I Am India Fox

by Virginia Nosky

  Jack filled a napkin with ice, then the flutes and walked over to India. He put the iced napkin against her throat and handed her the champagne, then turned to a large armchair and sat across from her. Minutes passed.

  “Better?” he asked.

  She put the glass down. “Yes. I don’t think my tummy wants champagne this minute. The ice feels good.”

  “Now,” his eyes bore into hers. “Is there something you need to tell me?”

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  “You spent some time at Langley when you were back in the States.”

  India was startled. “And…?”

  “You were debriefed. That’s normal procedure. Was that all? Those goons were after something. Me? Or was it you?”

  “Why would they be after me? Or after you, for that matter. What are you up to these days?”

  “Don’t change the subject. I think those two were supposed to scare you. Were you getting too curious?”

  “Jack, I saw you. You…you just killed two men.”

  “I didn’t like them.”

  “That sounded like a gun when the man fell against me. That popping sound. Do you have a gun?”

  “Answer my question. Were those men after you?”

  India set her glass down, studied her fingers in her lap, twisting the sheer fabric of her dress in her fingers. Then she stood abruptly and went to Jack. She knelt on the chair and wiggled the tight skirt up over her thighs and hips, straddling his legs, tugging the end of his black tie and pulling it from his starched collar. “I’m tired of questions.” She began on the studs on the pleated shirt, then bent and kissed him softly, running her tongue over and over his mouth. His arousal pressed against her panties and she wiggled him closer.

  He groaned, “India, what am I to do with you.”

  “You know. This,” she murmured against his mouth. “And this.” Then she stood, unzipped the black dress, let it float to the floor as she slipped out of her lacy panties in one motion and knelt back over him again.

  Into her breasts he muttered, “Are you going to let me do part of this?”

  She breathed, “If you like.”

  In an instant she found herself on the floor, dimly aware the carpeting was prickly on her back. Then it didn’t matter.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  The Spanish Riding School

  INDIA SLID ACROSS the seat of Jack’s rental Mercedes. As he helped her from the car he pushed her against the door and kissed her, a long, lingering kiss. “I can’t stop this, I’ve wanted to do it for so long.”

  “You’ll make me want to get back in the car.”

  “Don’t tempt me. We’ll wait until we get to the first bale of hay.”

  “Spoken like a farm boy. Were you a farm boy?”

  He touched the tip of her nose. “No. But I learned what a bale of hay was for. It just fits a bird’s bum if you turn her just right.”

  “I’ve never heard it put quite that way.”

  “Maybe you’ve never been turned quite that way.”

  “I don’t think I’ll go there,”

  THE RIDING SCHOOL was in a wing of the Hofburg Palace, built originally in 1279 and added to architecturally over the centuries. India swept her hand around the Baroque white and gilded interior. “This is the hall for the famous Lippizan horses. Where they perform their classical dressage maneuvers. It’s the most beautiful riding ring in the world. Certainly the most lavish.” Three huge crystal chandeliers hung over the sawdust performance area surrounded by ornate tiers for spectators.

  India and Jack made their way to the first of the tiered seating areas. “People usually think the horses were trained to do these maneuvers in battle” India said, “but actually the training was simply to strengthen the horses’ bodies and minds for the rigor of battle.”

  “Hm. That’s what I thought it was for. Can’t imagine fighting a battle on a horse. A white horse.”

  “They’re not truly white. They can be black, bay, other colors when they’re born, but they turn a pale gray, by about six years. Their skin is black. A true white horse is born white. The mare lines have a large number of other breeds in their lineage. Arabians, thoroughbreds, some of the other cold blooded European breeds.”

  “You know a lot about this.”

  “When I was in school in Switzerland, my class went to the breeding grounds outside of Graz, here in Austria. There are several others in other countries. We even had a chance to ride the mares. The females are only brood mares. The show horses are all stallions. We got to see the colts begin their schooling. It was fun. Poor babies have years ahead of them to learn all those fancy moves. I know how hard it is. I tried dressage once at school. I’m too impatient to be good. It takes enormous self-restraint.”

  Jack grinned. “I can see where that would be a problem for you.”

  “I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”

  “You did, love, you did.”

  A Strauss waltz began and the first of the exhibitions began. “I’d love to have one of the uniforms the riders wear. They’ve not been changed in 700 years—the coat most people think of as black. Actually it’s a very dark brown. The britches are white, black boots, white gloves, along with the black unicorn hat. I think they’ve got cheap knockoffs in the gift shop, but I’d want the real thing.”

  “Good God. America’s ruining the world. Gift shops!”

  “Says the Englishman whose dukes and earls sell tickets to their castles. You can’t tell me they don’t have gift shops to sell their tea cozies.”

  “Touché.”

  “Now, look. They’re starting. The horse wears a gold breastplate, white buckskin saddle over a shabrack or saddle cloth. You can tell the rank of the rider by the red or green, gold-fringed or un-fringed. It takes years to go up the rankings. These riders for the most part do this for life.”

  “I know that it used to be only chaps were chosen to train the horses, but two years ago an English girl passed the exam and was chosen. Made all the papers. There actually was never any rule against women, just nobody had ever tried to break into the blokes’ ranks before. Think the other girl was Austrian.”

  “I didn’t know that. Good for them.”

  “Maybe we’ll see them today.”

  “Hardly, they’ve got several more years to learn the routines,” she said. “It’s like a lifetime dedication. They work themselves up to it through the ranks before they ever get to perform.”

  “I worked here in Vienna several years ago in the Reuters bureau. Never got to come here.”

  “You worked out of the Vienna office? I have a lot to learn about Jack Spear, don’t I?”

  He grinned. “I’ll tell you all you need to know.”

  The rough business in the alley last night flashed through her mind.

  The Strauss music swelled and the white horses entered, high-stepping down the length of the arena to salute the life-size portrait of the Emperor Charles VI hanging above the royal box opposite the entrance. Then the balletic performance unfolded, with its stylized pirouettes and cabrioles.

  “GOD, THEY JUST float,” India marveled as she and Jack made their way out of the hall at the end of the show. “Now I need to get back to the hotel and check out. I ordered the hotel limo for four o’clock.”

  “I’ll take you to the airport.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I want to make sure you’re not followed. And I’m having a hard time with the idea that I’m not going to see you for a while.”

  She took his hand. “Then I’d like that. I wish you could be in Paris with me.”

  “So do I. But I’ve got a meeting I can’t miss in London. I’ll try to find you if you’ll be in Paris for a week.”

  “I don’t think that long. I have to be back in Washington. If you can get away before I leave, call me.”

  “Oh? Washington? Not New York?”

  “Um…I promised my parents. It’s Daddy’s birthday…” She kne
w Jack looked at her skeptically, but he said nothing.

  “We’ll talk then. Right?”

  “Yes. Call me a lot. I’m staying at the Meurice, missing you.”

  At the hotel, Jack left the car with directions to wait, they’d be right down. In the elevator to her room the look on his face made her knees weak.

  “We’ve got twenty minutes. Plenty of time to get to the airport.” He pulled her into his arms. “I have a goodbye in mind that won’t take long.”

  ***

  IN THE WAITING room at the Vienna airport overseas lounge, India tried to get Racquel again on her special phone. For the third time the phone rang and rang. So much for my Vienna contact. I’ve got to tell her about the goons who attacked Jack and me last night. Maybe she would know about it? Maybe it was just a mugging.

  But the nagging fact she couldn’t ignore was that two men lay dead in that alley. Jack had dispatched them with a speed that left her with unanswered questions. Granted he was experienced, living in very iffy places in the world. He has to have some self-protective skills. Journalists these days have to be street-wise. Often their lives depend on it. It was one of my reasons to take the CIA course, give myself some back-up. Did Jack have a…well…people like that?

  India looked at her watch. It was the middle of the day in Washington. She would call Earnhardt, to complain if nothing else, that his Vienna contact for me ignores my messages.

  When India was finally put through to Earnhardt Clausen, she began her tirade. “Racquel got in touch with me. Now I can’t get in touch with her. She worked the fashion show with me. She’s gorgeous by the way. We had breakfast, shared some intel…isn’t that what you call it? Anyway…”

  “Hold up a minute, India. I’ll be quick. You couldn’t reach Racquel because she’s dead. She was run down by a car yesterday, not far from your hotel yesterday morning. She had just had a meeting with you. Our Vienna office says it was deliberate…”

  India turned cold. Racquel? Racquel was…murdered? That couldn’t be. They’d had breakfast together. They’d talked. Laughed.

  She stammered out the ambush of the two attackers the night before last. Earnhardt talked on, but she wasn’t listening.

  “…you’ll be met in Paris. Don’t go anywhere by yourself. Pay attention to your surroundings. Don’t use the women’s bathroom…”

  “They’re calling my flight, Earnhardt. I…I have to go.”

  “Good flight, India. When you get off the plane, wait to be met. We’re looking into all this. You’ll have to come back to Washington.”

  “I’ll be in Paris for four, maybe five days. At the Meurice.”

  “No, you won’t. You’ll be In Washington. Here in Virginia, to be precise.”

  “Earnhardt, I’ll be in Paris. I need to unwind. I’ll come to Washington in a few days.”

  There was a dead silence in her ear. Then. “Let me phrase that a little differently. Get your ass over here on the next plane out of Paris. When I say ‘jump,’ my girl, you not only jump immediately, you ask me how high. We need to know what you found out in Vienna. You don’t get a little vacation in Paris. Is that clear?”

  India felt a flash of anger. “Don’t talk to me that way. Maybe, if you need me, I’ll be there.”

  “You’ll be met at Charles de Gaulle. Don’t do anything dumbass. Do what the man says. He’s there to take care of you.

  “All right.”

  “All right, Sir”

  Seething, India cut the connection. Sir? Am I in some goddam army?

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Langley

  EARNHARDT CLAUSEN’S TONE was apologetic. India sat stiffly across from his desk, her mood rebellious.

  “Look, again I’m sorry I blew up at you. I get nasty when I lose an agent. Racquel was a good one and I had high hopes for her future. Besides, my life wouldn’t be worth living if I let anything happen to Justine Fox’s kid.” He shuddered. “It wouldn’t be pretty. Now go over again the attack on you and the Reuters guy in Vienna. You said you think he shot the guy choking you, and you guess that he offed the one roughing him up with a blow that broke the guy’s neck. That’s pretty serious business.

  India shook the thought away. That her mother cared. She cared? She had always cared…

  “Uh…serious. Yes. He threw the flat of his hand up, like this.” India brought the flat of her hand up hard… “and I heard the man’s neck snap. Then we got away. He used the kind of move we learned down at the Farm.”

  “What do you know about this guy, Spear.”

  “Not much. Just that I finally got the sexy bastard in bed, well, after the floor, and I’ll do it again the next time I see him. He’s with Reuter’s and worked out of Beirut, where I met him. He’s the one who took me to see Assad. Assad and Jack Spear’s doctor father got friendly in the UK. The night before I sat at the Assad table, a guest of his wife, Asma. Because of my interview with her, I assume. She said the wife of Bashar’s finance minister was scheduled to sit there, but the woman wasn’t feeling well and begged off. Then Asma thought of me. By coincidence, the Assads had invited Jack Spear to sit at their table. He sat across from me, but at the end of the dinner we walked out together. It was a nice night. He offered to walk me back to my hotel.”

  “Any chance the thugs were after Spear and not you? Or, some outfit that’s got it in for the Syrian dictator.”

  “At the time I didn’t know. As I said, I don’t know a lot about Spear. He helped me up to my room. He mentioned it, wondered about it. He stayed to make sure I was okay. I was kind of woozy. We talked about the possibility. Now that I know what happened to Racquel, do you think it was me they were trying to scare?”

  “Hmm.” He frowned. “About those items you discussed with Racquel.” He looked at the notes he’d taken of India’s report. “I want to stay with that. Did she say any more about the son being brought home because he was running with a drug crowd?”

  “No. Racquel asked me about everything the woman said, several times. I wondered why, but she didn’t elaborate.”

  “Do you know who the woman was you’d overheard?”

  “I didn’t, but Racquel did.”

  “Did she know the kid’s father’s name?”

  “Hossein Masoud. I looked him up. He’s the Petroleum Minister of Iran. He’d just been elected the Secretary General of OPEC. He’d only been appointed minister that week by Ahmedinejad so it was something of a surprise, I understand. I’m guessing he hadn’t joined any particular OPEC cabal as yet, so they settled on him. Just guessing, as I said. The meetings were closed to outsiders.”

  “It’s a pretty good guess. Ahmedinejad’s election has raised some unrest in Riyadh. It was fixed, of course, but the starry-eyed young generation still thinks it gets a choice.”

  “Are you interested in this Masoud kid for some reason? I didn’t learn anything else. The mother seemed annoyed about the Daddy’s ultimatum to get home.”

  “The Harvard ‘kid’ is Kazen Masoud. Actually he’s not a kid, he’s in his late twenties. He’d been studying economics at Oxford, then decided to go for an MBA. In reality, it was his father who decided the son needed the American business degree.”

  “Oh?”

  Clausen leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head, lost in thought.

  India watched, puzzled at this pause in the conversation. “Is there anything else, Earnhardt?”

  Clausen sat up quickly. “Yes. I had to sort out something in my mind.” He drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment. “I have a job for you.”

  “What is it? I have some ideas my TV station is tinkering with. Some assignment for me.”

  He waved his hand in dismissal that anything else but his own assignments had no relevance. “Here’s the background. Kazen Masoud met Racquel at Oxford. They were getting very close, sleeping together I suppose. In any case, Kazen was smitten. Beautiful girl, smart. American. Old man Masoud would hate that. Racquel was studying economics,
too. As well as working for us, but of course he didn’t know that right away. Long story short, she worked to ‘turn’ the Iranian. We think she was almost there. Kazen must have espoused some opinions that scared the old man. He nosed around, found out about Racquel and shipped the son off to Harvard, ostensibly to get the MBA and be ready for big things in Iran.”

  “Racquel studied economics at Oxford? I thought she was a professional model.”

  “Oh, she was that, too, on the side, after she came to us. We encouraged her to continue that. The modeling got her into some interesting places. Doors are open quite often to beautiful women. Racquel was brilliant as well. A great combination for us.”

  “I can see that. She was younger than me I’d guess. How’d you get her to agree to do,” India waved her hand in a circle…“this?”

  “Not complicated. She came from rural upstate New York, very modest circumstances. How she came to be with us isn’t a long story. She went to the city, Forbes agency saw her, grabbed her and she began modeling for them. One of our people saw her, too, convinced her we were a great career path for an extremely smart, ambitious girl. He was right. It excited her. Her earlier upstate New York life had been dull as hell and doing daring things turned her on.” His voice tightened. “Damn, I hate losing her.”

  “What do you want me for? I can’t do the things she did.”

  “No. I need someone to get Kazen back to the UK. You speak Farsi and French. He’d be a comfortable with you. He doesn’t want to stay in this country and he doesn’t want to go back to Iran.”

  “Look Earnhardt, part of me thinks that would be fine, but another part says, ‘hey, you’re just a rookie at the dangerous stuff.’ Look what happened when I was attacked with Jack Spear. If he hadn’t been with me, I’d most likely be dead, too.”

  “We’ll be sending you with somebody who’s good at the dangerous stuff. Marcus Shawn. Understand you met him briefly in the Beirut embassy.”

  “Uh…yes. Briefly. I got to know him a lot better going around in a Ferris wheel gondola overlooking the harbor. After my “birthday party.” “When is all this supposed to happen?”