by Jerry Ahern
Cross turned on the light and shut the door behind him. He’d straightened up a little before his shower and, with the help of the daily maid service, it didn’t look bad. “Shouldn’t we both sit down and run a medical and sexual history on each other?” she whispered as he took her in his arms.
“I’m okay if you’re okay.”
“Yeah. I’m okay. Now that you’re holding me. I really did think you were never going to ask.”
“I didn’t know what you’d answer. Funny thing if you’re a guy is, well, you want her to say yes, but not too easily. And then you’re ticked off if she says no. You can’t win.”
“Who wins, then? The woman, you think?”
“Nobody wins that way.” He drew her closer to him, his fingers touching at her hair, at her cheek, drifting down across her shoulders. “What do you do to yourself? Your skin’s so soft.” He kissed her shoulder. “And it tastes so good, too.”
Her hands touched at his face and he lowered his face to hers and touched her mouth with his, his hands hard against her back and moving down to her rear end, her hands massaging his face and neck and starting to tug at his jacket as he kept kissing her.
As he moved his hands again, his left hand catching at the fabric of her dress to pull it up, she slipped away from him and backed across the room a little. “There’s so much you should know about me.”
“I know. You’re secretly left-handed. I already guessed that. If you tell me you’re just the result of a cunning sex-change operation, I hope you know I’ll kill myself.”
“I’m not left-handed. And I am real. And if you killed yourself, I think I’d do the same thing. I love you.”
He walked toward her, slipping out of his jacket and throwing it on the chair. “It’ll get all wrinkled.”
“I’ve got two more.”
“You realty—”
“Yeah. I wanna marry you. I can always go get the captain.”
“He’s asleep.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Maybe.”
“Why only maybe?”
“Maybe I won’t be any good in bed.” She smiled.
“Somehow, I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”
“ I don’t think it will be either.” Her hands moved behind her to unzip, and his arms closed around her and he held her hands there and kissed her hard on the mouth. Then his left hand tugged the zipper down. She’d already gotten the little hook and eye thing open. She stepped back from him and shrugged her shoulders and the dress fell. He guessed it was one of those things with a built-in bra, because she wore none, the nipples of her pretty breasts hardening as the palms of his hands frictioned against them. The dress caught at her hips for the briefest second, and she moved her hips and the dress fell the rest of the way. There had been an ankle-length white silk slip under it and she hooked her thumbs in the waist of it and pushed it down. Nothing but panties on, she pressed herself close against him, her hands at his tie, undoing it.
“I thought this looked rumpled enough to be real.”
“I’m glad I didn’t have my pants off when you said that.”
The tie was opened and she started working at his shirt buttons. He had never liked studs. His hands cupped her breasts as she opened his shirt, her mouth touching at his chest, her fingers knotting in the hair there. He drew her closer to him, arching her back, kissing her neck, then moving his mouth down, touching at her nipples.
She pulled back again. “Take them off me, please.” He dropped to his knees and pulled her panties down and her arms closed around him, drawing his head close against her abdomen. “I do love you,” she whispered.
He stood up. She still had stockings on, the kind that magically defied gravity and stayed up on the thighs. He’d get to them. Cross swept her up in his arms. She kicked her high heels off and he carried her over to the bed. She was a tall girl and, regardless of how easy it looked when Clark Gable had carried Vivien Leigh up the staircase, carrying a full-grown woman in your arms was never that easy. But he put her down on the bed, without showing her that she’d been anything but light as a feather, then started out of his clothes. Another thing in movies was that guys never wore socks or underpants when they had to dress or undress in a hurry, and though Cross hadn’t thought about it that much, he’d never thought he looked his romantic best struggling his socks off.
He threw the rest of his things on the chair and picked up her dress and laid it across the back of the chair.
“Thank you,” she told him.
“I was always polite. Even as a kid.” Cross found the light switch and flicked it off, noticing she was watching him intently.
“You can see where they got the term horny,” Jenny whispered, giggling a little, as the lights went out.
He got into bed beside her and took care of the stockings, throwing them away, then slipped between her thighs. “Do it now,” she whispered. “There’s a lot of night left to do it again. ”
“All right,” and Cross felt her hands guiding him as he kissed her.
Chapter Fifteen
Most of his time in the Navy hadn’t been spent aboard ship, but he’d spent enough time to know when a vessel the size of the Empress stopped. The Empress had stopped.
Abe Cross, his right arm asleep under her, slipped his arm from around her shoulders, her head from his chest, and sat up, massaging his arm to get the feeling back. With the porthole curtains closed and because of the constant westward movement of the vessel, he had no real circadian rhythm sense of what time it was. He looked at the luminous black face of the Rolex Sea Dweller on his left wrist and squinted his eyes to get in focus. It was 4:00 A.M.
Unless it had been a faster trip to New York City than anyone had anticipated, there was trouble.
Cross swung his legs over the side of the bed, realized he had to urinate badly, and stood up.
He stumbled across the cabin to the head and hit the light switch. There was no light. He urinated anyway, didn’t bother flushing and left. He found the chest of drawers and opened the top drawer, shuffling around inside until he found the two items he wanted, a pocket-sized mini-Maglite and the larger, three D-cell version. He turned on neither but instead walked to the bed.
Cross sat on the edge. “Jenny. Wake up. Do it now. Wake up, darling.”
“Ohh, that sounds nice—‘darlin.’ ” She rolled over. He kissed her eyelids and she opened her eyes. “What time—”
“It’s about four A.M. The Empress is stopped and there’s no electrical power. With these cabins so soundproofed, I don’t know what’s going on. You get dressed in something. I’ve got a pair of sweat pants and a hooded sweatshirt you can get by with. The pants have a cord you can tighten to adjust the waist. Might look silly with your high-heeled shoes, but a lot more practical than your dress in case there’s something up. Now hurry. Will you need a flashlight to find the head?”
“No, no, what—”
“I don’t know what’s wrong. Go to the bathroom and I’ll find your underpants for you and get that sweatsuit. And you were wonderful.”
“So were you,” and she hugged her arms around him tightly for a second, then slipped out from under the sheet, his eyes accustomed to the darkness now, her slender, long-legged body looking like a wraith moving through the darkness.
He cupped his hand around the head of the smaller flashlight until he had the beam focused for pinpoint use and then searched the floor for her underpants, found them and her stockings too in case she wanted them, then put them on the bed. He went to the closet. He took down the sweat pants and hooded sweatshirt and put them on the bed for her as well. He went to the dresser again and found himself a pair of underpants and skinned into them. He took two pairs of socks, put one pair on the bed for her and sat down, pulling on the other pair. “Abe?”
“I’ve got your things for you—you’re probably better off with a pair of my socks. They’re on the bed,” Cross told her, patting her fanny as he crossed the cabin again to the
closet. He found a pair of Levi’s and pulled them on. His track shoes. He stuffed his feet into them, telling himself he’d worry about tying them later. A black knit shirt. He couldn’t tell in the dark, except that he owned no other color at the moment.
He pulled it on over his head and went back to the dresser. He took out the one-and-three-quarter-inch Safariland Garrison strap. It had the standard Garrison buckle that could be used in conjunction with the belt as a flail if needed. He started threading it through his belt loops.
There was time now, Jenny still dressing, so he dropped to one knee and tied a shoe, switched knees and tied the other one.
And then there was a knock at the door.
“Probably somebody from the crew. But hide on the other side of the bed, just in case,” Cross ordered.
“All right, what’s—”
“I don’t know.” He went to the door, took off the chain—they didn’t hold against even a moderately powerful person who knew how to use his body weight anyway—and as he opened the door, he shifted the larger aircraft aluminum bodied flashlight into his right hand, ready to use it like a nightstick.
There were panic lights on in the corridor, the kind that ran off batteries, and he could see clearly the face of the man just outside the doorway. “Mr. Cross. I’m afraid I lied the other evening when I said I was a journalist. I’m really with British Intelligence. Is Miss Hall with you?”
“Yes. Come in,” Cross told him. It was Andrew Comstock and there was a flashlight in his right hand and a look on his face that in the grey light seemed to combine both fear and determination. “Jenny. It’s Mr. Comstock,” Cross announced, starting for the bed. He grabbed the blanket off it and walked back toward the door, giving it to Comstock. “Roll it up and slide it against the base of the door. It’ll block light from getting out under the crack and slow up anyone trying to force the door. Is that part of the problem?”
Comstock—or whoever he was—took the blanket and started stuffing it against the bottom of the cabin door. “That is part of the problem. Are you with CIA, Mr. Cross? I rather suspected you might be.”
“Why?” It was Jenny Hall, coming around the bed, who asked the question.
“There’s at least one American agent aboard this vessel whom I know of. That’s why I was sent. I was in the area and your country’s people asked my country’s people to help out, NATO or something. All I know is the chap’s got something stolen from the Russians. On my end, we weren’t told if the Americans were sending in another agent to shepherd this chap themselves. I was just ordered to hang around and see if any help needed to be rendered. And now the Empress has been stopped. Some sort of terrorist group. Could be Russian-inspired. They have their dirty fingers in a lot of pies these days. There!” And he stood up, the blanket wedged against the bottom of the door fully. Cross turned on the big Maglite.
“Well, you secret agent guys always have guns and stuff in your exploding attache cases, right?”
“I was just about to ask you the same, actually,” Comstock smiled. “Could you avert the light a smidge?”
Cross moved the flashlight’s beam downward.
“Terrorists?” Jenny Hall said, incredulous sounding.
“I couldn’t sleep and I pulled on these clothes and went for a turn around the deck. Hadn’t felt myself all evening. Why I missed your performance, actually. And suddenly I heard some commotion up on the bridge and then searchlights came on going over the water and there was this yacht lying just off the port bow. I heard what sounded like a few silenced shots from the bridge and then I saw some of the people I’d seen the last few days about the ship. A couple of crewspeople and a few passengers and God knows who else. But they had guns and two of them were moving the captain between them and they had guns pressed against him and his hands looked bound behind him and there was a black sack over his head.”
“Aww, shit,” Cross snarled. “Sorry for using the ‘s’ word, Jenny.” He sat on the chair, feeling Jenny’s dress starting to slip off the back of the chair, catching it. She was beside him, took the dress, folded her arms across her abdomen, hugging it to her. “How many?”
At least a dozen came up over the side from the yacht. Carrying things that looked like explosives.”
“Why did you come here?” Jenny asked.
“I remembered a bit more about Mr. Cross than I let on. The articles that appeared following that airline hijacking. They said the lone survivor, Lieutenant Cross, was suspected of being a Navy SEAL. Frankly, the whole story about being the substitute piano player smelled a bit. So, I put two and two together and assumed Mr. Cross was the CIA chap.”
“I’m not,” Cross told him.
“Damn,” Comstock hissed.
“There’s a gun hidden in my cabin, if we can get to it. And we have to find the man traveling as Alvin Leeds.”
Abe Cross just looked at Jenny Hall. “What?”
“It wasn’t the piano player thing that was contrived. It was the singer story. Doris Knight was asked to quit so I could take her place.”
Abe Cross just closed his eyes for a moment.
Chapter Sixteen
The Englishman seemed to know his stuff; Cross gave this Andrew Comstock devil his due. “They were speaking English, if you call it that. I made them as being Irish. And that could be bad. They’re about as fond of we British as the Mid-East terrorists are of Jews. And there’re a goodly number of British subjects aboard this vessel.”
“What you said about the Russians,” Cross whispered as the three of them waited at the L of the corridor.
“Russians? Yes?”
“If this CIA guy you mentioned has something the Russians wanted, could they have used the Irish terrorists to get it? I mean, hide behind a terrorist raid?”
“Good point, really, Mr. Cross. But, somehow, I have a gut feeling they didn’t in this case. I think we’re living through the nightmare of coincidence.”
“I agree,” Jenny Hall added.
Cross peered round the corner and saw nothing. Jenny’s cabin was in that direction, about half the length of the corridor down. “Run for it?”
“Agreed.” Comstock nodded.
Cross took Jenny’s hand and pulled her with him, breaking into a dead run. He’d made certain that she took her key out of the little beaded bag she’d used as a purse so there’d be no fumbling in front of the cabin door.
They kept running, Cross looking back, Comstock right behind them, running well. “Here! Here it is!” Jenny announced to Cross unnecessarily. She shoved her key into his hand and he thrust the key into the lock, opened it, shoved her inside and waited for Comstock, then pulled the door closed after them.
Cross shone the larger of his two lights low across the floor. Her portholes weren’t curtained. “Get those curtains close,” Cross ordered. Jenny took one, Comstock the other. Then Jenny went to the closet, using the mini-Maglite, Comstock packing the bedspread along the crack between the cabin door and floor.
“I’ll be just a second. Gotta change and get my gun.”
“Got any other weapons?” Cross asked. He knew of one, her body, and he kept putting down the urge to curse her out or hit her or kiss her. The part about not knowing which was the hardest part.
“I’ve got a small knife, too. I was supposed to just be around here if the Russians tried anything, never even contact our man unless they did. And he was never told I’d be here, just that this was the ship to take.”
“Wise move,” Cross remarked.
“Tell me, Miss Hall,” Comstock began. “Is Leeds the chap’s real name? I was never told, but assumed it was probably false?”
“I think it is,” she answered from half inside the closet, using the darkness like a screen to dress behind, Cross imagined. “I was never given another name. I’ve been working in Europe for the past eight months and I’m a little out of touch with what’s going on back at Langley.”
“Your singing’s a cover, then,” Cross started rather th
an asked. “Kind of like Bob Culp and Bill Cosby used to do on television except you don’t play tennis. Right?”
“I guess. That’s a little before my time, but I’ve caught some of the reruns. Funny show. Okay. I’m set.”
She emerged from the closet, his sweatsuit replaced by a pair of tight-fitting jeans with too-short legs that looked as though they’d been washed a thousand times and run over by a truck—evidently brand new and just in fashion. She had put a long-sleeved pullover sweater on instead of his hooded sweatshirt. And in her hands were her weapons. The pistol was a Colt Officer’s ACP .45 in stainless steel. The knife was a Cold Steel Mini-Tanto.
“Let me see the knife, unless either of you are into knives more than I am,” Cross began.
She gave him the knife.
“Any spare magazines for the pistol, Miss Hall?”
“Call me Jenny, Andrew. And yes. Two spares, six rounds in each, just six in the gun. And I’m keeping it.”
Cross looked up from inspecting the knife. “What the hell do you do with this?” There were divers straps attached to each of the two belt slots, the kind that gave with movement.
“I wear it sometimes under a loose shirt, all right?”
“Is Jenny Hall your real name?”
“Yes. And I really do love you,” she told him matter-of-factly. “And I tried to tell you, well, before. But you didn’t want to talk.”
He shook his head. “I know. Don’t remind me. And I meant what I asked you, before, too. All right!?” He started taking the diving straps off the sheath to pocket them. He had no way of strapping the knife to his leg or his arm, but it would fit nicely inside the trouser band of his Levi’s against his skin.
“I’m sorry I interrupted you two,” Comstock said suddenly. “I’d kept trying to tell myself you weren’t an item. Oh well,” Comstock exhaled. “Perhaps I’ll catch the next pretty girl that comes along.”
Jenny leaned up and kissed Comstock on the cheek. “Sorry, you being an ally and everything.” She laughed. And then her voice was perfectly serious. “Whatever this thing is Alvin Leeds is carrying, it’s important and sensitive. We have to find him and quickly before the terrorists have the ship totally under control.”