Forever (38 page)

Chrysalis
had been designed to be a
completely self-contained resort on the move, a recluse's paradise
from which one could see the world without ever having to set foot
off one's own jealously guarded domain. Unless, of course, one
chose to.

On this clear and wind-whipped afternoon in
June, the helicopter was gone and they were all up there. On the
sundeck, five storeys above the sea. By the lapis lazuli pool, the
electronically controlled plexiglass wind-screens protecting it
from the buffeting warm gusts.

Ernesto de Veiga was seated at a portable
desk inside a peaked white silk tent on the port side, its panels
tied back with thick silk ropes. Busy at a portable computer that
linked him to all the financial capitals of the world.

Zarah Bohm, his mistress, also in the tent,
was swathed in a voluminous caftan intricately worked with gold and
silver threads, a tight-fitting helmet of snowy feathers completely
hiding her hair. Sitting up on a silk-cushioned lounger, chin on
her knees, carefully painting her toenails silver.

Eduardo, their sleek Adonis of a son, was
swimming in place against the artificial current in the lapis
pool.

And, in an identical silk tent on the
starboard side, her back to the others so that she faced shore, was
an elderly invalid confined to a wheelchair. She had just turned
eighty-four, and in her prime must have been a great beauty. She
still was in many ways, despite her soft wrinkled skin, watery
eyes, and garishly dyed red hair. She wore a lilac silk dress, a
matching wide-brimmed hat, and lilac silk slippers. Double strands
of opera-length pearls and a pair of Zeiss Ikon binoculars hung
from around her neck.

All but ignored by the four of them was the
buffet table. Like an altar dedicated to food, it had been heaped
with glittering ice, in each cube of which a butterfly had been
frozen, keeping chill the al fresco lunch. Crisp baby lettuce
greens. Slivers of crudites. Mounds of beluga and sevruga and
osietra. Hard-boiled quails' eggs. Succulent pink prawns the size
of small lobsters. And, since food was a feast for the eye as well
as the taste buds, raw oysters in perfectly butterflied shells,
each decorated with a precious black pearl and a single strand of
seaweed. Plus there were assorted tropical fruits flown in fresh
that very morning from halfway around the world, and pastries baked
but hours ago in Vienna and Bad Ischl.

At the poolside, and in both tents, vintage
Cristal champagne waited in sweating coolers.

But only the old woman was drinking.
Drinking and peering through the binoculars at the thatch-roofed
poolhouse, white towers, stucco walls and pink umbrellas of the
Marbella Club. The sky was absolutely cloudless and swept clean by
the wind, almost cobalt, so blue was it, the air so crystalline and
intense everything looked razor sharp. She felt she could reach out
and actually touch it all: the purple coastal mountains,
palm-fringed tan beaches, the white-washed, bougainvillaea-draped
villas and apartment complexes.

Sip, spy. Sip, spy. The old lady was in a
pleasantly bleary fog, now peering through the binoculars, now
sipping her champagne, now lifting the binoculars to her eyes once
again, the glass on the table beside her constantly replenished by
a steward with a talent for rarely being seen and never, ever,
being heard.

Ah, the sheer extravagance, the sweet
languor.

Zarah Bohm, toenails completed, began
smoothing a light foundation on her face. She glanced across the
deck to the other tent, and saw that the old woman was sitting
forward, her binoculars once again trained on the coast. 'What do
you see,
Mutti!
she called out in German.

The old woman didn't bother to turn around.
'What do you think I see?' she snapped back in the same language.
'Shore.'

'Mother can be so trying at times,' murmured
an unfazed Zarah. She picked up a gold hand mirror and eyed herself
critically. Brought it in close, tilting it this way and that.
Placed a finger at the corner of her left eye and pulled the taut
skin this way and that. Was that the beginning of a crow's foot
she'd seen? Relieved to see that it wasn't, she continued putting
on her face.

In the pool, her son lunged sideways and
slapped the button to halt the artificial current. He launched
himself across the pool, and with a noisy surge of water, climbed
out. Not using the gold-plated ladder, but athletically, doing a
neat push-up.

Zarah watched with swelling pride as he
leapt to his feet, water sluicing off his honey-tanned body. She
smiled at the way he pulled higher his spandex briefs; the noble
way he waved away the steward who came running with a fresh towel,
a
grand seigneur
in the making; the way he scooped up the
used towel from his poolside lounger and flipped it casually around
his neck. 'Ah!' he exclaimed in Portuguese. 'That was refreshing!'
He used both hands to sleek back his wet, jet-black hair.

'Eduardo,' Zarah said almost reproachfully,
now switching to Portuguese. She extended a slender hand, palm up,
the fingers curled as though beseeching. 'Darling, do come and give
your mother a kiss.'

Dripping a trail of water on the teak deck,
he strode over to her, a tall, lithe heartbreaker of twenty-six. He
ducked into the tent and, with mock solemnity, simultaneously
lowered his head and raised his beautifully manicured fingers to
his lips.

She smiled up at him and touched his face
tenderly with her fingertips. What a beautiful young man he was!
she thought admiringly. No wonder he had women everywhere eating
out of his hand. Lean and darkly tanned, with those thick-lashed
eyes, lightning-bolt cheekbones, that hungry mouth. Oh yes, she
could understand his attraction. And he was so extraordinarily fit,
without a gram of excess fat; with each movement he made she could
see the muscles shift and tense and ripple just beneath the surface
of his skin.

Someone's shadow momentarily darkened the
tent. They both half turned.

It was Colonel Valerio, mirrored sunglasses
reflecting two blinding coronas of sun. He was in his lightweight
summer uniform of starched khakis: short-sleeved shirt,
knife-creased trousers, sand-coloured deck shoes.

Zarah raised her eyebrows questioningly.

Coming to parade rest, he said, in English,
'Dr Vassiltchikov called to say the helicopter just left the
airport in Malaga. It will put down in -' As though executing a
salute, he cocked his left arm smartly and consulted his watch, '-
approximately fourteen minutes.'

'Thank you, Colonel,' Zarah replied in
English, and watched him turn on his heel and stride off.

She lay back and sighed. A mere fourteen
more minutes of rest. Then an hour of treatment.

Remaining young really demanded so much
effort.

Ashore at the Marbella Club, lunch was in
progress.

As if drawn by a magnet, everyone had
gathered around the pool to eat, splash, and bake their bodies a
fierce nutty brown. For a crowd mostly dressed in briefs and
bikinis, members of both sexes wore an inordinate amount of
jewellery. Gold chains and huge Rolex watches on the men. Diamonds
at throat, wrist, and ears on the women.

They were really quite ordinary birds trying
awfully hard to emulate an exotic species which, apparently unknown
to them, had become extinct in the mid-Seventies. Never mind. They
were happily pretending this was the same, the very same sizzling
Marbella of twenty years earlier, at the height of Jet Set
chic.

In the purple shadows of the umbrellas and
thick-trunked palms, very young jewellery- and bikini-clad beauties
sat opposite men old enough to be their fathers, and in some cases
well-preserved grandfathers. In the pool, a hopeful Cinecitta
blonde with twin peaks of silicone and two strips of pink spandex,
floated on a clear plastic air mattress, trying, in vain, to Get
Noticed by someone Very Very Rich. And from a round table of eight,
a female voice drawled, 'Prick', but the burst of laughter which
followed barely enlivened the almost sanitorium-like atmosphere.
Yet the cushioned, white wooden chaises were all filled, and there
were proportionately more young people than old.

Where were the spontaneous conga lines of
yester-year? The gypsy fortune tellers? The spur-of-the-moment
parties and wild shrieks of hilarity that marked pure reckless fun?
Even the waiters seemed to have run out of steam, and dispensed
desultory gloom along with the famous veal snout cake and glasses
of less-famous Andalusian wine.

Away from the others, in the blazing sun on
the beach, a young brunette with bobbed hair was just raising a
shapely leg to apply sunscreen to her calf when a masculine voice
behind her said: 'Marrakesh.'

Leg still in the air, Stephanie half twisted
around, pulling her Jackie-O-style sunglasses down her nose to peer
up at him.

He swaggered into view, at first glance a
young bronzed demi-god sprayed into bikini briefs. He had dark
curly hair and a body belonging to a Greek statue. But a longer,
slightly harder look showed a good-looking man trying desperately
to retain his youth. And losing.

From his curly chest sprouted spirals of
grey. And the capped or bonded teeth - or were they dentures? -
were too brilliantly white not to be artificial.

She wondered if the enormous bulge in his
briefs was for real - or was it, too, cosmetic? Mere padding?

Ageing gigolos don't die, she thought. They
come to Marbella and pounce on young women.

'Marrakesh,' he repeated, smiling his
factory-enamelled smile, in North Africa.'

'The last I heard, it still is.' Stephanie
pushed the glasses back up on her nose and, ignoring him, lowered
the one leg, squeezed sunscreen out of a plastic tube, and raised
the other. She began applying lotion to that calf.

'Last summer, wasn't it?' he persisted. 'At
the Duchesa de Fornacetti's palace in Marrakesh.' He paused, as
though to measure her reaction. 'We danced under the lanterns.
Don't tell me you don't remember!'

'Oh, really!' Stephanie groaned. 'Do give me
some credit. That must be the oldest opening gambit in the
world!'

'You are English?' he guessed.

She lowered her head and looked up at him
from over the rims of her glasses again. 'Try American.'

'Of course.' He smiled. 'That would explain
your abruptness. The English are far more . . . shall we say . . .
polite?'

'Either that, or they're possessed of
incurable patience. Unlike myself.' Her voice turned hard. 'Scram,
gigolo.' And turning her back on him, she rolled over on her
belly.

Unexpectedly, he began to laugh. 'So you
think that's what I am? A gigolo?'

She didn't reply.

'And you?' he asked. 'What are you? A
husband-hunting gold-digger?'

Her head snapped in his direction. 'What
makes you say that?'

'Because,' he said, 'you have been here for
three days, and for those entire three days you have had your eye
on one thing only.'

'Oh? And what does that happen to be?'

'The yacht.' He gestured with his chin. 'Out
there. The
Chrysalis
:

'So?'

'A word of well-intentioned advice, Miss
Williams -'

She whipped off her glasses. 'How do you
know my name?' she demanded. Her eyes had become dangerous
slits.

He shrugged. 'I have friends at the club.
They saw your passport.'

'Then I suggest you take my well-intentioned
advice, Mr Whoever-You-Are. Mind your own business.' Her glare
could have melted ice - or made hot water
freeze.
'Capishe?
'

She started to turn away again, but he
squatted down, took her by the arm, and turned her roughly around.
'Listen to me, Miss Williams,' he said, his voice low, almost
menacing. 'If you are a gold-digger, and your sights are set on
that yacht, forget it.'

She tried to shake his hand off, but his
fingers were too strong.

'What's it to you, anyway?'

'Perhaps I like women, and do not wish to
see them come to harm. Or perhaps -' His eyes darkened and flashed.
'- Perhaps us old-timers have been around long enough to know when
not to play with fire. And perhaps we like to warn others about the
dangers.'

'What dangers?'

'Here in Marbella, and elsewhere along this
coast, we do not speak of it, we pretend not to see.'

'Pretend not to see . . . what?

A veil seemed to come down over his eyes.
Then he let go of her arm and strode away, towards the peaked,
thatch-roofed poolhouse.

Slowly she turned in the other direction.
And stared out at the sleek, massive white yacht anchored
offshore.

Marbella, Spain

Morning. The terrace of the club. The night
had been cool, but the day already had all the makings of a
scorcher.

The first thing Stephanie did was look out
to sea.

She felt relieved. It was still there.

Majestic, rakish, and blinding white.

As she stood gazing out at it, M.Y.
Chrysalis
dwarfed a multimillion-dollar hundred-footer
surging past it. Seemed to take as its due the homage accorded it
by the flotilla of colourful small craft bobbing on the water:
sunfish, sailboards, motorboats, jetskis, speedboats pulling skiers
throwing up rooster tails of spray.

The playground of the indolent rich had
awakened.

Abruptly she hurried back inside, heading
straight for the concierge's desk.

'Good morning, Miss Williams,' greeted the
thin Spaniard manning the counter.

'Good morning. It's a lovely day out.'

'Oh yes, Miss Williams. Very lovely. The sea
is perfect.'

'Which is why I would like to hire a
boat.'