Tess Awakening

by Andres Mann

***

  Nicola had barely survived his wound but was on the mend. For the first time in her life, Carmen was taking care of someone other than herself, and she helped Nicola recover with all the love she could muster. She was also still working through her mind why she had killed Kemal in such a brutal manner. She felt that she should have regretted what she did, and talked about it to Nicola and Tess. Both of them responded that they would have done the same thing. “Don’t forget, Carmen,” Tess told her, he almost killed the man you love; at least you had your revenge. I would kill Amir in an instant if I could. I just hope that he spends the rest of his days in hell, flogging himself for what he did.”

  The police investigated the massacre that took place at Jake’s farm and determined that Carmen, Nicola, and Tess were justified in using lethal force to defend from an attack by criminal mercenaries. The investigators questioned Carmen’s apparent excess of force against Kemal but eventually gave up that line of inquiry. The attack by Amir’s men and the murder of a child had shocked the community and made national headlines. Most of it was explained away as a terrorist attack. Tess and Jake let them think what they wanted. The only thing they wanted now was to make sure that Amir would pay for his crimes.

  Chapter 82

  Plotting Again

  The Iraqi government now moved to extradite Amir to face charges of treason. His lawyers in New York set up roadblocks, arguing that the demands for extradition were politically motivated. In any case, Amir had to answer for his crimes in a local court. The State Attorney was preparing an indictment against him. This was going to be an important case, and they dedicated all the necessary resources to make sure everything was done right.

  The judge ordered Amir held without bail. Amir’s lawyers went into high gear. They argued that their client was in need of urgent psychiatric care because he was traumatized and not responding to stimuli or other people. Eventually, they were able to move Amir to a secure medical facility for observation.

  Amir mental state was indeed problematic. He now started to delude himself, uttering disbelief and denial about his responsibility for the death of his son. He struggled to reduce his anxiety about what had happened, but the reality of what had transpired made it difficult to alleviate the pain in his soul. Everything inside him shouted “No”! His mind struggled to escape reality. Unable to tolerate the pain that emerged from his guilt, Amir fell into emotional anesthesia, allowing numbness and confusion to overwhelm him. He wanted to cry but couldn’t, so he withdrew into himself; he no longer cared about anything.

  Amir continued to act erratic and mentally disturbed, but slowly recovered from his depression. Now he started to rationalize his position. Yes, he caused his son’s death, but only because Tess had taken the baby with her instead of leaving him with his grandfather for the weekend as they usually did. He didn’t know that the baby was in the car. He sprayed bullets in the direction of the vehicle because he wanted to kill Jake, the man that had turned Tess against him so he could have her for himself. Had he succeeded in killing him, Tess might have realized the error of having chosen the wrong man and perhaps, in due time she would have returned to him.

  Amir now resolved to plot the next step. He missed the convenient services of Kemal, the faithful implementer of his wishes. It was too bad that Carmen had made mincemeat out of him. ‘What is it about these women,’ he thought, ‘why do they need to act like men?’

  Amir’s lawyers decided that an insanity defense would keep him out of jail so that they could fight for another day.

  The insanity defense is generally assumed to apply to psychopaths and sociopaths. Amir’s behavior throughout his life did reflect patterns of antisocial personality disorder. He habitually disregarded the rights of others, failed to respect laws, engaged in deceitfulness, lying, and conning others for personal profit or pleasure. Other troubling indicators were irritability and aggressiveness, reckless disregard for the safety of others; lack of remorse and rationalizing having hurt or mistreated others.

  Critics argue that the insanity plea is a rich person’s defense. Only wealthy defendants can retain high-priced psychiatric experts. Persons represented by public defenders are usually afforded a psychiatric examination for the defense, but they may not get the same quality of assessment, nor are they typically able to hire more than one examiner. Since money was no object, Amir’s lawyers made sure that several distinguished psychiatrists worked on the case.

  Three men posing as relatives visited Amir. They had the proper passports to prove it. Amir continued to mask his recovery by acting strangely, but at the end of the visit, the men received crystal clear instructions on what to do.

  Despite housing people who had committed violent, often heinous crimes, the facility where Amir was kept was still a hospital, not a prison. The patients were constrained but not locked up. There were police officers at hospital entrances, and others stationed nearby on call to respond quickly to staffers’ alarms when a fight broke out. But uniformed guards did not patrol the halls of even the highest-risk units. So the most violent patients were left to terrorize the others freely, with only doctors and nurses to stop them.

  Amir’s men saw plenty of opportunities to engineer his escape from the facility. They coordinated with Amir and implemented the plan. At the designated hour, Amir punched three men lining up for dinner in the mess hall. A melee immediately exploded. Inmates started to overturn tables, overwhelmed the few guards in the area, pummeled each other, and engaged in an orgy of violence.

  The guards outside ran into the building to help quell the disturbance. Amir punched two of them and sent them flying on the shiny tile floors. He made it to the front door where he met two of his men. They had used a truck to topple the front gate and left the vehicle in place. Hustling Amir to a waiting black SUV, they speeded away, reaching a clearing where a helicopter was waiting. They abandoned the car and boarded the aircraft, which rapidly took to the air.

  Amir and the men changed into new clothes in the helicopter. By the time they landed on a platform on top of a New York City building, the passengers leaving the craft appeared to be an ordinary group of businessmen back from a meeting.

  ***

  The men whisked Amir to a large luxury apartment with floor to ceiling glass walls that provided a stunning view of the lighted City in the evening. He showered, dressed in comfortable clothes, and walked to the dining room. A beautiful blonde woman wearing a tight, silky dress was seated at the end of the table. She stood up and went to Amir. She kissed him. “Welcome, General. My name is Tiffany.”

  “Please call me Amir.” He was pleased. It was a long time since he had a woman. He was also famished. They sat down, clinked glasses of Champagne and feasted on a classic selection of French dishes, Coquilles Saint-Jacques, smoked salmon and dill crepes and cardamom coffee mousse

  Tiffany was educated, charming and expensive. They made small talk, after which Amir took her by the hand and walked to the bedroom.

  Her associates had briefed Tiffany on Amir’s preferences and she understood the routine. He was a frequent client of the escort agency and the favorite of the girls because of his skill and ability to please them. Even though this was work, she expected to have a splendid time. Amir took his clothes off and sat on the bed. Tiffany stayed on her feet and kicked off her high heel shoes. Then she slowly removed her dress and underwear. Overall a splendid woman, much to Amir’s liking. He stood up, performed his usual inspection, touching her all over her body. He now felt a tremendous urgency. He picked her up, laid her on the bed and put his hand on her beautiful female center. She was already wet as he ran his fingers down her pink folds.

  “Nice,” he commented, “I missed not having a woman.” Tiffany cooed, aiming to please. Amir slipped on a condom, mounted her and had his climax after a few strokes. That was a relief after months of enforced chastity.

  He recovered quickly and wanted to make the woman earn her money. He took her again, turned her over, and rough
ly parted her cheeks. She screamed “no!” and tried to squirm out from under him. “You are too big for me, you will hurt me!”

  Amir’s response was succinct: “You are a whore and will do what I want!”

  Tiffany stopped him. “Amir, I am just a student working my way through college. There are some things I don’t do.”

  Amir ignored her but got an unexpected response. She twisted her right arm around and slashed his face with her long and sharp red nails. One nail caught the corner of his left eye. The pain was sufficient to cause him to rear back and release her.

  Tiffany dashed out of the bed with speed worthy of an Olympic runner. Naked, she grabbed her dress and fled the apartment.

  Amir walked to the living room and grabbed a cube from the ice bucket to place on his eye. Sitting on the sofa he began to laugh. Nothing aroused him more than a woman who fought back. “Ah, my Tess,” he thought. Just her name gave him a rigid erection that demanded release.

  He was still unsatisfied and returned to the bedroom. He remembered Tess insisting on his playing with himself while she watched. He had never done that before and it excited him at the time. Careful not to touch his glans, he began slowly touching his shaft. At every stroke, he wallowed in his memories of Tess and their lovemaking. He could still feel the thrill of her orgasms as he moved inside her. As he felt the tension build, he cupped his balls in his left hand and pressed gently, then harder. He felt his climax approaching and began to call her name over and over. At the moment of his eruption, he screamed “Tess!” and spilled sperm all over his abdomen and chest. He rolled into a fetal position and began to cry. He still loved her as much as he wanted to kill her.

  Amir downed a whole bottle of liquor and passed out, still dreaming of Tess in his arms.

  Chapter 83

  Day of Reckoning

  It didn’t take long for Tess and the gang to learn that Amir had escaped. Tess went into a rage. She was determined to find Amir and to make him face justice. Jake as usual, analyzed the situation and developed a lucid evaluation. The police search did not disclose much. Jake and police investigators agreed that the only place Amir could have gone was in the City. He would probably lay low for a while and then figure out a way to escape to another country.

  Jake assembled the team and laid out his analysis of the situation. “I believe that Amir will eventually escape to a country that has no extradition treaty with the U. S. and Iraq. The chances are that he will go to a place that is unlikely to ask a lot of questions. He would probably use a different name and disappear, at least for the foreseeable future.”

  “The question is whether this is the end of the story,” added Tess. “Amir is demented, in my opinion. His obsession will drive him to hit us again, somehow.”

  Carmen interjected. “Don’t you think that he has had enough by now?”

  “No, Carmen. He is even more obsessive and stubborn than I am.”

  “Amen,” the team said in unison. Tess was not sure if they were referring to her or Amir, but she let it pass.

  “In his twisted mind, Amir will want revenge. Sooner or later, we will cross paths with him again. The only question is how can address this?”

  “How about the police?” asked Carmen.

  Jake shook his head. “The police will do what they can, but I have little faith they can do much if Amir leaves the country. They are not going to dedicate the necessary resources to track him down.”

  Joe Slezak, the computer genius, suggested that it might be possible to trace Amir’s movements through financial transactions. “I might be able to access known bank accounts and see if we can get an indication of suspicious movements of funds. Credit cards are not likely to be used, so that’s not an option.”

  “How do you know about Amir’s bank accounts?”

  “I monitored his payments to his lawyers. It seems that he used several accounts, so we can start with those.”

  Jake saw a potential solution to the problem. “Great, Joe. Let’s do it.”

  “Are we going to tell the cops that we are going to do this?” Tess asked.

  “No. it would just complicate things, and it would take too long to get a court order. We are going to take a chance and do the monitoring discreetly.”

  George Kimmel, the Intelligence specialist, volunteered. “I can monitor airport activity, as long as we recognize that there is only a slim chance of finding anything useful.”

  “It’s worth a try,” said Jake as he rose, indicating that the meeting was over.

  Joe Slezak and Jake were the first ones to get to work. They accessed Amir’s impressive bank accounts in the U. S. and overseas and tried to discern a pattern of funds movements. Activity appeared to be legitimate, consisting of significant transfers to his legal team. Rent payments for his New York apartment had stopped soon after Amir’s incarceration, indicating that he was now hiding in a different place. Joe sourced the Real Estate databases and could not find anything useful. He wrote a series of programs that would not only monitor financial activity, but also provide alerts should anything out of the ordinary surface.

  ***

  Amir had arranged to go to Ecuador. His people had rented a large villa by a river on the outskirts of Cuenca, a gracious colonial city. The place had a perimeter security wall, barbed wire on top and surveillance cameras. It would do for a while. Before leaving, however, he had something to do. He wanted to square things off with Tess.

  Amir was furious, mostly at himself. He wanted to scream. ‘Tess is my nemesis. Nothing good has happened since I met her. She will kill me if she can. She hates me. Why do I still want her?’

  For the first time in his life, he was honest with himself. ‘I could have her with me now if I hadn’t tried to manipulate her. We are so much alike. She possesses the same intensity and relentlessness that I have. She is driven to succeed. She can be ruthless when necessary. She can be murderous when she is denied what she wants. She is just like me. That’s why we were destined to be together. I just failed to understand that the only difference between me and her is that she has a moral compass. I still don’t not know why such a superior woman is afflicted with a bourgeois sense of right and wrong; she should be taking advantage of the privileges that a gifted person is entitled to.’

  ‘I expected her to forgive me for omitting that Aara was my daughter. After we slept together, it shouldn’t have mattered, but unfortunately it did. I could not resist showing off when I made love to her even after she told me it was enough. I just wanted to prove to her that I was no ordinary lover; instead I overpowered her and made her feel that living with me would mean giving up her sense of self.

  What was I thinking when I unleashed my men to attack and hurt her? There must have been a better way to get her and my son. I used brute force instead of showing her my love and devotion. Now all she wants to do is to kill me. Perhaps I should offer myself to her, a praying mantis who devours the male after mating. It would be worth it to me if I could possess her just one more time.

  ***

  Two of Amir’s people were parked outside Tess’s apartment building, observing the comings and goings. They did not detect much activity. Mostly, the saw Tess and Jake go to work in the morning and return late in the evening. They had few guests. Then the men saw Jake leave the apartment carrying a suitcase. Obviously, he was going on a trip.

  They relayed the information to Amir. This was his chance to settle things once and for all. He rushed to the building and told his men to stay downstairs. He went up the elevator and buzzed the bell on Tess’s door, then moved away from the peephole. It worked. Tess came to the door, looked through the lens, and did not see anything. Thinking it could be a package from UPS, she opened the door. Amir rushed in and sent her flying to the floor.

  “Hello, Tess. It is nice to see you again. Are you well?” He had a gun in his hand.

  It didn’t take long for Tess to recover. She stood up and tensed her body like a cat. “Amir, haven’t you done e
nough damage? What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you, my love. I am here to take my revenge. It was your fault that I lost my son. I need to make you pay.”

  “You forget who shot our son, you miserable piece of shit!”

  “You had him with you in your car when he was supposed to be in New York instead. I just shot at your husband. He turned out to be a coward. He did not safeguard the child. He used him as a shield, trying to protect himself from my fury.”

  “Jake has more courage in a fingernail than you ever had in your whole body. He is the man you never were. You are just a lying murderous lunatic.”

  “Let us not split hairs my love. I came here to settle things. I now know that I will never have you for myself so I will put you out of your misery. Nobody defies Amir al-Saadi. I will now regrettably end your life. You must believe me; it is with a heavy heart that I do this. I still love you, but I now must sacrifice you. I have to do this to avenge my son.”

  A hard object connected on Amir’s head. Carmen was checking up on Tess and was surprised that her door was not completely shut. She immediately understood the situation and waited for the right moment to grab the statue at the entrance and pummeled Amir.

  Amir reeled and fell, aided by a kick from Tess. She stepped on his hand and made him relinquish the gun. It wasn’t enough to bring him down. He lunged at the women and managed to hurl Carmen to the wall. Tess swung around and kicked him in the kidney. Amir was now mad with fury. He took a chair and threw it at Tess, who dodged it. They now squared for a fight to the death. Amir was now familiar with Tess’s moves and tried to strike her with a kick to the throat. Tess anticipated the move, dodged his swing, and kicked him in the stomach.

  Jake came upon the scene. He had forgotten something and had come back to retrieve it before boarding the plane. He saw Carmen against the wall and Tess squaring off against Amir. He propped his bag and entered the fray. “Tess, let me take care of this.”