“I guess so.”
“What happened?”
“We ate dinner, and he ordered me some fish dish with clay in it, and then we had a fight, and he kissed me on the beach, and then he wanted to sleep with me but I said no.”
Linda nodded with relish. “Well,” she said briskly. “I knew he wouldn’t be dull. Was that ‘clay,’ darling, or is my hearing failing?”
“Yeah, but it’s not worth going into,” Karen replied wearily.
Linda poured herself a cup of tea and settled comfortably on the bed. “Why did you say no? To sleeping with him, I mean. Just as a matter of academic interest, you understand.”
“He’s so alone. It seemed like it would add to that loneliness if I became another sexual statistic in his life. Does that make sense?”
“Don’t ask me,” Linda said dismissively. “You don’t make sense half the time but I love you anyway. What was the fight about?”
“I asked why he was a mercenary when there were so many other things he could do.”
“My, that was impertinent. What did he say?”
“He told me to mind my own business.”
“Quite right, too. Advice I never take, by the way, but well worth repeating.” She removed the cloth from the plate of biscuits and held one out to Karen. “These are very good. They’re something called dulcettas, which as near as I can make out means ‘sweeties.’ I’ve been eating them all evening while watching a Brazilian soap opera on television. I didn’t even know they had soap operas in Brazil—did you? How about some tea? ”
“Okay, thanks.”
A bellboy knocked and delivered Karen’s envelope as Linda was pouring her drink. She was booked on the noon plane back to Newark, nonstop, the next day.
“British efficiency,” Linda said when she saw what Karen had received. “I got mine this evening. They’re certainly giving us the boot in short order, aren’t they?”
“I guess they figure that the sooner we’re home, the sooner all of this will be forgotten.”
“I picked up a little tidbit about your friend Colter after you left tonight,” Linda said mysteriously as she handed Karen her cup.
Karen stared at her.
“What?”
Linda batted her eyelashes.
“Linda, tell me.”
“Well, you know that man from the embassy, the friend of my father’s?”
“Yes?” Karen said impatiently.
“He told me that Colter is a specialist in the type of rescue work he did for us, going into siege situations and breaking hostages out. Apparently he’s called in on that sort of thing constantly and it’s about all he does. As you can imagine with the state of the world these days, he’s in great demand.”
“He never told me that,” Karen said, almost to herself. “Even when I questioned his ethics, he didn’t say a word about it. He led me to believe he was just a soldier of fortune—you know, a guy who would do anything if the price were right.”
“Well, darling, I’m sure he’s well paid. I doubt if he’s running a charity bazaar for the anti-terrorist set.”
“Still, it’s not the same. He’s really an expert at getting people out of trouble, isn’t he?”
Linda studied her closely and sighed. “‘Better drink that cuppa, Karen; this could be worse than I thought. This may indeed be love, the big one, with a capital L.”
“Oh, stop making fun of me,” Karen said impatiently, “and listen. If what you’re telling me is the truth, I can’t understand why he would deliberately let me think the worst of him.”
“Testing you, perhaps?” Linda asked.
“Maybe,” Karen replied thoughtfully. “You could be right. He’s a complex man.”
“That,” Linda said, sitting up and setting her cup in its saucer, “I gathered.”
“I get the impression he’s afraid to want things, or people, too much, because that would make him vulnerable.”
“You figured out a lot about him in one evening,” Linda observed.
“He’s not as clever as he thinks. He gives some things away if you watch for them. And I was watching. Besides, it was two evenings. I spent the night on the boat with him too.”
Linda’s green eyes widened. “So that’s where you were! And you told me you fell asleep on deck. Naughty girl.”
“I did fall asleep. When I woke up in the morning he was gone. You see what I mean? We had kind of an intense conversation, and I think it took him by surprise, made him uncomfortable. He ran from it then, but later he asked me out. He was drawn to me, but not enough to overcome his past experiences. He believes that if he remains aloof he’ll never have to let down his guard.”
“He’s right, isn’t he?”
“Sometimes you have to take that chance.”
“No, you don’t,” Linda replied simply. “You can choose to be alone.”
“That’s what he’s done,” Karen said. “Or maybe it wasn’t a choice at first. He was an orphan and raised in a home. That might be why he’s so wary. I volunteered to give him my address, something I’ve never done before, because I knew he wouldn’t ask for it. And at the same time I could tell he really liked me, but he wasn’t willing to get that involved.”
“Sounds like you might have gotten to him, too,” Linda said quietly. “That’s a pretty defensive reaction for a man who doesn’t care.”
Karen shook her head sadly. “He won’t call me. I just know it.”
Linda stood and put her cup down on the tray. “I would love to continue this fascinating conversation,” she said, “but I have to be up at a beastly hour to catch my plane.” She went to the desk in the corner of the room and picked up a blank notepad. “This is where you can reach me, both in town and at our place in Sussex. Ring up any time, or come and visit. I shall miss you. I doubt if things in Almeria will ever return to what they were so we probably won’t get together on the job again. Promise me you’ll keep in touch, now.”
“I promise,” Karen said dutifully.
Linda kissed the air next to her cheek. “I must run, good night.” She paused in the doorway to look back at Karen. “Darling, I know he’s damnably attractive, but you’d best forget him. He sounds like walking heartbreak to me.”
Karen didn’t answer.
Linda sighed. “Well, off to the wars. I’ll have to whip these people into shape early if I’m to make my flight.”
Karen smiled to herself. Linda would make her flight. With her imperious voice and “Rule Britannia” manner, she always got the staff scrambling to perform for her in hotels and restaurants. Karen, on the other hand, stood in lines, lost her luggage and could never get a sandwich sent to her room before she fell asleep waiting for it.
“Goodbye.” Linda waved and pulled the door closed behind her.
“Goodbye,” Karen murmured. It was her second farewell of the evening. She undressed slowly, thinking about Colter and her conversation with Linda.
She knew Linda was right about him but it would be difficult to put him out of her mind.
Karen climbed into bed and left a wake up message at the desk. She had thought she wouldn’t be able to sleep, but the events of the past few days caught up with her. She fell into a deep, dreamless slumber that wasn’t broken until the phone rang in the morning.
She dressed quickly and sent a cable to her sister telling her when she would arrive at Newark. There was no message from Colter. She had a late breakfast in the hotel dining room and then left by taxi for the airport.
In a couple of hours she was on her way home.
Chapter 3
Karen’s sister Grace was waiting at the arrival gate in Newark, her face a mask of anxiety. When she saw Karen making her way through the crush of people she surged forward and threw her arms around her younger sibling.
“Oh, Karen, are you all right?” she said worriedly. “Ken and I were just frantic when we heard the news.” She drew back and peered at Karen closely, biting her lower lip.
“I�
�m fine, Grace; let’s just get out of here,” Karen replied, glancing around her furtively. “I really don’t feel like running into a reporter who wants an interview with the returning native. You never can tell who might have gotten wind of my flight schedule.”
“Of course,” Grace said hurriedly, almost running to keep up with Karen’s brisk pace. “But what about your things ?” She glanced toward the crowd waiting for the luggage return.
“There are no things, Grace. Just what’s on my back, and in this tote. I didn’t even have my passport, the British embassy in Caracas arranged my travel visa.”
“Oh, you poor dear,” Grace said, overcome again. “Ken and I watched it every day on TV. I couldn’t believe the story when I first heard it. I was at the supermarket and when I came out and got in the car, the report was on the radio. Then on the five o’clock news there was a film of it, and later they started interrupting the programming to give special bulletins.”
“Grace,” Karen said patiently, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I really don’t want to talk about it. I lived it for five days and I’d rather forget it, okay?”
“Fine, fine,” Grace said hastily. “I understand. We’re just glad you’re home safe and sound.”
Since her marriage Grace had a tendency to use the editorial “we,” including her husband and two children in her opinions.
“Where are the kids?” Karen asked, remembering them. Tommy, five, and Mary, three, were conspicuously absent.
“Oh, Tom’s in school and I got a sitter for Mary. I figured you might not need her Big Bird imitations today.”
“Thanks,” Karen said, “I appreciate it. You know how much I love her, but a peaceful ride back would be nice.”
“I made up the spare room,” Grace said as they passed through the outer doors and headed for the short term parking lot. “You feel free to stay just as long as you want. Do you have any plans about what you’re going to do?”
“Well,” Karen said dryly, “it’s pretty obvious that I’m out of a job.”
“You don’t think you’ll go back to Almeria?”
“I’m a little afraid to go back,” Karen answered frankly. “Even if this crisis is settled the unrest is going to keep on indefinitely. And if they ask me to return, working at Government House would keep me right in the thick of it.”
“Thank God,” Grace said, relieved. “I was afraid you would be determined to stay on there.”
“Not after the past week,” Karen said, subdued. “The USA looks pretty good to me right now. I think I’ll try for a job around here, then get my own place.”
“What about your apartment in Ascension?” Grace asked. She was scanning the numbers on the metal fence, looking for the section where she’d parked her car.
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll close it up and ask my landlady to send the clothes and personal stuff. The furniture isn’t worth transporting; she can sell it.”
“This way,” Grace said, spotting her station wagon. They walked in silence for a while until she went on, “Karen, I know you said you didn’t want to discuss the kidnapping. But if you just answer one question I’ll forget it, okay?”
“Okay. What’s the question?”
“You weren’t hurt, were you? I mean physically?”
“No, not at all,” Karen replied reassuringly. “Some of the men were but they left the women alone.”
“Gallantry?” Grace asked sarcastically.
“Who knows?” Karen answered wearily. “But I can tell you the worst that happened to me was that I got a terrible scare.”
“That makes me feel a lot better,” Grace said, sighing. They reached her car and she unlocked the passenger door for Karen. “Still, it must have been awful.” Then realizing that she was still pursuing a subject she had promised to drop, she fell silent and walked around her car, getting in on her side.
Karen slid into her seat and buckled her seat belt, looking around at the familiar green New Jersey turnpike signs, feeling as though she had just returned from another world.
“Now, there’s no rush about getting your own place,” Grace said, starting the car and pulling out of her space. “Take all the time you want. We have plenty of room, and Ken and the kids are looking forward to having you in the house.”
Karen almost winced. She knew that Grace was sincere, but the role of dependent relative was not one Karen intended to play for long. At the moment she had no choice, but her first order of business would be to get out on her own.
“What about money?” Grace asked. “Do you have any? We can lend you some if it’s necessary.” She pulled up to the lot monitor’s booth and paid her parking fee.
“That’s thoughtful of you but I still have that bank account at Federal Trust in Manhattan. My share of the money Dad left us is in it.”
“It’s a blessing you never moved it to Almeria or you might never have seen it again. Do you have any real idea of what’s going on there now?” She steered the station wagon onto the access road for the turnpike.
“Nobody seems to know. The rebels have been arrested, but the group supporting them is still acting up and nothing is settled. Believe me, Grace, I don’t care. By the time we were rescued all I wanted concerning Almeria was to be out of it.”
“Who rescued you?” Grace asked curiously. “I heard something about it on the news but the reporter wasn’t very clear. They weren’t police, were they, or government agents?”
“They were a team of mercenaries,” Karen said. “They were paid to go into Government House and get us out.”
“They must have been good at it,” Grace observed, gliding up to the northbound entrance for the turnpike and taking her ticket from the machine. “The report said it was all over in fifteen minutes.”
“Yes,” Karen replied evenly. “They were very good.” She shifted in her seat and rolled down the window. “How does Tom like kindergarten?” she asked.
“He wasn’t too keen on it at first but he’s getting used to it,” Grace replied.
“I can’t wait to see him,” Karen said. “Does he still look like Aunt Elizabeth?”
Grace grinned. “More than ever. She’ll never be dead as long as Tom is around to stare at me with those district attorney eyes. I swear, sometimes I think she’s come back in that little body to tell me to clean up my room and do my homework.”
“I know what you mean,” Karen sympathized. Grace’s son resembled their aunt in an uncanny, almost supernatural fashion. It was difficult to look at him and completely dismiss the theory of reincarnation. “And how is Mary? Charming everybody at nursery school?”
“Sure,” Grace said. “She’s charming as long as she gets her way. Cross her and the charm fades very fast.”
“She’s only three, Grace.”
Grace shook her head. “You indulge that girl too much.”
“My godchild, after all.”
Karen settled back in her seat and watched the exits pass in a blur of off ramps and overpasses. Grace lived in the Passaic County suburb of Wayne in a development of ranch houses and split levels, built twenty years earlier, when Wayne was still rural and the township mostly farmland. Now it was a crowded, bustling hodgepodge of shopping malls, professional offices and industrial complexes, and the house Grace and Ken had purchased when they were first married was worth four times what they’d paid for it. Ken worked as a chemist for a pharmaceutical company in one of the corporate parks, and their two children attended local schools. Grace was on the PTA and took exercise classes with her neighbors; Ken was a member of the Elks and played golf. They were the perfect nuclear family and always made Karen feel as if she had traveled backward in time and landed on “Father Knows Best.”
“It’s been a while, huh?” Grace said.
Karen turned to look at her. “What?”
“It’s been a long time since you passed through here.”
Karen nodded. “It’s busier than I remember it.”
Grace grimaced. “It gets
busier every day. Ken says if any more New York commuters relocate to this area he’s going to write his congressman about moving Wall Street to North Jersey. It would save everybody a lot of traveling.”
“Do you remember Alice Dunphy? Her parents had a farm just outside of Oakland. I wonder if it’s still there.”
“I doubt it. Probably ten colonials are sitting on it now.”
“Her father used to say it was just forty-five minutes from Broadway, like the song.”
Grace snorted. “That was never true. The only thing that’s forty-five minutes from Broadway is the corner of Broadway and Thirty-Third Street.”
“I love New York,” Karen sang softly, like the tourism advertisements, and Grace laughed.
Conversation flagged and Karen put her head back against the headrest, closing her eyes and thinking about her forthcoming job search. She would get the Sunday papers with the full classified sections that weekend, and type up a resume to be printed for distribution. As Grace drove she made her plans, unaware that her employment prospects would turn out to be much narrower than she had suspected.
In the weeks that followed, Karen discovered that getting a job was a problem. With no local references and little demand for a Spanish language translator in affluent suburbia, she sent out a lot of unanswered queries and made quite a few fruitless phone calls. She continued to respond to want ads and finally got a written referral from the Almerian attache´, but the opportunities presenting themselves were still few. She came to see that her skills would be more in demand in an urban environment with a bilingual population, and she expanded her horizons to include cities like Paterson and Passaic. She resolved, regretfully, to include a car in her increasingly alarming budget calculations, and routinely sent resumes to people she had little hope of hearing from in return.
More than a month passed and she was still unemployed. She helped Grace with the kids, read, took long walks, composed what she hoped were riveting cover letters, and meditated on the meaning of life. Nothing worked. She still couldn’t forget Steven Colter.
One afternoon Grace came into the paneled rec room with the mail and handed Karen a letter.
Men of Intrgue A Trilogy Page 29