt lost if he hadn’t heard the fingernails persistently clawing at his door.
He stumbled toward her voice emanating from the television area. He found his wife kneeling with both hands pressed against the far wall.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I think I found a door.”
“Who are you, Nancy Drew?”
She pulled an artificial fern away from the wall and removed a small table beside a couch. “Look. It is a door,” she said excitedly.
“Looks like it goes into the next room.”
She tried the handle and the door cracked open. Paint chipped away from the frame that had been plastered over.
“Great. Let’s see where it leads,” Fred said. He grasped her by the hand and took the lead.
The only light in the adjoining room shone up from the swimming pool through lace curtains. It was another suite, and he could hear springs creaking rhythmically in the next room.
He held a finger to his lips and pulled Linda through the doorway.
Together, they tiptoed across the carpet past an open door to the bedroom.
Fred nudged aside a pair of women’s platform shoes and a man’s leather sandals.
He could make out the outlines of the couple embraced under their sheet. The woman’s giggle masked the sound of their footsteps.
As they approached the front door, Fred noticed a light emanating from the bathroom. He felt his wife’s hand on his shoulder. She was pointing into a closet at a rack of clothes.
Fred rolled his eyes, then nodded. It seemed flaky, but she had a good idea. He didn’t want to be identified while leaving the hotel.
She reached out and wrapped a long fabric under his armpits and around his belly several times then up and over one of his shoulders. Somehow, the sari didn’t look quite right in the mirror.
She finished wrapping another sari around herself.
“Wait,” Linda whispered. She entered the bathroom and nearly stumbled over something.
He looked down and found a man’s legs.
A plumber must have let himself into the suite. He pulled out from under the sink, his face and fingers grimy from his work.
“Excuse me,” Linda apologized and reached over the man for lipstick.
She applied a heavy red coat to Fred’s lips.
“Now rub them together.”
She leaned over the plumber and touched up the lipstick around his lips.
“Try this on,” she suggested.
The plumber leaned back under the sink while Linda wrapped her teal scarf over Fred’s head. The fabric effectively covered the stubble on his chin as well.
They turned to sneak out of the room. Despite his attempts at stealth, Fred inadvertently jangled the lock on the door into the hotel hallway.
A woman’s voice rose drowsily from the bed. “Please shut the door behind you,” she said.
Fred looked back through the doorway as a shaft of light fell on the woman’s buttocks.
Then he felt an elbow jab into his ribs, and they slipped out into the bright hallway. He didn’t dare to look back at his own room.
They glided delicately down the central stairway. Their footsteps mingled with that of the staff in the large, open stairwell.
Saris streaming behind them, the two huddled women boldly stepped into the lobby.
Smartly dressed Westerners and their Indian counterparts crisscrossed the marble floor. Cologne and singsong Indian accents wafted through the air, swirled by large white ceiling fans. Voices flowed in and out of the numerous club-like restaurants and onto the courtyard lawn with its massive lighted swimming pool.
“Let’s take a cab out of here,” Fred said, and led his wife into the humid night.
At eight p.m. sharp, Hans Schroeder entered the lobby of the Hotel du Rhône in Geneva. He stopped for a moment to take in the Rhône River and its bridges. Across a serene garden, he saw Geneva’s Old Town with its dominant Cathedral. He was not a religious man, but tonight anything might help.
He turned and saw something across the lobby that made him wince.
Director Gro Brundtland was already waiting for him.
The robust, blonde Norwegian with the perfect résumé stood up from a lobby sofa. Trained as a physician at Harvard, she had become head of the Global Commission on the Environment and Development at the UN. More recently, she had served successfully as Norway’s first female prime minister.
“Fashionably early?” he insinuated with good humor.
“I’m always early,” she said, fixing him with her light brown eyes.
They had a professional relationship that bordered
on friendship during private meetings. Hans wondered if she was that way with everybody who met her. As an unmarried man, he allowed himself to feel flattered by her attention.
The Neptune had their reservation and a table waiting.
He felt as if he were entering a conch shell. The chairs, floor and walls radiated a marine pink, while the rich bouquet of carnations on each table drove the motif home.
They took their seats.
“Now, what is the purpose of this meeting?” Gro asked, warming her hands by rubbing them together in front of her. Hans interpreted the gesture as enthusiasm.
“A fatal form of malaria,” Hans stated simply.
Gro’s eyebrows narrowed. “A new form?”
“Ja. It appears to be a new biotype. We have never seen it before. I hope to get samples in the laboratory shortly so that we can ‘work up’ the complete genotype.”
“You said it was fatal,” she said.
“That’s right. It seems to remain dormant upon infection for several weeks, maybe longer, then explodes into a fatal form of cranial malaria.”
“Where is the disease right now?”
“India,” Hans said simply.
“How many victims?”
“We’ve only had scattered reports, but it seems to be an epidemic in the making. We sent a team and couldn’t find anything. It gets inside people, ticking away like a time bomb. We don’t know when it will explode.”
Gro sat back. Her hands fell to her lap. “Why didn’t I hear of this sooner?”
“We are only finding out about it now. It seems to behave like an ordinary form of malaria. Only recently have we determined that it might be a new biotype, perhaps a new species.”
“Where did it come from?”
Hans shook his head. “This is the first time we ever recorded its existence. Suddenly over this past month, it was endemic all over India. It’s a potential tragedy on a scale we haven’t seen since the Black Plague.”
“Are we working on a cure?”
Hans shook his head. “We haven’t even obtained a sample yet.”
Gro looked thoughtful. Hans took inspiration from her deep calm.
At last she said, “Well, that’s it. We’ll have to announce it to the press.”
“And create panic?”
“Panic will erupt if we do not frame it properly to the press. My purpose is to stimulate scientists around the world to focus on the problem. You will personally select a task force to coordinate research between our laboratories and those in other institutions. I will get on the phone to heads of state. When did you say the disease was first detected?”
“Just over a month ago.”
“Then, with an incubation period of several weeks, I’d say the bomb will go off at any time. Thousands may have died already. We could lose millions more.”
Hans cleared his throat. “Gro, our own figures estimate that a total of 1.2 million people already die of malaria each year, and that over half a billion people are currently infected with and sickened by some form of the disease worldwide. India is a nation of over one billion inhabitants. I think it’s safe to assume that hundreds of millions will die from this.”
Gro blinked. Her eyes grew moist, and she looked away. “So many children,” she said under her breath.
She stood. “Come. We will hold a news conference tonight. We can make the morning papers.”
The maître d’ came running up to the table.
“Madam, is anything wrong?”
“Please give my regards to Eric,” Gro told the man. “I shall have to miss his salmon tonight.”
Alec awoke in his hotel bed with a start. Camille’s bare arms were curled around his neck.
According to the room’s illuminated clock, it was only 4:00 in the morning. But she was awake and looking him over.
“Why so jumpy?” she asked.
He could only see the outline of her bushy dark hair. “I jumped because I thought you had left me again.”
“I will leave again before you wake up.”
“I figured as much.”
“But I’ll be back,” she said. “Sometime.”
“How can I be sure?”
“I’ll be back because you comfort me, and it comforts me to know that we are friends.”
“For a friend, I’m not really sure I even know you. In fact, you’re difficult to get to know.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Let’s start with your childhood. Where were you raised?”
She smiled. “Right here. On Grande Comore. My mother was the daughter of a Catholic missionary on Mayotte, the farthest island to the east. Then she left for boarding school in France. She came back to Moroni on Grande Comore one summer after college in Paris and met my father, who was a devout Muslim businessman.”
She hesitated for a moment, and Alec felt her warm legs stiffen.
“He had several wives, yet Mama was the one he truly loved. I constantly felt the friction of the two religions in our house. I had brothers and sisters who became Muslim, and others who became Catholic. I opted for neither. Against both parent’s wishes, I denied God and espoused political truths instead.”
“Like Marxism and Maoism?”
She nodded and said nothing.
“And do you still believe in them?” he asked.
“Not really. I’m on the verge…”
“The verge of what?”
Her wide lips stretched into a smile. “You’ll see.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Again they kissed, her body absorbing his.
She began to make love with abandon. He sensed something terrible in her lovemaking, as if it were some final act. Was she trying to communicate something or experience some earthly pleasure for the very last time?
It felt like he was the only person who could keep her from doing something horrible. But what was it?
She was a wild animal, beyond reason.
Chapter 14
At dawn, Alec awoke from a deep and troubled sleep.
The building was strangely quiet. Someone had turned the air conditioner off. The clock was blank.
His clothes lay in a heap on the floor where he had left them. The bathroom door was slightly ajar. Water dripped from the showerhead. The light was turned off.
What mode of death had Camille left behind this time?
He caught a whiff of roses. The vase was empty, but a freshly cut flower lay on the pillow beside him.
Then he heard men grunting outside the building.
Naked, he peered out between the thick curtains. A unit of twenty soldiers was exercising on the palm-fringed beach.
In the darkness, he found a bathrobe and wrapped it around his waist. It was soaked from a recent bath and Camille’s ylang-ylang lotion.
He slipped outside, crossed his balcony and watched the soldiers behind the trees.
Camille was there in battle fatigues, pouring over maps with a commander.
“Camille, Camille,” he whispered to himself. “What are you up to this time?”
He sucked in his breath and studied the men’s macho workout, their skin and their faces. The variety of features indicated a mercenary force drawn from many continents.
At last, the men stopped and spread into a straight line. Camille moved from man to man. Her slim figure lunged viciously at them, whirled in defense and thrust imaginary bayonets into their bellies.
Alec shook his head and returned to his hotel room, bolted the front and sliding glass doors, and reached for the bedside phone. He needed to warn Ahmed Harouna, the CIA’s main informant, in Grande Comore’s major city, Moroni. Ostensibly a clerk at the Bank of America, Ahmed sent regular dispatches to Langley.
There was no dial tone.
Alec’s phone line had been cut.
Lou Potts hadn’t tried to sleep that night.
His section heads had stayed up to deal with the disappearance of the congressman and his wife and daughter.
Natalie had spread her suitcase open on her office floor and settled in for the indefinite future. She knew what losing a daughter was all about.
The Emergency Action Committee occupied the hastily commissioned Emergency Control Room, the topmost room of the consulate.
The committee included three consular officers, among them Peter Sloan, who was the last to see Keri alive. Adding diversity to the group were political officer Howard Cohen, security officer Luke Sharp and administrative officer Larry Windecker.
Lou Potts and Natalie Pierce, who was the highest ranking officer under Lou and who was the last to see the congressman and his wife alive, rounded out the team.
Conspicuously absent was any representative of the CIA, since Mick had vacated that position a month earlier.
The three consular officers and Luke, the security officer, had alerted the State Department’s Operation Center and the embassy in New Delhi. On a more constructive front, they had contacted and briefed law enforcement agencies from the Maharashtra State Police, to the crime branch of the local constabulary, to the CBI, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation. By midnight, agents were on the street with photos of the missing American VIPs.
“Oh my God,” Natalie said, reading a classified cable just handed to her by one of the consulate’s communications technicians.
Seven inquisitive faces turned to her.
“What is it?” Lou asked.
She scanned the transcript of a press conference given by the World Health Organization late that evening.
“The WHO has issued a high alert for India,” she said. “A new, usually fatal strain of malaria has spread across southern and western India.”
“That’s us,” Lou said.
“That’s Mariah,” she whispered.
“Read on,” Lou instructed.
“‘There are no known cures, therapies, or vaccines to combat this new form of malaria. It appears to be transported by mosquitoes just as normal malaria is, but seems to have been aided by some other vector, as indicated by its rapid transmission across India in the course of a single month.’”