“God, you’re a devious devil,” said Jennifer Red Cloud in frank admiration. “What a team we’ll make.”
Castle nodded and rose.
“We’ll go over the details Monday.”
Listening to him describe their coming coup had brought her Apache and Viking blood to a slow simmer, as it always did in the presence of an audacious maneuver involving risk and danger. All she needed now was the touch of a hand and it would boil over.
“Monday? That’s two days away.” She looked up at him provocatively through long lashes, “Let’s, ah, do it. Now.”
He reached across the coffee table and took her hand. He brought it to his lips.
His kiss was as cool and calculated, as make-believe as a senator’s tax return.
She felt like punching him in the teeth but remembered how slow and stupid men could be. “The whole weekend ahead of us. I hoped I wouldn’t have to spend it alone.”
Castle released her hand and straightened. “I wish I could,” he said uneasily, “but I’m afraid it’s impossible. Turnbull’s asked me to deliver a personal message to Premier Kawasaki, for which”– he consulted his wristwatch –“I’d better catch my helicopter to the airport or I’ll be late.”
“Tomorrow?” Jennifer Red Cloud said, still hoping, as
she walked Castle to the door.
“Tomorrow I must pay my respects to the emperor.” He turned. “I don’t think I mentioned how absolutely smashing you look in black, but I can think of a way you’ll look even better.”
“Yes?” she said, wondering whether he would frame his answer in stuffy lawyer’s language or come right out and say how delicious her bare brown body would look against white satin sheets.
“Yes, on our wedding day, when you walk down the aisle in your long white wedding gown.”
“Good-bye, David,” she said through clenched teeth, and closed the door before he was halfway down the path to his waiting car.
Manuel thought that the caller had gotten the address wrong. The man was dressed in a red wool shirt, open at the collar, with worn dungarees and scuffed cowboy boots.
“I’m Ripley Forte,” the visitor said.
“Yes?” said Manuel, and then, seeing the narrowed eyes in the strong, weather-beaten face, quickly added, “sir.”
“Tell Mrs. Red Cloud I’m here.”
The door began to close.
Forte put his shoulder to it. “Never mind,” he said, barging through with Manuel trailing like a puppy at his heels, “I’ll tell her myself.”
He strode into the salon.
Jennifer Red Cloud was leafing idly through a house and garden magazine. She looked up.
“Why, Rip, how nice to see you.”
Forte glanced over his shoulder at Manuel.
“Beat it!”
Manuel beat it.
“Sit down, Ripley,” said Jennifer Red Cloud with a grand gesture. “Sit down and tell me all about your sordid little affairs. Since you left the Sun King with that fake– it was fake, wasn’t it?–kidney ailment, I’ve completely lost track of what the masses are thinking.”
“What I came to do isn’t done sitting, not in Texas, anyway.”
“And what did you come for, Ripley? Your telex was rather vague.”
“I came to pay an old debt.”
“Did you, indeed? I wasn’t aware that you owed me anything, unless you’re speaking of the pleasure of my company all those tedious months aboard that dreary iron ship.”
“I owe you plenty, and today I’m going to pay you in full, and in kind, I might add.”
“How mysterious. Would you care to explain?”
“Think back, Red.”
“How far?”
“To July 1998.”
“That’s ten years. Ah, is it our anniversary?”
“In a manner of speaking. In the early part of the month my father was killed. In the latter part I was screwed out of my share of Raynes Oceanic Resources.”
“Oh, now I see. You’re here to gloat about Raynes having fallen on hard times.”
“Your memory isn’t so good, Red. Already you’ve forgotten what I just said.”
“Refresh me.”
“If that’s acquiescence, your choice of verbs is wrong. What I said was, I came to pay you in full, and in kind.”
She read it in his eyes. She had seen that look in men’s eyes before. There was no mistaking it. “Manuel!” she shouted.
Forte just looked at her, not moving.
Manuel materialized, bowing nervously.
Forte turned around. “If I see your face again, Manuel,” he said softly, “you’re a dead man. Please believe me.”
Manuel was a believer. He turned and fled.
Jennifer Red Cloud was lithe and fleet of foot, but she had taken no more than three steps toward the door when Forte’s arm locked around her waist. She felt herself being lifted into the air and flung over Forte’s shoulder like a bag of laundry. She kicked frantically and succeeded only in losing her shoes. He took no notice but strode to the foyer and then up the spiral staircase.
He opened the first door. It was a bathroom. He went to the next. It was a bedroom with a huge circular water bed under a tentlike silken canopy.
She wanted to scream, but her heart was beating too fast and somehow seemed to have gotten stuck in her throat.
He walked in and kicked the door shut behind them.
She slipped out of the dream into reality, or was it the other way around? It had been like that ever since he had first grabbed hold of her, a delicious fantasy that had enveloped her, only to fade away into deep sleep and erotic phantasmagoria from which she awakened to sensations that she had read about but never really believed existed.
She stretched out her hand for more, but the place where Forte had been was empty. She rolled over on her back and opened her eyes.
He was on the other side of the room. He had just bent over to pick up his shirt from the floor.
“Where are you going?” she said, sitting up.
“Away.”
“But, but why?’ The late afternoon sun was slanting through the curtains, and a balmy breeze blew through the open window. “It’s early. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
Forte shook his head. “Time’s run out, Red. I’ve done what I came to do.”
She studied him through sleep-swollen eyes. “I don’t understand.”
He buttoned his shirt slowly. “Okay, I’ll say it again. You and Ned Raynes diddled me good ten years ago. He’s beyond reach, but today I paid you back, with interest. Finito la musica.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m serious. I’ve waited a long time for this. I’ve ruined your company, and I’ve given us both a taste of what might have been if you hadn’t been so goddamn greedy.”
She got out of bed and came toward him, her black hair floating around her shoulders, as light and lovely as swansdown on a summer breeze. She twined her arms
around him. “But you love me.”
“Who said so?” said Forte, standing perfectly still.
“You said so.”
“Maybe I was lying.”
“You weren’t lying. I know it.”
“Maybe not. Maybe so. What difference does it make?”
“It makes all the difference in the world. I know now that I want you, and I’m going to have you. I’ve waited too long for this. I’m not going to lose it.”
He pried her arms gently apart.
“Sure. You feel that way now. You wouldn’t be a woman if you didn’t, and nobody ever said you weren’t all woman. But tomorrow you’ll be back scheming to knife somebody in the back, to take some kid’s marbles, to take over the world. Well, Red, the world you’re going to take over isn’t the world I want to live in.”
She stood back, her hands on her slim waist, defiance in her eyes. “I dare you to say you don’t love me.”
Forte shook his head sadly. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
He turned and opened the door.
“Ripley, come back!” she called as she heard him walking down the stairs.
“Ripley !” she shouted. But there was no answer.
She heard the front door open and then shut.
A typical male trick. He was expecting her to run after him, panting with unrequited passion. And if she did, she knew she’d find him grinning at her from the bottom of the stairs.
She stayed where she was. When she didn’t follow, he would return. She cocked her head, listening for his footfall. She waited, scarcely breathing.
She waited quite a long time, little realizing that she’d wait forever.
40. THE SINCERE FRIEND
22 JULY 2008
“VYETEROK,” SAID KGB CHAIRMAN SERGEI BALIEV, leaning back in his chair and regarding the fluttering curtains with dreamy eyes.
“Svezhest” Premier Vasily Osipovich Korol corrected him.
“Well,” said Prov Vaslav Navori, the great conciliator of the Presidium, “I think we must all agree, at least, that it is not a buran.”
Whether the gentle wind ruffling the curtains was a mild vyeterok or a balmy svezhest, it certainly wasn’t the cold, biting, black northeasterly buran out of Siberia, for it blew in from the west, bringing nothing but comfort and warmth. This day it brought not only uncommonly blue skies and shirt-sleeve weather to Moscow but the Brown-Ash Mark IX, which Premier Korol, at the window, was observing being unloaded in the inner courtyard of the Kremlin.