by J. S. Cook
Octavian was funneling money and supplies to the Nazis, selling out his own people to the enemy. “I hope you don’t make it through the war,” I said.
“What does that mean?” He turned his flat, empty eyes on me. “Hm? What exactly are you saying, Mr. Stoyles?”
“I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes, Octavian. When this war is over and we’ve won, the Greeks are gonna knock themselves out getting hold of you.” Maybe it was the heat or my imminent demise, but the thought of Octavian being handed over to the Greek Resistance was hilarious. “You’ll be lucky if all they do is draw and quarter you.”
“Shut up, Stoyles.” He grimaced. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. After the war I’ll be welcomed back to Athens as a hero.”
“Is that so?” It might have been my imagination, but the Greek chauffeur’s big shoulders moved up and down a notch. “Not after they find out about you, Octavian. The things you’ve done, the lives you’ve sacrificed. I think a firing squad is way too good for you. The Greeks are liable to think so, too.”
“Oh, Mr. Stoyles, you are so completely simpleminded. I am not so stupid as to openly cast my allegiance with any one body! I do a little here, I do a little there. It really doesn’t matter to me who wins the war.”
Just listening to him was making me sick. “Yeah. You only care that you get paid.”
“And I do, Mr. Stoyles. I get paid very, very well, and I have the satisfaction of knowing my small contributions are put to the best possible use. The Germans have made such rapid progress in Greece. To subdue an entire nation takes careful planning and the very best lines of supply. Can you imagine the satisfaction I feel, knowing it was I who made that happen?”
There it was again: the chauffeur’s shoulders moved, and his eyes met mine in the rear view mirror. What the hell was going on? “You’re a real inspiration, Octavian. I’m sure your starving countrymen appreciate everything you’ve done.”
“Oh, but you are again mistaken, Mr. Stoyles. In this war, I consider myself a soldier. Unofficially, of course.”
“Of course.” I could see the white house on the desert, looming ahead of us through the windshield. We’d be there in a matter of moments.
“So I have taken care to”—he smirked—“spread the wealth a little. Sometimes there are clandestine air drops of food and medical supplies to some of the sorely harassed areas, or some surplus clothing, marked, of course, with the logo of my company, Octavian and Weiss. It is easier to be grateful for that which one has received when one is familiar with the giver, don’t you think?”
I didn’t have to answer. The chauffeur pulled the car up in front of the house, turned, and spoke something in Greek to Octavian. He kept the gun in my ribs while we got out of the car, holding me nice and steady. The big chauffeur walked behind Octavian, just in case I got any ideas about making a break for it. “It’s a shame, Mr. Stoyles, that you feel the way you do. I could use a man like you in my organization.” He stopped before the door and waited, but the chauffeur didn’t move, so Octavian barked something in Greek. The chauffeur turned so quickly, it was impossible to follow, and something flashed silver in the morning sun. Octavian’s gun fell away, and he was crouched against the side of the house with both hands wrapped around a gaping wound in his throat. His mouth moved as if he was trying to speak, and then he simply folded to the ground, dead at my feet. The chauffeur moved toward me, pulling at the skin on his face, dislodging his hair and mustache and eyebrows, and Colonel Andros Scala emerged, coolly self-assured. “I did not want to kill him.”
I looked down at Octavian’s dead face. “You saved my life.”
Scala shook his head sadly. “I did not do it for you.”
I followed him into the house. Frankie Missalo’s body had been removed and some attempt made to clean up the living room. Sam Halim sat in a chair by the window with a Browning 9mm handgun in his lap. He looked at us, Colonel Scala and me, as if he had never seen either of us before. “Is he dead?”
Scala nodded.
Sam’s face stiffened, and the hand holding the gun trembled. “It is well.” He tried to smile at me, but couldn’t quite manage it. “I have done all I could for your friend, Mr. Missalo. I have shrouded his body and said the Salat al-Janazah for him. His remains are resting in the bedroom.”
“I’ll go see him in a minute. Look, Sam, I know Jonah Octavian is your cousin….” There wasn’t anything I could say, not really.
Scala shifted his feet. “I will contact the others.” He disappeared down the hall and into another room; I heard him talking on the telephone.
“It is over now, Jack.” Sam tried to stand but fell back into the chair. His gun clattered to the floor, and I bent to pick it up. “I had hoped to avoid the inevitable, but he left me no choice.” He shook his head slowly. “The day I left you in Newfoundland, I knew this could not end until I found him.” He pressed his hands against his eyes. “I am so tired, Jack.”
I went down on my knees and pulled him into my arms. “Me too, Sam.” I kissed his cheek. “Me too.”
I left him there for a few minutes while I went and had a word with Frankie. Sam had washed the body and shrouded it in a clean white sheet. I knelt beside him and touched the shroud where I figured his heart would be. “They’ll never believe this back in Philly. You and me, huh Frankie?” I didn’t need to ask why he’d hooked up with somebody like Octavian; I knew. Frankie was dirty. He hadn’t started out that way; he just couldn’t resist the money Octavian was offering.
See, Frankie came from a family with too many kids and not enough money, and lived in a falling-down house in a crummy part of Philly. By the time he was twelve, he had three paper routes and was earning extra money by selling apples after school. Mind you, my family wasn’t doing too great either, especially after my old man was killed at work, but there was only me and Ma. We didn’t have nowhere near the number of mouths to feed that Frankie’s family did. I guess growing up that way makes you hunger for all the things you don’t have. So when Jonah Octavian came knocking, Frankie took him up on it. He probably found some way to reconcile the things he was doing with the other stuff going on in the world, and maybe he reckoned it wasn’t so bad. Maybe all the things he’d done to help me balanced the scales. The way I figured it, Frankie threw in with Octavian because the Greek had money and connections, and because he’d probably made Frankie the kind of promises that are hard to resist.
“Good-bye, Frankie.” I didn’t know what else to say. I felt a hand on my shoulder.
Sam was there. “He was your friend. I am sorry it ended the way it did for him.”
I nodded. Mostly I was trying not to cry, but I could feel the back of my throat closing together. “Yeah.” I coughed, just to try and get rid of the awful feeling of wanting to break down and sob my guts out. “So, uh, what happens now?”
Sam brushed my cheek. “Jonah Octavian has been effectively… removed. He is out of the equation. Now we go back to Cairo. My wife and children are staying with relatives. I am anxious to see them.”
There was that old, familiar, kick-in-the-gut feeling again. “Sure.”
“Jack.”
“Mm?”
“If I were to come to your room this evening, would you be available to”—his gaze lingered on my mouth—“receive me?”
“You mean…?”
“Oh, yes.” His eyebrows arched. “If you aren’t otherwise occupied.” He smiled, and something kindled in his dark eyes. “I believe the time is right.”
AT QUARTER to eight that evening, there was a knock at the door of my suite. I’d been waiting, trying to read the newspapers, sipping some coffee, but my nerves were jumping all over the place. “Hello, Sam.” He was dressed simply, in khaki trousers and a blue shirt; he still looked tired but not as bad as he’d looked at Octavian’s place in the desert. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d wanted anybody as badly as I wanted him.
“Jack.” He looked at me for a moment. Maybe
he was thinking the same thing I was, that we were finally alone together, behind a closed door, safe from prying eyes. “My darling.”
I took three huge steps toward him and crushed him in my arms. Our mouths found each other, fumbling at first, hot and slippery and wet and so good—oh God, so good. His fists twisted in my shirt, and he walked me backward until we fell down on the bed together. The noises from the open window vanished, and the room went away; there was nothing but Sam’s hands and his mouth, his body. I strained toward him, wanting to feel him all over me. I groveled into his shoulder, groaning wordlessly as his lips roamed over my neck, the hard bulge of his clothed erection pressing into my belly as he rubbed himself on me. He stiffened, his whole body taut, his mouth open and his eyes closed. He groaned deep in his throat, a sound that rippled through me like heat, and I caught him to me as the tension left him and he came to rest against my shoulder, breathing hard.
I chuckled. “That good, huh?”
“Oh, Jack.” He swallowed hard and tried to catch his breath. “It has been a very, very long time for me. I beg you, please forgive me.”
“Forgive you? Sam, I’m flattered.” I lifted his chin and kissed him. “It’s been ages since anybody wanted me that much.”
He propped himself on one elbow and smiled down at me. “You are never going to allow me to forget this, are you?”
“Never.”
“Years and years from now, when we are both old men, you will remind me of just this incident.”
“Uh-huh.”
He kissed me, and my heart just about burst wide open. Goddammit, I loved this man.
“Jack, let us bathe together now, and then we will love each other slowly.”
We stood under the shower’s warm cascade and kissed, touching and exploring one another with all due consideration. It was strange, because I’d been waiting for such a long time now to have Sam to myself, to kiss him and touch him and make love to him without the fear of prying eyes. I couldn’t stop looking at him. He was lean and more muscular than I’d expected, his chest and abdomen beautifully defined. His shoulders were broad, angling down to a narrow waist, and the muscles in his arms stood out in sharp relief. There was a scar on the right side of his chest, perhaps three inches long, evidence of some past surgical repair. The little finger on his left hand had been broken and badly set. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
He kissed me and pulled me into his arms, warm and slippery under the falling water. He held my face between his palms and gazed into my eyes. “Jack.”
“Sam.” I was grinning like a fool.
We turned the shower off and lay down together on my bed, our bodies warm and wet. He pressed me down and kissed my neck and shoulders, licked my nipples and the hollow of my throat. I surged toward him, desire throbbing through me like a rampant heartbeat. He took my cock into his mouth, and I was gone, brother, but good. I cried out and fisted the sheets, groaned and sobbed and begged him to let me come. I told him over and over how much I loved him, how much I wanted him. My release rose in my belly, uncoiling like a snake, and I came so hard my vision grayed out around the edges. When I finally drifted down from it, Sam was there, holding me as the aftershocks rippled through me like jagged lightning.
I reached for him, took his cock into my hand and stroked him gently, varying the speed and pressure, tugging him closer and closer to his climax. He writhed, fisting the sheets, and now and then a powerful shudder would run through him. He whispered to me, little things that lovers say, muted cries and wordless exclamations. He was silent when he came, panting through it, reaching for me and murmuring my name, his hands on my face, in my hair. “Jack.” Sam looked at me and smiled. “My beloved.”
“Mmm.” I didn’t know what would happen after this idyll was over, and I didn’t want to ask. “Sam. I’m so glad. You know, I didn’t think… I didn’t think we’d ever get here. Like this.” Something occurred to me. “Your wife and children, are they…?”
“They are well, Jack. Thank you for asking.” He traced the bridge of my nose. “Jack, I must tell you something, in order to help you understand the way things are between my wife and me.”
“Sam, that’s not necessary. It’s none of my business—” My throat closed together.
“No, Jack. I would have you understand.” He sighed. “My wife and I met at Oxford University in England. It is rare for a Moslem man to meet an educated woman of my generation. Tareenah was beautiful and bright, and we felt the same way about so many things. My family had been insistent I marry upon my return from England; I had given my father my word. I knew I could not marry a woman simply to acquire a broodmare. I wanted a mate, a companion. Thus, Tareenah.”
“Love at first sight, huh?” There was that feeling again, like I’d been kicked in the gut.
“No, Jack. Not at first sight. That is a Western notion. Your people may think us cold and unfeeling because we regard the sexes differently than you do. We are as passionate as your people, but we choose to enact that passion privately. What passes between a man and his wife is not for the outside world, and we believe love grows slowly, from the humblest of beginnings. I loved Tareenah; I still do.”
“Yeah, sure, Sam. I get it.” It was almost a physical ache. “I really do.”
“No, Jack, you do not.” He sighed and kissed the corner of my mouth. “My wife is brilliant. She is beautiful. She is an excellent mother to our children. In that, she has no equal. When our twins were born—Stamos and Tabia—the doctors told my wife another pregnancy would kill her. We have discussed the use of contraceptive devices, but my wife prefers to abstain from marital relations entirely.”
“Jesus.” I didn’t know much about Sam’s religion, but I was pretty sure he was expected to have sex with his wife. “There’s other things…. Sam, this is none of my business.” To say this conversation was awkward was putting it mildly, and I didn’t know Sam’s domestic situation well enough to comment on it.
“There are other paths to pleasure, you will agree, but….” He sighed. “Tareenah prefers to devote herself to her work. She is deeply involved in the welfare of refugees and others displaced by the war. I respect her decision. She has given me four beautiful children; what more could I ask of her?” He studied me carefully. “You probably cannot understand such an arrangement.”
“No, you’re wrong, Sam.” Suddenly my respect for Tareenah Halim grew by about a thousand degrees, even if I didn’t understand her. “I do. I really do. Does your wife… does she know…?” Dammit, how the hell did you say such a thing? “Does she know you have close male friends?”
“Jack.” His voice was very gentle. “I have never had any close male friends, as you say.” He picked up the gold cartouche and smoothed it between his fingers. “You, my darling, are the first. I sincerely hope you will be the last.”
“What will your wife think?” I didn’t relish the idea of being Sam’s extramarital affair.
“My wife approves of you, Jack. It is with her blessing that I am here. Do you know it was Tareenah who urged me to come here today? ‘Go to him,’ she said. ‘Do not keep such a man waiting.’ Tareenah’s wish is that I am happy. With you, that is possible.”
He stayed with me for the rest of the night, and we slept in each other’s arms. It was strange, after all these years of being alone, to lie next to someone, close enough to hear his sleeping breaths.
Near dawn, we woke and made love again and drifted back to sleep. When I next opened my eyes, it was nine in the morning and Sam was sitting by my bed, fully dressed. “You’re going?”
“I must. Will you come by the police station later this morning and make a report? The details of my… of Jonah Octavian’s death must be properly recorded.”
“Sam, what’s going to happen to us? When I go back to Newfoundland, I mean.”
He stroked my cheek. “I cannot answer that, my darling. Let us take each day as it comes.” He leaned in and kissed me. “Until later.”
<
br /> “Good-bye, Sam.”
I knew I’d see him in an hour or two, but saying it—saying those words—felt strangely and unpleasantly final.
Chapter 7
WHEN I arrived at the police station later that morning, Ibrahim Samir was in Sam’s office, sorting through papers on Sam’s desk. He glanced up but didn’t smile. “Captain Halim is not here.”
“Good morning to you, too. Where is he?”
Samir shuffled rapidly through a stack of file folders. “He has taken exercise. You will find him in the athletic club on Sharia Soliman Pasha.”
“You… you okay, Samir?”
“I have never felt better.” His gaze was pointed, his dark eyes as hard as obsidian. “Was there something else you wanted?”
“No. No, I’m good.” Whatever the hell was wrong with Samir was his business; I wasn’t interested. I found the athletic club on the Sharia Soliman Pasha, as Samir said. Sam wasn’t in the sauna or getting a massage, but I did find him in the boxing ring, sparring with some hulking brute of a guy who had fists like hams. I stood by the ropes for a while and watched.
Sam was a naturally graceful boxer, light on his feet and with lightning-quick fists. The big guy moved in, flailing, and a punch caught Sam on the side of the face, but he shook it off. His opponent came at him again, lashing out with both hands, but Sam danced back out of his way, and then feinted a right hook. The big guy struck again, a glancing blow high up on the cheek that opened a cut under Sam’s eye. He’s going to get pulverized, I thought. I was sure I’d be scraping Sam off the mat when everything was said and done, but he surprised me.
