The soldiers stepped away from her and Zalaya lowered the revolver to the desk, studying her.
She straightened her spine, threw her shoulders back and looked him in the eye.
“Very brave indeed,” Zalaya said. He massaged his thigh once more, over the same spot. “It’s time to tell me why you were wandering the corridors of the presidential palace.”
“You won’t believe me,” she said warningly.
“Likely not,” he agreed. “Yet we must go through this tiresome business.”
“Don’t you want to record this for posterity or something?” she asked. “All these cameras everywhere...one of them must work. I don’t want to have to do this twice.”
“Oh, do not worry,” he assured her. “This is being recorded.” He pointed toward the corner of the ceiling and she looked over her shoulder. The miniaturized camera was barely the size of a cigarette pack and painted to match the ceiling. Only the reflection of the lens gave it away. “I record everything that happens in here,” Zalaya continued. “There have been many occasions I have enjoyed watching again.” He gave another of the smiles that didn’t reach his eyes.
Was Duardo merely playing the role he was locked into, or was he trying to warn her? Both? She looked around once more at the cameras and equipment. They were evidence of a sick mind. Minnie shivered.
“Are you cold?” Zalaya asked.
“You’re an evil bastard.”
“So they say,” he returned calmly. “To business. Your name?”
“I thought you wanted my story?”
“Tell me your name!” he shouted, lunging across the desk at her.
She skittered backward. “M-Miranda,” she stuttered, her heart screaming at her. He is being Zalaya. If he did not do this they would know he was not Zalaya and they would kill him. No, they would kill both of them, she realized bleakly.
Duardo had to play the role of Zalaya with complete conviction or they both would die.
She felt the tip of one of the guns touch her bare shoulder. It was a warning.
Zalaya sat down on his chair once more, as calm as a moment before. “Very good,” he said. “Tell me why you were in the palace.”
She took a deep, wobbling breath. “I’m a Knight Errant,” she said.
“Indeed.”
“I know, you’re wondering what the hell I’m talking about. Most of the world hasn’t heard of us. We’re a loose alliance of people who challenge each other—”
“Wait,” Zalaya said, holding up his hand and frowning. “I have heard of this. The man who walked into the Queen of England’s bedroom. The woman who climbed the outside of the Eiffel Tower. The person who stole Fidel Castro’s personal cigar humidor. Correct?”
“They were members of the alliance. They have been formally expelled.”
Zalaya leaned forward. “Because they were caught?”
She shook her head. “Because the rest of the world heard about it. We don’t do it for the glory.”
“Ah!” He sat back again. “And your challenge was to break into the palace and...?”
“Steal a monogrammed cushion from the presidential bedchamber.”
He considered that for a long moment. “There is no penalty for being caught?”
“I haven’t failed yet,” Minnie pointed out.
“I see.” He seemed genuinely amused. “Telling me about it doesn’t disqualify you?”
“There are no rules, except for getting yourself plastered on the front pages of the world’s dailies. Whatever it takes.”
“You think you can talk me into letting you go and also letting you take one of these cushions you seek?”
She looked him in the eye. “It was worth a try.”
Zalaya’s smile, this time, was broad. “You are an unusual one. So unusual, I’m inclined to believe you would fit in well with this group you describe. If it existed.”
“It exists,” Minnie said flatly. “Do any of these electronic gizmos have Internet access?”
Surprise touched his face. “Certainly. Don’t tell me. A website?”
She nodded.
He leaned sideways and snagged a keyboard from where it lay on top of the console next to his desk and rested it on his lap. He looked at her. “The address?”
She gave it to him. He tapped in the URL and hit enter, then swiveled to look over her shoulder at one of the monitors behind her. “It’s asking for membership codes.”
She gave him a half smile. “I told you, we don’t do it for the glory. It’s a close-knit group. Invitation only.”
“Then why a website at all?”
“We come from all over the world.”
“Including Australia,” he added. “Give me your code.”
“That would get me expelled,” she said quickly. “I told you, anonymity is a requirement.”
“Code,” he repeated, his gaze unwavering.
She dredged up the necessary details from her memory. “The sign-in name is ‘Galahad’. The password is ‘n-i-m-u-e’.”
He grimaced. “Very romantic,” he commented and tapped in the data. He looked up at the screen again. “And accurate,” he added. “I was half expecting you to tell me the reason it wouldn’t work was because you had been caught and they’d changed the codes to protect their privacy.”
“How could they know I’d been caught? You’ve already searched me—was a communications device found?”
He smiled. “There’s a couple of places we haven’t searched yet,” he assured her. She felt herself blush. He pushed the keyboard away. “It’s an intriguing story.”
“Take it or leave it.” She shrugged.
“For now, I will think about it.” He stood up, grabbed the cane and leaned on it, looking down at her. “Which leaves me with the remaining question. What do I do with you?”
Minnie heard a half-muffled cough behind her. It had to be Soto, silently renewing his demand that she be put in the whorehouse.
Zalaya gave no sign that he had heard the cough. He was studying her with close attention to detail. He cocked his head, examining her face, then lifted her chin with a finger. She felt like a steer being measured up in a sale yard, then realized the analogy was an apt one.
Zalaya nodded. “One for the colonel,” he declared.
Soto gave a sigh.
“When I am done, you may have her,” Zalaya told Soto. “I will put her at your personal disposal for...one week?”
“Dos semanas.”
“Very well. Two weeks. Take her through, Soto.”
Soto moved around her, slinging his gun over his shoulder. Zalaya tossed him keys and he undid the cuff around the drawer handle and walked through the other door in Zalaya’s office carrying it with him, the chain slithering along behind. Minnie saw well-polished furniture—a bed, a leather sofa, tall cabinets. Then the chain snapped taut and she was pulled through the door.
Soto was connecting the other cuff to a rail in the foot of the big bed. He readjusted his rifle, winked at her and left, looking cheerful. He shut the door after him.
* * * * *
Serrano poured coffee for himself. He didn’t offer Zalaya any, even though his household spies told him Zalaya had been up all night.
Zalaya didn’t comment as Serrano sat down at the breakfast table with his loaded plate. He sat watching.
After several mouthfuls Serrano spoke. “You kept her?”
“Why not? She is young, wholesome. There’s some fun to be had out of her.”
Serrano shrugged. “I thought your taste ran to boys.”
“My taste runs to anything interesting,” Zalaya corrected, showing no sign of insult or offense. “She’s interesting.”
“As long as she doesn’t distract you from the real work,” Serrano said.
This time Zalaya did show an emotion. His face tightened and anger flickered in his eyes. “If you had known me before the war, you would know better than to question my dedication to my work.”
“Oh, I hear
d. I heard,” Serrano said, waving away his anger. “But I’m paying damn good money for your services. To be precise, I’m paying you for the cold, calculating son of a whore you really are. Don’t go getting emotional on me or I may have to reconsider. Fuck the bitch, toss her into the bordello and let’s get on with it, yes?”
Zalaya considered this. “Yes,” he said at last. His expression was neutral again.
* * * * *
The sun rose not long after Soto closed the bedroom door on her. When the light was full, Minnie explored the room as far as the chain would let her. She discovered that the chain was just long enough for her to reach the toilet in the attached bathroom, but not the medicine cabinet over the sink.
It meant that the chain had been carefully measured for this sort of thing, long before Minnie had arrived. The calculation in it made her uneasy. Zalaya was everything Nick had thought him to be and the woman in the hospital had warned them about.
Why on earth had Duardo taken over his identity?
The chain wouldn’t let Minnie reach the tall bureau on the other side of the room but the closet was reachable and innocent. Zalaya was an austere dresser. Black trousers, plain short-sleeved shirts. No military uniform that she could see. No underwear either.
The bedside table was empty. More foresight?
She scanned the ceiling and found in one of the corners the same painted box as was in Zalaya’s office. The man was clearly a narcissist as well as an exhibitionist. He got off watching himself and didn’t seem to care who knew it.
The camera meant that even this bedroom was not safe. In here, Duardo must still remain Zalaya.
That was the full extent of her exploration. She could reach no farther into the room, so she curled up on the bed and tried to rest while she did some heavy thinking.
What was she going to do? Was there any way out of this? If there was a way out of this, why had Duardo not used it long before now? There had to be a reason he had stayed here, pretending to be Zalaya.
Did that mean she must find her own way out? Reluctantly, she admitted to herself that yes, she might well be on her own. Duardo was locked into his role as Zalaya and must stay there for reasons she did not know right now. He could not come to her rescue. She had to do it herself.
How was she supposed to escape? She could pin her hopes on Carmen finding her way here undetected, but if she did there was no way to deal with the cuff on her wrist. Zalaya had the key. Duardo might risk trying to give her the key, but the cameras in every room made that a high risk indeed.
She could hope that Nick and Calli might figure out where she was and come looking for her, except that would bring Nick face-to-face with Zalaya and he was not ready for that confrontation yet. Nick would not risk the future of his country for the sake of one stupid American woman who’d embroiled herself in yet another problem. She would not want him to take that risk.
The full size and scope of the potential disaster she had set off registered. Minnie hugged herself, shivering. She realized she was weeping when tears spilled onto the pillow. She drummed the linen impatiently with her fist. Self-pity wasn’t going to help her now.
She bit her lip as the truth came into perfect focus. All her life she had got into scrapes and troubles and every time there had been someone nearby to get her out again—her father throughout her childhood and Calli, more recently. Then Duardo, who had defined himself by his loyalty to his country yet had put that loyalty aside in order to help her.
This latest, greatest scrape had dropped her into territory where no one could help her. Duardo, the one person who might help, would most certainly die if he tried. She was going to have to help herself. Only...she had no idea how she was supposed to do that.
She indulged in more hot tears, her thoughts fracturing into weak protests of despair and unfairness. It was childish and quite useless, but she wasn’t able to stop the whining voice inside her, so gave into it and wailed silently. If she hadn’t been aware of the silent monitor in the corner of the ceiling, she would have kicked her heels in a tantrum too.
Eventually, she dozed and her thoughts drifted. She knew she was dreaming, for Duardo was with her. His hands were on her body. In her dream, Minnie arched back as Duardo’s long fingers slid over her with a knowing stroke. Her body was hyper-alert and that single stroke left her quivering, with every nerve ending sizzling with expectation. She yearned for another stroke and silently cried for it.
She was woken by the rattle of blinds rolling up and the flood of late afternoon sun through the tall windows. She blinked in the light. Zalaya turned from the window and faced her. “How did you get to Vistaria, hmm? I failed to ask that question this morning.”
Minnie sat up, trying to push aside her confusion. Her body was still heavy with arousal, her mind sluggish with after-images of Duardo’s hands stroking her.
“What do you mean?” she asked, playing for time.
“I mean, how did you travel here?”
“The usual way,” she said and shrugged, trying to look carefree. Only, with Zalaya in the shadows and the light in her eyes, it was as if the old Duardo stood before her. Her aroused body could not distinguish the difference.
Zalaya gave an impatient wave of his hand. “There have been no commercial flights into Vistaria in four months—not since we defeated the old guard.”
“I have been here six months,” she said.
“That is not possible. Vistarian customs and immigration only issue three-month tourist visas. Your name does not appear on any passenger flights before the revolution.” He smiled and added with a deceptively mild voice. “There have been no commercial flights since then.”
She thought it through swiftly. She had lied her way into a corner. Usually she was better at thinking ahead than this, but her confused state had hampered her ability. She fell back on an old tactic. The truth—or as much of it as she could afford to reveal.
“You’re right, I didn’t fly in. I came over the night before last night, by boat.”
“From?” he said sharply.
“Acapulco.”
“You own a boat?”
It was another trap. She could feel her heart warn her by jumping hard. “I stole it. Which is why I didn’t tell you first time around.”
“And this boat is where?”
“Some bay. I don’t know this place all that well.”
“Yet you found your way from ‘some bay’ to the city without problems.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t have problems. It took me two days.”
He considered this for a long moment. “We found the boat,” he said.
He had been playing with her. He’d known all along about Nick’s yacht. She had told him exactly what he had wanted to hear.
He added casually, as if it were a throw-away detail, “It’s too big for one person to handle.”
Thank god Carmen was an incessant talker! Minnie dredged up Carmen’s run-off-at-the-mouth speech about sailing it one handed. “Not if you know what you’re doing,” she told Zalaya. “You can’t use a spinnaker, of course, but if you short sheet the jib and keep it tight, then you can manage it. It’s slower, but it gets you there.”
His brows lifted. Then his eyes narrowed. “I don’t suppose you know whose boat it is that you stole?”
Minnie just barely hid her surprise. Of course they would have recognized the boat. The real Zalaya would have known it was Nick’s.
“How the hell would I know?” she told him. “And why would I care?”
He considered her for a long, thoughtful moment. “Indeed,” he said at last, his voice dry. He shifted the cane under his hand and moved his weight.
Minnie thought: Change of directions. New tactic.
“Who is ‘Duardo’?” he asked.
She swallowed dryly, unable to prevent her eyes from widening in shock. Why would he ask that here?
“You were asleep when I came in and you murmured the name,” he added, almost as if he were answe
ring her silent question. He moved around the bed, coming up to her side. “You murmured the name with longing and your body was aroused. This Duardo is your lover, no?”
She shivered. “Duardo is dead,” she said flatly.
“Who was he, then?” Zalaya’s one good eye gazed into her own.
Instinctively, Minnie stuck to the fundamental truth. “He was a Vistarian.”
“You are not a stranger to this land.”
“Not entirely.”
Zalaya gripped the cane. “He was in the army,” he said flatly.
“I didn’t say that.”
He smiled. “You do not have to. It is written all over your face, your body and in every answer you give. Your Knight Errant mission to break into the Presidential Palace was no coincidence, was it? Your Duardo must have been posted here at the palace. You proposed the mission to your fellow knights.”
He was guiding her answers, giving her hints on how best to construct her story so it would withstand probing.
He turned and moved back to the end of the bed, putting himself back into the shadows again. “I have done some research on this group you claim you belong to. ‘Knight Errant’ has a specific definition and my English is good enough to distinguish the subtleties. The quests your knights set are both chivalrous and quixotic. They’re romantic, noble deeds that are at best unreachable. A modern version of tilting at windmills.”
She phrased her answer carefully. “You can think that if you like.”
Again, the long study and consideration. Then, “Take off your clothes,” he said, his voice low.
Her heart jumped. “No.”
He pulled the revolver from the pouch on his hip. “Understand this. Your future depends upon obeying me for as long as I command it.”
Remember, he must be Zalaya...and you must behave as if he is Zalaya. “Go fuck yourself,” she said and added, “Literally.”
“A physical impossibility,” he assured her.
“You won’t shoot me,” she told him. “It’ll end all the fun you have planned.”
He fired and Minnie recoiled sideways as the heat and friction of the bullet stung her upper arm as it passed by. She was too shocked to even utter a scream. The roar of the revolver in that small room was like a thunderclap.
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