Paradise Burning

by Blair Bancroft

  Except with herself.

  Live a little. Isn’t that what her Grandmother Armitage had urged, even while Peter was still a world traveler? Go to Peter, Mandy. Wherever he is. You’re still his wife. Move right in. But of course she hadn’t. Couldn’t. Peter Pennington, free-lance journalist, was always in the thick of it. From vicious wars to beautiful people, continent-hopping as easily as some people commuted from suburbs to the city. Revolutions, polo matches, a space launch at Baikonur, dog-sledding with Inuits, a cattle ranch in the Pampas, the building of the great Yangtze River dam. How could she have kept him from any of it? Or even wanted to?

  But it was so much easier to nurse her hurt, to tell herself he’d abandoned her . . .

  He had. That’s exactly what he’d done. No sense letting truth get in the way of a good grievance.

  Men were so . . . simple. Peter now had time for a wife, so he built a house and figured she would come. Well, I’ve got news for you, Mr. Egotistical Pennington. You’re going to have to work harder than that to get me back.

  And, even then, it might not be enough.

  Meanwhile, Mandy had other fish to fry. Like making a mystery out of an anomaly, out of what was probably no more than a random incident—a woman sitting on a log above a nut brown river. By the dawn’s early light.

  Mandy hated dawn. Despised dawn. No matter how lovely, how dewy and pristine, she never wanted to see another dawn as long as she lived. She glared at the alarm clock, then—face set in grim determination—set it for a pre-dawn hour.

  The mystery girl was there. Once again, she was seated on the trunk of a palm downed in some long-forgotten storm, hugging her voluminous dress tight around her knees, the mist rising up before her like some shimmering fairy ring. Mandy, unwilling to shatter the spell, neither called nor waved. The girl might run off, as she had before.

  Okay, she also might be an old woman with long white hair. The picture of a beautiful fairy tale maiden in distress was probably all in her own wistful, overactive imagination. Her quest for a distraction from Peter was blowing an improvised skit into an epic multi-million dollar production.

  Mandy eyed the small aluminum boats tethered to the dock with some misgiving. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t row. Peter had taught her during their halcyon days at AKA. The good years. But the river was so foreign, its dark water hiding who knew what—gators, water moccasins, snapping turtles, piranhas.

  Not quite, but three out of four was enough to make a girl stop and think.

  Mandy grabbed a pair of oars from the oar rack, then stepped carefully into the outermost skiff. It had been a while . . . did she face forward or back? Back, silly. Remember, rowing is treacherous. You can’t see where you’re going.

  Mandy scrambled to the bow, slipped the rope loop off the bollard, then settled onto the center bench, facing the stern. One by one, she lifted the oars from the bottom of the boat and fitted them into the oar locks. Are you crazy? sensible Mandy Mouse hissed. Alligators! Snakes!

  She was an Armitage. She could do this.

  A tentative tug and the tiny boat moved forward. Pale but triumphant, Mandy grinned. Turning her head, she checked her goal. Yes! The blonde still sat on the palm trunk. She appeared to be giving Mandy her full attention.

  The current was flowing upriver—a tidal phenomenon, Ed Cramer had explained—so her little boat made good time. Every once in a while Mandy turned and looked over her shoulder to check her bearings. The woman was still there, clearly visible above the waves of fog drifting up from the river.

  It was all a wild goose chase. A self-inflicted snipe hunt. The explanation for the mystery maiden on the bank of the Calusa at sunrise was going to be totally mundane. A molehill she’d blown into a mountain.

  But she had to know, had to find out. Mandy gritted her teeth and rowed.

  Stroke. Stroke. She was concentrating so hard she wasn’t aware she’d arrived until an overhanging bush scraped her cheek. Shipping her oars, she grabbed the offending branch and pulled the small boat in until it was parallel with the riverbank. Scrambling to the bow, Mandy slung the boat’s lightweight anchor around the base of the bush. (If she tossed it into the water, she reasoned, it would probably become so tangled in the exposed underwater roots at the river’s edge that she’d end up having to swim the alligator-infested river to get home.)

  She’d done it. She’d actually crossed the river, and the girl . . . Mandy looked up. Oh, my! Her mystery girl was lovely enough to satisfy all of her imagination’s fantasies. Young, with straight silver blond hair falling to her waist and framing a piquant face from which two bright blue eyes shone like beacons, their natural beauty enhanced by makeup so skillful the young woman appeared to have stepped off the screen of a high-budget fantasy film. Mandy couldn’t see a figure beneath the girl’s voluminous white caftan, but she suspected it was as perfect as the rest of her. No, not quite, Mandy amended. The elaborate eye makeup was slightly smudged, as if the girl had been crying. Or had had a long, hard night. Close up, the ethereal creature on the fallen palm trunk looked as vulnerable, lost, and alone as Mandy had pictured her. Surely not. She was creating a fair maiden beset by dragons from nothing more than a overly fertile imagination. And perhaps the need to be a hero, to solve a puzzle without AKA. And to keep from thinking about a husband who was best seen through a lens, darkly.

  Grabbing the overhanging bush, Mandy hauled herself hand over hand up the slippery riverbank. The young woman was still sitting on the tree trunk, regarding Mandy with eyes which, though watchful, were alight with curiosity. In fact, a pulsating excitement radiated from her, almost as if she too recognized this moment was more than the casual meeting of two strangers.

  Mandy ventured a smile. “Hi,” she said, adding a small self-conscious wave of her hand.

  “Hi.” The girl’s voice was soft. She didn’t smile.

  “My name’s Mandy. I live at the campground over there. I hope you don’t mind my trespassing.”

  A faint frown creased the young woman’s forehead. The blue eyes clouded. “Izvenityeh, pazahlsta,” she murmured. “Ya nee poneemayoo.”

  “You’re Russian!” Mandy exclaimed, her mind racing vainly through her Russian vocabulary. She could read some Russian, mostly technical words, but she had had little occasion to speak it. No more than a basic handful of words responded to her frantic search. “Izvenityeh meenya,” she countered. “Ya zabivala feesyo.”

  The girl beamed, as if Mandy had given her diamonds instead of begging to be excused for forgetting her Russian. “Vee gavarityeh pa-russki!”

  “No, no, no,” Mandy protested with a grin. “I read a little, not speak well,” she managed in Russian. “Do you speak English?”

  The girl held her thumb and forefinger a half an inch apart. “Neemnozhkah,” she said with an apologetic shrug. Then added in English, “American TV. I watch. Learn a little.”

  “That’s great.” Mandy was relieved. On closer observation, she could see that her mystery girl was not as young as she had first appeared. Mid-twenties, Mandy guessed. Delicate bone structure, but with far more character in her face than the fairy tale princess she had conjured from mist and imagination. The girl’s eye makeup was smudged, but at the moment Mandy could see no sign of tears. “May I sit?” she inquired.

  “Ah, da.” When Mandy was seated on the tree trunk, the Russian girl pointed to herself. “Nadezhda Semyonova. Nadya,” she pronounced carefully.

  “Amanda Armitage. Mandy.” Mandy opened her mouth to continue, then snapped it closed, totally frustrated by her rusty Russian vocabulary.

  “Ochen preeatna, Man-dee,” Nadya said, holding out her hand. Solemnly, the girls shook hands, then found themselves enveloped in frustrated silence. “We need a dictionary,” Mandy ventured in Russian. “Slovar.”

  “Ah, da!” the girl replied with a vigorous nod of her head.

  “Where do you live?” Mandy asked in English, embellishing the question with a broad wave of her hand to indicate t
he area around the river.”

  It was as if the Iron Curtain had returned to slam down over the young woman’s sunny face. After a long silence, Nadya pointed north. “House. There,” she said. Her face remained shuttered as she dropped her gaze, seemingly in deep contemplation of her thin-soled slippers, which had never been intended for walking in the woods.

  “Where did you live in Russia?” Mandy asked.

  That question took two repetitions and more broad hand-waving before the young woman cried, “Ah! Small, very small town. Not far Yekatarinburg.”

  “In the Ural mountains.” Mandy nodded.

  “Da.” Nadya, a smile once again lighting her lovely face, was obviously pleased by their minimal communication, snail-paced though it was.

  Mandy’s excitement was mounting, though why she was so certain there was a mystery here she couldn’t have said. Woman’s intuition, Peter would have scoffed. And she would have countered by taunting him about men’s gut reaction. An inelegant term, but just another way of describing that sixth sense humans ignored at their peril.

  “Why did you come to America?” Mandy asked in halting Russian.

  Nadya’s pale blond hair fell over her face and drooped onto the ground as she suddenly bent her head down to her knees. Awkwardly, Mandy reached out and touched the young woman’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “Is that a bad question?”

  Nadya peeked through her curtain of hair, scanning the jungle to the north of the cleaning. What little Mandy could see of her face was pale, her eyes wide. A shudder shook her. “Plahoy,” Nadya whispered. “Ochen plahoy!” Bad. Very bad. “I must go. Karim will be angry.”

  The Russian girl shot to her feet, then paused, a shimmering white still-life from Swan Lake. “Das veedanya, Mandee,” Nadya said, the farewell soft and precise. “It good, very good, to speak with you.”

  “Wait!” Mandy cried as the girl ran toward the dense tangle to the north. “When will you be back? Who is Karim?”

  But Nadya was gone. Swallowed whole by the Florida jungle.

  Later, as Mandy sat at her oars, taking a last look at the spot where the girl had disappeared, she realized that one thing was quite easy to analyze. She had no difficulty putting a face to the man called Karim. Dark. Sculptured. Proud. Seething with pent-up energy. Karim had to be her Iranian soldier. She was certain of it.

  This, Mandy promised herself, was a puzzle she was going to solve. Grim-faced and determined, she dug in her oars and headed back downriver.

  Arms crossed, former Major Karim Shirazi of the Army of Iran leaned against the one of the peeling 4x4 beams that framed the steps to the back porch of the sprawling old house. He eyed the narrow path that wound through the woods with resigned patience punctuated by a quiver of anticipation. His lips curled into a hint of a smile. Major Shirazi had made sure all the occupants of the house knew the area around them was teeming with wildlife, most particularly rattlesnakes, wild boar, and large spiders. He had also emphasized the river was full of alligators that moved very fast, in water or on the land, and had very sharp teeth.

  Armed with graphic sketches he himself had made, the major had repeated the words slowly and clearly. In Russian, English, and Spanish. He had even held his drawings of snapping teeth and wicked fangs close to the women’s frightened faces, then waved his arms in a broad circle around the house. They must have understood, for since then few of the silly creatures would even venture out onto the porch for fresh air.

  Only Nadya Semyonova had not been suitably terrified. Of all the girls, she alone followed the narrow trail to the small clearing along the bank of the ugly brown river. Karim did not like jungles. The mountains were his home. Soaring, clean, their heights were as bare as the desert which was also part of his homeland. But endless miles of dull flat land that sprouted phalanxes of box houses or masses of impenetrable greenery made him feel caged in, claustrophobic. Sometimes, in the heavy humid air, he thought he could not breathe.

  So he did not begrudge the girl from the Ural Mountains an occasional opportunity to tug on her leash. Besides—the tilt of Karim’s thin lips expanded into a full-blown, if feral, smile—the consequences of Nadya’s moments of freedom were so personally satisfying. Unlike the keepers of the harim, he was not required to be a eunuch.

  Major Shirazi came off the column, snapping to attention as a flicker of white caught his eye. Today Nadya had been gone a long time. He should be angry. Glowering. He must never let her see the rush of pleasure, the pulse of anticipation as he thought of the forfeit to come. For Nadya would pay for her few moments of freedom. As she always did. With the only coin she had.

  Karim settled back against the column, re-crossed his arms and waited, his stoic face revealing no sign of the impatience he felt. Impatience and excitement. Already he was growing hard. For Nadya Semyonova’s coin was very sweet indeed.

  “Take my recorder next time,” Peter advised later that morning, as he and Mandy sat in matching swivel chairs in front of identical computers, set under the two broad banks of windows that gave the corner office its superb view. “Have your mystery girl record her story. We’ll get Brad Blue to translate.”

  “Brad Blue?”

  “The developer of Amber Run. Remember, I told you his grandfather owns most of the land on the far side of the river, and Brad’s wife Claire runs the Model Center. She’s a New Englander—Connecticut, I think. You’ll like her.”

  Mandy, obviously zeroed in on her current focus point, ignored the pleasant potential of a new friend. “You say her husband speaks Russian?”

  Inwardly, Peter sighed. His wife, the AKA terrier, sinking her teeth into a subject and harrying it until she found an answer. So much for trying to turn the moment into a pitch for home and family.

  Peter leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs out until they were within a foot of Mandy’s. She eyed them as if they were a couple of RPG launchers poised to fire. Great, just great.

  “The way the story goes,” Peter said, “is that Brad’s mother—Wade Whitlaw’s daughter—was disowned when she married a Russian defector who was working as a cow hunter—that’s Florida for cowboy—at the Whitlaw ranch. Brad was brought up bilingual on a modest-sized vegetable farm. Local gossip also says he went to work for the government, which put his language and other skills to good use before he retired about three years ago, supposedly due to an excess of bullet holes. To squeeze things down to the proverbial nutshell, Brad inherited the Amber Run land from his grandmother, Wade Whitlaw’s wife, as well as the veggie farm from his parents. There was a reconciliation of sorts with the old man when Brad married Claire a little over a year ago, but I hear Wade Whitlaw still gnashes his teeth every time he sees houses going up on land where he used to graze cattle.”

  “I can’t say as I blame him,” Mandy remarked before hearing the echo of Eleanor’s arrogance in her judgmental tone. Who was Mandy Armitage to judge other people’s lives when she’d done so poorly with her own? “I’m sorry, she added hastily. ”This is the most attractive, well laid out housing development I’ve ever seen, but what happens when there’s no natural Florida left?”

  “As long as there are old codgers like Wade Whitlaw, there’s hope. And he has a son and a grandson, considerably younger than Brad, who agree with him. The Whitlaw Ranch has been growing beef for six generations and the next two look pretty secure as well. But you can’t really blame the landowners who sell out,” Peter added, playing his favorite role of devil’s advocate. “Why struggle to raise beef if you can retire for life on what some big-time developer is willing to pay?”

  Mandy waved her hand toward the view. “I suppose it costs a lot more to leave things as natural as this.”

  “Way more.”

  “So your Brad Blue must be more like his grandfather than he’s willing to admit.”

  Peter grinned. “Definitely. But don’t let him hear you say that. He and his kid cousin Slade are a lot more like the old man than Wade’s son Garret
t, who’s all politician. Smooth, teflon-coated charm over hard-headed realist. Don’t get me wrong, Garrett’s a good guy—I’d give him my vote any time—he’ll probably be governor some day. But Brad and Slade are action types. If you’re ever in trouble, those are the two you’d want in your corner.”

  “What about you?” Mandy challenged. “I thought Peter Pennington was synonymous for Mr. Macho?”

  Mr. Macho. He’d thought so once.

  Peter’s lips quirked as Mandy looked down, noticed that the bare toes peeking out of her sandals had somehow crept within an inch of Peter’s loafers. She zipped them back under her chair.

  “Back when I worked for Jeff,” Peter admitted, “I was young enough, and blind enough, to think I was Mr. Invincible. Leap tall buildings, outwit villains, bring home the bacon. Name the cliché and I was it.”

  Abruptly, Peter sat up in his chair, rolled backwards until it hit the computer counter. “But now I’m older, wiser, and a hell of a lot less wild. You want macho, look to Brad Blue. I’m just Peter, the tame pussycat, basking in the sun.”

  You’re macho enough for me. Mandy almost said the words aloud. Swiftly, she buried her momentary weakness under the crisp upper crust insouciance of the Boston Kingsleys, ruthlessly bringing the subject back on track. “Brad Blue’s Florida sounds like the Wild West.”

  “Close enough. Most newcomers live their lives in the thin veneer of civilization along the coastline and have no idea what the other ninety-five percent of Florida is like.”

  “Oh.” Abruptly, Mandy swung her chair around to face her computer. Time to close this conversation. Peter was too close, too overwhelming. Her thoughts were chaotic, like a scattering of shotgun pellets. Supposedly, they were discussing the wild side of a state most people thought of as sun and fun, but visions of Peter’s vast bed kept swamping her mind. What had happened to her much-vaunted tunnel vision, her ability to focus? Mandy could feel herself giving in. Being engulfed by the bed, by Peter. By the ruthless determination that had made him so effective—as AKA agent, journalist, and author. The sheer willpower that now, incredibly, seemed to be focused on winning back his wife. Did she stand a chance of resisting?