Too Bad to Die

by Francine Mathews

  The strains of music from the hotel, several hundred yards behind him. The ripple of the swimming pool, at the edge of the lawn on his left. The rustle of the breeze in the fronds of a date palm, waving just off this sanded path.

  He stopped short, eyes fluttering open. The air was dead calm. There was no breeze tonight. Which meant . . .

  He started to turn just as the knife pierced his back with a force that sent him stumbling. Instinct helped; that slight shift in posture at the moment of attack deflected the thin steel into his shoulder blade and saved his lung. He flung his arm backward, groping for his assailant, and fell to his knees.

  Applause burst from the Mena House ballroom. Churchill must have said something witty.

  Pain seared through Ian’s shoulder. The man was on him immediately, one gloved hand clamped across his mouth. He would pull the knife out of Ian’s back and slit his throat in a matter of seconds. Ian thrust an elbow viciously into the man’s rib cage, trying to twist out of his grasp. There was a grunt. But the hand on his mouth only tightened.

  He could feel the man’s free arm rising. The knife, he thought. But he was wrong. Something hard and metal came down on the back of his skull. Ian’s world cracked wide.

  —

  IT HAD NOT been difficult to lure Michael Hudson into the waltz, Pamela reflected, once she found him standing by himself near the entrance to the lounge. The music and the servicemen ringing the wooden floor weren’t officially part of this final night in Giza, but once the stuffy dinner broke up and the various members of the delegations began drifting away to their rooms, she’d been mad for some sort of diversion—anything but her empty bed and another dose of chloral to bring on sleep. Pamela had walked alone to the lounge, her head lifted. She would be unassailable. Beyond criticism. She would not hear them if they called her back. Someone would stand her a drink and charm her. Someone would play the game.

  One cigarette and a drink into the night, she’d glimpsed Michael.

  She leaned now against his encircling arm, her half-lidded eyes fixed on his. He was a superb dancer. Had Pamela been asked what she meant by this, she’d have said he didn’t think about his feet and he made the point of the whole exercise the greater glorification of Pamela. He certainly behaved as though there was nobody but themselves in the room; his eyes never wavered from hers, and his hands made her body respond in exactly the way he intended. Pam couldn’t help but enjoy herself. For all his breeding and charm, Averell Harriman was an uneasy dancer. Ed Murrow didn’t have time for it. Was it any crime to amuse herself with Michael, who took to music like a cat? All these men pretended to love her—said they would give the world for her . . . but they left her alone in the end. She hated being alone. Randolph. Ave. Now Ed. Expecting her to waste the best years of her life while they ran off on their adventures.

  The best years. She loved this war. It was the most exciting time she could ever imagine. None of the old rules applied. Everyone snatched at sensation because they might die tomorrow. When the killing was done, it would be the risk-takers who’d won. The people who seized their chances with both hands. The ones who didn’t bother with guilt. Pamela’s mother had put the fear of God in her as a girl, but she learned early that fear was just another name for guilt, and she’d chucked both when she left home. She was one of the winners.

  Michael’s face was very close to hers. The intensity of his gaze was making her restless. He was ten years older than she was, but twenty years younger than Ave. She wondered what he was like in bed. Her gaze wandered to his mouth. His lips parted and he drew a rapid breath, as though winded. The music stopped.

  “Walk me home,” she murmured. “I’m so tired of all these people.”

  He steered her through the group as instinctively as he’d waltzed. The faces around her seemed to fall back, an indistinct halo to their charmed circle; Pamela kept her easy smile fixed on her face and murmured nothings at the others. She must be tight. How much champagne had she drunk? Or was she intoxicated by Michael? She could feel his hand in the small of her back. Her evening cloak—one of Ave’s furs—slid over her bare shoulders. She nestled her chin in the softness and closed her eyes. Lord. She would see Ave tomorrow. She hoped she could manage to feel something.

  The desert air was chill and a vault of stars arced overhead. She shuddered and leaned into Michael as he steered her down the sanded path. It was going too fast. They’d be there too soon. She stopped short and made him face her. Went limp in his arms. Of course he bent his head and kissed her. Probing. Hungry. Bending her head back to find her throat, the cleft at her collarbone, intent on the breast curving below. The fur cloak wrapped around both of them.

  “My room,” she breathed.

  He lifted his head, gathered her in, hurried them both down the path.

  And so neither of them noticed the clawed and painful marks in the sand, the spray of pebbles in the garden bed, the scuffs where the heels had been dragged in a wavering sketch toward the date palm—or the dark gouts of Ian Fleming’s blood.

  —

  GIL WINANT NOTICED.

  He never drank to excess, and he had piercing eyes that were used to working in the dark. Too many nights in the past year he’d jumped into a bomb crater, pulling back timber and brick rubble where there’d once been a house.

  “Looks like somebody’s butchered a pig here, Sal.”

  He came to a measured halt on the sanded path, Sarah Oliver shivering in her evening dress beside him.

  “Arabs don’t eat pork.”

  “Sheep, then.”

  “Or fatted calf. For a prodigal son. Bloody hell—do you think Randolph’s turned up? And Pamela’s murdered him?”

  Gil drew Sarah toward the PM’s villa. “Come on,” he said gently. “You’re cold as ice and you need your sleep. We’ve all got a big day tomorrow.”

  —

  THE MOONLIGHT moved slowly across the uneven stone of the Great Pyramid. It picked out the edges of the hewn stone blocks and the Bedouin stillness of the snipers positioned among them. A jackal threw out its high-pitched cry. One of the snipers shifted painfully, his muscles cramping from the cold.

  Michael Hudson moved his right leg from the warmth of Pamela’s bed to the floor, careful not to make a sound. He waited for the space of several heartbeats, then slid the rest of his body from beneath the covers. Her steady breathing was unchanged. She slept facedown, her cheek turned away from him, her burnished hair spread across her pillow. One silken arm reached toward him. But she hadn’t held him close in sleep; Pamela was anything but possessive. It interested Michael that a woman so voracious in her pursuit of men felt so little need to hold on to them. Pamela was beyond his usual experience. She’d enjoyed him like a good glass of wine or a satisfying meal, as if there’d always be another waiting for her.

  A thin line of moonlight knifed through a gap in the heavy draperies at the window. She’d told him she hated the sight of the Great Pyramid, that the curtains were always drawn in her room. It didn’t matter. The moonlight was like a pencil torch—it illuminated enough so that Michael could navigate.

  He pulled on his trousers and quietly slid his arms into his shirt. Then he drifted toward Pamela’s desk. A sheaf of papers, scrawled in her somewhat childish hand. Letters. What was she telling people about the conference?

  He scanned them quickly. One to Beaverbrook. Another to Murrow. Madame Chiang has the most divine frocks, but her husband never gives her the time of day . . . Mr. Roosevelt really is a cripple! He has to be lifted out of his wheelchair . . . The son isn’t half as good-looking as his pictures make him out to be . . .

  She shifted in her sleep—the arm she’d flung across his pillow collapsing like a furled wing. He watched, his breathing suspended.

  She slept on.

  He moved from the desk, crouched down near the wardrobe, and began to ease the door open. He was looki
ng for anything—a transmitter, a radio, a codebook with a German name.

  He had a bet with Ian Fleming that there was nothing to find. And a deep personal reason for hoping he was right.

  CHAPTER 11

  The slender opium pipe was of black lacquer, set with silver and spinach jade. The silver was engraved with cranes in flight and had been chased by a master craftsman; the pipe was several centuries old. When it was no longer needed, it lay on a black lacquer rest. Carved in the base of the rest were three convex circles. These held the opium paste.

  Chiang lay on a couch in his Mena House suite. He wore a dark blue silk robe embroidered with scarlet dragons. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling of the room, tracking visions through clouds of yellow smoke. There was nothing dreamy about the pinpoint pupils.

  With his lean, regular features, his black hair silvering at the temples, his elegant frame, he cut a dashing figure by day; but in the evening, May-ling thought, shed of his Western uniform, he was magnificent.

  In a bloodless and terrifying way.

  When he was drugged like this, stilled by his visions, Chiang seemed at once dead and alive, like a demon-god of ancient times. Opium freed his deepest self, just as Western clothes shrouded it.

  May-ling sat in her composed fashion in the main salon, legs tucked beneath her and teacup cradled in her hands. She had left the room in darkness, content to gaze at the Great Pyramid flooded with moonlight. It had been a good day. She had got free of him, and enjoyed herself, and though her legs were tired from climbing countless stone steps, her hands still tingled as she held the porcelain cup. Remembering the touch of Elliott’s fingers on hers.

  “Wife,” he sighed, the voice no more than a whisper, a faint thread of sound, like a summons from the spirit world.

  Almost she did not answer it. She was never entirely sure he recognized her in the grip of opium. But when the summons came again she set down her cup.

  “Husband,” she whispered, as she knelt by his bedside. She allowed her eyes to adjust. He was surrounded by flickering candles, their light unnaturally bright after the glow of the moon.

  The pipe lay on its rest. His hands were folded slackly at his hips, but he lifted the right one and set it lightly on her shoulder, allowing it to slide like a falling leaf to her elbow.

  “So beautiful,” he murmured. “Like rarest celadon.”

  The voice was childlike with wonder; and she, who had never borne a child, felt her heart soften toward him.

  “My concubine,” he crooned. “My whore.”

  His eyes were still fixed on the ceiling, but he gripped her arm painfully now. She stiffened and tried to pull away. His head whipped around like a snake’s.

  “You are hungry for Roosevelt’s son. You’d open your legs if he asked. You shamed me through Cairo today, dallying and laughing and swinging your hips.”

  “No,” she cried. And wrenched her arm free.

  “Kwang followed you.” He spat the three words. His bodyguard. A Kuomintang veteran.

  “Kwang lies.”

  “He knows shame when he sees it. He called you whore.”

  “And you let him?”

  He sat up.

  The first blow was for the pipe. The flat of his left hand sent the precious thing skittering against the far wall.

  The second was for May-ling.

  She flew backward into the doorframe, hitting her skull hard. He was upon her in seconds, fingers clenched in her hair. He dragged her to the far side of the room and discarded her with the broken silver and jade. A fragment of lacquer bit into her palm.

  “I renounced my wife for you,” he said between his teeth. “My concubines. And this is how you repay me. You parade like a slut before the leaders of the West. My enemies laugh at me.”

  “The dishonor is yours,” she said clearly. She studied the pieces of shattered jade, not his face. “You believe a liar rather than your wife. Another man would have killed Kwang for his insolence.”

  She expected a second blow. But to her surprise, Chiang laughed softly. “What would that get me? Nothing.”

  May-ling looked at him directly then. “That’s what it’s always about, isn’t it? What you get.”

  “Yes.” He crouched down beside her. “And you have given me nothing. All these days in Cairo. All your smiles and swinging hips. I have no secrets I can sell. What good are you, wife?”

  DAY THREE

  CAIRO AND TEHRAN

  SATURDAY,

  NOVEMBER 27, 1943

  CHAPTER 12

  Commander. Commander Fleming.”

  There were weights on Ian’s eyelids, pennies for a dead man. He struggled to obey the Voice and raise them. But the light that penetrated was painful, and his vision was blurred. He closed his eyes again.

  “He should do for a bit, now,” said the Voice. “When he’s alert, give him something for the pain. He’ll have a head on him.”

  “Good.” A second man, vaguely familiar: “Leave some instructions for my housekeeper.”

  “And I’ll call again tomorrow. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if there’s anything—”

  Ian was aware of a door closing. One voice would stop badgering him, at least.

  Somebody crossed the room in a casual way. Ian could feel a presence looking down on him. It reminded him of Mokie. When he was young. Ill with fever. That detached, speculative look, hands in his pockets, as though Ian were a dead fish washed up in the Arnisdale gravel.

  He opened his eyes and scowled into Alex Kirk’s face.

  It was neither a pleasant nor a repulsive one. The American ambassador to Egypt was fastidious, well groomed, pleasure-loving; his skin was smooth and carefully tended. It was possible, Ian thought, that he plucked his eyebrows. Not a stray hair anywhere. His tie was of an exquisite silk, expertly knotted. It was rumored that he liked young Egyptian boys.

  “There you are.” Kirk drew up a chair and seated himself by Ian’s bedside. “Headache?”

  “A snorter.” The double vision was leveling out, which he found reassuring. “Somebody coshed me.”

  “And stabbed you in the back.”

  “I know.” He squinted and gazed around an unfamiliar room. “Where am I?”

  “My villa. My gardener almost fell over you this morning. Right around sunrise. We figured this was the best place to bring you.”

  Ian’s mind groped its way back through a fug of half images and hallucinations. He had crawled out of underbrush. Or had he dreamed that? He remembered severe thirst and the heat of fever. Sand beneath his elbows. The conviction he was dying in the Sahara. He had fetched up near a stone fountain, driven there by the scent of water.

  “Why not the PM’s villa?” He tried to raise his arms, felt a stab of pain, and settled for lifting the left one. No sign of gravel burn, but then he had been wearing a dress uniform last night. “I crawled there. I’m sure of it.”

  “You made it to the PM’s garden. Must’ve come to sometime after the attack and tried your damnedest to reach civilization. Until you passed out again.”

  “Concussed?”

  “Sure. You also lost a lot of blood. Scalp wounds are a helluva mess, not to mention the cut in your back. The doctor’s swell news is that the knife didn’t reach your lung. Or anything else you might need.”

  Kirk spoke soothingly, but Ian was unconvinced. He ought to be in the British villa, not the American. Apprehension curled in his gut.

  “What time is it?” He tried to sit up, whistled bloody hell between his teeth, and settled cautiously back onto the mattress.

  “Little after ten-thirty.”

  “I have to get dressed.”

  “Fleming.” Kirk smiled apologetically. “Relax. The planes already left. You’ve got no particular place to go.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “’Fraid so
.”

  “Bugger. All of them? The PM? Miss Cowles?”

  “Gone.”

  “Your people, too?”

  “Yep. Sorry.”

  So Hudson had flown out a few hours ago. Without a hint of what was happening. He’d watch President Roosevelt roll straight into a Nazi killer’s trap. Churchill, too—Ian hadn’t even warned his own people! Christ—he hadn’t sent so much as a memo to Grace or Ismay or, God help him, his chief, Rushbrooke—and now they were all flying, ignorant as babes, straight into their destruction. And it was his fault. Everybody would die—Hitler would win the war—and it was his fault.

  He tried to sit up again and settled for a stream of foul language.

  “Your boss, old Rushbrooke, thought you ought to stay here,” Kirk explained. “I guess you’re gonna be weak for a while. Your orders are to lie around for a few days, then head back to London.”

  “No,” Ian said firmly. “That’s what he wants. To get me out of the way.”

  “Who? Rushbrooke?”

  Ian glanced at Kirk. “The man who did this.”

  “You mean you recognized the guy?”

  “It was dark. And he came from behind. My killer.”

  Kirk’s eyebrow rose. “You’re not exactly dead, buddy.”

  “That’s the oddest thing about it.”

  Kirk placed a cool hand on his forehead. “You running a fever?”

  “I’m entirely sane,” Ian snapped. “Be a sport, Alex, and give me a hand.”

  Kirk supported Ian’s good left shoulder and helped him ease to a sitting position. Ian’s teeth were gritted against the pain, and sweat stood out on his forehead.

  “I thought there was more to this than Rushbrooke let on,” Kirk said. “He told the rest of the delegation that you’d come down with bronchitis. Seemed a bit cagey to me. If you were mugged and robbed—why not just say so? It’s not like it was going to happen to anyone else. They were all leaving.”