Power Games

by Victoria Fox

  Before she left London, Eve had completed the Veroli piece, sending it to her editor with one important omission: Corrigan’s name. If they could hold out just a few more weeks, she promised, it would spell the ultimate exclusive. After the trip to Indonesia, Eve would have the definitive Senator Corrigan exposé, the kind of up close and personal that money couldn’t buy.

  While the paper had been persuaded, they had insisted on publishing parts of what they had. The item made no mention of Corrigan, but it remained clear the writer knew exactly whom Mr X was. Judging by Corrigan’s reluctance to give Eve a second of his time, she was confident he had seen it.

  Corrigan knew she was on to him. He knew it had been her who’d trailed him in Italy. He would know better than to think he had escaped. She would wait, that was what she did, lying low in the grass. Angela Silvers might not be one to disclose other people’s secrets—but Eve was. She hadn’t got this far by nursing a conscience.

  She was pulling on clothes when, from the corner of her eye, she detected something move: an outline, solid yet liquid, pouring from a tree branch.

  A fat black snake was coiled round the limb, about a foot from where she stood. Its scales were jet, apart from the rings of bright, fierce yellow that were splashed down its length. Against the foliage the serpent’s marks were dagger-points, spooling and writhing. Its head, the underside a same vivid canary, dripped down to her level.

  Its tongue darted out. It eyed her beadily, its tight reptilian skull leading a weapon of brutal muscle and fatal efficiency. She dared not move. The snake’s head dipped from side to side, a queasy pendulum, before, silent and smooth, it slinked back onto the branch, unfurled itself and slipped soundlessly from sight.

  43

  Las Vegas

  Ten thousand miles away, on a terrace outside the Parisian, Dino Zenetti released an anguished shout and kicked the top of a mock-stone fountain.

  He turned on his father.

  ‘She’s my prize!’ he yelled. ‘Get her back!’

  ‘It ain’t that easy, D,’ Carmine Zenetti replied.

  He let his only son play out the tantrum. Dino had always been hot-headed. He always reacted badly to news. Sometimes he needed just a little time to think it over, before he saw the advantages. For a man like Carmine, there were always advantages.

  ‘We’re supposed to be gettin’ married! Holy crap, I waited long enough.’ Dino’s face was puce. Spit pellets flew from his mouth. Angela was a hot piece: he had been champing to nail her his whole life and, just as he got within reach, she went and got herself killed. ‘She never even put out!’ he complained.

  Carmine took a seat. As usual, he waited for the penny to drop.

  ‘An’ what’s that jackass Lawson thinking, jumpin’ in on my parade? Angela’s mine, goddamnit! I oughtta floor the guy!’

  ‘You would if he was worth it,’ said Carmine.

  ‘Fuckin’ damn straight I would.’ Though Dino had never been in a fight in his life. ‘Acting like he’s Indiana fuckin’ Jones—y’know they’re saying he got with Angela one time? Makin’ out like it’s a big fuckin’ love story and what am I s’posed to do with that? Fuck him. Fact is she’s engaged. To me.’

  Carmine narrowed his eyes. He didn’t give a crap whatever stories came out, except for the one where they all got found someplace, which, while nobody wanted to say so, was never going to happen. Jeez, it was getting boring! Nobody talked about anything else.

  If just one VIP had carked it, the reaction would be bad enough, but stick a load of them at the bottom of the ocean and things got out of hand. After a time it became nothing but white noise, shock piled on shock piled on shock. There was no upward scale, no escalation. It reminded Carmine of his ex-wife, who had used to scream at him at equal volume whether he left a clump of hair in the shower drain or nailed six hookers in a night and blew three million dollars on the craps table.

  Carmine tuned out. He had higher matters on his mind.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly what?’

  ‘You’re engaged. You and Angela.’

  ‘Yeah? What about it?’

  ‘Think it through, D.’ Carmine stood. ‘The contract we signed entitles us to half the Silvers fortune. That sum’s trebled since the engagement got announced.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And in turn Angela gets half of the Zenettis’.’ Carmine paused, licked his lips. ‘But what if there is no Angela?’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘Until the marriage got stamped, the whole deal rests with her, right? My little slice of insurance pie—in case she had a wise idea and decided to back out.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have.’

  ‘It don’t matter if she would or she wouldn’t,’ Carmine said. ‘What matters is that the Silvers don’t see a dime. Orlando, Gianluca, kaput. Now she’s gone, it all comes to us, kid—the mother ship! That’s what I’ve been tryin’ to tell you …’

  ‘But she is coming back. We’re getting married.’

  Carmine pursed his lips. He approached his son, held him by his shoulders and abruptly drew him into an embrace. Carmine was not a man who often showed affection, and Dino stood limply, his arms hanging down by his sides.

  ‘Let it go,’ Carmine murmured. ‘It’s over.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘But you and me are richer than we’ve ever been.’ Carmine drew back, holding Dino at arm’s length. ‘Every business cloud has a silver lining, my friend.’

  44

  Day 3

  Another day came. Nothing changed. No sign of home.

  LA, Boston, San Fran, New York; London, Tokyo, Lagos … They flicked through Jacob’s mind like shadows on a wall. Make-believe cities unfeasible in their light and sound, their movement. The clubs he had partied in, the music he had danced to, the shots he had drunk, the women he had kissed, the parties he had crashed, the sunsets he had seen: so much to see and so many colours.

  Heat alone separated day from dusk. Behind his bandages, everything was dark. Celeste came to unwrap him. The red glow on his lids blazed. She held up fingers, asked him to count how many. He started to see glimmers, sometimes wrong, mostly wrong, but he tried and when he got it wrong they tried again.

  Later, he went to the pool with Tawny. She kept charging off ahead and having to come back and haul him up when he stumbled. He hated it. He had never felt so powerless. Here was the woman he had spent weeks trying to impress, and this was the result.

  Since they had no clothes to change into, the same set had to be washed. Jacob heard her undress, and pictured it: the material gathered at her feet, her skin brown, her blonde hair lightened in the sun. Of all his companions, hers was the face he remembered most clearly. Tawny’s beauty had been etched onto his mind since the moment they had met. He pictured her breasts, the nipples pink and delicate. Her bush, honey-coloured, damp in the heat. Tawny’s body was here, finally right next to him, close enough to touch—and Jacob couldn’t see a thing.

  He thought of the girls on his tapes, their eyes looking past the camera but never into it, glazed and vacant. Images played on a twisted loop. All of them, looking at him—and he couldn’t look back.

  Tawny was wringing her clothes. She didn’t stop talking. She seemed to have two modes, verbal splurge or hysterical tears. They all had their way of dealing.

  ‘… It was the freakiest thing,’ Tawny was saying. ‘Cacatra Island, you know? Reuben van der Meyde’s place—that über-exclusive spa rehab; I was going to say you must have been, but then you probably haven’t because most people haven’t. Anyhow I went last summer—and when we came here I thought at first, Shit, this is it! Just a different bit … And when we went to the top, I don’t know, maybe the sun fried my brain, but I could swear we were going over the hill and there it would be—all the huts dotted on the water and the helicopter pad and everything … but of course there wasn’t—just more cliffs, and more sea, and more heat, and more jungle. Maybe the next ridge, I
thought, maybe then, but we could see the whole island by then …’

  Jacob imagined their position on a map, a giant map of Indonesia and the Banda Sea. If it were Jacob he would call it without hesitation: the passengers had died. The plane had crashed. Game over.

  ‘… I guess Angela wants me to be grateful, and I mean don’t get me wrong or anything, it’s not like I’m not grateful, but then it was her fault in the first place that we went anywhere near that stupid swamp. Look, talk to me once you’re in that position ‘cause I’m telling you, it’s like the worst thing ever. And I thought the mudpacks at the Monterey were bad! Anyhow now it’s like she wants me to kiss her ass. It’s like we have to do things her way because she’s the only one who knows what she’s talking about or whatever. Who made her chief? I didn’t.’

  There was a neat splash, and Jacob’s face was spattered with water. He heard her swimming and inched towards the rim of the pool, hands discovering the earth, positioning himself on the ledge and dangling his legs in.

  ‘Promise me you’re not peeking?’ said Tawny.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Promise you can’t see a thing?’

  ‘Just a blur.’

  ‘Can you see this?’

  There was an upsurge of water. He envisaged her breasts on the surface.

  ‘How about this?’

  He wished he could.

  ‘Celeste has got the hots for you, you know,’ said Tawny. ‘It’s obvious. She’s hardly had much practice with men—you can tell. Well, not you, because you can’t see, but to me it’s painful. Maybe she’s got a thing for blind people. Ha! Sorry—lame joke.’ She swam closer. Jacob felt her put her hands on his knees.

  ‘Do you like Celeste?’ said Tawny softly. ‘Do you think she’s pretty?’

  ‘I don’t remember what she looks like.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘I don’t.’ It was the truth. Celeste had been tending to him more than anyone else, but he couldn’t even recall setting eyes on her in Jakarta. She must have been there, but he had been so wrapped up in Tawny he hadn’t noticed.

  ‘It’s your turn,’ said Tawny.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To wash.’ Her hands spread up his thighs. ‘Take your clothes off.’

  She helped him remove his shirt. As she peeled it open, she ran her hands across his muscled chest. The patch beneath his collarbone stung, the burn almost healed but still sore to touch.

  Next came his jeans.

  ‘And the rest,’ she said.

  Jacob could feel her cool breasts pressed against his shins. He took a risk and reached down, catching one in his hand. Tawny gasped in surprise or affront, but it lasted only a second before she sank closer. Her breast filled his palm, the nipple stiff and pronounced. She took his other hand and pressed it to her chest. He imagined her nakedness, her head thrown back and her hair trailing into the water …

  Jacob’s brain told him he was aroused, but his dick wouldn’t work.

  Tawny took a step out of the water, her chest level with his face, and he felt her fingers guiding his chin. Obediently he tasted, licking and biting her skin. He cupped her ass, slipping his touch into the moist slit. At the front she was completely hairless, not what he had expected, and it felt strange, alien, without being able to see.

  His cock lay dormant. Tawny freed it. He felt her tongue engage and if anything was going to get him hard this was it. She flicked across his penis, circling the head, and moaned, taking him in her mouth. Everything about this should have been turning him on, but every time he went to let go something stopped him.

  Tawny after the crash; how she had recoiled from his injuries.

  Get him away from me! She had yelped, as if he were a monster.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked now. The question came from a different mouth to the one that had moments ago been pleasuring his balls; it was the voice of his History teacher at school. Pay attention, Jacob! What’s the matter with you?

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Keep going.’

  ‘Like hell I am. You want to screw, then try getting hard.’

  ‘What do you think I’m doing?’

  She laughed scornfully. Jacob heard the swish of water as she backed away.

  ‘Sorry if I didn’t realise it was going to be such an effort. The impression you gave me before we came out here, I thought you’d be spunking all over the place!’

  ‘I guess I’m not in the best frame of mind. Go figure.’

  A pause before she asked, ‘Is it me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it because you can’t see me?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘It must be. If you could see me you wouldn’t be having this problem.’

  ‘It isn’t a problem.’

  She snorted, confidence restored. ‘It isn’t anything.’

  He fumbled for his clothes. Tawny didn’t help.

  ‘I’m not used to this,’ he said.

  ‘Believe me,’ Tawny hauled herself from the pool, ‘neither am I.’

  He felt, rather than heard, her go.

  Jacob dressed alone.

  He put everything on the wrong way round, and had to wait for the next person to come to the pool and assist him before he could get back to camp.

  45

  Night fell. The fire flickered, red and gold, casting a glow across their sleeping bodies. The lagoon was a sheet of ink, creamy moonshine thrown across its surface. Flames leaped and sprang; and beyond the beach, behind the palms, the deep jungle trembled with nocturnal imaginings. Dark screams sprang from a dark place.

  Celeste went to the shore. She listened to the wash of the sea as it kissed the sand and with it her toes. It was warm at night, soaking up the heat from the beach.

  Serrated cliffs were visible, giant silhouettes above the silent indigo. In a spill of moonlight, a shape glided darkly through the water.

  Another shark fin followed instantly.

  The realisation of this prehistoric creature was incredible. Fear was dwarfed by awe, for in this context the animal seemed less terrifying than majestic.

  Here, it belonged, and they were the imposters. This was its home, not theirs.

  She daren’t tell the others that she couldn’t swim. She didn’t want to be weak, or to be ruled out of things, the pathetic woman that Carl always told her she was.

  Tawny had already targeted her for sticking to the shallows instead of the pool. ‘You can’t soap-dodge for ever, you know.’ If only she knew how Celeste scrubbed night and day, rinsing off her crime until the skin bled and tore. Then Tawny had added, maliciously, under her breath, ‘Fucking Europeans.’

  Celeste returned to the fire, cracking and hissing as it spat orange gems into the night. Sleeping bodies were scattered on the sand. By the forgiving glow of the flames, Jacob looked young and vulnerable, like a child. Innocent.

  A sparkle caught her eye, winking in the darkness. Diamonds.

  Next to a gently snoring Tawny was a shallow, wide boulder, on which the chain was delicately laid. Celeste knew that Jacob had bought the necklace for her. Tawny hadn’t stopped going on about it, making sure Celeste was in earshot every time she did. ‘He pursued me like you wouldn’t believe—flowers, jewellery, you name it! It’s kind of cute. What sane girl says no to diamonds?’

  It had been months since Celeste had last stolen. She watched the gems, thinking of Jacob, and Tawny, and Carl, and how out of control the world had become.

  She crept closer. Temptation beckoned.

  She listened for Tawny’s exhalations, a rhythmic murmur, and reached out.

  Unseen, Celeste lifted the diamonds, her swift fingers pearl-white in the liquid sable. Her pulse slowed. Her blood calmed. She watched Tawny’s face and wondered at how something so lovely could be so unkind.

  All night she held the jewels in the palm of her hand, tight, as if someone already knew they were there and would come to take them from her.

  A shriek erupted
from the forest. It was met by a second, this one a shout, almost human. Kevin shivered. He turned his back on the trees that marked the limit of their territory.

  The dividing wall was deep and inscrutable. It frightened him; in the pitch it crept closer, a faceless, nameless shroud behind which mad things flourished.

  Everyone was asleep.

  A solitary tear rolled out of Kevin’s eye and plopped down to his ear. He sat up, swallowed his sobs, and traced into the sand the KC symbol that adorned all his album covers. Come the morning, when the tide washed in, the sign would dissolve. It felt significant.

  At home, the world revolved around Kevin Chase. Out here, Kevin Chase ceased to be. All the petty grievances he had held against Sketch, how trivial they seemed now. All the times he had told his mom to staple her cake-hole shut, or sworn at his PR, or stomped off with Trey, or blasted Rusty for a pointless thing …

  He wished Sketch were here to tell him what to do. Kevin had never decided on much himself—assistants were always on hand; hordes of his subjects grovelling to help—and who could blame him? He had lived like a god, and gods didn’t need to look after themselves. Out here, he was no god. He was a castaway.

  If he were back in LA, hearing this shit happen to someone else, he would figure they had all died. Of course he would. More bleak was the fact he would give it all of five minutes’ thought before focusing on the next distraction: where to get a cookie milkshake, who was giving him most love on Twitter, where the label wanted to shoot his new kick-ass album cover …

  Maybe the loss of his pills would bring about a quicker, merciful end.

  The pills.

  In living memory, Kevin had never let a day pass without them. Realising their loss had been like toppling from a skyscraper. He would keep falling, and only when he had fallen for long enough would he start to see the effects of the lapse. He was convinced that things were about to change.

  Without his pills, he would start to transform.

  Into what, he did not know.

  Mitch checked the gold watch. Three a.m. Noiselessly he drew a log from the pile and held it to the fire. The end glowed, throwing off sparks that whispered and cracked. The fire betrayed their presence. It found them out. It made them conspicuous to anyone who cared to look. It was a single candle left to burn in a deserted house.