by Bill Walker
“Yes, it is.”
“You are married?”
Thorley nodded, and he found that he parted with that information reluctantly, as if some portion of his being did not want to alienate the girl.
“My husband was killed by the Germans, because he tried to help the British.”
Thorley studied her now, seeing the gleam of tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he said, hating the phoniness of those three words. A moment went by before he spoke again. “You must hate us, awfully.”
She shook her head, slowly. “No, I do not. You fight to save us, as Reshef did. He was a good man, and I think that you are a good man, too. I cannot hate you for that.”
She drew closer and planted a soft moist kiss on his lips, her hand cupping his chin. The dam broke in Thorley’s heart and he took her in his arms, kissing her with all the unspent passion within him. She groaned and melted against him, her agile tongue filling his mouth with hot expectant wetness. The kiss seemed endless, a total world unto itself. Moments, or hours later he couldn’t tell, they broke, staring into each other’s eyes, knowing that it wouldn’t end there.
“We can’t go back to where I’m staying,” he said, breathless. “I’m sharing a room.”
She put a finger to his lips. “I live nearby. Let me tell Femi that we are going, yes?”
He looked off toward the Pyramids, the outlines of those ancient tombs barely visible in the darkness, then turned back to her. “Yes, tell her.”
She retreated into the nightclub, leaving Thorley to the fury of his thoughts. When she returned clutching her purse, they began walking down the street, her arm through his. For the briefest of moments, he felt like a schoolboy on his first date.
Aziza lived in a tiny three-room apartment over a café, consisting of one bedroom, a modest bath, and the main kitchen/living area. Furnishings were scant: an ancient overstuffed sofa, a couple of straight-backed chairs, and a lot of gaudy throw pillows scattered about on what appeared to be a high-quality Persian rug. And while the apartment was by no means a palace, it was clean and cozy.
Aziza’s bedroom overlooked the street and had a small balcony, reached by a set of French doors trimmed with lace curtains. Aside from a bureau heaped with cosmetics, the room was barely big enough to fit the bed, a large full-sized affair also covered with pillows, and which sat directly on the floor without benefit of box springs.
Leading him by the hand, Aziza pulled him inside and began undressing him, her nimble fingers working patiently at the buttons of his shirt and trousers, kissing each new area of his exposed skin with her warm full lips. When he was naked, she gently pushed him back onto the bed. The moon poured through the window, its pale light throwing the pattern of the lace curtains onto his body.
Without taking her eyes off of him, Aziza moved to the bureau. She picked up a box of matches, struck one, and lit a fat candle. It sputtered at first, then settled into a steady flame that cast a romantic glow throughout the tiny space. She turned to him, eyes shining with lust. And then she began to disrobe.
Starting with her evening dress, she teased each strap off her shoulder, slowly, sensually, then let the dress slide off her body to the ground. Thorley inhaled sharply as he saw her body now fully exposed, save for her panties and brassiere. Unlike so many Western women who insisted on starving themselves into sticks, Aziza was full-figured, curvesome—womanly. And she seemed to delight in his rapt attention. Smiling, she reached for her bra, unsnapped it from behind and tossed it aside, her generous breasts heaving. Thorley noticed the nipples and aureolas were a dark chocolate color against the unblemished café au lait of her skin. She caressed them, kneading them together, her eyes closed, her mouth pouting with pleasure. Aroused, she stepped up the pace of her striptease, her own eagerness overcoming her desire to titillate. She tore off her panties, then kicked off her high heels, revealing long, gracefully curved toenails polished a bright red to match her fingernails.
She climbed onto the bed and slid into his arms, encompassing him with her ripe body. He kissed her and again felt that swirling vertiginous feeling, as if the entire universe began and ended there. Pulling away from her mouth, he began to trail his lips down her body, feeling her back arch as he reached her pubic mound. Her hair was thick and dark, like wool and he filled his nostrils with her musk as he began to make love to her in earnest.
Sensing that her desire now matched his own, he rolled her onto her back and mounted her. Her groan as he entered her was deep and throaty. He began to thrust, slowly at first, marveling at her tightness, then increasing his speed as she began to respond. She moaned and writhed beneath him, beads of sweat breaking out on her dark skin. Her musk permeated the air and she began to buck against him. He could feel the tightness beginning in his scrotum and knew that would not last long. Scant moments later he ejaculated with a groan and fell onto her, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
After he’d caught his breath, he rolled onto his back, feeling the first onrush of guilt, his wife’s face once again before him. He wanted to shrivel up and blow away, melt through the mattress, anything to get the bloody hell out of there. His mind worked furiously, wondering how he would extricate himself from the situation gracefully. Then he realized that there was no need. All he had to do was get dressed and walk out, without another word or glance.
But as rotten as he felt for betraying Lillian—and himself—he couldn’t bring himself to be quite so callous.
Aziza spoke suddenly, as if reading his mind, her voice a husky whisper. “I am not quite so beautiful to you now, am I, British?”
Christ, what was it about women that they could sense when a man was thinking about another?
He turned to face her and was about to answer when the light snapped on in the room. Aziza scrambled to cover herself as Thorley whirled to face their intruder. It was Brady.
“Jesus bloody Christ, Corwin, what the hell are you doing here?”
The normally loquacious Irishman stared at him, a hard expression on his narrow face, then he raised his right arm. Clutched in his hand was a Walther PPK pistol with a silencer attached. He fired once, catching Aziza just over the right eye. She issued a strangled cry and flopped onto the mattress, blood spouting from the wound like a tiny geyser. Thorley was too stunned to move.
“My God, what are you doing? W—why did you shoot her?”
Brady kept the gun trained on him as he padded into the room. He went to the lace curtains, pulled them aside and looked out. Apparently satisfied, he returned his attention to Thorley, who watched him with saucer eyes.
Brady smiled without a trace of humor. “What are you talking about, Mikey? You shot her.”
“W—what?”
“You had a row after making love and you shot her, then, in a fit of remorse you took your own life.... I’m sorry, Mikey, you were a real friend.”
Brady raised the gun just as Thorley opened his mouth to scream, providing the perfect target. The gun coughed once more and the 7.65mm bullet caught Thorley squarely in the mouth, blowing out the back of his head. Without a sound, he fell across Aziza’s corpse, his body spasming in a grotesque parody of their lovemaking.
Working quickly, Brady unscrewed the silencer and wiped the gun down, then placed it firmly in Thorley’s right hand.
It was perfect.
The fact that he’d shot him in the mouth would make it hard to disprove suicide, except for the lack of powder burns. And he knew from experience that the incompetent Egyptian medical examiners would not bother looking for them, that is, if they even bothered to examine the bodies to begin with.
Standing back from the bed, Brady stared at Thorley a moment, a sadness creeping into his eyes, then he turned and left the apartment, taking the back stairs, careful not to let any of the early risers in the building see him leave.
Three hours later, he stood on the aft deck of a tramp steamer bound for Dublin, watching the shoreline as it pulled out of Alexandria harbor.
&nbs
p; Another job well done.
Another job made neat and tidy for King and country.
This one, however, had left a bad taste in his mouth. He couldn’t wait to get back to the old sod and hide away in his farmhouse in Kerry for a month, or until those right old bastards in MI6 called him again. In any event, he’d had enough of sand, sun, and friendships to last a lifetime.
THE SON: 1984
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Dearest One... If you are reading this letter, it means that I have not survived the war, something I now fear is intended by those who wish to insure my silence. I want you to know that your father loves you with all of his heart. If you are a girl, I have asked your mother to name you after her. If you are the son I have prayed for, then...after me. However you turn out, please know that you are wanted and loved.
“A great deal has happened in the last two months, so much that I can scarcely comprehend the consequences. All I know is that after returning from a successful and highly secret mission to Finland—that I was ordered to undertake—I have been hastily reassigned from a comfortable job as a translator in the Foreign Office to a post within Hell itself....
“I write you now from my barracks in Cairo. I leave tomorrow for Siwa, where the temperature reaches an ungodly one hundred twenty-five in the day and plunges to near freezing at night. God only knows why the war has been brought to this godforsaken land....
“My coming journey will take me right to the heart of the enemy, and I fear this will be my undoing. If that be so, I can accept an honorable death in battle. What I cannot accept is the treachery of my own government.
“Now comes the difficult part. Though we will probably never meet, I must ask you to do your father a favor. My solicitors, Cadwallader and Soames, are holding certain items for me in safekeeping. If I fall, they are instructed to release them only to my heir. That is you, my child. Aside from providing the solicitors with a copy of your certificate of birth, you must utter these three words, ‘The Eagle Flies.’ These items hold the key to the peace and security of the world, my child. When you see them, you will know what to do. Use them wisely, and well. Love, your father....”
The yellowed pages fluttered to the floor, resembling leaves scattered by the wind on a raw Autumn day. Michael watched his mother reach for them, her delicate, liver-spotted hands grabbing for them with sharp, desperate movements. She held them to her breast, her breath coming in great sobs, her eyes brimming.
“I had no idea this was up there, Michael,” she said. “No idea at all. I’m so dreadfully sorry.”
Michael nodded. His father, who had been little more than a dusty photograph and a collection of stories his mother had told him over and over again, had suddenly taken on flesh and blood, had called out to him from the grave and asked his help. Part of him yearned to reach out and tell his father that he’d loved him all his life, but the thought of it also left him feeling a trifle silly, as if he were contemplating confessing to a statue. And then there was the fog of mystery surrounding his death. What had he meant by the “...key to the peace and security of the world?” Certainly, whatever the problem was, the urgency was long past; it couldn’t be more than an historical curiosity, by now—a mere footnote. And yet the passion behind his father’s words continued to resonate within Michael. He hungered to know more, any scrap that would reveal more of this man who still remained partially hidden by the shadows of time.
I want you to know that your father loves you with all of his heart....
“Where are Cadwallader and Soames located, mother?” Michael asked, breaking the silence.
Lillian looked up, a look of panic flitting across her face. “I—I’m not sure. I believe they used to be in Piccadilly, but I stopped using them after your father....”
“Then they could still be there?”
“I don’t know, I suppose so, but would they even remember something from so long ago?”
Michael stood, and began moving toward the door, his lips compressed into a thin line. “Let’s go, Erika.”
“Surely, you’re not going back tonight? Let me fix up your old room. Miss Rainer could stay in my room on the chaise lounge—”
“No.”
Erika reluctantly followed Michael, her expression mirroring her extreme discomfort with the mounting tension in the room. Lillian joined them, her hand reaching out to her son. “Please, Michael, don’t go.”
He whirled on her. “How could you not know of this? You were his wife, for God’s sake! And that letter.... Waiting in that dusty attic all these bloody years! Something happened to him out there, something they’ve covered up! And you’ve just let them bloody do it.”
A panoply of emotions swept across Lillian’s face: shock, anger, outrage, then...sadness. “No, I didn’t! I loved your father.”
“Bloody crap! They send all his worldly possessions home in a tidy little box, and you just tucked him away in the attic and never looked back. How could you do that to him? How could you do that to me!”
Before she could answer, Michael turned and stormed out, letting the weathered oak door slam against the wall. There was a moment of silence before Lillian spoke, a moment where the two women listened to Michael’s feet crunching across the gravel drive.
“I should have expected this,” Lillian said, with a sigh. She turned to the younger woman and fixed her with a level gaze. “With just he and I all these years, it’s been so very, very hard. All we had was the memory of his father.... We tried to forget the disgrace....” Lillian paused and watched her son, who sat leaning against the red Mercedes, brooding. “I should have remarried. I had plenty of suitors. Good men they were. But after Michael, I—I just couldn’t. Lord knows little Michael needed a man around to teach him how to become one.”
“I think your son is a fine man,” Erika said.
“You’re kind to say that.”
“I mean it.”
Lillian stared at the younger woman again, her aged eyes searching Erika’s face for some indefinable something. “I believe you do,” she said finally. “I just wish Michael could see it.... And what I had to do....”
Erika nodded, looking toward the door. “I’ll talk to him.”
Lillian wiped a stray tear from her eye and smiled. “You’re a dear. I do hope we shall get to know one another better.”
Erika reached out and gave the older woman’s arm a gentle squeeze. “I hope so, too. Good night, Mrs. Thorley.
Erika turned to go, and Lillian stopped her, her grip surprisingly strong. “Be careful, my dear, history is such a restless beast.”
Puzzled, Erika nodded, then walked out and joined Michael. A moment later the bright red car tore out of the driveway and headed back toward London.
It had been a long time since Pavel Kolenkovich Hedeon had felt his career teetering on the precipice. And it was a feeling he hated. After all he’d been through in the last forty-five years: Stalin’s purges, Beria’s aborted coup attempt, Khrushchev’s bullying, Brezhnev’s pig-headedness, he was now about to be undone by a phantom.
Under any other circumstances, he would have welcomed Sir William Atwater’s death, would have itched to do the deed himself, yet someone else—someone outside his network—had killed the old goat and made it so the finger pointed straight at him.
Why?
And why now?
Atwater was no longer a threat to anyone, save his own country, though he wouldn’t put something like this past those bastards at MI6.
The phone rang, and Hedeon moved his stocky frame toward it with surprising grace. Still well-muscled for a man in his late sixties, he also boasted a mane of shocking white hair, a vanity of which he proudly proclaimed. His face, though lined with a thousand wrinkles like a fine old painting, showed strength and determination in the firm set of his mouth and the feral gleam in his ice-blue eyes.
The phone sat atop an exquisite and very original Louis XV table at the far end of the suite. It never ceased to amaze him that th
e Dorchester Hotel, one of the best in London, refused to put more than one phone in a suite, and in the wrong room, no less. Still, Hedeon counted himself lucky. As the senior KGB man in Britain, he had the choice of living either in the embassy compound, or in any residence of his choice. He liked the Dorchester for its sense of history and because the Penthouse floor he rented could be secured without becoming obtrusive to the rest of the hotel’s guests. He also liked it because it tweaked Moscow’s proletarian nose. And if they ever complained, he could always point out the fact it helped to bolster his image as the Chief Russian Cultural Attaché.
He snatched up the receiver on the fifth ring, already annoyed at the lateness of the call.
“Yes...?” He listened, his eyes softening. “Speak English, you know better.... Yes, I know all about the girl. My operatives picked her up when she boarded the ferry at Ostend.... I won’t make any promises. If she can be separated from young Michael, then any unpleasantness can be avoided.... Yes, I will keep you apprised. Do not worry. Good night.”
Hedeon hung up the phone and walked to the large picture window overlooking Hyde Park, his gait less graceful, almost lumbering, as if a large weight had deposited itself on his wide shoulders. The fierce expression on his face moments before had changed to one of deep sadness, the blazing light in his eyes dull and flickering low. This business was a dirty one when it concerned ones you cared about. It was a weakness for which Moscow would be ruthless and unforgiving, and one against which he’d fought his whole life. Sentiment had no place in the craft.
Reaching a decision, he returned to the phone and picked it up, dialing a special series of numbers from memory. He waited until the person on the other end picked up, and then said, “It’s Hedeon.... Da, I know.... I want everyone on his toes. This Atwater business was directed at us. I want answers....”
He hung up a moment later and returned to the picture window, easing himself into a comfortable overstuffed chair, a tiny bitter smile creasing his lips. He would find whoever was responsible for this mess, and when he did, Pavel Kolenkovich Hedeon would take great pleasure in wringing his fucking neck.
