by Paul Kenyon
She came back to the world, drenched with sweat, the ends of her hair sodden where it had rested on her shoulders and back. There was a whole series of little delightful twinges still going on, contracting her vagina, squeezing the last dregs of gratification out of her nerves. She sighed with pleasure as they petered out. She felt warm and drained.
Beneath her, Harley was struggling to sit up. She leaned over and kissed him. "You were very good, darling," she told him. "You get the blue ribbon."
She lifted herself off his stem, slick and glistening with her juices. It was beginning to droop ever so slightly. A flood of warm semen dripped from her receptacle and mingled with the straw. She stretched comfortably, hearing her bones crack.
He stood up happily, a smile creasing his ruddy face. "I must have been out of my mind, doing it in this barn like that. That fuck could cost me ten million dollars."
"It was worth it though, wasn't it, darling?" she yawned.
She walked over, naked, to Sea King's stall while Harley put on his pants. The big horse was trembling, making little whinnying sounds. He'd pawed up the clay floor of his stall, and there was a great bloody scrape on one fetlock.
"Poor fellow," she said gently, stroking the glossy face. "It's all right."
He began to calm down. He nibbled at her hair. She put her arms around the massive neck.
"You're a wonder," Harley said, zipping up his pants. "How would you like a job as his groom?"
She was still soothing Sea King when the shock came.
Her wrist tingled under the big chrome watch from Cartier's, the electrical potential increased by the perspiration she'd just worked up.
Involuntarily, she glanced upward. Somewhere up there, hundreds of miles out in space, MESTAR was sending her a message.
She pulled the stem of the digital watch out. Her back was to Harley. He couldn't see what she was doing.
The shocks stopped. MESTAR's electronic brain mulled over her acknowledgment for about a millionth of a second. The trickle of current that passed for thought flowed in a predetermined pattern through its electronic gates. The tiny computer built into Penelope's watch took note. The liquid crystal display on her wrist changed its polarization.
Little lines of fire appeared on the tiny screen, glowing in the dimness of the barn. They formed two words.
ROME
SOONEST
Penelope leaped, nude, onto Sea King's broad back. He quivered with the surprise of it.
"That's all right, boy," she said.
She leaned over and snatched up her dress from the corner of the stall where she'd thrown it. There was a bridle hanging on the wall. With one deft throw she got it over Sea King's head and got the bit in his mouth.
"Go!" she yelled, slapping his rump.
The big racehorse reared up on his hind legs and whinnied. She hung on with her knees. She slapped him again.
"Penny, for the love of God, what are you doing?" Harley shouted.
"I'm borrowing Sea King," she said. "For a little ride!"
He grabbed for the reins. "Penny, that's not a cow pony you're sitting on! That's a ten-million-dollar horse!"
"He is now, darling," she said. "Before we taught him to screw, he wasn't worth a plugged nickel."
She slashed at his face with the free end of the rein. He stepped back, and she got Sea King past him.
"I'll leave him at the airstrip!" she flung back over her shoulder as Sea King thundered toward the open barn door. She had a final glimpse of Harley's horrified face staring vainly after her as she got away with his Triple Crown winner.
Outside, Louie the groom stopped in his tracks, almost dropping the reins of the horse he was leading back to the barns. His jaw dropped. He couldn't believe his eyes. Sea King — the horse that nobody was allowed to handle except himself and Mr. Chase — was galloping over the green pastures, jumping any fences that got in his way. A naked woman with long flying black hair was riding him bareback.
The Baroness managed to squeeze into her dress before she reached the public road, one strap hanging loose and the skirt hitched up over her thighs. She urged Sea King on with her bare knees, getting all the speed out of him that she could. If anything could get her to the airstrip and her personal jet in a hurry, he could. Speed was what he'd been born for.
He leaped a final fence, and she was galloping down the highway. Cars swerved to avoid her. Faces goggled at her from behind windshields.
She arrived at the airstrip in a cloud of dust. Her private jet was at the end of the runway, a three-million-dollar Grumman Gulfstream II with the Orsini family crest painted in blue and gold on its tail. There was a big tank truck parked under the wing, and a couple of coveralled mechanics were reeling in hose. They'd just finished refueling.
Sumo was already leaning out the door of the plane, lowering the boarding ladder for her. Beside him she could make out the rugged features of Dan Wharton, her co-pilot.
A mechanic stared up at her, his eyes wide with astonishment. She slid off the big stallion's back and tossed the reins at him.
"This is Sea King," she said. "Take good care of him. There'll be someone out here for him later."
Then she was climbing barefoot up the ladder, feeling Sumo's strong hands on her wrists hauling her up. She went forward, the carpeting soft and thick under her feet, and seated herself at the controls.
"Where are we going?" Wharton said beside her.
She started the engines. The big jet shuddered into life.
"Rome," she said.
3
It was midnight in Rome. The Baroness paid off the cabdriver and looked up at the big glass-fronted office building that housed the Italian branch of International Models, Inc. It was all dark, except for a light up near the top. John Farnsworth's office. He was waiting for her.
She stood on the sidewalk a moment, a tall, stunning brunette who attracted the stares of late strollers on the Via Veneto. She was wearing the dress she'd changed into over the Atlantic: a clinging black matte jersey by Scott Barrie with another of those deep, bare, square necklines. The neckline was functional. It let her get quickly at the .25 caliber Bernardelli VB automatic pistol that fitted snugly under her arm, in a nylon holster sewn to the side of her bra. The outline of the Bernardelli could scarcely be seen unless she lifted her arms and took a deep breath. It was smaller than a derringer; a flat square gun that was only four inches long and thinner than a cigarette case.
She pushed her way into the darkened lobby. Inside the door she stopped and listened. It never paid to rush into things, not when Key had been turned and Coin activated. You never could tell what animals might be thrashing about in the forest. Once she'd killed a KGB man here, and helped Farnsworth strip the body and throw it into the Tiber.
"Buona sera, Baronessa!" an effusive voice said.
It was old Enzio, the night watchman. He was a neat, courtly man in a threadbare uniform, wearing the worn leather holster and gun he'd taken with him when he retired from the carabinieri. He made a little fluttery gesture with his hand and bowed slightly from the waist.
"Good evening, Enzio," she smiled. "Do I have to sign in?"
"You? Sign in? Of course not, Baronessa." He beamed at her. "You're the boss."
All the same, she noticed as she crossed to the elevator, the old man was signing in for her in the big ledger at his post. Enzio was careful and scrupulous. She had a sudden, inexplicable warm feeling as she entered the elevator.
It was odd to see the reception room dark and empty. Usually it was crowded with agents and models and dewy young hopefuls with their boy friends or their mammas. She slipped past the low leather-and-steel chairs and the little tables piled with fashion magazines, a silent shadow in black jersey. International Models, Inc. was a thriving concern that brought in a couple of million dollars a year on top of the considerable fortune she'd inherited from Reynaldo, the Baron Orsini, and her first husband, John Stanton Marlowe of the Philadelphia Marlowes. They were legitimate
dollars, too. They had nothing to do with the million and a half in secret funds that the National Security Agency funneled to the agent called Coin. It was nice to have a cover that was fun and made money.
She pushed open the door to Farnsworth's private office and stepped inside. A pair of strong hands grabbed her under the arms and lifted her off the floor. He must have been standing inside the door. Most women would have struggled, or tried to kick the man behind them. But the Baroness had a set of one hundred and twenty-four possible reflexes programmed into her nervous system to deal with the problem of being grabbed from behind. The basal ganglia in her brain automatically chose the correct response for the situation.
She kicked forward, not back, swinging both legs upward from the hips. The hands holding her by the rib cage tightened, but all they could do now was serve as a pivot. She went up, up and over, like a circus acrobat, skirts flying. Her center of gravity overbalanced the man holding her as she flew upward. He staggered backward, his grip broken now, and she landed like a cat on her feet behind him.
Her right hand dipped into her square neckline and slid past her left breast to the armpit. The Bernardelli VB was in her hand, her thumb already on the safety, pointing at the dark outline looming in front of her.
He was fast too. He'd whirled, crouching, as soon as his hands had lost contact, and he was facing her now with a gun in his own fist, coming up fast to point squarely at her chest.
They aimed their guns at one another for a long moment, then broke simultaneously into laughter. The Baroness returned the Bernardelli to its bra holster and said, "Which one of us would have been dead, John?"
"I would have been," he said. "You're still too fast for me, Penny."
She took his face between her hands and kissed him on the lips. "You're a dear," she said. "Actually you weren't more than a second behind me, and that was because you had to turn around."
He broke free, flushing at both the compliment and the kiss. Farnsworth was an old-fashioned, conservative old bird — a fact which was no comfort at all to all the men he'd killed during his thirty-plus years as an intelligence professional.
"Still crossing borders with that thing?" he said gruffly. "Some day you're going to get caught."
She stuck out her tongue at him. "John, darling, you know very well that if I dropped that little gun at the feet of the customs officer at the Rome airport, the dear man would pick it up, brush it off, tip his hat and hand it back to me."
He laughed in spite of himself. "It helps when you come in on your own jet. And when the pilot looks the way you do."
"Why am I here, John? I had to tear myself away from a fascinating round of parties. I'm going to miss the Lexington Ball!"
"I know. Your escapade with Sea King made the evening news. And the early editions are buzzing with your million-dollar bid at the Keeneland auction. It's going to help."
"Help? What are you talking about?"
"The Emir of Ghazal has some of the finest Arabian breeding stock in the world. Some of the bloodlines in his stables have never been permitted out of the country. It'll give you a good, plausible reason for wanting to go there."
"Where the hell is Ghazal?"
"It's a place you wouldn't be caught dead in, if you weren't after a stud for your new million-dollar mare."
She sat down in one of Farnsworth's antique chairs and crossed her legs. "I think you'd better start from the beginning, John."
He seated himself behind his desk and popped a cassette into the tape player built into one drawer. "Listen to this."
There was a series of beeps she recognized as code groups. The transmission started out well, then grew ragged and came to an abrupt halt.
She frowned. "A CIA transmission, isn't it? They use those low-redundancy pentad groups. But what was wrong with the operator? His 'fist' changed there near the end, as if he were fighting panic. If he was worried about something — somebody walking in on him or anything — they're trained to just break off and try again when it's safe."
"Very good, Coin."
She made a face at him. He had put on that dreadfully stuffy official face of his, and he was calling her "Coin."
He went on: "The panic was genuine. I had an analysis run through the 7090 computer at Fort Meade — using a sub-program that gives a psychological breakdown of the operator through variations in the rhythm of his 'fist.' The CIA man was terrified. Probably lost control of his bladder during that patch where a pentad ran together. And it was induced panic — physical, not psychological. Something was playing on his nervous system like a violin."
"Drugs?"
"No. Something outside the computer's experience."
"What did the transmission say?"
He handed her a scrap of paper with the transcription. She read it and looked up at him, her brow furrowed.
"Jelly?" she said.
"That's what he said. 'Men and animals turned to jelly.'"
"It doesn't make sense."
"I'm afraid it does. I got a close-up TV picture from the Big Bird spy satellite." He grinned. "Tom Sumo can make it do tricks for us without the Defense Department knowing about it. There's a village just about at the spot where we triangulated the CIA transmission. Or what was once a village. There were bodies scattered all over the place."
"And this is in a place called Ghazal?"
"Ghazal… or Saudi Arabia… or the Arab Emirates. The borders aren't very well defined."
"Well, John, you've been busy while I was over the Atlantic. Have you been working on a way for me to get into Ghazal? And a cover?"
"The Emir of Ghazal is partial to Western beauties. Film stars, models, entertainers. He has agents constantly scouring the world for candidates. He's been known to pay a hundred thousand dollars or more for a one-night stand."
Farnsworth had lowered his eyes while he spoke. He was blushing.
Penelope was amused. "And you've arranged for me to come to the attention of the Emir? Right?"
"Yes. I've let it be known that you're interested in looking over the stallions in the royal stables. They've got a pedigree going back hundreds of years — one of the branches produced the original Darley Arabian. Only the Emir's never permitted any horses of the bloodline to be exported. He's keeping them for himself. They caught a servant trying to sneak a stallion's semen out of the stable last year. The Emir made an object lesson out of him. Public castration."
"Sounds like a delightful man. And I'll be expected to sleep with him?"
Farnsworth looked uncomfortable. "That's up to you, Coin."
She couldn't resist teasing him. "It's all right, John. I'll close my eyes and think of Philadelphia."
He coughed. "The agent thinks an invitation from the Emir will be forthcoming in a day or two. You'll bring him a gift — a pair of matched Salukis. Hunting dogs. It would be a natural thing to do if you wanted to soften him up to sell you a stallion."
"What about my team? Are you arranging covers for them?"
"You can take a personal maid and a hairdresser into the palace with you. That'll be Yvette and Inga. And Tom Sumo. He can be a manservant. The rest of your crew are going to be an archaeological expedition."
"An archaeological expedition?" she laughed. "I can't see Fiona with a shovel in those lily-white hands."
"It's all been arranged. The Emir of Dharja — that's just across the border from Ghazal — is an enthusiastic amateur archaeologist. The country is rich in ruins dating back to the time of the ancient Sumerians — five thousand years ago. Teams are always going in to dig up mounds. And the Emir always cooperates. I've got a legitimate grant from the Tyler Foundation. It's an unbreakable cover."
"In less than a day? John, you're a marvel."
"Skytop and Wharton and the others will be less than thirty miles away — on call if you need them. Sumo can rig up a communications system for you."
"All right, John. I'll start rounding my people up. Skytop's in France, taking fashion shots for me. And Fio
na's in New York doing cosmetic commercials for television."
She stood up. Farnsworth got out of his chair to see her to the door. She turned to face him.
"By the way, John, we're going to have to kill Enzio," she said.
"Our night watchman?" He looked startled.
"He's a CIA agent. The poor fool tried to give me a CIA recognition signal when I came in. They never bothered to tell him that the CIA and our bunch aren't buddies. If our identities get bandied about in that sieve they call Langley, it's all over. The President wouldn't like it."
Farnsworth looked horrified. "The CIA hasn't been this close to us since that incident at the Doomsday briefing," he said. "Are you sure?"
She nodded grimly. "When I got into the elevator, I felt warm all over. Enzio must have rigged up some kind of microwave scanning device. He knows I'm wearing a gun." She patted the side of her left breast. "And he's probably detected the radio energy that comes out of that trick desk of yours. After I refused to return his recognition signal, he must have started thinking again. We'll have to get rid of him before he reports to his Rome contact."
"All right, Coin, I'll do it tonight."
She cocked her head and listened. Farnsworth hadn't heard it, but his ears weren't as superbly keen as hers. She whirled suddenly and dove for the door. She caught Enzio halfway down the corridor. He was trying to get away with the tape recorder and suction mike he had under his arm.
When he heard her running footsteps, he turned and threw the tape recorder at her. It was a heavy, compact Wollensack with a metal case. She sidestepped. If she hadn't, the corner of the machine would have cracked her skull open. As it was, it hit the hollow of her shoulder. Her right arm went numb and useless.
