Peacekeepers (1988) (21 page)

He stood on the bare hilltop with Kelly beside him and looked back at the harbor, the ships anchored along the modem concrete quay, a rusting hulk half sunk next to a rotting old pier, the seaplane riding the gentle swells out by the breakwater. The equatorial sun was baking its heat into his bones, yet the trade wind was cool and refreshing.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Kelly said, smiling out at the view.

Pavel turned his gaze to her. "You are beautiful, too," he said. And he kissed her, wondering just how much he meant by his words, his actions. Kelly clung to him for a moment, then broke away.

Shaking her head slightly, she said, "Don't play games with me, Pavel."

"I'm not playing games."

"Not much."

"Kelly, honestly . . ."

"Let's see the town." She turned away from him, and started down the steep path that led back to the port.

Pavel followed her down the sloping path. They reached the quiet, sun-drenched streets where the stucco fronts of the buildings were painted brilliant hues of blue, yellow, green and white. Children in school uniforms sat up on the roof of a single-story building, intently reading. The outdoor market was noisier, the tang of spices filling the air while women in colorful dresses bargained noisily on both sides of the stalls over freshly caught fish and teeming bins of vegetables. Clouds of flies buzzed over the fish and red meats; Pavel waved at them annoyedly, ineffectively.

Finally he took Kelly by the wrist and led her away from the stalls.

They found a tiny cafe with a patio that looked out on the municipal square. The food was good, the wine even better. Pavel began to fantasize about spending the rest of the afternoon in a romantic hotel room, but he knew that Kelly would never agree.

Yet she suggested, "Let's go back up the hill and find a quiet spot where we can take a nap."

His thoughts churning, Pavel brought her back to the abandoned Moorish castle. She has almost as many contradictions about her as her father, he said to himself. It's almost as if she is fighting within her own soul.

But another voice in his mind warned, Her loyalty is to her father; always remember that. Your loyalty is to the Soviet Union and its people. Her loyalty is to her father.

They climbed solid stone stairs to the topmost turret, stretched out in the sun and almost immediately fell asleep, more like brother and sister than prospective lovers.

Pavel woke shivering. The sun had dropped toward the horizon, leaving him in the shade of the turret's parapet. It was cold, lying on the stones. Kelly was nowhere in sight.

He sat bolt upright, then quickly got to his feet. Ah, there she is! Kelly was leaning on the weathered stone parapet, off at the other side of the turret, gazing down at the town and the harbor. Pavel felt an immense flood of relief. She had not deserted him. She had not been abducted.

Wondering which reason was the stronger within his own mind, Pavel walked over to her side.

"You were snoring," she said.

"Impossible. I never snore."

"How would you know?"

"Hasn't your father told you that in the Soviet Union, everyone is watched all the time? If I snored, there would be a tape recording of it, and my superiors would have warned me to cease such bourgeois affectations."

Kelly laughed. "Snoring isn't allowed in the USSR?"

"Of course not," Pavel joked, surprised at how happy her laughter made him feel. "We are striving to create the truly modem man. Snoring is definitely not modem."

They laughed and joked their way down the mountainside and back into the town. The sun was setting, so they walked back to the pier and the Zodiac they had left tied there. Kelly inspected the boat carefully once they had hopped into it, even taking a small electronic beeper from her belt and passing it back and forth over its length twice.

"Don't want to bring any bugs back to the plane with us," she said. "Or bombs."

Pavel sat beside her as she started the motor. "Your father has enemies."

"Yes, he does," she replied. Then, staring hard into his eyes, she asked, "Aren't you one of them?"

He had no answer. They rode back to the seaplane without further words. Pavel felt grateful that the roar of the boat's motor made intimate conversation impossible.

From São Vicente they flew to Dakar, on the bulge of Africa's Senegalese coast. Again, Alexander suggested to Pavel that he take Kelly into the city. But when Kelly said she wanted to go dancing, both men were dubious.

"I don't like the idea of you two out in the wild-life district at night," Alexander said grimly. "Dakar isn't a tourist's city; it's a rough, grungy town at night. It can be dangerous."

Kelly shook her head stubbornly. "We won't go into the red-light district, for God's sake! We'll stay with the country club crowd."

Pavel had a more serious objection. "I don't know how to dance," he confessed.

She grinned at him, her father's sardonic, superior semi-sneer. "I'll have to teach you, then."

So Pavel escorted Kelly on a tour of the city's nightlife, sampling capitalistic delights such as dancing in private clubs that boasted live musicians and dining in posh restaurants, all the while wondering when—if ever—Alexander was going to get his Libyan mission under way.

It was obvious that Alexander wanted Pavel away from the plane for long hours at a time. But under constant observation, nonetheless. Pavel wondered also about his relationship with Kelly. She is Alexander's daughter, he kept telling himself. She is intelligent, charming, lovely in her own way—but she is Alexander's daughter, and her first loyalty is to her father.

Pavel found himself wishing it were not so.

"This is our last night of fun," Kelly said over the din of a torrid Senegalese rock band.

"What?" Pavel had heard her words. With a shock, he realized that he did not want things to change.

Kelly leaned forward over their minuscule table. Two plastic coconut shells half filled with poisonously delicious rum drinks tottered slightly between them. The nightclub was lit by strobing projectors flashing holograms of video stars that sang, played their electronic instruments and even "danced" with the customers. Couples gyrated wildly to the throbbing, drum-heavy music, casting weird shadows across Kelly's snub-nosed face. She was wearing a sleeveless frock, its color impossible to determine in the flashing strobe lights.

"Tomorrow the real work starts!" she shouted into Pavel's ear.

He took her by the wrist and led her across the edge of the dance floor, threading through bluish clouds of smoke and past the wildly thrashing couples, even directly through several of the oblivious holos. Once the thickly padded main door of the club closed behind them, the parking lot outside was blessedly quiet. The stars glittered in the breaks between low-scudding gray clouds. The air was damp and heavy with mingled odors of flowers arid oil refineries.

"Had enough of the rich capitalist life?" Kelly teased.

"You said our mission begins tomorrow?"

"The real work starts tomorrow, yes," she said. "The exact timing for the mission is still a secret."

"Rayyid will officially open the irrigation system next week," Pavel pointed out. "The news is in all the headlines."

She nodded, began walking slowly toward the rows of parked cars.

"Kelly . . ." Pavel began.

Turning back toward him, her face lit by the garish glow of the nightclub's animated sign, she seemed to be waiting for him to speak the right words.

"A few days ago . . . you said I was one of your father's enemies. That is true."

"I know it."

"But I don't wish to be your enemy."

She sighed and shook her head. "Can't be his enemy without being mine, Pavel."

"I have my orders. I am a loyal Soviet citizen. He knew that when he accepted me."

Kelly took a step toward him, "Pavel—I don't make friends easily. I've always been a loner . . ."

"Me, too," he admitted.

She started to say something, changed her mind. Pavel could sense the emotions battling within her.

"Maybe we'd better leave it that way," she said at last.

"It might've been good between us, but . . ."

A blow struck between Pavel's shoulder blades like a boulder smashing him. He went down face-first, heard his nose crunch on the asphalt of the parking lot. Kelly screamed.

There was no pain. Not yet. Pavel half rolled over, and a massive black man loomed over him, a thick length of pipe in his upraised hand. Beyond him, Pavel could see two others grabbing at Kelly, twisting her arms painfully and laughing as they tore at her dress.

Without thinking consciously, Pavel blocked the downward swing of the pipe-wielder's arm and kicked his legs out from under him. He went down with a surprised grunt and a thwack as Pavel scrambled to his feet.

Kelly smashed the heel of her shoe into one of her assailant's insteps, wrenched her arm free from him as he yowled in sudden pain, then drove her cupped palm into the nose of the other man holding her. His head snapped back.

Pavel took out the man hopping on one foot with a swift stiff-fingered shot in the throat, then whirled to face the other one. But Kelly smashed lightning-fast chops at his solar plexus, kidney and groin. He hit the asphalt like a dead man.

The big one who had struck Pavel was climbing to his feet. Feeling utter fury boiling within him, Pavel launched a flying dropkick at his head, knocking him to his knees.

Pavel landed catlike on the balls of his feet and wrenched the pipe from the man's hand. With every ounce of his strength he swung the pipe into the big man's ribs and felt them give way. Then backhanded across the face and he went down heavily. Then a two-handed swing across his back.

"Stop it! Stop it!" Kelly hissed, grabbing Pavel's shoulder.

"Do you want to kill him?"

"Yes!" Pavel snarled. But he stopped. He was trembling with rage, and he knew that it was only in part from the shock of being unprovokedly attacked. They had tried to hurt Kelly.

He turned to the two who had grabbed her, stretched out on the asphalt.

"Subhuman bastards," he muttered.

"Come on," Kelly said, "let's get to the plane."

They took one of the battered ancient taxicabs waiting in line at the club's entrance. As it jounced toward the waterfront, Kelly peered at Pavel's face in the dim light of the occasional streetlamps.

"Your nose is bleeding."

"They tore your dress."

"Is it broken?"

"No, I don't think so. There's a bruise on your shoulder."

"That's nothing. What about your back?"

"It feels numb."

"You're lucky no bones are broken."

"Where did you learn to fight like that?"

"From when I was a kid. Then training at the IPF. My father's people have taught me a few new tricks, too."

Suddenly they were laughing together. Bruised, bleeding, sweating, trembling with delayed reactions of fear and anger—they laughed almost uncontrollably all the way to the waterfront.

"A fine pair of warriors we are," Kelly said as they passed the armed guard at the pier's entrance. "We must look awful."

"But we look better than they do," Pavel reminded her.

It wasn't until they were halfway back to the plane, with cold spray drenching him and throbbing pain starting in his back and face, that Pavel began to ask himself, Were they merely muggers? Or were they sent by someone?

Enemies of Alexander's, perhaps? Or could Alexander himself have sent them, as some kind of test of my ability to protect his daughter? The man is devious enough for that.

Alexander was strangely silent as Kelly explained what had happened. Pavel stood beside her in the softly lit wardroom, his back blazing with pain, his nose still trickling blood, and watched Alexander. No one else was present.

The man listened grimly to his daughter and replied only, "I told you it was a dangerous town."

"When you're right, you're right," Kelly admitted.

"Well . . ." Alexander let out a sigh that was almost a snort. "You're both okay. No permanent damage. That's the important thing."

"Pavel needs treatment for his back."

Turning his steel-gray gaze to Pavel, Alexander said, "Yeah, I guess so. Come with me."

Without another word to his daughter, he led Pavel from the wardroom and down the passageway to his private quarters. His bathroom was as large as Pavel's whole compartment, and wedged between the shower stall and the toilet was a narrow deep tub.

"My one luxury," Alexander muttered. "Whirlpool bath." He touched a button on the tub's control box and steaming hot water started filling it.

Pavel caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror above the sink. His upper lip was caked with blood; his cheek was scuffed raw. His back was so stiff now that he knew he could not raise his arms, even to defend himself.

Alexander placed himself squarely in front of Pavel.

"I asked you to protect my daughter, and you damn near get her raped and murdered."

"I got her . . ." Pavel felt shocked at the accusation.

"Don't you have any goddamned sense? Where the hell did you take her, to some goddamned junk bar or what?"

"It was a private club that she selected."

"You're supposed to protect her," Alexander snarled.

"You're supposed to be on the alert, have some common sense in that thick Russian skull of yours."

Anger flamed through Pavel. "So it's the fault of the Russian barbarian that muggers and hoodlums infest Dakar!"

"You damned near got her killed!"

And Pavel's anger dissolved as quickly as it had appeared.

There was real fear in Alexander's eyes, real anguish in his voice.

"I know," he said, his voice low. "I love her, too."

Alexander's mouth opened, but no words came out. He stood motionless, speechless. Then he gestured toward the rapidly filling tub. Through the steam, Pavel saw that there was a set of three steps built into its side. In silence, Alexander helped him into the tub, turned on the whirlpool action and then left Pavel alone.

It took two days of rest and whirlpool treatments to heal Pavel's back. The hot swirling water eased the pain and swelling to the point where Pavel felt only a twinge when he raised his arms above his head. During those two days he saw Alexander only when he knocked for admission to the bathroom.