At precisely one P.M. on a bright afternoon in May, Count Giovanni Santini stepped from the front door of his villa. Dressed in a conservative gray suit carefully tailored to disguise his obesity, he paused for a moment to survey his empire. The high gloss of his shoes mirrored the sun as he proceeded to his Porsche Spyder sandwiched between a juanty red Alfa Romeo and an emerald green Maserati. With the air of a man who worships punctuality, he glanced at his watch before getting into the sleek Porsche. The car roared to life and with a screech of rubber, the Count started down the winding driveway leading from his estate.
At precisely one minute after one, Countess Carla Santini had watched the Count out of sight and was savoring the refreshing coolness of the soft, Roman Ponentino playing against her nakedness when she heard the soft rapping at her bedroom door. The rapping stopped and the door eased open. A man of medium height stood in the doorway, his wavy hair carelessly combed, his shirt open to the waist and his deep, liquid eyes devouring Carla's starkly white breasts.
"What took you so long, Marco?" Carla said listlessly.
"I wanted to wait until the faithful wife waved her farewell to her very important and very rich husband," Marco said.
Carla snorted. "How selfless of the faithful nephew. Your timing is nearly as precise as Gio's Omega."
Marco stepped deeper into the room. "You're testy today. I think a good screw will straighten you out."
"That's supposed to solve everything, isn't it?" She started to turn away but Marco loomed in front of her, his slender hands grasping her bare shoulders. He drew her to him and she felt the hair on his chest tickling her nipples to attention. She experienced the odd feeling she always had when his serpentine manhood grew to prod and poke along her upper thigh.
"Bambina," Marco cooed, "it's been nearly a week. You make me out to be an animal."
Carla had made up her mind that this would not happen today. She had steeled herself against it, willing herself to keep the Count uppermost in her thoughts while he was gone to Rome on business. After all, without him there would be none of this opulence, this lazy, easy life. Then he had not turned to look up at her window. He had not bothered to wave goodbye and she covered her momentary disappointment with her customary hardness. The hell with you, she had thought as he drove out of sight. Go to hell. The hell with you. They were familiar thoughts light on the mind because she had honed them by repetition to think them effortlessly, without care. She had position and money. What else was there? Oh, yes, only one more thing: the great, thick man flesh nudging her leg, then filling her demanding pussy to empty her boredom in erratic floods of female lust potion. Man flesh had been so much to her life, so vital, so irresistible. Her resistance was ebbing. When she moved her leg against Marco's potent rod, it drained away the last of her good intentions.
Stepping back from Marco, she allowed him a trace of a smile. His gaze followed her breasts and she said, "You love to look at them, don't you?" She cupped her full breasts with her small hands, squeezing them until the nipples bulged out at him. "Take a good look, Marco. Do you want to touch them? Are they worth betraying your uncle?"
Marco's hands darted to Carla's breasts and he fondled them harshly. "Let us talk of loving to look and loving to touch, amata mia. Let us talk of betrayal when you say what you say to me in the heat of passion, eh?" He pinched her nipples, his eyes growing harder. "Let us talk," he rasped, "of Armand and Nino and the blond one, the Swede, what was his name?"
Carla threw back her head and giggled at Marco's wrath. "Go ahead, squeeze them, pinch them, tear them from me. It feels good, you poor fool. It feels good!" she lied.
Marco's hands slipped away from her breasts. "It probably does to a bitch like you," he grumbled.
Carla cocked her head and studied Marco's face. "Naughty, naughty, calling .names." She clucked her tongue. "My poor Marco, I didn't know you were so jealous. And the names, you have the names at the tip of your tongue. You are truly a conscientious lover, Marco."
Marco's hands balled into impotent fists. "You torment me," he said with feeling. "Am I to be your lover or merely your toy?"
Carla ran her hands down over her belly and sent her fingers scurrying through her bush as Marco watched avidly. "You are both, my dear child-man. You are what you are when the spirit moves me. When I am happy, you are my toy. When I am depressed, you are my lover. And," she added in a softer tone, "a very good one."
Marco's features brightened. "What are you today?"
Carla turned her back to Marco and sauntered to her vanity table. She picked up an atrociously large powder puff and dabbed her dark bush white with talc. "Today I am depressed," she said in a voice barely above a whisper. She stretched out an arm. "Come to me, caro amanti." Bowing her legs slightly at the knees, she stroked her whitened hair.
Marco blinked. "You are truly cheap, Carla. And vulgar. And-"
"And you want every naked bit of me," Carla cut in. "Come over here and take that splendid thing from your pants before you hurt yourself." Without waiting for Marco to move, she started for him. "Or shall I take it out for you?" she murmured.
Marco grinned. "A virtual prostituta. A Via Veneto whore could not say it better."
The appellation struck a responsive chord in Carla. "A very expensive whore for a very clever and daring nephew, true? You call me names and make conversation while I stand here and melt, you teasing cuckold."
"You shift blame too easily," Marco responded. "It is you who tease, not I." He rubbed the ominous bulge in his pants. "I thought you were willing to help me," he said.
Carla was not yet deeply emeshed enough in the pleasure pulsations of her gash to have lost touch with all the senses that had always guided her. She wondered idly how banal and idiotic this all might appear to a casual observer as she herself had been when not sufficiently stirred by Marco's ardor. The two had not as much met together as accosted each other. They had flung mutual insults and jibes calculated at hate more than love. Now Marco's maleness had gained advantage. With one snide question he made it appear that she needed a screw more than he. That thought goaded her to action. She glided to Marco, casting a spell on him with the subtle way she moved her hips, her breasts, and when she was very close to him she reached down to his swollen crotch and trapped his turgid cock with her hand.
Marco's response was immediate. He doubled over as if to bow to an audience. The cords on his neck stood out and he let out a yelp. "Let go, damn you!"
"Take it out!" Carla hissed.
"How can I take it out when you're throttling it?" Marco complained with vehemence. He tried to pry Carla's hand loose. Failing that, he took a swipe of her swaying breasts but succeeded in only grazing her nipples.
Marco's attempt to strike her made Carla angry. Even as desire radiated in waves from her wanton channel, she perversely attempted to harm what she wanted most. She gave Marco's penis one final wrench before releasing it and backing away quickly. She continued backing until the backs of her legs nudged the edge of the bed. She sat down hard on the satin bedspread.
With a look of painful perplexity, Marco unzipped his fly. He inserted his hand between the zipper's gleaming metal teeth and gingerly pulled out his reddened rod. He bent his head to get a better look at his abused penis, then cradled it gently in his palm and eyed Carla accusingly.
"Look. Look, can you see your fingerprints, those red streaks? My God, it hurts. It hurts like hell. What were you trying to do to me?"
"Stop your whining," Carla said coarsely.
"What? You must be pazzo! I've got a mind to-to...."
"To what? Go ahead, finish it!" Carla reached back to the sinkhole of her past for an inflammatory slur. "A real man doesn't talk-he does!"
Marco glared at her. "All right, Contessa, all right," he said grimly. As he advanced toward her he shucked off his shirt. He paused to wriggle free of his pants and shorts, his bloated penis hobbling grotesquely. "I'll fix you," he said. "I'm going to screw you till your ears ring!"
"Give it to me, then, damn your soul," Carla said. "Do it if you think you can. I've got a river of love for you, you bastard! Let me have you! Let me have all of you!"
"You can't handle all of me, you vixen! I'm going to tear you apart!"
"Try it!"
Carla flopped back on the bedspread in a position of rampant obeisance, her hips undulating, her legs spread wide with knees bent, her pussy revealed as a yawning, pinkish slit -rimmed with darker, fatty lips and kinky coarse, damp hair. Marco stood at the edge of the bed, ribbons of muscle bulging from his thighs as he gripped his homely, jutting tool. He climbed onto the bed with awkward slowness as his eyes held to Carla's most private orifice. He inched forward slowly, crumpling the bedspread with his legs, his eyes never leaving Carla's gaping channel until her knees were before him like twin guard towers and he maneuvered between them, his hands beside her hips for support while his knob-headed, distended rod poked futilely at the edges of her parted lower lips.
"Put it in, you son of a bitch!" Carla edged forward with her body until she could raise her hips to capture the tip of him. She rotated her taut cheeks until he gained purchase within her, then sank down, drawing him with her until she gasped with delight at his penetration.
"Move it, move it," she urged. She unloosed her resources on Marco's probing flesh wand. He sighed with satisfaction and paused to savor the fluid washing over him before the movements of his straining penis became more concerted. He surged forth anxiously, driving in deeper, raking her clitoris, churning at the inner walls of her life center until she reflexively released another tide of liquid. Marco responded with jets of sperm that left him weighted and still atop her.
At length, Carla stirred beneath him. "Get off," she said.
"I'm resting," Marco told her.
Sated by Marco's attentions, Carla lapsed back into her normal self. As such she could be changeable as the wind, now coquettish, now whimsical, headstrong and then dependent or capable of enchanting gaeity that became truculence without warning. At the moment, she decided to be mean. She pinched Marco's bare hip with her nails and kept pinching until he rolled away from her.
Marco regarded her with baleful eyes as he rubbed his anguished hip. "You have hurt me again which means you must be happy. That makes me your toy, doesn't it?"
"Oh, Jesus, Marco, stop being so sensitive," Carla said. "There's no need trying to be profound about something that isn't worth talking about. You've had your lay, I've had mine. That's all there is to it."
"Is it?"
Carla sighed with resignation. "Marco, dear Marco, I'm simply not up to putting a rose between my teeth and dancing in-"
"Must you always cut so deep, must you need to destroy?" Marco blurted. "I was thinking of love. I don't suppose you were. No, I can see it in your face. There isn't any love there for me."
Carla shrugged. There was nothing she could say to refute Marco. Why should she make a mockery of trying? She had taken what she needed from him, or had prevailed upon him to give her what she wanted. What was there to discuss? He would hound her again after this day; he wanted her love and needed her to tell him she loved him so it would be a balm to his conscience, so he could face his uncle and converse with him without feeling like a shame-driven mongrel. He would be released from the mental bondage that kept him returning to her if she told him she loved him. She could not. She would not.
Marco persisted. "You don't love me, do you? You just use me."
"You're boring me."
"Of course I am. You're through with me for today." Marco began to dress, turning from her as he did so. When he was clothed he began pacing back and forth while Carla remained reclining on the bed. She was startled when he leveled an accusing finger at her. "I've finally figured out what you are," he said.
He was about to say more but Carla interrupted, allowing her voice to reflect the tedium she felt. "Do you know how big a bore you really are, Marco? Not even your pitiful melodrama can disguise your boresome ways."
"No, you don't, not this time, Contessa. You won't chase me from your quarters this time until I've said what I want to say."
"If it will help you to leave, say it, for God's sake. I'll hold my tongue, I'll-I'll arrange to have it cut out from my mouth if you'll say it. Say something, Marco, for once in your life say something and try to make it sound intelligent!"
"All right, all right, I'll say it! Do you know what you are? You're like a vampire, that's what you are. But you don't suck for blood, oh, no. Good God, I wish you did! No, you suck the love from people, you feed on what you want from them, you drain them of what you need from them and when you're done you cast them away and another comes along-"
"Shut up, Marco," Carla said, half-rising from the bed.
"And another comes along. There's always another, isn't there? Oh, Carla, what you do to people! Poor Gio, what that man has had to endure," Marco said with intense feeling.
Carla swung her legs from the bed unconscious of her nakedness, unmindful of Marco's gaze dropping to her exposed pussy. "Go away, Marco," she said with a quivering voice. "Just go away. I'm very tired. Leave me alone."
Marco bowed deeply with mock subservience. "As you wish, Contessa. Your husband will be home soon so I will leave. But I will come back when time has passed and your body begins to itch for what the Count does not give you. I will come back when you ache for a man between your legs and I will be your toy-and your lover!" He strode purposefully to the door and slammed it behind him.
Carla sank back on the bed. She folded her arms over her breasts and closed her eyes while she forced the annoyance of Marco's words from her mind. Mentally, she scoffed at what Marco had said. A vampire, indeed! She refused to accredit his ridiculous theories. She was what she was and there was no making stupid excuses for that. She had got where she was by never letting up, never tiring of going ahead, never backward. If people let her manipulate them like puppets or use them as steppingstones, that was their fault, not hers. She had come a long way to this satin bedspread in this ostentatious bedroom. And she had a long way to go. There was much in the world to see, to feel, to experience. She didn't ever want to go back to Naples. Not ever. Her fingers gripped her upper arms tightly as she recalled the dismal past where her life had begun to take shape to make her what she was today....
"Caspita! Avanti mosca-volare!"
Carla's head snapped up at the sound of the watchman's voice. She dropped the can of C-rations she was trying to open and scampered off the dock, her matted, mousy hair flying in strands to whip into eyes wide with fright, her bird-like, dirty legs churning until the watchman's panting was no longer close behind her. When she was sure she had escaped, she slowed to a jog and looked over her shoulder. She was safe this time. Her stomach grumbled. Dejected, she sat down on a crumbling curb and silently cursed the watchman for ruining her foraging expedition. She refused to cry.
Tomorrow would be better. If she felt strong she would rummage through garbage cans where she would have to fight with other children and dogs as ravenous as she. She would apply the laws of the jungle in which she had found herself in the aftermath of war. If one of the boys were to find a really tasty morsel and if he wasn't too hungry, perhaps she'd swap him his tidbit for the privileges of feeling between her legs where strange hair unlike that on her head was beginning to form. Boys liked to do that. And other things, especially the older ones. She knew. She traded-"when she had to.
It was Caesar, born only to the name, who first noticed the budding of her breasts in a darkened cellar that provided some warmth for her blossoming body. After Caesar there were others, some rebuffed, some too strong to rebuff. Her breasts ripened, filled, poked hard against her torn, shabby dress. Her hips began to flare and her thighs and calves took on dimension and eyes that had once been too large for a pinched face looked down on an alluring body, one too good to be sullied in the rubble. She left the waterfront.
Nino took her from the desolation of Naples. He was an older man, a black market profiteer who wore gaudy rings and drank vast quantities of Cinzano. He was good and reasonable and did not tax her. He was educated and clever; he taught her about her charms, drew out her guile, refined her language and clothed her ripe young body more suitably. He took her on a trip to the Adriatic, to the Riviera. And there, on the white sand beneath the azure blue sky was Giovanni Santini....
Carla groaned. Her mind snapped back to the present and she felt chilled. She got up from the bed and rubbed her naked body briskly. She was putting on a robe when Marco appeared at her door, his face ashen, his hands dangling limply at his side. She took one look at him and rushed to his side.
"Marco, what's the matter? Marco? Marco, speak! What's happened?" she cried. When she got no answer, she took hold of Marco's shoulders and began shaking him. Marco's bleary eyes came into focus and he looked at her.
"Something's happened," Marco said in a quaking voice. He passed an unsteady hand across his face.
"Come now, Marco, get yourself together and tell me what happened!"
"Gio-there's been an accident."
"That's a very poor joke, Marco. If this is your idea of getting back at me for-"
"No, no, no," Marco said shaking his head slowly. "It's true. I just received a call from the police."
"Gio! Madonna mia!" Carla gasped. She stared at Marco. "Was he hurt badly?"
"They don't know. They're still trying to pry into the wreckage to get him out. There is no sound from inside. They asked if someone could come in case...." Marco's voice trailed off.
"In case," Carla repeated. "In case of what?" She was amazed at her own calmness. Her blood felt like ice water in her veins.
"They think it's Gio's car. It's badly demolished but they think the license plate matches his. They asked if he was home and I told them he wasn't. They asked if he owns a gray car, a German Porsche, and I told them he did." Marco paused to stifle a sob. "They-They think he may be dead."
"There must be some mistake," Carla said. "Gio is one of the most careful drivers in the world. I don't know why he ever got that damned sports car. He won't drive it as fast as it should be driven."
Marco fairly shrieked his dismay. "Do you want to stand here and debate this meaningless crap? We've got to go to him. Perhaps we can help!"
Carla suppressed an urge to score Marco on his melodrama once more. Aloud she said, "Very well." She gathered her robe to her body and followed Marco from her room.
The drive along the Via Valeria was made without conversation. Marco clung to the wheel of the Maserati like a man insane. Carla sat lost in her thoughts. She had never before entertained the idea of Gio dying, actually dying. The man seemed capable of living forever. He pampered himself nearly as much as her, taking care of what he ate and when, sipping only an occasional glass of port and puffing on an even less occasional cigar. His doctor checked his health twice yearly and Gio was content to retire early with a business contract or a book instead of prowling the Via Veneto or touring gaudy Roman night clubs.
Gio-dead. It couldn't happen. She hadn't planned it. No, that wasn't proper. She hadn't planned on it. The unexpected always jarred her, but never for long. The idea would take getting used to but she was adaptable if nothing else. Gio-dead? He'd been more of a father than a husband to her. She wondered why she thought of that just now. It would be a pity to have him die without some kind of farewell. It was, she told herself, an extremely unseemly thing for Gio to do. He was always so-so predictable. .
The police had cordoned off the scene of the crash. Carla and Marco shouldered their way through a small crowd of thrill seekers and identified themselves to an officer. .He removed his cap.
"I'm sorry, Contessa," he said. He stepped from in front of her to let her view the wreck.
The Porsche lay on the side of the road like a crumpled beetle caught in a spider-web-like maze of evaporating white foam. "Fire?" she said.
"We were attempting to extricate the Count when the gas tank erupted. There was little we could do except use our equipment."
"You didn't manage to get the Count out of the car?"
"No, Contessa."
"I see. Then you don't know it was my husband who's dead in there."
The officer motioned to the captain of the squad who joined them. "This is Contessa Santini," he told the captain.
The captain removed his hat. "I'm sorry," he said. He groped in his pocket and produced a ring. He held it out to Carla. "We found this in the wreck before it caught fire. Does it, er, I mean, is it your husband's ring?"
Carla took the ring from the captain. She hadn't realized Gio's ring finger was so thick. The ruby stone bore a fleur de lis formed in diamond chips, one of the few indulgences the Count had allowed himself, she remembered. "It is," she said quietly.
The captain and the officer uttered another chorus of condolence. Carla nodded and thanked them. "Is there anything else we must do?" she said to them. "May we see the body now? To be completely sure it is my beloved Giovanni?" She despised her tear ducts for failing her at a time like this.
"The body is-" the officer began.
"It's not advisable," the captain cut in. He looked to Marco for understanding.
Marco nodded. "It's best we not see it. Let us remember him as he was," he said to Carla. "I will take you home now."
"She is bearing up remarkably well. A brave woman. Not a tear," Carla heard the captain remark to the officer as she walked away.
Marco echoed the captain's remarks a few kilometers down the highway. "You have no tears for your beloved Giovanni?" he said, using her phrase with a trace of sarcasm.
"Don't be crude, Marco," Carla sniffed. "I keep my grief in private."
The telephone was ringing when they reached the villa. Marco took the call. He talked briefly, then hung up. "Gio's lawyer," he explained. "The police called him. He wants to see me. Will you be all right alone?"
Carla nodded.
"I love you," Marco said.
"Not now," Carla said. "Don't say that now. Go to the lawyer."
"I shouldn't leave you. Since you're bearing up so well, perhaps you would like to come?"
Carla said nothing. She stepped around Marco and walked toward the staircase. She heard Marco close the front door quietly. Then she took the stairs two at a time, arriving breathless in her room.
She looked around the room. It was hers, all hers now, everything in it. Everything in the villa, on the estate was hers, every bit of it. And there was the apartment in Rome, Gio's Mercedes 300 SL convertible, his bank accounts, his business fortune-it was endless!
Carla dived onto her bed and smothered her face in the satin bedspread. If this was a dream, she did not want to wake up. If it was a reverie, let it blot out forever the recollections of the past that had flitted through her mind an hour before on this very bed. She cooed with happiness. She sat up and ran her fingers through her hair. She was dazzled with what she had achieved. And long before she thought it possible! She suddenly had so much, so very much, and she had begun in Naples with nothing. But that had only been a preamble, a basic training for here and now.
This was the beginning. Just the beginning.
There was still a long way to go.
CHAPTER TWO
Hal Shane was not at all sure he would like Rome. His reservations about the Eternal City were largely based on a comely stewardess he had met on his Alitalia flight out of New York. The stewardess had been impressed enough with his position as Senior Editor and contributing columnist to Now magazine to meet him in the lounge at Fiumicino Airport, Rome's bustling air terminal, when the jet touched down there. His manner had been persuasive enough to prompt her to find quarters for him that she could share. But when she learned his position could in no way help her to get to meet Burton Richards, world-famous movie star, she cancelled the flight plan on which he was winging with her and his short-lived fling with her went down to a crash landing.
Hal Shane would say he had come to Rome to combine business with pleasure. In truth, Shane had come to Rome to get away from New York. The boys in the New York office were fond of saying Hal Shane had "paid his dues," but since the boys in the New York office lived in an ivory tower and talked of world events in cliche terms, Shane had no idea what they meant.
He did know that New York was getting to him. There was more disquieting noise for him at the corner of Park and Fifty-second Street than there was with a Green Beret patrol south of Saigon. And there was Elise, the publisher's daughter, a self-styled nymphomaniac who wanted to mount Shane in her trophy room. He found rumors about a merger between the two of them appalling.
Those rumors were begun by less-experienced and younger staffers in New York. Some of them would regard him with a kind of reverential awe as a breed apart; a genuine, for real war correspondent who had, in their parlance, "got his ass shot at, man!" Others were covertly hostile, feeling his return from the field would leave a vacancy out there that they might have to fill.
Shane noticed and kept silent, marks of his trade that had served him well in Korea, then in Middle East trouble spots like the Suez and Lebanon. He made his deadlines and earned his promotions and then there was Vietnam and there was a bitterness creeping into his columns, pro and con opinions red-pencilled out in New York, deletions without filler that made some of his work look like it had been drafted by a chimpanzee. Which brought him back to New York.
The holiday in Rome had been his idea. As senior editor, he had only to show his flag in the chrome and glass monolith that housed the magazine's offices, but that was not good enough for a man like Shane. He loved the field and did his best work there. When he got cantankerous enough to organize guerilla raids on the secretarial and research pool, the managing editor concurred that Shane needed a rest but that the magazine's circulation department needed his column. He was booked as passenger number twelve on the flight manifest of Alitalia flight two twenty-one leaving Kennedy International at eight-twenty in the evening, Eastern Standard time.
After his wildly erotic and erratic episode with the Alitalia stewardess whose name kept eluding him, Shane took time to get his bearings. To his dismay, he found Rome nearly as noisy as New York and sometimes more hectic. Those observations filled his first column and prompted a telegram of mock sympathy from his managing editor, which prompted Shane to respond with a telecom from the magazine's Rome office of such monumentally obscene suggestions he reckoned it would give the Federal Communications Commission a sleepless night.
The columns came more easily after he had unburdened himself. There was the almost obligatory visit to the Vatican. There was the hymn of praise and awe in a piece about St. Peter's. With wit and style that had made his columns readable and his name a recognizable one, Shane did a column on his fellow American tourists visiting landmarks such as the Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum until Shane realized he was doing the tourist thing himself.
His search for material of a more novel nature led him to Cinecitta, Rome's sprawling motion picture factory. Greeted by an oily public relations man, Shane was given the grand tour. It wasn't what he was after and he said so. Eager to please, the public relations man led him to the set of a film being shot.
"It is about ancient Rome, Signore Shane. Today they are shooting the orgy scene. Ahhh, such magnificence! The extras will be partially nude, of course, but it is said the leading lady will do a bath scene completely naked!" The man fairly smacked his lips.
"Would it be possible to watch some of the scenes being shot?" Shane said.
"But of course!" the man gushed. "Signore Shane, you write a column about it, you mention my name, eh?"
Shane smiled wanly. "I'll try. What I was thinking was that perhaps I could have an interview with the leading lady. My readers might be interested in what she might have to say, for instance, about the techniques used in Italian films as opposed to those used in American films."
The man nodded knowingly. "Si. I do not know whether Angelina is ready for that." He tapped his temple with his index finger and rolled his eyes. "She is, how do I say it? No, I think I do not say it. Angelina is a good friend. She is a good friend to everyone." The man dug Shane in the ribs with an elbow. "You understand, eh? She has so much a beautiful body it does not matter to many men that she has not so much a big mind. Angelina, she is prima. She does not so much think. She acts, she does, eh?"
Conversation between the two men had led them to the entrance of the set. A guard in uniform was posted by the doorway. When the public relations man and Shane sought to enter, the guard stepped in their way and spouted a stream of rapid Italian. Shane's guide whipped out his wallet and took from it a card which he brandished angrily in the guard's face. The guard stepped aside and let them pass.
"He said it was a closed set. Ha! No set is closed to Rudolfo Serra. Come, we go inside. A closed set, he said. They are shooting the big scene with Angelina. That will be something to see. Ahhh!"
It was, Shane saw upon entering the set. Ringed by camera dollies and boom microphones, there were perhaps ten girls attired in ancient Roman togas with one breast exposed and five other girls naked to the waist. All were, Shane noted further, marvelous specimens of Italian womanhood. They were situated around a vast marble tub, all gaily chatting and moving, turning frequently to the camera, flaunting their breasts under the extremely bright lights.
Shane was wondering how such movements would appear in script form when he felt Rudolfo's hand on his arm. "They are shooting," Rudolfo whispered. "We must not make a noise. I think any moment Angelina appears."
A sudden flurry of activity among the girls lent credit to Rudolf o's words. Shane peered through the maze of equipment, following a camera dolly that was moving forward. Then he saw her. He had come to think he had seen many beautiful women in his years but his jaded senses were not prepared for Angelina's entrance. His eyebrows shot up and his throat was suddenly very dry. "What did you say her name was?" he whispered to Rudolfo.
"Serra, Rudolfo Serra," Rudolfo replied, as entranced as Shane.
"Not your name-hers," Shane grated.
"Angelina Verona."
"Oh."
"She is something, that Angelina, eh?"
Shane tolerated Rudolfo's elbow jarring his ribcage because his mind was not on his own body. It was on the exquisite body of Angelina Verona and he was silently acknowledging Rudolfo's observation. Angelina was something, all right. Angelina was-she was-good Christ, she surely was!
Angelina glided to a mark on the stage floor and stood looking disdainfully at her handmaidens portrayed by the semi-naked girls. She appeared as regal as her role demanded although she was of no more than normal height. It was there that normality ended and the magnificent interceded. Her hair was blonde, a brilliant blonde under the demanding lights. Her skin was pale, nearly alabaster, and flawless. Her eyes flashed bright blue and when she smiled, her teeth were dazzlingly white and even.
The pale gold toga Angelina was wearing could only emphasize her body. Her shoulders were back, rounded softly, but it was to her breasts that the eye was attracted. They seemed to move even as she stood perfectly still. They were monumental in size, pendulous but not grotesque.
Rudolfo squinted at Shane. He followed Shane's gaze. "They say she can support a full bottle of wine on each one without the bottles falling away," he informed Shane.
Shane grunted. There was no time for words, not when Angelina was toying with her straps and the girls were rushing to help her. The girls surrounded Angelina and Shane's annoyance grew until the girls stepped back one by one to reveal Angelina's total nakedness. Shane grunted once more. Her breasts were truly stupendous, unbelievably large and yet there was no touch of absurd ugliness about them. Her nipples were bright red, touched up for the cameras, Shane imagined. He managed to tear his eyes from her staggering chest to look at the rest of her. Without knowing why he cared, he was gratified to see the rest of her body was shaped in proportion to her breasts. His eyes descended down to her belly, a faint mound with a deeply gouged navel. He noted her hips at a glance, good hips, a trifle heavy but not awkward. Her legs were chunky but not thick, stolid pillars he gazed at briefly because he was more enchanted by something he had noticed just a moment before.
Angelina was blonde all over.
"You will want to interview her," Rudolfo was saying from far away, it sounded.
"Huh? Oh, yes. Yeah, see if that is possible," Shane said, throwing up a gruff facade to cover his astonishment at Angelina's body.
"It will be arranged. And Signore Shane, you mention my name, eh?"
"Uh huh." Shane watched the man vanish into the equipment. What the hell was his name anyway?....
When the scene was completed, Shane was led somewhat ceremoniously to Angelina's dressing room. He entered alone and was somewhat relieved to find her attired in a terrycloth robe that covered her disconcerting body from the floor to her neck. Her smile had a sensuous quality when viewed away from the bright stage lights. She offered her hand and he shook it, holding it a moment too long, he thought. It was one of the softest hands he'd ever held, he told himself with a schoolboy giddiness he hadn't felt since he'd left the Columbia School of Journalism. And that had been a lot of long years before.
"You are the Signore Shane from the famous American magazine?" Angelina said.
"Yes. And Signorina-"
"You have come from America to interview me? You will write about me?"
Shane nodded. "That's right, Signorina, but-" Angelina let loose a squeal and threw herself into Shane's arms. She planted a wet kiss on his cheek and hugged him. "Signore Shane, I love you!"
Shane was reluctant to disengage himself. Angelina's breasts were blanketing his chest, crushing his cigarettes, making it impossible for him to get out his notebook and jangling his nerve endings. "Er, ah, Miss, that is Signorina Verona, ahhh-"
"What is it you want to ask me?" Angelina purred in his ear. "Ask me anything."
"Do you like making pictures?" Shane managed.
"Very much," Angelina cooed.
"Would you like to have dinner with me?" Shane said.
"Very much."
Shane mentally commended the young woman on her originality. He made arrangements to pick her up at her apartment. It was the shortest interview he had ever conducted in all his experience as a reporter and columnist. And she released him finally. It felt good to be able to take a deep breath without offending her.
They dined at Alfredo's and Shane earned a public smack on the cheek from Angelina's lips when he gifted her with the traditional gold fork and spoon presented each patron with a serving of fettucine. Angelina appeared to be enjoying herself immensely, especially with the goblets of dry, light Orvieto wine she was consuming more rapidly than Shane.
"Do you go back to America soon?" she said over desert.
Aglow with a combination of the wine and Angelina's radiance and bolstered by the fact this very expensive meal would go on his expense account, Shane said, "I may stay here forever."
"You would live and work in Rome?"
"Why not? I got a nice place. Food's good, wine is superb, the women are beautiful and the livin' is easy."
"Take me there," Angelina said suddenly.
"Take you where?" Shane said, puzzled.
"To the nice place you have. Mamma dia, I have so much trouble finding a nice place to live. I would like just once to see what a nice apartment in Rome looks like."
"You mean you can't find a good apartment?"
"Sophia can. And Gina. But no one has what I want."
"I see. Okay, if you want to see my place, we see my place." Shane hastened to pay the bill before Angelina came to her senses and changed her mind.
Shane unlocked the door of his apartment and stepped aside to let Angelina enter. "Don't look around too much," he cautioned her. "I wasn't expecting company. The place is in a hell of a mess."
"It is lovely, oh so nice, so beautiful," Angelina enthused. She kicked off her heels. "It makes me want to relax."
"Go ahead and relax. Let it all hang out," Shane said jokingly. "I'm off to make the drinks."
Shane popped out of the kitchenette moments later with a drink in each hand. He entered the living room humming. Then he spied Angelina and stopped entering and humming. Both glasses fell to the rug. "What the hell?" he blurted.
"You say 'let it all hang out.' I don't know what that means exactly in American so I guess. You want me to relax, I relax."
"Yeah, but-but naked? I mean, what the-why did you take all your clothes off?"
"Do you mind?"
"Oh, hell no, I don't mind," Shane said quickly. "It's just that-do you do this in your apartment?"
"You bet-your sweet-cheeks. Is that what you Americans say? Si, I come home each day and I take the bath and I walk around. It makes me feel good. I read my script and have a little pasta, a little wine. Then I go to bed."
"Okay. Well, I'll have to go and make more drinks," Shane said, surprised he could speak at all.
Angelina came toward him. "You don't have to do that for me," she said. "I do not need a drink now. The wine at the ristorante, it makes me a little fuzzy, how you say. I think I must dance."
"Oh, Jesus," Shane groaned.
"You do not like to dance with me? I can dance for you. In my last picture I do a dance. They did not want me all the way naked, only my top." She cupped her breasts for emphasis, causing them to wobble wildly over her chest.
Shane shrugged. "I don't know, Angelina. I don't know what to say. I think I need a drink." He turned and hurried from the room.
The kitchenette felt like a safe haven, a handy foxhole in which to duck from the barrage of Angelina's endless stream of coaxing phrases. Everything she said would have been innocent enough, Shane calculated, if it weren't for the look he'd discerned in her eyes. That look in her pale blues made a lie out of everything that had come trippingly off her tongue. It took no great effort to unravel her reasoning: Shane was a voice in the press, the International press, and that kind of voice was publicity. It was a cheap trick and he'd heard all the war stories about its employment from his colleagues but he had always considered himself immune from such nonsense. It made him vaguely angry enough to challenge the girl or chastise her for it. But there was the matter of her naked body more fertile than rich earth, those breasts more mountainous and inviting than the Alps. She was blonde all over, she really was.
Besides, how could anybody challenge or chastise with a stiff rod?
Shane made his way gracelessly into the living room with a single drink held suspiciously low in front of him. The impact of Angelina's hobbling breasts and pert cheeks was less astounding this time. As she danced, or pranced, to a soft melody coming from the radio she'd found and turned on, Shane sat down as an audience of one and watched. He watched until she noticed him sipping and watching and got him up to dance over his protestations.
"You said you cannot dance," Angelina chided.
"I said no such thing. I said I didn't know what to say about your dancing or my dancing and that I needed a drink. I still do. Need a drink, that is."
"Why do you dance so far from me? Are you afraid to touch bare skin?"
"No, dammit," Shane said, resenting the accusation.
"I will come close to you now," Angelina said. When she did, her lips rounded into a circle of surprise. "You have a trouble?" she said coyly.
"What the hell did you expect?" Shane grumped. "You've been tossing it around like there's no tomorrow. I'd be an ass if I didn't react."
"Do you want me?" Angelina said solemnly, looking Shane straight in the eye.
Shane countered with a question of his own. "Does this have anything to do with my column?"
Angelina bowed her head. He could barely hear her small voice murmuring into his chest. He tilted up her chin with his hand.
"I don't care about your column. I like you. I am lonely. You are lonely. You look so lonely. Everyone thinks a movie star has so many men so no one asks her and she goes home alone every night"
Shane remembered what the man at the studio had said, whatever his name was. "You have no friends?" he said.
"I have a good friend. She cannot help me. I have had lovers. They were not friends. I have no lover now. I need someone. Will you...." Angelina left the rest of the sentence, the request, the plea unspoken.
Shane noticed then that the music had stopped. The two of them had been moving their bodies together in tune to nothing but the tempo of their own feelings for each other. Shane gathered Angelina into his arms. They strolled into his bedroom. She helped him undress wordlessly, as though their minds had connected at last and nothing need be said. When he was naked, she made only one comment. She took hold of his rod and looked at it for a long moment.
"You Americans are so big. Like your cars," she said.
She sprawled out on the bed invitingly and she looked to Shane to be a fleshy mattress ready to receive his aching body. Witlessly, he tried to recall the last time he'd had a woman and could come up with the vague memory of a brassy, knob-breasted bitch he'd picked up at a cocktail party. She was frigid with her husband, she'd told him. She'd been equally as frigid with him and he rejected the memory of her now because now there was Angelina like the rich and fertile earth and he planted his seed. She roiled beneath him, perhaps not acting for the first time that evening and he clung to her shoulders and smothered his face in her mountainous breasts and licked her incongruously small nipples into submission.
He was barely spent when the phone rang.
"Don't answer it. Stay in me," Angelina urged.
"I have to," Shane said. "It might be New York."
"You will go back there."
"Like hell I will. Not right now." He rolled away from Angelina and slid from the bed. He walked gingerly to the phone and picked up the receiver.
"Mr. Shane?" a voice, a man's voice said. "Yeah? Who is this?"
"That does not matter. I have been instructed to inform you of an item for your column."
"Look, Jack, I don't need items. I don't run a gossip column and I don't print blind items," Shane said, plainly irritated at having been dragged away from the enveloping warmth of Angelina's pussy for this.
"I see. Very well. Within the hour, a messenger will arrive with the item written for you. Included with the item will be a check drawn to a sum of money sufficient to engage in any legal action that would result from printing the item. Should you not desire to print the item, I shall have it printed elsewhere. Oh yes, one further thing. Please do not try to trace the check. I prefer to remain anonymous and have so arranged the check to protect my identity. Thank you for your time. Good night."
Shane looked at the phone in disgust. Another crackpot, he thought. He slammed down the receiver and shuffled back to the bedroom. Angelina had fallen asleep, her legs outstretched the way he had left her body. He scratched his head and went back to the living room.
The weekly column was in its second draft when the door buzzer sounded. Shane went to the door and found a messenger awaiting him with an envelope which he turned over to Shane immediately.
"Who sent you?" Shane snapped.
"I am not permitted to give that information," the messenger replied. "I will wait for any answer you might give, if you wish."
Shane tore open the envelope and read the item quickly. It didn't make any sense, mentioning no names at all. He looked at the check and noted it was drafted in dollars instead of lire. The sum made him whistle softly. "Wait a minute," he told the messenger. He went to his desk and scrawled a reply of temporary acceptance on a piece of paper, then gave the paper to the messenger. "Tell whoever sent you I'll run the item and I'll wait for whatever happens. If things get too stiff, tell him, I'll print a retraction of the item and the circumstances involving it. That's all. On your way."
He was met in the living room when he came away from the door. Angelina stood wavering, her hair tousled, her eyes squinty. "So much noise," she said. "Telephones ring, door buzzers. I would not live here. You come back to bed with me now, Hal Shane? Come back to bed with sweet Angelina?"
Shane looked at his typewriter. "I can finish that tomorrow," he said. "But I should get it out of the way tonight."
"Come back to bed," Angelina insisted, moving her body.
He did. They didn't sleep, not right away.
CHAPTER THREE
There was the funeral. As conceived by Signor De Vito, the Count's lawyer, it was a monument to death more befitting a head of state than a prosperous Roman businessman. A motorcycle escort somberly guided the flower-smothered hearse through the avenues of Rome. Following behind at a measured pace were the mourners in a convoy of Cadillacs broken only by a Rolls-Royce, courtesy of Signor De Vito, in which Carla rode with Marco.
At the gravesite, those in attendance, all of them strangers to Carla, conveyed their tokens of grief to her and pressed her hands in condolence until her fingers were sore and sweaty in her black gloves while she remained tight-lipped behind her heavy veil. To the sides of her, and behind her, she heard the muted chorus observing discreetly how well she was bearing her woe and she blinked her eyes to induce tears until her eyes smarted but no tears came and she cursed herself for trying to be something she couldn't be. When the casket was lowered slowly into the grave tears finally came unsummoned to her eyes and she cried briefly without really knowing why.
And nobody saw her tears.
It had never been a part of Carla's nature to grieve but she did so now, formally at least, because it was expected from her. She spent the first day after the funeral in widow's black, drifting through the villa which seemed so empty now, waiting for someone to come, anyone. When no one came, she went to her room and shrugged out of her clothing and into a comfortable robe.
She was left totally to herself. For whatever purpose, Marco did not visit her and she grew accustomed to solitude, welcoming it at first to take stock of how far she had come and how much she had achieved. Then loneliness became a noticeable thing to her; it was an alien sensation now, left behind with her grim childhood and she bridled at this enforced seclusion, this charade in which even Marco seemed to be playing a part. She was eager to resume life, to know the width and breadth of Gio's fortune, to feel it, to read of it, to know it was hers. She paced the floor a great deal. She was impatient.
But she was still isolated. Evening sometimes found her by the window imagining she heard the guttural roar of the Porsche and once, when the sunset was painting the grounds in blending hues of red and gold, she thought she actually saw the familiar gray, sleek bullet of a car speeding up the driveway toward the villa. She didn't sleep at all well that night and thereafter light and darkness came to be one and the same.
Rousing herself from the lethargy of dream wishes and fantasy, she became occupied with her body. Long periods of time were spent in front of her vanity table mirror while she struck various poses, some of them emphasizing the classic grace of her form and others little more than lewd. Occasionally, she would perform a hedonistic striptease for her eyes alone, waiting with the eagerness of a lecher for her mirror image to discard the last article of clothing from her own body. At other times, she removed all her rings and bracelets, even her earrings, and stood naked in front of the mirror to clinically examine her body. She would fondle her breasts, caress her belly and lean flanks, stroke her limber thighs and toy with her pubic hair, delighting in the stark white flesh of her breasts and buttocks glaring in albino contrast to the deep tan of her face and the rest of her body.
And once, after several days without a visit from Marco, she abandoned herself to her feelings in front of the mirror. Her own hands became an extension of herself and as 'she ministered to herself her hands were divorced from her arms to become Marco's, flitting restively here and there, clinging to her arms, cupping her breasts. In a heavy-lidded trance, she watched her mirror image surrendering to touch. Her nipples ached and were squeezed, pinched until pain became pleasure. Her belly tingled as nimble fingers darted across it to descend to her legs, to awaken more of her lust before creeping upward to hover uncertainly at the lips of her sex and then her legs were open and insistent fingers were clawing at the dampness between her bowed thighs and there was a stabbing sensation as her fingernail scraped her inner walls and then there was a torrent, a gush and her eyelids fluttered. The face in the mirror, her face, gave back to her the animal satisfaction she felt until her knees were jelly and her thighs and calves ached and she hobbled to her bed, collapsing in a sprawl on top of it, her mouth dry and her lungs burning for air.
An hour or a day later, she knew not nor cared not which, she eased her naked body from the bed. She opened the door to her room and a cross draft from the open window swirled through the doorway to bathe her body in coolness. She smiled. To hell with tradition if it was such. To hell with Marco and all the other hypocrites. This was not life, this worship of death. Her period of mourning was over. She went to the closet extension telephone and used it. She was alive again....
"Come in, Contessa, come in," Signor De Vito said in greeting at the door of his private office. He stepped aside and let Carla enter.
"Thank you," Carla said. She proceeded straight to the lawyer's desk before turning to look at him. What struck her immediately was the man's age. She had never realized how truly old he was, this manipulator of Gio's fortune, this guide and sometime whipping boy Giovanni had held alternately in pride and contempt down through the years. His hair was snow white, his posture stooped, and there was a limp when he walked as he did now toward the desk, rounding it to sink heavily into a creaking swivel chair. Close up, there was an indistinct wheeze in his breathing and his face was a relief map of crags and crevices from which emerged his aquiline nose like a curving promontory.
Signor De Vito cleared his throat and peered at Carla. "I did not expect you so soon," he said. The look on his face conveyed a disapproval he would not put into words.
Carla faced the lawyer squarely, dismissing his tone of voice, his look. He was, she understood, grieved by the loss of a friend. And if he did not mend his ways, she thought acidly, he would be further grieved by the loss of the Santini account. She said, "You must excuse me if I have inconvenienced you. I, too, have had my hours of darkness but it has been brought to my attention that an estate as large as the Count's cannot function on grief alone." She folded her hands in her lap and stared at the lawyer.
"You would indeed be his wife," De Vito said as though he were thinking aloud.
Carla cocked her head with curiosity. "Why do you say that?"
"He spoke of you many times. He loved you a great deal. I've seldom seen a man so in love with his wife."
Carla felt uncomfortable. It seemed to her De Vito was using a circuitous route to tell her something but she knew not what it could be. At this point, the lawyer knew all she didn't; he had been dictated the terms of Gio's will and now he was apparently reluctant to let them go. Carla's lengthy idleness had left her in no mood for verbal fencing. She nodded acknowledgment of the lawyer's words and was about to say something acerbic when De Vito cleared his throat once more.
"I can safely assume you are here to see me about your husband's will," De Vito said, disconcertingly shuffling some papers on his desk as though he were postponing the performance of a disagreeable chore.
"Yes."
"I'm afraid I am going to disappoint you," De Vito said. He straightened in his chair and leaned across the desk toward Carla. "There is no will."
The lawyer's words brought Carla to the edge of her chair. A mad rush of thoughts caused a traffic jam at her vocal chords. "You're joking!" she squeaked.
De Vito settled back in his chair and placed the tips of his fingers together, one hand to the other. He gazed up to the ceiling and sighed. When he began speaking, it sounded to Carla like less of an explanation and more of a speech he'd been rehearsing a long time for just this moment
"Your husband was an incredible man in many ways, Contessa, but he was also very stubborn. Though we talked of a will if for nothing else than its formal aspects, the Count held out against such a gesture to the end, an untimely one, I might add.
I-"
Unable to contain herself, Carla interrupted. "No will!" she said in a shrill voice. "What is to become of the-what do I-oh, Madonna mia what has he done to me!" She gripped the arms of her chair and stared almost wild-eyed in shocked disbelief at the lawyer's tranquil attitude, his damnably cold, legal approach to this crisis. She could envision nothing less than the sight of herself in rags as her fortune slipped away to the lawyer, to the state. The crafty bastard, he'd engineered all of it! How else would a barrister be driving a Rolls-Royce? Good Jesus, she'd come all this way for nothing. For nothing! She buried her face in her hands.
De Vito's voice reached her from far away. "Would you like a headache tablet? Perhaps some brandy? You must calm yourself, Contessa. I didn't mean to upset you so. You must forgive an old man's ramblings and allow me to explain if you will."
Carla let her hands slip away from her ashen face. "Brandy," she said in a low voice. "I'll have some brandy, thank you." While she regained her lost composure and the lawyer shuffled about to get her her drink, her mind shifted into high gear, chewing up and analyzing what De Vito had said. There was something to explain which meant all was not lost. It was something. She accepted the brandy and took a sip. It calmed her.
"Please excuse me," Carla said at length. "I didn't mean to make a scene. You must understand these last days have been most trying. I'm sorry."
"It is I who must apologize," De Vito said. "As you say, these last days have been trying ones. The fault is mine for saying badly what I wanted to say properly. I meant to state that there is no will as a document. That is, the Count drew up no will on paper in his own hand nor did he dictate the distribution of his possessions to me in any way. In such a case, tradition declares that the closest and nearest survivor will inherit the earthly goods of the deceased. In this instance, the Count is survived by yourself as his wife, and by his nephew. The two of you are his only living heirs."
The lawyer's words fell like a choir of angels on Carla's ears. But he had mentioned Marco and that caused a doubt in her mind. "Do you mean Gio's estate will be divided between Marco and me?" She was afraid to hear De Vito's answer. When it came, she breathed an audible sigh of relief.
"The law, either in wisdom or folly, decrees the wife to be a man's closest and nearest survivor. Although Marco is a relative by blood, you and you alone inherit Giovanni's wealth." Then De Vito added, with remarkable insight, "That is the answer you wanted, isn't it?"
De Vito's question marred Carla's complete happiness. In an effort to keep things completely clear between the two of them she said, "You are implying that greed brought me to your office before a period of proper mourning was conducted. Further, you imply that avarice caused me to become distraught a few minutes ago. I would like to make one thing clear, Signor De Vito. I loved Giovanni but he is gone and I remain. I cannot and will not tolerate inferences that I am wallowing in Giovanni's wealth because I have achieved some kind of accidental or perverse victory of life over death. I married Giovanni to love him and serve him, not to inherit whatever he left behind when he died. If it were possible, I would exhume Gio from the grave this instant to have him rather than all the wealth in the world!"
It was a heroic effort, so touching, so sincere she nearly believed it herself. A glance at De Vito's face assured her she had made her points.
"Try not to misunderstand, dear Contessa," De Vito said in a voice nearly contrite in tone. "If I implied anything by what I've said at any time since you've been here, it's because I'm a careless, sentimental and foolish old man who doesn't know enough to go away gracefully. You see, Contessa, I too loved and served Giovanni longer, much longer than you. In this unhappy confrontation, I recognize the task of dispensing his worth as the final, irrefutable fact that he is no longer with us and I shall miss him. I hope you understand."
Carla nodded. The difference between her remarks and the lawyer's was De Vito had meant what he had said, she knew. From the heart. Even now the old man was making a magnificent effort to hold back demonstrable grief. She wished silently that someday she'd be able to feel about someone as the old man felt now. From the heart. For the present, she moved to make the moment less embarrassing for both of them.
"I don't know quite how to say this but how do I keep my house in order, if that is the phrase? The villa, the apartment here in Rome, there are bills...."
"Yes, yes, of course," De Vito said. "I'm glad you brought that up. I'm getting so old and forgetful. I've handled so many of these situations that I do it by reflex and habit and more and more lately my clients are disturbed with me. Where was I? There, you see? An old man with a failing memory. Oh, yes, I remember. Now then, in the matter of Giovanni's estate-and I use that word to include all of his accounts and holdings and properties-I have found one of two arrangements to be most feasible, dependent on the client. One, to have all bills channeled to me while the estate is doled out monetarily by an allowance system or two, to accept the estate as a total entity after subtracting taxes and my fee. Which would you prefer?"
"An allowance seems rather adolescent, doesn't it?"
"Not if you wish to maintain the kind of solvency Giovanni enjoyed. You see, and I'm sure you don't know this else you wouldn't have asked, Giovanni's fortune is largely of a speculative nature. That is to say his wealth is very great, but only on paper. The actual money is tied up in various ventures-real estate, stocks and bonds, securities, that sort of thing separate from the various bank accounts he maintained throughout Europe which were actually quite small in comparison to the man's total value."
"I didn't know," Carla said slowly.
"Yes. To go on. If you elect the allowance system, your life will remain very much unchanged and Giovanni's empire, if there is such a thing, will remain reasonably stable. If you elect to accept the estate, you will then have charge of it yourself. Unless you're extremely well-versed in matters involving the financial community, I would advise against this as your lawyer but the choice is entirely yours. And you needn't make up your mind this instant. You might be much more capable of managing the Count's affairs than anyone else, for all I know. But you must bear in mind that international finance is a tricky business. The issues in which your late husband was involved can be decided at any moment by just how angry the Russians become with the Americans or vice versa."
"I don't quite understand. It is so difficult without a will. If I interpret what you've said, it means I can choose the allowance, as you call it, and continue to live the life Gio and I lived together. What if I elected to accept the estate as a whole and liquidate those issues dependent on the world situation? I would gain, wouldn't I?"
"You would, if it were possible. But it isn't. Those issues could take months, years, to convert from paper to money if they're convertible at all. Since you've accepted me as your counsel, may I give you some advice? You're paying for it, you know."
"Please do. This is all very confusing."
"In a phrase, leave well enough alone, Contessa. The estate is well-managed now, not by me I might add. It is in capable hands and returning profit on investment. That profit is reinvested or deposited in the Count's bankbooks. As a working agreement, not much more could be asked. And in case you're wondering, the allowance system might be 'adolescent,' as you say, but there are few people in Italy fortunate enough to be able to draw on such an allowance. You will find it adequate to all your needs. That is what Giovanni intended, I'm sure and I think you'd honor and revere his memory if you left it so."
Carla's decision was instantaneous. "I will follow your advice," she said. "I would, however, like a letter or brief listing the Count's holdings so I can familiarize myself with the estate."
De Vito's eyebrows shot up. "Letter! Good Lord, I nearly forgot the letter! I vow it, Contessa, I must retire and soon!"
"Excuse me?"
"The letter. Some time before Giovanni died, he came to the office with two sealed letters. He gave them to me and told me the contents were not to be tampered with, that they were for you and for Marco and that you were both to receive them after his death. I have already given Marco his letter. I have yours here." De Vito reached into his desk drawer and drew out an envelope on which the words "Carla caro mia ti amo" were written in Giovanni's hand. He handed the envelope to Carla.
"Could this be a will, do you suppose?" Carla said, taking the envelope.
"I have no idea. Giovanni specified each of your letters should be opened in your own privacy. Other than that, he made no mention of what the envelope contains. It was his wish and I have respected it to the letter. Dear me, what a hideous play on words."
Carla wasn't paying attention. Her mind was on the letter and its contents. She held it gingerly, delicately as though it were a volatile bomb ready to explode. She was intrigued with the mystery with which Gio had surrounded the letter and was most eager to read it. Her anxiousness was commented on by De Vito.
"I'm sure you have no further business with me today," he said. "There is very little else I can tell you right now. I will be available to you should questions arise on the estate."
"Yes. Thank you," Carla said absently. She stood and made a brief farewell remark, then hurried from De Vito's office, the letter growing warmer in her hands.
The journey back to the quietude and privacy of the villa was made impatiently and at high speed. Once home, Carla hastened to the security of her own bedroom to read the contents of Gio's missive, pausing only to fix herself a double Johnnie Walker Red on the rocks before she sliced open the envelope with an ornate letter opener. A much-wrinkled, worn and yellowed piece of paper fluttered to her lap as she unfolded the letter but she paid it no attention. Her eyes raced over the opening lines:
"Dearest Carla," the letter began, "I am gone from your life and the world now but I come back to you this final time to speak my last words to you before becoming only a memory in future years.
"Signor De Vito was obliged to inform you of your inheritance before giving you this letter. I sincerely wish that you find whatever I could leave behind to you some compensation for the years you spent with me as my wife. They were, to me, good years and if there were bad moments I forgive you for them in death for none of us is perfect in life or beyond life.
"By necessity, this letter is to inform you of your true legacy, one that could not be public for reasons you will understand as you read on. You will find with this letter a portion of a map involving that legacy and an explanation is due you.
"As you did or did not know, the conflict of the last great war forced me into the service of our country as a liaison officer between the command staffs of the Nazi armies occupying our beloved Italia and the headquarters coordination staff of Benito Mussolini, our wartime national leader and a man whose name and deeds can only be found in history books by now. In that capacity, I was eligible to participate in the distribution of some of the ill-gotten gains that accrue in war. With the help of then Obergeneral Kurt Heiniger we, he and I, were able to mass a collection of valued artworks and gems taken from people that the circumstance of war found to be too rich or too politically unstable. It is that collection that I speak of now for it is your legacy, your true and real reward for the splendid years you gave to me.
"To go on with the explanation. Obergeneral Heiniger and myself were able to secrete our sordid fortune in one of the seven hills surrounding Rome. A map was drawn to mark the location of our stolen horde and each of us retained half the map so that long years after the war when time had taken its toll of the owners of our treasure, we could safely exhume it and realize its worth but not one without the other.
"Unfortunately, our plan suffered a reversal a year later. The war began to go badly and Heiniger and myself were captured simultaneously by advancing American forces. We were placed together in a prisoner-of-war camp outside Milan. For Heiniger it was disastrous. He had been, you participant in the Russian campaign and his name lived there in infamy as that of a cruel and heartless slaughterer of innocent civilians. Dreading the Allies would learn of his past and take retribution for it, he was desperate to escape. To that end, he was willing to sacrifice a portion of his map, being more eager for freedom than I. Between you and me, my dearest, the poor fool probably thought he had committed the map to memory. It doesn't matter now. We were let go by a greedy American guard who quibbled over the map but took it when I pressed money on him. I took the American's name and gave him my own and told him the map would be valuable to him someday and he laughed and urged us to be gone."
Carla stopped reading for a moment and finished her drink. She picked up the torn portion of the map and stared at it. Treasure! And Gio meant it to be hers! Unlimited wealth! She read on eagerly.
"Away from the good food, warm beds and American cigarettes we'd known in the camp, we were met by chaos. Our armies were surrendering wholesale so I simply stepped out of my uniform and became a civilian. Heiniger was reluctant to join his fellow Nazi countrymen retreating northward so he, too, became a civilian but so hunted he was forced to flee to South America where he is today with his part of the map."
Carla frowned. Heiniger, Kurt Heiniger. The name rolled around in her mind, vaguely familiar from the first time she read it in Gio's letter. Ahhh yes. Kurt Heiniger. Gio had always mentioned his name briefly and softly and there were those letters, one or two of them each year, from Buenos Aires they came, bearing no return address. She nodded slowly, sure she was catching sight of what Gio's intentions were. She turned back to the letter.
"And so, my beloved, you have read this far and I'm sure your agile mind is far ahead of me but I must finish. You now know where half the map is for you and Heiniger each have a fourth of it. It would be cruel of me to make you search for the other half. Instead I shall give you two names, both familiar to you. One is Harvey Mason. Yes, love of my life, the same Harvey Mason who is now here in Rome. It is a small world, isn't it?
"The other? Forgive my attempt at suspense. The other, of course, is Marco. I gave him my remaining portion of the map instead of wealth because he had shared of my wealth while I lived, as had others. He had shared in you, Carla, but do not feel badly now because I forgive you in my death, most adored one. I forgive you Marco and your other lovers for I had your love as well in my life and now in my death you shall have part of me. The map and the treasure to which it leads can be yours. Allow me to phrase it thusly:
Divide it by four or three, two or one, I wish I was there to see the fun!
"Whatever you do, my darling, live! Live! And go with God."
Carla read Giovanni's signature and let the letter fall to the floor. He knew, then. All these years he had known about Marco and her other lovers and had said nothing. All these years he had known about her greed for wealth, for luxury and the good life and now he was assuring she worked for it after his death as much if not more than she'd striven for it while he lived. She looked down at the letter and smiled. It was all there in his stilted old-world manner, the. archaic and convoluted phrases written as he would say them-Gio had done it well and with an especial flourish; his life style would hover over her from the beyond. And she pl-edged not to disappoint this last great effort of his.
CHAPTER FOUR
The proud black Cadillac limousine bearing the seal of the U.S. Consulate on both its front doors left the consular and embassy offices on the Via Vittorio Veneto with a roar that stirred the already ruffled feelings of the lone passenger in the rear. When the Italian chauffeur barged into traffic like some ancient Roman chariot gone berserk, the solitary passenger in the rear gave voice to his fears.
"For Christ's sake, Mac, take it easy, will you?"
The donor of this advice that fell on deaf ears was Harvey Alger Mason, third-ranking consular official of the American government in Rome. Relatively young in years for the responsibility he carried, Mason was one of a new breed of diplomats. He was pleasantly handsome with a smattering of official gray at the temples and his smile was disarming. Long years of training had subdued an inflammable temper that showed through at the edges now. Mason was normally low-key, persuasive, and likeable but on this particular afternoon his stomach was churning and he was upset.
The day had begun badly. He had wakened before the alarm clock clanged and his partially open eyes had settled on the seductive but sleeping form of his wife. She lay on her back with her breasts and belly exposed. The sheet used to cover her in sleep had been pushed down by her tossing and turning and now lay across her hips, exposing a glimpse of her silken, golden mount which was nearly as fine in texture as her platinum hair.
Stirred erect, Mason had kissed and sucked her nipples alive while his fingers pried insistently at her dormant pussy. She had come awake then and told him that she was tired and that he should go back to sleep, whereupon she had rolled over to present her back to him.
He hadn't gone back to sleep. Rebuffed and angry, he'd bounded from bed, dressed quickly, and breakfasted on juice, toast and coffee. It was something he rarely did and his repast lay heavy in his belly like a rock all morning to cast gloom on the usually stimulating view up the miniskirted legs of his secretary.
In the early afternoon, he was summoned to the office of his superior where he was informed that "Some dumb son of a bitch in State really screwed us up this time." It was a matter of a minor State Department figure making a minor speech at a minor college in Pine Bluff, Arkansas in which it was insinuated that European nations, which included Italy, were overlooking Communist encroachment on their governments. Mason was instructed to go forth and soothe the wounded feelings of the Italian government. It seemed an easy task.
It wasn't. An hour later, Mason convened with the Italian government in the person of a Signor Palma. Midway through his meeting with Palma, Mason began to doubt there was a God. Accustomed to the gentility of diplomatic relationships, Mason was stunned by wild gesticulation accompanied with torrid Latin oratory that cast aspersions on America, through an interpreter, and on Mason's lineage, without an interpreter. Breaking through to the fiery Palma at last, Mason stated a categorical retraction of the offending speech as an oversimplification of the situation and did it with such classic diplomatese that Palma seemed mollified. Mason emerged constricted at having to swallow his convictions and slumped into the back of the limousine that would take him home. After reprimanding the chauffeur, Mason sank into a sulk from which he emerged only by thinking of completing unfinished business begun that morning with Siv.
Siv. He had met and married her while a junior staff member of the U.S. Consulate in Oslo. Besides her ravishing body, he had been intrigued with her Norwegian personality which seemed to personify the country itself. She was cold and distant when they met and she remained that way which only served to lure him on until she thawed one night and her love flowed as the spring waters rushing to the ice-blue fjords of her native land.
A tour of Washington followed. In the substrata of Foggy Bottom, Siv became the complete social animal, giving herself to parties and partying. Back-biting wives of Mason's colleagues attributed Mason's rapid rise through the diplomatic ranks in Washington to Siv's obvious charms and some of them patently forbade their husbands near her. Mason continued his upward climb with his unimpeachable war record, his good looks and charm complemented by a perceptive intelligence, and knew nothing of whatever vicious infighting that occurred beneath him.
Which led him to Rome with Siv. Which led him to stepping with relief from the antic limousine. Which led him to Siv's cheery greeting, more receptive than the one she'd given him in the morning. It dispelled the last remnants of his black mood.
She had a way of kissing him that was unlike any other kiss he'd ever had from a woman and she kissed him that way now in a soft and subtle way which, at times, provoked in him the feeling that she loved him and hated him as her husband, as a man, and it pleasured and disturbed him.
"Do that again," he said to her when she drew away.
"I have dinner cooking," Siv said but her smile was enigmatic and there was that elusive mystery in her eyes that tormented him.
Mason kissed her again. "The hell with dinner. Let's go into the bedroom. I want to talk to you."
"Uh huh," Siv said knowingly. "What do you want to talk about?"
Mason's hand grazed one of Siv's breasts and he crushed her in his arms. "About this morning," he murmured, attempting to slide his hand under her skirt.
"Is that all you can think about?"
"Constantly. Come on, hon, let's go, huh?"
"Men," Siv snorted. "You're all a-like. Come home and jump into bed. Screw, screw, screw and to hell with everything else."
Mason noted the shift in her attitude. "Now what the hell's come over you?"
"Nothing," Siv said tonelessly. "Let's go into the bedroom."
Mason followed Siv into the bedroom. When Siv began tugging her blouse from her skirt Mason said, "Don't. I want to undress you."
"We haven't the time to be romantic," Siv said archly. "My roast will burn."
Mason tried to ignore Siv's remark. "I like burned roast. I want to have you like you were this morning."
"You don't have to keep mentioning that. I was tired. I'm sorry."
For Mason, exposing Siv's perfect breasts took the sting from her sharp voice. He dropped Siv's blouse and bra to the floor and reached hungrily for Siv's breasts, full and warm to his touch as he cupped them in his hands. Siv remained passive. "It's chilly," she said.
Mason clenched his teeth. He unzipped her skirt and inserted his thumbs in its elastic waistband, catching hold of her panties as he did so. He tugged both garments down together slowly, teasing himself, exposing her navel, the petite mound of her lower belly, the slender roundness of her hips until the skirt and panties met with her satin-spun muff to parallel where he had found the sheet in the waking hour of the morning. A tremor of excitement went through him and his penis surged to be free, to be working, to be enclosed in her tight slit.
Bending his knees as he followed down the descending skirt and panties, he pressed his lips to her belly and savored the sweet but oddly musky scent of the region below her navel. He wrapped his arms around her cheeks and licked her naked flesh.
Siv disturbed his rapture by shifting from foot to foot to stand free of her skirt and panties. She lifted him straight by sliding her palm under his chin and drawing upward. When his eyes met hers she said, "I really am chilly, you know." Brushing his saliva dry with exaggerated motions, she turned and went to the bed. She crept beneath the covers and then sat up with a pillow propped behind her. "Come to bed," she said.
Mason undressed quickly. He forced his mind to suppress his hurt and anger at the tone of her voice which told him she wanted the thing over and done with. He crawled into bed with her and pressed his body along the length of hers. He felt her relax almost grudgingly. When he toyed with her thatch with fingers that inched down and inward, she parted her thighs reluctantly and he thought he heard her stifle a sigh.
Mason did not bother to stifle his sigh. He mounted Siv almost at once, driving into her by instinct, deriving an almost perverse satisfaction with her stiffness, her reticence to rise to meet his surges. When she finally did begin to function, she acted like a well-programed robot and it increased Mason's zeal to finish what he had started.
"Come, goddammit, come!" he urged, beginning to chafe at plumbing her arid depths.
"I-I can't," Siv said with resignation.
"Yeah," Mason said with contempt. He rammed himself home twice more and then sent his sperm into her parched channel. He rolled away and got up from the bed immediately as though he were abandoning a machine that no longer functioned.
He closeted himself in his den and brooded. To keep from thinking thoughts he knew would be wrong, he turned on the television set and watched the Rome channel without paying attention until a news program came up in the program schedule. It featured an interview with a Signora Angelina Verona. Mason's interest livened when the cameraman, a doubtless lover of the arts, focused on Angelina's bounteous breasts. Mason leaned forward in his chair. Now there, he thought, would be one roll in the hay all right. He imagined a fleeting coupling with the voluptuous starlet and then chastised himself for such an absurdity. He had to get his mind away from Siv's untoward behavior. He picked up an issue of Now magazine from his unread stack of mail and began leafing through it. When Siv came shyly into the den he looked at her but said nothing.
"I'm sorry, darling," Siv said in a small voice.
"Forget it."
"I didn't mean to be-well, it was unexpected. I hadn't planned on it. I thought we would, you know, later-when it was time to go to bed and we'd had a drink and talked. I must have been awful."
"You're close." Mason regretted the words as soon as he'd said them. He looked at Siv. She was attired in a demure housecoat that could not entirely conceal the swell of her breasts nor the sweep of her hips. She was trying. And he had been a demanding ass, singular in his purpose whatever the cost to her feelings or mood.
Siv said, "I, uh, thought we'd have a little weekend gathering at the villa. Would that be all right with you?"
Mason shrugged. Gatherings, as she called them, were a necessary evil to his career. By inviting people from varied walks of life, he was able to gather useful information at times, build his reputation and career through important contacts, and have fun at the same time. And a weekend party might be all that was needed to snap Siv out of her bizarre behavior. He stared at the television set for a moment. The cameraman covering the Verona interview had contrived to shoot down at her from above. Mason felt he was peering between two snow-clad mountains. Miss Verona didn't seem to mind, he noted.
"Who'd you invite?" he said absently.
"That girl, for one," Siv answered.
"Huh? Who?"
"That cow there on your television set. No woman should have so much breasts. And put your eyes back in your head, Mr. Mason. You have no need to stare."
"Jealous?"
"Every woman is jealous of a girl like that. Perhaps I shouldn't have invited her."
Mason's laugh was an honest one and it felt good. It felt good, as well, to see Siv more like herself. "That's nonsense," he said. "Who else is coming?"
"A handsome Arabian oil millionaire. He's doing the continent. I thought you might want to talk to him about the Middle East."
"Good idea. Anyone else coming that I know?"
"Countess Santini. She lost her husband recently. You knew him, didn't you?"
"Yes. I know her, too. That is to say we've been introduced."
"There's one other guest I couldn't resist when I found out he was available," Siv said with enthusiasm. "Hal Shane. Imagine!"
The name sounded familiar to Mason but he couldn't place it in context. "Who the hell is Hal Shane?"
"Just the columnist in that magazine you're holding, that's all. He's an editor of it, in fact. Didn't you read his column? He's writing all about Rome and they say the item he ran about a fortune in treasure is a reference to Countess Santini."
"They are always saying something. Last month it was the pigeons in St. Peter's Square. This month it's a treasure. What next?"
"I don't know. By the way, dinner's practically ready."
"Did the roast get burned?" Mason couldn't resist inquiring.
"Yes. And you're going to eat it because you said you like it," Siv said with mock anger.
"There's something I like more."
"I know. And I'm getting out of here right now!" Siv made a quick retreat from the den.
As soon as Siv was gone, Mason thumbed slowly through the magazine he was holding until he discovered Hal Shane's column. He read it through and then read it again. He put down the magazine and went to his book rack. He took down a heavy volume and opened the book to the midsection. The wrinkled and yellowing portion of a map was still where he'd placed it some years before. But it had taken on a new dimension now. It was interesting. The coming weekend promised to be interesting. Extremely interesting....
"Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia," Marco croaked atonally. He hummed the rest of the lyric happily as he strutted about his room. He caught sight of himself in the mirror and beamed anew. "Ah, there you are, you lucky bastard! You've won! You've got her, by Jesus! And you didn't think it would ever happen, did you? You sly dog!" He winked at himself in the mirror. He struck what he thought was a devastatingly virile pose and examined his frail body image with eyes blind to its flaws. "She's a lucky bitch to be getting you," he said to his reflection.
An observer would have thought the man drunk and in a way Marco was. Ever since Carla had uttered the magic words, Marco had been intoxicated with the joy of capturing her for his own. In such a state, it wouldn't have occurred to him he could be cuckolded in the same way Carla had betrayed Gio, and with his own help. And it wouldn't have occurred to him that he was the least likely candidate for marriage of all her more illustrious male acquaintances. His sense of reason stopped just short of giving value to his only tangible inheritance from Gio; in an egotistical attempt to second-guess his late uncle, he'd classified his portion of the map left him as a worthless scrap of paper bequeathed him by a jokester although he took not the time nor effort to recall he'd never heard Gio make a joke or plan one. Except for the last gesture of Gio's which had to be classified as a joke or a stroke of lunacy. Marco couldn't be bothered to hazard a guess why Gio would want perpetuated the bizarre hoax of a buried treasure but he did Gio's bidding as he always had, sending innocuous and largely meaningless tidbits of information to Shane, the American journalist. He took time from his delightful reveries to dash off a note to Shane but he did it absently because his mind refused to dwell on anything or anyone but Carla.
Years of mingling with Gio and Carla amid Roman society had refined Marco but he was still a peasant in mind and heart. Carla's request that he post notice of their intention to marry had thusly made him as giddy as he was now. In the provincial region of the Po Valley where he'd been raised, the presentation in the public of such a notice was the ultimate commitment tantamount to witnessing a miracle, having a vision, or experiencing a dialogue with God Himself in a dream. Marco had Carla's commitment. He made ready to go to the village.
It was supposed to be a working vacation away from the New York charnel house and the accent was supposed to be on rest. In a manner peculiar to himself, Hal Shane had refused to have it that way and the pressure was beginning to tell. When the shadows of evening were making a ghostly cathedral of the Colosseum, Shane returned to his apartment tense and frustrated.
All the easy things had been done and now it was getting harder and harder to fill a weekly column without sounding like a compendium of tourism catalogs. And there was this oddly unsatisfying business of inserting those blurbs about a buried treasure into each weekly column and making them fit. There had been no legal repercussions so far but Shane found himself disliking his role as a combination of rumor monger and tattler.
He let himself into his apartment and made himself a stiff drink before delving into the day's mail that he'd picked up from a clerk in the lobby of the fashionable apartment house. The first two sips of the drink were nectar from the gods to quench a parched throat and flood away the petty troubles of the day. The third sip was for enjoyment and the fourth sip was to bolster himself against the contents of the mail.
It was there. He had come to recognize the writing of the address and the somewhat hazy postmark. He opened the letter and read it, stuffing the customary check in his pocket as he did so. "Thanks. For nothing," he said to the empty room and threw the letter down to the couch.
He came upon a letter bearing the dignified return address of the U.S. Consulate. Frowning, he said, "Now, what the hell is this all about?"
It was about a party. In a symmetrical feminine hand, the letter gushed out the details in a chatty fashion, requesting an answer to the invitation and signed by a Mrs. Harvey Mason. As a gesture of thoughtfulness, a guest list for the party was included with the letter. Shane decided to attend, considering the party as source material for a possible column.
The final communication of the day was from New York, a sprightly commentary written by Hank Morris, a fellow senior editor on the magazine. Shane chuckled with genuine delight as Morris out-lined his escapades.
"Thought you'd like to know," the letter read, "that true blue Elise still has the hots for what must be that monumental dick of yours. I had occasion to ply her with liquor the other eve, as if it was necessary to use that abominable ploy to get into her crotch, and after I thought I'd impressed her with the magnificence of my stroke she dropped your name. It crushed my grapes. Be advised, old man, she's got the net out for you. Act accordingly.
"One more thing before I close. The magazine's circulation has been hyped in your area by that hidden treasure crap you've been sneaking into your columns. As an indication of your popularity, the boss received and turned down a generous offer from the Rome Daily Herald for reprint rights to your column. How does it feel being the Norm Shattuck of Europe?"
Shane winced at the last line. Norm Shattuck was one of the country's hottest Hollywood gossip columnists who dealt with the bed-hopping adventures of stars and starlets a-like. He read Hank's letter to its conclusion and pocketed it.
Another drink made him reflective. He gave his attention to the letter from Mrs. Mason, perusing the guest list. He recognized, and smiled at the inclusion of Angelina Verona's name and then he studied the name of Countess Carla Santini. The name had a familiar ring to it. On impulse, he dialed the number of the Rome office of Now magazine and asked for a morgue file rundown on Countess Santini. In return, he received some startling information. Countess Santini's file was comprised mostly of photos, all of them shot by enterprising paparazzi and bought by the magazine. The male clerk examining the Countess' file oohed and ahhed over some of the pictures, perking up Shane's interest. He asked if a current residence address was included in the file. It was. Shane copied down the address read to him by the clerk, thanked the impressionable young man and hung up. He drummed his fingers on the arms of the chair he sat in through the consumption of one more drink. It took him just that long to make up his mind that Countess Carla Santini was worth a visit. And if things worked out, she might be worth an entire column.
He was impressed by the estate of Giovanni Santini. The ribbon of black top led him through what appeared to be endless acres of rolling turf and lush shrubbery before he arrived at the parking area in front of the villa where he parked his rented Plymouth next to an Alfa Romeo. He was barely out of his car when he spied a lean, rather frail man approaching him.
"You would be Signor Shane from the magazine?"
Shane squinted against the sun into the man's eyes which seemed to be scrutinizing for memory every line of Shane's face. "Yes," Shane said. "I'm a little early, I guess. Will the Countess receive me?" He tried to match the man's burning stare. "Are you Marco? Was it you I talked to on the telephone?"
Marco nodded. "It is a pleasure to meet a famous writer as yourself. Your column has all of Rome guessing about some sort of buried treasure."
"Yeah," Shane agreed, used to that sort of left-handed compliment-inquiry by now. Everyone he met seemed to think he'd sit down with them and spin out the whole story of the treasure.
Marco waited for Shane to say more. When he didn't, Marco said, "I'll take you to the Countess. She is having a swim with a friend. Follow me, please?"
"I wouldn't want to interrupt her. I'll wait for her," Shane said.
"That won't be necessary. The Countess left instructions that she see you as soon as you arrived." Marco began walking back to the villa.
Shane followed Marco, intrigued with the interior of the house. It was a motion picture set come to life as reality with domed ceilings, chandeliers and murals lining the walls. The rooms were cavernous and the hallways wide enough to accommodate whole clusters of people. His observant eyes filed away the opulence, the echoes of his and Marco's footfalls. His readers would eventually learn through his discerning prose how miniature palaces such as this still survived in a maddening world.
Marco stopped and turned to him. "The pool is through those doors," he said with a gesture toward two massive panels that appeared to be carved from Lebanon cedar.
"I see. Thank you. Won't you be joining us?"
"There are some things I have to attend to," Marco said. "Perhaps later. If there is anything you need, the Countess will call me." Marco walked away from Shane.
Shane proceeded through the doors and onto a tiled patio shaded with olive trees. The pool was a short distance away and Shane recognized Angelina Verona at once even if she wasn't swimming in the nude. She was. Her companion, then, who cavorted and giggled with Angelina, had to be the Countess. At first glance, her skimpy white swimsuit seemed the limit in bikinis. Shane glanced again and whistled softly.
Countess Carla Santini was naked in the pool.
Appreciative of the naked female body whether it be in Saigon or Santa Monica, Shane had no qualms about standing and watching the amateur aquacade. Though Angelina's massive mammaries cut their own swath in the water, it was Carla's unadorned body that drew his attention and he was enjoying the enticing glimpses of her splendid breasts and creamy white bottom at the very moment his presence was noted by Angelina.
"Signor Hal! Hallo, mi amor!" Angelina burbled before she sank beneath the surface of the blue-green water.
Shane shifted his weight and stared down at the tips of his shoes while he thrust his hands deep into his pants pockets. In a moment he was flanked by two dripping-wet, nude lovelies. He kept his hands in his pockets and his eyes averted, a modest gesture doomed to failure.
Carla spoke first. "You are Signor Shane?"
"Yup. I'm afraid I've-come at the-wrong, uh, time. I, er, didn't mean to-interrupt your, ahh-swim." Shane spoke slowly, distracted by Angelina's efforts to rub her body dry. Her nipples, as brightly red as the day he'd seen them on the movie set, did little interpretive dances of their own to confound Shane's concentration on Carla.
"Not at all. Would you care to join us, perhaps?"
"I don't think I could do that," Shane said.
"Please don't misunderstand. I could arrange a bathing suit for you." Carla casually examined Shane's physique. "That is if you needed one," she added.
"Signor Hal doesn't need to hide what he has," Angelina chirped. "He has a magnificent palo."
Shane flushed at Carla's grin. He knew enough Italian by now to realize Angelina's observation had pertained to his penis. "Could we, er, get on with the interview? I wouldn't want to take up your afternoon," he said lamely.
Carla's grin widened. "Excuse me," she said. "I do not mean to laugh. My dear friend Angelina has an unusual way of placing the men in her life. She has spoken most highly of you."
"I'm sure she has," Shane said with some embarrassment. He stared at the deep hollow between Carla's jutting, cinnamon-tipped breasts.
"You're sure you would not like to swim with us?" Carla said. It sounded like a dare.
"I really don't think so." Shane fingered his notebook and allowed his gaze to wander over Carla's naked body. "I'd like to get started on the interview if it's all right with you."
"Very well." Carla sounded disappointed. She excused herself to Angelina and turned to strut along the length of the pool. Her destination, Shane realized, was a building at the far side of the pool seemingly more plush and better-structured than the ordinary pool-side cabana. "We can talk in here," Carla said, allowing Shane to enter in front of her. His arm inadvertently brushed both her breasts as he did so. He felt his penis begin to swell.
Once inside, Shane briefly surveyed the deep pile carpeting and leather furniture before giving his attention to the nude contours of Carla's succulent buttocks as she promenaded across the room and began climbing a small flight of stairs. Shane followed, staring up at her revolving cheeks framing in motion the dark clump of hair between her legs that enticingly revealed the crease.
Carla flopped down in a deep leather chair in front of a window facing the pool. When she nonchalantly draped one leg over the arm of the chair to openly expose the wrinkled pinkness of her labia, Shane began to discern that the woman had no intention of clothing herself; she was, instead, making a real attempt at flaunting herself. And she seemed totally unconcerned about it if she wasn't enjoying herself. To prove the point to himself, Shane took a chair directly opposite from her and stared for a long moment at the excellent view of her most private orifice. She made no effort to conceal it.
"What did you wish to talk about?" Carla purred.
Shane attempted to cross his legs. It was impossible. He forced himself to speak and after a time his speech began to flow. Haltingly at first, he out-lined to Carla the purpose of the interview while mentally castigating himself for being a rank amateur shaken at the sight of a delectable pussy. He applied himself to making copious notes of Carla's answers to his questions and then began priding himself on his finesse in the face of an uncomfortable situation. It was at this point that Carla's gaze drifted languidly to the window. She stopped talking. Shane peered out the window and his jaw fell slack.
Angelina was no longer alone by the pool. She had been joined by Marco and as Shane watched with fascination, Marco finished stripping off his swim trunks. Shane blinked rapidly when Marco fondled Angelina's massive breasts. Angelina reciprocated by stroking Marco's stumpy virility to protruding stiffness.
"He is so easy to excite," Carla drawled in a knowing tone of voice.
"Can I ask you a personal question, Countess?" Shane said, plainly jarred by what he was viewing.
"Wait a moment," Carla said absently. "Look there. Isn't that beautiful?"
Shane looked and blinked rapidly again. Marco had mounted Angelina at the very edge of the pool and his frail buttocks were rising and falling with determination. It wasn't necessarily beautiful but it was puzzling as hell to Shane. He made his feelings known, unable to hold off the question he wanted to ask.
"What the hell is this all about?" he said.
"Excuse me?" Carla said. She took her attention reluctantly from the rutting antics of Marco and favored Shane with a heavy-lidded glance. "Oh. You mean about that business out there," she said. "Does it disturb you?"
Shane shrugged. "Doesn't it disturb you? Isn't that, er, I mean-" he paused to doodle with his pen "-oh, hell, I don't know what I mean."
"Do you plan to write about it?" Carla said. She was utterly calm.
Shane countered with a question of his own. "It would make interesting reading, wouldn't it?"
"I know you will treat me kindly in your column but I think you would have to ask my fiance about what you should write about him."
"What has he got to do with it?"
"That is he down there by the pool. A very good lover, isn't he?"
"You mean to tell me Marco is your fiance? And you're sitting here watching him screw, I mean, er, you're-"
"I like to see him enjoy himself. We are not yet married. A man is a man. Let him do what he wants now, not after we are married. Do you Americans not know the worth of that?"
"I don't guess we do," Shane blurted. He became momentarily entranced by the sight of Carla massaging the insides of her thighs. When her eyes met his, her meaning seemed clear to him. He stood from his chair and looked down at her inviting body. "Do you feel the same way as he does?" he asked in a hoarse voice.
"You want to have me," Carla said. Her gaze fastened to the prominent bulge in Shane's pants.
"I do," Shane admitted. He bent to kiss Carla, gathering one of her breasts in his hand.
Carla turned her face away and brushed Shane's hand from her breast. "I think I will swim now," she said. She stood quickly and walked past Shane. "The interview is over," she said. "You had better leave now." She proceeded to the stairs and went down them. In another minute, she had stepped onto the diving board arcing out over the pool. She appeared oblivious to Marco and Angelina.
Shane's astonishment turned to anger as he watched from the window. He wouldn't have it end like this. Not by a damn.
He was still fuming when he reached the office of the magazine in the center of Rome. He stormed into the office and went directly to the morgue file. He searched for and found the voluminous folder on Carla Santini. He scanned the photos and then looked at his notes. He looked at the photos more slowly this time, recalling the vision of Carla as she sprawled naked in the chair at the pool-side building. The photos revealed much of her legs in raised skirt shots and standard, crossed-leg pictures and there were other shots of her bending over to reveal a great deal of her bustline in pictures that had to be posed that way. A recognizable pattern emerged. Carla was an exhibitionist, proud of her body. By flaunting it as she did, she was also a tease, perhaps a frigid one. But a damned beautiful one.
Shane closed the folder. His initial ire at being rebuffed by Carla had turned into a burning curiosity about her. Her eyes and her body had offered a challenge to him. He had achieved his success in his field by taking the dare, accepting the challenge.
This was one especial challenge he wouldn't turn down. He was quietly proud that no one had ever taunted or toyed with Hal Shane for long. If Carla didn't know that, she'd find out about it.
Soon.
CHAPTER FIVE
Carla Santini was in a bitchy mood. And Hal Shane was the reason.
He had left her unfulfilled, damn him. She had spread herself out in front of him like a banquet and he'd gone on and on with those asinine questions of his, blind to her gaping, yearning pussy. And what had finally, finally stirred him? Watching. Peeping down at Marco and Angelina. Then he could come to stand over her to tell her he wanted her. It was too late then, damn him! And from what Angelina had said, he probably was a satisfying lay, too. The hell with him! He hadn't wanted to take the trouble to find out. There was a high price to pay for that kind of snub. Carla didn't care if she ever saw Shane again. Or so she told herself as she swept through her room in an exquisite robe she'd left open for cooling flesh grown warm under Shane's gaze.
Marco entered eventually as she knew he would. It was not the mail he carried that interested her; she had read enough messages of condolence to be in misery for the rest of her life. She was interested, but not amused, by the self-satisfied grin on Marco's face.
"Is that smirk a signal that you've completed your stud service for today?" she said sarcastically.
"I don't understand," Marco said, his grin fading.
"Don't you? Suppose I put it this way: did you enjoy your swim?"
"You-you saw!"
"Mia Dio, I saw! What do you think? You were shameless, screwing like a pig by the side of the pool! I took a dive from the diving board and it didn't even bother you!"
Marco sniggered. "I thought I heard a splash," he said lightly.
"Go ahead and laugh. Are you proud to humiliate me in front of a stranger?"
"Angelina is no stranger," Marco said. "The little tramp led me to believe we were alone."
"Don't blame it on her. She can't help herself. I'm talking about the writer who was here to interview me. He saw just what I did!"
"Signor Shane? He saw, too?"
"Of course he saw. We were in the cabana. Angelina made no effort to tell you?" Carla sighed. "I retract that question since it's Angelina we speak of. All she needs is a man near her and she has only one thing on her mind."
"Christ! Well, what did Signor Shane say about it?"
"He seemed to think we were all orgiastic revelers. At least that's what he led me to believe."
"Do you think hell write about...." Marco's voice trailed off and his face became flushed.
"It would make interesting reading," Carla mused aloud, savoring Marco's discomfort. She held out her hand. "While you're thinking about it, let me look at the mail." She went through the small pile of letters quickly, slowing when she came to the heavy parchment envelope from the American Consulate. "These are all opened," she said, glaring at Marco. "Why did you open them?" Her voice went up an octave.
"It was a-a foolish thing to do. Perhaps it was conscience, I don't know. I wanted to share a bit in the grief for Gio."
"That is a pathetic excuse, Marco," Carla said with scorn.
"Why is everything I say classified as pathetic or stupid? I'm telling the truth," Marco insisted.
"And you had to open this one?" Carla waved the consular envelope at him. She took out the contents of the envelope and scanned the invitation and attached guest list. "You had to open this one? Addressed to met"
"I didn't know it was an invitation to a party. I thought it was an official message of condolence. You know, gold embossed or whatever. I was proud it had come. I wanted to see what it looked like."
Carla studied Marco's eyes. She decided he was telling the truth. A lie would have been better thought out, more exotic. She nodded curtly at Marco's explanation.
"I want to go with you-Ho the party," Marco blurted.
"You can't do that," Carla said. "I could talk with Signor Shane about the-you know."
"I'll talk to Signor Shane. I very much doubt whether he will write an article glorifying your impetuous prick and Angelina's weaknesses."
"I have a right to go," Marco pouted. "I'm your fiance."
"It seems you remember that only when it's convenient."
"You needn't talk to me that way. I apologize for my conduct with Angelina." Marco stepped toward her and tried to fondle one of her partially exposed breasts.
Carla stepped back. "Only because you got caught at it," she said. "Do you really think I want you to touch me so soon after what you did this afternoon?"
Marco's eyes narrowed at Carla's rebuff. "You weren't quite so exclusive when Gio was alive. And you were far less touchy and selective before I gave you that scrap of paper Gio left me."
Carla bristled. "What do you mean by that?"
"What do you suppose I mean? What am I supposed to mean?"
Carla's heart pounded. Marco sounded as if he were dangerously close to piecing things together and that would be disastrous. Angelina had burbled on briefly about the delicious rumors sweeping Rome-her empty head could not retain the entire story but it had something to do with a well-known figure and a large inheritance. Or was it treasure? Angelina was bovine-breasted and feather-brained. Supposing Marco had heard those rumors? She retreated to the charms that had always sustained her. She parted her robe and sidled up to Marco. Her smile was warm, her touch was warmer.
"I don't mean to be harsh," she cooed. "Can you blame me for being annoyed at finding my fiance in the arms of another woman?"
The effect on Marco was noticeable at once. He slipped his hands inside Carla's robe and fondled her cheeks. In a moment, one hand was slipping around her hip to nestle playfully in her thatch before curious fingers found the puffy, outer rim of her snatch.
"I said I was sorry. Let me show you now how much I love you," he murmured. His tongue flicked over her nipples.
Carla quavered but resisted temptation. It would be too easy to submit and release the pent-up feelings Shane had left her with. Marco had to be kept in his place-but gently. "Not now, Marco. I'm tired. And you ought to be." She made it sound like a joke.
Marco grinned wryly. "You vixen," he chided. "When will you let me taste the sweetness of your love nectar?"
"Soon. It must be soon. I must have more of your poetry and more of you." She played along, suppressing an impulse to gag on her words.
"Will I be able to see you before you attend the party?"
Carla consulted the invitation. "It is tomorrow. And through the weekend. I shall be dreadfully lonely away from you."
"I'll be waiting for your return," .Marco said.
"I will be, too." She kissed Marco heavily on the lips. "Go now before I lose my self-control," she whispered. "It is not good for me to be so close to you," she lied.
Marco left reluctantly. Carla rushed to the bathroom and brushed her teeth until she felt her mouth had been cleansed of its lying and hypocritcal words. Then she began laying out her most alluring, form-flattering wardrobe for the weekend ahead. Her selection included a daringly transparent see-through blouse purchased at the exclusive alto moda shop of Antonelli on Rome's Via Lucullo. It would be just the thing for her grand entrance at the Mason villa.
Harvey Mason, Harvey Mason, Harvey Mason. The name spun around in her mind. She hoped he wasn't too portly or ugly. She wanted to have the seduction scene she would play with him contain some small element of glamor even if it was his portion of the map alone she was after....
A svelte platinum blonde met her at the entrance of the Mason villa. The woman extended her hand and grasped Carla's firmly. "I'm Siv Mason," she said. Her eyes widened slightly at the sight of Carla's diaphanous blouse which the slight breeze had pressed like form-fitting gauze to her breasts. "You must be Countess Santini."
"Carla, please call me Carla. I'm very happy to be here. Thank you for the invitation."
"It is I who thank you. You are a most welcome addition"-she paused to pointedly stare at Carla's blouse-"to our gathering. Please come inside. I'll introduce you to the rest of the guests."
Carla was led by Siv into a spacious room where the other houseguests were mingling. She spied Angelina at once, predictably engaged in a conversation with a man. And the man, she saw, was Hal Shane. To the left of them, looking superior in his isolation, was a mind-boggling vision. The man, either dark of complexion or deeply tanned, stood aloof and well he might with his bejewelled turban, satin Edwardian jacket that flared out at his hips, and stovepipe trousers with white piping down the side of each leg that just reached golden, slipper-like shoes with curled toes.
"This is Angelina. She tells me she knows you," Siv said.
"We're old friends," Carla said.
Angelina kissed Carla on the cheek and whispered, "About yesterday. You must forgive me. I couldn't help it. Marco, he-"
"It's nothing," Carla said. "Consider it forgotten." She moved, with Siv, to Shane.
"Nice seeing you again," Shane said.
"Ah, do you two know each other as well?" Siv said.
"I interviewed the Countess yesterday," Shane volunteered.
"Yes. A keen and thorough experience," Carla rejoined. She met Shane's eyes. "Signor Shane lets nothing distract him from his work."
Shane's eyes sparkled. He held up his half-empty glass. "Not always," he said. "We must do it again sometime. Is it a deal? Perhaps you can teach me more about mixing business with pleasure."
"Perhaps. I'm good at it, I'm told," Carla said with more coolness than she felt. Those eyes of his were getting to her again, consuming each of her barely concealed breasts with covert slyness.
Siv moved on to the turbaned gentleman. "And this," she said proudly, "is Ibn Rana Semal, an Arabian prince. Did I say that right, Rana?"
The Arabian's smile illuminated his dark face. "I'm afraid I am no Ibn, Madame Siv. That title is reserved for our kings. Please do not take offense. It is not something widely known. A misconception, I think it is called."
Siv said, "Rana is very big in oil."
Rana made a depreciating gesture. "It is not a great talent. In my part of the world petroleum is as difficult to find as pasta in Italy."
Visibly impressed, Carla said, "I'm very pleased to meet you."
Rana met her gaze, mesmerizing her for a fleeting instant. "The sight of yet another beautiful woman must indeed be a mirage I have brought from the desert sands," he said. "I can only hope my humble person is worthy of such radiant splendor." He bowed deeply from the waist.
"It wouldn't take much of that," Siv said with forced gaiety. "I'd better find my husband-oh, there he comes now. I wish he wouldn't keep disappearing like that but he insists no one can make the dry martini he can drink except himself. Harvey? Come over here, dear. I'd like you to meet Countess, er Carla."
Debonair. If a thought-association game had been played with Carla just then, it would be the word she'd use to describe Harvey Mason as he responded to Siv's call. And the closer he came, his step sure and confident, his manner engaging, the less Carla felt repelled at having to give her body to him. Memories of love from older men in the depths of her childhood flitted through her mind in flashes too brief or nearly long-forgotten to capture but she was able to identify the feeling Mason's presence gave her as one of security. His eyes held out a rapport for her without his saying a word as though they held a mutual secret and he had long been anticipating this moment.
Mason took Carla's hand and kissed it delicately. "Carla. How nice to have you with us. I don't suppose you remember me."
"I'm honored to meet the American First Consul," Carla said.
"You flatter me. I'm merely the Third Consul. I have to try harder." Mason guffawed at his small joke.
Siv nudged Mason with her elbow. "It's not polite to stare, Harvey," she drawled.
"I still remember the night we were introduced at the embassy," Mason said to Carla, ignoring Siv completely. "You weren't nearly so flatteringly dressed that evening."
Sounding slightly catty, Siv remarked, "Harvey has a mind like a steel trap for that sort of thing, don't you, dear?"
From the way Siv stared at her breasts, Carla knew her blouse had won the afternoon. And from the way Mason was unabashedly ogling her, his sharp eyes darting from nipple to nipple, she could assume she was on her way to another victory. Her mind seemed to buzz with the singular thought of the map. She imagined the sound to be clearly audible to everyone.
Rana spoke up. "A thousand pardons, Madame Siv. Regretfully, the liquid in my glass appears to have evaporated."
"Poor dear," Siv said with mock sympathy. "Let me chase down that insolent servant. He's probably pouting because Harvey was making his own drinks."
"Don't bother," Mason said. "I'll make our guest here the dryest martini he's ever had in the Western world." To Carla he said, "Would you like a lesson in the fine art of martini making?"
Carla seized on the opportunity to be alone with Mason. "I think I'd like that," she said.
"Make another pitcher of daiquiris while you're there, Harvey," Siv called after them.
In the well-equipped kitchenette, Harvey set out the ingredients for martinis and daiquiris. "The secret of making a good martini is to hold the vermouth about two inches from the rim of the...." He let out a deep breath. "Oh, hell, I don't want to talk about martinis and I hope you don't want to hear about them. I want to talk about you. You look absolutely ravishing!"
"Thank you." Carla concentrated on being demure, giving no sign she was aware of the effect of her blouse on Mason.
"I want to offer my sympathy regarding your late husband," Mason said.
"He was a good man," Carla said simply.
"I'd like to talk to you about him some time. You know, the things he did, that sort of thing. He struck me as an extremely interesting person." There was a message in his face again, the kind of acknowledgment Carla had been hoping for.
"That could be arranged," she said.
"I don't mean right now," Mason hurried to explain. "The others-we would surely be missed. I would like to talk to you before the day is through, though." Mason's brow knitted with thought. "I could get the rest of them stoned enough, I suppose. Siv has arranged a little buffet supper. I just don't see how we can get away together without it being obvious."
"There is something you wish to discuss in private, then?"
"Yes, very much so. The more private the better."
It was Carla's turn to think hard. She was struck with an inspiration. "Angelina," she said softly.
"Excuse me?"
"My dear friend Angelina. I think she could help us without knowing. She is, as you know, an Italian movie star. She's appeared in many of our movies, usually in a state of undress, poor thing. I do know that she likes to dance very much and she has been given little opportunity to do so in the pictures she's made. I think if I asked her to perform it would give us the time we need. Once she starts, she's difficult to stop."
"It sounds like a good idea if it works. Lord knows I've got stacks of records, everything from classical to rock and roll records, long-play albums and the like. Do you think she'd do it?"
"She owes me a favor," Carla said. "Perhaps your wife should be informed before I ask Angelina. Your wife might not like the idea."
"Shell love it. She likes these parties but she's always pressed for how to entertain our guests. She'll think this idea is a blessing from heaven. I'll tell her about it when we get back out there and we'd better do that pretty quick before they sound out a search party for us. My wife, bless her jealous little heart, sometimes feels I shouldn't be left alone with strange women. She has some crazy idea I'm irresistible."
"You are."
Carla's calm words slowed Mason for only a moment. "Only half so much as you, my dear. You must think it rude of me to have been staring at your unusual blouse. Please do not think me more rude when I say I'm sure the rest of your body is equally as lovely."
"I've been told it is. But each person must judge for himself as to what beauty is."
"I'm considered an excellent judge of many things," Mason said in a tone of voice that under-lined every word. He busied himself with the drinks.
Carla's hand lingered on his before she accepted the martini he offered her. "Perhaps you'll have the chance to demonstrate how good a judge you are," she said coyly.
"We'd better join the others," Mason said in a low voice....
Sinking slowly under a flood of drinks fed unscrupulously to her by Shane for his own reasons, Angelina blinked blearily at Carla as she approached. Discretely, Shane stepped away from Angelina at the same time, leaving the two women alone.
"Are you having a good time?" Carla said to her bosomy blonde friend. "You seem to be getting on well with Signor Shane. Renewing an old friendship?"
"Please don't be so mean to me, Carla. I know what I did was wrong and bad and I'd give anything if you didn't hate me for it," Angelina simpered.
"I don't hate you at all, dear child," Carla said reassuringly. "But if you feel you must make it up, there is a way."
"What's that?" Angelina said eagerly, anxious to redeem herself.
"The dances from your films you did for me some time ago at the villa. I'd be pleased if you did them again this afternoon."
"You mean those awful dances they made me do in both films? The ones that had no artistic purpose except to get all my clothes off? I don't know if I should do that here. I didn't want to do dances like that anymore. I want to become a serious actress."
Carla surveyed Angelina's swooping neckline, hovering so low as to expose mountains of flesh and the occasional glimpse of bright red nipples. "From the looks of what you've almost got on, I'd say it wouldn't be much further to total nakedness."
Angelina giggled. "You are not exactly dressed for a convent yourself."
Carla stiffened. "Very well. I thought you would dance as a favor to me, but-"
"I will, Carla, I will," Angelina cut in. "Just don't be mad at me."
Carla favored Angelina with a smile. She patted Angelina's arm. "I won't be. Not anymore. Let me tell Signor Mason about it. I'm sure he will be pleased."
Signor Mason was greatly pleased, as was Siv. Content to be released from the strain of carrying the party by herself, she announced Angelina's dance to the other guests. Angelina selected two record albums for accompaniment and requested that all the lights be turned out with the exception of one table lamp. Mason started the console phonograph and Angelina began to dance.
Carla waited until Angelina was well into her dance, moving languorously, suggesting much but not yet removing her clothes and capturing the attention of Shane and Rana along with Siv who stood transfixed. She spied Mason nodding to her and moved unobtrusively to his side. In a few seconds they slipped from the room together.
"The music will last for forty minutes according to the information on the record jackets," Mason informed Carla. "Follow me this way. It leads to my den." Mason led Carla to his den, closing and locking the door behind them.
"Forty minutes," Carla said softly. "I wish it were longer."
"So do I," Mason said hoarsely. "God, you're a beautiful creature."
They collided in the middle of the room as if magnets had drawn them together. Carla gave her lips willingly with feeling to Mason. His tongue demanded and gained entrance to her mouth and did a silent, pagan dance with hers before she eased herself away from him.
She unbuttoned her blouse and took it off. She slipped out of her skirt and dropped it to the floor. "I've wanted you since the first time I saw you," she murmured to him. "Can you judge my beauty any better now?"
Mason groaned. He stripped off his pants and shorts, revealing his rigid, thick penis bobbing grotesquely as he moved. He sank to his knees before Carla and quickly and expertly removed her wispy garter belt and rolled down her stockings, kissing the flesh of her thighs as he did so. He rolled her panties down over her hips and tugged them down so that they came free of her along with her stockings. He continued kissing and nuzzling the insides of her thighs, proceeding upward, closer, closer.
Stirred by this tender expertise, Carla sank slowly to her knees facing him. She took hold of his penis with one hand and guided the tip of it across her lower belly to let it nestle in her tuft while she cupped his balls with her free hand, rubbing her palm to and fro as she cradled them.
"Damn your soul, how did you know I liked that? It drives me crazy," Mason wheezed. His manicured fingers found the puffy rim of her pussy and manipulated her hirsute flesh before sliding deeper in to contact her clitoris and poke it, prod it, nudge it, stroke it until his fingers dampened.
Carla flopped down beside him and bent her knees. She spread her legs invitingly and began rocking her knees till they met and then drew apart. "There's a better way to satisfy me," she gasped. "Do it. Give it to me!"
Mason stood and padded to the door, removing his shirt as he did so. "The music's still playing," he announced. He stood over her supine body eying the glistening aperture of her gash. "I'm sure it feels as good as it looks," he said half-aloud.
"Stop talking about it and find out," Carla urged. She sat up and made a grab for Mason's turgid member, closing her hand over it and tugging him downward to her. She pulled him between her legs and let go of him when she'd placed the tip of his organ between her lower lips.
When his penis pushed aside her clitoris, she gave up her first shower of passion to him. Lubricated and fortified, he plunged inward and back and then in again and back to establish a rhythm she met with the surge of her hips.
"It's good!" Carla said with feeling.
Mason said nothing. His breath whistled between his teeth. In a few more lengthy strokes he came, his back and legs stiffening, shaking with the spasms of his spewing seed, and then relaxing to lay deadweight atop her. He lay in that position as if engraving it oh his memory. Then he rolled from between her legs crossing over his and stood up quickly but shakily.
"Tissues on the desk," he said tersely. "I'll get them."
Mason was every bit the gentleman as Carla used up the tissues he had given her. He turned his back to her, dressed silently and quickly, and manfully averted his eyes when he walked around her to go to the door of the den.
"We've been in here for sixteen minutes," he said casually. "Must be one hell of a dance she's putting on. The music's still playing. I don't hear a peep besides that."
Mason's first remark irritated Carla. She climbed hurriedly but efficiently into her clothing, aware the watchful Siv would spot one stray wrinkle, one random hair out of place. Then she brought her sights to bear on Mason.
"Sixteen minutes, you say? How dreadful of me to be so slow. I'm sure you've done better." Her eyes blazed at him.
"Hey, whoa," Mason said with a grin. He sauntered toward her. "Is this a sample of the Italian temperament you people are so proud of? If it is, you've every reason to take pride in it. You do it well."
Carla was disarmed by Mason's diplomacy. "I'm not sure how you mean that, but thank you."
"Not at all." The grin eased from Mason's face. Carla sensed a subtle change of attitude on the man's part, an eagerness to be inside her mind as deeply as he had just probed the depths of her pussy. Yet he acted as though he wanted to be away from her as well, as though she carried some alien disease and he feared contracting it.
She suspected that disease might be an age-old affliction of mankind: truth. If what Angelina had said was true, if there were indeed stories all over Rome about a titled lady and an inheritance or treasure, and if Gio's letter told her the complete truth and was no hoax or fiendish joke, Mason had good reason for wanting to talk to her. But Mason couldn't know of Gio's letter; he could only piece rumor and fact together as he clung to his portion of the map and his hopes and dreams that an ill-gained scrap of paper obtained years before would suddenly be worth something. She decided to test Mason's position-for her own good. She realized time was passing even as she pondered her own concepts of the situation.
"You said you wanted to talk to me," she said. She allowed herself a wicked smile. "What was just done, was that your talk? If so, it was a lovely conversation. If there's nothing further, I think we ought to get back to the others."
Mason matched her smile briefly. "If you ever have a yen to join the Diplomatic Service, please give me a call. We could use someone with your perceptive command of the language. You use it superbly." The smile vanished again. "I do want to talk to you." He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "About the map."
It was out and Carla noted his obvious relief. She wanted to string him along a bit more. Sixteen minutes! "Map? What map?" she said innocently.
Mason's face tightened. "You know very well what map."
Carla shook her head. "I'm afraid I don't. Are we going to play some kind of party game with a map? Is that what you're talking about?" she dead-panned, the picture of confused virtue.
"If I'd known you've a penchant for games, I'd have invited you long before today," Mason said, struggling with his temper. "As a matter-of-fact, I do have a game for you. Well, not so much a game-more a puzzle. The clues are here." He took three magazines from his desk and thrust them at her. "Turn to page nineteen in each issue and read the words under-lined with ink. When you've finished, perhaps we can solve the puzzle together."
"I do not read English as well as I speak it," Carla protested.
"It won't be difficult reading, I promise. It should, I would say, be very interesting. Especially for you."
Carla read the sentences underscored rapidly and with a good deal of uneasiness. A glance at the top of the page told her Hal Shane had written each column. The same Hal Shane who had interviewed her, and the same Hal Shane who now was here in the Masons' house with her! Drawing on all her skills, she attempted an icy calm. She handed the magazines back to Mason.
"What has this to do with a puzzle? I don't understand." Her voice mirrored far less innocence this time. And her appearance gave her away.
"Come off it," Mason said with irritation. "Time's running out and we're moving in ever-widening circles and accomplishing nothing. You damn well do understand. You do know what I'm talking about when I mention a map and you do know what that character Shane is talking about in his columns. Further, you are a titled lady, as Mr. Shane puts it, and finally, I happened to know your husband before I came to Rome and if he never told you about it when he was alive then he must have left you that information in a will."
Carla tried to interrupt, to stop the avalanche of facts descending on her. "There was no will. I-"
"Let me finish, please. I'm talking about a map, a treasure map and I have part of it and you want it. Your reason for coming here this weekend is as transparent as that blouse you're wearing, Countess, so let's stop screwing around and get down to business!"
"You needn't raise your voice."
Mason exploded uncharacteristically. "I'll raise the goddam roof if I have to! I'll give Shane such an earful it'll leave him plugged up for a month!
I'll-"
"All right," Carla said in a husky voice, "all right. There is no need to pretend further. You are right. Gio, my husband, did tell me about the map and your portion of it." She lowered her eyes.
"Uh huh. So it comes down to the fact that each of us has something the other needs. What do you propose we do?"
"Give me your part of the map," Carla said flatly. Before Mason could erupt, she went on. "It is not as stupid as it sounds, nor do I believe for a moment you're any more stupid than I am. You say we need each other. This is true. I have a part of the map and your portion will give me more of it but will not complete it. For yourself, you have a small portion of the map which does you no good now nor will it help you if you wait a hundred years."
"Go on," Mason said.
"I will go back to our mutual need. When I eventually uncover the treasure, I shall need help in disposing of it. This will have to be done outside Italy. And this is why I need you."
"Why me? There are lots of ways this so-called treasure could be got rid of. The Mafioso-"
"They would take it all without a wave goodbye. No, you are the only way. Your diplomatic immunity protects you. No one would dare search your belongings when you left the country no matter how often. Do you understand now why we need each other?"
"How do I know I could trust you? You could take my part of the map and find the treasure, then keep most of it for yourself and give me a few pennies for what I've given you."
Carla countered with, "And how do I know I could trust you? You could take what I give you to sell, inflate the price of the object and keep most of the money for yourself and give me a few pennies for what I've given you."
"I still think you have more to gain."
"And if I can't dispose of it, does either of us gain anything? You don't have to decide now. You can let me know tomorrow."
"No. The damn thing's been haunting me for years. You may as well take it and get at it. I just can't think about it any more. Something has to be done with it." Mason took down the heavy volume and slipped his portion of the map from it. He handed it hesitantly to Carla. "Do something with it," he said.
"I will. You won't regret this." She gave Mason a heartfelt kiss. "We had better get back now," she said.
CHAPTER SIX
Saturday in Rome was usually an interminable day for Shane, perhaps because he had barely given birth to one column and it was already time to conceive another. He was accustomed to lazing through the day, letting his mind wander in search of an idea, a notion on which to build the next week's work. It was a pattern that had formed over the two months he'd spent in the Eternal City, an endless and unbroken pattern.
Until Saturday at the Mason villa. He was deep in the sheets with residual dreams of Angelina, stirring restively as his sleeping mind recreated her dance of the afternoon before. Her stolid thighs were planted firmly and her hips were rotating, revolving her navel that seemed, with the dimness of the light and the light-headedness of the drinks, to be a dark tunnel leading to the core of her being. Her naked body shimmered with perspiration, her face showed the strain of her marathon effort, a porcelain doll face whose smile had contorted to a grimace. Her hair, longer than he'd remembered it, flailed her shoulders, flecking occasional streaks of blonde across the redness of her nipples clinging to her monumental breasts.
Music roared from the phonograph in a compelling throb of percussion, a building crescendo of brass. Angelina clawed at empty air with outstretched fingers. She began bending backward, thrusting her belly, her hips forward, spreading her legs. Her thatch erupted from the union of her legs and torso like a furry fountain fluming over a triangular area of her lower belly.
As she continued easing back in tempo to the music, her crevice appeared, tight-knit and shy at first, then widening, unfolding until her pink maw was a mouth speaking silently to him and he was fighting with his zipper, massaging his tortured penis through his slacks, wading through what felt to be acres of quicksand to reach her delectable, exposed flesh ... Gong! Gong!
Shane jerked awake, wide-eyed and alert. He tumbled from the bed and belly-crawled beneath it while one hand searched reflexively for a helmet. His ears strained for the sound of "incoming mail," the distinctive and ominous whoosh or whirr or whistle that would tell him his position was in peril.
Comprehension came in the silence, a stillness played upon lightly by the trill of a bird from outside the open window of the room. Gong! Gong!
"Goddamm it!" he snarled, instantly angry, irritated with himself for responding as he had, disconcerted at finding himself in skivvies beneath a bed, and embarrassed because his penis was still rigid from the palpitating ardor of his dream.
Shane crept from under the bed and checked his watch. It was seven-fifteen in the morning. The gong sounded a third time to make him wince as he struggled with his slacks. Beyond his closed door, he could hear the mingling of vociferous Italian mingling with giggling and chuckling. He sorted out the voices of Carla, Mason, and Siv, joined soon by more heated Italian, which he took to be Angelina. He slipped into a shirt and padded to the door.
He blinked sleep from his eyes and regarded the scene before him with a lopsided grin. Mason stood by the gong with the lengthy hammer still in his hand, looking like a fortress besieged by maddened natives. Siv stood tall and straight by his side, bright-eyed and fetching in a tennis costume comprised of a skin-tight white polo shirt that appeared painted on and shorts brief enough to cinch at her crotch while exposing long, lithe legs.
The maddened natives were a bizarre lot. There was Carla, her rump swiveling pertly in bikini pajama bottoms as she unloosed another stream of invective. Angelina's rump, ungirded by any kind of covering, flexed occasionally as she shifted her weight. Rana rounded out the trio, garbed in a hoodless, abbreviated burnoose and sandals. He looked sleepy and a trifle awed.
Mason was about to swing the hammer at the gong a fourth time. "Don't," Shane said.
All eyes turned to him. "Ah, good morning, Mr. Shane," Mason said. "I do hope we didn't unduly startle you from your sleep. The gong was my idea, you see. I'm infatuated with these ancient Roman artifacts."
Shane nodded. "Had one of them in Nam. Damn VC kept banging away with it every sunup. Tickled the hell out of them. I s'pose gongs do that to some people. Anyway, one of our boys rearranged the damn gong with a clip from an M-14. A few 105s rearranged the Cong. Nothing but shreds of black pajamas. Ugly." Shane finished making his point by shaking his head sadly and clucking his tongue.
Mason seemed dismayed. "Yes. Well, it was foolish of me." He forced a laugh that sounded like a bray. He pushed on. "We've got a busy day, all of us. The sauna baths, the pool, the tennis court and skeet range are all at your disposal, my friends. Go to it, be happy, and if there's anything you need, be sure to ask Siv or myself. Our home is your home. There's plenty to eat and drink in the kitchenette just off the main room so feel free to help yourselves. Brunch will be served at eleven-thirty," He slid his arm around Siv's waist. "I'll take you up on that tennis match as soon as I change clothes," he said.
"Begging the pardon of my host and hostess, but I should also like a game of tennis if it can be afforded me," Rana said.
"I'm going for a swim," Angelina announced, luring Shane with her pale blue eyes. "Will you join me?"
"No, thanks," Shane said. He watched as Angelina pranced away. There was a lot of prancing. There was a lot to watch.
Carla glided over to him. "Would the distinguished American reporter care to use the sauna bath with me?" she purred.
"No, I don't think so. I guess there are some things we Americans don't know the worth of, as you said."
Carla said, "It is very early but you are still quick, so quick. Perhaps we will meet later."
"Perhaps." He glanced down at Carla's breasts. Cradled in an inadequate bra-like pajama top, they begged for attention and he gave it to them until Carla ambled off.
He wandered through the day indolently in the role of an observer. He watched Angelina gamboling nude in the pool for a protracted period of time and left her only because he was close to succumbing to the temptation of joining her. He took his brunch apart from the rest and jotted down a few notes as the idea of writing up this gala weekend in column form occurred to him. In the afternoon, he joined Rana and Mason for a satisfying discussion of problems in the Middle East and found both men to be well-informed on the subject, much better so than he and he left them. Afternoon wore on and he told himself he wasn't really trying to find Carla. And he didn't, not until all the guests had assembled around the dining table.
Carla chatted animatedly with Rana at the table. Siv gushed at some length over Angelina's dress, a daringly low-cut affair that threatened to let go of Angelina's massive breasts each time she moved. Shane took the opportunity to scrutinize his hostess. Siv was a stunning female but she reminded him of a predator for no reason he could pinpoint. She was talking to Angelina but her eyes were devouring the broad expanse of Angelina's exposed flesh at the same time. Had Shane not ruled out the random theory as preposterous, he would have been inclined to make an ungentlemanly assumption about the latitude of her sexual interests. But the idea was ridiculous, even for a trained observer, a knowledgable, traveled reporter who could not afford to leap to conclusions.
Somewhere between the apertif and the main course, conversation turned to Shane when he wasn't especially prepared for it. In a moment or two he found himself dragged down from the lofty perch of observer to the center of the stage. It was Mason who first focused a verbal spotlight on him. And it came in a temporary lull, just so everyone would notice and pay attention when Mason fairly boomed his question across the table top.
"Tell me, Mr. Shane, and I'm sure I'm asking the question most of the people in Rome would like to ask, how have you managed to get hold of those intriguing stories about some sort of treasure you've been running in your column?"
"You're right. Everyone in Rome's been asking me," Shane said to avoid an answer.
Carla joined in. "Signor Mason brought your columns to my attention yesterday. Am I flattered in assuming you interviewed me in that regard?"
Shane tried to shrug off Carla. "I haven't fully developed the interview with you into a column. The idea to interview you came after I'd seen pictures of you. I think most men would like to talk to you, Countess, after they've seen your picture."
Angelina's comment went by Shane without acknowledgment. The sight of Carla and Mason exchanging pointed glances interested him but the reasons were intuitive and too vague to define.
Mason was at it again. "I think you sort of side-stepped my question before, Hal, if I can call you that. I asked how you dug up this story about a treasure and a woman with a title being connected to it."
"A good reporter shouldn't reveal his sources," Shane said.
"Bravo for you," Siv said.
Mason persisted. "You can tell us. It won't go any further than this table." His tone was wheedling, almost as if he were begging.
Angelina took a deep breath. As if drawn forth by magnets, her breasts oozed out of her dress and settled firmly as they could, jiggling like two mounds of fleshy gelatin dessert tipped with cherry-red nipples.
Siv's face reflected satisfaction. Mason's jaw dropped. Rana stared. Shane saw all of it after he'd torn his eyes from Angelina's attractive assets.
"I'm sorry," Angelina said. She excused herself from the table. She returned a minute or two later with her breasts gamely stuffed into the same uncompromisingly small and dangerously vulnerable space.
"Let's get back to the treasure story, Signor Shane. I'm enchanted with it," Carla said.
"Yes," Mason agreed. "Do you have any inside information for us? I think you call it advance copy or something like that, don't you?" His gaze went from Shane to Carla and remained there for a few seconds.
Shane noticed. "Suppose I said it was a shabby device to help circulation. Everyone likes mysteries and puzzles. A clue here, a clue there, you know how it goes." He saw at a glance he was not convincing, especially to Mason. And Carla. Intuition nagged at the back of his mind.
When Carla spoke, she seemed to be talking to Shane for Mason's benefit. "Everyone likes puzzles" she said. "It is so exciting to follow the clues. I wish you'd tell us more."
"That's right," Mason said. "Isn't it true that the treasure is buried somewhere near Rome? And isn't there some kind of map involved?"
"I know this is going to be awkward as hell and I don't mean it to be, really. I don't want to beg off or offend all you nice people, but I'm going to have to leave for an hour or so. I've got to get into Rome and put last week's column on the wires," Shane said as he stood up.
"You're leaving?" Siv said.
"I'll be back as soon as I can, I promise," Shane said.
"Look here, old man, I didn't mean to chase you off or anything, you know. I mean to say perhaps I shouldn't have pressed-"
Shane interrupted Mason's statement of anxiety. "No, no, nothing like that. I'll be glad to answer all your questions when I get back. Matter of fact, Harv, if I can call you that, perhaps you and I could get together later for a little interview, sort of." He looked at Siv. "No, dear, I won't forget you, either. That would be impossible." He looked to Rana who was about to plunge into a sulk from being ignored throughout the conversation. "Rana, please excuse me for monopolizing things. When I get back I want to talk to you about your country. I'd very much like to do a bit of writing about it."
Rana brightened. "It would be my honor," he said, the scowl melting from his face.
"I've really got to go now," Shane said. Siv saw him to the door.
The interior of the rented Plymouth gave Shane a welcome respite to silently congratulate his intuition. It had nagged at him and annoyed him and now it was vindicated, freed from doubt by what Mason had said. Of all the people in Rome who had sought him out to satisfy their own curiosity about the treasure, only Mason had been more persistently interested than the rest. Only Mason, seemingly playing to or goaded by Carla, was unwilling or unable to let the matter rest and therein lay the exoneration of Shane's accurate but irritating instincts. A drive back to his apartment confirmed his suspicions. He read the letter again that he'd received from his anonymous tipster two days earlier. It was there, all right; the map was mentioned in the first sentence. So it had to be the simplest of deductions for Shane, the quick grasp of the fact that there was more to Mason's beleaguering questioning than met the eye.
For unless Mason was an extraordinary clairvoyant, he would have no knowledge of information not yet printed in the column. Yet he had that information and had asked about it, information supposedly known to Shane alone.
Shane sensed a story developing and a big one, bigger than a column of trivia, a feature story and a possible exclusive. But first he would need some facts and the New York office had a virtual mountain of facts all neatly and antiseptically microfilmed. He dialled the New York office direct and was pleased when the call went across the Atlantic almost instantly. He was more pleased to get in contact with his friendly nemesis Hank Morris, who announced he'd been given the night desk as a month's punishment tour for having become temporarily impotent from the stress imposed on his flagging organ by Elise's insatiable pussy. The two friends bandied wit back and forth until Shane was forced to become serious.
"I want everything you can dig up on a Harvey Mason. He's a consular official here in Rome. Check on a war record if there is one."
"Will you walk across the water for it or can I call you back? It'll take some time," Hank Morris informed him.
"Get the whole night crew on it, drag 'em away from their girlie magazines, especially the married guys on the staff. While they're at it, see what we have on a man named Santini, a Giovanni Santini."
"Aw c'mon, Hal, that's reaching. I remember seeing the obit on him. He was an industrialist, wasn't he?"
"I think so, I don't know. Look, Hank, trust me and do as I ask, okay? I may be on to something big over here but it's still a little too early to tell. I don't want to put the jinx on it by blabbing it around."
"All right," Hank droned wearily, "I'll see what we've got. Hang on."
Hank got back to Shane a few minutes later. As Hank related a surprising storehouse of facts on Mason and Carla's husband, Shane took notes without interrupting, save for an occasional low whistle of astonishment.
"Is that transcontinental static or have you started shacking with a canary?" Hank wanted to know at one point. He finished reading to Shane the file summaries of the two men. "That's about it," he said. "The rest is real fringe stuff."
"This'll do for now. I gotta run. You can telex the rest. Thanks a million and scusa mi for cutting it short." Shane cradled the receiver before Hank could reply. If he knew Hank, he'd get a reply some way anyway.
Shane did a rapid rewrite on the notes, marveling at how Santini's past dovetailed into Mason's former life at one juncture. He snapped his notebook shut and started for his car. Peaceful rest in Rome, eh? A working vacation, eh? Like hell. He was tracking a scent, playing his hunches, following a trail to the past, feeling the exhilaration and the gut-knotting of breaking a big, secret story. It felt good, damned good to be back in harness. He looked forward to his interview with Mason....
They were all still at the dining table when he returned, all of them gayer now, guzzling instead of drinking their wine, roaring instead of laughing and shouting instead of talking. All of them, that is, except Carla. Though in the midst of the others, she seemed terribly alone, waging some inner battle with herself. Shane announced his return by his presence in the dining room. As usual, he observed without saying anything. Carla saw him first and attempted a pitiful wave. Seeing this, Angelina turned in her chair, her breasts again carelessly exposed, jutting freely over her bodice. She squealed her welcome.
"Signor Shane, you are back. I am so happy!"
Mason cut short his booming laughter and stared blearily at Shane. "Ah, there he is," he said with a slurred tongue, "Newshawk, the champion of truth and justice and defender of the common man!" He swayed to his feet, made a grand, sweeping gesture with his arm, then toppled back into his chair.
"Hope I'm not too late to join the party," Shane said.
"Never too late," Siv said. "Besides, you've simply got to interview Harvey. I want to see his name splashed in great big, capital letters all over your column!" She giggled and pressed her hand to her mouth.
"Precisely," Shane said, glad to be led into the topic without pressing for it. "I came back to immortalize Harvey Mason, Third Consul to the United States Consulate in Rome."
"He makes it sound so-so powerful, doesn't he, Harvey?" Siv said.
Mason grunted. "All right, old man, you're on. Let me fetch you a little old drinkie and we'll get together in my den as soon as you've got your pencils sharpened." Harvey staggered away from the table.
"I don't know about the rest of you but I'm going to have to excuse myself," Carla said. "I've never felt so sleepy in all my life."
"It's the fresh country air," Siv said consolingly. "You go along to bed, dear. We don't mind."
Rana cleared his throat. "I, too, must take my departure from this most esteemed group. In my country the stars have been twinkling above for more hours than man should allow himself to watch them. No matter how long the night, the day comes always too soon. I must rest." He stood and bowed gracefully, then departed.
As Shane was heading for the den, he heard Angelina announce that her throat was parched and that she needed more wine. And he heard Siv respond in an unusual tone of voice that she would stay and chat with Angelina while the men were busy with their business. He discarded what he had heard the two women say and concentrated on getting his mental file in order. He rapped lightly on the door of the den and Mason called for him to come in. Shane entered the den.
"Welcome to my most private cave," Mason said. He gave Shane a drink and said, "It's good to be away from the shrillness of those females for a while, don't you agree?" Without waiting for Shane's answer, he went on, leaning forward to the edge of his chair in a conspiratorial manner. "Now you can tell me, just between the two of us, just what in hell is all this business about a treasure?"
"I wish you'd tell me," Shane said, baiting Mason, counting on Mason's inebriation for help.
It would be a small help at best. As soon as Shane countered his question, Mason sobered considerably. "What is there to tell that I haven't learned from your columns? The titled woman who's very popular in Rome, the vast inheritance in the form of a treasure, the map-"
Shane cut in. "That's twice, Harv. Or should that be Corporal Mason?"
Mason was on guard instantly, as though he'd encountered an electric shock. "What's that?" he snapped without a trace of slurred speech.
"I said that's twice," Shane repeated. He stared into Mason's eyes. "Twice in one evening you've referred to information I receive from an anonymous source." Noting Mason's growing discomfort, Shane stepped up the offensive. "That's right, twice. Once would be a coincidence, but twice you've made mention of a fact I haven't even printed yet. Would you like to ask me about the map again, Corporal? Just what do you know about a map if I only found out about it just two days ago?"
Mason attempted bluster. "Oh, for Christ's sake, man, use your head. What are you trying for here? If there's a buried treasure, one has to assume there's a map. Brush up on your Robert Louis Stevenson." Mason nervously lit a cigarette. "And what's this 'Corporal' business all about? What the hell kind of interview is this, anyhow? Is this how you get your material? You're not going to badger or shock anything out of me, Shane, so you better play a different kind of game because I don't need this crap from you or anybody!"
"Oh, I see. Then the crap quotient is in direct proportion to position, is that it? Let's assume it is, just for the hell of it. Using that assumption, I bet you had to take a hell of a lot of crap back in the big war, didn't you? All the brass shoving you around and giving you crap details like guarding prisoner-of-war camps on the edge of Milan in 1945. Really got to you, didn't it? All them Nazis and Eyties cushing it up, getting good food and a soft bed while you pounded your ass off with an M-l slung over your shoulder and your boots wet and your socks rotting and-"
Galvanized to action by Shane's torrent of words, Mason sprang from his chair and faced Shane squarely. "What the hell is this bull, Shane? What are you getting at? What are you after? Who's picking up your bill?"
"I'll give it to you straight, Mason, right from the top. Nobody picks up my bill but me. I came to Rome for a rest and I was doing pretty good at resting until some numb nuts decided to start sending me unsigned letters about this treasure. I thought it was a joke so I wrote the stuff into my columns. Two things happened then. Giovanni Santini had an accident and died and Rome's jet set decided I was some kind of oracle. I give a damn about any of it until tonight, Mason. You blew it tonight, pal. You were too pushy, too curious. When I left here I went back to Rome and called my office in New York. I had them-"
"You better take that rest, Shane. Leave this thing alone. You look tired. Maybe you're cracking up," Mason grated.
"I can't afford to rest, Mason. Until you opened your mouth tonight I had it whipped but now I've got a long way to go. This isn't just a novelty item anymore. This is a story and I plan to write it. And I'm going to get all the facts I need to do it. I can do it with you or without you Corporal. I don't want to hurt anybody. I just want the story. That's what I'm paid to do. That's how I pick up my bill."
"You're groping in the dark and you want me to light a candle. Let me tell you something, Shane: nobody ever lit any candles for me," Mason sneered.
"Okay. Then let me light up the sky for you. You were in the Military Police in World War Two. You were mustered out as a corporal. I can give you your serial number and the citations and campaign ribbons you earned if you want. Do you?"
"Go on," Mason said, "take some more rope. Take enough to hang yourself."
"Hangings are funny things," Shane said. "In the days of the wild West, they'd get so fired up sometimes they'd hang anybody, even if it was the wrong person. Lotta guys who did wrong things never got hung for doing them. You take the big war, for instance. There's this guard, see, and he's got this bigshot Eytie brass who wants out. The guard takes his fee and turns his head and the Eytie fades into the night. The guard fires a few shots and then reports an escape. Then he goes through life honor bright and never gets hung for what he-"
"All right, goddammit, all right," Mason blurted. He sagged into his chair. "What do you want from me?" he said in a resigned voice.
"Whatever you have to tell me about what you know of the map, the treasure. In short, everything."
Mason began in a low voice. His eyes were closed as if he was re-living the past in his narrative. "It was early 1945. Outside Milan, a POW camp. I was in the MPs as you say. You didn't miss a stinking thing, did you? Anyway, this Santini approaches my post with a guy in a German uniform, rank all over his tunic. He keeps calling the guy 'Herr Heiniger' all the while he's making his escape pitch to me. They gave me money and a part of a map. They said it was a treasure map. Heiniger was more willing to give me a fourth of his. They tore it into halves in front of me."
"You say this Nazi's name was Heiniger? How do you spell that?"
"I don't know. Let's get this over with. I got the map, part of it. A joke. What the hell did I need with a map? They gave me money, lots of it. I rat-holed it; it was a helluva lot more than a corporal could make. Santini and Heiniger beat it. Like you say, I never got charges brought against me. I suppose you have the rest of it. I wound up back in Rome and I met Santini again. It was at one of those trade fairs. It took me a while to place him but I'm sure he recognized me because he avoided me all evening. It was the sheerest coincidence, two ships in the night, that kind of thing. I had kept the portion of the map as a souvenir, a war story. I was going to get close to him to talk about it but he had the accident before I could." Mason heaved a sigh. "That's all of it."
"Uh huh," Shane mused. "Do you still have your part of the map?"
"Yes," Mason lied. "Could I see it?"
"Don't be crude. It's in a safe place."
"What has Carla to do with all this?" Shane watched Mason's reaction carefully. "Nothing."
"Really? She was Santini's wife. Is it coincidence she's here this weekend? Is it coincidence the two of you disappeared for a time yesterday afternoon when Angelina was doing her little dance?"
"Why don't you back off it, Shane? You've presumed a great deal upon me already. I already told you to leave it alone."
"I didn't presume anything, pal. I stated the truth as I knew it and you filled in the gaps. And I'm not going to leave it alone. I told you I want the story that's involved here. And Carla is involved, isn't she?"
"No. I said she has nothing to do with it."
"That's hard to believe. She was closest to Santini There was no public will that I read about and there was enough press coverage of Santini's funeral that such an item would have been given some publicity. The tipster, whoever he is, told me there is a map and you've confirmed it. She has part of the map and you've cooked up something with her, haven't you?"
Mason leaped to his feet again. "No!" he shouted. "It's none of your damned business!"
"That's harder to believe," Shane snapped.
Mason said, "Are you calling me a liar? You blackmailers will stop at nothing, will you? You've got your scabby little story. Go ahead and print it. You won't get anything further out of me with blackmail!"
"Blackmail is a dirty word, Mason," Shane rasped.
"Is it? You practically coerced me into telling you my side of the story with those nasty research files of yours. Then you attempt to blackmail me with my mistake, to make me admit I'm involved in this treasure mess, to drag Carla-"
Mason was too furious, too busy pouring out his thoughts to see the blow coming. Riled considerably at being falsely accused of a crime he had no intent to commit, Shane swung from his belt. His fist traveled in a sloping arc, connecting smartly with Mason's chin just under Mason's lower lip. The strike sent Mason reeling backward, sinking to the floor.
Shane towered over Mason with clenched fists, his temper beginning to ebb as soon as the punch was thrown. "Blackmail is a dirty word," he repeated.
Mason rubbed his jaw. He blinked stupidly at Shane. "You hit me. You crazy son of a "bitch, you actually hit me!"
"I was just trying to correct a speech defect," Shane said. Without another word to Mason, he took his notebook and left the den. He proceeded through the now empty dining room, through the main room to the front door and out into the night.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The typewriter won the staring contest. After a long, long unproductive time it came to resemble the square, squat head of a Yorick, sloping of brow with the legend "Smith-Corona" emblazoned permanently on its forehead. The white keys swam before Shane's eyes, appearing to be a tri-tiered set of teeth in a gaping mouth that grinned at him to mock him and silently jeer him. The blank white sheet of paper erupted from the roller like an angry white mane. In frustration and desperation, Shane slammed the side of the machine with his open hand and winced. It was the hand he had used on Mason.
Shane stared into space. The column trickled through his mind but there was no coalescent theme, just disparate moments making up the past weekend for what he had experienced of it. He snuck sidewise glances at the telephone, determined he wouldn't call New York for help, not again. He had never relied on New York before and he didn't need its smug, incontrovertible memory bank now. Yeah.
The trouble with his mental faculties was Carla and she had been trouble since the day he interviewed her, he admitted reluctantly to himself. Whenever his thoughts about her would achieve an impersonal plane, a flash vision of her naked body would assail his senses to set his penis pounding. Speculation about whether Mason had told her of the interview was difficult in contrast to recalling the memory of her spread thighs, her firm breasts and the dewlet drops of pool water that nestled like tiny diamonds in the rich tuft surrounding her vagina. He got up and shoved his hands into his pockets. He began pacing back and forth like a caged animal. With sufficient will power, he was able to compel his mind to release the etheral spirit of Carla and begin functioning properly. He set his own ideas aside and placed himself in the position of his two antagonists.
First there was Mason. Old, sore-jawed Harvey had only two options as far as Shane was concerned. He could run to Carla with the total story of the interview, but that would involve admitting he'd cracked under pressure and spilled a lot of tight information. Or he could keep his mouth shut and ride out any eventual storm, hoping some chips would fall his way. Most of what had been wheedled out of him corresponded with what Hank Morris had come up with in New York but Mason had h-edged on showing the map. That part was all right; the man was in his own home and he could use the map for crap paper if he wanted to. What wasn't all right, in fact downright pathetic, was the he about Carla not being involved.
And what about Carla? Could she suppose his interviewing her indicated suspicion that she was the titled lady? How did her mind work? Was it pure coincidence that she was making that weekend at the Mason villa? She must have had something to discuss with Mason, having disappeared with him for nearly three-quarters of an hour as she did. And the questions at the dining table, the looks exchanged between the two?
Shane's pacing grew slower as he got deeper into thought. He had to presume Carla had the map. Santini had had the map and would have willed it to her; Italian husbands were sometimes notorious back-door men but they were always good to the wife and kids. Okay, she had Santini's map and very probably had put out or offered Mason some cockamamy scheme for his part of the map which would account for his reluctance to produce for Shane what he no longer had. If he were Carla, Shane reasoned, he would track down the one remaining sector of the map and negotiate for it or become partners with the owner of it. Recalling Mason's confession, that man was Heiniger. Now then, who the hell was Heiniger and where was he?
"Uh huh," Shane said aloud. "Didn't need that smug, incontrovertible memory bank, huh? Didn't want to go to Daddy for help, huh? Okay, Newshawk, pick up the phone and call New York. And try not to make any more of those phony promises to yourself, huh?" Purged of his self-disgust, Shane dialled the operator....
Four Pratt and Whitney jets whined and roared and the cabin shuddered and the huge Pan American jet lifted off the runway of Leonardo Di Vinci Airport in Rome. Shane settled back and watched the ground recede below him from his window seat. Then he watched the "No Smoking" sign until it was out and he lit up a cigarette. He unzipped his briefcase and took out the manila folder containing all the information New York had accumulated on Heiniger, scowling at his atrocious handwriting. He put his written notes aside and scanned the telex that provided the full resume of Heiniger's career. It made easier, if more grisly reading.
"S.S. Oberstgeneral Heiniger, Kurt Johann, born in Regensburg, Bavaria, October 28, 1915/ Gymnasium, Oberschule Regensburg 1929/ University of Munich 1931/ University of Heidelberg 1933." A whiz kid, Shane thought. He read on.
"Joined Nazi Party 1934, S.A. commission to S.S. 1934, Captain. Assigned Flensburg 1936, Major. Assigned Dachau Concentration Camp 1939, Colonel. Transfer Waffen S.S. to Totenkopfbrigade-Deathshead Division 1940." Shane whistled softly. The kid had gone right up through the ranks like he was on greased skids. Where the hell did they get all this trivial crap anyway? Shane had to reach back in his memory for the infamy of Dachau. The kid got his hands dirty at the age of 24. A man who should have known better. Nazi bastard. Transferred to the Deathshead butchers in 1940. He was lapping it up, the kid was. He liked blood. Shane ordered a cocktail from the stewardess, feeling he might need one. He knew he needed one after he read the next paragraph.
"Assigned Eastern Front, Russian Campaign, July 1941, General rank. Command responsibility for pogroms against Russian Jewish populations of cities of Odessa, Minsk, and Kiev. Russian figures place death figures at two hundred fifty thousand approximate."
Shane downed his cocktail in one gulp and told the stewardess to refill the glass. He remembered his first search-and-destroy mission in Vietnam. Separated from stark death until then by his world-roving assignments, he quailed at the sight of ten dead Vietcong. Ten. And Heiniger had the deaths of a quarter of a million poor souls on his head. The figure was incomprehensible, beyond belief. He had no desire to complete reading the report but he had to get the facts clear in his head before he dozed. He turned his attention reluctantly to the telex.
"German retreat and intense Russian partisan activity to liquidate Heiniger prompted transfer to Western Front, Italian Campaign, August 1943 General rank. Transferred to Waffen S.S., Milan sector. Heiniger disappeared from Milan sector approximate July 1944. Heiniger was condemned to death in absentia by Nuremberg Tribunal, 1945. This man is still alive, believed to be residing this date in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Informed sources in Tel Aviv tell us Israeli 'Eichmann team' closing the net on Heiniger." There followed two lines recognizable at once from the drab report as an addendum by Hank Morris giving reference to telephonic communication between New York and Rome and dropping the name "Elise" out of context in one sentence.
Shane smiled at Hank's brief message. He had felt positively asinine when Hank had told him a scrambler device was being used on the transatlantic call so that the address Now magazine was furnishing him, courtesy of the Israelis, could not be intercepted by anyone. Shane looked at that address now as though it was engraved in gold and in a way he imagined it was. There were doubtless a magnitude of relatives attached to two hundred fifty thousand people; the survivors would each of them like to spend a few minutes alone with Kurt Heiniger. Shane could only guess how it had been handled but he had received authority from the Israelis to go in to see Heiniger in advance solely on the merit of his credentials as a respected reporter. Time was of the essence. The Israelis would soon drop the net on Heiniger. He smiled. It was something Carla didn't know, bless her scheming little heart. Once captured and returned to Israel, Heiniger wouldn't chitchat about treasure maps....
Lugging a vacuum cleaner as a cover, Shane trudged up the steps leading to the residence of Senor and Senora Jaime Armandez. The house was plain and slightly weathered but the grass on both sides of the sidewalk was cut and flower beds neatly groomed -lined the walkway. The typical Teutonic passion for orderliness, Shane mused.
A young woman answered the door. Thinking she was Heiniger's maid, he said, "Good afternoon, Senorita. Is the lady of the house at home?"
"I am Senora Armandez. May I help you?"
Shane squinted and took another look. The Senora was a pretty woman, a trifle shorter than he. Her eyes were nearly as dark as her glossy black hair. Her face had a natural radiance cosmetics could only smother and the plain housedress she was wearing could not conceal the lushness of her ripe young body. Shane had expected an older woman. Had he given it any thought he would have remembered the telex had not mentioned a marriage in Heiniger's past. The whiz kid was still clicking-this delectable morsel confronting him would be excellent cover since she was obviously a native Argentinian and a helluva lot of woman besides. The crafty Kraut had fooled him but he recovered quickly.
"Would you be interested in buying a vacuum cleaner? The price is modest and you must see the results to believe them. I would feel terrible if you did not let me demonstrate this model for you."
"I do not think so. I shall be moving soon. I-"
"Moving, you say? Then you must have this marvelous machine. The new home will need cleaning," Shane said. He gave Heiniger's wife his best grin.
"You are very persuasive. Please come in." Her eyes told Shane before she spoke that he had won her over.
Shane stepped inside. "Is your husband home? He must see this machine. I will not sell it to you until he does. I can be no fairer than that."
"Yes, you can. You can tell me who you are and why you are here. You are not selling vacuum cleaners, are you?" She took a step back. "I do not believe you are from Argentina at all, are you? There have been so many like you. Are you an American?"
Shane drooped. The woman was so candid and honest without anger he could not keep up the foolish charade. He nodded. "You're right," he said. "I don't know one end of this infernal contraption from the other and I am an American."
"And you want to see my husband."
"Yes, in a word. Will he be home soon, Senora?"
"Call me Astrid. They all have. They come and they linger and I tell them Jaime will be home tomorrow afternoon and they do not wait. They go away and do not come back. They come from many foreign countries."
The loneliness Shane thought he'd detected in Astrid's eyes was clearly evident now in her voice. It was a shame to see so beautiful a woman so lonely. Yet her face did not reflect the hell she had to have gone through as. the wife of an international war criminal. He said, "I would very much like to meet Jaime. You don't mind if I wait a while for him, do you?"
"I would be pleased if you would take dinner with me," Astrid said. "I always cook for Jaime but he never comes in the evening."
"I would find it difficult to stay away from a woman as pretty as you," Shane said sincerely.
Astrid brightened. "Thank you," she said. "Jaime does not always want to stay away from me either. He has his reasons, good ones."
"I'm sure he does," Shane said cryptically.
If Shane's remark struck home, Astrid did not react. "You did not tell me who you are," she said. "I am at somewhat of a disadvantage. It is strange to like a person without knowing his name."
Shane wondered if he was being conned; if he was, it was a pleasant feeling. He considered briefly how many times Astrid had had to re-enact a scene such as this with all those foreigners who "come from many foreign countries."
"My name is Hal Shane," he said. "I'm pleased to meet you, Astrid." He extended his hand and Astrid took it. Her hand felt like a delicate bird, soft and warm, trapped within his.
Astrid withdrew her hand slowly, squeezing Shane's fingertips gently. "Dinner will hie ready soon. Would you like a beer? It is imported from Germany. My husband has a taste for it."
Shane nodded. "A beer would be fine," he said. Astrid brought him a bottle of Lowenbrau, then excused herself and went into the kitchen. Left alone, Shane sipped his beer from the bottle and meandered around the living room. It was a strange feeling to be in a house, someone's literal home. He had never had more than an apartment himself, some good, some adequate, some terrible. This was a home, a home with love, or its viable substitute, in it. Shane recalled reading about the butchers of Dachau; they went off to conduct their heinous medical experiments and their inhuman gassings and cremations and returned to small cottages ever surrounded by cultivated rose gardens and flowers such as he's seen lining the walk outside. Heiniger was true to form.
Thinking of the name and the man brought him back to reality. Without trying too hard, he sought out tokens of the man who inhabited this home with that lovely creature in the kitchen. There were no pictures of the man, understandably enough, but there was nothing else in the room to indicate in the slightest the man lived here. In short, it was the home of the hunted; there was no trace of the pursued, no clue.
Shane wandered into the kitchen. "Hope you don't mind the intrusion," he said. "That room out there is, uh, kind of cold, uh, er, without you."
"You see me at my worst," Astrid said, brushing a stray strand of hair into place. "A man should never see a woman that way."
Shane didn't think so. There were shafts of sunlight coming through the open window, falling on Astrid. Sitting at the kitchen table, he was able to discern the shape of her legs beneath the house dress. Looking more intently, he saw that Astrid was quite naked beneath the flimsy attire that clung to her breasts and her hips. He admired her olive-hued skin, the motions she made standing at the stove. She was, he decided, an enigma and a lonely one at that, unlike any woman he had ever met. She seemed to want nothing for herself, she made no complaints; she was pleasant and pleasurable to be with and she needed someone, anyone, he sensed, just another human being. He wanted to screw her; given the smallest opportunity, the slightest opening, he would. If he could.
Dinner was stew. Shane ate like a trencherman, going back for seconds. Astrid's face showed her pleasure. "Is it good?" she said.
"It is good. So are you."
Astrid thanked Shane for the compliment. Then she said, "You do not simply want to see my husband, do you. I mean, there is more to it than that, isn't there." It was more a statement of fact than a question.
"I wish there wasn't, having met you, but there is," Shane said. He pushed his plate away. "You see, Astrid, I know who your husband is. He isn't really Jaime Armandez."
Astrid sagged against the back of her chair. "Somehow I felt that you knew. I watched you in the living room. So many of them who have come here do that. They look and they find nothing and they come to me as you did. Sometimes I wish just one out of all of them would come to see me, be as interested in me as they are in Kurt Heiniger."
The mention of Heiniger's name coming from Astrid's lips gave Shane a startled moment. "I'm sorry," he said, meaning it.
"As am I," Astrid said. "You are different from the others. You are not as-as intense. Yes, that is the word. I don't think you mean harm to my husband. I wish he were here. He would enjoy meeting you."
"You must love him a great deal."
"I care for him. He is not young, over fifty years of age. You knew who he is when you came here. I know who he is as well but that does not matter. I do not know him for what he was or what he did but for what he is now. He has been good to me. I have wanted for nothing, not a thing except my friends." Her eyes grew moist. "We have no friends. I see no one. It is lonely. I am lonely." She pressed her hands to her face. No sobs came. In a moment she was in control of herself again. "He asked nothing of me except that we use my maiden name. I do not know the reason and I do not care."
"You didn't have to tell me all this," Shane said by way of consolation.
"You do not understand," Astrid said. "I told you what I did because I wanted to. I wanted to talk to you, Hal Shane. I like you, Hal Shane. Let us go into the living room. The radio plays good music in the evening. Kurt has found a station on the short wave. It broadcasts from Hamburg. Sometimes he cries a little when he listens to the German. I pretend I do not notice. Come, let us see what we can find on the radio. You can select what you like. You will have to excuse me while I get out of this horrid dress. I do not wish my own mother to see me this way."
"Looks fine to me," Shane said warmly.
"I shall put on something special-for you. No, do not worry. My husband will not be home this evening. And if he were to come, he would not be angry with me. Or with you. He trusts me. Let me give you another beer and we shall get comfortable in the other room, all right?"
"Sounds fine to me," Shane said, astounded at his own command of the language.
Astrid emerged from her room a few minutes later as Shane was giving the room one last, futile sweep in an attempt to learn something, anything about Kurt Heiniger.
"You do not give up easily, Hal Shane," Astrid said softly.
"Huh?" Shane turned toward the direction Astrid's voice came from. She had got out of her horrid dress, all right, but what she had got into, and barely at that, was a puzzle to Shane. He didn't worry about it. There was the outline of her breasts pressing against the flimsy gauze, the miniature mounds her nipples would make. And below, where her legs moved to waft the thin material lazily in front of her was the dark forest at the crest of her thighs, and the faint evidence of her smooth, long legs that moved her hips ever so slightly from side to side as she seemed to drift across the room to him.
"Do you like it?" Astrid said.
"It's special, just like you said it would be. There doesn't seem to be much of it but there sure as hell is a lot of you in there."
Astrid turned her back to Shane. "Zip me up," she said.
"Okay." Anything would have been okay at that point. His forehead looked like it might crease permanently, his ears felt hot, his tongue like a wad of cotton. His fingers dangled thick and heavy from his hands like swollen sausages and there was something else swollen, dangling not at all and he dared not look down to see how much of himself was protruding, pushing at his slacks. Where she was bare beneath the filmy material, her skin was warm and electrical to his touch. He tried to avoid touching her skin. He could more easily have avoided breathing.
"I can't seem to find the zipper," he said.
"Feel beneath the folds of cloth," Astrid instructed him.
Shane did as he was told. When he had gathered two fistfuls of cloth and had still found no zipper, he opened his mouth to protest. It was then that he suddenly had all the material he needed. Astrid glided free of the diaphanous cloak, her bare cheeks bouncing saucily, compelling him to stare. Before she turned to him, she did something with her hands at the nape of her neck. Her long black hair cascaded down her back and over her shoulders. She shook her lustrous mane as she revolved toward him with taunting languor.
There was a haughtiness about her as she stood naked before him. Her hair trailed down to the swells of her breasts, luring his gaze to her tiny, deep-brown nipples. Her eyes glistened and she let her tongue lick meaningfully at her lips. Her face seemed drawn taut with pride commingling with feminine lust. She was the eternal female, her torso shaped as a classic hourglass through which pass the sands of men's lives. She offered everything to him without moving, without speaking.
Shane croaked his way out of his speechlessness. "What do we do now?"
Astrid extended her arms to him. "Come to me, Hal Shane. Let me hold you as I want you to hold me. Let me feel your lips and your body next to mine. Make love to me, Hal Shane."
Shane shook his head slowly. His feet wanted to fly to her but he stood still. "It isn't any good, Astrid. You're spoken for."
"I am tied to no one here but you because we are alone together in this time, in this place, you and I. If you will not come to me, I will come to you."
She did. Her breasts jiggled heavily as she closed the distance between herself and Shane. She did not so much embrace him as engulf him, colliding roughly with him, wriggling sensuously against him. Her lips pecked at his neck, tugged at his earlobe, grazed his cheek. "Oh, God, I'm so lonely, Hal Shane. I need you!"
Shane tried to disentangle himself without any real desire to do so. She was like a kitten cuddling to him, asking him without words to pet her, to keep her from her loneliness, to give her the love and attention she craved so desperately.
"I don't like it." When she stiffened, he hastened to explain. "I mean I do like it. It's your husband...."
"I do not worry about him and you mustn't. Let us go into my bedroom. You must love me or I will go crazy!"
He was hardly through the door of her room when the lonely kitten became a tigress, flailing and clawing at his clothing, disrobing him more rapidly than he could ever do so himself. When she came to his prick she tugged it free of his shorts and fondled it hungrily. She caught the thick flesh tube at its hairy base with her thumb and forefinger connected and stroked tenderly back and forth with her fingers squeezing before she massaged the underside of it to the satiny flesh of her belly.
Shane's last thoughts of Heiniger were dispeled. "Let's go," he said gruffly. He stripped off his shorts and led Astrid to her bed.
Astrid arranged herself on the bed. She slid a pillow beneath her rump and spread her legs wide. She held open the lips of her gash with her fingers. "In there. Quickly!" she urged.
He sank into her, surprised at the tightness of her, inching forward until she heaved her hips upward and lubricated his way. He moved back and forth and she came again, wrapping her legs about his, butting his rump with her heels, goading him to increase the fury of his stroke until he was not rising and falling but drawing back and plummeting into her. Laved with her love nectar, he sank effortlessly into her, brutally nudging her clitoris aside, striving for the innermost depths of her where he grew iron hard and shot jets of sperm into the elastic dampness of her pussy.
They lay side by side afterward, their bodies touching in the loose and tender communion of lovers having shared their intimacies. "You will stay the night," Astrid said.
"I can't do that. Your-"
'"Your husband, your husband,'" she mocked. "By the Madonna, Hal Shane, have you no sense at all? Do you think I would have let you enter this house if there were the slimmest chance my husband would come home? Do you think I would have pranced about without clothing or would have given myself to you?"
It came to Shane gradually Astrid wasn't telling all she knew. "Your husband isn't coming tomorrow. And I don't suppose he'll be coming the day after tomorrow, either," he sighed.
"He is not in Argentina at all. The men from Israel-the ones who caught Adolf Eichmann-they were very close to catching Kurt. He did not want that. He went away."
"Where?"
"I am fond of you, Hal Shane, even though I will never see you again, but surely you know I could not tell you that. Such information would make you rich and a widow of me."
"You probably won't believe this but I don't want to see your husband harmed. It is vital that I talk to him."
"If you do not want him for the Israelis, why do you want to see him?"
"I'm an American journalist. I'm writing a story, I mean I want to write a story. That doesn't make sense to you. Let me try it this way. Did Heiniger ever mention the name of a Giovanni Santini?"
Astrid nodded. "He said they were friends in the last war. Why?"
"Did he ever mention a treasure, a map leading to that treasure?"
Astrid gave a bitter laugh. "Oh, that," she said scornfully. "The great treasure. A dream like the dream that I'll ever find peace with my man."
"It ain't no dream, baby. It's for real. Your man could use that treasure, maybe. So could you. Maybe you could buy your peace eventually, go somewhere in this wide world where you'd never be bothered again and you wouldn't need to worry about money or the police or anything. You see, Astrid, you've given me every reason to be fond of you, too. I'd like to see you have your peace even though, as you say, we'll probably never see each other again. Now, are you willing to tell me where your husband is?"
"I want to believe you, Hal Shane."
"You can. You have to. Please, Astrid? It's important to both of us."
Astrid eased herself off the bed. "I will get the address for you. It is a city in the Middle East. I cannot pronounce the name."
Shane watched her go. So Heiniger was out of the country, halfway across the world? God, look at that butt on her. She's a helluva lot of woman. It would be easy to-his random thoughts were broken by the jangling of a telephone. It seemed out of place.
Astrid returned eventually. She handed Shane a slip of paper. "It must be true," she said.
Shane examined the paper. Rlyadh? Where the hell, oh, Kuwait. Kuwait. That would be by Lebanon if he remembered his geography. "What must be true?" he said absently.
"That telephone call was from a Carla Santini," Astrid said. "She asked for the same information you did."
Shane prepared to melt into a small puddle on the bedspread. "What did you tell her?"
"Nothing at first. If you had not said what you did, I would have thought her an Israel agent. Then she told me things about her husband and my husband, things Kurt had told me, information only Santini's wife would know. I gave her the address over the telephone. Now I have given it to you. It is really such a small world."
"Not small enough," Shane grated. He hopped from the bed. "I think I better get goin'," he said.
Astrid froze his movements by cradling his balls in her hand. "Go tomorrow," she said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Carla cradled the telephone receiver diffidently in her hand. She had always thought the damned thing a nuisance but at this minute it was an instrument to be cherished. The words she had heard from Buenos Aires-how many thousands of miles away was that?-had been the final entry in the ledger. All the chips were down and she had the winning hand in the form of a slip of paper telling her Heiniger's whereabouts.
She had the smug look of self-satisfaction she usually wore when she'd done something particularly exciting. Or unethical. Were she not so thrilled with being close to the end of her hunt, she would have taken time to congratulate herself on her cleverness and tenacity. It had been tenacious not to throw up her hands and lament she would never find Heiniger. It had been clever to think of going through Gio's effects to find the cache of letters written from Argentina over the years. It had been cleverer knowing what to look for; Heiniger would never have been stupid enough to use his own name even when hiding. She had pored over the letters until she had sorted out all references to things Latin. By elimination and cross-reference, she narrowed the possible aliases Heiniger might be using down to three.
Clever and cleverer, but cleverest was facing the issue without panic, calling on the cooperation of the transatlantic operators instead of hieing off to Argentina on a wild goosestepper's chase. It had worked on the second call. She had said simply, "Signor Giovanni Santini would be interested in seeing Senor Armandez' collection of maps and charts." The woman in Buenos Aires had said all the right things, bless her.
"Who were you talking to on the telephone?"
She had been too busy with her triumph to hear Marco enter the room. When he spoke to her from behind, as he did invariably, an insansate fury overwhelmed all her joy. She wheeled around and glared at him.
"You were listening!" she accused.
Marco reasoned with her. "Why would I ask you who you were talking to if I had been listening? I just now came into the room, my love. What's that slip of paper?"
Carla crushed the paper into a small ball and jammed it into her bra. "Nothing," she said, hoping her eyes didn't reflect the guilt she felt. When would he stop his damned prying? If he knew something, why did he always approach it in such a roundabout fashion?
"I came to see you because I think it's time we had a talk," Marco said.
Aha! At last! Her mind began thinking in terms of countermoves. "What did you want to talk about, Marco?" She noted instantly the effect of her wariness on Marco and wished she'd been more pleasant, more misleading. Oh, the hell with it.
"Well? Go on, what is it?"
"I suppose this is it, the tone of your voice when you talk to me, the way you rebuff me when I come near you. Dear Carla, I am your fiance and that gives me a few rights although not as many as I had assumed earlier, I've discovered. I know that I did wrong with Angelina and I have tried to pay the price for it but you do not seem willing to settle."
"Let's just forget it," Carla said wearily. He was off on his own tangent again, clarifying nothing, explaining nothing, talking to hear the sound of his own voice.
"There, you see? You have been this way since you returned from your weekend with those Americans. You challenge me, accuse me and you scorn my touch. You told me every minute would be an hour until you returned to my arms. Ha! My arms have been empty and I have been rejected. I have been rejected, in fact, since I gave you that slip of paper Gio willed me."
"That's nonsense," Carla said. He was closing in; he had to be put off the scent. But God, to give of her body again? To make him the little boy panting after the earth mother? To admit that there was some magic in that flesh wand of his dangling between his legs? To admit the width and breadth of it had assuaged her aching flesh so many times and could do so again? She couldn't be as maniacal as Siv, trotting out her sex for kicks whatever the route or cost. And she couldn't be like Angelina, heedlessly spreading her legs for every cock on the walk, crying afterward she couldn't help herself ad infinitum ad nauseum. And she couldn't be like Shane, damn him to hell, wanting but not taking, resisting willfully with moral strength and integrity. What was the sense in all of it?...." wish you would take my declaration of love as I meant it," Marco was saying. "You're not even letting me try to prove how much I love you."
Carla took Marco's hand. "You must forgive me. I have things on my mind," she said truthfully. Then, for balance, she lied. "Perhaps it is an aftereffect of Gio's passing. I did not mourn as I might have."
"No one can know of mourning but the mourner," Marco said diplomatically. "You showed the grief you had in your heart."
Like a sword, Marco's last thought had two edges. Carla decided not to challenge it. "I know I've been bitchy, my love," she told him. "I need to have a rest, to get away from all of this. I feel like going somewhere totally foreign, a place where everything is new, where I can lose myself and just be enchanted and intrigued."
"Paris?" Marco offered.
"Paris is Rome in French," Carla said. "I want to go somewhere exotic like Bombay. Or Beirut or Cairo. Wait a moment, I know where I want to go." She fished the crumpled paper from her bra and spread it out. "Here it is. Rlyadh."
"There is no such place," Marco said.
"Ah, but there is. And a dashing Arabian prince lives there." She had no idea where Rana Semal came from but she would have to use some excuse other than telling Marco she was searching for Heiniger.
"You've been drinking."
"I had been-at the Masons' home. The Arabian prince was there. He invited me to spend some time in his country," she lied. With Marco it was pathetically easy.
"Here's what I want you to do. Go to Rome and get my passport straightened away. Make an airline reservation for me. When you come back, I will be waiting for you." She gave Marco a broad wink. "I promise."
Marco acted stunned. "Do you really mean that?"
"Yes, my lover. And when I return from my visit, we will have to get our heads together about our marriage."
"Prima!" Marco roared. He took Carla by her forearms and danced a small jig with her.
"You mustn't tire yourself," Carla cautioned.
"Not a chance. My darling, you don't know what it means to see you being yourself again!"
"I won't be myself until you're inside me," Carla cooed. "You must go now and do my chores. And bring back some champagne."
"I will race the wind," Marco said. "And I need no champagne. I will make you sparkle and bubble and froth."
"You are a hopeless romantic," Carla teased. "Go along with you now."
As soon as Marco had departed, Carla called Siv Mason. She out-riposted and out-conned Siv with elan until she was in possession of Rana's address and a wish for happy hunting from Siv. She was amazed to find that Rana resided in Kuwait near the city of Rlyadh. She called in a telegram to Rana telling him in her cable that she planned to visit Rlyadh. Then she took a shower and afterward annointed her body with sweet oil. She stretched herself out on the bed and waited.
Marco returned, fairly bounding into her room with half his clothing already removed. When he spied her stretched out indolently, he emitted a lustful whoop and dived for her. She accepted his powerful prod willingly, succumbing to the pleasure of him as he carved his way deep into her.
But she didn't bubble. Or sparkle, or froth. She thought perhaps she might be tired, or bored. Or both. It could be, as well, that her mind was already far away from the bed on which she lay under Marco's heaving flanks.
Marco announced later he'd had a wonderful time but she knew Marco was little more than a randy stag who would have a good time with two pounds of liver in a milk bottle. Marco simply had no class.
He had been a good lay, though. If that's all there was to life.
It wasn't.
Carla deplaned at Rlyadh's provincial airport and followed her baggage through customs. Completing her formalities, she was about to pick up her suitcases when an ancient appeared from nowhere, his head swathed in a turban and a beard of wild shrubbery mushrooming from his cheeks and chin. His gnarled hands took Carla's bags.
"Allow this humble servant to aid you, madame. Follow me, please?"
Carla glanced about the small reception room. There was no sign of an emissary from Rana. Oh well, it had merely been a whim anyway. To the spry oldster toting her bags she said, "Will you be able to guide me to a good hotel?"
The old man said nothing, as if he hadn't heard. He led Carla through the glass doors of the reception room and into the blistering heat of Rlyadh. Perspiration sprang immediately to her forehead but the old man remained cool in his floppy, immaculate burnoose, moving methodically toward an elegant Rolls parked a little distance away. He approached the car and put Carla's luggage in the trunk. Then he held the rear door open for her.
"My master sends his regrets that he could not come to meet you personally," he said. "Please enter the car, madame. If you allow it, I will take you to his humble abode now."
Carla stepped into the Rolls. She suspected the best but asked her question anyway. "Is Rana Semal your master?" The old man's term for his employer felt strange on her tongue. Do you suppose he's a, I mean actually a-a slave? she mused. The thought sent a small shiver down her spine. What she had said to Marco about coming to a land where all was foreign was coming true very soon.
"Yes, madame. I am Nessef. I served the master's great father and I have had the privilege of serving the master since he was a child. We will go now."
Carla watched out the window. The sight of people moving through the streets in what she considered those sheeted costumes reminded her constantly she was in an alien world although she did see men and women in Western dress and an abundance of Volkswagens and Mercedes. The car soon left the teeming city behind and proceeded on a road that plowed through the white, sparkling desert sands. The brilliant sun cast blinding flashes on dunes that rolled endlessly on like sandy waves. On the crest of a mountainous dune some distance away she spied a camel caravan plodding slowly as those caravans had plied their trading routes for centuries. The scenery and the sands gave her a feeling of timelessness. It filled her with restfulness and she sank into the plush leather cushions of the Rolls and savored the comfort of the car's air-conditioning.
The journey neared its end when Carla peered through the windshield ahead and spied a cluster of walled buildings capped with minarets in the distance. The structure miraculously resembled the Taj Mahal, stolen from India and plopped down in the desert. A towering television aerial sprouted incongruously from the sand nearby. Humble abode, indeed.
Rana greeted her with a wave at the main gate. Somehow, in his natural setting, he looked like the summation of virility personified togged out in sandals and shorts that hugged his thighs and a casual pullover that advertised the breadth of his shoulders. His tawny skin made the ensemble shimmer in the sunlight. When he hopped into the Rolls, Carla noted for the first time the complete lack of hair on Rana's arms and legs. It was, for a woman used to Western men, a curiosity.
"I received your cable. So glad you could come to see me," Rana said.
"And I thank you, kind sir, for taking in a wandering traveler who is strange to your land."
She was led by Rana through the wide, airy corridors of his spacious castle. Impressed, she said, "I never dreamed this sort of thing existed."
"That is understandable. I had never dreamed the magnificence of your cities existed until I saw them. I hope you will enjoy your stay here at my quarters which pale before your beauty."
Carla liked that. She showed it. "You are a true gentleman, Rana. There aren't many of you left. I want to get to know you better."
"There will be time. It would afford me immense pleasure." Rana paused by a massive stone door. The ubiquitous Nessef, trailing a discreet length behind, came forward and pressed a button. The mammoth door began to slide open.
"Your bath," Rana explained. "After you have washed the desert from your ivory skin we will talk. You must be hungry. I'll have something prepared. I will leave you for now. Nessef will bring you to me when you are ready."
Carla stepped into what she thought was surely a scene from one of Angelina's movies. The floor and walls were done in blue tile and crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling. In the center of the room was a marble bath filled with placid green water. There was the aroma of perfume in the air. Three nubile young girls dressed in filmy pantaloons but barebreasted approached her with giggles and gently disrobed her. They led her to the bath and guided her down the marble stairs into the water. It was warm and felt good.
The three girls shucked off their pantaloons and joined her in the bath. They fell to bathing her tenderly, first washing her with jasmine-scented soap and then cleansing her soaped skin with pitchers of water scooped from the bath. They paid meticulous attention to her breasts and her pussy, giggling a good deal as they ministered to tits that were bloodless white to their eyes and larger than their own budding mounds. They chatted gaily about her luxuriant mound, possessed only of kinky scrub themselves. After they were done bathing Carla, they led her back up the marble stairs and annointed her skin with oil that disappeared as it was rubbed into her. Lastly they wrapped her in a garment having the best features of a sari an sarong and draped a matching robe over her shoulders. Then one of them summoned Nessef.
Rana awaited her at a long table piled high with steaming delicacies. Carla joined him and ate until she felt her belly would burst. So good was the exotically prepared food that for one mad moment in the course of the meal she reverted to her gutter manners of Naples years back and impolitely licked her fingers.
"This is delicious," she enthused. "What is it?"
"Lamb. It is a staple in our poor land."
Carla looked around. "Poor?"
Rana smiled. "This is my principality, I believe you would call it. What you see here is in no measure shared by our working people. Please forgive me if I change the subject but I am interested in why you came to see me."
"I have business in Rlyadh. An unclosed account of my husband's."
"Perhaps I could help," Rana offered.
Carla considered what Rana had said. Perhaps Rana could help her to find Heiniger, especially if he were no longer at the same address. Rana might give her her quarry for a share of the treasure. She decided to unburden herself to someone for the first time since reading Gio's letter.
"Do you remember the dinner at the Masons' villa? The talk of treasure and a map? Well that is not rumor, it is fact. I have with me three-fourths of that map left me by my husband. The remaining quarter belongs to a friend of his who is believed to be here in Rlyadh."
"I see. I'm sure my men could find this person for you."
"I would be very grateful. You would be well rewarded, Rana."
"Rewarded? With all this?" Rana waved a hand disparagingly at the surrounding ostentation. "This is an accident of birth but it is mine and there is more than enough for me and my heirs to perpetuity. I need no more wealth. But I will aid you in any way I can as a favor I want very much to do for you."
"Thank you, Rana," Carla said with sincerity.
"Now that we are done with formality, I would like you to join me in the other room. Your cable gave me a chance to plan for your stay. I have arranged a divertissment I hope you will enjoy."
Carla followed Rana into the next room. Against one wall of the room stood three men with musical instruments. The room was lit dimly; on the right side center was a dais with large, fluffy pillows placed side by side. Rana sat down cross-legged on one of the pillows and invited Carla to do the same. She managed the feat with some difficulty.
"What you are about to see is offensive to many in the West," Rana said. "If you are offended by the display, please tell me and I will stop it at once."
"I think I have a pretty high tolerance level,' Carla said.
"Good. We will proceed."
When Rana clapped his hands, six girls, all o them naked, appeared from the left. The musicians began clanging their bells, clashing cymbals and beating on the crude drum one of them held aloft The pulchritude of the girls was uneven; one hac bovine breasts, the next had runted pimples for breasts outweighed by a pot belly. The third and fourth were a matched chest set and the fifth and sixth appeared as little girls with the area of their mons veneris shaven bald to show the hairless creases of their vaginas.
The girls performed a ritual dance in tune to the atonal cacophony for a time and then, at a signal unseen, began pawing at each other, squeezing the breasts and fingering the crotches of one another. One by one, they all dropped to the floor in a position of submission, their legs open wide, their hips rotating suggestively.
A handsome, well-muscled male with close-cropped blond hair and oiled torso came from the left. He surveyed the girls with an air of boredom, then whipped off the short, wraparound cloth he was wearing to expose the thickest, longest penis Carla had ever seen. She gasped audibly.
"Will you continue to watch?" Rana said.
Carla nodded dumbly, her eyes fixed on the man's burgeoning tool.
Rana nodded at the young blond god. He dropped to his knees, seizing his immense organ with both hands. He approached the first girl and eased himself into her until it was obvious she achieved orgasm. He continued this performance down the line until his prick glistened and five girls lay asprawl, their flesh damp with their exertions.
The blond man hovered over the sixth, the one with melon breasts. He took her breasts in his hands as one would examine grapefruit. She guided his potent prod into her. When he neared his climax, he jerked her up by her breasts. She took his organ in her mouth.
Carla turned her head away. When she looked back, the troupe had gone.
"I will go to bed now, I think," Carla said.
"Yes," Rana agreed. "Tomorrow is Friday. You mustn't miss the busy morning in the city square."
Carla found out next day what Rana meant. In the ancient Middle East the Code of Hammuribi and its derivatives still reigned supreme. In the city square of Rlyadh for all to see, and many came to watch, public chastisements and punishments were held each and every Friday of the year. A thief had his hand chopped off. A man who had importunely lifted the veil of a woman for a better look at her face found himself with but one eye to continue life for the other was gouged out when sentence was passed. Carla wanted to leave but Rana insisted they remain for the finale. As chief magistrate of the principality, it was his duty to prescribe sentence for an adulteress. Carla did not understand the Arabic but the sentence was clear when the miserable woman, a misshapen hag, was sewn headfirst in a burlap bag. Carla looked on with horror as the woman was systematically stoned until her body ceased to move within the burlap. Blood seeped from the bag; the crowd greeted this grisly display with huzzahs. She pressed close to Rana and shivered all the way back to the palace in the back seat of the Rolls.
Rana had not exhausted his quirk for the bizarre. On Saturday night Rana invited her to an anteroom instead of the usual room they'd gone to to witness his theatrics. The walls of the anteroom were padded with a thick, quilt-like material. Carla could only suspect what the material would be used for.
It did not take her long to find out. As if Rana's mind had been momentarily seized by the lust for screaming such as they'd heard in the city square that morning, he presented a showing guaranteed to curdle her imagination, especially when she thought of such an event occurring to her.
A redheaded girl was led into the room and left to stand alone as Carla and Rana looked on. She had apparently been instructed to remain silent for she said nothing to either of them. Very soon, three disturbingly well-built young men entered the anteroom. They proceeded directly to the girl and proceeded to disrobe her. She made no movement of protest.
One of the young men stripped himself naked and the other two followed suit. The three had one thing in common. All had outsized phalluses but two of the three wore colorful and decorative devices over their penises. The girl was lowered to the floor and the three men descended on her in earnest.
"What are they going to do to her?"
"You will see. Those devices the men are wearing are called French ticklers, for some obscure reason. Watch now, they're about to begin."
One of the men seized the girl by the legs and held them wide. Another descended on her vagina and rammed his hooded penis into her. She writhed at the outrage but made no sound. While one was busily engaged with the girl's vagina, the second young man bedecked in his unusual way sought entrance to the girl's rear. The girl screamed then but with the padded quilting it sounded like a squeak. When the third young man was about to plunge his dork into the girl's mouth, Carla ran from the room.
"Into the other room. The evening is young," Rana said. It was there Carla was invited to witness another erotic display. Seated on the same pillows they'd used to view the earlier ritualistic orgy, Carla watched as two Nubian eunuchs accompanied a dazzlingly statuesque, naked blond girl onto the floor. She stood silently, her eyes darting to Carla, pleading with her for some release from this madness. Carla averted her gaze.
Two men followed the girl onto the floor. They were dressed in the same wraparound garments worn by the blond Adonis with the Herculean dork. They whipped off their garments as easily and stood naked save for leather sheaths affixed to their erect organs. Rana stood from his pillow and went to the two men. He took two blades from Nessef and handed one to each of the men. The men busied themselves attaching the blade given them to the tip of the leather apparatus tied to their organs. Rana returned to Carla's side.
"This is, as you can see, a duel. The two men will use their penises as swords. The first to draw a measurable amount of blood will win the prize."
"And the girl is the prize," Carla said.
"Exactly. The winner of the duel will have the right to do what he wants with the girl, or have her do to him what he wants."
"Where did she come from?"
"She is a white slave," Rana said casually. "Pretty, isn't she?"
The girl was. Her facial features seemed Scandanavian. "Do you know her nationality?" Carla wanted to know.
"My friend Ben Kazar tells me she is Danish.
She was found in London and now she is here. I will give the two gladiators the signal to proceed. This should be interesting."
It was, in a way. Midway through the arcane tableau, Carla leaned to Rana, her curiosity aroused. "How do they stay, I mean after so long they, their-things are still...." She gave up words and pointed instead.
Rana smiled. "They are trained since childhood. Their reproductive cords are cut. They achieve lengthy erections because they cannot achieve the end of the sex act. There, one has drawn blood. There, again! I think that is enough. The one on the left is the winner."
Rana had Nessef explain the man's victory to him. He beamed and eyed the Danish girl greedily. He said something to Nessef and Nessef went to the girl. The girl listened fearfully, her eyes widening. She nodded her head jerkily. Nessef came back to Rana and explained.
"How marvelous," Rana enthused. "This should be something!" He told Carla what had been said. "The victor has told the girl she will have to make him climax before he is done with her. The girl, naturally, has agreed."
Carla felt the chill beginning to envelop her entire body as the victor lunged for the girl. He knocked her to the floor with one blow and sat astride her bulging breasts, grabbing a fistful of her hair and jerking her face toward his erect organ. He thrust it deep into her mouth. The girl gagged and drooled but the victor insisted. Tiring of his sport, he shifted to the girl's vagina, clawing roughly at it with his hands and nuzzling his face to it before he changed position and inserted himself into her. To her credit, the girl emitted no sound. She took her trial with silence, her face frozen with shock and horror.
The victor had one heinous fillip left in his repertoire. He drew out of the girl and flipped her over on her belly. He seized both her hips and yanked her to a kneeling position. Pressing down on her back, he mounted her from the rear, jabbing at her anal cavity with his portentious but seedless cock.
The girl screamed this time.
"Stop it!" Carla yelled. "Stop it!"
Rana waved his hand. The victor stood reluctantly. He gave the girl a departing kick in the rump before he left the room. "What is the matter with you?" Rana asked with concern.
"Let me out of here!" Carla shrieked. "Look what you've done to that poor girl!"
"That poor girl is your very own," Rana said calmly.
"What?!"
"I purchased her for you. I wanted to have her domesticated before I presented her to you. In this world it is a great-"
"I don't give a goddam what it is in your world!" Carla trilled. "Ever since I came here you have shown me every conceivable way your world treats a fellow human being, especially a woman. You can have your orgies and your slaves and your perversions. I don't want them! Take me back to Rlyadh!"
Rana trailed her to her room and tried to talk to her while she angrily packed her things. He told her he had been misunderstood, tried to explain that he had meant no offense. Carla grabbed up her suitcases and marched down the breezy corridor. Rana signalled Nessef to man the Rolls. "Let me go with you," he said.
"I don't give a damn what you do," Carla said. She slid to a halt. "Wait a minute. There is one thing you can do for me."
"Anything."
"Set the girl free. If she's a slave, set her free. If you have given her to me, I set her free. I want her free in any case!"
"It will be done," Rana said. "Carla, please stay. I could make you happy, my dear Carla."
Carla stared at him. "No-you-couldn't," she said flatly, spacing her words. She hurried into the Rolls.
Rana climbed in beside her. "Isn't there anything I can do or say to make you change your mind?"
"I have seen enough to make up my mind," Carla fumed. "I could very well be any of those miserable creatures next year. No, my friend, not me! Can I go back to Rlyadh now?"
Rana stepped out of the car. "I am sorry to see you leave this way," he said. "I do not bear the same hard feelings I have incurred in you. My Nessef will help you find the man you seek."
"You don't have to do that," Carla said.
"After all I desired, it is nothing," Rana said glumly. He told Nessef to drive on.
Nessef spoke but once on the return to Rlyadh. "You must not feel badly about the master," he said. "He had warm feelings for you. At times the meeting of West and East is not always an easy one."
"In this case it was an impossible one," Carla said. She realized in the calm of the car she could have married Rana. He did care for her, as Nessef said. But what if his feelings changed? Would she be another white slave or an automaton dancing girl to reveal her pussy for the entertainment of another one of Rana's fancies? She had only the treasure and the map to console her. She would make her own way as she always had.
Nessef dropped her at one of Rlyadh's better hotels. He deposited her bags by the doorway and told her he would come to see her the following day in regards finding the man she was looking for. In his way, he seemed to be apologizing for all that had gone before.
Carla stooped to struggle with her bags. They were heavier than she had realized.
"Let me help you," a familiar voice said.
CHAPTER NINE
Carla's head snapped back. "Wha-what are you doing here?!"
Hal Shane gave Carla a crooked grin. "Same thing you are, I suppose. Here, let me help you with those bags."
"I-I don't believe this! You followed me, didn't you!"
Shane decided he'd get further if he remained laconic, at least for the time being. There wasn't any point in airing out things in the middle of a flyblown hotel lobby. And there was no real point, either, in triggering Carla into doing something brash like calling the local fez-one patrolled the walk in front of the hotel-and telling the cop she was being molested or worse.
He said simply, "Nope."
"I'm going to write your magazine a letter. I'm going to tell them you're invading my privacy," Carla fumed. She started for the hotel door through which she'd come minutes before.
"You're forgetting your bags, miss," Shane called politely after her.
Carla stopped. She turned and came back to Shane. "Give me those," she said.
"If you're going to look for a hotel, you might as well not bother. All the other hotels in town are worse than this one and what's more, you'll play hell getting a cab."
"Very well. I shall register here. In a room as far away from you as possible!"
Shane lagged behind with Carla's bags, waiting for the desk clerk to tell her what he'd been told before he'd offered the man a handsome bribe. He could tell by Carla's reaction she'd been informed the hotel was full. He moved in on her with his clincher. "It must be fate, Carla, us meeting here like this," he said smoothly. "You see, since this trip is on my expense account, I reserved adjoining suites for myself. It was something I'd never done before but I figured I might as well live like a king once in my life."
That Shane had reserved the second suite for the possibility of entertaining some of the local talent, which he'd been told was very good, willing and able, was not a matter for discussion.
Carla stared at him. "You planned all of this, didn't you?" She smiled at him as might a cobra before striking.
Shane slammed down Carla's bags and massaged his aching arms. "Look, lady, use your head. How could I plan this when I didn't even know if you'd be here when I got here. Now, I have a spare suite; you're welcome to it if you want it. If not...." Shane shrugged.
"I have no choice and you know it. You may as well stop gloating and show me to the suite. I'd like to refresh myself-if it's all right with you. I should like that much privacy from your hounding, at least."
Shane began to whistle softly, a sign to anyone who knew him well that he was angry, too angry, and would rather pipe a toneless melody than say something rash. He led Carla to the hotel elevator. He got off with her on the third floor and led her down a dimly lighted corridor. He paused before a closed door and unlocked it. "In here," he told her. He took her bags into the room. Carla followed him.
"It's not much by our standards, I know," Shane said, watching Carla survey the room disapprovingly. "The air-conditioner works when it wants to. The shower or bath, such as it is, is in this lobby way between the two rooms. There are locks on both doors that join our rooms-so I, ah, won't invade your privacy," he said with a hint of sarcasm.
Carla slipped out of her suit jacket and skirt at once and paraded around the room in bra and panties. The sight was slightly unnerving to Shane, who had never got over the performance she'd given him in the cabana, or the willful exhibition of the see-through blouse at the Masons' shindig.
She fiddled with the dials of the air-conditioner and it began whining sporadically until something resembling a flow of air coursed through the room. "You know," she said, "I have just remembered something you said in the lobby. I asked you what you were doing here. You said, 'Same thing you are, I suppose.' What did you mean?"
"You can't tell me you still want to keep up the pretense?"
"I don't understand. I came here to see Rana, the Arabian gentleman who was at the Mason affair."
"Yeah, you probably did," Shane grunted. "But we both know that isn't the real reason you're in Rlyadh."
"You talk in riddles, Signor Shane. I have no time for such riddles. I would like to bathe now."
To Shane, Carla's haughty remark just about capped off his anger. He had gone to Buenos Aires, to Astrid Heiniger, on a search that yielded him the same information this woman had got with one lousy phone call. He had barrel-assed-his term for it-from Buenos Aires to the Azores to Athens to Cairo and by shuttle to Rlyadh in quest of Carla. Failing to find her, he had cooled his heels for three miserable days in this forgetable hotel, eating lamb, which he despised, and trying to sleep. In those three days, the monotony of his stay had been broken only by the presence of an Arab whore who spoke no English and insisted, when he was screwing her, on jamming a wad of string into his butt, then yanking it free when he came. It had been an unusual feeling, the only feeling of any kind he'd had in three days except for the uneasiness constant helpings of lamb caused his belly. The time for playing any more silly games was over.
"I suppose Astrid is a riddle. You know the name? Astrid Heiniger. She lives in Buenos Aires. She's married to Kurt Heiniger. You know that name, too? Does that help your riddle any?"
Carla crumbled under Shane's barrage, her face paling. "You know, then," she said in a shaky voice.
"I know, then," Shane repeated. Her reaction surprised him. "You mean Mason never told you?"
"Mason? What didn't he tell me?"
"Remember the Saturday night at the Mason villa? I went to Rome. When I came back, you announced you were going to bed. Mason and I adjourned to his den. For an interview, I told him. What I did tell him then was everything I had learned about his past and everything I had learned about your husband's past when I took my little trip into Rome that night."
"You bastard," Carla said softly.
"Close. Anyway, Mason collapsed under intensive questioning, shall we say? He spilled his guts about what he knew of the map and the treasure. He mentioned Heiniger's name but he refused to implicate you, so if you have an urge to kill him, you ought to keep that saving grace in mind."
"Why? Why did he talk?" Carla wrung her hands.
"He was boxed out a little. And he was strung out with the secret. He had sat on it for years, I guess. When you disappeared with him on Friday afternoon when Angelina was doing her dance, I suppose he saw the end in view. I didn't tell him all that I knew and I didn't let on he'd given me valuable information. I suppose he guessed I'd be at a dead end with what he'd told me."
"Did you know the day-the day you came to see me?"
"Didn't have a clue. It was a toss-up between you and Baroness Stein and Princess Anne. All three of you had lost your husbands in a short space of time but Princess Anne was a question mark because her late husband had never been anything more than a pretender to the throne of Spain anyway. When I came to see you at the pool that day, the thought of you being the titled lady in question was the furthest thing from my mind."
"What was in your mind that day?"
"The interview. You."
"You mean you actually saw me that day?" Carla said coyly.
"I saw you. How could I help but seeing you, goddammit," Shane said. "You were spread out like a Christmas feast."
"Yet you did nothing. Why?"
"Don't say I did nothing. I tried. You turned me off, brushed me away. Then you made some clever remarks about it at the Masons' place. I didn't think you were interested."
Carla threw back her head and laughed. "That is sadly amusing," she said. "All the while I thought you were uninterested." She unhooked her bra and let her breasts swing free. She twisted her shoulders alluringly to make them sway slightly as she skimmed down her panties and hastily got out of her stockings. When she was naked, she stood motionless, a live, seductive statue. "And now?" she purred.
Shane's penis throbbed as it hadn't in recent memory. All the pent-up desire for her that she'd thwarted and he'd suppressed surged through his loins. He stood up shakily from the chair he'd been sitting in. "Are you doing it again? Taunting? Teasing?"
Carla grinned. "I think I will bathe now," she said.
"Not before I screw you, you little bitch!" Shane roared. He moved to her quickly, tearing at his fly as he did so. By the time he reached her, his rod was out and bobbing, stiff and swollen. He forced her to touch it.
Carla shuddered, her breasts jiggling, her belly heaving. "You proud bastard," she grated at him. "I didn't think you would ever do this for me. I thought I would have to beg you for it. Good God, it's a marvelous thing you have here. Why have you denied me so long?"
"Let's not talk now. Let's screw," Shane urged.
"No, not yet," Carla said. "I have waited too long. You were in the back of my mind ever since that day in the cabana. I offered myself to you. I stretched myself out naked. I would not ask you to take me, not then. There were your eyes, the way they looked at me. They have haunted me ever since. You didn't even try to touch me, not once. You sat there with your damned pad and then you watched Marco and Angelina and when you came to me I was hurt and rejected. I thought you were coming to me because they had stimulated you, because you thought it had been there as an appetizer long enough and now you would taste it."
"My God," Shane groaned. "The stupid games we've played."
"I want you to screw me now, Hal Shane. Do you know why? All my life I have waited for a man who could hurt me so I would feel it. You did that to me, Shane. I-I think I am in love with you."
Facing Carla, Shane looked deeply into her eyes. "I think I feel the same way," he said.
"Take me now, Hal Shane. Take me and do what you want with me. I'm yours. Hurry, please hurry. I want you, I need you desperately."
Shane hurried. He lost three buttons on his shirt hurrying. He ripped his shorts hurrying. But he hurried. When he was naked, Carla insisted on admiring his body. "That scar above your navel. What is it?"
"It isn't important," Shane grumbled. "Come on."
"I want to know. I will not let you take me until I know."
"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Shane looked down at the scar. He scarcely noticed it anymore it had been there for so long. "A shrapnel scrape. From Korea. Happy now?"
"Not until you are inside me," Carla breathed. She clutched Shane's thick penis and backed toward the bed. She sat on the edge of the bed and spread her legs, her cheeks perched low. "Can you do it like this?"
Shane scowled. "Never mind the trick or treat. Get your ass back on the bed!" He took her by her shoulders and wrestled her back until her head met the pillow.
"You are strong, Shane. Now show me just how strong you really are!" Carla flattened her hands on her cheeks and boosted them toward Shane's towering tool. She surrounded Shane's waist with her legs and drew him down to her. Her hand stroked him and squeezed him even as she led him to the portals of her womanhood. "Show me now!" she urged.
Shane showed her. He eased his strident wand into the warm depths of her and she came almost at once. He moved back and forth and she joined him in the ageless rhythm of lust, her hips rolling, swaying from side to side to stroke the sides of him with the hot walls of her channel. She heaved upward each time she came until Shane's balls slapped stickily against the underside of her. He drove on, cleaving his own path, hammering into her relentlessly until he felt the juices gathering at the base of his spine, commencing their flow forward, quickening, tickling, searing, burning, stiffening him and then he released his orgasm, ejaculating his sperm with distended spurts.
They lay close together, their arms and legs intertwined until their breathing became normal again. Carla toyed with Shane's penis, stroking its limpness with talented fingers, fondling his scrotum until he moved.
"You're going to have more than you can handle in a minute," Shane grumped.
"I would not mind," Carla replied.
"Oh, no?" Shane reached for her moist crotch. He inserted his middle finger deftly and began manipulating her clitoris until her hips started to move. "How does it feel?"
"Don't make me come," Carla begged. "All my love is reserved for that beautiful thing of yours. Don't make me waste it."
"Okay. Truce? You leave me alone, I leave you alone."
CHAPTER TEN
Carla woke early, as soon as the first light of dawn entered the room. She lay next to Shane and listened to his deep breathing. Then, as if driven by an uncontrollable force, she grew restless and got up soundlessly. She stared at her clothing, then at Shane. She struggled with her conscience for a long, bitter moment. Then she dressed and left Shane's suite.
Below in the lobby, she sat nervously, waiting for Nessef's arrival, hoping Shane would not awake and come bounding after her. She smoothed hair already combed and straightened nonexistent wrinkles in her clothing. She glanced alternately at the door of the hotel and the desk clerk, who had by now assumed a growing interest in her.
She stood up and left the lobby. In the still air already warm outside she felt freer to think. She could only wonder now in the glow of morning why she had acted toward Shane as she had last night. He had been right; things were clearer by day and she was able to cast off a good deal of sentimentality that had threatened to engulf her the evening before. She had no commitment to Shane. Let him write his little story-if he could. She could find Heiniger and be long gone from Rlyadh before he was able to find her, she reckoned. She had to be strong and firm, not weak and mewling and dependent as she had been last night with Shane. Only one thing mattered and that was tracking down Heiniger and getting his part of the map any way she could. It was the last bridge to cross and when she had crossed it she would be in a better position to bargain and reason with Shane. If such bargaining was necessary. Shane might have his ideals and his code but she had seen wealth turn the head of many good men. He would come around. All men did. To her.
Nessef appeared mysteriously. "Has the madame been waiting too long? This humble servant regrets being indisposed before now."
"Yes, yes," Carla agreed, "that's all right. Do you have the car?"
"It is not far from here, madame. Does the madame wish that I get it for her?"
"No. I'll walk to it. I just want to get away from the hotel. Show me where it is."
Nessef bowed deeply. "This way, madame." He led her to Rana's Rolls and helped her enter the back seat. He got behind the wheel and leaned over the seat to her. "Is there a special reason for the madame's haste?"
"Not any more," Carla said, relieved to be away from the hotel front and the possibility of Shane stopping her. She was on her own now and she felt the knot of challenge tightening in her empty belly. She took a photo from her handbag and handed it to Nessef. The photo was one of Giovanni and Heiniger together, both men in their respective uniforms. She had found it among the cache of letters that had led her to Heiniger's telephone number and her conversation with Astrid.
"This is a very old picture," Nessef commented.
"It's all I have," Carla said. "The man on the right of the picture is the man I'm searching for. All I can tell you is that the picture is more than twenty-five years old. I think the man on the right is much fatter today."
Nessef perused the photograph, holding it close to his aging eyes. "Ah, yes, I believe there is a distinct possibility the man is known in this city. Begging the madame's pardon, I shall need another opinion on the matter. We shall have to venture into the poorer part of the city but do not fear. No harm will come to the madame," Nessef assured her.
Carla nodded. "Whatever you have to do. Only quickly," she said.
Nessef started the Rolls. The route he took led by the city square. Carla flinched at the memory of the horrors she had witnessed there. Past the square, she was able to see the class of the city disintegrate block after block until the car was crawling through a zone of squalor not to be believed by Western eyes. The car eased to a halt. Nessef sounded the car horn.
A figure materialized from an alleyway and approached the driver's side of the car. Carla watched in fascination as Nessef and the man carried on an animated conversation over the photo Nessef showed him. The man, a stunted elf with deep holes for eyes and a large nose, cast occasional furtive glances back at Carla. At length there was much nodding. The man lingered. Nessef turned to Carla.
"The man has given me information. He asks me to tell you that true words are as gold and have a value of trade in the marketplace. If the madame does not wish to pay him I will be glad to give him a small reward for his service to me."
Carla dug into her handbag. She held out money to Nessef. "Is this enough?"
The wizened runt's face broke into what passed for a grin, displaying brown stumps of teeth. He took the money and bowed away from the car. Nessef turned the Rolls around and drove from Rlyadh's slum more rapidly than he had entered.
"It is not far," Nessef told her.
It wasn't. No more than three minutes' distance from the slum, Nessef halted the car again and got out. "I shall lead you to the apartment of the man you seek," he told her. "Since I am told the man does not care for people such as myself and my brothers, I shall be out of sight when you greet him so you will not offend him by my presence. A word of caution if the madame will heed this aged servant's advice. It is told to me the man is of a bad temper. It would be wise for madame to conduct herself gently."
"You needn't worry," Carla said. "I think I'll get a friendly greeting."
True to his word, Nessef guided Carla to Heiniger's apartment, then vanished down the drab hallway. Summoning up her courage and swallowing hard, Carla rapped faintly on the door. There was no answer. She rapped again and heard a muffled stirring.
"Who is it?" a gruff voice called.
"Carla Santini, the wife of Giovanni," Carla answered.
"Who?"
"A friend of Astrid Armandez," Carla called.
It brought results. Carla heard footsteps nearing the door. The bolt was unlatched and the door opened a crack. She thought she spied the blue metal of a pistol muzzle.
"What does Astrid Armandez want?" Heiniger's gravelly voice said.
Carla sensed she was being tested, asked for a password of a kind. "She sends her love from Buenos Aires. She is well and misses her husband. I talked to her not long ago. I had to use a special telephone number to reach her." Carla recited the telephone number.
The door opened. She was confronted with Kurt Heiniger, half a head taller than she, his hair gray and crew cut, his coarse features polarized by a bulbous nose under which grew the square-cut mustache of another era in history. Heiniger was dressed in a tattered tee shirt that showed glimpses of his fat, hairy belly hanging over wrinkled pants.
"Come in," he gestured with the pistol he held in his hand. When Carla entered his apartment, Heiniger closed the door swiftly behind her and locked it.
"You don't have to do that, Kurt," Carla said, her skin acrawl with a caged feeling. "I come as a friend."
"That well may be," Heiniger rumbled. "But there are very few friends out there."
"It makes me uneasy," Carla confessed. "Giovanni said you were a true gentleman of the German army. I would be pleased if you would unlock the door."
"Frightened to be with the Killer of Kiev alone? Very well, I shall honor your request as a gentleman of the German army although I do not consider it wise. I make this sacrifice for you because you interest me." Heiniger unlocked the door.
He turned to her. "You say you are a friend of my wife. How do you come to know her name? You call me Kurt." He leveled the Luger at her midriff. "Men have been killed for less. Forgive my inhospitality but you will have to explain yourself."
"Yes, of course," Carla said quickly. "I am Carla Santini, Giovanni's wife. Do you remember him? He spoke well of you. He told me you two served together in the great war. He was in the Italian Army serving as an aide to Benito Mussolini."
"Who was Benito Mussolini?" Heiniger shot at her.
"I know only the name. I was young when the war ended," Carla answered truthfully. She allowed no cuteness or irony in her voice, not when confronted with a pistol in the hands of a man who doubted everyone and everything to stay alive.
"So you are Giovanni's wife? He wrote me of you. How is my Camerad?"
"He passed on a few months ago," Carla said quietly.
"Es tut mir Leid. I am sorry," Heiniger said. His eyes narrowed. "Why do you come to me now?" he said harshly.
"Please, Kurt, can't we relax? Do you have something to drink?"
"Do you need drink to talk?"
"I want us to be friends, Kurt. I would like to have a drink of friendship with you. My husband told me a great deal about you, about how good and fine you are," she lied, chancing it.
It worked. Showing a slight bewilderment at such kind words, Heiniger shoved the Luger into his belt. "I have some schnapps and some local wine. The wine is badly fermented and sour to the taste. In your honor, I would suggest you take the schnapps." He reached into a creaking cabinet and brought forth a bottle of cognac without once taking his eyes from Carla. He took two glasses from the same cabinet and poured, looking away from her only briefly to see what he was doing. He gave her one of the glasses.
"To our friendship," Carla said, lofting her glass.
"Ja," Heiniger said, clinking his glass against hers.
Carla sipped of the fiery liquid and suppressed a cough. "It-is-excellent," she stammered.
Heiniger's craggy features dissolved into a brief, fleeting smile. "Your man told me you were a starker. I believe it." The face became granite again. "We have had our drink. Let us talk. Tell me why you come this far to see me."
Carla took another sip of cognac. She could feel the warmth charging through her body. "My husband left me a will. In it he told me of the treasure the two of you had stored away during the great war. He spoke of a map. That is why I come to see you."
"Ach so. Now the hunted has a huntress, nicht wahr?" He took a step closer to Carla. "You do not come to me for Astrid or for yourself. You come for the rotten map!" He reached for his Luger.
"That is not true," Carla protested. "I come to have you as a partner in the treasure. What good is my part of the map without yours? I want to share the money with you. With that money you could find a place in the world with your wife where you would not be bothered."
"Ja, ja. And an Engelchen would spirit the hidden wealth to my wife of me once you had the map, hah? Let me tell you, I do not believe in such angels. I believe in no one but Kurt Heiniger!"
Carla sensed she was making no progress. She resorted to her last time of defense, to the ploy that had always got her what she wanted when she wanted it. "It is warm in here," she said. She took off her jacket, exposing her bra.
Heiniger stepped back cautiously. "What are you doing?"
"I'm getting comfortable," Carla said. She was in command of herself now, sure her body would carry her through, convinced her body was the one lure no man could resist. She unzipped her skirt and pushed it to the floor. "I want you to have faith in me," she told Heiniger. "I want to show you my faith in you."
"Sehr interessant," Heiniger growled. "Continue with your demonstration of faith." His eyes feasted greedily on Carla's partial nudity.
Carla kicked off her shoes and stripped off her stockings. She unfastened her bra and let it fall away with a shake of her shoulders. She cupped her breasts, offering them to Heiniger. "A strong man like you needs a woman. You must be lonely. Astrid would understand. Let us bring our friendship together for the good fortunes of both of us." She began to roll down her panties and got as far as her hips with them before Heiniger stepped close to her.
Carla did not expect either blow that caught her flush on each cheek to turn her head from left to right and back again. Her mouth fell open in astonishment. She rubbed her cheeks and staggered backward.
"Schweinl Slut!" Heiniger roared. "You would offer yourself to me as fleisch, a piece of meat? You are not a woman, you are a pig! For money, for the buried treasure, hah? Does it mean that much to you, hah? I tell you what it means to me!" He dug in his wrinkled pants and produced what Carla immediately recognized as part of the map. It was folded up, seemingly containing something.
"This is your precious map," Heiniger said. "It is wrapped around a cyanide capsule. When I have to die, I will swallow this poison and the map with it. That will end the past! There will be no further disgrace in the world press for the wife of Kurt Heiniger!"
"I was only trying to show you-you didn't-have to-hit-I wanted to explain...." Carla stuttered, fighting off tears, rubbing her burning face.
"Ja, you have showed me. You have showed me you could not be fit to be the wife of Giovanni Santini. You have shown me your greed. You are an insult to the memory of my dear Camerad. You are not fit to life!" He stepped close to her again and slapped her breasts. Carla let out a yelp of pain. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
"Cry, that's right. Cry out your life. Be sorry at your death and you may redeem yourself beyond. I am going to kill you, you miserable woman!" Heiniger leveled the Luger at Carla, pointing the barrel of it at a point slightly above her aching left breast....
Shane was dreaming he was awash in a sea of cinammon-dotted marshmallow breasts, all of them Carla's. He rolled over in his sleep and reached out to sample a portion of all that surrounded him. His hand found only a flat, wrinkled, cold sheet. His eyes snapped open and he sat up, springing from bed at once. He shouted Carla's name. There was no answer. He noticed the clothing she had worn yesterday was gone but her baggage was still on the floor by the door. "God damn her, she's gone and done it anyway!" He dressed hurriedly. In a few minutes he was in the hotel lobby barking instructions at the desk clerk while he shoved generous amounts of money across the counter at the man.
In every city in the world, as novels and the cinema would have it, there are people who do and say things for money, for a price. Shane did not read many books and saw fewer movies but he had learned this salient fact from hard experience. From the desk clerk he demanded a gun, no matter what its origin, and an informant to lead him to the hideaway of Kurt Heiniger. In fifteen minutes he had the gun. The informant arrived five minutes later, a stunted man in a soiled burnoose with ferret eyes and a pronounced nose. The informer scurried up to the desk like a rat going for food.
The desk clerk spoke to the misshapen local. He was answered in a stream of Arabic. The desk clerk spoke again. This time he received a fountain of verbiage in response.
"What the hell is he babbling about?" Shane said with impatience.
"Begging your pardon, sir, but I can only translate in general terms. He tells me he knows the man you are after and can take you there-for a price. He also tells me the man must be very famous to merit so much attention."
"Why's that? Out with it, man!"
"He tells me a Western woman in a very expensive car sought out the same information earlier today at his home."
"Carla! Okay, how long ago was that?"
The clerk asked. The dwarf answered. "Not more than a half hour ago, he tells me."
"Good. There may still be time. You tell him to get a cab if he has to lie down in front of one to stop it. When we get in that cab I want him to fly me to the guy I'm looking for. Tell him I'll pay whatever fines he runs up."
The desk clerk was barely done translating when the runt hurried out the door, pausing to take a fistful of money before he went. In a minute or two, a cab screeched to a halt before the hotel door and Shane piled into it with the informer.
Shane hung on grimly as the cab careened through Rlyadh. Rocking back and forth as the cab narrowly avoided one accident after another, he checked the condition of the pistol given him by the desk clerk. It was a Smith and Wesson snub-nosed .38. All the chambers were loaded. He shoved the gun in his pocket, then peered out the back window. Far in the distance, there appeared to be a lineup of police vehicles massing in convoy to give chase. Shane urged the cab driver to greater speed.
The informer yammered at the cab driver and the cab slowed and took a wicked right turn before slowing to a halt at the curb in the middle of the street. Shane dragged the informer from the car and gestured wildly. The informer nodded and started loping down the sidewalk. Shane followed. The informer skidded into an alleyway and pointed up a flight of stairs. Hearing sirens far in the distance, Shane bounded up the stairs three at a time followed by the panting informer. There was an aged Arab awaiting him at the top of the stairs.
"You are seeking Madame Countess Carla?"
"Yeah," Shane panted. "Where is she?"
"Follow me. I fear for her. She said the man is her friend but he has shouted at her for some time now. I do not believe there is friendship in his voice."
Shane halted by the door to Heiniger's apartment and pressed his ear to the door. At the same time he noticed the door partially ajar, too far from the jamb to be locked. He heard Heiniger's rasping voice. "Cry, that's right," Heiniger was saying. "Be sorry at your death and you may redeem yourself beyond. I am going to kill you, you miserable woman!"
Shane acted without a second of hesitation. He shoved the door open and went in low, crouched over, his pistol at the ready. He spied Carla at the far side of the room, cringing before a mountain of a man who held an unwavering gun pointed at her naked breast.
"Down, Carla!" he shouted. He hit the floor, relieved that Carla sank to her knees and tried to scramble behind a chair.
"Was?" Heiniger said, astounded. He swung around ponderously and fired two shots at the door. Shane aimed his pistol carefully and squeezed off a round. The shot struck Heiniger in the belly. He sagged but did not fall. Heiniger fired again while he tried to get something into his mouth. Shane took another shot and Heiniger staggered sidewise, then crumbled to the floor.
Carla crawled around the chair toward Heiniger's prostrate body. She stopped and picked up something, Shane saw, then continued toward Heiniger. When she reached his fallen form, she stared for a moment at his dead face. Then she spit on him.
Shane gained his feet and wobbled over to Carla. He helped her up. "Are you all right?"
Carla began shaking. "I'm frightened. I'm cold." She looked into Shane's eyes. "He was going to rape me. When I resisted, he told me he was going to kill me." She began to sob, leaning against him.
Shane looked over her bare shoulder and spotted the garments strewn on the floor in a pattern, none of them torn. "It's okay, baby," he said, giving her the benefit of his doubt. "Calm down, hon. It's all over. Try to relax." He heard excited voices and the pounding of feet on the stairs.
Police flooded into the room with pistols drawn. The informer and the ancient were in tow. The leader of the squad, identifiable by the gold clusters on his collar, began questioning the two Arabs. When he was done he turned to Shane and Carla. "You will come with me, please," he said. "It is necessary." He beckoned to them. "Please," he said....
The three of them stood at the airport gate. The slight breeze tugged at the trousers of Shane and Rana and threatened to send Carla's skirt sailing over her head.
"We can't thank you enough," Carla was saying to Rana.
"That goes for me, too," Shane said. "It could have been sticky with the publicity. Nobody needs that. It was good to have you aboard. And I must do that interview with you sometime."
"I look forward to it," Rana said to Shane. To Carla he said, "I was glad to be of service. What else is a chief magistrate for? The testimony of the two local witnesses was more than sufficient to clear you both of any suspicion. And the world is free of an evil man."
The loudspeaker droned the departure of a flight in Arabic and English.
"That's us," Shane said. "Gotta run, Prince. Listen, when you're in Rome or New York, be sure to contact me, huh? I mean it."
Carla gave Rana a peck on the lips. "Thank you again for everything. I will never forget you."
"Perhaps we will meet again," Rana said. He waved a farewell to them and turned to walk away.
As the big jet circled Rlyadh, Carla snuggled close to Shane. "You saved my life," she said. "I owe you. You shall have a share of the treasure whether you want it or not."
Shane draped his arm over her shoulder. "I wouldn't have had to save your life or shoot somebody if you had listened to me," he chided her. "And don't tell me you still haven't given up on that stupid treasure?"
"I have the complete map now, thanks to Heiniger," Carla said. "Will you help me look for it? What will you do when we find it?"
"You mean about the story?"
"Yes. Have you decided yet?"
"I haven't, even if you have, apparently. To tell you the truth, I don't know yet. As I told you before, I'll do what I have to do when the time comes. It's the fairest way-for both of us."
"For both of us," Carla said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The weekly edition of the Frankfurter Tagblatt arrived each Wednesday at the Armandez residence in Buenos Aires. Most European newspapers or magazines mailed from the Continent to South America were mailed fourth class and tended to be late arriving but the Frankfurter Tagblatt was an exception. It was mailed second class from Hamburg and was never late.
It was also a camoflage. Secreted within the respected editions of the Frankfurt newspaper each week, fifty or so residents of the Buenos Aires area could expect to find, and invariably did, a copy of the Volkische Beobachter, a two-sheet, pale imitation of the once powerful, official press organ of the Nazi Party published clandestinely by the extreme right wing faction of Stahlhelm. These rightists cast a blot on the tolerated, if not venerated German Army Veteran's Organization recognized by the Bonn government. They advocated all things Nazi and everything neo-Nazi. Their press instrument was a way for members of the Party to keep in touch, to maintain a kind of nostalgia for better times.
Astrid Heiniger nee Armandez dutifully took her copy of the paper from the mailbox into the house. She would not have bothered looking at the paper ordinarily but times had changed for her in the past few months. Her husband had gone and she clung to things German as a reminder of him. Then, too, an American named Shane had come into her life and the effort to blot him out, to forget the impact he had made on her lent her to reading anything she could lay hand to. She peeled off the plain brown wrapper and waded into the unfamiliar German writing. She came to the smuggled issue of the Volkische Beobachter and stopped.
The issue before her presented a front page uncustomarily bordered in heavy black. In the center of the front page was a photo of her Kurt, resplendent in an archive study of him in his SS uniform. The banner headline read: Unserer Kamerad Gefallen! She delved into the article beneath the headline. She made out the dateline of Cairo and further along in the article picked out, in order, the names of Rlyadh, Contessa Santini, and Shane. She put down the paper, dismissing the front page as ridiculous. She had learned from Kurt that the paper was wildly erratic, submitting bizarre claims to its readers, claims to which little credence could be attached. The paper was without honor in its own country, especially for a long time after publishing a claim that the beloved leader, Adolf Hitler, was alive and living in Tibet. Kurt had guffawed at length when he had read it, explaining to her later that if Hitler were indeed alive, he would be a senile shell over eighty years of age, hardly qualifications for a leader. She went about her housework.
The front page nagged at her and she returned to it twice more as the day wore on. The German print was as German as it had been when she first saw it and made as much sense to her. But at day's end, increasingly disturbed by a growing fear that this issue of the paper was not a joke, she contacted one of Kurt's few acknowledged friends and asked if he would come by the house. He did so under cover of darkness. When she presented the paper to him, his face fell. "I'm terribly sorry, Frau Heiniger," he said.
"It is-not good, is it?" Astrid said in a quavering voice. "Please translate it for me?"
The man translated the article verbatim. When he was done, he offered his condolences once again. "You should be hearing from the Stahlhelm before too long. We take care of our own. There is a pension fund for widows. Is there anything you would like me to do, any help you need now?"
"Yes, there is. Get me an airline ticket to Rome, one way. I think I shall take care of myself," Astrid said.
"As you wish," the man said. "Do you care for my wife and I as company tonight in your time of deep loss?"
"Thank you but I prefer to be alone."
"Very well. I will say goodnight. And I will light a candle for your dear, departed husband." The man left stealthily as he had come.
Astrid sat down and buried her face in her hands as the news came home to her with finality. Slowly, surely, Shane's perfidy filled her with anger. The man who had lain with her and taken her body had taken her Kurt from her. He would have to pay for that. And the woman, the dear family friend Carla Santini, she had called for information that was given willingly in trust and used treacherously. Did the bitch think she would benefit from Kurt's death? The treasure map had obviously been the only reason for Kurt's end; as Kurt's only remaining heir, Astrid felt entitled to her husband's share of the buried loot. She took an oath to be damned or dead before having it any other way. For Astrid Armandez, it was a long and mournful night in Buenos Aires, a night filled with thoughts of revenge and reparation....
The cab that brought her from Rome to the gates of Giovanni Santini's villa traveled far too slowly for Astrid. The driver negotiated the long, paved driveway and stopped before the villa. He announced an exhorbitant fare to Astrid which she paid begrudgingly, cursing in Spanish as the driver got out her luggage. As the cab disappeared down the driveway, she was hailed by a young, thin man with a shock of wavy hair, standing in the doorway.
"Hallo. Can I help you?" The man approached her.
"I have come to see the Contessa Santini," Astrid said. "Is she here?"
"She lives here but she is away on a trip. My name is Marco. Perhaps I can be of service."
"Do you live here as well?"
"I am the nephew of the late Count Santini. The Contessa is my fiance."
"Her fiance. I see. Do you know where the Contessa is? When shall she return, did she say?"
"Carla, er, the Contessa is in the Middle East at present. A place called Rlyadh, I believe. She is visiting a friend there. She did not say when she would return."
"I would like to wait for her if that is possible."
Marco said, "It would be my pleasure to accommodate you. The villa is empty. There is plenty of room."
"Good. I have forgotten to introduce myself, Marco. I am Astrid Armandez, the widow of Kurt Heiniger. Does that name mean anything to you?"
"No, it doesn't. But I am pleased to meet you, Astrid, if I may call you that."
"I insist on it," Astrid said. "You and I must have a long talk, Marco. I think there is much you should know about your fiance."
Marco grew sober. "Very well. Let me show you into the villa. You can clean up from your trip, then we'll have tea and sandwiches."
"I'd prefer a drink, thanks. And there is no need to take time tidying right now. I'd much rather talk with you."
"Whatever you prefer. It has been lonely here. I could use some talking myself," Marco said.
They sat in the main dining hall where Gio had held forth when he was alive. Marco made drinks and they sipped at them as Astrid wasted little time on formalities, launching straightway into her explanation for being at the villa. As she spun out her tale, she could see Marco's wonder growing. Several times in her monologue he got up to fix fresh drinks and the afternoon wore into early evening before Astrid was done recounting her story. "So that, my dear friend," she said in conclusion, "is the sorry tale of your fiance and her American friend."
"The bitch!" Marco snarled vehemently. "She was using me. She was using me all the time! I was never anything more than a plaything for her to amuse her when she wanted amusement!"
"Perhaps I should not have told you what I did," Astrid said.
"No, I welcome your information. It has opened my eyes. You see, there are things that make sense now when they didn't make any sense at all before. Carla was so anxious to love me, even marry me until I gave her my part of the map. Then I was put off, ridiculed and scoffed at. There was never time for me anymore, it seemed. Small wonder. She was very busy pursuing her own good fortune. And to think that I treated the entire thing as a joke. I was even instructed by the Count to send that bastard Shane blind items for his column. I even paid him to print them in his column! Good Christ, the bitter truth is devastating!"
"I need another drink," Astrid drawled.
"So do I after what I've learned," Marco said. Marco made the drinks and suggested they leave the dining hall. "The place has a stench to it now," he said. "It is a mockery to the memory of my uncle. Let us go out by the pool. It is calm and peaceful there in the evening. The sunset is beautiful. At least there is one beautiful thing left in this stinking, phony world."
They sat by the pool and drank, fed by the plentiful stock of a portable bar. After a while, Astrid reached into her purse and brought out a small pistol. "Bang, bang, you're dead," she smirked, pointing the gun at Marco.
"Don't fool around with that thing. It's loaded."
"You're damned right it's loaded. Six little bullets, every one of them for Hal Shane!"
Marco forced a laugh. "You don't mean to kill him. Be serious, Astrid. That won't bring back your husband."
"Watch me. You'll see. Besides, do you have a better idea?"
"I think so. Carla will return eventually. If she has your husband's part of the map, she has nearly all of it, probably all of it. When she comes back I shall simply face her with the truth, tell her all that you've told me and all that I know. Faced with that, I shall further demand that she share the treasure rightfully with us or I will call the police."
Astrid grimaced. "The police!" she wailed. "That'll ruin everything, you fool! Once the police get their hands on the treasure, no one will get anything. I did not come all this way to watch my husband's hard work and my legacy go to the hands of the police!"
"You don't know Carla at all," Marco said. "She wants the treasure, to be sure, but the idea of sharing it will be more appealing to her than having the whole lot go to the police. Carla will see my way of thinking, I tell you."
"I hope it makes sense. Whatever we do, we've got to stay together, you and I. Our futures depend on it. You and me, Marco, it's got to be that way."
Marco fell silent. He remained silent so long Astrid had to prompt him to speak.
"I was thinking of Carla," Marco said.
"You're wasting your time. She's been nothing but trouble for you. And Shane has been the same for me," Astrid said, feeling woozy.
"I know she's been trouble. That is, I know it now. But I always believed that there was some kind of decent streak in the woman. I remember all the affairs she had with other men when my uncle was alive. She was always very clever, very discreet so he never knew what she was doing, so he wouldn't be hurt. And when he died, she mourned him in her own way. I had never seen her cry. She told me once she had cried enough when she was young, that she wouldn't cry any more. But she cried over my uncle. I had faith in her. I trusted her for the bit of humanity she had. When she told me she was going to Rlyadh to visit a friend, I could not doubt her."
"Don't mention that place," Astrid said. "My husband was murdered in that place!" In her slow inebriation, things were gradually being reduced to basic black and white with no gray areas, no room for understanding or forgiving. So complete was her convolution of thought she was able to say with sincerity, "Just because he was a war criminal was no reason to kill the man." She began to sob softly.
CHAPTER TWELVE
As the time came nearer to actually search for the treasure, Carla's fears grew. She found herself casting sidewise glances at Shane as they rode the airport bus to Rome. For his part, Shane said little, preferring to doze on the bus as he had on the plane. He did not come fully awake until the bus stopped in downtown Rome to let off its passengers.
Shane helped Carla from the bus. They waited for their baggage. When it was unloaded, Shane said, "Your move, baby."
"We will go for it without any more delay. I'll take a cab back to the villa. I don't want to get any more involved with Marco than I have to. You will help me?"
"I'll help you," Shane said. "Like I said on the plane, you've made your decision even if I-"
"You're not being fair, Hal. I have not chosen the treasure over you. I am filled with a burning curiosity about it, that's all. I love you, Hal. I don't really know what I'll do either when we locate the treasure. I may bury it again and forget it. I can't tell now. Does that make you feel any better?"
"Some. You always make me feel better. You're coming back to Rome as soon as you have things squared away at the villa?"
"As soon as I have Marco out of my hair. I may not see him at all. He's become something of a recluse since my weekend at the Mason villa. I'll pick you up at your apartment. Will that be all right?"
"Yep. I'll be waiting for you."
The sound of the cab door slamming roused Marco from his light sleep. He leaped from Carla's bed and raced to the window. "Mama dia, she's back!" he gulped. He ran back to the bed and nudged Astrid from her slumber. "Astrid, wake up. Move, damn it!" Astrid's eyes fluttered open. Marco attempted to yank her from the bed. "Carla's back," he hissed. "You must hide. Out the door and down the hall. A room to the left. Quickly!" He hastened a sleepy and confused Astrid on her way and then stumbled downstairs to greet Carla. When she entered the front door toting her luggage Marco raced to her.
"Welcome home, my dearest Carla," he said warmly. He took her bags and put them on the floor. He gathered her in his arms. She returned his embrace stiffly.
"A fine welcome home this is. You look like you were sleeping," she said.
"Do not be so harsh so soon. You sent no word you were arriving today."
Carla relaxed. "You're right. Forgive me." She passed her palm over her brow. "It's hot out there already. I could use something cool to drink." She started into the main dining hall. "Hello. What have we here?"
Marco trailed Carla into the dining hall. His heart sank when he found her staring at Astrid's luggage. "Oh, those. A friend of mine from the south," he said.
"Lavender luggage. Hmm. You have peculiar friends, don't you, Marco?"
"I'll get you a drink," Marco said hastily.
"Don't bother. I think I'll go directly to my room. I want to get out of these things. I've been traveling in them for over sixteen hours."
Marco hurried to keep pace with Carla's determined stride. He berated himself for being caught so woefully off guard. He should have been the one doubting her, toying with her. Instead he was on the defensive, as usual, only this time he had no excuse whatsoever, not if Carla discovered any further traces of Astrid.
She did. Stopping by her bed, she turned to Marco. "Availing yourself of all the little niceties in my absence, I see," she drawled.
"I wanted to see how it felt. It will be our marriage bed, after all."
"Of course. Only I hope you leave it tidier the next time." She took two hairpins from the pillowcase and a lipstick from the nightstand. "You should give these back to your friend from the south. He might need them."
"It isn't what it seems," Marco whined.
"It's exactly what it seems. Feminine luggage. Female do-dads in my own bed." She bent to sniff the pillowcase. "Have you changed your brand of hair oil recently? Oh, Marco, stop looking so stupid. You are as transparent as your lies and you always have been."
"Really? I suppose it wasn't a lie about your friend in Rlyadh," Marco blustered. "I saw the article in the papers about the man killed there. You were involved in the death of a Nazi war criminal and you told me you were going to the Middle East to visit an Arabian prince!"
"Where did you get that information?" Carla snapped.
"It was in the papers. Only a small item. Nazi war criminals aren't big news anymore but the article was published. I read it."
"Did you? May I see it?"
"I-I threw it away, yes, that's it, I threw it away. I didn't want that kind of sordid scandal surrounding our marriage from its start." Marco realized he was pedaling backward, giving ground.
He wanted to come out against her with the treasure story but that would tip her off. He had to stand and take it and hope Carla would do nothing foolish.
"Where is the girl hiding? Will you introduce her to me? Perhaps we could be friends, the three of us."
"There is no girl," Marco persisted weakly.
"Have it your way. Please leave me alone, now. I want to change my clothing. If you are at a loss for something to do, you might go and chat with your girl friend. This one isn't Angelina. The perfume smells too expensive for Angelina."
"You'll never forget that, will you?"
"No. I'll never forgive it either. To tell you the truth, Marco, your behavior since our engagement disgusts me. I see no point in going through with a marriage that would be a mockery, a union in name only. You obviously cannot keep your rod in your pants. I could not have that kind of husband."
"Perhaps you have found something better?" Marco suggested scornfully.
"Perhaps I have. Hal Shane is waiting for me in Rome. I'm going to go to him if you ever leave so I can change clothes in privacy. He is a man. I don't think you would know about that. You're still a child. I wonder if you'll ever grow up."
"You have the cruelty of a pit viper, Carla. You condemn me for the same thing you're doing yourself."
"That's right, Marco. Only there's a difference. You gave me no choice because you did it first!"
"You're leaving me, then?"
"Call it what you will. If I marry Hal, we may live here, we may not. You are part of the family. You can choose to remain or go. It's your decision."
"Thank you," Marco snarled. "I believe you've asked me to leave you alone. I'll do that now!"
"Please do," Carla said calmly.
Marco stormed from Carla's bedroom. He stood fuming in the hall until Carla came out a few minutes later dressed in casual but rugged clothing. She walked past him without saying a word to him. He trailed her down the stairs. When she got to the door, he called her name.
"Carla, do you mean this?"
Carla turned to him. "I do," she said.
"I see. Goodbye, then." He turned from her and ran back upstairs without hearing what she said in answer, if anything. His heart was beating wildly at the joy of being rid of Carla. He located Astrid in the room he'd sent her to.
"Get dressed faster than you ever did in your life. We're going to follow Carla," Marco told her. "While you're dressing, I'll call the police."
"The police! We agreed we couldn't do that! Have you lost your mind?"
"I figured it all out last night after you fell asleep. I'll call the police and tell them there are grave robbers-"
"Grave robbers! Santa Maria!"
"Never mind. The police take a dim view of it. I'll tell them the grave robbers are operating in the wide-open hills outside Rome. It's my guess that's where the treasure is buried from my part of the map. If it isn't, we're sunk. I'll tell the police, anonymously, of course, that these grave robbers they're after are clever fellows and that if they want to arrest them they'll have to use caution. I'll tell them to be on the lookout for a green Maserati. That's the car Carla took. They'll have helicopter surveillance, I'm sure. Since there is only one thoroughfare carved through all the seven hills, they shouldn't have too much trouble. They'll move in and arrest Carla, and Shane if he's with her. They won't bother about the grave business. If Carla and Shane protest they won't be believed."
"It would not be difficult to blow your story to bits for all its chance and improbability," Astrid said with doubt.
"I know that but we have to chance it. If everything works out, Carla and Shane will prove their identities in minutes. We have only those few minutes to locate the treasure. Come on, let's go."
"What about Shane? If the police arrest him, I won't be able to kill him."
"If it means that much to you, remember he'll be free very soon after being arrested. I wish you wouldn't linger on the idea but you can console yourself with the thought that you'll get a shot at him eventually." Like hell she would, he thought grimly. Not if he could help it. And he'd find a way, any way. It was all mad, insane, but better to placate her now so the chase could be expedited. "Now hurry and get dressed," he urged her....
Shane was enjoying the Maserati. He had never driven a European sports car before and its road-hugging power was a novel experience for him. He glanced occasionally in the rearview mirror. Far, far back as to be almost an indiscernible speck lagged another sports car, a red one.
"We're being tailed," he told Carla.
"I expected that. A red sports car?"
"Yep. And that isn't all, sis. Look up there." Shane pointed up to the sky. "Chopper. Wonder who they're after."
Carla laughed uneasily. "Wouldn't it be hilarious if it was us. I wouldn't put it past Marco, you know. He was positively insensate with rage when I left the villa."
"Yeah. Insensate. Hilarious. Listen, are you following that map? We've been driving for a helluva while now."
"I'm trying. It is an old map and wrinkled as well. I do not know much about maps."
Shane slowed down. "Give it to me." Carla handed him the map. It was an odd feeling to hold in his hand a piece of paper Carla had connived for and a man had died over. He put the thought from his mind and studied the map. "A terrain job. Military stuff. I saw plenty of this in Nam." He stopped the car and squinted out at the rolling, hilly landscape. "Well, I'll be damned. Good thing I took a look. We're here. See this squiggle and these two small mounds? The circle at the upper end of the squiggle? Look there."
Carla followed Shane's pointed finger. A small, worn trail left the road and passed between two boulders. Following the trail upward, she could see what could be a cave except it was all grown over with moss and vines. It could as well be another boulder. "Are you sure this is it?"
"If they're still making terrain maps the same way, it is. There are some things the military hasn't changed in a thousand years no matter which army it is. Let's have a look."
Shane arrived at the slab-faced mound before Carla did. "It's a cave, all right. This is just surface crap. Damn good camoflage job. The gooks couldn't do any better." He pried with his fingertips for the lever that would unlock the well-constructed camoflage. Seizing a piece of flat stone, he pulled hard. The wall-like structure crumbled, revealing a dank cave.
Carla ran inside. "Be careful," Shane called. "God knows what's in here."
"O Madonna Maria, I'm so excited I can hardly breathe," Carla said. "Look, the cave goes deeper into the mountain. The treasure must be further in." She ran forward again.
"I said be careful, dammit," Shane's voice echoed through the cave. "You didn't listen to me once and damn near bought it. You want to try for doubles? Wait for me!"
Carla waited. Shane took her hand and inched forward in the semidarkness. "Looks like some kind of door ahead." He reached out his hand and felt moldy wood. "It is," he said, sniffing. He felt over the surface of the door until he found a damp, flaking latch. "IVe got the handle," he said. "This is your moment, baby. I can yank the handle or we can walk away from this thing right now and live the rest of our lives in peace. You start fooling with this thing and you may cultivate more damn trouble than it's been worth so far. Give it your best shot, Carla."
Carla was silent for more than a minute. She said in an almost inaudible voice, "Pull the handle, Hal."
"Okay. Here goes." Shane tugged at the door and felt the wood giving. Almost too late he felt something else at the bottom of the door and recognized it for what it was as the tension of a trip wire was snapped by the wood being pulled against it. He gave Carla a terrific shove and shouted, "Trip wire! Booby trap! Get down!" He took a flyer through the air and landed close to Carla's fallen form. He crawled over her and protected her with the umbrella of his body.
The booby trap gave off an ominous hiss which Shane knew to be the burning of an unseen fuse. In another moment there was a whoosh and a puff of smoke followed by a searing wall of flame.
"It's burning!" Carla screamed. "The treasure is burning!"
"Yeah," Shane said. Though in danger from the flames, he was experiencing the most sublime moment of his life.
"Let me up," Carla squealed. "I've got to get in there. Maybe I can save part of it!"
"Stay where you are, you stupid ass! You want to burn to death? That looks like a napalm substitute in there. It'll stick to your skin if it gets you and it's hotter than the fires of hell!"
The fire subsided quickly, dying down to the embers of picture frames smoking. Shane rose from Carla's body and stepped over the charred remains of the wooden door. He kicked a foot tentatively. In the afterglow of the fire he could see small piles of gems melted together, blackened. There was row after row of picture frames gutted of their paintings. He shook his head. "Must have been worth a hell of a lot to somebody. Took a long time getting this kind of stuff together."
"Look at it now. It's worthless!" She shook her fists at the roof of the cave and looked upward. "Jesus, you forsook me!"
"Yep. That kind of thing usually goes two ways," Shane said softly. He doubted if Carla heard over her wracking sobs. "Well, baby, we might as well get outta here. No sense looking at all this gunk." He took Carla's hand and led her slowly to the mouth of the cave. He peered out to see a thin line of blue-uniformed men fanned out across the field below.
"We got company," he told Carla.
"Police! That bastard Marco!"
"I'll be a son of a bitch! Look down there, about thirty yards to the right. Yeah, right there. It's-it's Marco. He has a woman with him. Jesus Christ, it's Astrid!"
As if to confirm his suspicions a bullet whined past his head and ricocheted into the cave. Shane ducked and dragged Carla down.
"The dizzy bitch is shooting at us!" he said with astonishment. Another round buried itself in the earth beside the cave. A third round hit the rim of the cave with a shrill, whistling sound. Shane lay flat on his belly. To his amazement, the police began firing at Marco and Astrid.
"Oh, my God! They think Astrid's shooting at them! Whoops, she is, now!"
The scene was played out in the best tradition of an epic battle. The police advanced at a crouch, firing toward Marco and Astrid. Shane saw Astrid rise, saw the glint of her pistol in the sun as she sought to aim at a policeman. With dismay, he heard the pop pop pop of small arms fire and saw Astrid topple backward like a limp rag doll, her black hair flying in the brilliance of the day before she sagged to the earth.
"Don't shoot at them!" Shane bellowed. The firing continued. "They don't understand English," he groaned. "Carla, yell at them! Tell them to hold their fire!"
Carla screamed. Her voice was lost in a fresh fusillade.
Shane watched dumbstruck as Marco raised up, waving his arms frantically. He was struck down, literally thrown back by the impact of seven slugs hitting his body simultaneously. Shane held his hands over his face and sank to one knee.
"Are they-are they-dead?" Carla gasped.
"Yes." Shane balled his hands into fists and shook them at Carla. "Yes, they are dead?"V he bellowed until his voice cracked. "And for what? For what?" He started to weep. "For nothing," he said softly. "For nothing."
Although it was only late summer the evenings outside Oslo grew chilly with a preview of the long Norwegian winter ahead. A fire crackled merrily in the fireplace and the man sitting before it toasted his feet on the warmth of the polar bear rug stretched out before the hearth.
Siv Mason entered the room, her hair wrapped in a towel, her naked skin fresh and scented. "That was refreshing," she said. "It's been years since I've had such a good sauna bath. Thank you for having it ready for me."
Count Giovanni Santini leaned forward and caressed Siv's naked rump as she passed by him. "Lay your pretty little ass down on this rug and let me look at you. I've hardly had a glimpse of your beauty since you arrived."
"Oh, Gio, what do you want to look at me for?" Siv giggled. "You've seen a pussy before."
"I know, I know," Gio said, standing from his chair in front of the fire. He slipped out of his satin robe and displayed his own nakedness to Siv. "This veteran rod of mine doesn't have many more miles of loving left," he said. "I've got to get my stimulation any way I can. Move over a little and let me join you. Hey, that tickles the hunger," he said, sitting down on the fur.
"It doesn't look like a veteran to me," Siv said, stroking Gio's flesh to turgid firmness. "It looks marvelous to me."
"Wonderful! How about slipping it between your legs then? Do a tired man that favor. I've been waiting all afternoon to screw you!"
Siv lay back and stretched her legs wide. Gio crawled between them and dropped to her ivory body. Before entering her waiting gash, he licked her nipples alive with his tongue. "Sweet things," he murmured. "Sweetest things in the world. I think I'll use them for a pillow tonight."
"Don't worry about tonight, my love. You may not get that much rest."
"Oho, that's what I like to hear! Let me at you!" Gio slipped neatly between the oiled lips of Siv's flexible slit. "You do it well," he said admiringly as her trunk heaved up to meet his downward dive. "How about you doing the work for an old man?" he said.
"I will but you won't get away with this all the time," Siv wheezed. She planted her feet firmly on the rug and used her thighs and buttocks to create a rhythm for Gio. He rocked to and fro, barely aiding her, savoring the sensation of being stroked without stroking, wallowing in the taut constriction of Siv's vagina until he erupted. Siv sagged down to the rug.
Both of them enjoyed the warmth of the rug near the fire after their exertions. "How did you manage to finally break away?" Gio said.
"It was not difficult. I waited until he went to work and then I packed and left. I had got your call the day before telling me what to do and I did it. You know, you were very lucky with those calls. You got your timing mixed once and I caught the telephone, with luck. I told Harvey it was a wrong number."
"He never suspected anything did he, the poor devil."
"Nothing. You are more lucky than you imagine, my lover. He never even found one of your letters although I must admit I was quite careless with them toward the end. I just didn't care for him anymore. But you were lucky nonetheless. It could have spoiled everything, my stupidity."
"My whole fortune has been luck. Ninety percent luck and ten percent skill. The only way a fortune can be made, my dear. Tell me, what news is there of Carla? Did she find her fortune?"
"You rascal, you know she didn't. She and her boyfriend Hal Shane were trapped in the cave where you'd mined the treasure. She was free on bail pending an inquest into the matter. I saw her only briefly. She looked terrible. Perhaps it was Marco's death that upset her."
"Marco dead? Good Lord, I hadn't planned on that. How did it happen?"
"A mistake by the police. I really don't want to talk about it now. There will be plenty of time to tell you."
"What do you want to talk about? Screwing? I can talk about that all night, even give you a demonstration of the art if you'd like."
"As the Americans say, you are a dirty old man, Gio. No, I do not talk about screwing. I do it, that is all. I want you to tell me how you were able to get away. Everyone in Rome is convinced you're dead."
"Luck, as I said before. I was as tired of Carla as you were of Harvey when we met. Carla was a beautiful woman and still is, no doubt, but she never got enough. She never got enough money, never had enough of travel, not even enough of sex. I could not keep up with her and I decided I didn't have to and didn't want to."
"But the crash-your ring was found in the crash with a burned body."
"A stroke of luck. I met the proper fellows in Rome who will do anything for money and keep their mouths shut about it. Some sort of underworld code. I had them rig a bomb in my Mercedes, a bomb big enough to destroy the car and burn up whoever was in it once the speedometer registered fifty kilometers per hour. They were able to locate a bum and ply him with just enough wine so that he could navigate the car. They gave him the address of my villa and told him to deliver the car. I left my ring on the front seat of the car. I don't think the bum noticed it. I feel better knowing he never knew what hit him, poor devil."
"And now we have the future, just you and me. No looking back, right?"
"Right. And I must tell you that I conducted a little test with you to see if you really loved me or my money."
Siv frowned. "A test? What sort of test? Didn't you trust me?"
"I had to be sure. I've been burned before by pretty young women. I hope you understand. The test I gave you was in not telling you of my fortune."
"Don't tease, Gio. There is no fortune. It burned up in flames in that cave."
"That was a bogus fortune, a wealth of worthless oils I purchased in Rome along with piles of costume jewelry. My real fortune is safe in Switzerland. I had friends there through the war. They have taken care of it for me."
"Switzerland! That's a neutral country, isn't it? I mean, almost anybody can go there in peace. Oh, Gio, I'd love to go and look at your fortune, really I would!"
Gio considered Siv with a dull stare. What have I done? he asked himself. She had already told him she would brutalize him in bed that night. There was a shrillness about her voice and now she was overenthusiastic about the secret treasure he'd told her about.
Here we go again, he thought.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The official inquest into the Mystery of the Treasure, as the Roman press heralded it, was held on a Monday morning. Shane and Carla were requested to appear and were represented by her legal counsel. Her lawyer approached the bench and requested the hearing be held in camera to avoid undue confusion. The judge agreed. The lawyer informed Carla of what was to occur, then left for the judge's chambers.
"You look awful," Shane told Carla. It was the first time he had spoken to her since the afternoon in the cave, nearly a week before.
She did. And she knew it. It seemed as if all the wrongs she had committed in her relentless drive for success and status had come home to her on one bright, lyric day on an Italian mountainside near Rome. By the loss of the treasure and the death of Marco, she had been condemned and punished for her scheming, her infidelities, her lack of trust in her fellow man. The death of Astrid weighed on her head nearly as heavily although she had never known the woman. Shane's enraged bellow had come back to haunt her a thousand times in the five days that had passed since the fateful meeting at the cave. "For what? For nothing." She recalled it now as she heard Shane speaking to her and she shuddered anew.
She felt Shane taking her hand. "I said you look awful. Didn't you hear me? What have you been doing to yourself?"
She focused bleary eyes on him, eyes that teared so easily these days. "Can you ever forgive me?" she whispered.
"I can. God can. It's a matter of whether your courts can," Shane said.
It was small consolation, his forgiveness. Did he still love her? Did He find any place in His heart for such a mortal miscreant. She tried to send the thought from her mind. "How have you been?" she said to Shane. "You do not look like yourself, either."
"I'd be a damn liar if I said I've been fine. I've been worried about you, of course. You asked me just now if I could forgive you and I said I could. I mean that, Carla. I wish you knew how much I love you. I guess I could forgive just about anything you could do to me."
"It is not only what I did to you, Hal. It's what I did to the others as well."
"You cannot go through life blaming yourself for Marco's death, love. He was as greedy as you were; the both of you wanted that money, that treasure, that whatever more than anything else on earth."
"I'm so sorry," Carla said.
"Try to cheer up. It could be worse. Did you hear about Harvey Mason?"
"Harvey? No. What happened to Harvey?"
"Siv ran off and left him flat. No goodbye note, no warning it was coming. He says she was as sweet as apple pie the morning she left him. Gave him a great big kiss at the door and told him what he was going to have for dinner that night. When he got home from the Consulate she was gone. He waited a few hours, figuring she might have gone out shopping or something. When she didn't show, he called the Rome police. They haven't turned her up till this minute."
"What do you suppose happened to her?"
"Nobody knows. As if that wasn't enough to steer him to the ledge, the papers in Rome broke this treasure story. Mercifully, he was spared involvement but he took it right in the gut and went off his trolley completely."
"He is ill?"
Shane tapped his index finger against his temple. "I'll," he said.
"The poor man. You see, there is another life I helped to ruin."
"I'm going to get tired of telling you this pretty soon, baby. Just because some guy in Florence falls off a scaffold, it doesn't mean you had something to do with ruining his life. The same is true for Harvey or anybody else involved in this swindle. You were all in it for avarice, the come-easy, do-nothing-for-it buck."
"All of us except you," Carla reminded him.
"I wasn't any different. I was chasing the star because I wanted a story out of it. I wanted my own fame my own way. That's nearly as vain as chasing after filthy money."
Carla was about to say more but she saw her lawyer coming from the judge's chambers. The lawyer walked to her slowly. It portended bad news.
"The judge has ruled that Mr. Shane can leave. As an American, he is not directly involved with Italian jurisprudence. The judge has been counseled that Mr. Shane's government wishes to press no charges or make any claim against him." The lawyer looked at Shane. "As you say in your land, Mr. Shane, you are as free as a bird."
"Thank you," Shane said. "If you don't mind, I'll wait out the decision on Carla right here with her if it's permissible."
The lawyer nodded.
A few minutes later there was another interruption. Shane looked over his shoulder to see Angelina strolling down the aisle locked to the arm of Rana Semal. Angelina was almost dressed in a black creation that displayed most of her enormous breastworks on the way to plunging to her navel. Her milky shoulders were swathed in an emba mink stole that reeked of money. Rana was nattily attired in a Western business suit.
"We've come to see if there's anything we could do," Angelina said.
"I'm afraid not." Carla looked at Rana. "We're not in Rlyadh this time," she said sadly.
"I wish you were," Rana said. "Angelina and I shall be going back there at week's end. I've managed to convince the young lady she has a home in my part of the world."
"Congratulations," Shane said.
Carla looked hard at Angelina but Angelina would not meet Carla's eyes and the message Carla wanted so desperately to convey was lost. "I hope you'll both be very happy," she said aloud.
"Is there anything we can get for you? You cannot leave this room, can you?"
"Nothing, thanks, except maybe a new life," Carla said.
Rana looked puzzled. Angelina tugged at Rana's sleeve. "I traded a king for a prince and still came out ahead," she burbled. "C'mon, mi amor, let's go and do some more shopping. Whenever you folks are passing through Rlyadh, be sure to drop in and say hello, all right?"
Carla had to laugh in spite of herself. "There's one life I didn't ruin," she said.
"You didn't ruin mine," Shane said.
"Will you love me as you did before, Hal?"
"I will. And you?"
"I never really stopped loving you, Hal. I just needed more time and a bigger shock than most to come to my senses."
"Are you all right now?"
"If you're with me, yes."
"Marry me?"
"Yes."
"That's all I need to know," Shane said.
The lawyer reappeared. He was smiling this time. Despite his age, his step was jaunty as he approached Carla.
"The case has been dismissed," he announced.
"You mean I am free?" Carla said.
"Free as a bird," Shane chimed in.
"Exactly," the lawyer said, affirming it again. He reached into his pocket and handed Carla a key. "Outside the court building you will find a blue Bentley," he told her. "Consider it a gift of celebration from the estate. It was thought by a representative r umber polled that you didn't want to have anything to do with green or red sport cars any longer."
"You needn't thank me. It's all your money," the lawyer said.
The drive back to the villa was made at a slow and leisurely pace as Shane tried out the beautiful English sedan. "Drives like a cloud," he said.
"I feel like I'm on a cloud," Carla said. "I feel like I've been given a second chance at life. And this time I'm going to do everything right."
"You mean I won't have to break you in?"
"Haven't you done that already?" Carla said coyly.
Shane stepped on the gas.. The last few kilometers to the villa were covered at a record clip. He brought the car to a screeching halt in front of the main entrance and Carla scrambled out with laughter trailing over her shoulder as she ran for the villa. Shane hot-footed around the car and tried to catch her at the stairway but she eluded his grasp. He paused for breath, then pursued her again.
He caught up to her in her bedroom. She was undressing.
"Feeling awfully spunky all of a sudden, aren't you?" Shane said.
Carla strolled toward him, letting go of her bra as she did so. "I am. I have you. With that, I have everything on earth I wish to possess." She folded her arms loosely around his neck. "Do you want me?"
"That's an awful thing to ask," Shane said. "Finish me, then."
"How's that again?"
"Finish undressing me. I want you to take me. Now."
Shane undressed Carla with difficulty which he would attribute, if asked, to the fact that she had unzipped his fly and hauled forth his palpitating penis. She stroked it lovingly, cooing at it and blowing kisses in a downward direction. It forced Shane to inadvertently tear her panties.
His shorts didn't make out well either. It didn't seem to be much of an issue when they were both on her bed and Shane was nibbling at her ear lobe as she ran her nails over his bare back.
Nobody in the world seemed to care about them at all. No one except themselves. They had come through the fires of trial unscathed, sure of their new and lasting love tested now as he sank within her to savor what would be his for a lifetime.
