by David Drake
Kelly swung Annamaria to his right side as the tank burst, interposing his own squat body between her and what was about to follow. The blast flicked across his neck between collar and hairline, heat in momentarily palpable form. The Fiat twisted, out of control but running on the gas still trapped in its fuel lines. It side-swiped a parked Mercedes and swapped ends in a spin. The street behind and beneath it was a gush of flames. A moment later the back tires exploded from the heat, one and then the other. They sounded like the double barrels of a shotgun, louder by far than the fuse detonation that had started the process.
The side-swipe had torqued the car body enough to wedge the doors shut. The driver was trying to get out. One of the Algerian policemen who had been directing traffic threw down his flashlight. He took two steps toward the car before the flames beat him back. The screams from inside could not be heard over the roaring fire, not really.
The patrolmen at the upper side of the embassy complex were gaping, forgetting the traffic they were there to control. The huge flaming barricade brought cars to a halt in front of the Chancery gate and back up the street in screeching sequence.
“Let’s cross quick,” the agent said. He still gripped Annamaria by both shoulders. People were jumping out of their stopped cars, babbling in polyglot amazement. Kelly and the woman darted between the bumpers of a Peugeot and a Dacia pick-up as quickly as Annamaria’s spike heels would permit her to follow the guiding hand. The flames, fed now by the asphalt roadway itself, threw their capering shadows down the street in demonic majesty.
XXV
The gate of the GSO Annex had been left open during the affair at the Residence. The guard was the man who fed Kelly the night before. He stood open-mouthed beside one of the gateposts, his eyes filled with the nearby inferno. He gave no sign of noticing Kelly and Annamaria.
The agent started down the drive, primarily from inertia. Annamaria halted him with a gentle tug on his arm. “People will be getting cars,” she said. “They won’t be able to leave, but they’ll be coming over here anyway. There’s a place we can talk, though. . . .”
Kelly let the woman direct him to the right, along the inner face of the compound wall. They passed the playground and buildings of the American School. Kelly had not realized the Annex area was so extensive. The path narrowed between the wall on one side and the steep hill down to the Conexes on the other. The shrubbery was rough, obviously untended. Suddenly there was a small, square building in the midst of the trees and brush. It was barely touched by the streetlight reaching over the wall and through the foliage.
The white exterior plaster had flaked somewhat at the corners and around the jamb of the round-topped door. It gave the squat building the look of a soldier who has gone through a battle in his parade uniform. A double band of ceramic tiles encircled it just below the roof line. The flat roof humped in the center into a dome.
Annamaria reached up and fingered one of the smooth tiles, the care of its decoration obvious though the dim light washed its varied colors into shades of gray. “The tiles are mostly Dutch, you know . . . here, the Residence, most of the really old buildings in Algiers. 16th Century Delft tiles here. . . . It was a saint’s tomb, a sidi was buried here. The body is long gone, of course.”
The door was a thin plywood panel, clearly not original to the building. It was held shut with a twist of wire, perhaps part of a coat hanger. “Why the mania for Dutch tiles?” the agent asked as he unwound the wire. “Not that they aren’t very pretty. . . .”
“The price was right,” Annamaria said. She was so close to Kelly that her breast touched his left arm. “Charitable societies in Holland used them for centuries to ransom Christian seamen from the pirates. The Barbary Pirates, the Berbers. . . . Do you suppose he slept better, the saint, knowing that his tomb was covered with the ransom of infidels?”
Kelly swung the door open. It scratched on the stone flooring. There was nothing within but hollow echoes and a few leaves. He turned deliberately to Annamaria and kissed her as her arms slipped under his jacket. When the pressure of her fingers on his back relaxed, Kelly also relaxed slightly to allow their mouths to part. He murmured something that even he did not understand, his eyes screwed shut in hope and pain.
“Darling,” said Annamaria quietly, her fingertips ten moth-wing touches above the line of his belt, “what happened to you last night after you left me? Or was it this morning?”
The agent’s eyes were open, now, and as still as pools of quicksilver. “Oh,” he said with a smooth, false nonchalance, “did your husband say something was going to happen?”
“It was Rufus who did something, then,” the woman said. She stood with the perfect calm of a gymnast the moment before she executes a particularly difficult series. “No, darling, Rufus said nothing. . . . I told you, Rufus doesn’t talk when he’s angry, not to me. But you—” She raised one hand and traced the index finger from Kelly’s ear-lobe down his jaw line, then back and down his chest. He shivered. “You made a decision, and you stood by it last night when I think it might have been easy not to.” Her finger tapped Kelly’s belt buckle and skipped lower, briefly, enticingly. She giggled.
Kelly mumbled and tried to draw the dark-haired woman close again. Annamaria leaned back, away from the fulcrum of his hands. “No, darling,” she said seriously. “I have to know.”
“I—” Kelly began. Then, his eyes on hers, he went on. “Last night I got reminded that people don’t live forever. I won’t live forever. You know, the plane you were supposed to be on crashes, or a roof tile nips your ear before it busts to hell on the sidewalk. I’d decided, maybe I couldn’t handle two things at once. But I decided, yeah: and maybe I can’t handle either one alone. But even if I live in a cave and have people slip food through a slot, something can still go wrong. That’s not a reason to be afraid to try. . . .” He swallowed. “Afraid to do things that are important to do.”
Annamaria’s left hand still held Kelly gently where his rib cage tucked under. She spread her right hand on his shirt, over the nipple, and looked at her own fingers rather than the agent’s eyes. She said, “Darling, if you were very angry with—my husband, with Rufus—” she looked up. “How would you get back at him? You would get back at him.”
Kelly took his hands away so abruptly that the woman stumbled back a step. He did not notice because he had turned and smashed the heel of his palm against the tomb as hard as he could. He slowly raised his left hand to the arch of the door, feeling his way along the plaster. His face was bent toward the empty floor within.
After almost a minute poised against the tomb, the stocky man faced about. In a hoarse, tired voice he said, “I’ve done things, Anna, you’re right. . . . Not, not just to get even, but why should you believe that? And anyway, it doesn’t matter.” He wet his lips and paused. Annamaria stood with her arms crossed, her long fingers touching her own shoulders. Kelly said, “Anna, I’m not subtle. I—I might kill, sure, because there’re some things, some people that—I’m not going to have go on. But—not your husband, because he is your husband. And I. . . . Nothing I”—he looked away—“nothing I wanted from you had anything to do with your husband.”
Annamaria’s face warmed by stages in a broad, slow smile. “Wanted?” she said, extending her right arm with the delicacy of a plant sprouting. “Want-ted? Darling, don’t try to tell me that you don’t want it still.” She continued to caress his groin until she moved her hand to permit their bodies to press closer together while they kissed.
Kelly slid his hand up and cupped a breast through the silk dress and nothing more, Jesus, nothing more. The nipple hardened beneath his palm. Annamaria leaned away, raising her hand to Kelly’s. Their lips parted. An apology rose in his throat but caught there as the black-haired woman slid the silk off her left shoulder and let the dress fall free of her torso. It was caught momentarily by Kelly’s hand on her breast, then held at her waist as they embraced again. The aureolae were small and very dark against Annamaria�
��s white skin, black in the diffused light of the street lamp.
Kelly bent. She touched her own left breast, lifting the erect nipple to meet his lips. When his tongue began to quiver over the surface of the nipple, Annamaria moaned and sagged a little against the hand with which Kelly supported the curve of her right hip.
Annamaria reached down and touched her groin, through the dress at first, sliding a finger up and down over the slick fabric as she arched herself to meet her hand. Then she gave a tiny gasp, a catch of her breath, and hiked her skirt up with a convulsive movement that threatened the material. Kelly knelt in front of her, feeling but ignoring the bite of pebbles on his knees. When his mouth left her breast, Annamaria touched the wall of the building with her left hand and leaned sideways until her shoulder braced her. Her face was slightly lifted, her eyes closed. From her throat came a purr that may have been intended for words.
Annamaria’s panties were simple and very brief. They were white and more noticeable against her skin for their reflectance than for any difference of shade. Kelly hooked his thumbs under both sides of the garment, then gently tugged it down. The fabric clung at mid-thigh, then dropped around her ankles.
She tossed her head sideways, looking down past the dress she held bunched at her waist. She lifted her left foot carefully clear of the panties, then kicked out sharply with her right leg. The slight garment flew off into the darkness from the tip of her open-toed shoe. Annamaria giggled and ran the fingers of one hand through Kelly’s hair.
Bending forward, Kelly divided the lips of the woman’s vulva with an index finger. They were already moist. Her pubic hair was a small black wedge with a stem up her midline toward the navel. He touched, then kissed, her exposed clitoris, slipping his finger back and deeper as she thrust her pelvis toward him.
Annamaria began breathing with short, rasping intakes. The fingers of both her hands danced over Kelly’s scalp, guiding his rhythm with their pressure but never attempting to force what they already controlled. After a moment, she began to caress his earlobes between her thumbs and index fingers. The skirt had tumbled across Kelly’s face in a spidery flood. He lifted it away with his right hand while his left hand and tongue continued to probe gently and rhythmically.
Annamaria’s gasps stilled, her hands froze in brushing contact with the man. Only her hips continued to move, once, twice, and as she thrust the third time she screamed in a perfect counterfeit of pain. Kelly continued to hold her, continued to stroke, until her body relaxed and she bent over him. Annamaria murmured endearments as she drew him upright, kissing him and clinging with a supple muscularity.
After a moment, the woman stepped back. ‘’This,’’ she said with an angry intensity, looking down at her dress. “This!” She found the concealed zipper in the side, then pulled the garment off over her head instead of stepping out of it.
Kelly, grinning, took the delicate dress from Annamaria’s hand as she turned to fling it into the dark after her panties. “Now, always treat your equipment kindly,” the agent said. “Never know when you’ll need it again.” He leaned into the tomb and hung the dress carefully from the upper edge of the door. He tossed his own suit coat over the panel as well.
Annamaria giggled again and bent to test the ground. “I think,” she said as she straightened, “that cracked stone has it over cedar twigs.” Wearing only high-heeled shoes and the dappling shadows, her beauty was startling. Kelly had tossed his shirt over his coat. He was leaning against the door jamb, struggling with a shoelace and wondering if there were not somehow a more sensual way to undress. The dark-haired woman stepped close and kissed him. “Well,” she said, eyeing the tomb floor speculatively, “not the most romantic setting I could have found, is it? But I doubt somehow that I’ll notice that the stones are cold.”
“Romance is something you bring with you,” Kelly said, “not something that’s there.” He lifted his right foot out of his shorts and trousers together. Without being fully conscious of the fact, he was using his torso to keep the small sheath knife out of the woman’s sight. Her eyes were not on his clothing. Her hand reached out again to stroke his genitals. “And as for the floor,” he added in a huskier voice, shifting his weight to clear his left leg in turn, “I know a trick worth two of that. . . .”
Kelly spread a hand under each of Annamaria’s buttocks. Their groins pressed together. He was a strong man, proud of his strength, and never more of his mettle than now. Their lips met, damping to a murmur the question in Annamaria’s throat. Kelly lifted her easily, her calves wrapping instinctively around his thighs and taking much of the weight off his arms. The lips of her vulva, spread naturally by the motion, slipped easily as he entered her for the first time. Her cry was a muted echo of her previous climax. They rocked together, Kelly’s knees flexing and straightening. Annamaria’s head was turned to the side, her fingers splayed on her lover’s shoulders. She gasped and gasped, and at last cried out in pleasure that wracked a spasm from her vagina and brought Kelly to climax as well.
For him, the experience was a unique combination of delight and a bludgeoning. His blood pressure went momentarily off scale, a vise over his skull and the veins of his throat. Then his whole body relaxed, the muscles of his legs trembling. His arms felt as if they were no longer parts of the body he controlled.
Annamaria felt his sudden weakness. She uncoiled her legs, setting her feet on the ground again. The two of them leaned against the plastered wall, still joined, their arms tightly around one another. The woman’s high heels had been pressing against the muscles of Kelly’s thighs without either of them being consciously aware of it. Both of them were flushed, able to ignore the increasing cool of the night, but the noises of the outside world began to reenter their awareness. The sirens had stopped. Cars were moving in the street and the lot by the DCM’s house. Headlights swept within the compound wall. Horns and curses, mostly in French, marked the labored departures.
“I suppose I’ve got a handkerchief in my pants pocket,” Kelly said after a time.
Annamaria ran a hand over his left hip, feeling the play of muscle beneath the skin. “What do you do tomorrow?” she asked, her head turned aside and her eyes half closed.
“Work,” the agent replied. He was interested to note that he had not tensed at the question. “All day. I’ll—I’ll see you again, if you . . . if you want that. Not tomorrow, and maybe not in Algeria. But again, I hope.”
Annamaria turned and nibbled at his left earlobe. “Well, we shouldn’t waste what we have, then, should we?” she whispered. She felt him stir within her. “Now, if we’re careful, I think we can lie down without—oops!” She giggled again as Kelly slipped out of her. “Well. . . .” She sat back, first on her heels and then on the stone floor of the tomb. She stretched her hands toward Kelly from the darkness. “Come here, darling. I told you the stone wouldn’t feel too cold.”
Later, the walls were an echo chamber for her happy cries.
XXVI
“Oh, by the way, Kelly,” said Commander Posner, “we got a reply from Paris on your cable. The general will look into it.”
Kelly straightened from the recorder more abruptly than he should have. The shock of motion was as severe as if he had brought his head up under a cabinet door. It drew a wince and a muffled groan from the agent, “Which cable was that?” he asked, fashioning his pain into a frown of question. Drinks in the bar of the Hotel St. George were just as expensive as Charlie DeVoe had suggested, but Kelly had pretty well decided that he had enough money to last the rest of his life.
Sergeant Rowe rapped on the office door. He unlatched it before either of the others had time to grunt him an invitation. Rowe was keyed up in a cheerful, anticipatory way quite at variance with the other men. The Defense Attaché’s face was a map charting the alternate disasters of success and failure. As for Kelly—Kelly would have been grim and tense had he not been hung over. To the extent his pain distracted him, he became less grim—and more dangerous. “Say,�
� said the sergeant happily, “what’s the Company doing here so early on a weekend? I saw all three of their cars when I parked. Harry got something on too, do you suppose?”
“Maybe they’ve got a tap into the MFA sewer and they’re raking shit,” Kelly snapped, more sharply than he had intended to speak to Doug. “Christ,” he added more plaintively, “we’ve got enough here to hold us, don’t we?”
“The cable is the one you requested me to send, you might remember,” Commander Posner said with a hint of his own frustration. “The duty officer brought the reply over to me at the Residence last night. I looked around for you, but you seemed already to have disappeared”—Kelly was tense but he did not jerk his eyes toward the Attaché—“and I eventually decrypted it myself. There was a traffic accident on the street that took hours to clear up. I decided I might as well use the time by reading the cable, since I couldn’t get home and you had left me with the program.” Perhaps misinterpreting the agent’s stiffness, Posner added, “If that was a mistake, no doubt you can put enough in my next Fitness Report to quite destroy my career, if you so desire.”
Kelly shook his head, then winced again. “Oh, hell, that’s fine,” he said. “Like you say, you had the program disk. I. . . . Pedler’s going to get Hoang out through Frankfurt, then?”
“Apparently there’s some problem with that,” the Attaché said, speaking somewhat more mildly himself. “The Vietnamese—Hoang and his escort—are flying in and out through Paris . . . and of course our relations with the French aren’t quite what they are with the Germans, especially on a matter that could be seen as impinging on the Arab world. The Conference being in Algiers, that is. But the General will make an attempt.”
Kelly managed to grin, then forgot it and let it fade. “Well, I said I wasn’t going to worry about what I couldn’t change.” He glanced at his watch. It was a good half hour before he wanted to leave. They would be using one of the mission’s Plymouth Volare station wagons. It was as conspicuous as an ox in a sheepfold, but it was so obviously the property of a foreign diplomatic mission that the Algerian police were unlikely to try to stop it. If worst came to worst. . . . “Doug, you still have your key to the armory?” Kelly asked in sudden decision. “I need to get in for a moment.”
