Twilight Christmas: A Carolina Coast Novella (Carolina Coast Novels Book 3)

by Normandie Fischer

  Tony took another long swig of beer, then closed his eyes and lay back in the warm water, his head resting against the tile. The beer did nothing to ease what his thoughts churned up. Achmed’s ugly face loomed behind his closed lids.

  According to Achmed, too many details known only to the movement’s elite had filtered out of bounds into international intelligence circles. They weren’t big secrets. Nobody in the field had access to the big secrets, but when a supposedly private memorandum wended its way from someplace in Italy through England and into the hands of a sympathetic Frenchman, Achmed’s profanities had ended in him deputing Tony to Perugia. “You have traveled much. You will blend in.”

  Again that assumption that Tony could possibly go unnoticed.

  Achmed’s thick lips had spread over stained and uneven teeth as he offered Tony a glass of hot, sugared tea. They’d been at the training camp just south of Amman, in the largest of the cinderblock buildings that provided housing and offices for the group’s elite. Recruits slept in tents. And all around was dirt and dust and heat.

  “No one will imagine that you come as anything other than my envoy,” Achmed had said in an offhand manner that belied the gleam in his heavy-lidded eyes. “In a friendly sort of way, an American studying the language. So, you add a new one to your repertoire. How many will that make?”

  Tony’d kept his hands at his side, flexing his fingers so they wouldn’t ball into fists. Just being in the same room with the man made him want to slug something. Preferably the guy’s face. “Five.”

  “You see, it is an altogether profitable thing for you to go. And you will find the one who is so careless with my words. You will be able to leave your job for this time?”

  “Presumably. But couldn’t I be more useful interpreting things out of Israel?”

  Achmed’s smile had vanished as he snapped a pencil point against his thumb, and his eyes had narrowed. “Perhaps you are correct. Still, I doubt there will be a war this month, and you will go. Bahir has all the details for you. Including your tickets.”

  Shaking off the memory—because he hadn’t a clue about any of it and was really foundering here—he climbed from the tub, dried off, and picked up his razor. He hated having left things unsettled between him and Bahir. And probably hated it more because of the constant nagging guilt. If Bahir even imagined the truth… No, he wouldn’t go there. All he got from thinking like that was a migraine.

  He wanted this thing started and finished. He would do what he had to and be as sneaky as possible and tell all the lies required of him. Then, as soon as he could, he’d hightail it back to Jordan and double his efforts to convince Bahir he didn’t belong among the scorpions of Abu Sadiq. It was past time for Bahir to quit playing number two man to Achmed the Scumbag Terrorist.

  Perhaps if he could uncover the truth about the murder of Bahir’s parents and lay that truth at his friend’s feet, it might help. He was certain it hadn’t been Israel behind the Lebanese car bombing, in spite of what Achmed claimed.

  He finished his second beer before making the phone call to Yusuf, his first step in the business that had brought him here. Yeah, and wasn’t he looking forward to getting to know the local boys?

  But if he didn’t, how would he figure out who worked for whom and why?

  Yusuf answered on the third ring, responding to Tony’s introduction with “Now? Excellent. You cannot miss me. I am short and round, and my hair, it continues to retreat.”

  “I can—”

  “And you are tall, yes? I have heard that. I will await you at the Bar Turreno, you know that one? Near the fountain? I will be reading… I think a newspaper, l’Unità.”

  The bar was darkly paneled, though light spilled through the front windows. Tony paused in the doorway, followed the waving hand, and slid onto the bench across from the balding Yusuf, who folded his paper and smiled. “Anton? Anton Rasad? Yusuf Ajani. Marhaba.”

  Tony answered the Arabic hello and said, “Call me Tony.”

  “Kaif al-hal? How are you after your travels?”

  “Much better since I’ve had a little sleep.”

  “That is a terrible trip to do all at once. Myself, I prefer to stay over a night or two in Rome. Still, you are here, and I welcome you.”

  “Shukran. Thank you.”

  “Coffee? Something?”

  Tony shook his head. “I ate.”

  “Well, I have found a room for you. If it meets your requirements, you may move in this evening or tomorrow morning. The signora is very accommodating. Also, there is Internet.”

  “Excellent. The hotel’s comfortable, but I’d like to unpack and get settled.”

  “I must tell you,” Yusuf said, with a sheepish grin, “there is a daughter, but the view makes up for her.”

  “Good thing I don’t plan to be here long enough to worry about a woman or her mama.”

  The other man laughed. Tony couldn’t help responding to such good humor.

  “I will take you to see it after I introduce you to some of the recruits.”

  They stood, and Yusuf reached behind Tony to usher him from the café. Only, the touch didn’t exactly land on his lower back.

  That height issue again. His butt was not a place he wanted another man’s hands. His dad, he hugged. His uncles. Even some of his cousins. But guy friends? Other than the one-armed, quick-let’s-barely-touch hug? Thanks, but no thanks, even if he had grown up in a touchy-feely Arab culture.

  “This way,” Yusuf said, oblivious to that personal-space intrusion. “Some new students have joined us recently, including an older man I have yet to meet. Ibrahim Hawaat was to come on the same train as you. He will study at the university, medicine they say, and will work with us.” A pause as he led them around a corner to a narrower street, and then, “There was trouble on that train of yours. Do you know anything about it?”

  “Trouble? What sort?” Tony had been too exhausted to notice much of anything. Not that it mattered.

  “An Englishman, Mr. Andrew Darling, has disappeared. He traveled with my fiancée, Natalie, and the police, they are considering that perhaps he left the train unwillingly.”

  “You mean was pushed off?” That got his attention. So much for it not mattering. Murder, if that’s what this was, always mattered. And an Englishman with ties through this Natalie to the head of the Abu Sadiq base in Italy? Achmed had mentioned the stolen memorandum having passed through English hands.

  “They do not know yet. I think perhaps they doubted Natalie when she first inquired and did not want to consider that such a thing could happen on their railroad, certainly not without someone noticing. Natalie wished to show her friend Perugia. We were to spend today with him.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “It is. Natalie is furious that no one does anything. This helps her, the anger. She has returned to Terni, because she is a teacher of English, but she has promised to come this weekend. Perhaps you can meet her.”

  “I would like that. And let me know if you discover more about the Englishman. As you said, I was on that train.”

  After sipping tea with some of the students and handing over a month’s rent for the room with a view, Tony headed back to his hotel. He was itching to report what he’d learned about a missing Englishman with ties to the group here.

  He booted up his computer, inserted the security device into a USB port, and signed on to the Internet with the secure connection his cousin had provided. Then he began to type.

  3 Rina

  Perugia.

  She’d been here two days. The sun shone outside her window, and she breathed deeply of the yeasty scents she already associated with mornings in this mountain town: bread in its myriad forms emerging from ovens with a siren’s call to eat, eat, and eat more.

  Fingering the softness of her new dress—bought for its crushability, its gay colors, and its flattering lines—she promised herself that the allure of food would not seduce her. She’d rebelled enough to get here; she w
ould not let rebellion turn into another sort of addiction.

  Because it easily could. The convent pensione’s dining room offered two simple loaves at every meal, salt-free and salted—her vote was a no on the unsalted variety, thank you very much—but during yesterday’s ramble, she’d discovered a bakery, a darling, calorie-filled bakery that offered pane al cioccolato and croissants filled with big, fat morsels of her favorite dark stuff. And then there was the pizza emerging regularly from huge ovens. All she had to do was pop in, point to one of the large rectangular trays, and grab a square of whatever variety tempted her. Comfort food at the ready. Oh, yeah, she’d better be very, very careful.

  Her room was only one story above the street entrance, but the convent perched on a hillside, opening up a four-story view to the back courtyard. Very Rear Window-ish, except she wasn’t house-bound like Jimmy Stewart, nor did she spy on neighbors with her binoculars. On the other side of the garden walls, spoons clanged on pots and plates, voices chattered, radios blared music of a crooner and an opera.

  She bent to massage calf muscles that screamed from Perugia’s brand of aerobics. Back home, she’d hit the sidewalks on flat ground along the waterfront or on shaded streets. Here, it was all up hill and down dale—or rather, up and down low, wide, killer stone steps. Yes, ma’am, her legs and lungs were going to be in great shape.

  Comparing her then to her now, Morehead to here? Honey, now looked good for more than just toned muscles. Then? Not so much.

  Yes, in the then she had a fiancé. She still had him, in spite of the scowl that had marred his handsome face at her first mention of this trip. Of course, she’d been about to leave for six months. What fiancé would be thrilled about that?

  Auntie Luze, on the other hand, had been downright giddy at her good fortune. It wasn’t until Rina’d mentioned seeing Uncle Adam that a flicker of fear had clouded Luze’s hazel eyes. Poor darling. Rina could still feel that soft hand on her cheek, that dear voice saying, “You’ll invite him to Italy, won’t you, and not go traipsing off to Jerusalem to see him? It’s too dangerous there with all those angry people. Promise? You’re all the family I have.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  She’d written to her uncle from North Carolina, saying how much she wanted to see him, suggesting a holiday in Paris sometime after the Italian course ended. Adam was the last of her mother’s family, and she’d always adored him. He’d agreed that Paris or anywhere she wanted would be fun. They’d mentioned late summer.

  Motors revved up a distant hillside, and bells tolled as she fluffed up the pillow on the narrow bed and straightened the coverlet. She’d showered in the communal bath after a breakfast of salted bread, yummy butter, and a thick fig jam, all washed down with tea, and had air-dried her hair, combing it out in front of the minuscule mirror over the sink. Only cold water spouted from the faucets, but for now they were her faucets and this was her room. In Italy.

  Fine, it was in a convent boarding house, but who, other than Jason, cared? He’d pored over the list of available lodgings and had jabbed his longish nail—he’d been overdue for a manicure—at this one. “Here,” he’d said. “It’s women only.”

  Luze, sitting across from Jason at the kitchen table, had bobbed her head of cropped graying curls. “You will be careful, dear, won’t you? All those Italian men. They seduce innocent women.”

  Jason had laughed. “That’s the point. She’ll be rooming at a convent.”

  Rina could picture that moment as if she were still in it: Jason running fingers through his dark blond hair, swinging one tasseled foot, and trying to decide if he should worry that his fiancée planned to be out of sight for longer than a week, or if this were something he could get behind. “Why do you have to go now? We can travel together after we’re married. Why can’t you wait nine months?”

  She couldn’t. Finding those brokerage accounts after her father’s funeral had clicked open more locks than merely the one on his safe. She had no idea what had turned him into a miser, forcing them all to live as if semi-impoverished. She used to make up scenarios where he had a gambling addiction or some other vice that stole all his doctor’s pay. Had he even paused to consider her reaction to finding his hoard? Obviously not. Obviously, the supposedly honorable Dr. Roberts hadn’t worried that lies would be her most lasting memories of him.

  Her father, who had loved the thought of Jason and had laughed about passing the baton to Jason. What had he meant? What baton? The one that had controlled her?

  She hung her head. Jason’s love had been there when her father’s hadn’t, and yet... and yet.

  Leave it, she told herself. Today was two months and six days since she’d sat in front of her father’s banker, and she’d thrown off the shackles of her father’s lies to begin her own bright story. She wasn’t going to let anything—not home, not Jason—keep her from kicking up her heels for just a little while.

  The memory of Jason’s lips hardening when she’d insisted on traveling unencumbered barely disturbed her now. He’d been incredulous. “No cell phone? You won’t buy a laptop? We can’t even Skype?”

  “We can write real letters.” And she’d have freedom without tethers binding her to sameness.

  “What about emergencies?”

  “I’ll send you contact information. I’ll be reachable.”

  Besides, he was always so busy schmoozing his firm’s partners and playing golf that he wouldn’t notice her absence, not really. And he was redoing his house to accommodate his mother in a suite of her own. He wanted everything to be perfect, just the way he wanted Rina to be. Lord, love him. She’d been a shy, awkward sixteen-year-old when the college boy who lived down the street approached her at poolside to announce, “I’m going to marry you one day.”

  Easing out of that scene’s memory, she slid her feet into comfortable flats and headed down the stairs and out the door, picking a different route to the town center today, up one of the narrow streets where the stone buildings spilled almost to the pavement. Her dress—a nod to the day’s warmth—brushed her thighs, swishing air with each step. Laughter approached from behind, the slide and slap of shoes on asphalt. Other sounds—voices chattering, high heels clacking, a baby squealing—dimmed as a group of boys came up on either side of her.

  One grinning Romeo lifted his wrap-around sunglasses in a salute, followed by a smooth “Ciao, bella.”

  She might have whooped at his absurd behavior if he hadn’t pinched her bottom on his way past. Instead, she slowed to give him and his laughing posse time to cross the next street and slither off in search of other prey.

  A black-clad matron hissed from a doorway, flicking her hand at the boys’ backs. “Pappagalli. Stupidi.”

  Rina took comfort in the words, their female solidarity. Stupid was an excellent descriptive, as was the Italian word for parrot. Were these young men called pappagalli because of their plumage—those jangling necklaces, bright shirts, and too-tight jeans? Or was it because they parroted each other’s walk and talk? Maybe she’d find someone to ask at the language school.

  But the next hand to grab a piece of her flesh without an invitation would find itself flung wide and its owner bowled over from a collision with this shoulder bag. She’d read about these packs of young men whose attention some women coveted. Well, honey, she wasn’t a masochist.

  It was the time of the passeggiata, the afternoon parade. Giggling girls strolled arm-in-arm. Families laughed together. Boys traveled in groups, boisterous, strutting like young roosters, affectionate with each other as American teens weren’t. She loved the art of taking a walk, of strolling, and of actually enjoying it.

  Shops and cafés lined the pedestrian-only Corso Vannucci in the town center. Yesterday, she’d wandered through the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria and tried out the Café Centrale. Today, she chose Santino’s Café and ordered an acqua naturale and a croissant—chocolate, of course.

  The waiter filled her glass with bottled water and set the sc
rumptious chocolate croissant in front of her. “Grazie,” she said. He rewarded her with a bright smile showing very white teeth. She smiled back and began to relax.

  What if she’d never left Morehead? What if she’d stayed trapped in that house, wandering blindly through the rooms, tripping over her aunt’s bric-a-brac, oblivious to the chatter, all because her senses had atrophied?

  The croissant peeled into layers in her fingers. She bit and chewed—and sighed.

  And there he was again, the American, his large frame and wide shoulders easily visible as he strolled next to a smaller, heavyset man. Twenty feet away, his eyes were almost invisible, but not his head towering above the crowd. She hadn’t seen him since he’d helped her board the train.

  She willed him to look her way, to join her for a cup of something so she could speak English with someone who would understand her idioms. But she remained invisible, watching the world saunter past.

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  Acknowledgments

  This short book came out of a thought that blossomed into thousands of words flying off my fingertips and into the computer faster than I’ve ever seen in all my years of writing. That never happens to this writing slogger. But first drafts always need fixing. Even second and third drafts do. I am so grateful to Jennifer Fromke and Robin Patchen for their slashing and chopping and egging me on to make it better, to dig a little deeper. And after the digging and the rewriting, they put on their editor hats and worked magic. Their thoughtful suggestions were invaluable.

  A few members of my Street Team did the eagle-eye proofing again. I am so grateful to the brilliant Susan Peterson, DJ Sakata, Becky Hrivnak, and Carol Boyer. I don’t know what I’d do without these ladies. They, along with Ariana, my brave and valiant first born, provoke me to offer my best, my very best.