Rockets' Red Glare

by Greg Dinallo

  The young man lifted his blond curls from the pillow. His moist lips began delicately kissing the points of Melanie’s breasts that quivered in a taunting rhythm above him. He ran his tongue across them, across their smooth opalescence.

  He did it repeatedly, slowly, unendingly.

  Melanie began whimpering, “God, oh god, oh god,” then shifted to a patter of anxious squeaks.

  Her movements quickened. Her head snapped from side to side, long brown hair whipping in constant motion. Her hands on his shoulders, pinning him beneath her, nails cat-scratching across his chest.

  “Ohhhh, yessss,” she moaned, drawing the word out, then repeating it at closer intervals and with increasing volume, “Yessss, yesss, yess, yes, yes!” The last was an exuberant shriek that reverberated off the skylights and echoed through the cavernous space. Then a sudden rush radiated from her center across her trembling flesh, attending to every pore.

  She tumbled onto the pillow satiated, and let out a lusty growl. “Tom, ohhhh, Tom,” she purred.

  “Tim,” he corrected, a tremor in his voice.

  Melanie looked at him out of the corner of her eye and grinned mischievously, like a child.

  He raised a brow and grinned back.

  They tangled their glistening bodies like knotted snakes and laughed out loud.

  He first caught Melanie’s attention earlier that evening in the Hotel Dorset Bar, an elegant watering hole on West Fifty-Fourth Street, a short walk from the City Center Theater where she worked as a modern dance choreographer. The Dorset catered to a professional clientele, and Melanie often went there on nights she needed to be with someone—preferably someone from out of town.

  As it turned out, Tim-Tom was a local brat, and Melanie decided to wait until morning to tell him she wouldn’t be seeing him again, and why.

  * * * * * *

  Chapter Four

  Ten hours had passed since Churcher’s call to the Soviet Embassy in Washington triggered the cable to Gorodin in Cuba. The exchange of coded communications between Havana and Moscow that had followed got the Houston business magnate the meeting he wanted.

  In preparation, Churcher had spent most of the night scrutinizing paintings in his underground museum. He moved from Renaissance Masters to Dutch Realists, to French Impressionists, to canvases that spanned the history of great art. He skipped right past some, and went directly to others, knowing which, if any, might bear the same stigma as the Van Gogh. Though not an expert, once alerted, he had enough knowledge to make cogent evaluations. To his anger and disappointment, his efforts confirmed his suspicions rather than eliminating them, as he had hoped.

  He left the museum well before the beep of the Rolex. The elevator door hadn’t finished opening before he was out of it, and dashing through the kiosk toward a limousine.

  A uniformed chauffeur opened the rear door with an economy of movement, and nodded.

  “Stand on it, son,” Churcher barked.

  Without breaking stride, he jackknifed at the waist, and propelled his taut six-foot-three frame into the big car. His attire blended with the gray velvet interior, where tinted glass concealed the face but not the identity of its well-known passenger.

  Many of Churcher’s wealthy friends and associates had long ceased using personalized license plates for security reasons. His still read CHURCHCO. It was, he proudly boasted, a conscious measure of his arrogance.

  The antenna-studded limousine rocketed down the drive and through the electrically operated gates. The wrought iron tour de force had once greeted the major film stars of the thirties and forties at the studio now owned by Churchco Communications.

  The stretched Lincoln accelerated east onto the 290 Freeway, and in less than thirty minutes was hard into the curving interchange where Texas 610—the heavily trafficked ribbon that rings the Houston suburbs—meets the Katy Freeway to downtown.

  Characteristically, Churcher was evaluating the problem at hand and the men with whom he would soon meet: Gorodin, a pleasant, accommodating fellow, but cunning; Beyalev, cold, ambitious, and inexperienced, therefore dangerous and not to be trusted; Deschin, an old friend who had the power to make things right—if he wanted to. Churcher hadn’t seen Deschin in almost six years. Not since the last problem with their arrangement. Not since the Nugent report.

  He slouched in the backseat of the limousine, and shuddered at the memory. Overdone, heavy-handed, he thought. Typically Russian. He felt sickened whenever that rainy night in Deschin’s Moscow apartment came to mind, sickened by the fear and confusion that he imagined on Dick Nugent’s face the night of his death.

  The limousine was on the Katy Freeway where it swings across Texas 45, and fast approaching the North Main off-ramp, the major street-level artery that cuts through the heart of downtown.

  The Rolex started chirping and brought Churcher back. The repetitious beeping reminded him, over and over again, how he’d been manipulated and used. He let it continue a long time before he clicked it off.

  * * * * * *

  Andrew Churcher flipped a stirrup over the saddle horn and reached beneath the horse’s heaving belly. He pulled hard on the cinch loosening it, and slid the hand-tooled saddle from the white Arabian’s back. The momentum carried the saddle in a wide arc onto the rail of a weathered fence. A whistle sent the animal romping off into the pasture.

  His father’s horse had been watered, saddled, and ready to go at 7:15 A.M. sharp, as always. A half hour later when Churcher still hadn’t shown up at the stables, Andrew took the Arabian for a run himself.

  He was squaring the saddle on the fence when he spotted a rooster tail kicking into the air behind a car in the distance. Andrew ducked between the whitewashed rails and ambled through the mesquite to the road that split thousands of acres of fenced pasture.

  Ed McKendrick’s car approached at high speed, and nosed to a stop in a dust cloud.

  “Good news, Drew!” he boomed, unfolding from behind the wheel of the red Corvette. “Contracts for European distribution just came through.”

  Andrew jammed his gloves in the back pocket of his jeans, and latched onto the hand McKendrick offered. “That’s great,” he replied.

  “Sure is, kid,” McKendrick rumbled. “The old man did a hell of a job convincing the commies that he could sell their Arabians to Wops, Squareheads, and Micks, not to mention the Limeys and Frogs. Didn’t leave anybody out, did I?”

  McKendrick was Churchco’s ramrod. A good-looking iron pumper, and all-American linebacker with a PhD in economics from Notre Dame. Five years ago, Churcher pirated him from the Rand Corporation, the Los Angeles based think tank, as a replacement for Dick Nugent.

  Andrew disliked McKendrick’s style but knew that beneath the locker-room bluster hummed the most disciplined mind he’d ever encountered next to his father’s.

  “Geezus, Ed, you’re the worst,” he said in response to McKendrick’s ethnic shorthand.

  “Shit,” snorted McKendrick, gesturing to the expanse of uninhabited land. “Who the hell’s going to hear me out here? Besides, I love ’em all. You know that. Got some great numbers for you, too.”

  “Numbers?” queried Andrew.

  “Yeah. Before you go to Russia, you’re going to have to swing through Rome,” McKendrick explained. “And yours truly can recommend some flesh-crazed madonnas you can slip right into.”

  Andrew shook his head from side to side in mock despair.

  “When you’re not screwing your brains out, you can sell Arabians,” McKendrick went on. “There’ll be buyers up the ying-yang at the International Horse Show. And we have a direct line to the guy who organizes it every year. His name’s Borsa, Giancarlo Borsa. He’s a government honcho, runs the Defense Ministry when he isn’t breeding Arabians. He’ll be expecting your call. He and your old man go way back.”

  “I know. Dad introduced me when we were there last year,” Andrew replied. “I’ll look him up as soon as I get in.”

  McKendrick pulled a bulging file
folder from the Corvette and dropped it on the hood with a thud. “Everything you need’s in there,” he said.

  Andrew hefted the file as though he were weighing it. “That’s a lot of numbers,” he shot back, teasing.

  “Bet your ass,” McKendrick said deadly earnest. “Get familiar with ’em.” He had completely missed the entendre. His computerlike mind had reset, and he was all business. “This is your shot, kid. Don’t blow it.”

  Andrew felt frivolous in the face of serious matters. I’ll get it one of these days, he thought. He had made similar efforts of camaraderie with McKendrick in the past, but the timing was never right.

  “You’re leaving in two weeks,” McKendrick went on. “Use the time to bone up on each account. Know the individuals you’ll be dealing with. Memorize their backgrounds, business interests, the profile of their breeding stock. What they have. What they need. Am I coming through?”

  Andrew nodded earnestly. “Does Dad know?”

  “No. I haven’t been able to reach him yet today.”

  “Me neither,” Andrew said curiously. “He didn’t ride this morning. Didn’t call to let me know he wasn’t, either. Not like him. Something’s going on, Ed. I thought, maybe, these contracts were it.”

  McKendrick shrugged, then his mind reset again. “Probably did too much galloping on some little filly last night and took the morning off!” he cackled.

  He turned from Andrew, crossed to the Corvette, and slid his large body behind the wheel.

  “Remind me to give you those numbers!” he shouted as he slammed the car in gear. Then he popped the clutch, kicking up a shower of dirt and gravel, and roared off down the dry road.

  Andrew tucked the thick file under his arm.

  Twice he had flown with his father to Moscow, and then on to Tersk in the foothills of the northern Caucasus, where some of the finest Arabian horses in the world are raised. Both times Churcher had slipped away to “meetings” and had returned ebullient and satisfied, the way he always did after closing one of his deals.

  That his father had gone to see a woman didn’t occur to Andrew at the time. But, now, he recalled that day at the breeding farm in Tersk—the rapid guttural sound of the Russian auctioneers exhorting the bidding higher and higher; the babble of interpreters keeping clients in the competition for sales that averaged over $150,000; the barrel-chested horses prancing obediently to clipped Russian commands; the stink of hay and animal waste filling his head; the evaporating ammonia, so powerful it burned his eyes, making them water; then, the delicate aroma of perfume cutting through the stench like the scent of Texas lavender that blew through his rooms above the stables when the wind shifted direction—and the woman, willowy, white-skinned, jet black hair, red lips, soulful eyes, and the look—the fleeting current that passed between her and his father when she nodded to the auctioneer and outbid Theodor Churcher for an animal he wanted badly.

  That his father had allowed it should have been proof enough, Andrew thought, but the sexually charged glance left no doubt. It had the hallmarks of smoldering intimacy, of nights spent passionately.

  Andrew swept his eyes across the pastures that rolled to every horizon, trying to recall her face; but he couldn’t.

  * * * * * *

  Chapter Five

  Each week the airports that serve the Washington, D.C., area handle a revolving door blur of traffic as over three hundred thousand people arrive and depart the nation’s capital.

  On this morning, the continuing arrival of representatives from fifteen NATO countries and their retinues packed the terminals, along with welcoming committees, security personnel, and ubiquitous media correspondents.

  In the Lufthansa section of Dulles International, West Germany’s Deputy Minister for Strategic Deployment Gisela Pomerantz, fashionably attired in a long raccoon coat, and carrying an alligator attaché, strode through the arrival gate.

  Her aquiline face, the impact heightened by the blond hair pulled back severely, remained composed and assured despite the microphones, tape recorders, and camera lenses that thrust toward her.

  The questions came rapid-fire, in an overlap of English and German: “Do you think the Russians really mean business this time?” “What are the chances for disarmament?” “As an avowed hard-liner, can you support a nuclear pullback of the magnitude suggested?” “Do you have specific concerns with regard to negotiating points?”

  Pomerantz held up her hands defensively.

  “Please,” she pleaded, “we hawks can’t handle more than four questions at once. It ruffles our feathers,” she added with a disarming smile.

  Laughter rippled through the crowd of reporters, who appreciated the self-deprecating inference.

  “I hope so. —Better than even.—That’s what I’m here to decide.—Definite concerns,” she said, placing crisp pauses between answers and pointing to the reporter who had asked the question to which she was replying.

  Her entourage closed around her and began walking through the terminal. The reporters surged after them. One of the more tenacious correspondents thrust her microphone between the jostling bodies.

  “Can you be specific about your concerns?” the young woman prodded.

  Pomerantz eyed her coolly, and continued walking.

  “No,” she replied with finality. “I can’t discuss them at this time, I’m sorry.”

  The group pushed through the automatic doors. A protocol officer came forward and directed Pomerantz to a limousine. She took one step into the rear of the vehicle, and paused suddenly.

  “Hello, Gisela,” Phil Keating said with a warm smile. The chief U.S. disarmament negotiator was tucked into the far corner of the backseat, smoking a cigarette.

  “Philip?” Pomerantz mouthed with momentary uncertainty. Keating still had the craggy good looks; but his hair had grayed, and gold-rimmed bifocals bridged his nose. She settled next to him and kissed his cheek. “Good to see you, Philip,” she said brightly. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Good to see you, too,” Keating replied, studying her face. He was thinking it was as beautiful as he’d remembered when she flared the fur onto the seat, revealing a black knit dress that hugged her long, shapely torso. His eyes swept over it appreciatively.

  Pomerantz noticed and broke into a comely smile. “The last time you looked at me like that Keating, I recall you disappointed me—terribly.”

  “It was the gelati,” he said with the boyish charm that first attracted her to him. “I mean, there’s just something about chocolate gelati—no woman has ever been able to compete with it.”

  “Oh, I know,” she said, pausing for effect before adding, “that’s why I voted against holding this conference in Italy.”

  They were both laughing as the big car left the Dulles access road and swung onto the Beltway heading for Camp David in the bare-treed forests of the Appalachian foothills.

  Snow started to fall.

  “You know,” Pomerantz said with a mischievous twinkle, “a spicy sex scandal might give the media something to pick on besides my ‘political baggage filled with hawk droppings,’ as they refer to my policies.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Keating replied. “Indiscretions outnumber lobbyists in Washington these days.” He grinned, took a drag of his cigarette, then pressed it into an ashtray, and snapped the lid closed. “To tell you the truth,” he resumed more seriously, “I was hoping you’d brought other bags on this trip.”

  “I brought the only ones I have, Philip. Whether or not I unpack them is up to you,” she replied softly, taking his hand much more gently than on that day nine years ago.

  “I’ll do everything in my power to stop you,” he countered, leaving his hand in hers.

  They studied each other’s face for a moment before their eyes met in silent confirmation of their intense attraction.

  On the rear window of their limousine, large flakes of snow were sticking, then slowly fading away, melted by the radiating heat of the electric defroster.


  * * * * * *

  Chapter Six

  The drive to the Churchco Tower on Fannin Street took less than the usual twenty-five minutes.

  Theodor Churcher rode one of the glass elevators high into the open core of the building to the tower-level executive suites.

  Elspeth, his longtime administrative assistant, saw his preoccupation and sensed what was coming.

  “Clear the deck, Els,” Churcher said without breaking stride. And that was all he had to say. They had their own special shorthand, and this meant he’d be unavailable and incommunicado for the rest of the day.

  “Jake called,” Elspeth said, knowing that despite Churcher’s order he’d want to be told.

  Churcher paused thoughtfully, lips tightening as he decided, then nodded. “But nobody else,” he said. He crossed to his office, inserted his card key into the electronic reader, and entered. The Van Gogh was waiting on the glass desk.

  The intercom buzzed.

  Churcher flicked a look to the painting, then pressed the blinking light on the phone and scooped up the receiver. “Jake!” Churcher said, forcing it. “What’s going on in Foggy Bottom?”

  “Geneva. Current scenario has genuine potential,” Boulton replied rapid-fire. At five-six, and a hundred-thirty-two pounds, the director of Central Intelligence had the metabolism of a hummingbird. “Nature of my call is related. Specific interest—your ETA Rome.”

  “I’m not going,” Churcher replied. “Andrew’s handling the auctions alone this year. Churchco Equestrian’s his division now.”

  Boulton’s eyes widened pleasantly in surprise. “Celebration definitely in order.”

  “You know it. I never thought I’d see the day. What did you have in mind anyway? The Italians getting out of hand?”

  “Negative. Italian Defense Ministry has displayed exemplary toughness despite severe internal pressures. Advent of arms control negotiations prompts Company to ascertain IDM’s needs, and affirm our support. Informal conduit to Minister Borsa deemed appropriate.”