by Robbie, Vic
‘Yes, yes, the bomb.’ She looked down into her glass as though the past lurked there. ‘If it hadn’t been for the bomb, he probably would have finished me off. They found me later in the debris and thought my injuries were caused by the blast. At first, they believed I was dead.’ She pulled back her curtain of black hair to show him an ugly red weal running from her hairline past her ear and down her neck.
‘Who was he?’
She looked as if she were about to tell him and then thought better of it. ‘Just someone who didn’t want me to stay alive,’ she said. ‘Look, do you mind I need a breath of fresh air and a bit of space.’ She got to her feet and brushed past him with an apologetic smile, closing the doors behind her.
He stretched out on the bunk and before long the exertion of dragging Paradiso around lulled him into sleep.
When he awoke, darkness had crept in and moonlight was rippling across the ocean. The cabin doors opened and closed with a soft click and someone sat down beside him placing a finger to his lips and he felt Natalie’s hair on his face.
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Natalie lowered her head until her lips brushed his cheeks. Then she moved away from him and her eyes roamed across his face as though approving his features before making her decision. She found his mouth and kissed him deep and hard while holding his arms down on the bunk. He felt as though he were drifting as the intensity of her passion took his strength away and, as he surrendered his defences, he reckoned this was what drowning must be like.
She pulled away and smiled down at him. ‘Don’t move, chéri,’ she whispered hoarsely and swung her legs around until she was sitting on the edge of the bunk with her back to him. For several seconds, Natalie sat there in silence before reaching down and lifting her dress up to her waist. She paused before pulling it higher and over her head, causing her hair to flow over her shoulders like silk. The whiteness of her skin in the moonlight contrasted with the raven black of her hair and her slim back tapered to a tiny waist before flaring to rounded hips. And she shivered as he touched its softness and traced a finger down the curve of her spine.
‘I said don’t move,’ she whispered with a throaty chuckle, turning to look at him with one eyebrow raised at his disobedience. Even in the dark, her violet eyes burned as though a demon possessed her from within.
He sat up and took a handful of hair, moving it to the side, and she lowered her head, shivering in anticipation, as he kissed the scar on her neck. His fingers fumbled with the clasp of her lace brassiere and she giggled and twisted her arm around to help. Her breasts jiggled free and he caught them, caressing them, feeling the hardness of her already erectile nipples with his thumbs. She turned to look at him, her mouth half open, and her eyes questioning him, but they lost focus as he ran his hands down her body, causing her to tremble uncontrollably. Her black panties were tied at each side with a pink ribbon and he undid one so it fell away and she quickly unfastened the other, and as she did, she turned again to kiss him.
She lay back on the bunk watching him, inviting him in, and his finger moved slowly in a wavy line up the inside of her thigh, and she parted her legs, and he continued feeling her wet and warm. A moan came from deep in her throat and she shook, hugging him closer to her. He hungrily sought out her mouth, alternatively nibbling her bottom lip and thrusting his tongue deep into it, and she arched her back and her nails dug into the flesh of his shoulders. Holding her with his left hand, he disengaged his mouth and peppered her face with kisses and then moved down, biting her throat, taking first one breast and then the other in his mouth and sucking softly on her nipples as she moaned with pleasure. And down, his tongue licking her belly button and then encountering the coarseness of her pubic hair. He felt her hand on his head, guiding him down and she opened her legs wider and he was inside her, probing and listening to her moans while she rocked from side to side. And she tasted sweet.
A hand tugged gently on his hair pulling him back up alongside her.
‘God, I want you,’ she whispered and they both laughed and she surprised him with her strength, rolling over him so his back was on the bunk and she was now on top. Her hand reached down for him and she laughed when she took it, encircling it with her fingers, kneading it, and he gritted his teeth to stay with her. She studied the tip for an instant before ducking her head, licking it as though tasting an exotic delicacy and took it in her mouth and sucked powerfully and he thought his eyes were going to explode out of his head. And all this time her eyes were open, staring at him, gauging his reaction.
He realised he couldn’t hold out much longer. He cradled her head in his hands and she kissed him on the mouth again as he entered her and she cried out ‘God, oh God, don’t stop, chéri.’
And they were as one like two souls welded together forever in the passion of their union, and he felt an overwhelming urge to consume her so they became one being. Every part of his body was rippling with life as though his nerve endings were on fire and her every move caused a tightening sensation to flow down the entire length of his body. Although her eyes still burned with that violet intensity, they seemed to be distant, as though she had retreated into a place of her own.
He withdrew and turned her over and she thrust her buttocks at him and he took her again as she whimpered and shook with the lust engulfing her. She gripped one of his hands with such force he feared she’d break it. And, as if his heart had exploded deep inside his chest, everything flowed out of him like his life being drained away. He felt her convulsing beneath him as the tremors surged through her. And he felt her wetness and she his.
He collapsed on her, sweat pouring down his face and pooling on her back, and she turned her face to the side with a look of contentment. And he lay beside her, kissing her damp hair.
‘Oh, God, I forgot about Louis.’ She struggled up and swung her legs off the bunk, briefly kissing him again as she did.
He lay propped up on one elbow, watching her dressing in silence, burning every moment of what had happened into his memory until he couldn’t stand it any longer. He reached out and encircled her waist, pulling her back towards him. They kissed again although it was different from the lust of before and was now replaced by a deeper more affectionate kiss of people who now knew each other and could take their time over their lovemaking.
‘I want you,’ he said.
She laughed. ‘Now? Again?’ Her eyes widened in wonderment.
Her mouth opened and he kissed it and wanted to go on kissing it forever.
‘Okay, you two.’ It was Louis’s voice. ‘I need you both on deck now.’
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Upstate, New York: Wednesday, November 19th, 1941
Even a hard-bitten patrolman, who had been on the job more than 20 years and seen his fair share of road kill, found it hard to stomach. He had been chewing gum when he approached the Buick and pulled open the driver’s buckled door with some difficulty. The shock of it made him clamp his jaws so tight the gum almost cemented his teeth together. Afterwards, he reckoned it had helped him from throwing up all over the evidence.
Not long after dawn and he was on his way back to headquarters when he spotted the Buick, nose into the trees with its nearside wheels off the ground. Many a time he’d seen cars, parked off the road, that had come to grief on the uneven terrain. He was driving at a fair speed, concentrating on getting back to headquarters for breakfast before the food ran out. For a second or two he considered ignoring it. He couldn’t go stopping for every breakdown or when some idiot had run out of gas and gone off to seek help, but his nagging conscience persuaded him. By that time, he’d overshot the Buick and then he had to back up which would have been tricky later in the day because they came down this stretch at quite a lick. At that time of the morning, his was the only car around. He put on his warning lights, stopped right behind the Buick and, getting out, surveyed the road. A slight morning mist reduced visibility to about a hundred yards and light dew covered the tarmac suggesting this incident happened some hours e
arlier. He scraped a boot across the road looking for any telltale skid marks hidden by the dew. There were none.
This bend at the end of the stretch was known as Suicide Corner because of the number of speedsters coming to grief when they were unable to slow down in time. The Buick must have been burning rubber because it had travelled through some brush and bushes and over a ditch and buried its nose into an old oak tree that appeared to be unmarked by the impact. He felt the car’s bonnet. Cold. Someone was still inside although he could see only the top of their head as if they’d slid down in the seat. He used both hands to prise open the door and gasped as a middle-aged man fell out of the car, or rather not all of his body did. One of his legs had been severed under the engine when it was forced back into the cabin on impact. His opinion, not that he was forensics, was the driver had probably bled to death, if the shock of the crash hadn’t killed him first, as the whole of the front seat had turned blood red.
The patrolman stepped back to compose himself and pulled the gum out of his teeth and threw it into the bushes before poking his head back into the car. In addition to the sickly sweet smell of blood, there was another familiar aroma coming from the footwell. He averted his head and reached in beyond the amputated leg and his fingers touched what he was looking for. Not one, but two empty bottles of Jack Daniel’s. He nodded to himself and bent over the man’s torso that was soaked in whiskey. And he almost gagged when he realised the victim had vomited down his shirt.
He’d waited a good hour before an ambulance and fire truck turned up to cut the remains of the body free. And during that time he smoked several cigarettes in an attempt to mask the smell of blood and Jack Daniel’s. Then he had to spend another hour waiting for a tow truck to pull out the car and drag it back to headquarters.
He wasn’t optimistic about getting anything to eat, but after passing on the details of the crash he managed to find some breakfast and was surprised he still had an appetite after what he’d witnessed. When he went back upstairs the duty sergeant strode towards him clutching a sheet of paper.
‘Looks like you got something on your hands this time,’ he said. ‘Your guy’s some big shot in the State Department by the name of D D Durant. They’re sending a couple of FBI guys to check it out so don’t go disappearing on me. They’ll want to talk to you. Looks like the poor guy was in some kind of trouble.’
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Manhattan, New York: Friday, November 21st, 1941
New York was cold. The rain sliced down and combined with the glow from the stores and bars to turn the sidewalks into rivers of light. Traffic backed up all the way down Fifth Avenue, and he loved the city on nights like this when the elements closed around you like a protective arm. He was home. He relished the immediacy, the people rushing to a soundtrack of discordant sounds. New Yorkers with their abrasive attitudes walking fast and staying close to the buildings in an attempt to stay dry. Someone once told him the only way to deal with New Yorkers was to be as rude to them as they were to you, and they would understand and respect that. But he didn't believe it.
‘Where you been buddy?’ the cabbie asked. ‘You look as though you’ve got a vacation tan. You sure ain’t been hanging around here recently.’
‘Caribbean.’ Ben’s answer was curt, not wanting to encourage him to develop the conversation, although it would never stop a New York cabbie in full discourse.
‘Thought it was an expensive one,’ the cabbie said and chewed on his gum, searching his list of subjects. ‘Jeez, that’s where all those Nazi U-boats have been blowing up our boys. It’s time the President got his ass together and bombed those bastards. My neighbour’s son was killed…’
He tuned him out so his drone became background noise like elevator music, unable to interrupt his thoughts.
All the way back to America the secret of the Germans’ plans weighed heavily on his mind and now he just wanted to pass on the information to Smee. He would know what to do with it. He had no idea where the Allies and Germans were with their experiments into atomic power. But if von Bayerstein could be believed, the Nazis were close to winning the race for nuclear weapons and it would result in a devastating attack on the Eastern Seaboard. Whether some Americans liked it or not, they would be embroiled in the war. If Hitler did devastate New York, Washington DC and Boston, Japan would attack the West Coast. And America would be caught in a deadly pincer movement like a shrimp being devoured between the claws of a predatory crab.
On the flight, he was frustrated. The plane couldn’t go fast enough for him. He would fall asleep, then when he awoke, they didn’t appear to be any closer to New York. He wondered what the protocol was. As British Intelligence, Smee would presumably report to London first and the information would be shared at a higher level and the appropriate action taken. That is if the isolationists in America didn’t claim it was scaremongering and attempt to block any action. First, he had to get to Smee. Natalie had warned there were spies here in America who may already be lying in wait for him. And now it wasn’t difficult to regard every face as an enemy.
He said goodbye to Natalie after landing, and they’d kissed affectionately, promising to meet as though it had been a holiday romance. But on the flights back to America she’d become distant and slept, or feigned sleep, much of the time to avoid embarrassing conversation. He still didn’t know if he could trust her. Who was she working for? Were her masters the French Resistance; British Intelligence; or the disparate American agencies operating against each other? Or even some other country? And yet she’d collaborated with von Bayerstein until the game changed.
When they parted at the airport, she said she’d urgent business and he presumed she had to report to her masters, whoever they might be. And if she got to her people before Ben contacted Smee would that lessen the potency of his information? Or did she already know he wouldn’t make it and was removing herself from the line of fire? She held his hand and smiled sweetly, but as he watched her walk away, he realised he would never see her again. Although he was attracted to her, he wasn’t sure whether he liked or trusted her. And now he was beginning to experience what the male species of the black widow spider must feel when the female eats him after mating. Now he was no longer needed, he was to be discarded. Ronnie had told him Natalie was a killer and it didn’t really surprise him because there was something about her eyes when he caught her off guard, a detached coldness that troubled him.
Skaters glided effortlessly around the ice rink at The Rockefeller Center, which was lit up like a Christmas tree, and he wished life elsewhere could be so untroubled. He looked up at the leaden sky as he paid the cabbie and experienced a brief vision of atomic warheads dropping on the city, and he shuddered. He nodded to the four-storey-high sculpture of Atlas, as he also understood the burden of carrying the universe on his shoulders, and he took an empty elevator.
The corridor outside Smee’s office was surprisingly quiet. He pushed open the door, expecting to be assailed by the clatter of the machines and to see people rushing headlong into deadlines and for someone to shout ‘Who the hell are you?’ and ‘What are you doing here?’ in a plummy British accent. But it looked as though a bankrupt tenant had done a moonlight flit at a moment’s notice. The room was deserted. Sheets of paper littered the floor and the detritus of busy workers covered the desks. Empty food cartons, bottles, an odd scarf, even a jacket, and ashtrays piled high with cigarette butts and ash. All the hardware, the machines and typewriters, had gone. He thought he heard a noise and realised it was just an echo in his head of what had been. His footsteps clicking in the emptiness of the space, he made his way across the large room heading for the office Smee used when they last met. He pushed open the door, dreading what might be on the other side. It too was empty, apart from the metal desk with a swivel chair behind it and the chair he’d sat on for his meeting. They had removed the metal filing cabinet and left the neglected potted plant in its place. The room didn’t appear to have been used since his last visit. There we
re some papers on the desk and he glanced at them, but the writing was illegible. Now he was tired and he wanted to lie down and fall asleep. But before he could rest, he must speak to Smee although it looked as if he’d fled with everyone else. There was no way of contacting him. The only person who could help would be Pickering in London although it could take time and he didn’t know how much time America had.
He went over to the calendar hanging on the wall to see if it might yield some clues. No entries had been added since his last visit. A stale smell of cigarettes, sweat and decaying food pervaded the room and he opened wide a window and stood there breathing in the fumes from the streets below. The rain was growing heavier and he stuck his head out of the window and then turned round so the raindrops washed his face.
A noise.
The main door to the office opening and closing.
Footsteps walking across the room.
Not the confident footfall of someone knowing where they were going, more the diffident steps of an intruder checking out their surroundings.
He picked up the metal chair and flattened himself against the wall beside the door, trying hard to control his breathing.
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Ben managed to stop the downward swing of the chair as Smee pushed open the door, gave him an unworried glance and strode over to his seat behind the desk. ‘Bit melodramatic, old boy,’ he said.
‘I thought you were…’ His voice trailed off and he felt foolish.
‘Who? Old Rockefeller looking for his rent before we decamped to England?’ Smee laughed at his own joke.
He was confused. When he first met Smee he thought him to be a typical civil servant; on the second occasion he was more relaxed; now he had changed again like a chameleon. There was an edge to him, a confidence, showing he was in control and it was now time to complete the business.