Fury and the Power (26 page)

"I know." He moved his bad shoulder cautiously, fingers pressing here and there. "As long as we're on this kick, why don't you call me—"

"No, no, I
love
Lincoln. Linc. It's perfect. For you. Don't change a thing."

They were getting out of the limousine in front of the Caffe Greco, which had a modest dignified facade and cheery lighting inside, when she noticed a spot of red that had seeped through his sweater just below the shoulder.

"Oh, Linc, you're bleeding! Now I really feel terrible about hitting you."

He looked, unconcerned, at the blood spot. "One of your kamikaze African insects. Camel fly I believe it was. I scratched the bite and it bled. I guess the Band-Aid popped off when I was flexing."

One of the bodyguards handed Grayle a blazer, which he draped around his shoulders Continental-style before they went inside.

The Greco's foyer was jammed with standing Italians, mostly men in sharp dark designer suits killing time with an espresso and gossip before meeting wives or girlfriends for dinner. "Italians eat late," Grayle said, making their presence known to a young woman like a beautiful centaur, long-necked, lithe, and curvy from the waist up and with a marvelous flowing black mane, big in the hips and thick-legged below.

Grayle's chauffeur, Gwen assumed, had called ahead; there was a table waiting in conspicuous isolation in the snug back room. The magician nodded amiably to a couple here and a foursome there when they entered, all of them with the shapely auras of big money or secure fame. He paused to kiss the pallid cheeks of a young Roman pop star dressed in trendy tatterdemalion. Grayle spoke to the girl in Italian. The movements of his hands, the lilt in his eyes were second and third languages. The pop star adored him instantly. It was just something he spread around, Gwen thought, like sparkly dust in the air. Or a pleasant sort of flu.

"How do you know so many people wherever you go?" Gwen said to him when they were finally in their seats.

"The entree to the famous is fame itself. A novelist friend of mine wrote that 'Las Vegas is the crossroads of the civilized universe.' He tends to be a cynic, but the fact is, sooner or later the whole world shows up in Vegas. Or if some of the world is slow in coming, somebody puts up a Vegas version, more fabulous than the original. Venice, Paris, New York. Ancient Egypt. You have to go some to out dazzle the Luxor, but I made a good try with the Lincoln Grayle Theatre."

"I wish I could see it."

Campari was brought to them. Gwen had hers with soda. He looked at her over his raised glass.

"You've spoiled my surprise."

"What surprise?"

He leaned toward her with one of his beguiling gestures. Magic on his mind, at his fingertips. She was gathered in as if by the flourish of an invisible cape, cloaked in intimacy.

"If we're forced to scrub the Colosseum shoot, then I'm flying home day after tomorrow. Plenty of room on my Falcon, and there'll be a fun bunch aboard. I want you to come with me."

"When did you decide this?"

"On the way over." He raised his glass. "Chin-chin."

They sipped their drinks. Grayle said, directing her eyes to images of the renowned on the wall near them, "Keats, Goethe, Wagner, Liszt; they all might have sat where we're sitting now, at one time or another. That rake with the big nose is Casanova. Caffe Greco goes back to the mid–eighteen hundreds."

"Casanova? Your patron saint?"

"I love women. What I don't have is time to pursue them."

"Is that why we're moving so fast, Linc?"

"As long as we're going in the right direction."

"I'm charmed. Really. Can't we just enjoy
now
?"

"Yes. And I'm going to enjoy having dinner with you at Il Fiorentmo later. And the drive to Naples in the morning. You're not allowed to leave Italy without seeing Naples, Gwen. That's been known to provoke international incidents."

"Okay, but—"

"Or Florence. My God, we have to spend at least a day in Florence."

"But I—"

"I've been pushing myself hard for two years," he said, staring at her as if he was in a somber confessional mood and she was his only hope for absolution. "The TV special I've been working on, Madison Square Garden this past spring, command perf in London right after that. Ten shows a week at my own theatre. I badly need to take some time just to catch up to yesterday. And I want to spend that time with you." His smile was well placed but sweet and sincere. "Please tell me I'm not being unreasonable."

"No, but—"

A British actor with an alcoholic glaze to his face and wise suffering eyes approached to give Linc a friendly pawing, leaning on the shoulder that wasn't damaged and whispering at length in his ear. The illusionist laughed at the anecdote and sought to introduce Gwen, but the old pouf turned away from their table with a suddenly lost look, fumbling for a cigarette.

"Sorry. He's like that."

"Rude to his competition?" Gwen said with a wide-eyed smile. "But they're all fascinating." Looking around the clubby room where majestic creative monsters from dimmed centuries had passed some of their down time. She held up her empty glass, blood tingling in her cheeks. "If I could have another of these? Then I think I ought to change for dinner. Roman women know how to dress. But I can hold my own."

T
om Sherard and Bertie Nkambe had returned from their meeting at the Ambassador's residence when Gwen walked into the seventh-floor suite at the Excelsior. Bertie was napping on one of the large beds in the room she and Gwen shared. She fell asleep easily, like any healthy animal with nothing else to do, but her head lifted alertly from the pillow when she heard Gwen going through some of the eight shopping bags lined up against a silk-covered wall.

"Hi, how did it go?" Gwen said, not looking around. She pulled a beaded Fendi clutch from one of the tissue-filled bags, opened three boxes of dress shoes. This season ankle wraps were back in style.

"His Holiness has agreed to see us." Bertie yawned.

"Eleven o'clock tonight, in his apartment at the Gemelli Polyclinic."

"Clinic? Is he sick?"

"Just getting over an ear infection is what we heard. Also Tom and I will attract less attention there than we would at the Apostolic Palace."

"Eleven o'clock. Okay. Should I meet the two of you at the clinic?"

"Where are you going now?"

"To dinner. I have a date."

"Oh." Bertie looked at her with muted curiosity, then commented obliquely, "Looks as if you blitzed every shop on the Via Veneto."

"When in Rome. Besides," Gwen said with a pointed glance at Bertie, who was sitting on the bed now with her legs crossed, reaching high above her head, "I had the afternoon off. I—
we
—have really good taste in clothes, just never had enough money." She unwrapped the shoes she wanted to wear, tried them on again. "It's a kick, isn't it? Being goddamned rich." Bertie was still reaching for the coffered ceiling and didn't reply. She had wonderful breasts, Gwen observed. Mahogany-tipped, a shade darker than a brown hen's egg, with overtones of brass in the yellow lamplight:
 
her Chinese bloodlines. The dpg wondered what Tom Sherard was holding back for, with Bertie so crazy for him. Maybe a buffalo had gored him in a bad place. "You would never guess who I ran into today, I mean this evening, right here at the Excelsior."

Bertie exhaled lengthily through one nostril. "I was wondering how it works. If Eden needs you suddenly, you have to go, don't you? Doesn't matter if you're in the middle of the fish course, bing, you're out of here."

"Only when there's a dire emergency," Gwen explained with a burn of resentment at Bertie's lack of tact, carelessly reminding the dpg of her inferior, ephemeral status. "Otherwise she lets me know when I'm being… recalled."

"How?"

"Quantum physics. Earn your Ph.D.; then we can talk."

Bertie blinked at her juvenile belligerence, then smiled forgivingly.

Gwen modified her tone. "If you want to know how I get from here to there, or wherever, here's an analogy. Think of a superhighway with millions of lanes, all the traffic moving at about the speed of light. So if Eden wants me, I just slip out of the lane I'm traveling in now into a slightly faster lane, then back again; zip, I'm there."

"Speed of light," Bertie said, nodding, not entirely baffled.

"More to it than that, of course. Why the sudden interest? Did you hear from Eden?"

"No. I suppose everything's going okay in San Francisco. You didn't tell me who you saw in the lobby."

"Didn't give me a chance." The small blight of resentment faded. Gwen opened a dress box. "Lincoln Grayle."

"Linc? I thought—"

"His stunt, or whatever,
illusion
, didn't come off. First they had engine trouble flying to Zimbabwe and turned back. Then the hotel they were going to stay at near the Falls burned. Now he's in Rome for his TV special but having more problems; they may not let him use the Colosseum. If it doesn't work out for Linc, then we're going to Naples tomorrow, or maybe he said Florence. Do you like these shoes on me, Bertie?"

"Perfect. What else are you wearing?"

"Basic black." She held up the filmy dress she'd purchased. "The most dress for the money. I know it looks as if I spent a fortune, but everything I bought came to a little over eighteen hundred on the MasterCard."

"You did well," Bertie assured her prickly roommate. "You know, I've never seen you dressed up before. Well, I mean—"

"I know. By the way, if we're seeing the Pope, how does that go? Do I need something to cover my head in his presence?"

Bertie got off the bed and pulled on a T-shirt with Yves Saint Laurent's face on it.

"Look, I'm sorry, but Tom doesn't think you should go with us this time, either."

Gwen flung the black dress on her own bed, bypassing resentment for fiery anger.

"This is such
bull
shit! Where is he?"

"Tom? He's taking a—"

Tom Sherard was standing beside the marble bathtub but still dripping when Eden Waring's dpg stormed in. All of Tom visible from multiple angles in semi-misted mirrors. And clearly, although he had his share of the African huntsman's scars, no lethal claws had come near his groin. Gwen took in that much of him in a flash:
 
the interesting hard-used body, tight weld of flesh and muscle to the long bones, gaunt rib cage, white swath across abdomen and upper thighs where sun rarely touched him. And he was hung with the stones of a giant-killer in a leathern sling.

"Would you please tell me how you're going to explain what I should be explaining to His Holiness? They were
my
dreams!"

"Eden's," Bertie commented behind her.

She turned sideways to confront them both as if she held a dagger in either hand. Tom shrugged awkwardly into a terry-cloth robe, one sleeve of which wouldn't slide over the waterproof soft cast on his right forearm. His face reddened to the tips of his ears.

"Of course
I
never dream, but so what? I know every dream Eden's had since she was a baby! And the Pope has to hear about the beast from me, otherwise he'll think you're a couple of loonies!"

"Allow me a minute, would you?" Tom said with a look that was like cocking the hammer on a pistol.

Gwen retreated promptly, still in high dudgeon. Bertie watched her go with a complex expression that was not unsympathetic, shrugged for Tom's benefit, and gently closed the bathroom door.

She found the dpg in the sitting room, on the edge of a chair, rocking from the waist up, dissipating the rest of her quixotic energies.

"Tom is having a hard time dealing with much of this" Bertie said. "He's still embarrassed, frustrated, that he missed his shot the other night. No use in my trying to convince him that you can't kill a shape-shifter with a mere rifle bullet. Oh, and he's deeply confused about who or what you are, though he'll never admit that. Third point, he's never done well with obsessive personalities; try to ease up a little. I have to keep reminding Eden of that too."

"I know."

"Tonight—let me work it out with Tom. After all, three loonies are better than two. Where would the Stooges have been without Curly or Moe?"

"What?"

"Never mind. We wouldn't be seeing the Pope at all if Tom didn't have a long-standing relationship with Katharine Bellaver. I think they had a brief affair when Tom was about my age. She does know him
very
well. Flights of fancy are not in Tom's emotional kit. He's solid, stable, completely reliable in situations where other men would lose their wits and their nerve. That's what Eden—loves about him."

"You love him too."

"Have, since I was a kid. Always will."

"Is he in love with both of—us?"

Bertie answered that with a soft injured smile. "I'm not sure how clear his feelings are to Tom. Is it sexual, or just devotion? Whatever, call it a dilemma, and until he sorts it all out, the guilt feelings, the generational thing—like I care how old he is—his chivalric code and the mechanism for retaining his sanity will keep him at a distance from… us."