A Death in Geneva (8 page)

This personal disharmony at the apex of Towerpoint International had remained beyond the public's view, but it had troubled Adrian Starring deeply. As did his sister, he accepted his older brother's leadership eagerly, the springboard for his own comfortable corporate rise. Unlike Connie, he had welcomed, even thrilled to Tina's celebrity entrance into the family. Her aborted pregnancy had sorrowed him, truly a family loss. Her difficulties with Tommie, whatever their cause, presaged a bleak uncertainty he feared could only play negatively in his and the family's fortunes.

Tina had accepted the younger brother's first overture, an invitation to lunch, with indifference. Without doubt, his solicitude had been heartfelt. They lunched again, some ten days later. With her guarded responses, she had encouraged him to carry the conversations, his flow of words forming an increasingly polished mirror in which to study her future as a Starring. As Adrian had led her out of her dark forest of despair, he grew in confidence and in hope. She was reemerging, her spirit brightening, and in this he took tremendous satisfaction—a subconscious sense of contribution to Towerpoint's destiny.

As their meetings continued, there was soon too much to be said over the silver and linens of a restaurant table. He shaped his professional calendar to permit their conversations to extend from luncheons, to the cab back to her house, and through the shifting light of mid-afternoon over drawing room coffees. More than half a year had elapsed when one such afternoon he took her hands to say good-bye and brushed her cheek with his well-practiced brotherly kiss. She had kept his hand gently, told him she needed his advice, and had led him to the master bedroom where she had turned and kissed him with enveloping passion.

There could be no doubt as to Adrian's loyalty to his brother, but his eyes over the months of conversation, his physical adoration, had betrayed his weakness. She had made love to him that afternoon with such seeming desire that Adrian, in his dazed excitement, had climaxed almost immediately. She had held him in her. She had run her hands along his aroused flesh until she too trembled in orgasm, shuddering triumphant in victory over Tommie. That same evening,
as Tina sat with her husband at the head table of a black tie charity gala, she would sweetly whisper her affair with Adrian into his ears, a message to be permanently submerged by both in silence, her contribution to the revision of their marriage.

“Oats!” Starring's voice rose across the circle. “During your truancy, Dr. Ghadira and his houseguest Gus have been regaling us with fascinating tales. They share the rare distinction of having had the George Cross conferred on them by His Majesty George VI at the height of the Second World War. Dr. Ghadira, you Maltese have become legendary as the heroes of sieges. Is there some unique strain of bravery the parents endow to the sons and daughters of each new generation?” Starring retook his seat as he spoke, unbuttoning his green blazer, and accepted a Scotch.

“Mr. Starring . . .”

“Tommie. Call me Tommie, my friend.”

“Well, Tommie, we didn't think of it as bravery—maybe afterwards but not while we were defending our homes. I was almost seventeen when the Italians started in on us in June of 1940. The first half year was more excitement than hardship. Mussolini's bombers had an extreme distaste for anti-aircraft fire.

“The British, while their resources were very limited, had us well organized. My father was a gunnery sergeant, battery northwest of the capital. I was at the aerodrome, totally entranced by the RAF, running errands, anything to be part of the action. It wasn't too long before there was plenty of it, with the Italians giving way to the Nazi dive-bombers in early '41. I was with a runway repair crew then. The Nazis would blaze across each day cratering our strips. We would pop out, patch over the holes—”

“My God, how horribly dangerous. What about your family?” A faint line appeared on Tina's forehead as the fine brows drew together in a frown.

Ghadira's eyes sparkled with the pleasure of his tale. “I had four sisters, two brothers, five of whom are still alive. Our families were strengthened by faith, Mrs. Starring. There were times when I was sure my mother and grandmother carried the entire island on the strength of their prayers. We rode out the worst of the Nazi bombardments in caves. Malta is a rock. And so, we lived in caves, not comfortable but safe.”

“Sounds like an aunt of mine,” Tooms growled.

A steward appeared at Leslie Renfro's side. “I ordered you another wine, my friend,” Starring broke into the conversation, “a splendid Bordeaux just laid in.” In the growing darkness, he was conscious that she had been staring at him from the moment of her arrival. As he had caught her green eyes from time to time, he had been flattered, surprised to find that his mind had drifted from the lilting words of the Maltese professor. The first tinglings of sexual arousal had snapped his mind back to the conversation. He jumped to his feet to regain command. “Dr. Ghadira, what brought you and Gus together? You were a pilot, weren't you, Gus? I didn't know we had people here.”

Anderson shifted in his chair. He was a big man, pale, with light-brown hair growing in profusion from the open neck of his shirt, down along the heavy forearms resting on his knees, ending, a forest's edge, on the backs of his long-fingered hands. He rolled his pilsner glass between the fingers. “Joe and I are brothers,” he said, winking at the short, bald professor.

“Now, who is Joe?” Tina recrossed her lovely legs.

“Tina!” Starring's voice was firm. “Go ahead, Gus.” With the coming of darkness, the stewards had lit candles in hurricane globes at each of the cocktail tables. Long-poled kerosene torches flamed just beyond the periphery of conversation, the light playing across Anderson's long facial features. Silver trays of hors d'oeuvres were borne around the circle.

“Joe? Dr. Ghadira.” Anderson aimed his empty glass toward the professor. “He was my honorary plane captain. We had regular crews, RAF, but Joe was there when we scrambled and ready with the chocks when we landed. At the worst of it, in late '41, '42, he slept on a blanket between the plane's wheels, guarded her like a watch dog. I arrived in Malta in October '41, came down from the U.K. I had been a mail pilot, Oklahoma, further west, had sensed the war, but couldn't wait for Pearl Harbor. We had a mixed bag of good pilots down here, Limeys, Aussies, Kiwis, Canadians, Rhodesians. We were flying Hurricanes until the first of the Spitfires joined us in '42. The Hurricanes were good, had proven themselves against the Luftwaffe's Messerschmidt 109Es in the Battle of Britain.”

“Heroic engagement, carved in stone.” Starring directed his words to Leslie Renfro, who continued to watch him like a cat studying the occupant of an adjoining cage.

Anderson accepted another hors d'oeuvre, downed it in a gulp. “We'd come over this harbor flying out to tangle with the Junkers 88 bombers, their brothers the 87 dive-bombers, and the Messerschmidts. The first Hurricanes were classy birds, old-fashioned, fixed-pitch wooden propellers, fabric wings cradling eight Browning machine guns—”

“Better armed than some of today's blowtorches in the Sixth Fleet.” Tooms swirled the ice in the dregs of his bourbon; at the sound, a steward bore the glass away to the serving bar.

“You may be right. They were slow, though, three-hundered max. The MEs ran circles around us except in a dive; we could catch them in a dive. The air used to be thick, forty, fifty bombers, twice as many fighters, like clockwork every day, working over Valletta, the airfields, the dockyards—”

“And the fleet when it was here.”

“You're right, there, Mr. Starring. We counted as many as three-hundred bombers and fighters on more than one sortie. They had an easy run, just sixty miles from their fields in Sicily. Now, when the Spitfires came”—Anderson spread a hand across the sky—“what a marvelous fighting machine they were; fast, simple, clean cockpit, no more instruments than a Cadillac, machine-gun firing trigger built right into their joysticks. I was still flying Hurricanes. I envied those boys. Together we took our toll.”

“And the island held! Magnificent achievement! When did the king actually present the George Cross?”

“Who can forget that, Tommie? April 14, 1942. He awarded the Cross to the entire population. We were all quite staggered.”

“And, you have kept this friendship between you. I think that is very lovely.” Tina rose, made her way gracefully to a vase of cut flowers to reseat a dangling anemone. As she bent over the vase, she turned to Leslie. “You're very quiet, darling. Are you all right? Canapes and catamarans are not everyone's cup of tea.” Leslie's cool smile warned her away. She moved along to Tooms, rubbed a hand through his bristly hair. “Tell me again, Oats, where did you and Miss Renfro find each other? She is a most attractive young lady, and I am on the verge of being quite jealous.”

Tooms leaned back and stretched his arms, allowing one to come to rest on Leslie's chair. “We just met yesterday, my dear Tina, over a cold beer and a hot, black—”

“Tina! Muriel was not feeling well this afternoon. She is in her cabin. Make sure the doctor is keeping an eye on her.” She crossed over to her husband as he spoke, her hands with ten perfect ovals of rose-painted fingernails resting gently on his shoulders.

“Of course, Tommie. Poor Muriel, my co–wife. I don't think the canapés and catamarans agree with her. I'll have one of the stewards look in on her right now—and, really,—we all should have something to eat.” She continued her careful stroll around the outside of the circle, gave her instructions, and took her chair again.

“What I find so astounding”—Starring picked up the earlier thread—“is that the last war was merely a footnote to the greater sieges centuries before.”

“I must agree,” Ghadira said. “The weapons may have been more modern, the statistics greater in terms of tons of explosives, but the tactics, the intensity of struggle, the barbarism, the
cause
were far more dramatic in the sixteenth century.”

“The Turk, Suleiman, wasn't he? Suleiman of the Ottomans, Suleiman the Magnificent.” Starring moved to the rail on the flight deck's starboard side. The
Towerpoint Octagon
had swung on her mooring with the gentle northerly breeze. The others followed, looked out toward the mouth of the harbor across the dark, rippling water reflecting the lights of the city.

“My favorite of his titles, he must have had twenty,” Ghadira said, “was Possessor of Men's Necks. . . .”

“When did the siege actually begin?” Starring asked.”

“In 1564.” Leslie's voice brought a quick turn their heads.

“A student of the siege, too, Princess?” Tooms added to his file.

“When you live here”—her eyes stayed on the water—“it becomes part of you. It is living history despite the passage of the years, the repeated devastations.”

“‘Living,' that's excellent, very apt.” Starring resumed, one foot on the bottom rung of the raised safety railing. “Suleiman was in his seventies, wasn't he? He had driven the Knights from Rhodes forty years before, The Emperor of Spain had given them Malta as a place of refuge.”

“Charles the Fifth,” Dr. Ghadira confirmed.

“It was the Knights of St. John, I learned earlier this evening, who gave the islands their cross, each of the arms a virtue, each point on each arm a beatitude. Suleiman was obsessed with ridding the world
of them, launched his forces from Constantinople in two hundred galleys and sailing ships. What were the Knights' defenses?”

“De la Valette had two fortifications, Tommie, a small fort, St. Elmo, off to the left at the outer reaches of the harbor, and the main point of defense, Fort St. Angelo.”

“And, the Turk's plan was to sweep quickly across St. Elmo and then move in for the kill on St. Angelo—”

“Tommie, dear guests, the buffet is set.”

“Not yet, not yet.” Starring brushed her away.

“Tina, you're the most delectable morsel afloat. No need to bother with more food,” Tooms called. “Tell me about this well-earned vacation of yours.”

“
Jaruka, thumma, jaruka, thumma jaruka
.” She kissed him, a warm, lingering kiss on the cheek.

“I know,” Tooms answered, “felt the same myself countless times. What brought that to mind?”

“Arabic, Oats, my darling scholar. Don't your fish know the tongue of the desert? ‘Your neighbor, then your neighbor, then your neighbo,—very philosophical, don't you think?”

“Good for apartment living.”

“I am reading, reading a great deal about the Arabs, slowly transforming myself into a desert almanac. A camel, dear Oats, does four miles an hour at a walk, eight if he holds to a steady trot, and thirteen running as fast as his little feet will carry him. There is a new play—too soon, but it is there, with a benefit in less than a month. It is speckled with Arabia, and so will I be.” She glided away. Tooms gave her a bon voyage wave without moving from the rail. Ghadira had carried the Grand Siege to the fall of St. Elmo.

“Correct me, my friend”—Starring grasped the professor's wrist—“the Turks were so bitter when they finally took St. Elmo that they mutilated the bodies of the few Knights they found, sliced out their hearts, hacked off their heads, nailed them to crosses, and floated them over to St. Angelo?”