The Living Death

by Nick Carter

  "Karl, here, is our most valuable man," Professor Caldone said as we were introduced. "As Secretary of the ISS his task is to arrange every one of our monthly meetings. He chooses the site, arranges for accommodations, plans the seminars and the dinners, sees that everyone gets an invitation and generally makes our get-togethers what they are."

  Krisst beamed and squeezed the Professor's shoulder. He looked up at me with a mixture of interest and speculation in those small, quick eyes.

  "I understand your accommodations were specially arranged, Mr. Carter," he said suavely. "But if there is anything I can do, anything you wish, please do not hesitate to call on me. Karl Krisst is always on call for the members and their guests."

  Krisst had a faint accent I correctly diagnosed as Swiss and, had I met him in Chicago, I would have taken him for the typical convention glad-hander and back-slapper. He exchanged little asides with almost everyone, I'd noticed, was always smiling and seemingly pleased with everything. He slapped the professor on the back, gave my arm a squeeze and hurried off. I saw him often during the afternoon and at the dinner that night, hovering over everything, checking one thing or another, making quick shifts when necessary, tending to the personal whims of his distinguished assortment of guests. The eminent scientists plainly got a charge out of him and Karl Krisst did his job exceedingly well. He was just a type I never could warm to, the surface joviality always a hollow element to me. But, I knew, the world was full of Karl Krissts and they seemed necessary to this kind of thing. I had stuck with the professor like glue, carefully watching everything he ate and drank, and when the dinner was ended I found Karl Krisst at my elbow again.

  "Do the meetings usually run like this one?" I asked.

  "You mean this badly?" he returned, breaking into a storm of laughter at his little joke.

  I went along with what I knew he wanted me to say. "I mean this well," I said. "Are the programs at each one similar to this?"

  "Yes," he answered. "There are the general sessions comprised of the seminars, official dinners and luncheons and one main session with a formal speaker. Then the last day of the meeting is given over to relaxation. This is only a three-day meeting so the day after tomorrow we will all spend at the beach. Even the greatest intellectual likes the sun and the sea. A great mind and a lobster have that much in common." Again he convulsed at his witticism.

  "You are also a member of the scientific community, I presume," I commented. He smiled, almost a little too sweetly.

  "Heavens, no," he answered. "Not a professional member. I'm not smart enough to belong to the ISS. I'm perfectly content with my role as Official Secretary."

  I hadn't asked him that and I wondered why he felt it necessary to throw it in. I beat him to a pat on the back and walked Professor Caldone back to his room. The elderly little man now showed the strain of the day.

  "I'm tired, my boy," he said to me. "It is too bad you cannot go out for the night life here at the resort. Maybe, after I'm safely locked in for the night, you could slip away."

  "Not a chance," I told him. "I'm going to be next door, making certain you're safe."

  Signora Caldone admitted us to the room and I saw Amoretta seated in a chair, wearing a delicate pink lounging robe of silk. A magazine was in her lap and a pout on her lips.

  "We were just going to bed if you hadn't come, Enrico," Signora Caldone said. "At least I was. Amoretta says she is too restless to sleep. She wants to stay up and read a while."

  I suddenly realized something which I hadn't thought to check out "Amoretta isn't sleeping here," I said. "She has a room of her own, hasn't she?"

  Signora Caldone turned in surprise. "Why, no, Mr. Carter," she said. "We planned to have her sleep here in the suite with us. The sofa makes into a bed, I understand."

  "Sorry, but that's out," I ordered. "Only you, Signora, may stay alone with the Professor, unless I'm there."

  Amoretta was on her feet, lower lip thrust out and her eyes flashing. "You are suspicious of me?" she flared angrily. "That is too much!" I shrugged. Actually I wasn't, but a certain kind of suspicion was ingrown with me. I didn't suspect her, while at the same time I did. I didn't really know a damn thing about her or the depth of her relationship to her uncle. I felt she was very fond of him. Yet I'd seen many a sweet young thing turn out to be a hardened agent. Personally, I felt she was trustworthy. Officially, she was as suspect as anyone else in Portofino. The question was how to answer Amoretta without causing the volcano inside her to explode.

  "I cannot permit your staying here at night," I said. "I'd lose my job."

  It seemed to strike the right note for the anger in those black eyes died out instantly. But my unwavering stand had brought on another problem, if you could call it that. I checked the hotel and there wasn't another room available, not a broom closet. There was only one solution and I was already thanking Hawk for the inflexibility of the instructions he'd given me.

  "Signorita Amoretta can sleep in my room," I announced gallantly, making it sound like a sacrifice of truly heroic proportions. "I'm used to sleeping in a chair."

  The professor and his wife protested my "sacrifice," both grateful and suspicious of my selflessness, and a slow smile flitted across Amoretta's face. She was up and getting her bag. While she did so, I hung one of Tom Dettinger's little devices on the door of the professor's suite. It was a silent alarm that went off when the lock was opened, transmitting a radio signal to a live alarm in my room. The windows were all properly locked and after rigging the device, Amoretta joined me in going back to my adjoining room where I locked the door between the suites. Looking as sly as a Cheshire cat, she draped herself over the sofa. I decided to set her right at once about our going out for the evening. She pouted for a moment and then brightened at once.

  "So then we stay here," she said, getting up and walking to the window. "See, we have a lovely view of the bay and the moon. It is perfect."

  Indeed it was. I was enjoying a lovely view of Amoretta. The silk robe was very light and outlined her legs in perfect silhouette as she stood by the window.

  "Is there anything wrong in. your fixing us a drink?" she asked, her tone dancing on the edge of sarcasm.

  "Nothing at all," I said. "I have bourbon. Ever had it?"

  She shook her head as I made two good bourbon and waters.

  She sipped hers, thoughtfully at first, and then with honest relish.

  "This bourbon, it is like you," Amoretta said. "Direct, strong… how you say, no-nonsense."

  Amoretta was pretty no-nonsense herself. I took off my jacket, stashed Wilhelmina in the side pocket and watched her fiddle with the hotel radio. She picked up a pretty good all-night station from Genoa and began to move sinuously to the music. She came into my arms and we began to dance. I could feel the firm fullness of her figure through the thin robe. She moved in close, rubbing her breasts against my chest. I was just starting to wonder about how far she would go when there was a knock on the door. Just to play safe, I retrieved the Luger from my jacket pocket before walking to the door. Actually, I thought it was probably someone complaining about the sound of the radio. I opened the door and then closed my eyes for a long minute. The tall, regal figure in the white silk dress, auburn hair falling softly to frame her classic features, said one word. She couldn't have picked a better one!

  "Surprise!"

  I stood still as she walked past me into the room. "Your cable was so thoughtful that I decided to come down and surprise you. It was simple to check the hotels here. After all, it's not…"

  She broke off her entrance and her sentence at the same instant. I didn't turn around. I didn't need to. I could see her focusing on Amoretta in her lounging robe, drink in hand. It took her even less time to explode this time and I braced for what I knew would come. It came, a roundhouse swing that landed with full force. My cheek hadn't really begun to sting before she was out in the hall.

  "Denny, wait!" I called.

  "You don't waste a minute, do
you?" she snapped back, her eyes wintry.

  "I can explain" I said.

  "Hah!" she snorted. "Explain! You probably haw explanations filed away by number. Excuse 12D, Explanation 7B, Apology 16FI!"

  "Will you listen to me?" I called after her, but the only answer was the click of her heels as she stalked away. Once again, I knew what I wanted to do and what I had to do. I slammed the door shut angrily.

  "I have caused you trouble," Amoretta said, and there was honest concern in her eyes, so very different from the sly triumph that little bitch Vicky had worn. I forced myself to smile at her and shrugged.

  "Not really," I answered. "It wasn't your fault." I poured myself another bourbon and found her beside me, holding her empty glass up. She joined me in downing the bourbon and I poured another for each of us.

  "You are upset," she said, leaning her head against my chest. It was true, but she was making me less so. The points of her breasts were soft against me, excitingly inviting. Anyway, I was really more angry at Denny tonight than I was upset. She seemed almost bent on popping up when she wasn't expected and being out when I tried to get to her. Amoretta was moving in my arms and we began to dance again, her body warm and firmly soft in my arms. I switched off the large lamp as we danced past it and there was only the soft glow of the moonlight filtering in through the window. If Denny wanted to jump to conclusions without even hearing what I had to say she could damn well stew about it by herself. Amoretta was pressing her hand hard against my back, her stomach touching my own. Her voice was husky, sensual, promising.

  "In the mountains of my home, we have a saying," she breathed. "There is a reason for everything."

  She nuzzled her face against my shoulder and I could feel the throbbing vibrations that emanated from her.

  "In other words," I commented, "there's a reason for what happened a little while ago and there's a reason why you're here with me now."

  Her shoulders lifted in a small shrug. Her old Calabrian saying fell on fertile ground. I was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, anyway. Amoretta was obviously smoldering, eager, desiring and desirable. If it was that and nothing more, or if she had a reason, I'd find out in the only way to find out. I slipped my hands inside the silk robe. She had a thin nightgown on. Parting the robe, I let it fall from her shoulders. She quivered and her arms flew around my neck and her lips, those full, soft lips, closed on mine and in moments she was naked in my arms. I lifted her and put her down on the sofa, brushing her round, full breasts with my lips. She gasped and her hands reached out for me as I stripped off shirt and trousers. When I pressed my body down against her, reveling in the tactile pleasures of her skin against mine, Amoretta gasped and clutched at me.

  "Oh, yes… yes… yes," she breathed. My fingers traced a slow path down her body, lingering on the full, smooth breasts, small nipples coming to life as they responded to the touch, rising, reaching upwards for my lips. Amoretta pulled my head down onto them, pressing me down so hard I was afraid she would cry in pain. But there were no cries of pain, only of ecstacy. She moaned in pleasure and cried out, small, urging sounds, while she writhed and moved, thrusting her body up against mine. Her skin was smooth, as though a thin film of oil covered her body, and as I moved down across her deep rib cage, down along her softly rounded belly and down further, her head tossed from side to side in uncontrollable rapture. I lingered for a moment, then left and pressed her luscious, full lips, now devouring. The probing, darting touch of my tongue acted like a spark of flame on a twig. Her body quivered and writhed and she gasped in desire, the volcano erupting into flame. All the throbbing sensuality exploded into feverish desire, a consuming passion that swept away all else. This was not, I realized, a girl who knew how to make love but a girl whose intense desires to be made love to were stimulus enough for two. Such hunger was a gift of itself and I responded, finding the very center of her femaleness, rewarded by the pleasure of her cries. As I held myself in her, I let her press her mouth against my shoulder to muffle her real cries of ecstacy. When her climax seized her body, her scream was into my chest or it would have wakened the hotel to say nothing of the professor and his wife next door.

  Amoretta sank back upon the sofa for just a moment and then she turned to lie over me, her silken body a tingling blanket. She moved her legs over mine, her belly across my muscles and she whispered into my cheek. "More, cara mia," she said. "I must have more." This was a moment of escape for her, I could see. Her visits away from her mountain home of Calabria were obviously moments she waited for all year. Her sensuality was such that it could never be hidden anyplace, but I'd known the people of those hills. There she was equally desired, equally desirous, but their own strict code forbid it until she was wed and, unless I missed my guess, Amoretta had seen too much of the outside world to wed one of the peasant boys. And so her home was a kind of sexual prison for her. It was no wonder that away from it, she could not restrain the terrible pent-up hunger within her. I stroked her back, and she pressed her full breasts down into me as once again, small sounds of ecstacy began to well from her. There was no part of this throbbing creature that was not sensuously sensitive to the touch, I learned. I turned her over and she offered herself again as a flower offers itself to the sun. Her small nipples hardened under my tongue and she thrust them deeper into my mouth. Before the moon began to fade, I had made love to this fantastically hungry Venus three times, and each time she was a creature of pure passion, unsubtle and unwise, yet thrillingly responsive to the slightest touch. Finally, with a great sigh of contentment, she fell asleep with her breast in my mouth, cradling my head to her. I moved back to hold her quiet form, admiring the full-hipped lusciousness of her body as she lay still. I slept beside her till the sun, coming in through the window, reflecting brightly from the blue waters of the bay, woke me.

  I lay quietly, watching Amoretta's deep, regular breathing. Her legs, slightly parted, were half-turned toward me, her round, full breasts stood out eagerly, as though she waited in her sleep for me to waken her in that most wonderful way of all. I wished I had the time but I didn't. The ISS seminars got off to an early start. I slipped from her encircling arm across my chest without waking her. I had shaved and dressed when she woke. She pouted some but eventually came and put her head against me.

  "I have no words to tell you how it was last night," she said.

  "You don't need words, Amoretta," I answered. "You told me already."

  She smiled, a slow, comprehending smile, and I went to answer the polite tapping on the adjoining door. The professor was very much all right. After I took the alarm device from the front door, we went down and breakfasted together in the hotel lounge. If anything in the food was going to turn him into a vegetable, there'd be two of us.

  The day was taken up with more seminars, more meetings and more of those brilliantly dull papers. I concluded, by the end of the day, that every scientist should be forced to take a course in creative writing. If there was anything sinister going on at the seminars it was those papers. In the evening Karl Krisst had arranged a conducted tour of the resort area. I stayed close to the professor and Amoretta stayed close to me. She wasn't purposely trying to be a distraction. She just couldn't help it. By ten everyone was safely locked up for the night and Amoretta was in my room waiting. She didn't have long to wait. She was everything she had been the night before, everything and more for she'd learned a few things. When dawn came neither of us had had too much sleep, but then, I consoled myself, how much sleep does a fellow really need? I'd stopped growing long ago.

  It was the last day of the meeting, the time glad-hand Karl Krisst had called Relaxation Day, and he'd arranged a buffet at the beach.

  'This is a happy day and a sad day," Amoretta said, running a slim finger down my chest. "Happy, because you will be with me all day and sad because when the day ends we must part. I will never see you again. I know it."

  "Never is a word I never use," I grinned. "You may come to America or I may
get to Calabria. Our paths may cross. I get around."

  I didn't know it then, naturally, but I wished, later, that I had not been such a good prophet. As I hadn't figured on beach parties, I hadn't brought swimwear so I just took off my shut when we reached the beach, arranged the beach chairs so I could keep a constant eye on the professor, and relaxed. He was more than content to stay resting in his chair, and Amoretta curled up alongside me like a contented kitten. I brought the lunch from the buffet Krisst had set up, taking no chances on this last day. When the afternoon finally wore to an end, Karl Krisst made the rounds, looking even more rotund in shorts and a bright, yellow shirt of terry cloth. I watched him as he went from member to member, clasping an arm around each one, giving each a fond pat on the back, telling each one what a wonderful tan he had gotten. I found myself watching him with a mixture of amusement and irritation. The irritation bothered me and I decided it was because he seemed so out of place amongst these sincere men who were, for the most part, both brilliant and simple at once. When he reached Professor Caldone, he helped him struggle out of the beach chair, and between pats on the shoulder, helped him into a beach robe.

  "I hope you enjoyed your brief visit with us, Mr. Carter," he said, turning to me. "Not that we do not welcome having you, but whatever reason prompted your government to send you along with the professor will soon disappear, I hope."

  "I hope so, too," I smiled. "If it hasn't, I'll be back for another meeting."

  "And we will look forward to having you again," he said, easily outsmiling me. He turned after a brief handshake, made his way through the others, and, as I watched him bound up the stone steps leading from the beach, I felt a touch of sympathy for him. I'd always felt there was something pathetically lonely about the professional glad-hander. The true face of the clown behind the mask is so often a very different one.