Duel of Assassins

by Dan Pollock

  “I don’t remember. Actually, like I said, I just remember the by-line, Over here I mostly just check out the baseball scores a day or so late. And lately I’ve been picking up USA Today. More my speed, I guess.”

  “Don’t put yourself down, Jack. It makes me suspicious, since you strike me as a pretty bright guy. Which brings us to your turn. What do you do?”

  “Lately I go to trade fairs. Not a bad deal, driving all around Europe, tax deductible. Actually, what I do, I look for products, things that these people I represent back home—I work out of an office in Chicago, the Merchandise Mart—can license and sell. Mail-order gadgets. Damnedest stuff you ever saw. Toy solar-power dirigibles. Floating sunglasses, don’t ask me why. Underwater magnets, for picking up beer cans from docks, I guess, quarters from swimming pools. Backyard geodesic domes. Alpha-state stimulators. Personally, I like the toys best.”

  “Sounds like a perfectly wonderful way to make a living. Have you been doing it long?”

  “Couple three years now.”

  “That explains your accent.”

  “What accent?”

  “Your vowels are kind of roundish for a real American, if you know what I mean, especially a Middle Westerner. For instance, you just said ‘ahk-sent,’ instead of ‘axe-sent.’”

  “Did I? I guess I’m sort of a chameleon. Maybe they better send me home before I start putting my fork in the wrong hand. Anyway, the present deal is, I have a few weeks off and I’d never seen the Riviera, so I drove down from the toy fair at Nuremberg. I was heading for St. Tropez today, but I took a wrong turn, wound up here and liked it. I like it even better now. I rented a room up on the hill. Hotel California, like the old Eagles song. Pretty nice.”

  She hesitated, but only a moment. “We’re neighbors. I’m just below you. L’Auberge de la Calanque.”

  “Sounds so sexy, the way you say it.”

  Yes, she’d meant it to. She wondered at herself, at the no-brakes speed with which she was allowing this to proceed. Did her boldness have something to do with Taras’ not calling her? Or with the fact that this sleek, plausible fellow across the little table posed no emotional risk, and most definitely didn’t fall into the category of potential mate? Whatever did or didn’t happen between them, Charlotte knew, Jack Sanderson was a man who, in her old collegiate lingo, liked his space and would be moving on. But here and now he was looking awfully like dessert.

  He reached over to shoo a noisy bottle fly, exposing a puckered ridge of scar across his right biceps.

  “What’s that?” She pointed. “Have you been knife-fighting in your spare time?”

  “Nothing romantic. A .22 long rifle bullet did it. Fired by my cousin Donny when I was ten. He was demonstrating proper firearm safety features. Sorry to disappoint you. You thought maybe I was a hired assassin?”

  “A girl keeps hoping.” She laughed, and thought, Mister, you don’t know how glad I am you’re not an assassin. I’ve already had one.

  Twenty-Seven

  It was extraordinary that it had been Charlotte Walsh’s column on Potsdam, which Marcus had read in Lugano back in April, that had first alerted him to the possibility of his current assignment. For Marcus had been aware for some time, from GRU contacts in America, that Ms. Walsh and Taras Arensky were “great and good friends.” Marcus had, therefore, made a point of checking out the newswoman on several occasions when she had appeared on CNN’s European feed.

  His assessment of her had been favorable. Though by no means a classic beauty, she was definitely striking—dark-haired and stylish, with good cheekbones and brown eyes that flashed with intelligence and humor—and hinted strongly at sensuality. In fact, Marcus had been amused to see how closely she approximated one of his favorite types. Amused, because it seemed that again, as in the case of Eva Sorokina, he and Taras seemed to share a taste in females—an older woman this time, but equally appetizing.

  And Charlotte Walsh was destined to play an even more crucial role in their lives than had poor Eva—if all went according to Marcus’ plan.

  After ascertaining Charlotte’s whereabouts from her foreign editor, Marcus had cleaned out one of his safety accounts and assumed his final documented identity, an American mail-order sales representative, Jack Sanderson. He had flown to Marseille, rented a car, driven to Le Lavandou, verified again that she was still in residence at the three-star l’Auberge de la Calanque, then checked into the more modest hotel immediately above. In fact, his window overlooked the Auberge’s brick-arched Moorish entranceway.

  Still, he’d nearly missed her the following morning. She must have exited on the opposite side, through a private garden of cypresses and pollarded plane trees. He’d been damn lucky to catch a glimpse of her on the pathway below, just as she turned onto a private staircase leading down to the marina and the beach.

  He’d followed quickly, but loitered discreetly behind, frankly enjoying the rear view as she strode along, her bell of dark hair swinging metronomically. She was all in white—oversize T-shirt, jogging shorts and shoes. But the shorts were snug with side slits, showcasing long, shapely legs. Presently she ducked into a boulangerie, came out dispatching a croissant and licking her fingers. She was considerably taller than he’d imagined, perhaps only an inch or so shorter than he. Marcus found that provocative.

  As she emerged onto the bright blue bayfront, she harnessed into her little totebag like a backpack and set off on a beachside jog. Marcus admired her retreating figure a moment, then sat down on the low cement wall dividing the sidewalk from the sand, unfolding the newspaper he’d gotten at his hotel, a Var Matin.

  Fifteen minutes later he picked up the peripheral swing of her hair, turned to watch her coming back to him, slowing to a walk, hands on hips, her chest rising and falling under the sweat-soaked T-shirt. Fifty meters away she veered off to stake her spot on the rapidly filling beach. Once settled, she stripped down to a black bikini—an extremely daring one, Marcus thought, for a woman nearly out of her thirties, as he assumed Charlotte to be. Would she eventually drop her top as well? He thought not, but was happily prepared to be proven wrong.

  As she made her way down to the glassy bay, he further amused himself by wondering if she was going for a quick dip or a real swim. Marcus chose the latter and won his bet. She went breaststroking straight out until she had to pull up to avoid a little sloop exiting the marina on a port tack. She floated out there beside the breakwater several minutes before heading back. As she came dripping out of the sea with coltish strides, her dark wet hair sleeked back, Marcus felt the double barbs of desire and jealousy. He wanted this woman, wanted her to give herself to him exactly as she had to his rival.

  But he decided against making any moves while she was on the beach. That would be too obvious. So he’d stayed put, stalking at a distance, though ready to intervene quickly if any local stud should plant himself beside her towel or exchange more than a bonjour. Marcus was prepared for a long vigil when, an hour later, Charlotte had packed up her things, covered up and headed across the boulevard to the little book-and-card shop—an ideal location for them to meet, as things had turned out.

  All along Marcus had felt reasonably confident of his chances with the attractive woman journalist. But he hadn’t been prepared for the directness of her response. It was there in her eyes, her voice and body language. Suddenly it was as if his quarry were stalking him. And when, after only the briefest of exchanges, Charlotte had offered to escort him to another bookstore, he had the distinct feeling he had just been picked up.

  Inwardly it had given him a chuckle. It wasn’t, after all, an inopportune turn of events. In fact, his plan would work even better this way. Let the elegant lady reel him in at her own pace. All Marcus had to do was wait for his cues and brush up his rusty American accent. Certainly, after the first ten or fifteen minutes, he had little doubt that they were going to wind up in bed.

  It turned out to be hers.

  *

  Charlie lay back against
her headboard, sipping champagne. The door and curtains to the terrace were open, letting in an evening breeze and framing the solitary jewel of Venus suspended in a blue-velvet rectangle. But if she stretched her neck just a little, she could see the string-of-pearl lights of Port de Bormes-les Mimosas across the dark bay. But in order to see the tricolor dazzle of the Lavandou marina directly below her terrace, she would have to stir herself from her bed, and she was far too contented to do that.

  Besides, she’d also have to shift the muscularly defined right arm that was draped across her left thigh, and she liked it just where it was, thank you. She didn’t want to waken Jack from deep sleep—that blissful state from which she herself had only just emerged, and to which she intended very shortly to return. But for now she was enjoying surveying his subdued nakedness—this exciting beast she had lured back to her pastel cave—and listening to his slow, sibillant breathing, like a faint echo of the whispering Mediterranean beyond the terrace.

  Their mating dance had proceeded with a languorous inevitability. After the wine, they’d spent another hour or so on the beach, reading and chatting. Then they’d browsed their way back to the same brasserie, where they’d had an early and light supper of salade niçoise, pâté and cheese, watching through the shadowed palms as the beach thinned out and the afternoon tour boats returned from the Iles d’Hyères.

  Afterward, since their hotels lay in the same easterly direction, they were able to prolong the delicious charade, setting out together, still not touching, yet both knowing their destination was shared. They’d stopped twice along the way, once to watch some teenagers playing boule under the plane trees across from the main beach, and again for Charlotte to buy a cold magnum of Veuve Cliquot, without so much as a word as to its purpose.

  The first tactile intimacy had come at the foot of the escalier privé to the Auberge. Charlotte, a step ahead, had paused. Obviously this was not the way to the Hotel California; the sign said in simple French “for the usage of the Calanque” guests only. She’d half-turned, offering Jack her hand. As he’d taken it, their eyes had raked briefly, with unmistakable import. She’d squeezed his hand a moment, then let it go, preceding him up the first few steps, the champagne bottle dangling from her other hand, her clenching and unclenching hips ascending at the level of his gaze.

  He followed her on through the graveled garden of the Auberge, then up a curving wrought-iron staircase past hanging bougainvillaea, into the cool lobby where she gathered her key, down a softly illumined corridor and finally into her room.

  They’d popped the cork and toasted wordlessly on the terrace, sipping, watching the lights come on all over the waterfront, hearing a drunken argument down in the marina, the isolated spiel of a dockside carnival barker, intermittent motorized flatulence from the street below.

  Until the tension became unbearable.

  Still he had sat there, as his rugged silhouette darkened and grew more defined against the sunset. Could this devastating guy, Charlotte wondered, be timid, pathologically shy? She resolved to make the first move.

  Her voice carried a soft urgency in the evening air. “I’m going to take a shower, Jack. Wash all the sand off.” Pause. “You’re welcome to join me.”

  He’d turned his champagne flute, nodded slowly. “I’ll be there. Go ahead.”

  She’d gone, peeling off her sticky things, turning the needling spray as hot as she could bear, luxuriating in the steamy barrage, all the while aware of her heart pounding. Several times she turned to peer through the steam and the curtain’s translucence for a dark man-shape by the open bathroom door. Get in here, you bastard, she thought. And right now!

  Suddenly the curtain was yanked aside and he was beside her, growing quickly and delightfully hard against her. She shuddered as she felt his lips nuzzling the back of her neck, his tongue lapping droplets of water. Then he turned her gently around, his eyes taking her in, his palms cradling her breasts as they finally pressed full-length together and kissed deeply. After so much anticipation, Charlie nearly passed out. And then she did slip, her foot skidding on the porcelain so that he had to catch her, then steady them both. They found themselves suddenly eyeball to eyeball and nose to nose, both giggling as water streamed between.

  “What a way to die!” he said.

  “I promise to do better next time. Kiss me, Jack, and I’ll show you.”

  He leaned in, then broke out laughing.

  “What’s so damn funny?”

  “I was just thinking this beats the hell out of reading

  Harold Robbins.”

  *

  Now sipping her champagne, Charlotte recollected the implosive coupling that had followed that first kiss. They had climaxed together under the roaring shower, and again she had nearly lost her balance. Thinking about it now dizzied her with desire. Well, why not? That’s what he was here for, wasn’t it? She reached under his prone form, found and fondled his limpness until it responded of its own accord, even before his breathing quickened and his blue eyes opened with sly comprehension.

  “Shh,” she said, “you just keep sleeping. Don’t mind me. I just wanted something to hold on to.”

  But he had rolled over, availing himself totally. So she slid deftly over and onto him, kneeling astride with a certain air of ownership. She began slowly, posting atop the saddle of his hips like the blue ribbon equestrienne she had been in her youth. But gradually she increased the gait, putting them both through their paces till they had reached a full hell-for-leather gallop.

  *

  The first time with Charlotte, Marcus had felt little beyond vast glandular relief. But the second time he’d been flooded with contrary emotions, both sweet vengeance and bitter betrayal. Taras, of course, was the object of both of these.

  Odd, that this second coupling with his friend’s sweetheart should somehow signify the breaking of the final bond of friendship.

  Odd, considering he’d raped and strangled Taras’ first fiancée. Of course that had been in another country, many years ago. And—ultimate irony—it had been the making, not the unmaking, of their friendship.

  But only moments before—as Marcus had stared up at Charlotte hovering astride him, sheened in perspiration, eyes shut in communion with private lusts, launching herself again and again in pelvic shifts too wrenching for him actually to enjoy—he’d had an icy vision of that distant night with Eva.

  How she had writhed beneath him like a terrified rabbit, as though she could shed her skin or flee her own pinioned body. But he was far too powerful. Marcus had seen that awful reali-zation filled her gray eyes. It was almost the same moment he had realized that he had unleashed something within himself that he could no longer stop. It wasn’t just the White Dynamite, though certainly he was drunk out of his mind. But there was another, stronger intoxication—a sense of sudden bestial power over this helpless she-creature, and the need to give that dominance primal expression.

  Bringing his right knee up to pin her left arm, he had freed his hand to clamp her mouth and stifle her screams. Surely then Eva had glimpsed her fate, that he dare not let her live? She would have denounced him, he’d have been arrested, probably to spend years in a Russian prison. But Marcus had never killed a girl. Could he do it? He let his mind flood with a violent, seductive vision. He saw their eyes locking in the final, obscene intimacy of victim and predator, as both his hands crushed her tender neck.

  Alas, the reality of her dying had been something less than the vision. To stop her screaming, he had already been forced to crush her windpipe. The horror in her eyes was already fading as he released his grip to tear at her sweater, frantic to have her naked and to penetrate her before she escaped him. Finally, frustrated by her layered clothing, he reached under her dress, yanked and ripped her underpants down. Then, in his panic, he had ejaculated almost at once.

  Eva chose that moment to come back for a fleeting instant, as he was still in his final spasms. Her gray eyes, now horribly bloodshot, focused on him in
puzzled anguish. You’ve killed me, her eyes seemed to say. But why?

  Then she was gone.

  Later he had stripped her, launching his desperate plan to kill Kostya and blame Eva’s murder on him. By then her naked body meant nothing. Or if it did, Marcus had no time to think about it. Certainly he dare not feel cheated of his intimate moment. If Eva had died too quickly, nevertheless he had done what he wanted. So it could not be shame that he felt, staring down at the violated corpse at his feet, but unholy power. He had claimed that power now as his own, and it would never leave him.

  The conjured face of Eva was replaced by Charlotte, whose increasingly abandoned struggles were not to escape Marcus, but to subdue him, make maximum use of him as a conveyance to her own completion. Marcus didn’t mind being used in this way. He let his thoughts wander, deliberately holding off his own pleasure, till she finally shattered atop him and collapsed in diminuendos of delight.

  Then he rolled them both over. As he began to thrust into her, she opened her eyes, but they were glazed and didn’t focus properly. Which was fine; indeed it was perfect. All Charlotte had to do was yield, lie there passively while he pounded her into a semblance of female putty. She might or might not like it, but she would feel it all day tomorrow, long after the residual glow of her self-inflicted orgasm.

  *

  On the fourth day of Jack Sanderson, Charlotte felt drugged. She had ignored several callback messages from John Tully. And it was getting so she didn’t even glance at the daunting pile of reading matter she had brought along, including the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, entirely given over to advance analysis of the Potsdam Conference. Anyway, she could fake all that stuff when the time came. It would take her maybe an hour of prep to get current.

  She had simply pushed as many things as possible off till the following week, as Jack had apparently abandoned his own plans to tour the Côte d’Azur east to Monaco. They hadn’t really discussed this, just done it—the same way he’d moved his big suitcase and carryall out of the Hotel California the second day and in with her. They couldn’t stand being apart, what could be more obvious? And when they were apart—which probably hadn’t amounted to more than a few hours in four days—Charlie’s nerve endings still tingled with him, so that she felt constantly tethered to his body.