Leon Uris (37 page)

Nicole had that facility to always rise to a given situation with an appearance of loveliness. He commented on how beautiful she looked.

“Thank you.”

“I haven’t been able to answer your calls,” André said, “for the usual reasons. I run out of hours in a day.”

“I know you must be very busy during this crisis.”

“Yes, Nicole.... I asked you to come to Paris because of Michele. She’s taken the disappearance of François Picard extremely hard.”

“Is there no word?”

“No. I can’t even get information from Robert.”

“What do you think?”

“I think he’ll never return and we’ll probably never learn what really happened to him.”

“Oh Lord....”

“I’m afraid it’s what you call a clean job. They intended to make an example of him. Michele is going to have to go through a long and difficult period of adjustment. She’d better start now. Her place is with you. You can give her the time and the comfort she needs.”

“She hasn’t even answered my phone calls, André.”

“Don’t take that personally. She’s pent it all up inside. Just before I came I talked to her, told her you were coming to take her to Montrichard. She finally opened up. She’s crying it out now ... and she said ... she wants her mother very much.”

“Poor baby ... André, let’s go....”

“There are some things in the world that are unforgivable,” he said, “and one of them is to walk out on a plate of Sole à la Carton. Alex would be offended beyond repair. Seriously, let her have it out alone.”

Nicole nodded that she understood. An awkward silence descended. André pressed the service bell. Nothing was said until the soup was tasted and complimented upon.

“What about us?” Nicole asked shakily.

“I don’t think we should have a confrontation now. It’s quite enough with the Russians and Americans about to meet in the Atlantic.”

“I’ve had a long time to think things over,” she said.

“Yes ... I suppose there’s a lot to say.”

“When I first realized what kind of life I had condemned myself to I wanted to come back regardless of the past rights or wrongs. I was going to hang on to you at any price ... under the guise of calling it love ... under the excuse that you must accept a person you love with all her faults.

“When we married,” she said, “we brought into the marriage the things which made us fall in love. We also brought in our childhood, our demons, our weaknesses. The things that can kill any marriage if they are allowed to flourish. A woman like me demands from her husband certain rights, certain recognitions, certain equalities. When a woman wins these ... she’s not a woman anymore.

“The man rarely has the woman he needs ... but the one he gets. There are some who can’t do it for their man. A rare few who can and will. But most ... and these are the worst ... are those who won’t. We spend our energy in erecting defenses ... not daring to look into ourselves ... but only to justify our ineptness.

“A marriage asks of a woman ... skill, and just plain damned hard work. And we’re too stupid and too lazy so we hide behind our defensive barriers and viciously repel what we believe to be attacks.

“If I had known I might have coped with the demon you brought into the marriage, your confusion over your mother. You tried to find mother’s love from me ... the love she denied you by death. And at the same time you tried to kill her through me.

“In my final act of desperation I tried to act out the fantasy that if I behaved like her, like two women, I would have a chance with you. I made myself believe it was something you always wanted me to do.”

André’s face became drawn. He knew that in her dark groping she had dared to open locked doors ... her own ... and his.

“From the beginning, André, you closed me out of a part of your life. You threw up a wall and said, ‘I never forgave my mother for dying and leaving me alone, so I can never commit myself to any woman fully. Come close, but not too close. If you get too close, I’ll reject you.’ I lived in fear that you would find in some other woman what I was unable to provide you with. Much of what you call my possessiveness is just plain fear. And if I could not help you when you needed me, perhaps it was because you really didn’t want that help. You were afraid of needing me too much and I might let you down ... as your mother did.”

“So ... none of us is clean, right?” he asked.

“No, André, none of us is clean. I can’t buy back the mistakes ... but by God, I’m going to know what I’ve done and I’m going to make a life, somehow or other....”

Nicole sat on the edge of Michele’s bed in a scene once played so very long ago and believed by both of them to be forgotten.

“Oh, Mamma ... Mamma!”

“Shhh ... I’m here now.”

“I’m so ashamed I didn’t talk to you when you called.”

“You don’t have to explain a thing, Michele,” she said tucking the blankets firmly about her daughter and stroking her hair.

“Papa is trying to hide it from me ... but I know. I’m never going to see François again.”

“It’s in God’s hands now, darling. Michele ...”

“What, Mamma?”

“In a strange sort of way, you are very lucky.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Twenty years ago, if I had started giving your father what you gave to François from the beginning I wouldn’t be alone in the darkness now.”

“But you’ve given....”

“Not really. Like most women I went into it asking, ‘What’s in it for me? What kind of life is he going to make for me?’ I never really asked of myself, ‘What can I do for him?’

“And so, we cook our meals because a meal has to be cooked. But we don’t go into the kitchen filled with joy because what we are doing is going to bring happiness to our husbands. We cook to protect our position, for praise or just because it’s our duty. And when we make love we do what is necessary and expected for our own selfish reasons. How many women make love to a man because of the joy it gives him? Yet only through that joy can a woman really know what it is to be a woman. I’ve never known, Michele, because to be a woman is to give. And you’ve known that from the beginning.”

Michele turned her head to the pillow.

“Don’t cry and don’t pity yourself. You didn’t ask for an easy way when you set sail with a man like François.”

“Mamma ... is it too late for you and Papa?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

The girl’s eyes fluttered, then closed from the sedative. Nicole leaned over and kissed her cheek. André was in the hallway and the bedroom door was open. She wondered if he had heard.

“We’ll get her through this,” Nicole said.

As André stared at his wife, that old feeling which had never entirely gone came back strongly. He wanted to reach out and touch the half dozen strands of gray hair at her temples. A short time ago she would have been worried sick about them. But now they seemed so in place and so charming. It was nice that Nicole was accepting her age gracefully and without panic and self-pity.

Yes, he wanted her but he knew that in the morning he would want Juanita de Córdoba more. So, he would have neither.

“Will you be leaving for Montrichard soon?”

“Tomorrow. I’ll see that she gets to Paris when you have free time.”

“Thank you, for everything.” He turned for his study.

“Is there anything I can get you?” she asked.

“No.” André entered his study, adjusted his glasses, and hunched over his papers. He looked up to her and they stared through the open door for a long time. She realized she had come to him too late and perhaps with too little. Her husband belonged to Juanita de Córdoba. Strangely, she felt no malice. But she also knew that there would never be another man for her but André Devereaux and she would wait.

A
S SOON AS
R
ICO
P
ARRA’S
chauffeur drove the car into the grounds of Casa de Revolución to bring Juanita to his boss, she had an ominous feeling that something was wrong. But then, there was always something ugly about the place. They drove along a long palm-lined dirt road that hugged the Bahía del Sol. It was unusually quiet, devoid of the general activity of the guards and gardeners and men working on the pier. She got out of the car and looked around. Rico’s speedboat bobbed at the anchor buoy. A gloomy overcast was moving in from the sea, dulling out the defeated sun. It would be a long, cold, morbid weekend.

The chauffeur followed her into the villa.

Juanita screamed as she saw Hernández, Rico’s bodyguard, on his back staring up to her in death with blood still oozing from the bullet wounds in his fat stomach and chest.

The door slammed behind her and a pair of G-2 men seized her and another pair disarmed Rico’s driver and held him at gunpoint.

The room was in a shambles!

Muñoz came from the bedroom with a wet rope whip in his hand. The room swayed around Juanita as the nightmarish scene closed in but she steadied herself quickly realizing what had taken place. She walked toward the bedroom. Muñoz stepped aside and ushered her in with a mock bow.

Rico was spread-eagled, lashed at the wrists with leather thongs and tied to a pair of wooden ceiling beams. From the appearance of Muñoz’s men, Rico had not been an easy customer to take alive.

Once they had gotten him strung up in the crucifix position he had still been able to get off a good kick that landed between Muñoz’s legs. Then his feet were tied together and he was raised so that his toes barely touched the floor.

Even so, Muñoz got close enough to be spat on. A gag was shoved in Rico’s mouth.

Muñoz had worked him over fearfully. The wet rope had ripped the flesh of his bared body. His face had been beaten to a grotesque distortion. One eye totally shut, the broken nose a lumpy discolored bruise, his lips like raw liver.

Juanita walked to the bathroom, soaked a couple of towels and wiped the blood from his face and compressed one behind his neck. Without seeking permission, she untied the gag from his mouth.

He spoke with semi-intelligibility through the swollen mouth. “Sure one hell of a way to end up. Funny part. Muñoz was my protégé when we were in the mountains. Always felt the bastard was a coward.”

“I’ll stay with you as long as they let me,” she said.

“Huh ... you know, Juanita ... it wasn’t that I ever expected you to fall in love.... I just wished that once or twice you really enjoyed it ... ”

“Rico ...”

“Don’t lie ... don’t lie. What a hell of a woman you are. When you make a bargain you go all the way .... Well ... maybe you’ll get together with the Frenchman in heaven.”

“Enough!” Muñoz shouted. “Well, lovebirds, how do you like your honeymoon cottage now?” He advanced into the room, menacing them with the butt of the whip. “We all know now just how the Yankees found out about the missiles.”

“For whatever it’s worth, Rico Parra is innocent,” Juanita said.

“For selling his country for a piece of ass!”

“Cuba should be proud of you, Señor Muñoz. Well, when is it my turn?”

Muñoz laughed softly. “Not just yet. You have too many friends around Cuba whose names we wish to know. Oh, perhaps you won’t talk right away but after you watch what we do to Rico Parra now ... tomorrow ... the next day ... your tongue will begin to loosen. It happens that way when the mind goes.”

Juanita was lashed to a bulky chest of drawers so she was directly opposite Rico fifteen feet away. She neither flinched nor closed her eyes. Muñoz circled the hanging target, threw his whip away. “Why don’t you spit?” he taunted.

Muñoz brought the heel of his boot up and jammed it between Rico’s legs. Rico’s body shuddered and he moaned softly and swayed from his crucifixion.

And then Rico smiled. “You hit like a woman, Muñoz.”

Muñoz was infuriated. He kicked Rico again and again but Rico refused to cry out his agony. And then he vomited and Muñoz had his victory.

Muñoz’s eyes rolled insanely and the sweat poured over him as he pounded the defenseless bloated face until his knuckles began to shred and swell. And, as a blessed darkness fell over Rico, Muñoz continued to pound the half-dead man until he fell exhausted against him. Even some of his bloodthirsty colleagues were forced to look away. One came over and pulled him off.

Muñoz staggered to Juanita and ripped the clothing from the upper part of her body then unflicked a gleaming razor-sharp switchblade knife. “For you, Little Dove,” he gasped, “some very special art work. Those breasts of yours won’t look so beautiful when I finish carving them up.... Put the lovers in their bridal bed.”

Rico was cut down. He and Juanita were tied together from neck to ankle back to back and thrown on the bed and in a moment the sheets were blood-soaked.

As soon as he arrived at G-2 Headquarters at the Green House on Avenida Quinta, Muñoz showered and changed clothing but all of the stench and blood could never be washed away.

The Soviet Resident, Oleg Gorgoni, waited anxiously in his office. “I have just received urgent instructions from Moscow that you are not to harm Juanita de Córdoba. She is to be turned over to us.”

“I also have instructions,” Muñoz said. “No.”

“Don’t play with me, Muñoz.”

“Who plays? I said no.”

“I said it was urgent!”

“So you did.”

“You are on dangerous ground. Juanita de Córdoba is to be kept alive for reasons important to the Soviet Union.”

“She is to be taken care of for reasons important to Cuba.”

“You are angering the Soviet Union!”

“Isn’t that just too bad,” Muñoz answered. “Maybe you think you can bully us because we are small. Maybe it might work with Cuba because you’re too yellow to bully the Yankees!”

Gorgoni turned ashen as Muñoz stormed to his feet and snatched the morning paper from his desk and thrust it under the Russian’s nose.

“The Americans tell you to get the hell out of Cuba and what do you answer? Your great and courageous chairman engages in writing love letters to a doddering, inept British philosopher and cries and weeps and moans about the Yankee piracy and tells us all ... let’s sit down and talk ... brotherhood ... peace for mankind.” He flung the paper away. “Where is all the goddam missile power you’ve been threatening to use on the Yankees? You’re yellow ... liars!”