Hooked

by Ruth Harris

  Over the next few days, Cleo grew more concerned about her friend. Gail drank too much wine, gorged on candy and slept twelve hours at a stretch. When she did get up, she looked tired and bloated

  “I feel awful,” said Gail. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me—”

  “Have you seen a doctor?” Cleo asked.

  Gail nodded. “Two. One in Madrid, the other in New York. They both examined me and ran their tests and said there’s nothing wrong with me. They just about came right out and told me to my face that I’m a neurotic socialite with too much time on my hands—”

  “I know one doctor who won’t insult you,” said Cleo, picking up the telephone and calling the Garibaldi Clinic just outside Rome.

  “I have an invitation for you,” she told Gavin to whom she spoke frequently. Sometimes she felt he wasn’t really there at the other end of the line. Preoccupied with his work? Or with another woman? Other times they seemed to connect and she felt she was important to him. “And a patient—”

  It had been almost five months since they’d last seen each other but Gavin drove to Positano that weekend. He examined Gail in the guest bedroom, the one that had once been his.

  “When was the last time you had a checkup?” he asked Gail after he’d finished his examination and taken blood, urine and stool samples.

  “Two months ago,” she said. “In Madrid and New York. They told me there’s nothing wrong with me. They said it’s all in my head—”

  “Do you feel short of breath?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Feverish?”

  Gail nodded. “Yes, but I also feel chilled. I’m freezing and then the next thing I know I’m burning up.”

  “Heavy menstrual bleeding?”

  She nodded again. How had he guessed?

  “Always?”

  Gail hesitated. She didn’t want to tell him she had just had an abortion. “Well, just lately.”

  Gavin took the glass tubes containing Gail’s blood and the other specimens and put them into his bag.

  “I’ll have these analyzed, and we’ll proceed from there,” said Gavin, snapping the bag shut.

  “Do you think something’s wrong with Gail?” Cleo asked when Gavin emerged from her bedroom. They sat in the drawing room with the shutters drawn against the late-afternoon heat. Shafts of sunlight hit the parquet floor and illuminated the glossy patina that came with age and years of constant care. The light in the room was soft, filtered.

  “I don’t know,” Gavin said. “Not until I’ve seen the test results.”

  “She’s going on a cruise with Nicholas Kiskalesi after she leaves here—”

  “I thought he and Adriana Partos were together again—”

  “Supposedly,” said Cleo. “But they’re famous for making up and breaking up. I hear she wants to marry him but he refuses—”

  Gavin shrugged his shoulders. Gossip, no matter how spicy, was of little interest to him.

  “What have you been up to lately?” Cleo asked.

  “I’m still experimenting with amphetamine derivatives,” said Gavin. “Enzymes, too. I’ve had encouraging results with patients who are addicted to heroin.”

  He stood up, walked to the terrace door, opened it and stared out.

  “It’s nice seeing you again, Cleo,” he said, his back to her. “More than nice. Much more than nice.”

  She didn’t reply and there was a long, uncertain silence between them.

  “Gavin?”

  He turned and, as he did, she moved toward him. Suddenly she was in his arms, and they were kissing. Deeply. Hungrily. With longing.

  “Come,” he said, and he took her by the hand and led her to her bedroom. They quickly took off their clothes and without preamble, Gavin entered her. He was masterful and once again used every false start and surprise, every sudden change of rhythm and subtlety to catch her off guard, to bring her close to pleasure, to deny it to her, and then reward her with ecstasy.

  He kept at it until she begged him to stop and pleaded with him to go on. He pleasured her until she was breathless and dazed and drained.

  The following morning Cleo received a phone call from Bobbi’s lawyer in Baltimore. There’d been a fire and Bobbi’s guest house had burned to the ground. The main house had not been damaged and Bobbi herself was all right except that she’d suffered minor burns and a twisted ankle as she tried to rescue some of the paintings in the guest house. She was, needless to say, very upset.

  “She asked for you,” said the lawyer. “She wondered if you could come and stay with her for a few days—”

  “You have to go,” said Gail.

  Gavin agreed with Gail and even offered to accompany Cleo to Baltimore but she refused.

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be and I don’t want to interrupt your work,” she said, asking him if he had Gail’s test results yet.

  “Borderline anemia and malfunctioning thyroid,” he said, turning to Gail. “There are some pills for you to take and I’m going to give you a series of injections.”

  “Oh, no!” exclaimed Gail, putting her arms around herself and shuddering. “No shots. I hate shots!”

  “You won’t hate these,” promised Gavin and he began to prepare the hypodermic.

  Cleo watched, fascinated, as he drew fluid from a series of vials and, when he was finished and the hypodermic filled, he stroked Gail’s cheek, just enough to relax her. He ran his hand along her throat and across the top of her shoulder. Without pausing, he turned back her sleeve and began to caress her arm.

  He ignored her protests, soothing her with his voice and his touch. He soaked a piece of cotton with alcohol and wiped an area on Gail’s inner arm near the blue vein at the crook of the elbow. As he approached her with the hypodermic, she flinched, but Gavin held her firmly. He slowly slid the needle into the vein and, carefully, deliberately, plunged the fluid into her.

  The room was suddenly hushed and Cleo saw goose flesh appear on Gail’s arm. Then she saw the sharp points of Gail’s nipples push against the sheer fabric of her blouse. She heard Gail inhale sharply, then exhale with a sigh. She noticed the convulsive movement as Gail’s back arched and then relaxed. Gail’s eyes were unfocused, her expression — and Gavin’s — matching masks of desire.

  Cleo could no longer watch and she turned away. The look on Gavin’s face as he gave Gail her injection haunted Cleo. He seemed fully engaged yet consumed by lust.

  Why?, she wondered. And what did the shot give him that she couldn’t?

  8

  There was seven hundred million dollars’ worth of oil in northern Egypt, and Nicholas Kiskalesi wanted it. Right now, at four-thirty on a September afternoon, he was seated behind the famous rosewood bureau plat with ormolu mounts that he had bought at Christie’s the year before. He was in his office on board Lydia, holding the telephone in his left hand and listening with interest to what Gail de Córdoba was telling him.

  “Well,” said the handsome, hawk-featured man reputed to be the world’s richest, “you certainly sound better.”

  “You can’t imagine how wonderful I feel,” said Gail on the other end of the phone in Positano. “I’ve lost weight, I’ve regained my energy, I feel as if I’m eighteen again—”

  “And you think it’s all due to this doctor?” Nicky replied. “Jenkins, you said his name was?”

  “Absolutely. I think he’s a genius,” Gail said. And then she explained in more detail what she knew about Gavin Jenkins’ theories and revolutionary new treatments. “He’s not like any other doctor I’ve ever known—”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “Right here in Positano,” she said. “He’s a friend of Cleo’s and he’s staying with us. He’s here right now—”

  Originally Gail and Nicky had planned to meet in Istanbul and then cruise the stretch of coast called the Turkish Riviera, stopping at Marmaris, Antalya and Nicky’s own island, Cilek. Other guests had already been invited but now Gail was asking Nicky if t
hey couldn’t begin the cruise a bit earlier than planned.

  “I’m feeling so marvelous, Nicky,” she said. “I can’t wait another minute to see you. I’ll get on a plane this afternoon, and we can have dinner tonight. You know, in that restaurant overlooking the Bosporus.”

  She was referring to a riotous evening she and Nicky had spent with a party of twelve that had ended at three A.M. with every dish and glass in the place smashed. Nicky had paid for the damage with a check for three thousand dollars, leaving behind a pleased owner who could now afford to replace every piece of crockery and still have enough left over to begin to think of retiring.

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Nicky, curious about this Dr. Jenkins. “I have an even better idea. We’ll come to Positano and you can board Lydia there. You won’t have to move an inch. I’ll provide ship-to-door service.”

  “Nicky, you wouldn’t!” she exclaimed, delighted. “I’ve already begun waiting for you—”

  Gail hung up the phone. Nicky Kiskalesi was coming to her? Usually it was the other way around, her boarding one of his planes en route to some godforsaken place where he was buying or selling magnesium, tin alloy or copper or God-knows-what. But now, for the first time in their on-again, off-again affair, Nicky was coming to her!

  For years Gail had taken it for granted that the most she could hope for was to be the number two woman in Nicky’s life after Adriana Partos. But now she wondered if a marriage to Nicky might not be such a farfetched idea after all. She was considered one of the world’s most beautiful women, and he was considered one of the world’s richest men. What better, more logical, combination could there be?

  Across the Mediterranean, Nicholas Kiskalesi hung up the phone with an equal feeling of pleasure and anticipation. Perhaps Gail had, inadvertently, given him the key to eight hundred million dollars.

  It was certainly worth a detour to Positano to find out.

  In 1950, through a holding company incorporated in Liechtenstein, Nicholas Kiskalesi had secretly purchased fifty thousand acres of Egyptian desert four hundred miles south of Cairo near the Sudanese border. The land had been acquired anonymously because of the strident Egyptian nationalism that made it risky, not to say dangerous, for a foreigner to own large holdings.

  However, under the corrupt rule of King Farouk, bribes to the king himself and to the minister of commerce had permitted Nicky to run test drillings on his acreage. The engineers had reported that laboratory analysis revealed that underneath the barren land was an ocean of oil. However, in 1952, before rigs could be erected and drilling could begin, Farouk had been expelled and under the new Nasser regime, Nicky had ceased development. If the Nasser government found out that there was a fortune of oil just waiting to gush forth, Nicky’s acreage would have been confiscated and nationalized immediately.

  And so, for the past six years, Nicky had had a king’s ransom of oil lying just beyond his reach. He had, of course, considered and rejected several possible solutions to his problem — all of them too risky, considering the stakes involved. But it was still eight hundred million dollars and Nicholas Kiskalesi hadn’t gotten rich by giving up or giving in.

  “In my vocabulary,” Gail had once heard him say, “there is no such word as ‘enough.’”

  As the captain of Lydia changed course toward Positano, Nicky allowed himself a smile. If Gail was right about Gavin Jenkins, this was the closest he had been in six years to the eight hundred million dollars lying under the sands of southern Egypt. Just thinking about it, he felt the rush of blood to his groin that the prospect of large sums of money invariably produced.

  Then he picked up the gold receiver of his antique telephone and called his secretary in Athens with instructions to compile a background dossier on Gavin Jenkins, M.D.

  Immediately after, he pushed the onyx button on the intercom and summoned his assistant, X. He instructed her to proceed immediately to the island of Cilek in the Aegean and report back, firsthand, on the current condition of the Prince.

  As the world’s richest man, Nicholas Kiskalesi owned not only places and things; he also owned people. One of them was X.

  Her real name was Zara Xenidis and ten years ago she had been the most popular belly dancer in Istanbul. She was working at the Cinar in Yesilkoy, and Nicky had stopped in late one evening for a nightcap, when a customer, drunk and belligerent, had made an obscene lunge for the G-string that held up X’s transparent skirt. When she pushed his hands away, he reached into his waistband and pulled out a curved Turkish dagger and started toward X.

  The crowd in the nightclub screamed and scattered as X, with a swift movement, pulled a knife out of the black beribboned garter that held up her long net stockings. With a single twisting thrust up and back into the customer’s heart, she killed him on the spot.

  The owner called the police but in the panic and confusion that ensued before they arrived, Nicky grabbed X by the hand. He pulled her out the side entrance, hid her in his long American Cadillac, and under cover of night smuggled her onto Lydia, which was tied up at its usual berth on the Bosporus.

  Under the unspoken code of the East, both Nicky and X understood the terms of their bargain. His silence in return for her obedience. It was, like all good bargains, of equal value to both parties. Nicky’s silence had saved X’s life, and X, with the shrewdness born of slums, pimps, and shark-like nightclub owners, was an invaluable assistant. They needed each other and recognized the need. Nothing more had to be said.

  Another person owned by Nicky was his Royal Highness Prince Abd-el Sadun, all five-feet-six, two hundred and sixty-five pounds of him. Sadun was the cousin of Farouk, grosser, more depraved and more degenerate, according to those who knew them both.

  Nicky had purchased the Prince for the price of his flight out of Egypt when Farouk’s entire family was expelled. Additionally, Nicky had borne the cost of Sadun’s gambling debts and paid out hush money to the young boys and girls who were his favorite sexual playthings.

  Over the years, Sadun had cost Nicky a million and a half dollars, an investment that Nicky fully expected would one day repay him handsomely. The question was where and under what circumstances. Now, Nicky thought, perhaps, the time had come.

  “What’s Nicky like?” Gavin asked Gail as they sat on the terrace in Positano.

  “Thoughtful, selfish, hard, soft, cruel, calculating, generous,“ she said. “Dangerous—”

  “Are you serious about him?”

  Gail nodded. “More than ever—”

  “Is he serious about you?”

  “I hope,” said Gail. “I wish. Would you like to meet him?”

  Gavin nodded. “Yes,” he said. Nicholas Kiskalesi. A man who controlled fortunes, who bought and sold governments, a man who knew who had done what to whom and why — and where — the bodies were buried. “I’d like very much to meet him.”

  9

  “Hos geldiniz!” Nicky Kiskalesi stood on the bow of the gleaming white Lydia as she dropped anchor in the sapphire-blue waters in the yacht basin of Positano. He had thick platinum white hair, a swarthy tan and wore large, dark sunglasses. Stocky of build, he wore white trousers tailored in Saville Row and a blue Sea Island cotton T-shirt made by his shirtmaker on Via Condotti that made him look taller and thinner. He was casual, commanding and impeccable.

  “Merhaba! Merhaba! Nasilsiniz?” Gail shouted back across the water. Nicky had taught her several phrases in Turkish, some for use in polite conversation and others for use in bed.

  “Cok iyiyim. Tesekur!” Nicky yelled back in answer.

  Gail looked better than he had ever seen her, thinner, sleeker, more confident. Nicky studied the man standing next to her. Gavin Jenkins was younger than Nicky had imagined, in his late twenties, but the strength in his sculpted jaw line was apparent even from a distance.

  The first mate lowered the launch and it sped toward the dock where Gail and Gavin waited. When it made the return trip to Lydia, two mates held the polished chrome gangway a
nd Gail and Gavin boarded Lydia. Nicky’s welcoming kiss left no doubt whatsoever as to the nature of his relationship with Gail. When they pulled apart, Gail introduced Gavin.

  “Gail says that you have performed a miracle,” Kiskalesi said, extending his hand. He looked straight into Gavin’s eyes. Steel gray into black.

  “I don’t believe in miracles,” said Gavin, shaking hands with the man sometimes referred to as the rogue pirate of the Mediterranean. “There is only medicine.”

  Their first encounter: it had been a draw.

  While Gail went to the stateroom to oversee the unpacking of her luggage, Nicky gave Gavin a tour of the yacht. Lydia had been commissioned by Kiskalesi just after the end of World War II and was one of the first vessels to come out of the reconstructed Japanese shipyards.

  Three hundred and thirty feet long, Lydia was capable of twenty-three knots. It had Denny stabilizers, its own Alouette Magister helicopter, and a twin-turbo-engine Beechcraft amphibian. The art collection included a Rembrandt, two Picassos, and a Van Gogh; a collection of Georgian silver that was insured by Lloyd’s for three and a quarter million dollars, and a Coromandel screen, eighteen panels wide, that had once ornamented the royal palace of Peking.

  Gavin’s host showed him the Steinway grand piano bolted to the floor, the kitchens designed by the owner of New York’s Le Pavilion restaurant, the marble dance floor which, with the push of a button, could be rolled back to reveal an Olympic-size swimming pool. He ended the tour with an inspection of the ship’s clinic, complete with a fully equipped operating room including an X-ray machine and an iron lung.

  He gave a running commentary as he showed off his toys and Gavin wondered why he was being given the grand tour.

  “It’s not because of my pretty eyes, is it?” he said as Kiskalesi led him back up to the forward deck.

  “Nor for your sun-bleached hair,” said the billionaire as they rejoined Gail in the lounge.