The Scorpio Illusion (10 page)

“Wonder of wonders,” said Hawthorne, grinning, his full buoyancy returned. “I was hoping you’d manage to reach him.”

“Could I do anything else, my darling? I wasn’t being polite, Tye. I’ve missed you so.”

“I just checked out of a room down the street,” Tyrell said hesitantly. “I’m sure I can get it back.”

“Please. Do so,
please
. What’s the name of the hotel?”

“
Hotel
’s a little grand for what it is. It’s called the Flamboyant, also a touch out of its class.”

“Go there, my darling, and I’ll join you in ten or fifteen minutes. Tell the desk I’m expected and to give me the room number.”

“Why?”

“I want to bring you—us—a present. This is a celebration!” she said.

They held each other in the confines of the small hotel room, Dominique trembling in Hawthorne’s arms. The gift she had brought them was three bottles of chilled champagne, all carried upstairs in ice buckets by an overtipped desk clerk.

“At least it’s white wine,” said Tyrell, releasing her and going to the trays on the bureau, opening the first bottle. “Do you realize I haven’t had any whiskey since four days after you disappeared? Of course, I drank up the entire island’s supply in those four days and lost two charters, but that’s when the bourbon bottles went into the drink.”

“Then my leaving you had one positive result. Whiskey was only a crutch for you, not a necessity.” Dominique sat at the small round table that overlooked the harbor of St. Barts.

“Spare me, I’m not the same guy.” Hawthorne carried their glasses and the bottle to the table, then pulled back the chair opposite her. “What’s that corny phrase?” he said, sitting down. “ ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’?”

“Here’s to both of us, my darling.” They drank, and Hawthorne refilled their glasses.

“So you have a charter here?” asked Dominique.

“No,” Tyrell thought quickly, looking briefly out the window. “I’m checking out Barts for a Florida hotel syndicate; they’re counting on the fact that gambling will be here soon and want my input. It’s happening all over the islands, the economies are screaming for it.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that. It’s sad, in a way.”

“Very sad, and probably unavoidable. Casinos make for jobs.… I don’t want to talk about the islands, I want to talk about us.”

“What’s there to talk about, Tye? Your life is here, mine is in Europe, or Africa, or the refugee camps in the besieged countries, where people need our help. Pour me another; you and the wine are intoxicating.”

“What about you, a life for
you
?” Hawthorne filled their glasses.

“It will come soon enough, my darling. One day I’ll come back, and, if you’re not entangled, I’ll sit on your Olympic Charters doorstep and say, ‘Hello there, Commander, take me or throw me to the sharks.’ ”

“How soon is soon enough?”

“Not much longer; even my strength is wearing out.… But let’s not talk about the inevitable, Tye. We must talk about now.”

“What?”

“Courtesy of my uncle’s neighbors, I spoke to my husband this morning. I must fly back to Paris tonight. He has business with the royal family in Monaco and wants me with him.”

“Tonight?”

“I can’t deny him, Tye, he’s done so much for me and demands only my presence. He’s sending a company jet to Martinique for me. I’ll be in Paris in several hours, do a flurry of packing and shopping in the morning, and meet him in Nice later in the day.”

“You’ll disappear again,” said Hawthorne, the long-
absent champagne suddenly slurring his speech. “You won’t come back!”

“You’re so terribly wrong, my darling … my love. I’ll return in two or three weeks,
believe
me. But for now, for these few hours,
be
with me, stay with me, make
love
to me!” Dominique rose from the chair, removed the jacket of her white pantsuit, and began unbuttoning her blouse. Tyrell got up and removed his clothes, pausing to refill their glasses. “For God’s sake,
love
me!” cried Dominique, pulling them both to the bed.

The smoke of their cigarettes floated up to the ceiling in the glow of the outside afternoon sun, their bodies exhausted, Hawthorne’s brain relaxed by the intensity of their lovemaking, along with long swallows from the bottle of champagne. “How is my love?” whispered Dominique as she rolled over on his prone, naked body, her generous breasts encompassing his face.

“If there’s a heaven beyond this, I don’t have to know it,” answered Tyrell, smiling crookedly.

“That’s such a terrible remark, I’m forced to pour you another glass. Me too.”

“It’s the last bottle, and we’re overdoing the booze, lady.”

“I don’t care, it’s our last hour—until I see you again.” Dominique reached over the bed and poured the last of the champagne in their glasses, pools of liquid in circles on her side of the floor. “Here you are, my darling,” she said, holding the glass to Tyrell’s lips. She raised her right breast and placed it next to his cheek. “I must remember every moment with you.”

“You look and feel only outstanding … I think that’s a military term.”

“I’ll accept it, Commander—oh, I forgot, you don’t like that title.”

“I told you about Amsterdam,” said Hawthorne, barely coherent. “I hate the title.… Oh, Christ, I’m
drunk, and I can’t remember when—I’ve been drunk before—”

“You’re not anything of the sort, my darling, we’re just celebrating. Didn’t we agree to that?”

“Yes … yeah, sure.”

“Make love to me again, my dearest love.”

“
What
…?” Tyrell’s head fell to the side; he had passed out, the long, unfamiliar heavy intake of alcohol too much for his blood.

Dominique rose quietly from the bed, went to her clothes draped over the chair by the window, and dressed quickly. Suddenly, she noticed Hawthorne’s tan cotton jacket on the floor where he had dropped it; it was the common island uniform, a lightweight guayabera with four outside pockets worn over bare flesh in the hot tropic sun. However, it was not the jacket itself that caught her attention; instead, it was a folded, half-crumpled envelope bordered by blue and red stripes, the sort frequently used by governments or private clubs wishing to appear official. She knelt down, pulled it out of the pocket, and withdrew the contents, a concise and precise handwritten note. She moved to the window to read it clearly; it was written on a yacht club’s stationery:

Dominique squinted in the window’s afternoon sunlight as she replaced the note in the envelope, crossed back to the cotton jacket, and restored the paper to the pocket. Straightening up, she stared at the naked figure on the bed. Her magnificent lover had lied. Captain Tyrell Hawthorne, Olympic Charters, U.S. Virgin Islands, was once again Commander Hawthorne, naval intelligence, Amsterdam, recruited to hunt down a terrorist from the Baaka Valley whose journey from Marseilles had been tracked to the Caribbean. How tragic and how tragically ironic, thought Dominique as she walked to the desk and picked up her purse. She then crossed to the bedside table, snapped on the radio, gradually turning up the volume until the harsh, violent beat of the island music filled the room. Hawthorne did not stir.

So terrible, so unnecessary … so full of a pain she dared not acknowledge, yet by denying it increasing the hurt. She had fantasized an existence that in another life she would have killed to live. An inconsequential husband who supported her causes unfailingly, leaving her to find what happiness she could without interference in a world of treachery and deceit. Would that it were all so simple, so unencumbered, but it was not! She loved the naked man on the bed, loved his mind, his body, even his suffering, for she understood them all. But this was the real world, not a fantasy.

She opened her purse and slowly, carefully, withdrew a small automatic, placing it against the pillow which she folded against Hawthorne’s left temple, her index finger curved around the trigger, millimeters from the pull, as the reggae-calypso music reached successive Crescendos.…
She could not do it
! She loathed herself but she
could not do it
! This was a man she loved, as fully as she had loved the firebrand of Ashkelon!

Amaya Bajaratt returned the weapon to her purse and raced out of the room.

Hawthorne woke up, his head splintered, his eyes unfocused, abruptly aware that Dominique was not beside him in the bed. Where was she? He leapt to his feet, instantly steadying himself, and looked for the antiquated phone. He saw it on the opposite bedside table and threw himself across the sheets, lifting the receiver and dialing the operator. “The woman who was here!” he shouted. “When did she leave?”

“Over an hour ago,
mon
,” said the desk clerk. “A nice lady.”

Tyrell slammed down the phone, walked into the small, inadequate bathroom, and filled the inadequate sink with cold water. He plunged his face into it, his thoughts on the island of Saba. Surely she would not return to Paris without seeing her uncle once more.… Before that he had to reach Geoffrey Cooke in Virgin Gorda, if only to tell him that his sighting was a bust.

“Christiansted was a toilet too, old boy, and so was Anguilla,” said Cooke from Virgin Gorda. “I guess we were all chasing feathers. Are you coming back this afternoon?”

“No, I’m following up something else.”

“You found something?”

“Found and lost, Geoff. It’s important to me, not to you. I’ll check in later.”

“Please do. We’ve got two more reports which Jacques and I will cover.”

“Leave word with Marty where I can reach you.”

“The mechanic fellow?”

“And then some.”

The pontoons of the seaplane crunched down into the calm waters and taxied in a semicircle into the rock
hewn cove of the private island. The pilot maneuvered the aircraft toward the short dock, where one of the
lupo
-armed guards stood waiting. The capo caught the overhanging wing, steadying the seaplane as Bajaratt stepped down on a pontoon, gripped the attendant’s briefly freed hands, and climbed onto the dock.

“The
padrone
has had a good day, signora,” the man said in heavily accented English, shouting to be heard over the sound of the propellers. “Seeing you again is better than all the treatments in Miami. He sang opera while I bathed him.”

“Can you manage things here?” asked the Baj quickly. “I have to go to him right away.”

“What is there to manage, signora? I push the wing away and our
amico silenzioso
does the rest.”

“
Va bene
!” Amaya raced up the stone steps, catching her breath as she reached the top. It was better not to show anxiety. The
padrone
dismissed anyone who displayed signs of losing control, which she had not, but the fact that her presence was known in the intelligence circles that covered the islands was a shock. She could accept the
padrone
’s knowing, for he had debts owed to him throughout the world of the Baaka Valley, but for a hunt to have been mounted that reached the point of recruiting the retired Hawthorne was not acceptable. Breathing deeply, Bajaratt walked up the flagstone path and yanked down the bronze handle of the door. She pushed it open, holding her place in the frame, only to see the frail figure in the wheelchair waving childishly at her from halfway across the huge stone foyer.

“
Ciao
, Annie!” said the
padrone
, smiling weakly, and with what minor enthusiasm he could muster. “Did you have a fine day, my only daughter?”

“I never got to the bank,” replied Bajaratt curtly, walking inside.

“That’s regrettable. Why not? Adore you as I do, my child, I will not permit any funds to be transferred to you from my accounts. It’s far too dangerous, and my
familiars in the Mediterranean can well afford to send you anything you need.”

“I’m not concerned with the money,” said Amaya. “I can return tomorrow and get it, but what does concern me is that the Americans, the British, and the French know I’m in the islands!”

“But of course they do, Annie!
I
knew you were coming; where do you think I learned that?”

“I assumed through the Baaka financial establishment.”

“Did I not mention the Deuxième, MI-6, even the Americans?”

“Forgive me,
padrone
, but the brilliant film star in you often leads to exaggeration.”

“
Molto bene
!” laughed the invalid, rasping with constricted vocal cords. “Yet not entirely true. I have Americans on a distant payroll; they informed me that there was an alert out for you down here. But what area, what island?
Impossibile
! No one knows what you look like, and you are a master—perhaps I should say a mistress—of different appearances. Where is the danger?”

“Do you remember a man named Hawthorne?”

“Oh, yes, yes, of course. A discredited officer of U.S. intelligence, navy, I believe, once married to a Soviet double agent. You found out who he was and engineered a meeting, then enjoyed him for a number of months while you were recovering from your wounds. You thought you might learn something from his expertise.”

“What I learned was of little value, but he’s now back in business, hunting for Bajaratt. I ran into him this afternoon, I was with him this afternoon.”

“How extraordinary, my daughter,” said the
padrone
, his watery blue eyes studying Bajaratt’s face. “And how fortunate for you. You were a very happy woman during those months, as I recall.”