Assassin

Chapter Nineteen

Rome

FRANCESCA, STANDING IN THE DIM PINKISH LIGHT OF THE tiny lavatory, gripped the stainless steel basin and leaned into the mirror, studying the carmine gloss she’d just applied to her lips. There was a swaying motion and screeching sound as the train negotiated a curve. The Paris-Simplon Express was now rolling through Switzerland, high in the Alps, and a beautiful man was waiting for her in the lower berth of the moonlit compartment beyond the door.

She lifted her thin pale arms and ran her fingers through her thick blonde hair, inhaling the scent of Chanel 19 rising from the warmth of the cleft between her uplifted breasts. She was wearing a black negligee, Galliano, and it clung to her like a lover. She smiled at herself and closed her eyes for a moment, her lips parted, her long lashes brushing the swell of her cheeks as she composed herself for the scene she was about to play.

“Caro?” she said softly, pausing in the doorway so that he would see her body backlit by the pale pink light behind her.

“Come here,” he said simply, his hoarse whisper barely audible over the metallic chatter of the wheels on the rails.

The small wood-paneled compartment of the Wagons-Lit sleeping car was lit only by the deep violet of the night-light above the door. Nick Hitchcock, her American lover, was lying on his stomach, chin propped in his upraised palms, gazing out the window as the blue moonlit landscape of snow-covered peaks hurried by. He rolled onto his back and stared at the impossibly beautiful figure framed by the doorway.

“Did you miss me, Nicky?”

She ran her hands down over her hips, adjusting the drape of black silk.

“God,” he whispered. Even the sound of silk whispering across her body drove him mad.

“Why are you wearing pajamas, Nicky?” Francesca asked.

“I was cold.”

“But it’s so warm in here.”

“It will be,” Nick said, pulling back the covers and making room for her.

She padded across the carpeted compartment, taking only three or four small steps before she reached him. She sat on the edge of the fold-down berth and stroked his cheek. In the bluish-purple light, the small crescent of the scar on his cheekbone appeared luminous.

“So many scars, caro, for a doctor. Your patients, they cut you, Dottore?”

He smiled and stroked one silk covered breast, cupping his hand under it, feeling the weight.

“That’s a physician, darling,” Nick said. “I’m a physicist. A doctor of physics.”

“But you are a spy, too, no?”

“We’re both spies. We just don’t know yet who’s spying for whom. That’s why this honeymoon will be so interesting.”

“Nicky, caro, is not a honeymoon, this trip. Non sposato, mi amore, we’re not married.”

“We’re having the honeymoon first. Much more sensible.”

Francesca laughed, leaning over to kiss him on the mouth, her heavy breasts resting softly upon his chest. It was a hard, brief kiss and when she felt his probing tongue she sat upright and turned her gaze to the window.

“You will never marry someone like me. But, va bene, it doesn’t matter. I love you anyway. And, I love this old train. It doesn’t go to the Orient, it’s not an express, it doesn’t matter. Still they call it the Orient Express.”

“A long time ago, it went to Belgrade and Istanbul. It was the fastest way to get there from Paris.”

“He knows everything, my darling dottore pericoloso,” she said, bending over to kiss him again, “Someday, Doctor Dangerous, when we are old and grey and have made all the love we can make, you will tell me the secrets of the universe?”

“I’ll tell you one now,” he said smiling up at her. “There’s a lot more love out there than we can ever make. But, that doesn’t mean we can’t try.”

His hand moved under the hem of her negligee, tracing his fingers along the warm skin of her inner thigh, desperate to touch her. She caught his wrist in a surprisingly strong grip and pulled his hand away. “No, caro, not yet,” she said.

He reached up to pull her to him, but she pulled back, laughing. “No, Nicky, you must wait. I want to see all these scars you want to hide from me. I want to kiss every one and learn its secret. Then we make l’amore.”

She unbuttoned his blue silk pajama top and ran her hands over the thick cords of his heavily muscled chest, her fingers pausing to entwine themselves in the thatch of curly dark hair that began at the base of his throat. Then her hands moved down over his taut belly, quickly undoing the strings and pulling the silk down over his thighs to his knees.

“Now,” she said, surveying the pale landscape of skin, “No more secrets, Nicky.”

“No secrets,” he said as she pressed her lips to the long weal that began at his left shoulder and ended just below his left nipple.

“Tell me about this one,” she said, her lips trailing along the length of angry scar.

“Well. That was a bad one, I’ll tell you. An arrow got me,” Nick Hitchcock said. “Cowboys and Indians, St. Louis, Missouri. Nineteen seventy-five. I was only ten years old when that Apache brave sneaked up and got the drop on me.”

“And this one,” she said, her lips traveling downwards across his hard, flat belly.

“Self-inflicted. I was up in the attic playing ‘Doctor’ with my cousin and she bet me I couldn’t take out my own appendix.”

“Liar,” she said. She reached between his legs and gripped him hard in her fist. She bent her head to him and her tongue darted about, causing him to moan and arch upwards involuntarily. “What about this one? Right here on the tip? A naughty old girlfriend bit my Nicky?”

“Cub Scouts,” Hitchcock said, his breathing rapid and shallow. “I was late putting on my uniform for a Cub pack meeting and caught myself in my zipper. And that one, darling, is the truth. Now, enough!”

“No, caro, not enough. Be still, I must do something.”

He saw her hand disappear between her thighs and the breath caught in his throat.

“I have something for you,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, closing his eyes.

“It is not what you think,” she said and he heard a distinct metallic click between her legs. What the—

She held up a small silver switchblade that gleamed in the violet light. “I keep this hidden inside me, Nicky, just for times like this.”

“What? This is a joke, right? Some sick game?”

He twisted violently away, but she still had him gripped in the vise of her fist and now she squeezed cruelly enough to make him cry out.

“Nicky?” she said, her voice still warm and seductive.

He felt the cold sharp edge of the blade at the base of his scrotum. She stretched the skin of the sac out even further.

“No secrets, Caro,” she said, “no more secrets…”

“Good God, are you mad? What is this?”

“Have you ever seen a human testicle?” she asked softly. “They pop out very easily, all shiny and pink. Attached by only one thin white tube. One snip of my little coltello is really all it takes.”

“You are insane! Stop this! What do you want?” Hitchcock cried, his voice thick with fear, choking back the sick tide rising in his throat.

“I’ve already told you, Nicky. I want no more secrets.”

A scream had already wholly formed in his mind and now he opened his mouth wide to give voice to it when she…

“Cut! Cut! Cut and print!” Vittorio de Pinta screamed and, leaping down from the boom crane of the big Panavision 35mm motion picture camera, he rushed to embrace her. “Francesca, my angel, this, it was brilliant! This was transcendent! Magnifico!”

The director clapped his hands as the sound stage lights came up on the Orient Express set. The entire crew burst into applause as Francesca gave her costar a perfunctory kiss on the forehead and rose to her feet, a broad smile on her beautiful face.

Vittorio, a tall, elegant man with soft brown eyes and shoulder-length white hair, turned to his crew and bowed deeply. The Italian film crew, some of whom had worked with de Pinta in early days, before he went to Hollywood, applauded wildly as the now-famous director spread his arms wide as if to embrace all of them. He began smacking his hands together at arm’s length, clapping for his cast and crew. It had been a grueling twelve months. The shoot had taken them to locations around the world; from Washington to the Great Barrier Reef where they’d shot all the shark footage, to Hong Kong, Venice, and the Alps where the second unit had shot all the exteriors for the Orient Express sequence just completed.

And now, this final month at the old Cinecittà Studios in Rome shooting interiors for the completion of this latest and perhaps boldest of the Nick Hitchcock spy thrillers, Body of Lies. Back on the lot in Culver City, it was the executive producer’s fondest wish that the steamy love interest brought to the screen by this Italian bombshell would lift this pic above the wooden special effects–laden epics of the last few Nick Hitchcock spy thrillers.

It was also Vittorio’s fondest wish. His career had been dead in the water ever since his bloated costume drama, Too Much Too Soon, had spun wildly out of control, late and over budget, and ended up released as a network Movie of the Week. Body of Lies, he knew, was his last shot, his una ultima probabilità as Francesca had called it.

“That’s a wrap, ladies and gentlemen,” Vittorio said, still applauding all the grips and gaffers up amidst the forest of klieg lights mounted high above on the studio catwalks. “Grazie mille a tutto, mille grazie!”

A small army of production assistants and caterers appeared, setting up craft services tables full of caviar and crab, carrying trays of glasses and magnums of cold champagne onto the Orient Express set. Vittorio splashed some into a glass, first for Francesca and then one for superstar Ian Flynn, the ruggedly handsome Irish actor who played Nick Hitchcock, currently busy pulling his pajama bottoms up, eager to hide the fact that he had not much to hide.

Raising his own glass to the assembled, the director said, “To the legendary Ian, brilliant as always, for a magnificent performance! And, to our newest Hitchcock girl, the talented and beauteous Signorina Francesca d’Agnelli!”

She raised her glass, then tipped it back and downed it quickly. She had a plane to catch.

Some eight hours later, Francesca heard a light tapping on the cabin door. She sat up in bed in the darkness, heard a dull roaring noise and wondered where she was. The door cracked open and she saw a girl framed in the soft light from the corridor. The girl was wearing a snow-white apron over a black dress. The uniform of all the female staff aboard the Pasha’s private 747.

“Signorina d’Agnelli?” It was the perky English one named Fiona.

“Sì?” she said, sitting up and rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Che cosa, Fiona?”

“So sorry to disturb you, Signorina, but First Officer Adare in the cockpit informs me we will be landing in approximately one hour. I thought perhaps you might like some breakfast? Some time to freshen up?”

“Sì, some tea and toast, e il bagno, per favore.” The girl pulled the door closed and Francesca lay back against the pillows. A hot bath. Delicious.

The Pasha had been extremely generous, she thought, sending his plane to Rome for her as soon as the production had shut down. It was the first time he’d done it. He was pleased with her. Her last assignment had been carried out flawlessly. Pleased, his generosity knew no bounds. But then, neither did his brutality when you incurred his displeasure.

It was one of the reasons she was so strangely attracted to the man, despite his recent increase in belt size. She’d always had a taste for the unusual.

She rose from her bed and padded across the thick carpet to the marble-clad bathroom. She twisted the gold spigots, and the tub began filling with water. She poured oils and salts and flower petals from the crystal containers and bowls into the steaming water. She smiled. Air Pasha was certainly an upgrade over first class on Alitalia.

Two staff girls appeared with a tea tray and a stack of luxurious white towels.

“Grazie,” Francesca said, as the pretty blonde one poured her a cup of herbal tea while the other one tested the water temperature, then turned off the golden spigots. Francesca nodded and smiled, clearly waiting for them to leave. They bowed, and were gone.

Dropping her robe to the floor, she caught herself smiling in the mirror; she was still aglow with champagne from the wrap party and in the limo on the way to the airport. It was an amusing distraction being a movie star. It allowed her to move freely about the globe, come into contact with whomever she wished, exert her will. No one in this world, she’d learned, was fully immune to the star-fucker syndrome.

But this particular star fucked back.

She raised her right foot up onto the wide green marble lip of the deep tub. Using her right hand, she reached into the curly blonde thatch between her legs and removed the porcelain sheath and the dagger it contained. She held it up admiringly. How she would have enjoyed using her piccolo coltello, her little knife, on that arrogant Hitchcock. The Irish prick.

An imaginary tabloid headline floated across her mind as she stepped into the steaming hot water.

“Hitchcockless.”