Beloved Enemy (38 page)

Two pairs of hands rose and fell, fingers working, and soon enough they were naked. He pushed her up against a tree as his lips closed over hers, as he felt her mouth open, felt her moan seep into him as her tongue wrapped his. Her nipples were hard even before he kissed them, but when he did, she threw her head back, and arched her neck. Her right leg rose, opening herself to him, and she guided him into her, cupping him tenderly as he thrust into her, as she gasped with the pleasure, holding him in her warm palm as he moved rhythmically, faster and faster, until he lost all control. When he shuddered, and she felt him high up inside her, she abandoned herself to her own pleasure, shuddering with him, her buttocks bucking back and forth against his warmth, against the cool concrete—hot and cold, hot and cold, the sensations setting her off over and over again, until she thought the ever higher waves of ecstasy would never stop, would engulf her completely, shatter her into a million pieces, and leave her for dead.

“Jack,” she whispered, a long time later, “when I’m with you, I don’t know who I am.”

“You always know who you are, Annika. That’s the problem.” He shifted against her, not wanting to let go of the animal stickiness gluing them together. “You know, and I’m left in the dark, wondering. Always wondering.”

She put a hand alongside his cheek, stroking it. “I don’t want that. I swear I don’t.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what you want, Annika. I doubt you do, either. Your life has been twisted up with your grandfather’s. He was everything to you—father, mother, mentor, confidant.”

“But you—you’re my friend, my lover.”

“For other women that might be enough,” he said. “But I wonder whether it is for you.”

She smiled enigmatically. “You think I need more than other women?”

“I think you need everything.”

“You judge me so harshly.”

“How else should I judge you?”

“I was going to say … But no.” She turned away and reached for her clothes, then abruptly changed her mind, coming back to him, her hands on his bare flesh. Her eyes were large and glittery, tears throbbing on her lower lids, as if revealing the anguished beat of her heart.

She kissed him, tenderly, but with passion, so that when she took his hand and grazed it against her mound he found it newly wet, and she pressed herself against him. He pushed her away, and now she wept openly, but she no longer protested when he stepped away.

“Don’t go to Méribel,” she whispered after him. “For the love of God, I’m afraid for you.”

Jack could not think about that now. “Do you want me?”

“Yes.” He could barely hear her.

“Then tell me.”

“I want you.”

He came back to her then, and she opened herself to him, and again there was no space between them. He was inside her, part of her, and she him. There was only the two of them, entwined on the precipice of an abyss so terrifying neither of them could look into its maw.

Much later, as they dressed, she said again, “You mustn’t continue on.”

“But I have no choice, Annika. The Legeres must know who murdered Dennis, who the mole really is. The son is dead; only the father can save me now.”

“This is all conjecture on your part.”

“No. I see the pattern, Annika. Your grandfather understood what I can do. Giles is the key to saving me.”

“And if he can’t—or won’t?”

“I’ll worry about that then. For now, I can only go forward.”

“Iraj wants you dead.”

“He’s not the only one. But one way or another, we will be done with each other in Méribel.”

She kissed him with half-open lips. “I’m not your enemy,” she said. “I never was.”

He touched her, staring into her eyes. “Tell me, how can I be sure?”

*   *   *

William Rogers, busier than ever, had quite consciously not looked at the clock on his desk, but then an image of Justin crossed his mind. He tried to wipe it away, couldn’t, and saw that it was almost four o’clock. That, for him, was the witching hour. The time of day when his desire needed quenching and, no matter how much he fought against it, he knew he’d lose the battle. Already defeated, he rose and slipped on his overcoat.

No chauffeured car for him, no bodyguards, not even a taxi, blocks away from the office. Only public transportation would do, delivering him up onto M Street in Georgetown, where he walked, trembling hands in pockets, down to the canal. He turned right, went along the cobbled street until he came to a ramshackle brick building, next to a café touting Fair Trade coffee from Tanzania and Bali.

Rogers, who lived and breathed in a den of secrets and mysteries, was a mystery to himself. He had lived his adolescence and young adulthood in denial, the rest of his life in a dreadful duality that often struck him as being akin to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The one ignored the other, and vice versa. The strain this bifurcation put him under was immense. He had tried to abstain—repeatedly—without ever achieving an iota of success.

He paused on the building’s crumbling stoop, feeling distinctly lightheaded. He looked left and right, but no one was paying him the slightest attention. He was about to ring the bell, when the door opened inward. Justin, half in shadow, barefoot and naked to the waist, beckoned him inside. Rogers was momentarily paralyzed. That is, until Justin pulled him inside, led him down a dingy, windowless corridor into the familiar small room.

There were the slightly grimy calico café curtains on the window, the brass bedstead, the homey quilt coverlet, and Justin’s bluepoint Siamese, fastidiously licking his forepaws as if he had just eaten.

Justin’s wide lips curved into a knowing smile. The bluepoint purred as Justin closed and locked the door, before returning to where Rogers stood in an agony of anticipation.

“I believe I know what Billy wants,” Justin said, dropping to his knees.

*   *   *

Just over an hour later, Rogers was back in his office, running through electronic files, when the door opened and Krofft stepped in unannounced. He held a manila envelope under his arm. Rogers swung away from his computer terminal. “What are you doing here, Director?” Krofft laid the envelope on his desk.

“What is the meaning of this?” Rogers felt paralyzed again, but for an entirely different reason. A terrible premonition began to work its way through his mind, like beads of cold sweat running from his armpits.

“If you won’t open it, Bill, I will.” Krofft tipped out its contents. When Rogers saw the 8 x 10 photos of today’s sexual encounter with Justin, he leapt up, his chair tumbling backward.

“How stupid of you to fuck with one of my people,” Krofft said. “Copies of these have already gone out to the major political blogs. Next stop, the papers and the networks. Pack your bags—you’re finished.”

Rogers took one twisting, disoriented step, then another, before he fell to his knees and vomited all over himself.

T
WENTY-TWO

“I
F YOU’RE
determined to continue on to the chalet,” Annika said, “then I have to go now.”

Jack studied her. “Back to Namazi.”

“I have no choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

“My grandfather—”

“Gourdjiev was a monster,” Jack said.

Her eyes grew dark. “You’re confused. My father was the monster.”

“A different kind of monster—but still … Your Dyadya only thought of himself, of his plan, whatever the hell that was.”

“He was a good man.”

“He aligned himself with a terrorist—a gunrunner, a creator of cannon fodder, a man who helps manufacture wars, suffering, deformities, and death. My God,” Jack said, “look at your husband—”

“Don’t speak of Rolan. You know nothing—”

“Because you’ve kept his existence from me.”

“You were better off. I was protecting you.”

Jack’s laugh was bitter. “From what? The truth.”

She shook her head, as if shaking off his words. “I have to go.”

“Now you’ve aligned yourself with him.”

Her eyes sparked. “Iraj will be waiting. It will be difficult enough as it is to explain why I haven’t brought you back with me.”

“Tell him I threatened you.” Jack put two stiffened fingers against her temple. “Tell him I was going to blow your brains out.”

“He’d never believe—”

Jack struck her so hard on her jaw she staggered. Blood leaked from the corner of her mouth and her lips were already starting to swell.

“He’ll believe you now,” Jack said.

*   *   *

Annika took her sweet time leaving the forest, and drove slowly, in order to give Jack as much of a head start as she dared. She didn’t wipe away the blood that still oozed from the corner of her mouth. She glanced at herself in the rearview mirror. The swelling continued, and the center of it was already discolored. So much the better. The worse she looked, the more difficulty Iraj would have disbelieving her. Her face hurt, but it was Jack who had hurt her, so the pain was only skin deep. He had done what she would never have asked him to do; he had done what needed to be done in order to protect her from Iraj.

She drove fast, with an expert’s elegance, through the undulating countryside. Already, in the hazed distance, she could make out the jagged white shoulders of the Alps, among which Giles had made his exile’s home. With the road unfurling like a black ribbon ahead of her, she thought about Jack—the fierceness of his outrage, the righteous fury he directed at her. And yet, they had made love, not once but twice, and in that cauldron of desire all other emotions were swept away. She had felt him melt—not only his body, but his heart, as well—until they merged, facing each other as their true selves, stripped of artifice, lies, the cloaks of deceit under which they both hid. He loved her—no matter what he said or how he acted, she
knew
—and this alone kept her going, not her grandfather or her vow to him or her sense of duty. But love.

Love.

She felt the place where Jack had struck her, felt the soreness, the heat as if it were a caress. The swelling was a secret badge of his love, his talisman hiding in plain sight.

Love, that strange and exciting beast, spread its wings, like a phoenix rising from the flames.

A text from Namazi pinged her cell. He was waiting for her at a small airfield close by, where a helicopter was ready to take them to Giles’s chalet. He asked her whether she had Jack with her. She didn’t bother to reply.

*   *   *

Soon thereafter, she spotted the helo, squatting like a vicious insect on the tarmac. Beside it stood Namazi, speaking on his mobile phone. The moment he heard her vehicle approaching, he ended the call and pocketed the mobile.

His expression was expectant, nothing more, when she pulled up and he saw that she was alone in the car.

“What happened?” he said as she climbed out from behind the wheel. “What the hell took you so long?”

She put her face—bloody and swollen—up for his inspection.

“He did this?”

She stared at him, not bothering to reply.

Sporting an unpleasant grin, he said, “Your vaunted charms are eroding,
chérie
. Must I also find a new lover?”

The threat made her sick to her stomach.

“And what of the information you claimed he had?”

“I have it.”

“How did you get it out of him?”

“How do you think?”

“Even so.” Iraj studied her critically. “I can’t believe he would give it to you willingly.”

“He had no idea what it was.”

Namazi nodded in grudging assent, took her by the elbow, guided her into the helo.

Annika’s flesh crawled at his touch. This turn of the wheel of her life, binding her to this man, was almost over. She and Jack had discussed the end before she had left. And if this wasn’t to be the end? If something went wrong? she asked herself as she strapped herself in and the rotors began to turn, the violent engine revving up to a deafening pitch and a heavy vibration rattling her teeth. If her freedom failed to materialize? Then what? She turned to Rolan, who sat strapped into a rear seat. He stared vacantly at her, a vague smile on his face.

“Iraj, what is this?” she shouted. “What have you done to Rolan?”

Namazi bent over her, the better to be heard over the hellacious noise. “It seems your husband harbors a desire to kill me.” He cocked his head. “That isn’t what he confided in you, is it,
chérie
?”

Annika’s heart skipped a beat.
Rolan,
she thought,
how could you be so stupid?
“What are you talking about?”

“While you were off having your tête-à-tête with Jack McClure, Rolan tried to knife me. I saw it coming; I sedated him. It took two injections; he has an exceptionally strong constitution, that one.”

Iraj slipped into the copilot’s seat and buckled up, leaving Annika in the rear, facing a man she once knew intimately, who was now as opaque to her as a block of clay.

The helo rose off the ground and, banking steeply, headed west, toward the Alps. What a great effort, Annika held back her tears.

T
WENTY-THREE

G
ILES
L
EGERE
rode the elevator from his basement wine cellar down to the subbasement. Halfway down, he forgot why he was making the trip. The blank space in his mind, like a flabby sheet of wet paper from which all the writing had been washed away, startled him, then terrified him so badly that he staggered, only the padded red velvet walls keeping himself from crumpling into a heap on the small square of inlaid marble floor. There were two elevators in the chalet. The large one he and Galina used to travel between the three floors and, on occasion, the wine cellar, when they did not feel like climbing the staircase, and this one, hidden away in a secret side shaft, which went down into the room carved out of the mountain’s bedrock. This chalet that had once been the home of Giles’s father now kept the secrets of both Giles and Dyadya Gourdjiev.

Giles knew why he was making this trip, and yet he didn’t. Somewhere, in another part of his brain that was still functioning normally, was the answer. The trouble was, the harder he tried to get to it the less legible that sheet of wet paper became.