Hot Streak

by Susan Johnson

  Sitting down, she invited him to, but he didn't. Instead he paced to the bank of windows facing the city, briefly looked out, then restlessly moved back toward her. “Would you like a drink?” Molly nervously inquired.

  He shook his head, skirted the end of the peach silk couch, and strode back toward the windows.

  “Something to eat?” she queried into the deathly silence.

  Stopping, he spun around and stared at her as if she'd lost her mind. His mouth opened, then shut again in the same hard, determined line. His pale hair was ruffled, as if fingers had repeatedly raked through it. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to his elbows; he no longer had on the cream linen sport coat.

  “Would you sit down, at least,” she said forcibly, his restless stride making her increasingly nervous. “You're pacing like a new father.” It was not a good choice of words.

  His shoulders stiffened. Stopping abruptly, he walked over and dropped into a chair near Molly. “So who was the man you were playing with when I walked in?” he accused her in a hard voice.

  “I wasn't playing with anyone. The man was Bart, my ex-husband, whom I despise. We were arguing,” she answered coldly, responding to the injustice of his remark.

  His eyes which had been studying his steepled fingertips, flashed upward and pierced hers like lasers. “You could have fooled me.” Although his voice was flat and passionless, the muscles in his neck were rigid.

  “Don't get authoritarian with me, Carey Fersten. I'm not eighteen anymore, and I don't care if you're used to pulling rank on half the world.” Spreading her arms along the back of the couch, she straightened her spine and added, “I don't give a damn how important you are. But to clear your suspicious mind, I kicked Bart out right after you left. Supposedly he'd come over to see Carrie, but kept trying to pry into my private life.”

  Carey relaxed fractionally. “Really?”

  “Cross my heart,” she said. “Is that good enough, or would you like a blood oath?” The flowing white of her robe against the silky peach couch set off her golden-haired beauty like a framed portrait. Her long hair glistened, her rich blue eyes stared directly at him, her cheeks were touched with a rosy blush of anger. She was too beautiful for any other man to touch. An inexplicable feeling from a man who until now had calmly accepted the more liberal modes of human relationships.

  “I'm jealous as hell, Molly,” he said quietly, his familiar, brooding eyes gazing at her. “It's a novel sensation, but damnably real.”

  “Coming from the darling of the international jet set, I suppose I should be flattered.”

  “Don't believe all the hype. I lead a quiet life, and I'm not trying to flatter. It's God's truth.”

  “Thank you, then,” she replied stiffly.

  “You're welcome,” he answered, equally unyielding.

  They sat facing each other in the golden glow of silk-shaded lamps, across a short distance of pale green Imuk carpet crafted a century before they were born. Although his long legs were sprawled in front of him, Carey's posture was tense, adversarial. The lamplight burnished his pale hair like gold brushwork on eleventh-century gospels. His bronzed face was angular, cautious, his dark eyes compelling like some pagan god. After a short, spare silence, Carey said, “Why didn't you tell me about Carrie?”

  “I know what it looks like,” Molly replied, understanding his question although it was ambiguously worded. Dropping her arms to unconsciously clasp her hands, she went on, “but Carrie isn't-”

  “That child is mine.”

  “No!” Her exclamation was filled with disbelief and poignant pain. “Oh, Carey,” she cried, her glance anguished, “don't you think I wish she were? But it isn't true.”

  “Why not? The last time I was with you was only a few days before your wedding.”

  “Two weeks before.”

  “Twelve days,” Carey said in a voice scarcely above a whisper, “to be exact.” Molly's wedding date was etched on his heart, and the years had never erased that pain.

  “But I had a period after that,” she explained. The bizarre turn of conversation clouded the sequence of events that had until a few moments ago, seemed logical and clear.

  “What kind of a period?”

  How did he know, she wondered, looking at him with trepidation. Even though it had all happened years ago, she knew the answer as though it were yesterday because it had been so unusual. “Only slight bleeding,” she whispered at last.

  “It looks as though you were pregnant with Carrie when you married,” he said. “You never had a period, after all.” His gaze captured her blue eyes and held them in a glance that demanded an answer. “Did you?”

  “I don't know. It was years ago,” Molly dissembled, trying to avoid the collision course facing her, too confused now with complex emotional conflicts to want to come to terms with the unbelievable idea Carey was so relentlessly pursuing.

  “All you have to do is look at her and you'd know.”

  He was right. The physical resemblance was the most telling argument, the most damning evidence. Carey and her daughter were so remarkably similar, she marveled at her obtuseness all these years. “It can't be,” she declared with a stubbornness that still clung to the tenuous substance of her own misplaced convictions. “Carrie was born too late. She was born almost ten months after the wedding.”

  “My mother's pregnancy was close to ten months. It was a family joke, how I didn't want to leave the security of the womb.”

  “No, don't say that,” she pleaded, her eyes huge and liquid. “It's too unreal.” Covering her face with her hands, she sat there trembling. “It's not the way it happened,” she whispered, looking up. She was holding back tears, the struggle visible on her face.

  He only said, “Thank you for giving me a daughter.” And then, uncurling himself from the depths of the chair, he walked over and lifted Molly. He held her protectively in his arms, kissing her tear-streaked cheeks, murmuring, “I love you, Honeybear. I always have. Always… always…”

  Nestling close, she clung to him like a small child clinging to the only security it's known.

  He whispered his love and brushed his warm lips over hers. “I'm going to take care of you both,” he murmured.

  Molly lifted her head from his shoulder and gave him the beginning of a smile. “I can take care of myself…”

  He smiled back. “Well, I can kiss away the tears while you're taking care of yourself, smartass.”

  “Deal,” she whispered.

  “Now if you'll tell me,” he murmured, glancing over her head to assess the direction of the bedroom, “where the spare bedroom is, I think I'll turn in for the night.”

  “It's early,” she teased, licking his chin.

  “Fatherhood is exhausting.” He winked at her. “Arguing with the mother of my child is what's exhausting,” he amended, starting down the polished parquet hallway.

  “I'm not accomplished,” she whispered, thinking of all the women in his past, “like all… all those-”

  “I don't want that, Honeybear,” he murmured, crossing the threshold of the bedroom. “I just want to feel your warm body next to mine, feel the woman I love in my arms, touch your sweet face. I don't want accomplishments, sweetheart, only you, my Honeybear, the mother-” his voice grew ragged “of my child.” It frightened him how helpless he was to the deep emotion he'd thought long vanished.

  “Promise me something,” Molly said, her arms tightening on his shoulders.

  “Anything.”

  “Keep your girlfriends in the closet.”

  He set her on her feet and placed his hands very gently on her shoulders. “No girlfriends,” he said, his dark eyes solemn. “I'll promise that instead.”

  Her eyes shone with happiness, and he smiled because she meant to be practical and civilized but was as jealous as he.

  “I don't want any other woman. I'd be a fool to waste my time. I'm holding you every night… and every day,” he added emphatically, “until we're ninety-t
wo.”

  “And then what happens?” she teased, sliding her arms around his waist.

  “We start on the second ninety-two years.”

  Molly's eyes filled with tears. “Sometimes I'm not as strong as I say I am.”

  “That's what I'm here for,” he whispered, reaching up to brush away a tear. “I'll take up the slack when you're too wacked out to be strong.”

  “Like now. Oh, Carey, everything's happening too fast,” Molly cried. “All I know for certain is I love you. The rest-” Panic was closing in. “Tell me the rest will be fine,” she softly entreated, overwhelmed by the sudden changes in the fabric of her life.

  His life had been full of attractive people and congenial events, visited by success, insulated by wealth. Not in a grandiose way, but with a security he'd never had to question. What makes one person so special to you that life dims without them? He didn't know the answer. But only Molly could evoke this happiness, and until now he'd never comprehended the extent of his own sadness. He needed her.

  “I love you, Honeybear,” he whispered, “more than anything. And everything's going to work out. From now on,” he vowed, “life is going to be perfect. Guaranteed.”

  CHAPTER 22

  T he following morning in Rome, Shakin Rifat was seated at his desk an hour earlier than usual. Even for a man trained to give away nothing in his expression, the fire of triumph couldn't be disguised. He was leafing through a dozen black-and-white photos taken with a telephoto lens, developed in a private jet that flew across the Atlantic the previous night and landed at the secluded airstrip thirty miles north of Rome an hour after daybreak.

  The photos were of a blond man talking to a young girl with shoulder-length hair. The sequence of shots showed her placing her bicycle in an elaborate stand, then handing the man a package, only to take it back in the next two frames. Both subjects had the same color hair; both subjects had winged black brows; the similarities had been definitively cataloged by Shakin Rafit, his gratification heightened with each enumerated resemblance. Nose, eyes, chin, the same subtle curve of upper lip. The child was a girl, of course, so the strength of form was modified, but in a way, a girl was much better for his purpose. A father would do anything to save his helpless young daughter from harm.

  Shakin pushed the photos into a neat pile, a gold signet ring on his left hand catching the light, then leaned back in his chair, a satisfied smile on his dark, aquiline face, a quality of animal assurance in his relaxed posture.

  At last he had a way to put pressure on Egon.

  Leisurely reaching out, he rang for his secretary. When the young man walked in and noted Shakin's satisfied smile he said, “The photos were pleasing?”

  “Very. Mete told you?”

  “Only that the young girl appears to be-”

  “Is, Ceci… no question about it. How soon can you get the team ready?” Ceci Kiray had been aide-de-camp to Rifat in Turkey's First Air Corps prior to General Evren's takeover in 1980. With inbred military custom and a deferential nod of his head, Ceci silently asked permission to sit. Less punctilious than his young subaltern, Rifat casually waved him into the chair facing his desk. “I'd like to move on this as soon as possible, Ceci. A large shipment of gum base is coming out of Turkey next week, as you know, and our operating capital will be nicely maximized after the sale to the French chemists. You also know how desperately Brazil wants the prototypes for the new weapon. Seсor Jorge has been calling daily. It's an opportune time with our war chest in good order to step into the arms manufacturing business.”

  “Jorge is amenable to a percentage cut?”

  “He'd prefer buying the technical data outright, but I'm not so inclined. Everyone wants this prototype. All the third-world nations currently producing arms under license will pay for it. But Brazil will pay the most. Have you ever been to Rio?” Rifat leaned back in his chair and looked at his secretary who still bore the stamp of a hardened officer beneath his tailored suit and custom-made shoes. “You'll like it,” Rifat continued with a smile, answering his own question, aware of Ceci's postings over the last ten years.

  “What sort of timetable will you give to Colonel Jorge?”

  “That depends on how soon you can kidnap the girl.”

  Ceci shrugged dismissively. Mete had filled him in on the disposition of the apartment and inhabitants. “Two days at the most once we arrive,” he said casually, “but I'll need a week to ten days to round up my team. Reha's in Marseilles arranging for the delivery of the gum base, Husameddin's in Athens finishing the arms transfers out of Bulgaria, and Timur's back in Kemer burning away the days and nights in a state of seminudity at the Club Mйditerranйe.”

  “Austerity has never been Timur's strong suit.”

  “But since he flies anything that lifts off the ground…”

  Rifat smiled. “We indulge his vices…”

  “Or do without him.” Ceci smiled back, a younger version of Rifat, perhaps a trifle more elegant in his double-breasted banker's stripe suit, the twenty years difference in their ages distancing Ceci as well from the more brutal circumstances of Turkish military life.

  Rifat nodded in agreement. Although Rifat's Turkish father's military background had bred an austerity in him that looked askance at hedonists like Timur, he recognized talent when he saw it. Timur had been a genius with aircraft from the first day of flight training. Under Rifat's expanded aeronautics program during his command, Timur had risen swiftly through the ranks and come to Rifat's attention not only for his flawless performance but for his imaginative maneuvering in all the NATO wargames.

  In September, 1980, when Evren won the scramble for power among the generals, when Rifat's faction lost their bid for control and found it prudent to depart Turkey, Timur had chosen to align himself with Rifat even in defeat. “My mother is Armenian, too,” he'd said before offering his services to Rifat, but he had had other more practical reasons, as well. Evren's military coup meant a return to reactionary principles and a suspension of all political activity. And while his mother's Armenian heritage was a consideration in a conservative military regime that traditionally treated Armenians as dйclassй, Timur's reputation as Turkey's best pilot would have overridden the deficiencies in his background. At base though, Timur was interested in a grander lifestyle than that afforded by a colonel's pay. He had a taste for casinos, beautiful women, and fast cars-vices that required the kind of money Rifat paid. And danger had always exhilarated him. While supersonic aircraft and wargames sharpened that sensational flare of excitement he thrived on, they couldn't compare with the life and death reality of Rifat's outlaw world.

  “How long would you say,” Rifat inquired with a chilling smile that often appeared when he oversaw the “interrogation” of the assassins General Evren periodically sent out to kill him, “after the kidnapping before Charles Fersten appears at Egon's demanding he cooperate with us?”

  Ceci's smile appeared again. There was gratification in a well-conceived assignment. “Since he flies his own plane at times…” his strong hands slowly aligned themselves across his trim stomach, satisfaction audible in his voice, “a matter of hours I'd say.”

  “At which point we no longer have to deal with the erratic Count von Mansfeld. Directives will be given to Egon so he understands once he orders the weapons and blueprints released from his munitions factory, Mr. Fersten will be conveying them to us.”

  “Until then, Egon is the weak link.” Ceci grimaced, insensitive to the forms of paranoia motivating Egon's drug use.

  “Unfortunately. But once von Mansfeld has the prototypes ordered from his research facility, Mr. Fersten will better suit our purposes. He's seen more than the calibrations on a hypodermic syringe and the inside of Regine's. He's a seasoned athlete and an intelligent, practical man who served in America's war in Asia and survived. Unlike Egon, who's apt to disintegrate at the first sign of stress, we can depend on Charles Fersten to pick up the weapons and deliver them to us… for his daughter's sa
ke.”

  “How necessary is Egon?” Ceci's voice was low and muted.

  Rafit answered in an unhurried tone, as if he were describing an ordinary protocol in an ordinary businessman's schedule. “Only he or his sister the countess are able to order the weapons released. Von Mansfeld Works is, after all, a family-owned business, appearances notwithstanding.” Before his secretary could articulate the obvious question, Shakin straightened from his lounging posture, placed both hands palm down on his malachite desktop, and deliberately said, “She is more unstable than her brother. At least with Egon the only emotion we have to deal with is fear. He's considerably more tractable. So we need him… at least temporarily.”

  “Very well,” Ceci quietly replied, the matter settled. “I'll leave tomorrow to arrange the safe house while the men come in from the field.”

  “Once the girl is abducted, send me a message and I'll see that Egon receives his instructions.”

  “While I relay the necessary directions to Mr. Fersten.”

  “Precisely.” They could have been discussing the weather, for all the emotion displayed.

  Rising abruptly, Ceci stood with his natural military correctness and asked, “Will you be accepting Colonel Jorge's call today, then?”

  General Rifat implicitly trusted Ceci's competence. He'd never failed him and, while normally not optimistic, normally a very prudent man who anticipated each possibility of reversal in advance, he uncharacteristically fell in with Ceci's prompting. Glancing briefly at the photos spread before him on the desk, he thought: How convenient. “Yes, today I'm in to the colonel. We're about to add a new legitimacy to our entrepreneurship.”

  “Indeed,” Ceci said with a faint curve of his mouth. “Less tainted than the business of paying back other people's debts of vengeance.” Rifat's men were for hire… and to those in the world wishing to remain aloof from terrorism, for an appropriately large gratuity, their conspiracies could be executed, quickly and quietly.