“Admirable ending to this little drama,” Karinolov said. “Couldn’t have planned it better myself.”
He slammed shut the cabin door and grabbed Tarini’s hand.
“No use leaving you in the cargo hold where you’ll get into mischief,” he said. “We’re past any danger of being stopped by Customs.”
Tarini struggled but was ineffective—the drug had sapped her strength.
Even now, as he felt her skin, he knew he wanted to possess her. He fought this emotion, reminding himself with loathing of Austin’s child growing in her belly.
Tarini should have been his woman. She should be his reward for all he had endured.
Maybe there was a way to have her, he thought.
He shoved her into the cockpit. A small, waiflike figure stood trembling at the navigator’s table. His mind worked rapidly.
“Ah, my beautiful Tanya,” he said, dropping Tarini on the cockpit floor like yesterday’s garbage.
TARINI FELT a bitter taste in her mouth. She raised her head and tried to bring her eyes to focus. She shook her head in disbelief at what she was seeing.
In the tiny space of the cockpit, she saw her sister and Karinolov embrace. His mouth was on her sister’s, his fingers splayed across her hips.
With an animal cry, Tarini lunged at the couple, catching Karinolov off balance.
“No! No!” Tanya screamed.
Tarini brought down Karinolov onto the pilot’s seat. He gripped her as forcefully as she held him. Locked in a death grip, they fought for dominance.
“Bitch!” grunted Karinolov. He brought her head down and butted it against the control panel. A sharp crash sent stars to her head. She felt as if she was spinning.
Tarini realized it wasn’t just her. The plane was torquing slowly and ponderously in the hangar. The force of her head against the control panel had set the plane on its axis.
Tanya screamed.
Karinolov cursed. The cockpit door flew open.
Suddenly Karinolov was off of her. Jerked to his feet by Austin, who punched him once, twice and a third time before Karinolov could even mutter a feeble plea for mercy. Austin dropped the man’s unconscious body to a heap on the cockpit floor.
“Tarini, are you all right?” he asked, helping her up from the pilot’s chair. He leaned forward, flicking the gear shaft, bringing the whirling plane to a halt.
Tarini rubbed the back of her head. No blood. “I’m okay,” she sighed. “Just glad it’s over. It is over, isn’t it?” She looked down at Karinolov’s still body.
“Yes, it’s over,” Austin answered. He pulled a folded paper from his back pocket and held it out to her. “It’s all over.”
She read the communiqué from the Byleukrainian capital, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, Austin, I’m so happy! Vlad’s safe, he’s the new leader of our country, and you…”
“I’m yours, Tarini,” he said, kissing her tenderly.
Their pleasure was interrupted by a soft cry from beneath the navigator’s table.
“Tanya!” Tarini exclaimed.
Her sister crawled out to Tarini’s arms.
“I’m sorry!” Tanya moaned. “You thought I was kissing him for love, but I had Austin’s gun. When he kissed me, I was going to shoot him and then…myself.”
“Yourself?” Tarini cried in shock. “Why you?”
“Because I betrayed my country,” Tanya said, burying her head in Tarini’s shoulder. “I betrayed my family and my honor. I believed in him, Tarini, I believed everything he said.”
Tarini slipped the gun from her sister’s fingers and laid it on the carpet safely out of Tanya’s reach, behind Karinolov’s body.
“Tanya, many people believed in him,” Austin said. “You’re young and idealistic. You thought he had all the answers. But now you know better about him and about what he represents.”
He took the communiqué from Tarini’s hand and put it on Karinolov’s chest.
“We’ll let the police take care of him,” he told the two women. “He doesn’t have that precious diplomatic immunity of his anymore.”
He helped Tarini to her feet and the two walked Tanya out of the cockpit. From the cabin windows, Austin could see the police handcuffing Karinolov’s staff.
He watched Bob being led away and he grimaced. He would forgive his friend for betraying him to pay off his new gambling debts. He would forgive, but he didn’t trust himself to talk to Bob today.
He looked across Tanya’s head to Tarini. He had never known that he would or could love a woman so much. He had never known that there could be a relationship that would call forth his whole soul—even more important than the relationship with his parents or even with Vlad.
She was his woman.
The mother of his child.
His equal partner.
And he would make her his wife.
FOOLS. Wretched Fools.
Rubbing his aching head, Karinolov read the communiqué from the Byleukrainian capital. Cursing, he ripped it to shreds. The world was run by fools. He was better. Stronger. Smarter. Forged of an iron will.
But it was over.
He would never have his capital, his country, Tarini.
His fingers coiled around the gun. He was not a quitter, because he was never willing to let his fate be decided by others. Karinolov was the master of his destiny. He closed his eyes and remembered how hard he had struggled. He thought of the arrest and deportation that was sure to be his fate. The return to the Byleukrainian capital in humiliation and defeat. To be consigned to death at the hands of his enemies. Or worse, to a lifetime behind bars. It would not end with this, he resolved.
“WHAT WILL HAPPEN to him?” Tarini asked Austin.
Austin glanced around the hangar. “The police are busy rounding up his men, but they’ll take him in soon enough,” he said. “That was a pretty hard punch he took.”
He leaned against a cargo box and, slipping his fingers through her jeans belt loops, pulled her to him. He ran his finger across her belly to remind himself of all that had been saved.
Tarini glanced across the hangar to where her sister huddled, crying. Tanya had asked to be alone with her thoughts.
Tarini’s heart went out to her sister, but she knew Tanya was young. Time would soften her grief and self-reproach. She would survive.
She looked up into the eyes of her lover. “Did you mean what you said in the plane?”
“That I love you? Yes, I meant it I’ve never said I love you to a woman before.”
“If you had told me sooner, I wouldn’t have lied to you.”
“I didn’t know any sooner,” Austin confessed. “I didn’t know how much you meant to me until I nearly lost you. But it won’t happen again. Tarini, will you marry me?”
“Oh, yes, I will,” she said, pressing her lips to his.
Austin would have deepened the kiss but Tarini pulled away. She was not so modern that kissing in front of a roomful of strangers didn’t bother her. Even if the strangers were busy cuffing Karinolov’s men.
Besides, there was her sister. Cowering in a lonely corner of the hangar. Her shoulders shaking, her head bent, her weeping audible even from this distance.
“Go to her,” Austin suggested. “It’s all right. We have the rest of our lives to be together. She’s young and thinks it’s all over for her. Tell her different. Then we’d better call your mother.”
“Oh, God! She must be so worried!”
“She’s even more worried because her eldest daughter is going out with an American,” Austin teased.
“She knows?”
“Yeah, and I think she likes me,” Austin said with the brash confidence that had once annoyed her but now made her smile.
She pulled away from his embrace reluctantly. She started to walk toward her sister. But a chilling voice stopped her in her tracks.
“Tarini!”
AUSTIN SAW Karinolov at the cabin door. He saw his own gun in Karinolov’s hand and recogni
zed the look of despair and menace in Karinolov’s eyes.
He reached instinctively to his shoulder holster and found it empty.
As if all time had stopped, he made his decision rationally and without hesitation. There was no time to call on backup, no chance that the frozen-in-hertracks Tarini would react in time.
He sprang to his feet and lunged for her, praying that he would shield or, better still, push her out of the line of fire altogether. There were only three people he would lay down his life for—his mother, his father and his friend Vladimir. And now there were four. Make that five.
The gunfire exploded just as he felt her softness crushed beneath his weight. He remembered the promise he had made her on the sidewalk just a scant day and a half before.
He would protect her and the child she carried.
He closed his eyes against the pain and the darkness he knew would soon come—and smiled the weary smile of the protector.
He had kept every promise he had made to her.
Epilogue
After the ceremony at the Saint Joseph’s Basilica in Brooklyn, a reception was held at the United Nations Mission for the Sovereignty of Byleukrainia. Family, close friends and assorted dignitaries were transported by a caravan of black limousines with the Byleukrainian flag flapping on every hood.
As required by protocol, Prime Minister Vladimir Romanov stood at the head of the receiving line with the president of the United States and the first lady. Vlad wore a black serge tuxedo, sported closecropped hair and a newly confident attitude very much befitting a prime minister.
He had accomplished so many things in the past few months—taken control of the country, presided over elections, which he handily won, and instituted the reforms that brought food to the starving and hope to the downtrodden.
But there had been unpleasant tasks, as well, including the hush-hush transport of Andrei Karinolov’s body to the rural outpost that had been his birthplace. Anonymously, Vlad had paid for the private funeral and Karinolov’s parents were given a small stipend to ease their hardship.
It had not been the hero’s death Karinolov’s supporters would have expected. The suicide was difficult to accept and Vlad had resigned himself that rumors would always contradict the truth of what happened in the Kennedy hangar that night.
United Nations Ambassador Austin Smith stood at his friend’s side, one arm around his new bride, the other still in a sling.
Austin marveled at how the winter months in a wretched Byleukrainian prison had sharpened and strengthened his friend. He watched as Vlad shook hands and spoke a few personal words to each guest. He realized that Vlad didn’t need him quite so much as when they had been young.
Maybe it had been for the best that Vlad had gained control of his homeland without Austin fighting his battles for him. After all, a man who rules a country can’t do it if he has to ask for his friend’s help every time there’s a problem.
Still, the bond between the two men remained strong. Not a day went by that they didn’t confer. About the trade issues for the tiny country, about the political situation, about the country’s position in the community of nations, about the coming baby.
Austin looked to his left and placed a discreet kiss on the cheek of his bride. She wore the Romanov ring on her right hand, to remind her of the country for which she was the United Nations ambassador’s wife. And she wore Austin’s ring on her left hand, to remind her of their wedding promises.
Her face glowed and her belly strained only a little against her white organza-and-lace Cerutti gown. Because of the designer’s expert stitching and the attention drawn to the gown’s back by its hundred and twenty-eight buttons, Tarini’s pregnancy was still a secret. But Austin was sure that soon everyone would know. And would share their joy.
The couple wouldn’t have much time together, alone, before the baby came.
At Tarini’s side stood her mother and sister. Austin’s parents were stationed at the end of the receiving line. The former ambassador clasped hands with old colleagues and longtime friends. His father and mother had taken him aside to tell him that since Austin was now a representative of the Byleukrainian government, he was entitled to know that his mother was an occasional spy for the United States government and had been for thirty years.
“But, Dad, I’ve always thought it was you who…”
“Ha!” His father had laughed. “Your mother is much better at espionage than I’d ever be. Quiet and so good at drawing people out. People tell her all sorts of things, thinking she’s just a bland, somewhat ditzy diplomatic wife. But she’s been responsible for a number of intelligence operations.”
“But your gadgets and those rumors…”
“I love to invent things,” the ambassador said, “but I could never do what your mother does. Too dangerous.”
Looking at his mother at the end of the receiving line, Austin reflected that she really did make a great spy. No one would suspect the demure, ever-so-proper diplomat’s wife.
As the five hundred guests made their way into the ballroom, Austin noticed that Bob and his wife and daughters—Austin’s goddaughters—had slipped in without going through the receiving line. Bob was avoiding him, Austin reflected, knowing that his friend still felt awful about how he had succumbed to Karinolov’s blackmail. Austin reminded himself that he’d have to take Bob aside and remind him, yet again, that when he forgave a friend, he forgave…and forgot.
For now, Austin turned his thoughts to his bride.
“Tarini, let’s slip out,” Austin whispered. “We could go upstairs right now and…”
“But, Ambassador,” she said archly, “you have all these guests to consider. The Egyptian ambassador just arrived. There’ll be a diplomatic incident if you leave him without someone to talk to. Besides, the orchestra is beginning the first dance.”
And protocol required that the first dance with the bride belonged to the man who gave her away. Vlad stepped out of the receiving line and shyly approached Tarini.
“May I?” he asked.
With a quick kiss to her new husband, Tarini took Vlad’s arm and entered the mission’s grand ballroom. After playing a few bars of the Byleukrainian national anthem to get the attention of the guests, the orchestra segued into a Chopin waltz.
Vlad, who had always been good at the skills required of a man of his station, expertly swirled Tarini around the ballroom as the guests stepped back to give them room. Tarini waved to her friends Toria and Nicholas Sankovitch, who had flown in from Chicago for the occasion though Toria was scant weeks from her due date.
“I am so happy for you and Austin,” Vlad said. “It has all ended as it should have.”
“Except there is one mystery left,” Tarini said.
“What is that?”
“Who the dashing prime minister will ask to dance after he has danced with me,” Tarini explained playfully. “I watched the morning news and the reporter was certain that it was either to be Brooke Shields—” Tarini gestured to the staircase where the beautiful actress stood “—or perhaps the daughter of the president.”
Vlad glanced to where the president’s family stood together, but said nothing.
“The news reports also suggested you might dance with the former wife of the Prince of…”
Vlad looked over her shoulder at the divorced princess.
“Beautiful, but I’ve met her before,” he said. “Not my type.”
“So who will it be?”
“Who do you think it should be?”
“I was thinking you could ask my sister.”
“Tanya?” Vlad laughed. “Tanya’s just a baby. She can’t be more than…how old is she anyhow?”
“Twenty.”
“But she’s…” He raised his hand to his waist to indicate height, raising it another foot as Tarini shook her head. At last, he put his hand up to his shoulder with a questioning glance.
Tarini nodded. “She’s right over there,” Tarini said, nodding towar
d her mother and sister. Her sister wore a pale pink dress with a tulle skirt. Tiny rosettes dotted her bodice and her long black hair.
“That’s Tanya?” Vlad exclaimed. “When I saw her at the ceremony, I thought she was just another ravishing Schaskylavitch cousin. I couldn’t imagine…”
“Imagine,” Tarini said as the music died down.
“My dance,” Austin insisted at their shoulder.
“Sure,” Vlad said, clearly dazed, relinquishing Tarini. “Who did the news reports say I was going to dance with?”
“Brooke Shields, the president’s daughter or the princess.”
“Well, they’re all wrong,” Vlad said, sweeping across the room.
As Vlad asked Tanya to dance, an audible murmur swept through the crowd. The reporter from “Entertainment Tonight” dashed out of the room. The divorced princess quickly took the arm of the French ambassador.
“They look good together, don’t you think?” Tarini said, noting the flush of pleasure on her sister’s face.
“Matchmaker,” Austin accused playfully.
“I just want everyone I love to be happy,” Tarini said.
“We’re all happy. Everything has turned out wonderfully.”
“Except…”
“Except,” Austin admitted, thinking of that terrible moment when he had thought he was going to die.
Karinolov had seen the future he was consigned to, had known exactly what would await him in his homeland. The humiliation had been too much to bear—and Karinolov was not a man who could weather humiliation.
Not before a final hideous farewell to the woman he had loved. As Austin had lunged to save Tarini from what he thought was certain death, Karinolov shoved his gun into his own mouth and fired. Austin’s quick reflex had been proven wrong, but he had acted from the heart—and when he had opened his eyes and known that he was not to die at Karinolov’s hands, he had known that he was Tarini’s.
Completely and utterly and forever.
The dance was over too quickly and Austin and Tarini parted. He danced with the women he was required to—the sulking princess, the first lady, and assorted ambassadors’ wives. In deference to her wounded leg, he sat out one dance with Tarini’s mother, who chatted endlessly about preparations for the baby. Austin realized it was good for her to have something nice to think about, after the long years of struggle.
His Kind Of Trouble Page 16
