Impulse

by Catherine Coulter

  I had to put my journal away for a few days. I couldn’t bear to write, but I know I must accept her in Dominick’s life. I have no choice, and after all, he doesn’t remember who I am. I might never have existed for him. I’ve tried to make excuses for him for that day in Madrid in 1989 when he looked right through me. After all, I’ve told myself countless times over the years, I was very slender when I was twenty years old. I’m fuller now, a woman, and my hair is darker than it was then. Yes, I had pale blond hair when I was twenty, I’ve told myself. And dark glasses—I’m almost certain I was wearing dark glasses in Madrid, the kind that hide your eyes completely. After all, isn’t the sun so very strong and bright in Spain? Doesn’t one always wear dark glasses? My own daughter wouldn’t have recognized me. That’s what I’ve told myself, Rafaella, over and over, until I hate myself, my weakness.

  The word was that his new French mistress is in her early thirties and getting a bit long in the tooth to stay on top much longer in the modeling world. Thus she accepted Dominick’s offer without too much hesitation. He’s taken her to that bloody island he recently bought in the Caribbean.

  I must go there. I must see it. It’s stupid and obsessive and I am aware of it, but there it is.

  My hatred for him grew by another good-size bound when he took Coco. He’s had so many women over the years, but I know, I’m certain that she will last. The funny thing is that she doesn’t seem to be an evil woman, a greedy kept woman. I’m trying to find out everything I can about her. No, the hell of it is, she appears quite nice.

  I must stop thinking about him. I did for a while, when you graduated from Columbia and Charles and I attended and Charles threw that wonderful party for you at the Plaza. You were so gracious, Rafaella, even when Charles wanted to call the newspaper in Wallingford, Delaware. Charles, of course, is furious. He counted on handing you the moon, at the very least. I threatened him with loss of all sex with his wife if he said anything to you, and the dear man managed to swallow his bile.

  You told me at your party that you were worried about Benjie. Well, I am too. Benjie is a nice man but he’d take anything his father offered him, in a flash. No, really it’s more Susan who wants things, so many things, and she is really very talented. Charles doesn’t at all mind being manipulated by her. Or so it seems to me. She’s also teaching little Jennifer to be manipulative, conniving. Poor Benjie, he’ll never be the success Susan expects him to be. Or the success Charles expects him to be, for that matter. His watercolors continue to improve in their beauty and quality. He loves sailboats and the ocean, and they are mostly his subjects. I always buy several of them for Christmas presents for my friends. What else can I do?

  I must see the island. I must see where he lives, with her, with that damned French model.

  Rafaella closed the journal. Her mother had actually seen the island, studied it, willingly engulfed herself in pain. And to think she had never imagined that her mother had been suffering such torment, had spent her life gnawing over painful memories, creating new ones with every stroke of her pen in the journal, with every newspaper and magazine clipping she cut out and so relentlessly and neatly placed inside the journals. Rafaella wished very much that her mother hadn’t come to the island. Until then she’d kept herself physically away from him.

  When would it stop? Perhaps with the publication of the biography Rafaella would write about Dominick, the very unromantic illegal-arms merchant, the purveyor of death?

  Rafaella wished she were with her mother at this moment. She felt awash with guilt, even though intellectually she knew that a vigil at her mother’s bedside would have no bearing on anything. It would change nothing. She leaned her head forward and rested it on her knees. She prayed. She hadn’t prayed, not really, since she’d been sixteen, and then it had been a selfish prayer, one that had been answered, one she hadn’t deserved: Oh, please, God, let me have a convertible for my birthday, please, God—

  And there it had been, more than she’d prayed for, a Mercedes 450 SLC, red with white leather interior, jaunty and ready for her, sitting on the gravel drive in front of the house, Charles and her mother holding out the keys to her, smiling, smiling—

  Stupid selfish child. But that was years ago and she had changed and grown up. But her mother hadn’t; she’d remained locked into her hatred of Giovanni, her obsession with the man.

  Link watched Rafaella, wondering what she was thinking. She was obviously upset. He hoped she wouldn’t cry. His grandmother, who’d raised him, hadn’t cried except when he’d hurt her, and then it was great gulping sobs, and as an adult he simply couldn’t bear a woman’s tears. He was vastly relieved when the young woman seemed to shake off her funk, gather her things together, and rise. She was pretty, no doubt about that, and her eyes were particularly fine, that pale blue that darkened with emotion, like now. Those eyes of hers—Link shook his head. He needed to get off this bloody island; he was going stir-crazy. He quickly shrank back behind a palm tree when Rafaella walked toward him. As he watched her progress through the jungle until she was lost from his sight, he wondered if he were protecting her by shadowing her or protecting Mr. Giovanni from another assassination attempt.

  Link began his trek back to the compound, keeping a goodly distance between himself and Rafaella. There hadn’t been another assassination attempt. Of course, that first failure had been quite a fiasco, and the island was a fortress in itself, quite a deterrent. And the men, keyed up after the first attempt, shamed to their toes for their failure to guard Mr. Giovanni, were now losing it, boredom getting to them again, making them careless, not obviously—no, never that, they were professionals, after all—no, it was their judgment, their reflexes if there were a sudden attack. Link decided to speak to Lacy, who probably already recognized the problem. If there were a second attempt—when there was a second attempt—Lacy and the men would be ready.

  Funny, Link’s thinking continued, funny that those Dutchmen had poisoned themselves before Mr. Giovanni could question them. Funny that they should have poisoned themselves at all. Did Bathsheba have such a fanatic hold on its men?

  Link sighed. None of it made much sense to him. And he’d searched the Dutchmen before locking them in the shed; searched them personally. They must have had the poison glued between their toes.

  Link was continuing his ruminations when he heard her scream, high, thin, filled with terror and surprise. He sprinted forward, veering right at another cry, this one choking, pain-filled. He came to a horrified halt to see Rafaella Holland just off the path, the one and only boa constrictor on the bloody island, all ten feet of it, wrapping itself lazily around her body, its dark brown crossbars glistening as they slithered to her waist, tightening, ever tightening.

  She saw him, and he saw the sudden hope in her eyes. “Shit,” he said, and drew his knife as he sprinted forward.

  Rafaella forced herself to hold very still even though she wanted to continue her struggles. She wanted to vomit, she wanted to yell, but she didn’t move a muscle. The boa’s coils were heavy, so very heavy, and she was being bowed to her knees, but there was Link, and she instinctively closed her eyes when he cleanly slashed his knife through the snake, just below its head. There was no sound, only the loud thud as the head hit the ground. Did she expect a scream of pain from the snake? She was shuddering now from shock as the snake’s heavy coils began to loosen their hold on her. Her ribs, released from the gripping pain, heaved as she frantically sucked in air. She felt Link pulling the snake off her, knew he was unwinding it, and it was all she could do not to vomit. She opened her eyes and saw the blood, blood everywhere, on her bare arms, all over her baggy top, on Link, and covering the knife blade. And the boa constrictor lay headless at her feet, giving spasms still that made the coils hump upward, and she jerked away quickly, and raced away, only to fall on her knees and vomit. There was little in her stomach, but she couldn’t seem to stop the spasms. She dry-heaved until she was weak and shaking and ready to fall over. But she
didn’t; the snake was too near.

  She felt Link’s hand on her shoulder. “It’s dead, Miss Holland. Come along now, let’s get back to the compound and get you cleaned up.”

  Rafaella looked up at him and slowly shook her head. “I can’t, Link, I just can’t.” She pulled herself to her feet, avoided the snake, and raced back toward the beach.

  Link let her go. Quickly he wrapped the snake’s now-limp coils about his arm and dragged the rest of it into the jungle, out of sight. The other animals would devour the carcass. And Miss Holland wouldn’t have to see the thing again.

  He waited another moment, then walked toward the beach. He stopped at the edge of the jungle and looked out toward the sea. She was standing knee-deep in the surf, wildly and frantically splashing water on herself. Her hair was matted down and he could practically feel her skin crawling with revulsion as she scrubbed the snake’s blood out of her clothes.

  “Get hold of yourself,” Rafaella said over and over, even as her fingers fretted madly with the pale pink stains on her shorts. Then her fingers stopped and her arms dropped to her sides. The rush of adrenaline was over. She stood there utterly still, weary to the depths of her, the warm water slapping at her thighs, and she knew now that she was safe, quite alive, and the horror was slowly receding. She looked up then, took a deep breath, and saw Link standing patiently at the edge of the white beach, watching her. She waved and she fancied he smiled as he raised his arm and motioned her back to him.

  “Thank you, Link,” she said when she reached him. “You saved my life, and to me, sir, that is quite a wonderful gift.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, and he was smiling at her, a sweet smile, a gentle smile, and she was nearly undone. She wanted to cry, but she saw the appalled expression on his face and swallowed convulsively. She even managed to grin. Link understood and awkwardly patted her back.

  “There aren’t any more of those monsters,” he said presently. “That one’s dead as a bloody doornail—whatever that means. My grandma always used to say that when I was a boy—‘You keep doin’ that, Everett, and I’ll make you deader than a doornail’—and so it is, Miss Holland.”

  Rafaella looked up at him, sniffed, and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Everett? Your name’s Everett?”

  Well, he’d done it to himself. “Yes, ma’am. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep it to yourself. Merkel would batter me into the ground if he knew. And old Lacy, well, he just might roll off the island, he’d laugh so hard.”

  “You can count on me, Link. But I think it’s a lovely name.”

  “So did my ma,” he said. “So did my ma.”

  And there was the snake story to tell again and again, until Rafaella began to think it was but a tall tale, nothing more than a snake story that she and Link had embroidered to terrify the listeners. And Coco, mouth agape, cried out several times, “Oh, my poor Rafaella,” and folded her against her breasts, patting her back.

  Dominick said nothing in her hearing. He studied the bedraggled young woman, wondering where the devil that blasted snake had come from. Boas rarely left their own territory even when free to do so, and that snake had been cozy and happy high in Dominick’s private zoo on the middle ridge, and yet it had somehow gotten free of its pen, providently come down and waited just off the path, and given Rafaella the scare of her life. It didn’t make sense; he happened to look at Link at that moment and knew that the other man was just as confused.

  It was near to evening when one of the men found a large wooden cage in the jungle. And then things became clear. Someone had brought the boa here, loosing it on the trail to the beach. But the timing? Who had been the intended victim? It was accident, purely, that Rafaella had been on the path. Unless, he thought, unless that someone waited until Rafaella started back from the beach, waited and then opened the cage and loosed the boa.

  He said as much to Coco as they dressed for dinner, but before she could reply, Merkel was at the door, out of breath because he’d run upstairs, and told Dominick that Marcus was on the phone again and that Jack Bertrand had tried to kill him but Marcus had got him instead.

  Dominick merely nodded to Coco and followed Merkel from the room. He allowed Merkel to remain as he sat down at his desk and picked up the phone. “Dominick here, Marcus. Tell me what happened.”

  He listened, saying nothing, for a good five minutes. Finally, “I’m glad you survived it. There’s nothing to be done about the rest of it at the moment. Come home. We’ll decide what’s to be done when you get here.”

  Dominick fell silent again, listening intently. “You’re right, of course. We’ll go into it when you’ve returned. Oh, by the way, my boy, our Rafaella just had a very close call.”

  Even Merkel could hear Marcus shout, “That brain-defective woman! What did she get herself into this time?”

  Dominick chuckled, but Merkel, tuned to his boss’s every expression, his most subtle body language, saw that the chuckle didn’t mean what it was supposed to.

  “She had a run-in with a boa constrictor, Marcus. Link was with her, of course, not with her knowledge, and he killed the snake. She is rather upset, as you can imagine.” He paused, listening. “Yes, I’ll keep Link with her. Don’t worry. Come home.”

  Dominick gently laid the phone back into its cradle. He said, not looking up, “Bertrand never intended to pay up, and there were no arms. It was all an elaborate setup, a ruse, to kill Marcus and make me look like an ineffectual fool, a buffoon, a weakling. ‘The king is dead, or very nearly dead’—those were Bertrand’s dying words. But at least we have a lead on Bathsheba, this group or organization or man or whatever the hell it is.”

  Fifteen

  Over dinner, Dominick calmly told everyone in general terms what had happened in Marseilles. When he began speaking, he glanced at Rafaella, and she knew that he was assessing the wisdom of speaking so frankly in front of her. To her relief and chagrin, it appeared he decided she could either be trusted or it didn’t matter. It was the latter, she had no doubt, and she imagined he saw her only as a woman who was bright enough to be the recorder of his glorious life, and a woman, any woman, could be controlled. She accepted it; it didn’t matter. Only knowing what had happened to Marcus mattered. She forgot the boa constrictor that had nearly caved in her ribs and clutched her fork so tightly her knuckles showed white. “How did this Jack Bertrand try to kill him, Dominick? Marcus isn’t stupid.”

  “He tried to kill him stupidly. He sent over a girl whose responsibility it was to get Marcus into bed. And when Marcus was otherwise occupied, Jack would creep in and cut his throat for him.”

  “I take it, then, that Marcus refused to do as expected?”

  “Marcus isn’t indiscriminate in whom he takes to bed, nor is he a pedophile. He told me the girl was fifteen years old.”

  Dominick looked as if he would say more, then abruptly stopped. He took a chilled shrimp and forked it into his mouth. He chewed slowly. “I would just add, Rafaella, that this arms deal was all aboveboard. There was an end-user certificate. It’s just that these arms weren’t going to Nigeria as the French believed. They were going to a group of rebels in East Africa, to fight the communist-backed dictator there. Since this group is off-limits, we had to bend the rules a bit to get the arms to the rebels.”

  And goats sing opera, Rafaella wanted to say, but kept both her mouth and her expression closed. Dominick continued, saying, “We haven’t yet spoken of my profession. I admit I’m an arms dealer, but I deal openly, Rafaella, despite what you might have read or what you might have heard. I’m not an outlaw; I’m not a criminal; I’m not a man who supplies terrorists with weapons to kill innocent people; I’m not in the black market. Sometimes I am forced to stray into the gray market, but not often. This time was the first in quite a while that I was prepared to bend the rules. I never send arms to our country’s enemies—not to Qaddafi, nor to Saddam, not to North Korea. I have dealt often with the CIA in the past, but unfortunately that can’t be i
ncluded in our book. An arms dealer would never admit working with your government or he’d be thought a fool or a braggart. He’d be laughed out of the country by his peers.”

  “We are out of the country,” Coco said.

  “You jest,” Dominick said, but he didn’t smile. “Nor, I might add, would our government be pleased with such an admission.”

  “What were you sending to the rebels in East Africa?” Rafaella asked.

  Dominick fanned his hands in front of him. “Lord knows they need everything. I’d made a deal for a large shipment of mines, primarily. The mines are very useful to the rebels, given the desert terrain in their country.”

  Rafaella didn’t ask which country in East Africa. He’d have to step up his lying, and for some reason she didn’t want to admit, she didn’t want him to, not so blatantly. She was too worried about Marcus, blast his careless eyes.

  “I’ll teach you about the white arms market, Rafaella,” Dominick said. “So few people know anything about it, except the feds, of course.”

  “I’d like that,” she said. She’d read a good bit about arms dealing before she’d left the United States. There wasn’t much to be found, as Dominick had just said. As to the black market, even less was known. Many of the major players were recognized, of course, but not much else. And of all the major players, least was known about Dominick Giovanni. She wished she could have spoken to someone in the know at the CIA. That or the U.S. Customs Service.

  She sought out Merkel after dinner, drawing him outside on the veranda. “Please tell me more about this Bathsheba thing. What does it mean?”

  Merkel didn’t know what to say, so he tried backing off. “Look, Rafaella, I can’t talk to you about Mr. Giovanni’s business. He wouldn’t like me talking, and he wouldn’t like you asking. You’ve got to ask him or Marcus.”

  She’d ask Marcus. Oddly enough, very suddenly, she was afraid to ask Dominick. “So tell me about this now-deceased Jack Bertrand.”