She sipped at her Chablis and glanced at him over the rim. Who was he, really? What did he do for the service? Where had he come from and where was he bound? He had a sharp nose, and Margritta had noticed that he smelled all food and drink before he consumed it. His face was darkly handsome, clean-shaven and rugged, and when he smiled it was like a flare of light—but he didn’t let her see that smile very often. In repose his face seemed to become darker still, and as the wattage of those green eyes fell their somber hue made Margritta think of the color in the deep shadow of a primeval forest, a place of secrets best left unexplored. And, perhaps, a place also of great dangers.
He reached for his goblet of water, disregarding the Chablis, and Margritta said, “I’ve sent the servants away for the evening.”
He sipped at the water and put the goblet aside. Pressed his fork into another piece of meat. “How long has Alexander worked for you?” he asked.
The question was totally unexpected. “Almost eight months. The consulate recommended him. Why?”
“He has ...” Michael paused, considering his words. An untrustworty smell, he’d almost said. “A German accent,” he finished.
Margritta didn’t know which one of them was crazy, because if Alexander was any more British he’d be wearing a Union Jack for underdrawers.
“He hides it well,” Michael continued. He sniffed at the mutton before he ate it, and chewed before he spoke. “But not well enough. The British accent is a masquerade.”
“Alexander cleared the security checks. You know how stringent those are. I can tell you his life history, if you want to hear it. He was born in Stratford-on-Avon.”
Michael nodded. “An actor’s town, if there ever was one. That’s got the Abwehr’s fingerprints all over it.” The Abwehr, as Margritta knew, was Hitler’s intelligence bureau. “A car will be coming for me at oh-seven-hundred. I think you should go, too.”
“Go? Go where?”
“Away. Out of Egypt, if possible. Maybe to London. I don’t think it’s safe for you here anymore.”
“Impossible. I’ve got too many obligations. My God, I own the newspaper! I can’t just clear out on a moment’s notice!”
“All right, stay at the consulate. But I think you should leave North Africa as soon as you can.”
“My ship hasn’t sprung a leak,” Margritta insisted. “You’re wrong about Alexander.”
Michael said nothing. He ate another piece of mutton and dabbed at his mouth with a napkin.
“Are we winning?” she asked him after another moment.
“We’re holding,” he answered. “By our teeth and fingernails. Rommel’s supply network has broken down, and his panzers are running out of petrol. Hitler’s attention is fixed on the Soviet Union. Stalin’s calling for an Allied attack from the west. No country, even one as strong as Germany, can wage war on two fronts. So, if we can hold Rommel until his ammunition and petrol dries up, we can force him back to Tobruk. And past that, if we’re lucky.”
“I didn’t know you believed in luck.” She arched a pale blond eyebrow.
“It’s a subjective term. Where I come from, ‘luck’ and ‘brute strength’ are one and the same.”
She pounced on the opportunity. “Where do you come from, Michael?”
“A place far from here,” he replied, and the way he said it told her that there would be no more discussion of his personal life.
“We have dessert,” she said when he’d finished his meal and pushed the plate away. “A chocolate torte, in the kitchen. I’ll make us some coffee, too.” She stood up, but he was faster. He was at her side before she could take two steps, and he said, “Later for the torte and coffee. I had another dessert in mind.” Taking her hand, he kissed it, slowly, finger by finger.
She put her arms around his neck, her heart hammering. He picked her up, effortlessly, in his arms, and then plucked a single rose from where they were arranged in a blue vase at the table’s center.
He took her up the staircase, along the hall of armor, to her bedroom with its four-poster bed and its view of the Cairo hills.
They undressed each other by candlelight. She remembered how hairy his arms and chest were, but now she saw that he’d been injured; his chest was crisscrossed with adhesive bandages. “What happened to you?” she asked as her fingers grazed his hard brown flesh.
“Just a little something I got tangled up in.” He watched as her lace slip floated to her ankles, and then he picked her up out of her clothes and slid her against the cool white sheet.
He was naked now as well, and seemed larger still for the knots of muscle exposed to the candlelight. He eased his body down beside hers, and she smelled another odor under his faint lime cologne. It was a musky aroma, and again she thought of green forests and cold winds blowing across the wilderness. His fingers traced slow circles around her nipples, and then his mouth was on hers and their heat connected, flowed into each other, and she trembled to her soul.
Something else replaced his fingers: the velvet rose, fluttering around her risen nipples, teasing her breasts like kisses. He drew the rose down along the line of her belly, stopped there to circle her navel, then down again into the fullness of golden hair, still circling and teasing with a gentle touch that made her body arch and yearn. The rose moved along the damp center of her desire, fluttering between her taunt thighs, and then his tongue was there, too, and she gripped his hair and moaned as her hips undulated to meet him.
He paused, holding her back from the edge, and began again, the tongue and the rose, working in counterpoint like fingers on a fine golden instrument. Margritta made music, whispering and moaning as the warm waves built inside her and crashed through her senses.
And then there it was, the white-hot explosion that lifted her off the bed and made her cry out his name. She settled back like an autumn leaf, full of color and wilted at the edges.
He entered her, heat against heat, and she clung to his back and held on like a rider in the storm; his hips moved with deliberation, not frantic lust, and just as she thought she could accept no more of him, her body opened and she sought to take him into the place where they would be one creature with two names and pounding hearts, and then even the hard spheres of his manhood would enter her, too, instead of being simply pressed against the moistness. She wanted all of him, every inch, and all the liquid he could give her. But even in the midst of the maelstrom she sensed him holding himself apart, as if there were something in himself that even he could not get to. In their cell of passion she thought she heard him growl, but the noise was muffled against her throat and she could not be sure it wasn’t her own voice.
The bed’s joints spoke. It had spoken for many men, but never so eloquently.
And then his body convulsed—once, twice, a third time. Five times. He shivered, his fingers twisting the tangled sheet. She locked her legs around his back, urging him to stay. Her lips found his mouth, and she tasted the salt of his effort.
They rested awhile, talking again, but this time in whispered voices, and the subject was not London or the war but the art of passion. And then she took the rose from where it lay on the bedside table, and she followed the trail down to his restirring hardness. It was a beautiful machine, and she lavished it with love.
Rose petals lay on the sheets. The candle had burned low. Michael Gallatin lay on his back, sleeping, with Margritta’s head on his shoulder. He breathed with a faint, husky rumbling noise, like a well-kept engine.
Still later, she awakened and kissed him on the lips. He was sleeping soundly, and did not respond. Her body was a pleasant ache; she felt stretched, re-formed into his shape. She looked at his face for a moment, assigning the craggy features to memory. It was too late for her to feel real love, she thought. There had been too many bodies, too many ships passing in the night; she knew she was useful to the service as a refuge and liaison for agents who needed sanctuary, and that was all. Of course she decided who she would sleep with, and when, but there had
been many. The faces blended together—but his stayed apart. He was not like the others. And not like any man she’d ever known. So call it schoolgirl infatuation and leave it at that, she thought. He had his destination, and she had her own, and they were not likely to be the same port.
She got out of bed, carefully so as not to awaken him, and went naked into the large walk-through closet that separated her bedroom from the dressing room. She switched on the light, chose a white silk gown, shrugged into it, then took a brown terrycloth robe—a man’s robe—off a hanger and draped it around a female-shaped dress dummy in the bedroom. A thought: perhaps a spray of perfume between her breasts and a brush of her hair before true sleep. The car might be coming at seven in the morning, but she recalled that he liked to be up by five-thirty.
Margritta walked, the well-used rose in hand, into the dressing room. A small Tiffany lamp still burned on the table. She sniffed the rose, smelled their mingled scents, and put it into a vase. That one would have to be pressed between silk. She drew a contented breath, then picked up her brush and looked into the mirror.
The man was standing behind the screen. She could see his face above it, and in the second of calm recognition before terror she realized it was a perfect killer’s face: devoid of emotion, pale, and quite unremarkable. It was the kind of face that blends easily into crowds, and you do not remember a moment after seeing.
She opened her mouth to call for Michael.
3
THERE WAS A POLITE cough, and a peacock’s eye winked fire. The bullet hit Margritta in the back of the skull, precisely where the assassin had aimed. Her blood, bone, and brains splattered onto the glass, and her head thunked down amid the vials of beauty. He came out, snake-quick, dressed in tight-fitting black, the small pistol with its silencer gripped in a black-gloved hand. He glanced at the little rubber-coated grapple hook that clung to the terrace’s railing; the rope trailed down to the courtyard. She was dead and the job was done, but he knew that a British agent was here as well. He looked at his wristwatch. Almost ten minutes before the car would meet him beyond the gate. Time enough to send the swine to hell.
He cocked the pistol and started through the closet. And there was the bitch’s bedroom, a low candle flickering, a shape in the sheets. He aimed the pistol at its head and steadied his wrist with his other arm: a gunman’s pose. The silencer coughed—once, then again. The shape jumped with the force of the bullets.
And then, like a good artist who must see the results of his craft, he pulled the sheets away from the corpse.
Except it was not a corpse.
It was a dress dummy, with two bullet holes in its blank white forehead.
A movement, to his right. Someone fast. The killer panicked and twisted to get off a shot, but a chair slammed against his back and ribs and he lost the gun before his finger could squeeze. It went into the folds of the sheet and out of sight.
He was a big man, six-three and two hundred and thirty pounds, all beef-bred muscle; the breath left his mouth with the roar of a locomotive bursting from a tunnel, and the chair’s swing staggered him but didn’t put him down. The killer tore the chair out of his combatant’s grip before it could be used again, and kicked out, his boot hitting the man’s stomach. The kick drew a satisfying grunt of pain, and the British agent, a man in a brown robe, crashed back against the wall holding his gut.
The assassin flung the chair. Michael saw it coming in the flex of the man’s hands, and as he dodged, the chair broke to pieces against the wall. Then the man was on him, fingers clenching around his throat, digging savagely into his windpipe. Black motes spun across Michael’s vision; in his nostrils was the iron odor of blood and brains—the scent of Margritta’s death he’d smelled a second after he’d heard the silencer’s deadly whisper.
This man was a professional, Michael knew. It was man against man, and only one would be alive in a matter of minutes.
So be it.
Michael quickly brought his hands up, breaking the killer’s grip, and smashed the palm of his right hand into the man’s nose. He intended to drive the bones into the brain, but the killer was fast and turned his head to deflect the strike. Still, the nose crumpled and exploded and the man’s eyes were wet with pain. He staggered back two steps, and Michael hit him in the jaw with a quick left and right. The killer’s lower lip split open, but he grasped the collar of Michael’s robe, lifted him off his feet, and hurled him through the bedroom door.
Michael crashed into the hallway and into one of the suits of armor. It fell off its stand in a clatter. The Nazi assassin came through the door, his mouth streaming blood, and as Michael tried to scramble up, a kick caught him in the shoulder and flung him another eight feet along the hall.
The killer looked around, his eyes glinting at the sight of armor and weapons; for an instant his face had a shine of reverence, as if he had stumbled into a holy shrine of violence. He picked up a mace—a wooden handle with a three-foot-long chain attached to an iron ball of jagged spikes—and whirled it gleefully over his head. He advanced on Michael Gallatin.
The medieval weapon shrieked as it swung for Michael’s skull, but he ducked its arc and backpedaled out of range. The mace swung back the other way before he could get his balance, and the iron spikes bit brown terrycloth, but Michael leaped back, colliding with another suit of armor. As it fell, he grasped a metal shield and whirled around, catching the mace’s next blow as it came at his legs. Sparks flew off the polished metal, the vibration thrumming up Michael’s arm to his bruised shoulder. And then the killer lifted the mace over his head to crush Michael’s skull—and Gallatin threw the shield, its edge hitting the other man’s knees, chopping his legs out from under him. As the killer pitched down, Michael started to kick him in the face but checked himself: a broken foot would not help his agility.
The killer was getting to his feet, the mace still in hand. Michael darted to the wall and pulled a broadsword off its hooks, and then he turned to face the next attack.
The German warily regarded the sword and picked up a battle-ax, casting the shorter weapon aside. They faced each other for a few seconds, each looking for an opening, and then Michael feinted with a thrust and the battle-ax clanged it aside. The killer lunged in, avoided a swing of the sword, the battle-ax upraised. But Michael’s sword was there to deflect it; the ax hit the sword’s hilt in a burst of blue sparks, snapped off the blade, and left Gallatin standing with a nub of nothing. The killer swung the ax at his prey’s face, his body braced for the pleasure of collision.
Michael had, in a split second, judged the fine angles and dimensions of impact. He realized that a step backward would lose him his head, as would a step to either side. So he moved in, crowding the killer, and since blows to the face seemed to do no good, he drove his fist into the exposed hollow of the armpit, his knuckles gouging for the pressure point of veins and arteries.
The killer cried out in pain, and as his arm went dead he lost control of the ax. It left his hand and thunked two inches deep into the oak-paneled wall. Michael hit him in the ruined nose, snapping his head back, and followed with a blow to the point of the chin. The German grunted, spewed blood, and fell back against the second-floor railing. Michael followed him, drew his arm back to strike at the throat—but suddenly the assassin’s arms streaked out, the fleshy hands closing on his neck once more and lifting him off his feet.
Michael thrashed, but he had no traction. The killer was holding him almost at arm’s length, and in another few seconds the idea would come to throw Michael over the railing to the tiled floor below. There was an oak beam two feet above Michael’s head, but it was smooth and polished and there was nothing to hold on to. The blood roared in his brain, oily sweat surfaced from his pores—and deep within, something else stretched and began to awaken from a sleep of shadows.
The fingers pressed into his arteries, interrupting the flow of blood. The killer shook him, partly in disdain and partly to secure a tighter grip. The end was near; t
he German could see the other man’s eyes beginning to bulge.
Michael’s arms reached up, fingers grazing the oak. His body trembled violently, a movement that the assassin interpreted as the nearing of death.
For him, it was.
Michael Gallatin’s right hand began to twist and contort. Beads of sweat ran down his face, and utter agony played across his features. The black hair on the back of his hand rippled, the sinews shifting. There were little popping noises of cracking bones. The hand gnarled, the knuckles swelled, the flesh turning mottled and thick, the black hair beginning to spread.
“Die, you son of a bitch!” the killer said, speaking in German. He squeezed his eyes shut, all concentration on strangling the man to death. Very soon now ... very soon.
Something moved under his hands. Like scurrying ants. The body was getting heavier. Thickening. There was a pungent, animal smell.
The killer opened his eyes and looked up at his victim.
He was holding something that was no longer a man.
With a scream, he tried to throw the thing over the railing—but two pairs of claws dug into the oak beam and latched there, and the monster brought up a still-human kneecap and hit him in the chin with a power that all but knocked him senseless. He released the thing and, still screaming, but now in a high, thin drone, scrambled away from it. He fell over scattered armor, crawled toward the bedroom door, looked back, and saw the monster’s claws wrench free of the beam. The thing fell to the floor, hitching and convulsing, and thrashed out of its brown terrycloth robe.
And now the assassin, one of the best of his breed, knew the full meaning of horror.
The monster righted itself, crawling toward him. It was not yet fully formed, but its green eyes caught and held him, promising agony.
The killer’s hand closed on a spear. He jabbed at the thing, and it leaped aside, but the spear tip caught it on the malformed left cheek and drew a scarlet line against the black. He kicked desperately at it, trying to pull himself through the bedroom door and get to the terrace railing—and then he felt fangs snap shut on his ankle, a crushing power that broke the bones like matchsticks. The jaws opened and snapped on the other leg at the calf. Again, bones broke, and the assassin was crippled.