Obsession (Year of Fire)

by Florencia Bonelli

  “I’m not testing you, Yasmín. Or interrogating you to find out if you’re doing the right thing. I just want to know if you’re happy and if you’re following your heart. That’s all.”

  Yasmín hugged her mother and rested her cheek on her shoulder.

  “Mama, I don’t know why I’m having these feelings for this boy. Because he’s just a boy, Mama. I’m almost five years older than him.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t know, it makes me uncomfortable. He drives me crazy with his sober attitude and wise old gaze, it’s as if he can read my mind. Papa wouldn’t approve of it,” she pointed out suddenly.

  “Why do you say that? You’re prejudging your father.”

  “Because he has very high expectations for me. And Sándor is a nobody. A simple Bosnian, with no degree, no career, no money, nothing.”

  Francesca pulled away from her daughter and looked her in the eye.

  “You don’t know your father if that’s what you think of him. He was a great prince, the future king of Saudi Arabia, and he married me. Me, when I was a nobody. And you think he would oppose your relationship with Sándor because he’s a nobody? He might not approve if Sándor were a bad man, but not for the reasons you’re saying.”

  “Maybe you don’t know Papa like I do. It’s one thing to be his wife and another to be his only daughter. The only daughter of a Muslim.”

  “I think you’re using the idea of your father’s opposition as an excuse to cover up your fears about losing the security that André gives you. He’s a man from a prestigious family, with money and a brilliant career. You were always a little frivolous, my dear. And capricious too. You enjoy the good life.”

  “Thanks, Mom! I didn’t know that you thought so highly of me.”

  “You know I like sincerity.” Francesca reached her hand out and caressed her daughter’s forehead. “Yasmín, treasure of my life, I just want you to be happy, that’s all.”

  “I know, Mama.” She sought out her mother’s lap once more. “I’m so confused! I don’t feel the same certainties as I did before. I feel as though my life has been turned upside down.”

  “Do you love André?”

  “How do you know if you’re really in love with a man?”

  “That’s easy. All you want is to be with him, to feel his presence, look at him, to smell him. You want to touch him and for him to touch you. When you see him appear, you get so excited it hurts in the pit of your stomach. You think about that man day and night. You fall asleep thinking about him and wake up thinking about him. Who is it that you think about, my love? Sándor or André?”

  Yasmín didn’t answer. She stayed quiet not because she didn’t know but because she didn’t dare to say it. But she had spent the entire morning since then continuously repeating: I think about Sándor, Mama! Sándor! I never felt that way about André.

  At one in the afternoon that Friday, she parked her BMW Z3 on Avenue Elisée Reclus. Her bodyguards parked behind her and escorted her to the entrance of Eliah’s house. Sándor never would have let her drive alone; he would have sat in the passenger seat and put up with Yasmín’s grumpy face and caustic comments.

  Leila received her in the kitchen. Though she didn’t respond to her greeting, she gave her a serene, mature smile, and explained with signs that Matilde and Juana weren’t there, which disappointed Yasmín. She sat on a stool by the island and watched Leila piling up a tray with food.

  “Is that for Sándor?”

  Leila nodded. “Would you like to take it to him?” she asked as she put it on a little table with wheels.

  Yasmín didn’t answer right away; it was the first time Leila had spoken a word to her.

  “Yes, I would like to.”

  She was excited by the possibility of being with Sándor; in spite of her frequent visits, she hadn’t seen him once. Leila accompanied her to the service elevator and guided her toward the bedroom where her brother was staying, even knocking on the door.

  “Come in, Leila,” said Sándor in his mother tongue, and the girl gave her a little nudge before going back down to the bottom floor.

  Sándor sat up in bed and switched off the TV with a remote control when he saw Yasmín pushing the trolley.

  “Hello, Sándor.” He didn’t answer. “Leila asked me to help her by bringing up your lunch.” The Bosnian simply looked at her without betraying hostility or surprise; he just looked curious.

  Sándor liked Yasmín’s body, her well-defined hips and tiny waist, which he longed to close his hands around. He thought that her calves were beautiful, with their well-defined muscles emphasized by her high heels. He was knocked out by her breasts; when he was employed as her bodyguard, he had forced himself not to stare at them because they distracted him, and distractions had fatal consequences. He wanted to take a bunch of her long, black hair and twist it around her neck so he could appreciate the contrast with her white skin. Yasmín smelled wonderful and dressed like the women in Paris Match. How many francs had she paid for the Valentino dress she was wearing today? And her Manolo Blahnik shoes? He knew her favorite brands because he had escorted her to all the best stores in Paris. She could easily spend his monthly salary in one afternoon. And yet he remembered how, in the hospital, she had pulled her hand away when Eliah came into the room. She was ashamed of him, in spite of her attraction toward him. I’m just another of her whims, he thought.

  “Are you going to eat in bed or would you rather eat at the table?” She waited for an answer in vain. “I guess it wasn’t a good idea to bring you your lunch. Maybe it’s better if I just go.” She spun toward the door, her eyes full of tears.

  “Yasmín.”

  She was moved to hear him say her name without the formality of the “miss.” She stopped, but still kept her back to him. She heard him move and turned around.

  “What are you doing?” she asked angrily, rushing to the head of the bed. “Why are you getting up? Oh!” she exclaimed, and looked away from the unforgettable sight of Sándor’s hairy legs and his white underwear, which contained an implausibly large bulge.

  Sándor had thrown the sheets to the side and straightened up carefully so as not to bend his bandaged torso. He swung his legs out of the bed and stuck his feet into slippers.

  “Hand me my robe, please.” Yasmín passed it to him with her face turned away. “I’m decent now. You can look at me safely.”

  Yasmín turned around and smiled at him like a prude. Her cheeks were hot. Was it possible that she was blushing? She hadn’t done that in years. She looked up and was met by Sándor’s sky-blue eyes. She felt everything at once: the palpitations, the tingling between her legs, the sweat on her hands, the dryness in her throat, anxiety that his arms might crush her or that his lips might devour her. He, on the other hand, seemed in control of himself. Although she was five years older than him, Yasmín had the impression that she was an adolescent standing before a mature, hardened man. Eliah was telling the truth when he had said, “His spirit is much older and wiser than yours.”

  “How do you feel?” she asked, in a strange voice that embarrassed her. She tried to clear her throat.

  “Why didn’t you come to see me sooner?”

  “Oh…I…I came. I came on Wednesday, when I found out that you had been discharged, and I came yesterday, Thursday. And today…I came to ask how you were and…”

  “Why didn’t you come up to see me, then?”

  “Because…you know, it didn’t seem right. And I didn’t want to bother you.”

  Sándor let out a sardonic laugh that Yasmín had never heard before. It made him more beautiful in spite of its disdainful tone. The Bosnian moved away toward the window and stayed there, with his back turned, looking at the Andalusian garden. The clacking of her Blahniks warned him that she was coming. When the pitter-patter stopped, Sándor knew that she was just inches away from him.

  “Why did you decide to come up today? Why is it right today? What made you think you wouldn’t bother
me today?”

  “Well…I already told you, Leila asked me to help her…ah!” she screamed when Sándor turned toward her and grabbed her by the arms. “Sándor, you’re hurting me!”

  “For once in your life, could you be honest with yourself and everyone else? Why did you come to see me today? Because Matilde and Juana aren’t here and they won’t be back until this afternoon? Because your brother is at Mercure and won’t be back until this evening? Because no one, except Leila, who you couldn’t care less about, will realize that the princess fancies the commoner?”

  “I hate you! I despise you!”

  “If you hate and despise me, why did you come to see me? Why?” He shook her and dug his fingers viciously into her thin arms. “Why? Talk!”

  “Because all I could think about was seeing you! Because I wanted to see you with all my heart! Because when that man shot you in the chest I thought that I was going to die along with you! Because I wanted to die when I thought you were dead. Because I miss you so much! So much! I can’t stand you not being with me every day, behind me, taking care of me.”

  She threw her head forward and started to cry harder than she ever had before. Her throat hurt and her arms stung where Sándor was digging his fingers into them. She didn’t have the strength to ask him to let go.

  It took a while for Sándor to realize how happy he was. First he was startled by Yasmín’s vehemence; then he was surprised by what she was saying, or rather how she was saying it, in an accusatory tone, as though he was to blame for everything. He only allowed himself to savor the confession when it was over. He closed his arms around her, not noticing the painful half-moons that he had made on her flesh. He smiled when he felt her hands grasping at his back.

  “Sándor,” he heard her murmur, and loosened the embrace to allow her to emerge from his chest. “I can’t bear you thinking that I’m capricious and frivolous.”

  “That’s what you are, Yasmín.” He leaned down and pressed his lips against her half-open mouth. “But I like you anyway,” he said, his voice clearly affected by this light contact between their lips. It wasn’t a soft or romantic kiss; on the contrary, Sándor took her with all the wildness that had been building up inside of him all that time. He was goaded by Yasmín’s disdain, her ill treatment and the fact that he had been separated from her side. He wanted to make her understand that she belonged to him, that she was his and no one else’s. He abandoned the kiss to drag his lips down the thin, white neck that he had always stared at like a fool.

  “Say it again,” he begged her. “Say again what you just screamed at me.”

  Yasmín was incapable of putting a coherent sentence together. Her head was spinning, her body was throbbing as if it were one giant heart. She had been kissed by a few men in her twenty-nine years. None of them had kissed her like Sándor.

  “Why do you want me to repeat it? You already know it. I’m crazy about you. I think about you morning, noon and night. I can’t get you out of my head. I want to concentrate on my work and I can’t. You’re always there, always in my head. And when I saw you looking so pale on the floor of the chapel, I wanted that man to come back and shoot me so I could die along with you.”

  “Never say anything like that again!”

  “It’s the truth! That’s what I wanted! It’s insane, I know. But everything when it comes to you is insane.”

  Sándor pulled away gently. She was afraid, not of him, but of what she had just said, because he was looking at her sadly.

  “You’re right. This thing between us is insane, impossible.” He stepped back twice, and a cold shiver ran through Yasmín. “What can I give you? Nothing. I’m a man with no homeland, no wealth, no education and no money. Nothing compared to you, born with a silver spoon in your mouth. You’re the daughter of a Saudi prince, a biochemist with degrees from the best universities. You’re refined and educated. You know the world and are accustomed to getting the most out of life. Did you know that I didn’t finish high school? We were very poor and I had to help at my parents’ restaurant. I know how to speak French, not very well, as you’ve probably noticed, but I’m even worse at writing it.”

  “I can teach you! I want to teach you!”

  “Yes? What else do you want to teach me? To eat with the manners of a noble, to have good taste in clothes, to move through Parisian society with class, the way your fiancé André Saint-Claire does?”

  “That’s not fair!”

  “I don’t think so. Tell me something, Yasmín. Why did you treat me with disdain when I worked for you? Why did you make guarding you so difficult? Why were you so mean and capricious with me?”

  “Because you’re an arrogant fool!” Sándor leaped on her and cruelly grabbed her by the arms again. “Let go of me! You’re hurting me!”

  “I’ll tell you why you treated me so badly when I was your bodyguard. Because you fancied me…”

  “Damn you, Sándor! Damn you!”

  “Because you fancied me,” he continued, though he doubted Yasmín could hear him through her crying. “You fancied your chauffeur and bodyguard. You, a woman of class, whose fiancé is a director at Air France. The lady was attracted to the tramp. And that seduced you, but it also disgusted you.”

  “Sándor, no more, please,” she sobbed.

  Yasmín choked on her tears and started to cough. Sándor pulled away and looked at her worriedly until she recovered. He handed her a glass of water and a napkin. She drank and patted her lips dry with her back to him. Humiliated, offended and hurt, Yasmín put the glass and the napkin on the tray and left the room without saying a word or looking at him. Sándor sat on the edge of the bed, covered his face and burst into tears.

  * * *

  * * *

  CHAPTER 21

  * * *

  * * *

  The Israeli minister of transport and the El Al executives immediately agreed to a meeting in Paris with the directors of the Dutch insurance companies. The details of the meeting were arranged over the weekend between Michael Thorton and Ariel Bergman, and the meeting took place on Monday afternoon, in the conference room at Mercure Inc. It took them a little over three hours to agree on a figure to compensate for the losses suffered and caused by the disaster. Actuaries from the Metropolitan and World Assurance presented the details of the expenditures already made and a chart projecting those they would incur in the following months. The experts advising the Israelis analyzed the documentation and presented a long list of objections. Regardless, the Israelis wanted to reach an agreement, so they finally negotiated a compensation sum of seventy-three million dollars, of which forty-two million would go to the coffers of the Metropolitan, and thirty-one to World Assurance.

  Fifteen minutes after the Israeli minister of transport and the top executives from El Al had left the George V, and while the partners of Mercure and the directors of the insurance companies were cracking open a bottle of Dom Perignon, Al-Saud’s cell phone rang. He recognized the thick Hebrew accent immediately.

  “You got what you wanted,” said Bergman. “Now you have to keep your end of the bargain.”

  “Tomorrow I’ll meet you at—”

  “No, Al-Saud. Not tomorrow. Tonight. Now, if possible. We don’t have any time to lose. Over ten days have passed since the first article appeared. Time is against us. My country’s government has to act. The international pressure has become unbearable.”

  “In half an hour,” Al-Saud accepted, “At the Café Flore on Boulevard Saint-Germain. Can you get there in time?”

  “Yes, in half an hour I’ll be there.”

  As soon as he hung up with Bergman, Al-Saud asked Victoire to get in touch with Peter Ramsay. After giving some instructions to Ramsay, he said good-bye to his clients and partners and asked Medes to drive him to Boulevard Saint-Germain. He arrived before Bergman, and when the spy approached the table, Al-Saud raised a hand to stop him before he sat down.

  “Mr. Bergman, you should go to the men’s room and wash up befor
e you eat.”

  Bergman immediately understood Al-Saud’s meaning. In the bathroom he found Peter Ramsay, who blocked the door with a wooden wedge on the floor.

  “If you’ll allow me, Mr. Bergman.”

  The katsa spread his arms so Ramsay could check him for weapons.

  “This beauty will stay with me until the end of the meeting,” he said, slipping the Beretta into the front of his pants. Then he swept the Israeli with a frequency detector, without finding anything. “He’s clean,” he said, tilting his head slightly and speaking into the collar of his jacket. He took out the wedge that was blocking the door and, with a sweep of his hand, invited Bergman to go back to the restaurant.

  “What would you like to drink?” Al-Saud asked.

  “A coffee will be fine.”

  “Two coffees, please.” He let the waiter leave before saying, “I imagine you already know that the meeting was a success.”

  “For you and your clients. Not for my country.”

  “Israel isn’t accustomed to loss; it’s difficult for you to accept. However, in such a complex matter, the cost was only seventy-three million dollars. Nothing to a country as rich as yours.”

  “It’s not about money, Al-Saud, and you know that. It’s the image of Israel that has been damaged, maybe irreparably.”

  Eliah let out a humorless laugh.

  “Please, Bergman. You must already know that in the world of politics what’s black today can be white tomorrow and vice versa. In any case, I’m going to give you the key that will help make the passage from black to white quick and easy.”

  “Talk, Al-Saud. They’re impatient in Tel Aviv.”

  “It’s to do with the photos that were published.”

  “What about them?”

  “They’re forgeries.”

  Berman stifled a curse while the waiter served the coffee.

  “What are you talking about?” he hissed through clenched teeth. “The authorities from the Institute of Biological Research said that they belonged to their laboratories, that they were real.”