Last Call For Caviar (23 page)

The world’s doomsday clock was set at one minute to midnight; soon, the hour would toll. Today, after all this time holding stubbornly onto a dream of lost love, I opened my hand and released my heart’s desire. I let my love fly away on the winds in order to save myself.

Nothing truly mattered anymore. So I drifted, and let the currents of events wash me out to sea, to be swept along on the tides towards the far horizon, hoping only that Abdul’s arms would be there to gather me in on a new shore.

After dinner was finished, I wanted to go home, but instead, I found myself an hour later on a curving banquette by the dance floor at Buddha Bar. The music pounded, and shrieks of drunken laughter reverberated against the band of pain that squeezed my head. Whiskey bottles and champagne on ice littered the table before us. Abdul’s friends lounged back against the cushions, a beauty on each of their arms.

Abdul pulled me into the curve of his shoulder, and for a long moment, I closed my eyes, feeling the strength in the arms that held me close. I looked at my watch and saw it was almost one o’clock. I was drained, and the headache was excruciating.

Abdul brushed a kiss along my forehead and hugged me closer. “You look tired, darling. Are you okay?”

“I’m just really beat. I feel like I’m going to fall asleep on my feet.” I knew the evening was just getting started for Abdul and his friends. It would probably end, as the first rays of dawn were breaking, at the tables in the Casino.

“Do you want me to take you home?” He brushed a lock of hair from my eyes and kissed me softly on my lips. “I told you I’m going to take good care of you from now on.”

“I’m starting to get a headache, but if you want to go on to the Casino with the guys, Bilal can take me home.”

“No Casino for me tonight. I have to leave tomorrow for a short trip.” Seeing my surprise, he added, “I’ll be gone a week at the most, but I want to spend the rest of this night with you.”

This trip was clearly related to the Sheik’s mysterious business, and though normally I’d have sought details about what was going down, tonight I was indifferent: about Slava’s schemes, the whereabouts of the Prince, and about the Emiratis’ countermeasures and contingency plans.

“We’ll leave in ten minutes. I need to just talk with Amir before we go. Darling, the best part of the night is going to start when I get you home.”

Abdul was still engrossed in conversation with his countryman, Amir, forty-five minutes later when I slipped away to visit the little girls’ room. The night club was half-full. It seemed as if only the die-hard partiers and Abdul’s clique felt like shaking their booties in end times. Everybody deals differently with stress, and Lord knows I wasn’t unacquainted with the bottom of a whiskey bottle lately, but the thin veneer of gaiety on the dance floor didn’t begin to conceal the fear or deodorize the stench of desperation.

Making my way to the restrooms, I felt as if I were in Dante’s Purgatorio, surrounded by those condemned to party like hamsters on an exercise wheel. Abdul said I was acting as though the danger surrounding us was just a game, but truly, it would be a special kind of hell for me if I had to spend the rest of my days perched on a banquette by his side in a half-empty disco.

The ladies’ room was empty. One of the toilets had backed up, and wet paper towels and crushed cigarettes were strewn across the grimy teak floor. I remembered the scented hand towels at the Sheik’s party four months ago, the bathroom attendants and the fashionably dressed women primping before these mirrors. But tonight, it was just a filthy john in a seedy bar in a sleazy town.

I was in a stall at the far end of the long, narrow room when I heard the door open and the tap tap of high heels crossing the hardwood floor. A faucet turned on, and water splashed the rim of the rusting bronze bowl. I emerged from the stall and crossed to the long line of sinks. My head throbbed and I was lost in my thoughts, so I didn’t glance at my neighbor, although the sound of hair being brushed and the smell of perfume permeated my consciousness.

I turned to leave, looked right and saw Anjuli. As always, she looked stunning. Tonight, she wore a high-necked satin sheath of cranberry red, her hair a cascade of midnight tumbling about her shoulders.

We stood for a long second, staring into each others’ eyes. The band of pain around my skull tightened another notch. I wasn’t at all ready for a showdown with her alone in the bathroom. I thought to myself, “Fuck this. Anjuli will have to find a new toy to play with if she wants to sharpen her claws.”

I nodded to her and started to leave without saying a word.

“Maya, wait.”

I stopped, my back turned to her.

“Please. I really need to talk to you.”

Gone was the peremptory tone of command. There was almost something human in her voice, so I turned to face her, waiting for her to speak.

“I don’t have much time. I saw you heading towards the toilettes and followed you. We need to talk. For both our sakes. I can’t stay much longer, or he’ll start wondering where I am, the paranoid, sick motherfucker.”

“So then tell me what you want, Lucy. I’m listening.” Tonight, I couldn’t pretend she was a priestess of some exotic cult, and I couldn’t resist adding, “I thought sick, paranoid, psychopathic whack- job motherfuckers were your speciality.”

“Look, I know you don’t trust me, Maya, and you think I’m all loved up with Slava, but it’s not what you think. This isn’t a trick. I can help you, and maybe you can help me, too.”

“Sorry, Lucy… not interested. You have a good night.” And this time, I really turned to leave, but she closed the distance between us and grabbed my arm.

“Please! I don’t have time to explain everything right here, right now. I want to show you something.” She was almost pleading now.

My gaze searched her face, trying to discern if this was merely a performance and she was still the devil’s handmaiden. But all I saw was the same fear that I’d seen in Tasha’s eyes in this very same bathroom three months ago. I realized, I hadn’t seen or heard from Tasha since the night of the Sheik’s party on Midsummer’s Eve. And the last person I’d seen her with was Slava.

She glanced at the closed door and then walked towards the far bathroom stall. The partially closed stall door shielded her from anyone’s view who might stumble inside the ladies’ room. She didn’t meet my eyes as she lifted her long skirt and showed me her upper thighs. A network of thin slashes cross-hatched her caramel skin where the bite of the leather had scoured deep. She’d been whipped.

“I’ve known some fucked-up bastards in my day, but I’m not going to let this sadistic Russian prick keep beating on this girl’s black ass.

She stared off into a place only she could see, but I saw the sheen of tears brimming in the depths of her golden eyes. Our eyes met, and held. Neither one of us spoke, but I understood what it had cost her to show me how Slava had tried to break her. One lone tear slid down her cheek. I nodded my head. I would meet with her.

She smoothed the red satin back down past her thighs. “I’ve got to get back to his table. Can you come to the center on Tuesday at noon? And you can’t tell anyone about this—especially your boyfriend, Abdul—until we’ve talked. Promise me! I know it’s crazy but… in this fucked-up town, you’re probably one of the few people I can trust.”

She took a deep breath, and then back straight, head held high, red satin shimmering under the lights, she stalked like a runway model out of the restroom.

Abdul left me with one last lingering kiss just before dawn. He had barely let me sleep. It was almost as though he thought my fatigue was a scheme to incite him to seduce me. His touch had been insistent, alternating between languid caresses that brought me to the edge of ecstasy and something almost cruel, a game of dominance and surrender. I wondered whose face he saw as we lay entangled. I wasn’t sure it was mine. He slipped from my bed in the last hour before the breaking dawn.

In the past twenty-four hours, I’d made my decision; I’d chosen my path. I should have felt relieved. I was going to escape. I would be safe. But something gnawed at my entrails, and though I was dead tired, I was too restless to return to sleep.

I took a mug of coffee and leaned against the balustrade on the terrace. It was still dark, the morning air not yet broken by birdsong. I watched the shadows turn from black to indigo to violet as dawn crept across the cove, the light spreading until the dawn sky was streaked with rose and gold. The surface of the water was like spun glass, its depths shards of jade and cerulean. I knew it wouldn’t be safe without someone to stand guard, but in that moment, more than anything, I needed to submerge myself in the depths of that underwater world.

I unlocked the padlock and chain on the stout gate hidden under an overhang of ivy at the bottom of the garden and stole outside. I searched for a loose stone in the high wall and wedged the key to the garden and my Glock inside. Thickets of bamboo hid me from any prying eyes on the shore, and the path that led to the crumbling stone staircase was screened beneath a tangle of vegetation. My mask dangled from my hand and a diver’s knife was strapped to my thigh.

The first rays of gold were brightening the cove as I plunged into the sea. I swam the first ten meters underwater, before surfacing and striking out towards the grotto nestled at the base of the cliff a half-kilometer away. I cut through the water with strong and easy strokes, reveling in the feel of the seawater flowing like silk over my skin.

The rock ceiling of the grotto curved thirty meters overhead, and the shelves of granite at the water’s edge were slick with blooms of algae. The surge from the open sea buffeted me on the currents, and the only sound was the slap of the waves echoing against the grotto’s walls.

I’d read that life on this planet began about four hundred million years ago, thriving in the hot waters around the vents of underwater volcanoes. When our ancestors finally crawled out of the primordial oceans and began to live on land, we took with us the ocean’s legacy in our chemistry.

A woman carries the oceans within her body; the amniotic fluid in her womb has almost the same saline content as the waters of our origins. Our blood and sweat, too. And when we cry, the oceans are in our tears.

I floated on my back in the cool dimness inside the navel of the cliff. I watched the shadows dancing on the grotto’s walls. The waters outside shimmered in the sunshine.

I felt cleansed by the saltwater caressing my skin, and something almost like peace stole over me.

.

CHAPTER 25

T
ROPHY
W
ALL

Anjuli was wearing baggy Nike sweatpants and a loose white t-shirt when I was shown into her suite of rooms at exactly noon. Her face was scrubbed clean and her hair slicked back in a ponytail. Faint hollows had been sculpted by fatigue under her light brown eyes. The hair extensions and golden contact lens were nowhere in sight.

The remains of breakfast were scattered about the table, but hot coffee, fresh orange juice and buttery croissants were left. I helped myself to some orange juice, snagged a croissant, settled back and waited for her to begin.

“I really thought India had changed me. Easy money has always been my downfall.” She flashed me a wry smile.

I stayed silent and waited. “Tell me something I don’t already know,” I thought. Nope, I wasn’t buying yet. Anjuli- Lucy would have to do better than that.

“The meditation centers really do exist in India. That wasn’t bullshit about how practicing Vipassana meditation inspired me. Maybe the million souls meditating around the planet was an exaggeration. But I guess, like an alcoholic can’t ever take another sip, money and power can always trip me up—especially when it’s just lying around for the taking. I met Slava for the first time last summer when I came here with Graciella. I thought he was like the boys I knew from the cartel, that I could handle him. Jose Cruz, Ochoa Vasquez, even that maniac Gonzalo Gacha—they’re boy scouts in comparison. Slava is a whole other level of evil.” She shuddered.

“I showed you just a small part of his handiwork. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

She disappeared into her bedroom and emerged a couple of minutes later naked beneath a red silk robe. She turned her back to me and let the robe fall. Slava’s handiwork snaked from the tops of her thighs around the curve of her buttocks and continued to just below her shoulder blades.

“He did this to me two weeks ago, when I told him I wanted out and was going to leave.”

He hadn’t marked her face or arms, but he’d essentially opened up her back. There wasn’t a patch of skin left untouched by the cruel caresses from his whipping hand; the crusted lash marks, a couple still oozing pus and blood, had barely healed. Hematomas from fists and boots blossomed like dying flowers, and burns from the tip of a lit cigar extinguished in her flesh trailed over her breast and abdomen. It must have taken him hours to create this masterpiece of torture.

“He said if I mention leaving again, he will slit me open like a pig and peel me out of my skin.”

“My God, I’ve never seen anything so brutal. I don’t understand how you think I can help. If he thinks he can do something like this to a woman as strong as you… I’d like to help you, but what exactly do you think I can do? “

“I think I can persuade Graciella to lend me her yacht for an escape. She’s got the G5 in Rome. I’d have to leave Europe. His reach is too long. I wouldn’t be safe anywhere here. I’ve been thinking I’ll go back to India. I could start over again. I could still help people. Try and make up for what I’ve done. There’s no amount of money or power that’s worth this.” She paused and took a long swallow of her orange juice. Probably laced with a good dose of vodka; I knew mine would be if I was in her endangered skin.

“I need someone to help me get out of Monaco secretly. I need security on the yacht and the trip. He can’t know anything, or he’ll send his people after the boat to bring me back. The only ones strong enough to stand up against Slava are the Emiratis. I want you to ask Abdul if they’ll help me. Why do you think nothing has happened to you yet? Thank Abdul and his guard dog, Bilal, who watches over your every move.”

“And what will you give the Sheiks in return? As you said, Lucy, everyone thinks you’re in bed with Slava and loving every nasty minute.”

“I’ll tell them everything I know. About the Prince and what hold Slava has over him. About the thugs and ghouls he’s bringing into town. What I know of his plans for Monaco. Everything. He’s the devil, Maya. I was raised Catholic in Brazil, so I know what I’m talking about. I’m not trippin’. He really is the Prince of fucking darkness.”

“Lucy, you didn’t see from the beginning he was a scary dude? As long as he was throwing other people out windows or arming mad dogs just a couple of hours down the road, not your problem? Everything was cool. Just because now you’ve been beaten… you’re waking up and smelling the coffee?”

I knew I was pissed and lashing out, but in that moment, I couldn’t help wishing she’d found someone else to fucking trust. This kind of information could get me killed.

“Maya, he will kill me if I don’t get away from him. You can’t even begin to imagine the nightmare he’s going to bring down on these streets. He will bathe in everyone’s blood!”

Her anguish and fear couldn’t be an act. Anjuli had been privy to most of Slava’s plans, and I shivered at the image she painted.

“You’re right, Maya Jade. Everything you are saying is true. I’ve fucked up again. But I never signed up for this. I thought I could have it all—bring enlightenment into people’s lives, or at least bring them comfort as the world fell apart. And yes, I did like the perks: deference, envy, curiosity, people thinking I had the secret, the answer. People will pay anything for that. But this time, I told myself, no one would get hurt.”

“Lucy, where’s my friend Tasha? The last time I saw her was months ago with Slava.”

“Haven’t you been listening to what I’m trying to tell you? Men or women, it doesn’t matter to him. He broke her. This is what Slava does for kicks. She’s probably a skin hanging on his wall. He feeds off the energy of pain and fear like a vampire. He’s insane. I think he imagines he’s a god out of the old legends that wants only to devour our souls. I’m telling you, if we don’t get away, we’re all going to end up skinned and hanging on his trophy wall.”

Poor Tasha, so beautiful and brave. Her only crime—a taste for parties, and a preference for rich, dominating men as lovers. I sickened, imagining her end.

“Do you really think Graciella will let us use her yacht to escape?”

I’d been on the
Dawn’s Edge
a couple of times, for parties. A fifty-plus-meter Benedetti, it should be seaworthy enough for the run down the Italian coast to Rome. Best of all, it was fast—since we’d still have to pass through the waters of Liguria. Without guns and enough security guards to defend her, a yacht decorated like an opulent jewel would be an enviable prize for any pirates worth their salt lurking around the Med.

“I’ll convince her,” said Lucy firmly. “She trusts me for spiritual guidance. I’ll make her understand she has to trust me to save her life. Don’t worry. She’ll understand.” Her eyes were fierce as she continued. “But without enough firepower, we’ll be fucked. If he can’t turn us back on the seas, he could send helicopters after us with rocket-launched missiles. I don’t know everyone he has in his pocket. Ministers, the cops, palace officials—now that the Prince is missing—everyone is afraid to cross him. I’ll give you whatever you want if you’ll help me. I have plenty of gold. You could buy your way home. I know if you’re on the boat, Abdul will do everything in his power to make sure you come to no harm.”

Somehow, that didn’t sound like a boat I wanted to be on, being Anjuli’s human shield, with choppers and missiles on our tails. But I knew both Abdul and Giovanni would love to have her intel on Slava. Having a mole in Slava’s camp could change the balance of power.

Her offer of gold and Graciella’s G5, waiting on the tarmac at Rome, represented another option should things with Abdul not work out. I didn’t like having my back against a wall. I wanted to believe Abdul would do right by me and help me get to Oregon. But everyone had his own agenda. I had to laugh. Anjuli said I was one of the only people she could trust with her plan to escape. Besides Joe, and maybe Bilal, I didn’t know anyone in this messed-up town, really, who I could trust.

I looked at her, all artifice and trace of Anjuli del Solaire vanquished by fear. Lucy Brown peered out at me from those light brown eyes. No matter that she thought she’d amass riches and power by manipulating people’s fear and desire for spiritual comfort in a desperate time. Perhaps I was a fool to believe she could change. Didn’t we all dream of a second, even a third, chance? To her credit, she was ready to defy Slava and work his downfall, now she saw the true face of the monster she’d been allied with. Her scars and proposal were proof of that.

I thought of Tasha. So beautiful and so lost. I hadn’t been able to help her. I was haunted by enough ghosts. I didn’t want the images of Lucy’s death stalking me in my dreams. No one deserved such a fate.

Lucia Montero Brown had always been a greedy bitch. I might live to regret this. But I would pass on her message of assistance and her plea for help.