Once in Paris

by Diana Palmer

  "You are the damnedest woman," Pierce said with pure disgust.

  "Amen to that," Tate agreed. He checked his gun and pulled an automatic pistol from his jacket. He checked to make sure the safety was on and there wasn't a round chambered before he extended it, butt first, to Pierce. "Remember how to use that?"

  Pierce nodded. He checked the safety himself and stuck the gun in his own pocket.

  Brianne was getting uneasier by the minute. She remembered the two men her companion

  had shot and the way they'd looked there on the tiled floor, so vulnerable and helpless and pitiful. Her eyes went slowly around the interior of the helicopter and she saw what she'd missed at first These were killers. They knew how to use those guns and they wouldn't hesitate if threatened. Pierce had a knowledge of firearms that had surely come of using one himself, perhaps in some conflict or during some time of danger in his past.

  She felt young and gauche. She wrapped her arms around herself for comfort and averted her eyes to the pilot. He was starting to bring the chopper down near what looked like a seaport, but he wasn't landing anywhere near it/There was a lot of sand and a lot of people down there, all of whom looked, as they neared the ground, very Arabic. They wouldn't blend in, she and Pierce and whoever their rescuer was.

  When the chopper landed, their rescuer pulled a big duffel bag from under one of the seats and jumped down beside Pierce and Brianne and the others. The two men who'd accompanied him were wished well and released. The pilot took off with a cursory wave. "What do we do now?" Brianne asked worriedly

  "We blend in," said their rescuer, and he pulled off the mask that concealed his entire head.

  Brianne saw at once that he could have blended in, better than she and Pierce. The man was darker than either of them and he had rough features rather than handsome ones. He had deep-set black eyes with a faint almond shape to them, heavy brows, a broad, straight nose and a wide, chiseled mouth. His cheekbones were high, and his chin square. His thick black hair was in a straight braid behind him that reached below his shoulder blades. It didn't take much imagination to divine his identity.

  "Mr. Winthrop, I presume," Brianne murmured with a dry smile.

  The tall man lifted an eyebrow. "My reputation precedes me, I gather?"

  "He only said that you ate scorpions," she pointed toward Pierce.

  "Rattlesnakes, too, but only when they try to bite him," Pierce said with a grin. He extended a hand. "Thanks for coming after us. I don't think Sabon intended to let us go for quite a while."

  Tate returned the firm handshake. "This is what you pay me for," he reminded the other

  man. "Hell of a shame to waste money by letting me sit on my thumbs all the time."

  "How did you find us?"

  Tate grinned at him. "I could tell you..."

  ''But you'd have to shoot him," Brianne said for him.

  "I really would have to shoot him," Tate assured her. "I took an oath."

  "He took several," Pierce murmured, "but he only uses them when it suits him." He sobered. "If Brauer gets to the right people in Washington before we do, it's going to mean an explosion of epic proportions in this part of the world. The whole Arab contingent will go to war."

  "I brought a phone." Tate opened the duffel bag and produced the instrument. But when he tried to use it, nothing happened.

  He turned it over and exposed the battery. There was no battery. He said something in an unfamiliar-sounding language.

  "We can find a phone..." Pierce began.

  "Not here. There's not a telephone. Only the wireless on the freighters, and I don't have my codes with me. I need a land line." Tate let out an angry breath.

  "What happened to the battery?" Pierce asked.

  "Our pilot has a small black-market operation on the side," he said irritably. "I never thought he'd stoop low enough to rob me. I should have carried a spare. I usually do. But not this time." He shook his head and glanced at Pierce. "You should fire me."

  Pierce chuckled. "Get us home first, then I'll think about it." "I'm serious."

  "So am I." Pierce clamped a huge hand on the other man's broad shoulder. "Anybody can get caught up in circumstances. You had a battery pack stolen. I got kidnapped." He shrugged. "We're even."

  "Okay." Tate dug deeper in the duffel bag and tossed two roomy black garments at Pierce and Brianne. "I didn't have time to worry much about sizes, but they're voluminous. They should work all right. And wind these around your heads especially yours," he told Brianne, glaring at her wealth of pale hair that reminded him so much of Cecily's. "You stick out like a sore thumb here."

  She shrugged into the large garment "That's no way to talk about 'white gold.'"

  Tate frowned. "What?"

  "White gold," she repeated. She looked at Pierce, who was faintly amused. "That's what Mr. Sabon thinks of me. He said I'd have brought quite a price in earlier times in the slave trade."

  "Did he really?" Pierce asked with eyes that grew colder by the minute. "I gather that you found him less repulsive than before?"

  She frowned slightly at his tone. "I felt rather sorry for him, if you must know."

  His eyes looked like black splinters of heat. "How interesting. Then we married for no real purpose, I gamer?"

  She'd almost forgotten that. They had married to save her from Sabon, who'd turned out to be no threat to her or any other woman, and they'd consummated the relationship for the same reason. Annulment was strictly out now unless they both wanted to lie about the intimacy of their relationship. It would take a divorce, and that would take time.

  She looked into Pierce's black eyes and blushed, seeing all over again the heat and passion of his expression in that most intimate of encounters.

  He averted his own gaze. He didn't want to remember. He was going to put the whole episode behind him. They'd go home, stop Brauer and his little plot, and then they'd get a divorce, quietly, and Brianne would go to college. It would be easy. Right now, he had to put first things first.

  "We need to move," Pierce told his security chief.

  All three of them wore the flowing garments and turbans. In the guise, Brianne looked amazingly like a young boy. Her skin was very fair, but Arabs had mixed complexions. She wouldn't stand out too much, especially in the company of Pierce and Tate, both of whom ' were darker than she.

  They made their way slowly into the main part of Qawi's small capital city, trying to blend in with the populace. It would have been impossible in a small village, where everyone knew his neighbor. But this was a port city, and there were always crowds from other parts of the Middle East moving along the docks. They didn't attract much attention once they were near the moored ships. The one thing Brianne did notice was the poverty. Philippe had been right when he said that his country had none of the modem appearance of other Middle Eastern countries.

  They wandered down the row of disreputable freighters until Tate saw one that he recognized.

  "I know this tub, and its captain," he said quietly. "Stay here. I'll go aboard and see if he's willing to give us berths."

  "Can you trust him?" Pierce asked.

  Tate shrugged. "You can't trust anyone this far from home, but he's honest enough if he's paid well. I won't be long."

  He went aboard the ship, holding on to the rope lines as he passed crewmen coming down the gangplank.

  "So that's the elusive Mr. Winthrop," Brianne said. It was the first chance she and Pierce had been given to talk since their confinement. She was uncomfortable with him now.

  "Yes. He's impressive, isn't he?"

  She nodded. She couldn't quite look at him. She was confused and embarrassed, even a little shy.

  He moved in front of her and tilted her face up to his. The expression in her green eyes made him feel guilty. He remembered that he'd called her by his late wife's name, and so must she. It was there, in the faint accusation that shadowed her gaze.

  "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I wanted to spare you Sabon. But I
'd already told you that it was too soon for me."

  "Two years," she replied. "Most people would start to heal by then."

  "She was my life," he said through his teeth, dropping his hand.

  "I know that. She still is." She moved away from him. "I didn't learn anything that I didn't already know, except that now I'm not raw material for a virginal sacrifice anymore," she added coldly.

  He hated knowing that. He'd done what he had to; he'd protected her from Sabon. She acted as if he'd hurt her deliberately.

  "Wasn't the point of the thing to spare you Sabon's advances?" he asked.

  "Yes, and you did," she agreed, refusing to tell him the truth about any of it. She kept her back to him, her arms folded defensively over her chest. "No harm done."

  That's what she thought. He looked at her and ached all over. For a brief encounter, it was devastating. He'd thought of nothing else since they'd taken him from her cell. He wanted her.

  The thought shocked him. Yes. He wanted her! But how could he, when his heart still belonged to Margo?

  She wasn't looking at him. Her gaze had gone to the freighter, a rusted old hulk with several foreign-looking men aboard. It was a dangerous step they were taking, to trust their safety to the captain of that ship. But if they didn't go on the freighter, sooner or later their identities would be discovered and Sabon would have them back in his clutches. She wasn't really afraid for herself, because she . knew too much about Sabon. But she was afraid for Pierce and his friend. Their treatment would be unpleasant, especially after Winthrop had shot some of Sabon's mercenaries. Their friends would want revenge.

  She wondered what they'd do if they were recaptured, and decided that she'd face each minute by itself, slowly, and not try to swallow the entire situation in a gulp. Most of all, she couldn't give in to fear. Only courage would see them through the rest of this ordeal. She had to be strong, for everyone's sake. That included not arguing with Pierce about something he couldn't help. He'd been gallant, doing something he hadn't really wanted to do, for what he thought was for her sake. She knew that to him, it must have felt like adultery. How could she blame him because he couldn't return her love? It wasn't his fault that he loved Margo and still considered himself bound to her by invisible bonds. It wasn't fair to make him feel guilty because of something he couldn't help.

  She turned back to him, her eyes wide and sad and apologetic. "I'm sorry," she said before she lost her nerve. "You did what you could to protect me, and I'm grateful."

  He was surprised at her change of attitude. He stared down at her intently, curiously.

  She forced a smile to her lips. "There's absolutely nothing to worry about now," she assured him. "I'm on the pill, and thanks to you, Philippe Sabon won't ever be a threat to me again. We don't owe each other a thing. We're quits."

  That was only half true, but why bother him with something that might never happen? If it did...well, she could lose herself somewhere in the world and he'd never have to know.

  "Quits?" he asked, and his voice had roughened.

  "We'll get out of this," she said with conviction. "When we do, I'll go away to college

  and you can get a quiet divorce. No one even has to know that we were ever married."

  This was moving too fast. He wanted to slow down, to look back, to think about this muddle they were in. She was running for the border and he hadn't even looked at the evidence yet. He scowled and searched for the right words to express what he was feeling.

  But before he could speak, there was a movement aboard the ship and he saw Tate Winthrop coming down the gangplank, grinning from ear to ear.

  "Comrades," he told his companions, "we have friends in the strangest places, it seems!"

  He gestured over his shoulder at the man coming down the gangplank. It was a tall, strangely familiar man. When he got closer, Brianne recognized nun. It was Mufti, one of her captors!

  Chapter Ten

  Mufti grinned at Brianne. "You are surprised, yes?"

  "I am surprised, yes!" she parroted. "What are you doing here?"

  "I am spying for the government of Salid," he told her, with a flash of yellowed teeth.

  "That's the neighboring country that this attack is going to be blamed on," Tate informed her. "We have to get Mufti out because he's just become our star witness." He didn't tell her the rest of the story, that Mufti had been captured and almost assassinated by one of Tate's men before he threw himself on their mercy and told them who he was and why he was in the compound. His story, easily verified with the appropriate authorities in Salid via shortwave, panned out and Mufti became an unexpected ally. Tate had sent him ahead to find the captain of this boat and make the travel arrangements.

  Tate spotted the captain coming quickly down the gangplank. He excused himself and went to meet the man. There was a brief conversation and the captain ran back up onto the ship, shouting orders and waving his hands.

  "He just had a shortwave call. Sabon's mercenaries are on their way here," Tate said quickly. "The captain says he can't possibly sail today, anyway. He'll wait for us tomorrow, but we have to find a place to lie low for the

  night."

  "Where?" Pierce asked, glowering as he looked around them at the busy port. "Even in this garb, we're not going to look like natives. We can't just book into a hotel and blend in."

  ' "That wasn't what I had in mind,'' Tate told him. He motioned to his companions. "Mufti has relatives near here, in a tiny village that's off the beaten track. I've got an idea."

  Two hours later, Brianne was sweating and calling Tate vicious names in her mind as she toiled to milk a cow in a makeshift stable of adobe and straw a few miles out of town in a village that looked as if it had remained unchanged since the first century A.D. The men were busily pitching hay and cleaning stalls. Mufti, his graying hair covered by the same wound cloth as his companions, was carrying sacks of grain from a dilapidated truck into the stable. They weren't getting paid for all this labor, but they were going to have a place to sleep on the clean hay in the loft.

  Brianne's derriere was still smarting from the camel ride to this isolated village where Mufti had led them. It was the last place Sabon and his men would think to find them. No doubt he was still scouring the seaport, looking for them. All they had to do was stay hidden for the night and sneak back into town and onto the boat in the morning. Presuming that they weren't discovered first.

  As Brianne struggled with her first attempt at milking, Sabon's quiet words about the plight of his people came back to her. She looked around at the primitive way the people in these outlying areas lived and felt guilty for her silk dresses and leather sandals back home. The poorest family in America lived ten times better than this, she thought. The women looked much older than their chronological ages. The wear and tear on them from this sort of existence was obvious.

  The men were stooped and malnourished, and most of the young women were bearing babies on their backs as they went about their chores. The lack of proper clothing was painfully obvious. Some of the young children had the trademark bloated little bellies that denoted lack of adequate food. The older ones drew water from a deep well with a metal pail, which, according to one of the women Mufti translated for them had been a gift from the West. This village had its own metal pail and didn't have to use the animal skin bag that most villages did.

  Brianne marveled at the pleasure such a trivial thing gave to these poor people. She marveled as well at their acceptance of the lives they led. No one seemed to complain or blame anyone for the poverty that was so obvious. Nor did they seem to mind that just across the border in a rich neighboring country was a city modern enough to compete with any in Europe. Many villagers had gone there, she learned, only to return with crushed hopes of finding prosperity. People who lived under primitive conditions had no computer or literacy skills to better themselves in a city. The very lack of education defeated them in the end, just as Sa-bon had said.

  The village was compo
sed of Muslims, and the simple sincerity of their daily prayers was touching to her. Time seemed to slow down, almost to stop. She could imagine people having lived here in this same manner a thousand, two thousand years before. She felt a connection from past to present, as if she were touching history.

  "You look very pensive," Pierce said as he paused with a sack of grain over one shoulder.

  "I was looking at the past," she replied with a faint smile. "Isn't it amazing how little change there's been? These people have nothing, yet they seem to be happy m spite of their lack of worldly possessions."

  "Their sense of values hasn't been distorted by materialism," he replied. He lifted his head and looked around them. "Clean air, no time clocks dictating a use for every minute of the day, no real crime, no drugs or blatant violence." He met her eyes and smiled. "There's