Tess Awakening (47 page)

Amir and the men changed into new clothes in
the helicopter. By the time they landed on a platform on top of a
New York City building, the passengers leaving the craft appeared
to be an ordinary group of businessmen back from a meeting.

***

The men whisked Amir to a large luxury
apartment with floor to ceiling glass walls that provided a
stunning view of the lighted City in the evening. He showered,
dressed in comfortable clothes, and walked to the dining room. A
beautiful blonde woman wearing a tight, silky dress was seated at
the end of the table. She stood up and went to Amir. She kissed
him. “Welcome, General. My name is Tiffany.”

“Please call me Amir.” He was pleased. It was
a long time since he had a woman. He was also famished. They sat
down, clinked glasses of Champagne and feasted on a classic
selection of French dishes, Coquilles Saint-Jacques, smoked salmon
and dill crepes and cardamom coffee mousse

Tiffany was educated, charming and expensive.
They made small talk, after which Amir took her by the hand and
walked to the bedroom.

Her associates had briefed Tiffany on Amir’s
preferences and she understood the routine. He was a frequent
client of the escort agency and the favorite of the girls because
of his skill and ability to please them. Even though this was work,
she expected to have a splendid time. Amir took his clothes off and
sat on the bed. Tiffany stayed on her feet and kicked off her high
heel shoes. Then she slowly removed her dress and underwear.
Overall a splendid woman, much to Amir’s liking. He stood up,
performed his usual inspection, touching her all over her body. He
now felt a tremendous urgency. He picked her up, laid her on the
bed and put his hand on her beautiful female center. She was
already wet as he ran his fingers down her pink folds.

“Nice,” he commented, “I missed not having a
woman.” Tiffany cooed, aiming to please. Amir slipped on a condom,
mounted her and had his climax after a few strokes. That was a
relief after months of enforced chastity.

He recovered quickly and wanted to make the
woman earn her money. He took her again, turned her over, and
roughly parted her cheeks. She screamed “no!” and tried to squirm
out from under him. “You are too big for me, you will hurt me!”

Amir’s response was succinct: “You are a
whore and will do what I want!”

Tiffany stopped him. “Amir, I am just a
student working my way through college. There are some things I
don’t do.”

Amir ignored her but got an unexpected
response. She twisted her right arm around and slashed his face
with her long and sharp red nails. One nail caught the corner of
his left eye. The pain was sufficient to cause him to rear back and
release her.

Tiffany dashed out of the bed with speed
worthy of an Olympic runner. Naked, she grabbed her dress and fled
the apartment.

Amir walked to the living room and grabbed a
cube from the ice bucket to place on his eye. Sitting on the sofa
he began to laugh. Nothing aroused him more than a woman who fought
back. “Ah, my Tess,” he thought. Just her name gave him a rigid
erection that demanded release.

He was still unsatisfied and returned to the
bedroom. He remembered Tess insisting on his playing with himself
while she watched. He had never done that before and it excited him
at the time. Careful not to touch his glans, he began slowly
touching his shaft. At every stroke, he wallowed in his memories of
Tess and their lovemaking. He could still feel the thrill of her
orgasms as he moved inside her. As he felt the tension build, he
cupped his balls in his left hand and pressed gently, then harder.
He felt his climax approaching and began to call her name over and
over. At the moment of his eruption, he screamed “Tess!” and
spilled sperm all over his abdomen and chest. He rolled into a
fetal position and began to cry. He still loved her as much as he
wanted to kill her.

Amir downed a whole bottle of liquor and
passed out, still dreaming of Tess in his arms.

Chapter 83

It didn’t take long for Tess and the gang to
learn that Amir had escaped. Tess went into a rage. She was
determined to find Amir and to make him face justice. Jake as
usual, analyzed the situation and developed a lucid evaluation. The
police search did not disclose much. Jake and police investigators
agreed that the only place Amir could have gone was in the City. He
would probably lay low for a while and then figure out a way to
escape to another country.

Jake assembled the team and laid out his
analysis of the situation. “I believe that Amir will eventually
escape to a country that has no extradition treaty with the U. S.
and Iraq. The chances are that he will go to a place that is
unlikely to ask a lot of questions. He would probably use a
different name and disappear, at least for the foreseeable
future.”

“The question is whether this is the end of
the story,” added Tess. “Amir is demented, in my opinion. His
obsession will drive him to hit us again, somehow.”

Carmen interjected. “Don’t you think that he
has had enough by now?”

“No, Carmen. He is even more obsessive and
stubborn than I am.”

“Amen,” the team said in unison. Tess was not
sure if they were referring to her or Amir, but she let it
pass.

“In his twisted mind, Amir will want revenge.
Sooner or later, we will cross paths with him again. The only
question is how can address this?”

“How about the police?” asked Carmen.

Jake shook his head. “The police will do what
they can, but I have little faith they can do much if Amir leaves
the country. They are not going to dedicate the necessary resources
to track him down.”

Joe Slezak, the computer genius, suggested
that it might be possible to trace Amir’s movements through
financial transactions. “I might be able to access known bank
accounts and see if we can get an indication of suspicious
movements of funds. Credit cards are not likely to be used, so
that’s not an option.”

“How do you know about Amir’s bank
accounts?”

“I monitored his payments to his lawyers. It
seems that he used several accounts, so we can start with
those.”

Jake saw a potential solution to the problem.
“Great, Joe. Let’s do it.”

“Are we going to tell the cops that we are
going to do this?” Tess asked.

“No. it would just complicate things, and it
would take too long to get a court order. We are going to take a
chance and do the monitoring discreetly.”

George Kimmel, the Intelligence specialist,
volunteered. “I can monitor airport activity, as long as we
recognize that there is only a slim chance of finding anything
useful.”

“It’s worth a try,” said Jake as he rose,
indicating that the meeting was over.

Joe Slezak and Jake were the first ones to
get to work. They accessed Amir’s impressive bank accounts in the
U. S. and overseas and tried to discern a pattern of funds
movements. Activity appeared to be legitimate, consisting of
significant transfers to his legal team. Rent payments for his New
York apartment had stopped soon after Amir’s incarceration,
indicating that he was now hiding in a different place. Joe sourced
the Real Estate databases and could not find anything useful. He
wrote a series of programs that would not only monitor financial
activity, but also provide alerts should anything out of the
ordinary surface.

***

Amir had arranged to go to Ecuador. His
people had rented a large villa by a river on the outskirts of
Cuenca, a gracious colonial city. The place had a perimeter
security wall, barbed wire on top and surveillance cameras. It
would do for a while. Before leaving, however, he had something to
do. He wanted to square things off with Tess.

Amir was furious, mostly at himself. He
wanted to scream. ‘Tess is my nemesis. Nothing good has happened
since I met her. She will kill me if she can. She hates me. Why do
I still want her?’

For the first time in his life, he was honest
with himself. ‘I could have her with me now if I hadn’t tried to
manipulate her. We are so much alike. She possesses the same
intensity and relentlessness that I have. She is driven to succeed.
She can be ruthless when necessary. She can be murderous when she
is denied what she wants. She is just like me. That’s why we were
destined to be together. I just failed to understand that the only
difference between me and her is that she has a moral compass. I
still don’t not know why such a superior woman is afflicted with a
bourgeois sense of right and wrong; she should be taking advantage
of the privileges that a gifted person is entitled to.’

‘I expected her to forgive me for omitting
that Aara was my daughter. After we slept together, it shouldn’t
have mattered, but unfortunately it did. I could not resist showing
off when I made love to her even after she told me it was enough. I
just wanted to prove to her that I was no ordinary lover; instead I
overpowered her and made her feel that living with me would mean
giving up her sense of self.

What was I thinking when I unleashed my men
to attack and hurt her? There must have been a better way to get
her and my son. I used brute force instead of showing her my love
and devotion. Now all she wants to do is to kill me. Perhaps I
should offer myself to her, a praying mantis who devours the male
after mating. It would be worth it to me if I could possess her
just one more time.

***

Two of Amir’s people were parked outside
Tess’s apartment building, observing the comings and goings. They
did not detect much activity. Mostly, the saw Tess and Jake go to
work in the morning and return late in the evening. They had few
guests. Then the men saw Jake leave the apartment carrying a
suitcase. Obviously, he was going on a trip.

They relayed the information to Amir. This
was his chance to settle things once and for all. He rushed to the
building and told his men to stay downstairs. He went up the
elevator and buzzed the bell on Tess’s door, then moved away from
the peephole. It worked. Tess came to the door, looked through the
lens, and did not see anything. Thinking it could be a package from
UPS, she opened the door. Amir rushed in and sent her flying to the
floor.

“Hello, Tess. It is nice to see you again.
Are you well?” He had a gun in his hand.

It didn’t take long for Tess to recover. She
stood up and tensed her body like a cat. “Amir, haven’t you done
enough damage? What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you, my love. I am here to
take my revenge. It was your fault that I lost my son. I need to
make you pay.”

“You forget who shot our son, you miserable
piece of shit!”

“You had him with you in your car when he was
supposed to be in New York instead. I just shot at your husband. He
turned out to be a coward. He did not safeguard the child. He used
him as a shield, trying to protect himself from my fury.”

“Jake has more courage in a fingernail than
you ever had in your whole body. He is the man you never were. You
are just a lying murderous lunatic.”

“Let us not split hairs my love. I came here
to settle things. I now know that I will never have you for myself
so I will put you out of your misery. Nobody defies Amir al-Saadi.
I will now regrettably end your life. You must believe me; it is
with a heavy heart that I do this. I still love you, but I now must
sacrifice you. I have to do this to avenge my son.”

A hard object connected on Amir’s head.
Carmen was checking up on Tess and was surprised that her door was
not completely shut. She immediately understood the situation and
waited for the right moment to grab the statue at the entrance and
pummeled Amir.

Amir reeled and fell, aided by a kick from
Tess. She stepped on his hand and made him relinquish the gun. It
wasn’t enough to bring him down. He lunged at the women and managed
to hurl Carmen to the wall. Tess swung around and kicked him in the
kidney. Amir was now mad with fury. He took a chair and threw it at
Tess, who dodged it. They now squared for a fight to the death.
Amir was now familiar with Tess’s moves and tried to strike her
with a kick to the throat. Tess anticipated the move, dodged his
swing, and kicked him in the stomach.

Jake came upon the scene. He had forgotten
something and had come back to retrieve it before boarding the
plane. He saw Carmen against the wall and Tess squaring off against
Amir. He propped his bag and entered the fray. “Tess, let me take
care of this.”

“No, I want to kill him myself.”

“I am sure that you do, but this time he is
mine. You owe it to me!” He pushed Tess to the side and squared off
against Amir. Jake had waited a long time for this. He was finally
confronting the man that hurt the woman he loved. He had killed his
children and had repeatedly tried to humiliate him. Now it was his
time for payback. He had now transformed into a killing
machine.

Amir also welcomed a confrontation with the
man that had taken Tess from him. It was fitting for two men to
battle over a prize. He threw himself at Jake, trying to knock him
down. Jake dodged him and kicked Amir on his spine. It didn’t stop
him. Now Amir turned into a demented beast, not feeling blows to
his body, wildly kicking and punching, nor caring that he was not
connecting. Jake kept hitting him. He hit him on his face, kicked
him in the stomach, systematically destroying him.

Amir would not give up. He was seeking own
apocalypse, relentlessly counterattacking until Jake finally broke
his leg. A bone now protruded from his thigh, but Amir didn’t care.
He tried to move but collapsed. Then he saw the gun that he had
dropped when Tess stepped on his hand and picked it up. Jake had
drawn back when Carmen screamed, “He has the gun!”