Flashpoint (15 page)

    "Iskir?" Talia said at last. "I know it's late, but I have good-" She stopped as a tirade of abusive sounds reached my ear, even though she had the phone slightly shielded. "It's not possible," she said hurriedly when she could get a word in. "He is here with me now. With the envelope." She cut her eyes toward me. "Yes. Sealed." There was another torrent of sound from the phone. "I have
seen
it, Iskir!" she wedged desperately into the waterfall. "Yes. No. What?" She listened for a moment. "Yes, I can." She hung up the phone slowly. "Mr. Bayak will see us in an hour," she said without looking at me.

    "An hour!" I barked. "After working up a sweat convincing the guy who had the envelope that it had to be returned unopened to be worth anything, now your Mr. Bayak wants me to cool my heels for another hour?"

    I wondered if Bayak had already learned of the knife-artist's demise. There wasn't much else that could explain his abusiveness on the phone. Unless he was getting nervous waiting for a report which was never going to come? I inspected Talia's beautiful face. The fear that I had seen before was back again.

    She slithered in my direction and stopped so close to me I could feel her body heat. "While we wait," she said coaxingly, "I will take care your needs."

    "Okay," I agreed, knowing I had no choice but to wait to see Bayak on his terms. "The first thing I need is a shower." I took hold of her nightgown-and-robe covered arm. "And you can join me."

    The smile she gave me was almost demure. "You Americans," she said archly. "You want to begin where other couples arrive after a day and a half."

    I led her into the bathroom. All I'd really had in mind was removing her from the vicinity of the phone so she couldn't make any phone calls I couldn't hear, but I made no objection when she removed her robe and pulled her nightgown over her head. I really needed a shower after the exertion of dealing with the knife-artist, and I undressed quickly.

    Talia pulled on a pink shower cap and tucked her dark hair beneath it, then came to me. She ran her fingertips curiously over the numerous scars on my chest and thighs from the skin transplants that had made me a new face, but she didn't say anything. I unfastened the tabs at my hairline and removed my wig. For an instant she looked startled at the unveiling of my hairless, serrated pate, but she recovered quickly. "Even when I was a little girl in Ismir, Yul Brynner was my favorite actor," she murmured with a smile.

    There was a lot more to Talia's olive-skinned nudity than appeared possible in street clothes. Her breasts were large, slightly pendulous, and grape-nippled. I turned her around, and her silky-looking buttocks were almost chunky, with just a hint of the controlled, powerful action seen in a thoroughbred mare. Tattooed on one upstanding hind cheek was a fantastically realistic multicolored butterfly. Talia made no move to hide the needle punctures on her arm, evidently feeling that my eyes were busy elsewhere.

    I turned on the water in the shower stall and adjusted it to lukewarm. I led her into the tiled enclosure, and when we were both wet I soaped her from neck to heels. The luxuriant female flesh was delightfully pliable under my palm.

    Then she did the same for me, with embellishments. "You must be a very strong man to have survived this," she said quietly as her fingertips again traced my scars.

    I'm not the easiest man in the world to arouse at any time, and the thought of Chryssie's end was still in the back of my mind; but Talia's skillful hands turned me on standing in that steamy enclave. I had to breathe shallowly to avoid spontaneous combustion.

    We dried each other off with huge, fluffy towels, and Talia dusted us both liberally with perfumed talcum powder. "It prevents friction except where it's wanted," she assured me with a doe-eyed smile. I had suffered a diminishment during the drying-off process, and she dropped to her knees and restored me with a facile tongue.

    We went into the bedroom. Talia stripped off the coverlet, disclosing black silk sheets. She dusted these with still another kind of powder. Attar-of-roses wafted itself to my nostrils as she put me on my back on the huge bed and for ten minutes indulged herself and me in exercises which convinced me I was a sexual amateur.

    Considering my on-again, off-again track record with women, I hadn't really expected to make it with this girl, despite her good looks and manifest availability. When she finally turned me loose, though, I rolled over her and plowed her wheat field with no thought of failure. Her expert, quick-darting hands encouraged the harvest.

    She patted my shoulder lightly when I slid off her. She rolled from the bed, and I raised my head to watch her lush, highlighted ivory nudity as she went to the dressing table, struck a match, and lighted two candles. The smell of a musky incense drifted through the room, pungently fragrant.

    She returned to the bed and resumed her role of domestic stimulant. I started to tell her she was wasting her time, then quickly found out that she wasn't. To my surprise I found myself reaping a fresh crop and enjoying it.

    "You're something better than an empty box stall," I told her when I had back the breath lost during the second session.

    I could see that she didn't know the meaning of the racetrack expression, but she didn't mistake my meaning. "Americans are little boys," she informed me gravely. "They start too late. They should begin at the age of ten. With their sisters."

    "I'll see if I can peddle your idea to
Good Housekeeping."
An arched eyebrow indicated that she didn't know what
Good Housekeeping
was, either. "Never mind."

    She rolled away from me and looked at the bedside clock. "We can leave now," she said, and slid from the bed. Her manner was subdued. All her sexual sparkle had left her.

    Her attitude reminded me that I was going to meet the man responsible for Chryssie's death, even if indirectly. I went into the bathroom, removed my Smith & Wesson from its shoulder holster, and taped it lightly to the back of the calf of my leg with two strips of adhesive taken from Talia's medicine cabinet. The classic frisk is a from-the-back job which concentrates on shoulders, armpits, chest cavity, rib cage, waist, buttocks, and thighs. It takes an unusually thorough searcher to proceed lower.

    "Where are we going?" I asked when I rejoined Talia.

    "It's only two blocks," she said. "We can walk."

    On the street, she turned right, toward the river. We went left at the first corner, right at the next one, and then she turned in under a green-and-white marquee. I followed her into a high-ceilinged lobby lined with bronze mailboxes. For sheer luxury the lobby resembled a Hollywood set. No one was visible.

    Talia headed for the nearer of two side-by-side elevators. I boarded it behind her after noticing there was no floor indicator on the wall above it. A single button on the wall of the elevator cab confirmed my guess that the elevator served only the penthouse apartment.

    I still had one thing to do, and now was the time to do it. The instant Talia pushed the button and the doors started to close, I snapped my fingers. "Cigarettes," I said, squeezing through the closing doors. "Be right back," I called over my shoulder as the doors shut behind me. I removed the envelope from my pocket as I crossed the lobby, found the name Bayak on the lineup of mailboxes, and dropped the envelope into it.

    I was recrossing the lobby when the elevator doors opened again. "Doesn't seem to be anywhere close by to get cigarettes," I explained.

    "I could have told you that if you'd asked me," Talia said sharply.

    I stepped aboard the elevator again, she punched the button, and we ascended silently.

    

    

    
THE
elevator doors opened and we stepped out into a scene worthy of a
House Beautiful
center spread. A foyerlike room was bathed in soft, amber light. The tile floor was patterned in large black-and-white squares, so highly polished that the grillwork of the gold-painted, wrought-iron room divider beyond was reflected in the surface.

    Through the grillwork I could see a sunken living room the size of a tennis court. Except where covered by black tufted throw rugs, its matching black-and-white checkerboard floor mirrored a sparkling, heavy crystal chandelier overhead. The entire decor in the two rooms consisted of stark white and flat black contrasts highlighted by gold accents. Displays of Moorish swords, lances, mail, and armor lined the white walls, with handcarved ivory pieces and decorative brass pitchers containing fresh white flowers adorned oversized ebony end tables.

    Two steps off the elevator my left wrist was seized and my right arm was trapped to my side by a viselike grip. Both hands were then pulled behind me, and my crossed wrists were painfully gripped in one giant hand which locked them together with finger-lengths to spare.

    I had two quick impressions: over my shoulder a huge figure towering ten inches taller, and the overpowering odor of a musky, heavy-scented male cologne which resembled nothing so much as a whiff of lemon-essenced wine.

    Talia stood impassively while a matching giant hand searched me roughly from neck to knees for weapons. The hand then made an additional search of each pocket, turning them out one by one. All my belongings clattered to the tile floor. "Nossing," a guttural voice announced.

    I was released and thrust to one side. I nearly fell as I had my first look at the giant's flat-faced features and almond-shaped eyes which suggested Mongol blood. Black slacks disappeared under a white, knee-length, choke-collared Nehru jacket. The shoulders were wide enough to have caused the man difficulty in passing through any ordinary door.

    "You said he had the envelope, my dear," another voice said pleasantly. It was high pitched, almost a tenor. The sound of it directed my attention to a thick-cushioned white sofa at the right side of the sunken living room. Seated upon it was a gross caricature of a man who looked as though he could surely match the bodyguard in weight but not dimensions. Pear-shaped, with narrow shoulders, broad hips, heavy thighs, and spindly legs, he looked like one of those inflated punching toys that always rocks back upright awaiting the next punch. Sparse, black hair looked as though individual strands had been glued to his pate, and a thin, waxed mustache diminished to tightly-twisted, needle-sharp ends.

    This apparition had on a white-velvet smoking jacket with black satin lapels, and his pudgy fingers were encircled by numerous gold rings. Bulbous, froglike eyes were fixed steadily upon Talia.

    "He does have it!" she cried out anxiously. "I saw it!"

    "Perhaps you had better check out the sincerity of her statement, Abdel," the fat man said softly. The giant moved toward the girl, and I could see her turn pale.

    "Get the hell away from her!" I said harshly. "Did you think I was stupid enough to walk in here with it?" The giant paused. "Or to let her know what I was doing?"

    "Obviously not, as regards the first part, at least," the fat man said amiably. "You had better have him tell you where it is, Abdel."

    The giant reversed his direction and started for me. I stooped swiftly, snatched the.38 from the loosely confining adhesive around my calf under my pants' leg, and showed it to Abdel. He kept right on coming.

    I had no intentions of going through the meat grinder of those massive hands. "Left shoulder, Abdel," I said, and put a bullet into it. The sound of the.38 was just a flat crack in the tiled room. The giant tilted to one side but still advanced. "Right arm," I said, and blasted him in the fleshy part. He rocked to a halt, clutching at his arm as blood stained the sleeve of his Nehru jacket; then he started toward me again.

    I lined up on his Adam's apple, but the fat man spoke sharply in a foreign tongue. The giant stopped, his little eyes smoldering. The fat man smiled at me benignly. "You have made your point, Mr. Drake."

    "I ought to make it on you, too!" I said harshly. "I came here to talk business, and you go on the muscle!"

    "The wise man doesn't buy what he can take," the fat man said smoothly. "Since your-ah-demonstration precluded that, we will now talk business." He shifted his attention to the ashen-faced Talia. "Take Abdel along with you into his bedroom and patch him up."

    "I witnessed his shame," she whispered. "He will kill me."

    "I think not." The fat man addressed the giant again in the same language as before. There was no change of expression on the stolid features, but Abdel left the room in Talia's wake. "He really deserved that anyway for such a clumsy, inefficient search," the fat man informed me.

    "If he brings a gun in here, you're not going to appreciate it," I warned as I descended three steps to the right of the grillwork and entered the sunken living room. I took a chair across from his sofa, and I kept the.38 in my hand. Behind the sofa was a well-stocked bar, and to its left a partly opened door that disclosed a liquor storage closet.

    The fat man was smiling. "I am Vizier Iskir Bayak, Mr. Drake," he said. "That was an impressive performance. Not that you concealed the weapon successfully, but that you used it instantaneously when the situation seemed to require it. I'm sure you're aware that the two don't always go hand in hand. Shall we talk about the envelope?"

    I nodded. "If you're buying."

    "What is your price?"

    "Ten thousand dollars."

    The frog-eyes didn't blink. "An exorbitant figure. It's a fortunate circumstance for you, however, that I cannot conclude an arrangement to which I'm committed without the contents of the envelope. Ten thousand dollars it is. When shall we make the transfer?"

    "If he can walk, send Abdel and the ten thousand with me."