Night Chills (16 page)

“It’s not as easy as all that, I assure you. Futurex isn’t a private game park, you know. It’s a public corporation. I can’t raid the treasury at will.”

“You’re supposed to be a billionaire,” Salsbury said. “In the great tradition of Onassis, Getty, Hughes ... Futurex isn’t the only thing you’ve got your hand in. Somewhere, you found more than two million dollars to set up this lab. And every month you manage to come up with the eighty thousand dollars needed to maintain it. By comparison, this new expense is a trifle.”

“I agree,” the general said.

“It’s not your money that’s going down a rat hole,” Dawson said irritably.

“If you think the project’s a rat hole,” Salsbury said, “then we should call it off right now.”

Dawson started to pace, stopped after a few steps, put his hands in his trouser pockets, and took them right out again. “It’s these men that bother me.”

“What men?”

“These mercenaries.”

“What about them?”

“They’re nothing but killers.”

“Of course.”

“Professional
killers. They earn their living by—by murdering people.”

“I’ve never had much of anything good to say about free-lancers,” Klinger said. “But that’s a simplification, Leonard.”

“It’s essentially true.”

Impatiently, Salsbury said, “So what if it is?”

“Well, I don’t like the idea of having them in my home,” Dawson said. His tone was almost prissy.

You hypocritical ass, Salsbury thought. He didn’t have the nerve to say it. His confidence had increased over the past year—but not enough to enable him to speak so frankly to Dawson.

Klinger said, “Leonard, how in the hell do you think we’d fare with the police and the courts if they found out how Kingman died? Would they just pat us on the head and send us away with a scolding? Do you think that just because we didn’t strangle or shoot or stab him, they’d hesitate to call us killers? Do you think we’d get off scot-free because, although we’re killers, we don’t earn our living that way?”

For an instant Dawson’s black eyes, like onyx mirrors, caught the cold fluorescent light and gleamed unnaturally. Then he turned his head a fraction of an inch, and the effect was lost. However, something of the same frigid, alien quality remained in his voice. “I never touched Brian. I never laid a finger on him. I never said an unkind word to him.”

Neither Salsbury nor Klinger responded.

“I didn’t want him to die.”

They waited.

Dawson wiped one hand across his face. “Very well. I’ll move ahead in Liechtenstein. I’ll get those three mercenaries for you.”

“How soon?” Salsbury asked.

“If I’m to maintain secrecy every step of the way—three months. Maybe four.”

Salsbury nodded and continued laying out surgical instruments for the autopsy.

7

Monday, August 22, 1977

At nine o’clock Monday morning, Jenny came to visit the Annendale camp, and she brought with her a sturdy, yard-high canary cage.

Mark laughed when he saw her carrying it out of the woods. “What’s
that
for?”

“A guest should always bring a gift,” she said.

“What will we do with it?”

She put it in the boy’s hands as Paul kissed her on the cheek.

Mark grinned at her through the slender, gilded bars.

“You said you wanted to bring your squirrel to town this coming Friday. Well, you can’t let him loose in the car. This will be his travel cage.”

“He won’t like being penned up.”

“Not at first. But he’ll get used to it.”

“He’ll have to get used to it sooner or later if he’s going to be your pet,” Paul said.

Rya nudged her brother and said, “For God’s sake, Mark, aren’t you going to say thank you? Jenny probably looked all over town for that.”

The boy blushed. “Oh, sure. Thanks. Thanks a lot, Jenny.”

“Rya, you’ll notice there’s a small brown bag in the bottom of the cage. That’s for you.”

The girl tore open the bag and smiled when she saw the three paperback books. “Some of my favorite authors. And I don’t have any of these! Thanks, Jenny.”

Most eleven-year-old girls liked to read nurse novels, romances, perhaps Barbara Cartland or Mary Roberts Rinehart. But Jenny would have made a serious mistake if she had brought anything of that sort for Rya. Instead: one Louis L’Amour western, one collection of horror stories, and one adventure novel by Alistair MacLean. Rya wasn’t a classic tomboy—but she sure as hell wasn’t like most other eleven-year-old girls, either.

Both of these children were special. That was why, although she had no particular affection for children in general, she had fallen for them so quickly. She loved them every bit as much as she loved Paul.

Oh, yeah? she thought, catching herself in the admission. You’re just brimming with love for Paul, aren’t you?

Enough of that.

Love, is it? Then why don’t you accept his proposal?

Enough.

Why won’t you marry him?

Well, because—

She forced herself to stop arguing with herself. People who indulged in extended interior dialogues, she thought, were candidates for schizophrenia.

For a while the four of them fed the squirrel, which Mark had named Buster, and watched its antics. The boy regaled them with his plans for training the animal. He intended to teach Buster to roll over and play dead, to heel when told, to beg for his supper, and to fetch a stick. No one had the heart to tell him how unlikely it was that a squirrel could ever be made to do any of those things. Jenny wanted to laugh and grab him and hug him—but she only nodded and agreed with him whenever he asked for her opinion.

Later they played a game of tag and several games of badminton.

At eleven o’clock Rya said, “I’ve got an announcement to make. Mark and I planned lunch. We’re going to do all of the cooking ourselves. And we really have some special dishes to make. Don’t we, Mark?”

“Yeah, we sure do. My favorite is—”

“Mark!” Rya said quickly. “It’s a
surprise.”

“Yeah,” he said, as if he hadn’t almost given away everything. “That’s right. It’s a surprise.”

Tucking her long black hair behind her ears, Rya turned to her father and said, “Why don’t you and Jenny take a nice long walk up the mountain? There are lots and lots of easy deer trails. You should work up an appetite.”

“I’ve already worked up one by playing badminton,” Paul said.

Rya made a face. “I don’t want you to see what we’re cooking.”

“Okay. We’ll sit over there with our backs to you.”

Rya shook her head: no. She was adamant. “You’ll still smell it cooking. There won’t be any surprise.”

“The wind isn’t blowing that way,” Paul said. “Cooking odors won’t carry far.”

Anxiously twisting her badminton racket in her hands, Rya glanced at Jenny.

What a lot of schemes and calculations are whirling around behind those innocent blue eyes of yours, Jenny thought. She was beginning to understand what the girl wanted.

With characteristic bluntness, Mark said, “You got to go for a walk with Jenny, Dad. We know the two of you want to be alone.”

“Mark, for God’s sake!” Rya was aghast.

“Well,” the boy said defensively, “that’s why we’re making lunch, isn’t it? To give them a chance to be alone?”

Jenny laughed.

“I’ll be damned,” Paul said.

Rya said, “I think I’ll cook squirrel for lunch.”

A look of horror passed across Mark’s face. “That’s a terrible, rotten thing to say!”

“I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s still rotten.”

“I apologize.”

Looking at her out of the corner of his eye, as if he were trying to assess her sincerity, Mark finally said, “Well, okay. ”

Taking Paul’s hand, Jenny said, “If we don’t go for a walk, your daughter’s going to be very upset. And when your daughter is very upset, she’s a dangerous girl.”

Grinning, Rya said, “That’s true. I’m a terror.”

“Jenny and I are going for a walk,” Paul said. He leaned toward Rya. “But tonight I’ll tell you the shocking story of the hideous fate that befell a conniving child.”

“Oh, good!” Rya said. “I like bedtime stories. Lunch will be served at one o’clock.” She turned away and, as if she sensed Paul swinging his badminton racket at her backside, jumped to the left and ran into the tent.

The stream gushed noisily around a boulder, surged between banks lined with scrub birch and laurel, descended several rocky shelves, and formed a wide, deep pool at the end of the hollow before racing on to spill down the next step of the mountain. There were fish in the pool: darker shapes gliding in dark water. The surrounding clearing was sheltered by full-sized birches and one gargantuan oak with exposed and twisted roots, like tentacles, thrusting into the leaf mulch and black earth. The ground between the base of the oak and the pool was covered with moss so thick that it made a comfortable mattress for lovers.

Half an hour above the camp and the meadow where they had played badminton, they stopped beside the pool to rest. She stretched out on her back, her hands behind her head. He lay beside her.

She didn’t know quite how it had happened, but the conversation had eventually given way to a gentle exchange of kisses. Caresses. Murmurs. He held her to him, his hands on her buttocks, his face in her hair, and licked lightly at her earlobe.

Suddenly she became the bolder of the two. She rubbed one hand across the crotch of his jeans, felt him swelling beneath the denim.

“I want that,” she said.

“I want you.”

“Then we can both have what we want.”

When they were naked, he began to kiss her breasts. He licked her stiffening nipples.

“I want you
now,”
she said. “Quickly. We can take longer the second time.”

They responded to each other with a powerful, unique, and utterly unexpected sensitivity that neither of them had ever quite achieved before. The pleasure was more than intense. It was very nearly excruciating for her, and she could see that it was much the same for him. Perhaps this was because they had wanted each other so fiercely but had not been together for so long, since March. If absence makes the heart grow fonder, she thought, does it also make the genitals grow randier? Or perhaps this electrifying pleasure was a response to the setting, to the wild land’s sounds and odors and textures. Whatever the reason, he needed no lubrication to penetrate her. He slid deep with one fluid thrust and rocked in and out of her, down and down, filling her, tight within her, moving her. She was transfixed by the sight of his arms: the muscles bulged, each well defined, as he supported himself over her. She reached for his buttocks, hard as stone, and pulled him farther into her with each galvanizing stroke. Although she rapidly came into her climax, she coasted down from it so slowly that she wondered if there would be an end to it. Abruptly, when the sensations in her had subsided, he grew still, pinned by the power of his own orgasm. He softly said her name.

Shrinking within her, he kissed her breasts and lips and forehead. Then he rolled off her, onto his side.

She moved against him, belly to belly, and put her lips against the throbbing artery in his neck.

He held her, and she held him. The act that they had just completed seemed to bind them; the memory of joy was an invisible umbilical.

For a few minutes she was not at all aware of the world beyond his shadow. She couldn’t hear anything except the beat of her own heart and the heavy drawing of breath from both of them. In time the voices of the mountains filtered back to her: leaves rustling overhead, the stream splashing down the slope into the pool, birds calling to one another in the trees. Likewise, at first she couldn’t feel anything but the slight ache in her chest and Paul’s warm semen trickling out of her. Gradually, however, she realized that the day was hot and humid, and that their embrace had become less romantic than sticky.

Reluctantly, she disentangled herself from him and rolled onto her back. A sheen of perspiration filmed her breasts and stomach.

She said, “Incredible.”

“Incredible.”

Neither of them was ready to say more than that.

The breeze had almost dried them when he finally raised up on one elbow and looked down at her. “You know something?”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve never known another woman who was able to enjoy herself as thoroughly as you do.”

“Sex, you mean?”

“Sex, I mean.”

“Annie enjoyed it.”

“Sure. We had a fine marriage. But she didn’t enjoy it quite like you do. You put everything you’ve got into it. You’re not aware of anything but your body and mine when we make love. You’re consumed by it.”

“I can’t help it if I’m horny.”

“You’re more than horny.”

“Oversexed, then.”

“It’s not just sex,” he said.

“You’re not going to tell me that you like my mind too.”

“That’s precisely what I’m going to tell you. You enjoy everything. I’ve seen you savor a glass of water like some people do good wine.” He drew a finger down the line between her breasts. “You’ve got a lust for life.”

“Me and Van Gogh.”

“I’m serious.”

She thought about it. “A friend at college used to say the same thing.”

“You see?”

“If it’s true,” she said, “the credit belongs to my father.”

“Oh?”

“He gave me such a happy childhood.”

“Your mother died when you were a child.”

She nodded. “But she went in her sleep. A cerebral hemorrhage. One day she was there—gone the next. I never saw her in pain, and that makes a difference to a child.”

“You grieved. I’m sure you did.”

“For a while. But my father worked hard to bring me out of it. He was full of jokes and games and stories and presents, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. He worked just like you did to make your kids forget Annie’s death.”

“If I could have been as successful at that as Sam evidently was with you—”

“Maybe he was too successful,” she said.

“How could that be?”

Sighing, she said, “Sometimes I think he should have spent less time making my childhood happy and more time preparing me for the real world.”