Peters sat down on the edge of the bed, reached out and gently stroked Alexandra’s hair. “Hang on just a few more hours, sweetheart. Then it’ll be over. You’re the toughest woman I’ve ever known. I know you can handle it.”
“Don’t patronize me, Rick.”
“All right, I won’t!” Peters snapped, abruptly pulling his hand away from Alexandra’s hair and stiffening. “I don’t know what the hell this sudden identity-crisis nonsense is all about, but I’ll talk to the Alexandra I know. I don’t understand this chickenshit prima donna act you’re trying to lay on me. The boxing matches start in an hour and a half, and we have to be there. That’s the reason we’re here, baby. For Christ’s sake, you’re a professional. You’re the best, which is why you were approached in the first place. Now, all of a sudden—”
“I don’t believe that, Rick.”
There was a long pause. When Peters finally spoke again, Alexandra thought she heard an unnatural thickness in his voice. Fear? she thought. Of what?
“You don’t believe what?”
“I don’t believe we’re the best, much less the only, people the CIA had available to task for a mission as important as this one.”
“You think I lied to you?” Peters asked tightly. “You received a second confirmation, the same as I did.”
Alexandra propped herself up on one elbow and turned on the lamp beside her bed. Peters shied almost imperceptibly, as though afraid of the light. His features appeared stiff, and there was a slight tic in his left eyelid.
“What if the CIA lied to both of us, Rick? Think about it: the Company has a complex that spreads over a hundred and forty acres, God knows how many personnel, and a budget that probably goes well over a billion dollars a year. Why should they round up two ex-dragons and task them for an operation so sensitive that a miscalculation could trigger a world war?”
“We’ve been through this. I told you. After—”
Alexandra impatiently shook her head. “I don’t care about Watergate, Company purges, blown networks, or what’s left of Hughes-Ryan. You know what those agency people are like. I just don’t believe they’d let Congress gut them to the extent they’d need us for a job like this. Do you really believe it, Rick?”
“You know I do. It’s why I’m here risking my life. I believe everything they told me precisely because it is so tricky. That’s why they had to use us. You believed it a week ago. What’s happened to change your mind?”
Alexandra, unwilling to look into the pale eyes any longer, turned her head away. It seemed so simple to him, she thought. Rick Peters was one of the toughest and most cynical men she had ever known, yet he seemed to accept without question what he had been told by the CIA. Why, she wondered, couldn’t she?
“Tell me again what John said.”
“You’re kidding,” Peters said irritably. “You want the whole conversation word for word? We do have one other little item of business to take care of tonight, you know.”
“You should have arranged for John to talk to me.”
“Sure, and you could have brought Raul along to keep us all company. Raul would have been overjoyed to see John.” Peters grunted angrily. “What’s the matter, Alexandra? I told you John’s brains ran out his ears when he started worrying about you. Now he’s thinking clearly again. At eleven o’clock tomorrow morning the two of you can talk all you want.”
“I don’t understand how John could panic like that.”
“You said that before. Was it like him to tag along after you when you came here? Whatever excuse you gave him didn’t take. You’ve got yourself a jealous husband.”
“No. You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me.”
Alexandra wasn’t sure whether she wanted to go into it. She didn’t seem to be able to organize her thoughts. “John’s been in trouble,” she said at last.
She turned her head in time to see Peters’ eyebrows arch slightly. “What kind of trouble?” he asked.
Woman trouble, she thought, and said, “It’s not important. He followed me to San Sierra because it was important to him to show me that he loves me. If you know that, maybe you can understand the pain he must have felt when he saw us together, and what he’s been feeling all week.”
“That’s interesting, Alexandra, but irrelevant. We both agreed that tonight will probably be a milk run. We finish up this evening, and tomorrow you meet John. You’ve got the rest of your lives to work this other thing out.”
Alexandra barely heard him. “The point is that my marriage was at a flash point when you came to see me, Rick. I think I decided to accept this task partly, maybe mostly, because I was hurt and angry. In a way, maybe I was trying to hurt back.”
“This is a hell of a time to bring up something like this!”
“I’m sorry. You’re right, of course, but I haven’t been … thinking too clearly. I’d forgotten how really dirty this business can be, and what it does to my head. Coming to San Sierra was a kind of escape from my problems. I realize now that if I hadn’t been so confused at the time about the rest of my life, I probably wouldn’t have accepted. And I’d probably have advised you not to accept. John said that it just didn’t feel right. Now I know exactly what he meant.”
“You’re upset, which is understandable. We’re both under a lot of pressure. I’d have accepted the task, no matter what you said. I told you: I believe the Company’s story. I thought then, and I think now, that I owe it to my country to help in any way I can. This is what I was asked to do.” He shook his head and nervously ran his fingers through his hair. “Why the hell would the CIA want to manipulate us? For what purpose?”
“I don’t know, Rick,” Alexandra sighed. “I just have this feeling that something terrible is going to happen to-well may happen if you don’t get your beautiful ass out night.”
Peters laughed without humor. “Something terrible damn well may happen if you don’t get your beautiful ass out of bed so we can go to the boxing matches. Salva could be killed. I could be killed, which is even worse. You say the Company may have lied to us, but you’re forgetting one little detail: Swarzwalder. There sure as hell was at least one bad guy on this trip, and he wanted to kill us as a warm-up to killing Salva.”
“But how could he have known about us, Rick?”
“I don’t know, Alexandra. And this isn’t the time to talk about it. Let’s discuss it later, after we know Salva is home and safely tucked into bed.”
“Rick, I—”
Peters abruptly reached over and turned out the light. The next thing Alexandra knew, Peters’ hand was inside her robe and squeezing her breasts, kneading her nipples, pushing her back down on the bed. Then his head was on her chest. His mouth moved over her flesh, frantically licking her belly, kissing her breasts, and sucking her nipples.
The strange, abandoned foray against her body had come so fast and unexpectedly that Alexandra barely had time to react. She pushed against Peters’ shoulders, but her arms felt totally drained of strength.
“Don’t!”
“Please, Alexandra,” Peters murmured, his voice muffled by her soft flesh. His right hand passed down her belly, slipped into her panties and began to press urgently against her vagina. He pushed her thighs apart and slid two fingers up into her body. “I’m afraid, too. I know you don’t need my body, but I need yours. Help me. Please let me have you.”
Alexandra felt paralyzed. There was no desire in her, only a terrible devil’s wind of confusion swirling in the empty place that had been her will. She was powerless to resist as Peters tugged her panties down and off her legs. Then he was suddenly on top of her, in her and rutting, holding her legs up and apart with his hands. Alexandra wanted to cry out, to beg him to leave her alone, but no sound would come out of her mouth. The face above her was no longer boyish: Peters looked much older now, like a bizarre reflection in some carnival mirror. His eyes were closed, his features contorted with lust. Sweat ran off his forehead and lips, spray
ing over Alexandra’s face and breasts.
She wasn’t giving herself to him, Alexandra thought absently. She was just unable to stop him from taking her. It meant absolutely nothing; he might as well be masturbating.
Yet, despite the fact that Peters was not physically hurting her, his brutish, somehow-pathetic lovemaking was producing in her the fiercest torment she had ever experienced. This pain transcended her flesh and was beyond tears. As Peters pounded, panted and poked, all Alexandra could do was lie passively beneath him with her mouth open, her eyes wide in horror, submerged in abyssal depths of despair and anguish so hot and caustic that they seemed to be melting her soul.
Peters ejaculated with a kind of strangled whimper. He collapsed on her and lay breathing heavily. He stayed there for long minutes, until his breathing became regular. Then he wearily pulled out of her, sat up on the edge of the bed, and wiped himself with a corner of the sheet.
Alexandra, still stunned by her profound sense of fragmentation, simply stared at Peters as he pulled on his pants, straightened his sweater, and combed his hair. He looked at her strangely for a few seconds, then turned and walked across the room to his bed. He picked up his radio from the nightstand and went to the door, where he stood cloaked in shadow. Alexandra could not see his eyes in the gloom, and his body was no more than a dim outline.
When Peters spoke, his voice sounded strained and rasping. “I’m going to wait in the lobby, Alexandra. There’s not a whole hell of a lot I can do about it if you don’t want to come with me. There probably won’t be anything going down anyway, and if something does I’ll just have to try to handle it myself the best way I can.”
There was a long pause during which Alexandra could hear Peters breathing; then the voice came again, this time taut with anger. “I just want you to know I resent the fact that first you agreed to be my partner in this, but now you’re folding up on me just as we’re about to cross the finish line. I love you, baby, but frankly I thought you were better than this. We both accepted a task, and I’m going to keep my part of the bargain. If I don’t, and if anything happens, I’m afraid I won’t think much of myself.”
Alexandra cleared her throat. She wanted to speak, to reassure him, but she still could not seem to dredge words from the soup of bewilderment boiling in her mind.
Peters pushed the door open, started to leave the room, then slumped in the doorway. “Forgive me, Alexandra,” he continued very quietly. “Forgive me for the stupid thing I did a few minutes ago. I didn’t mean to humiliate you; I just had a … terrible need. And please forgive me for talking to you like that. The pressure’s getting to me too. The fact of the matter is that I’m very much afraid there may be another man. I need you with me, baby. I can’t cover the entire arena by myself, and I know I’m likely to get myself killed if I try and there is a second assassin. In a couple of hours it will be finished. Please come and help me.”
“I’ll be down in a few minutes,” Alexandra said in a voice she hardly recognized as her own.
“Thank you, baby,” the disembodied voice said softly. “I’m taking the radio along so I can tune in the broadcast from Miami. Maybe we can get some advance word on Salva’s plans.”
Alexandra said nothing. Peters stepped out into the hallway, then closed the door quietly behind him.
Alexandra lay still for almost five minutes, staring at the ceiling but not seeing it; she was looking at, absorbed in, the walls of her mind. Finally she sat up and slowly pulled on her panties. It had never occurred to her not to go; it was the cold emptiness inside her chest, the terrifying sensation of splitting up into little pieces of disembodied personality, that had stalled her and temporarily paralyzed her will.
John had put her together once, she thought. He might be able to do it again, but somehow she doubted it. Now John knew what she had been, what she was. Judging from what Peters had told her, things in John had broken too.
So there was nothing left to consider or worry about, Alexandra thought. Not any more. There was only this last piece of the task she had agreed to do; after that she would passively wait in the center of her emptiness and see what happened.
Alexandra turned on the light. She picked up the barrette from the table beside her bed and began to put up her hair.
John
In mindless terror he scrambled the last black thirty yards with water coursing around his arms and legs, foaming over his buttocks and back, thrusting him forward. He fell into the large chamber, slipped and went under water, was twirled around and smashed by the force of the water against the opposite wall. He finally managed to get his feet under him and stood up, reeling, spitting water, coughing and gasping for air.
He pressed back against the rock and put his hands over his face, stunned by and in awe of the magnitude of the roaring forces unleashed about him in the utter darkness. Not only was water swirling and rushing about his knees, it also seemed to be hissing from the very pores of the rock surrounding him. The phenomenon involved much more than tidal movements, John thought, wryly amused to find that he could think of anything other than the fact that he was going to die in a very short time if the water didn’t stop rising. It occurred to him that the entire cliff on which Tamara Castle stood was like a huge sponge. Or a bucket: the water, set in motion by the pressure of tides eons ago, was still sloshing around, back and forth, up and down.
Rivers of water were cascading down on his head, snatching air from his lungs. When he tried to move to his left, his feet were swept out from under him. Rather than struggle, John let his muscles go limp and went with the water, allowing himself to be carried like a great fleshy leaf bobbing and floating in a lazy, undulating circle around the perimeter of his stone prison as the chamber continued to fill.
He crossed his arms over his head to protect his skull from the rocks and tried to lose himself in the not unpleasant sensation of weightlessness. There was, he thought, simply nothing else to do but wait for the cold, deadly touch of stone on his face that would signal the end of his struggle.
He found he was no longer afraid of dying. He had tried everything, and it was almost a relief to have nothing left to do but float in the water and let natural forces decide his fate. He was simply too exhausted to care any longer.
8:41 P.M.
A Gunner
The gunner squatted beside a pile of coiled electrical cables and watched the action in the corner of the ring just above him. Two youthful lightweights were fighting in the second bout of the night. The American had backed the Sierran up against the ropes and was peppering him with jabs that to the gunner looked more stylish than effective. The Sierran counterpunched with a right uppercut that snapped back the American’s head and splashed heavy globules of sweat over the gunner’s face and clothes. The gunner moved back and knelt down in an aisle.
From this position the gunner had a clear view of the brilliantly lit arena, except for the blocks of seats directly opposite the elevated ring. To his right, high up in a tier of bleachers just below the cantilevered balcony, a section of perhaps a hundred seats had been roped off; the gunner knew that would be where Manuel Salva would sit with his entourage when he arrived.
The gunner could see Alexandra Finway sitting in an aisle seat adjacent to the reserved section. She was, the gunner thought, big, beautiful, and very easy to pick out. She seemed to be following the action in the ring closely, cheering for both the Sierran and American fighters. Occasionally she exchanged good-natured smiles and nods with the Sierrans sitting around her.
Alexandra Finway had the appearance of someone who was thoroughly enjoying herself, but the gunner knew better; he could tell that the woman was distracted by something. The gunner knew how to look at people in order to see past their surface behavior, and he knew that Alexandra Finway was acting. She was very nervous; she was holding her body too stiffly, and her smiles and applause were forced.
All of which the gunner noticed, and then dismissed. The gunner’s only concern was in knowi
ng exactly where she was at all times.
Rick Peters posed a far more difficult problem, the gunner thought. The short man was slippery, elusive.
Peters had been constantly in motion since the start of the bouts, generally staying high up near the balcony, casually wandering around with a large portable radio propped on his shoulder and held close to his ear. At the moment the gunner had lost sight of the blond-haired man but he was fairly certain that Peters was somewhere on the balcony just behind him and above his head. He would not worry about it, the gunner thought, until Salva came in. Then he would act quickly to pinpoint Peters’ position.
The gunner, ostensibly checking equipment, had been around the perimeter of the arena three times, and planned to make yet another circuit in fifteen minutes. Up to that point he was satisfied that John Finway was not in the arena. In which case, the gunner thought, Finway was not his concern. His instructions were to kill any of the three people who were in the castle, but only after Manuel Salva had been assassinated. He reminded himself that he was not being paid to hunt, but only to kill under specific circumstances.
The gunner stood and stretched as he looked up at the night sky over the open arena. The Goodyear blimp moved slowly across the full moon, its bright running lights making it appear like some strange, sightless beast tracking currents in the depths of an ocean of night. The gunner moved his hands as though to rub his back and lightly touched the hard shape of the revolver to make sure it was properly seated in his belt next to his spine, covered by the loose, oversized nylon windbreaker he wore.
The gunner stretched again, yawned. He would, he thought, be paid the same fee even if Salva, for some reason, stayed away, or came and was not killed. However, the gunner found himself hoping that the dictator would come to the arena, as everyone supposed he would. He wanted to see Salva in person, and if Salva were assassinated the gunner would be an eyewitness to an important historical event.
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