Eye of the Cobra

by Christopher Sherlock

  He lost his grip then, and her hand caught him hard across the face. He felt the blood running from his lips.

  ‘My God!’

  He yanked her hair and twisted it, forcing her face down below his waist.

  It was then that the memories came flooding back to her and she sank her teeth into him.

  He lay on the floor, sobbing, and she quickly pulled on her dress.

  ‘Jack, you could have had me, but you chose the wrong woman for your perverse fantasies. From now on it’s just business.’

  She turned on her heel and he heard the door slam. He staggered to his feet. This was just the beginning, he told himself. It would take time, but he would get total control of her.

  You could hardly tell it was dawn. It was still almost dark, and it was raining hard. The weather matched his mood. Bruce de Villiers rolled open the metal garage door and switched on the lights. He stared at the Formula One car crouched on the concrete, and his spirits lifted. She broke all his preconceptions of what a Formula One car should look like.

  She was beautiful, a work of art - a reflection of Dunstal’s design genius. He knew she was based on some sketches that James Chase had made long ago - James had always had a flair for design. Bruce couldn’t wait to see her perform. But until the test track was dry he wasn’t going to give the Shensu Shadow her debut run. And he didn’t trust Jack Phelps’s Carvalho tyres one iota.

  Looking up at the black thunderclouds, he thought of Ricardo Sartori. Sartori was still on his island, he hadn’t responded to the telegram. Sartori, he surmised, must have someone very pretty keeping him occupied. It was a problem. But short of sending some strongmen over to Skiathos, there was little he could do except wait.

  Wyatt Chase was a different animal. He was champing at the bit to drive the Shadow. He’d hit it off perfectly with Mickey Dunstal at their first meeting. That was important, because if the driver could communicate well with the designer, then the car could be set up perfectly.

  He rolled down the door and locked it, then walked back through the pouring rain towards the main building and his office.

  The morning paper did nothing to improve his mood. As he turned over its sodden pages, he found that the weather forecast did not look in the least bit promising.

  The international news didn’t interest him. He turned to the stock market prices for the previous day. The block of Shensu stock he’d got as part of the deal had been performing well.

  His eyes zeroed in on an article with the magic words ‘Formula One’ in the headline. He skimmed through it. The story amused him. A German couturier would be designing the outfits and promotional designs for one of the Formula One teams. It was going to be a fashion statement. He smiled. A team that had that sort of help wasn’t going to be taken seriously. Probably one of the teams that had nothing much going for it. He preferred a neutral image, neat and orderly but not over-conspicuous.

  There was a knock on the door and his secretary walked in with a cup of coffee for him. She modelled herself on Madonna, and the excruciatingly tight pencil-skirt she was wearing didn’t leave much to the imagination.

  ‘Debbie, you shouldn’t dress like that.’

  ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘A little too much.’

  He glanced down at his diary and saw that it was only minutes before he was to speak to a representative of Jack Phelps who would, as the American magnate had expressed it over the phone, ‘look after his interests’. This person, Phelps said, was to be given full co-operation.

  ‘There’s someone here to see you.’

  ‘Must be the consultant Phelps was talking about.’

  ‘It’s Susanna von Falkenhyn.’

  ‘And who the the hell is she?’

  ‘Her pret a porter range was the talking-point of the Munich shows.’

  ‘I don’t bloody believe this.’

  Susanna von Falkenhyn came in through the door and he was conscious of a delicious fragrance. He felt slightly disconcerted as he stood up for the blonde vision in front of him. She made Debbie look like a tart: perfectly made-up, with long blonde hair that cascaded around her face, and dressed in a stunning navy-blue suit.

  ‘Miss von Falkenhyn? Please sit down.’

  He felt ill at ease. He did not want anyone else interfering in the running of his team.

  ‘It is a pleasure to meet you. I have read so much about you.’

  ‘So how can I help you, Miss von . . .’

  ‘Please call me Suzie. I prefer it.’

  ‘Sooz . . .’he said, trying to exert a little control over the situation by giving her a nickname.

  ‘No. Suzie.’

  He settled back, and his eye caught the article in the paper. Suddenly he put two and two together.

  ‘Hell,’ he muttered under his breath.

  ‘I’d like to start immediately,’ she said crisply.

  Bruce cleared his throat. ‘I’ll be straight with you,’ he said. ‘This is a racing team. We need to concentrate on what we’re doing, which is racing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I am busy developing our new car. I employ the best drivers. I run this operation like a rugby team.’

  ‘I think we are going to get on well together.’

  He felt disconcerted again. She smiled.

  ‘Look, Suzie,’ he tried again, ‘let me make myself clear . . .’

  ‘No. Let me make myself clear. I know, as the Americans say, where you’re coming from. Well, I am coming from nothing. You can help me or, I suppose, you can make my life impossible.’

  ‘Look, fashion and Formula One just don’t go . . .’

  ‘Your philosophy will become an essential part of my designs. I admire your approach, your fanaticism.’

  Bruce coloured.

  ‘I will make you what you want to be,’ Suzie pressed on. ‘I am handling all your publicity and design work. I wanted this job and I am going to keep it.’

  ‘OK, I get the point,’ Bruce replied drily. Something told him he wasn’t going to get the better of this number.

  ‘First, Bruce, I’d like to tell you a little about the way I work.’

  He liked her spirit, he decided.

  ‘So what do I have to give you?’ She leaned back and looked him straight in the eyes.

  He laughed. He couldn’t help it. There was no way he was going get one over her.

  Suzie laughed too. ‘I think we will work well together, Bruce.’

  Over the next hour he was exposed to the Zen culture, the fascinating design business of Suzie von Falkenhyn.

  ‘So you really want to be a part of the team?’ he said at last.

  ‘I will not get in the way. I just want to develop a feel for the way you function. Clothes and colours are a part of life. If I am to design for you, I must become a part of you.’

  ‘You’ll do that in a spirit of co-operation?’

  ‘As I said, I want to help you, not bring you down, as you seem to think I will.’

  He stared out through the window at the falling rain. It was going to be a very difficult year. Nothing was going as he expected it to. However, this woman seemed intelligent, and anxious to make a contribution. If he didn’t accept her, Phelps would force him to, and then his relationship with her would be strained. If he co-operated she would be more manageable.

  ‘All right, Suzie. You’re part of the team. When do you want to start?’

  A broad smile broke across her face.

  ‘Tomorrow morning. I should like you to introduce me to everyone, and after that I promise I will not get in your way.’

  He pulled open the drawer of his desk and handed her a set of keys.

  ‘Everyone who works here gets these. This isn’t a nine-to- five job. I trust everyone.’

  She took the keys and put them in her handbag. ‘You know, I did some research on you before I came. I expected a fight.’

  ‘I appreciate your honesty,’ he replied, slightly taken aback at her candour.
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  ‘And I want your stamp of approval on everything I do.’

  He showed her out to her car - a navy-blue Aston-Martin convertible.

  ‘I like your style,’ he said.

  She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thank you for accepting me.’

  His senses reeling, he watched her drive off. He didn’t think

  there’d be anyone objecting to having Suzie von Falkenhyn around.

  She drove away fast. She didn’t know how she’d kept so composed - he’d made it so difficult for her at first. But she liked Bruce de Villiers. It was going to be a challenge, working with him. She could tell that his approach was very similar to her own - he was a man who didn’t accept compromises.

  She thought back to the evening with Phelps. She had been disappointed in him - but she was still excited about the project and relished the challenge it presented. Why was it she could never find a man who measured up to her expectations? A man she could love.

  Everyone thought her life had been one easy ride on the roller-coaster of success - that as a member of the German aristocracy she had come from money, and all the advantages that money had made available to her. Nothing was further from the truth.

  The truth was something she did not talk about. After the Second World War her family had been penniless, and during the time of the reconstruction her father had worked as a labourer. He was an arrogant man, Baron Ludwig von Falkenhyn; a gentleman of leisure. He had never entertained the thought that he would ever have to work. Before the war he had amused himself with the scores of beautiful women who fell natural prey to his saturnine good-looks. He had evaded conscription by keeping in socially with the Nazi chiefs-of- staff, but they had demanded heavy payments from him towards their cause and had expropriated much of his land. By the end of the war he had nothing.

  Susanna had been born in 1959, her parents’ first and only child. Her mother had adored her and so had her father, at first. By the time she was born he had managed to gravitate from his position as a labourer to that of senior clerk in a leading German bank.

  He never brought anyone he worked with home. Susanna’s mother knew this was because he had created a false picture of the way they lived, telling everyone they owned a huge country estate. In reality they eked out a meagre existence in a two-bedroomed flat where the plumbing leaked continually.

  Susanna worked hard at school, determined to earn enough money to support her mother - to take her away from her father. He treated her with callous disregard, laughing at her excellent results and saying that only ugly girls had to succeed academically.

  She remembered the night her life changed. It was late, and her father had slammed in through the front door. Her mother had come out to greet him. Susanna heard the sound of the blow as he hit her, then the sobbing.

  Susanna had been working on a drawing in her bedroom, but immediately switched off her light. She heard his feet falling heavily on the floor, and waited to hear the noise of the mattress springs in the next room as he collapsed into a drunken stupor.

  Instead she heard the handle of the door to her room being turned, then the light was switched on. Her father closed the door behind him and locked it. She pretended to be asleep, and smelt the schnapps on his breath.

  ‘Hallo, Susanna.’

  He shook her so that she had to open her eyes. He was staring at her fondly.

  ‘Kiss your father goodnight.’

  She rose up and kissed him. He held her, and pushed his tongue into her mouth. He kept on kissing her and enveloped her in his arms. Obviously, she thought, he felt guilty about the way he had been treating her.

  She felt his hand come up between her legs and start stroking her pubic hair. She shivered involuntarily.

  ‘You’re almost a grown woman now . . .’

  ‘Please, father. I want to go to sleep.’

  ‘I must teach you how to please a man.’

  He pulled her hands down behind her back and with his other hand unzipped his trousers. There was a masculine smell now, and she stared down to see his erection.

  She tried to struggle free, and he became angry. He ripped off her nightdress and began to fondle her breasts. He put his mouth to them and licked them. Desperately she tried to kick out with her legs, but he leant on her with his full weight so that she was powerless.

  ‘You’re not going to lose it gracefully, are you?’

  She screamed as he forced her legs apart. He laughed. She closed her eyes as he penetrated her. It was worse than any nightmare. All she could do was cry.

  It was the beginning of a bizarre relationship that had lasted over a year. She felt she couldn’t talk to anyone about it, especially not her mother. Susanna was torn between the guilt and the longing.

  Then one night, when she was lying in her father’s arms, there was banging on her door. She heard her mother’s voice.

  ‘Ludwig, what are you doing with her?’

  The banging intensified, and he got up from the bed, his face red with rage.

  ‘Shut up, you bitch!’

  He unlocked the door and her mother burst into the room. She stared at Susanna, naked on the bed.

  ‘What have you done?’

  He hit her hard, and Susanna screamed out again as her mother collapsed on the floor.

  Her father climbed back on the bed and forced her legs apart again. ‘Come on. Show your mother what we do together.’

  She closed her eyes tight and heard the sound of breaking glass. Her father collapsed on top of her, bits of glass falling everywhere.

  When she opened her eyes she saw her mother holding the neck of a broken bottle. Her father’s body rolled off her and fell heavily onto the floor, and her mother gathered her in her arms, sobbing.

  ‘You must get away from here!’

  She had stared silently at her mother, hardly comprehending.

  ‘Come,’ her mother said, ‘I have some money saved for you.’

  Her mother watched as Susanna dressed quietly, then packed her few clothes into a small suitcase.

  ‘Don’t come back, Susanna. Don’t write. Just get away from here . . .’

  The rain was drumming hard against the windows of the car, a truck was coming straight for her. Suzie pulled the wheel over hard, breaking out into a cold sweat. How long had she been driving like that, thinking of the past?

  She composed herself. She wished she could wipe that time from her mind, but it would never go away. There had been men in her life but never love. Sex was merely a physical act, a momentary pleasure.

  She concentrated on the road ahead. She was going to make a success of the Calibre-Shensu sponsorship. She was determined to succeed at it, as she had at everything she had ever done - except at love.

  And she liked the idea of calling herself Suzie. It was one step further away from the past.

  Wyatt jogged slowly round the test circuit in the early morning light. Today he would drive the Shensu Shadow for the first time. He knew the circuit intimately - the exact nuance of every curve, and the straights where he could coax the car to go a little faster, a little more smoothly.

  It was vital for him to be fit. He needed to keep his weight as low as possible and his reaction times razor-sharp. He alternated between slow jogging and fast sprinting. He liked the silence of the track in the early morning, the dew on the grass, the freshness of the air.

  He sprinted down the straight and then relaxed into a jog as he approached the esses. In the distance he caught sight of someone in a black tracksuit and immediately upped his pace. Perhaps it was someone snooping around. Other teams were always anxious to catch up on the opposition’s secrets.

  The figure drew closer. Very athletic, the man was a natural runner. The proportions seemed almost feminine, though; perhaps the backside was a little too curved.

  It was only as he drew level with the runner that he realised it was a woman, a very attractive woman. He gestured for her to stop. Instead, she increased her pace. He knew he could outr
un her, it was just a question of wearing her down, so he kept level with her until she finally stopped sprinting at the next curve.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ she said in a German accent that seemed vaguely familiar.

  Her blue eyes flashed angrily, and her features were thrown into relief by her blonde hair swept back in a long pony-tail.

  ‘This is private property,’ he said.

  ‘I know. I like to run on my own. Privately.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  The face was so perfect, he was almost driven to kiss it. She frowned, facing him squarely, and he admired the athletic stance of her body, the firm breasts pushing hard against the thin material of her tracksuit.

  ‘My name is Susanna von Falkenhyn,’ she said.

  ‘Haven’t we met somewhere before?’

  Her face coloured at the memory. She crossed her arms, holding her shoulders with her hands, but he took the hands and gently pulled her arms apart, drawing her close to him.

  ‘You bastard,’ she murmured.

  He kissed her, and her body softened. Her arms wrapped round his back and he felt himself swimming in the warmth of her sensuality.

  ‘Last time,’ she said, ‘I think I made it a little too easy for you. This time I want to get to know you better.’

  He relaxed his arms around her. She sighed, her breath turning to vapour.

  He felt scared. He never lost control like that. It went against all his training.

  ‘I only started work today,’ she said. ‘What do you do here?’

  She started to run again and he kept pace with her, still talking. ‘I’m Wyatt Chase.’

  She stopped and stared at him. ‘We’re going to be working together,’ she said.

  ‘You own Zen?’ He felt his perspective changing. He had read about this woman, was fascinated by her interest in Eastern culture. ‘You’ll be handling all our promotional work?’

  ‘Everything will be a statement. Your clothes, the colours and logos on the Shensu Shadow, all the publicity material and the way we present ourselves to the public.’

  Wyatt’s eyes widened. ‘Bruce agreed to this?’

  She nodded.

  ‘But whose idea was it?’