Death of the Falcon

Chapter 6

I was thinking about the previous night’s sex contest when my phone rang.

“Nick, are you up? It’s Candy.”

I told her I was just getting dressed, although I’d actually been awake since a little after five. After exercising and showering, I had spent about thirty minutes on the phone to AXE headquarters. I had wanted to find out if any further information had come in on what the Sword’s plans might be, but none, I was told, had been received. Our local agents had learned that most of the radical underground groups in the District’s area seemed to be alive with activity, after being relatively quiet for almost a year. Several, especially the revolutionary-terror group known as the American Arab Coalition, had held clandestine meetings, attended by only the leaders of the units, although all members had been put on the alert. For just what, nobody seemed to know.

“Breakfast is on, Nick,” Candy said eagerly.

“Great,” I replied. “Downstairs?”

“Yes. We’ll see you in the Terrace Room in about a half hour.”

“So you sold Sherima on getting out and meeting her public?”

Candy replied, “There will be just the two of us, Sherima and me.” That didn’t seem to make much sense as a response to my question, but I realized then that the former queen was.probably nearby and that Candy couldn’t talk too freely. The urge to tease her under those circumstances was too great to resist, so I said:

“I’ll be the one wearing the cowboy hat and the erection.”

Her laughter flowed out of my receiver before she hung up.

At first, only a few heads turned to glance at the two attractive women moving toward my table; but when the headwaiter, obviously recognizing Sherima, intercepted them halfway across the room and began making a formal fuss over her, people took notice. Voices fell into whispers and casual glances became stares as Sherima spoke with the waiter. By the time they finally made their way past the patronizing headwaiter, I could see that nearly everyone in the room had recognized the former Queen. Even the normally busy waiters and waitresses had collected by the long buffet table to discuss the famous new arrival.

“Nick, I’m sorry we’re late,” Candy began, “but I—”

“Don’t believe her, Mr. Carter — Nick,” Sherima interrupted. “Candy had nothing to do with our being late. It’s my fault. It takes me a while to decide I’m up to facing what I’m sure is going on behind us.” She extended her hand, adding, “I’m Liz Chanley.”

Taking my cue for informality from her, I shook hands.

“Hello, Liz. Candy says you were going out house hunting today,” I said. “Which way are you headed?”

“Into Maryland,” she said. “Up around Potomac and north of there. I had dinner with the Secre… with an old friend last night and he suggested that area might have just what I’m looking for. I want someplace where I can have my horses.

I liked the way Sherima had stopped before saying the Secretary of State and turned it into “an old friend.” It showed she was secure enough within herself, not to have to drop famous names to assure her own position. There’s a nice person behind that pretty face, I decided.

The waiter hovered discreetly in the background and I motioned him forward to order our food. Poached eggs, toast, coffee for Sherima; the same for Candy, except her eggs would float over a hefty portion of corned beef hash; ham and eggs, toast and coffee for me.

I maneuvered the conversation to Sherima’s househunting agenda for the day, graciously offering my services as a guide — with Her Highness’ permission, of course. Just as graciously she accepted the services of a helpful fellow American. Candy’s foot was rubbing against mine, slowly and sensuously. When I glanced at her, she gave me an innocent smile, then turned to offer Sherima more coffee, her foot never stopping for an instant.

I was finding it hard to concentrate on Maryland real estate.

The husky bodyguard had the limousine door open the instant he saw Sherima and Candy appear in the hotel entryway. Then he suddenly noticed me trailing close behind and his right hand let go of the door and automatically darted toward his belt. Sherima’s words stopped him before he could draw the gun that I knew must be concealed there. She, too, obviously had realized what his sudden action meant.

“It’s all right, Abdul.” she said quietly, adding as she turned to me, “Mr. Carter is with us.” I stepped up beside her and Candy and she continued, “Nick — Mr. Carter — I want you to meet Abdul Bedawi, who looks after Candy and me. Abdul, Mr. Carter will be coming along with us today. He’s a friend and he knows the area where we’ll be going.”

I couldn’t decide if the expression that flooded Abdul’s face came from suspicion, recognition of my name, or plain dislike. But in an instant, he covered it with a broad smile, although his eyes continued to appraise me from head to toe as he bowed. Even as he spoke to Sherima he was watching me intently. “As you wish, my lady.”

I stuck out my right hand and said, “Howdy, Abdul. Nice to meet you. I’ll try not to get us lost.”

“I, too, shall endeavor to keep us from going astray,” he replied.

There was a moment’s hesitation on his part before he finally took my hand. For another brief instant, we tested each other’s strength, both without being obvious about it. His grip was a crusher and he seemed surprised that I didn’t attempt to pull away from it. No one watching would have suspected our little combat, however, from the smiles on our faces or from his cordiality as he finally let go, bowed and said, “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Carter.” His English was formal, precise, and typical of those Arabs who have been raised in nations where the British and Americans have had a strong influence.

Bedawi held the door until we were settled in the back seat of the car, then went around and took his place behind the wheel. I noticed the first thing he did was to lower the window that separated the rear compartment from the chauffeur’s seat, something that normally would have been done by the passengers when ready to speak to the driver. He wasn’t taking any chances on missing a word that was said.

As we started off, Sherima, looking around the car, said, “A different car today, Abdul?”

Contempt was evident in his voice as he replied, “Yes, my lady. I don’t know what is going on at the embassy. They can’t seem to get it straight that we are to have our own car. I spent two hours after we returned last night checking out the other car to make certain that we wouldn’t have trouble today again. Then, when I got to the embassy this morning, they had this car ready for us. The other one was gone.”

It crossed my mind that perhaps Hawk was playing games with the car again, but I was reasonably sure he would have mentioned it to me. Was there somebody in the embassy involved in the Sword’s plotting, I wondered, as I directed Bedawi through Georgetown onto M Street and toward Canal Road. It was difficult to play navigator and tourist guide at the same time, but I managed to point out some of the interesting shops and fine restaurants in that charming old sector of the capital as we passed.

“This is Canal Road, Abdul,” I said as we swung off M Street and headed along the scenic highway. “We stay on this road for some time now. It eventually becomes the George Washington Parkway, and that takes us just where we want to go.”

“Yes, Mr. Carter,” the chauffeur replied coldly. “I spent some time this morning studying the maps.”

“Don’t you ever sleep?” I asked.

“I need very little sleep, sir.”

Sherima interrupted, sensing, I felt, the tension that was growing between us. “Why do they call it Canal Road?”

“Well, you see that big ditch out there filled with water,” I said, pointing out the window. As they nodded automatically, I went on, “That’s what remains of the old C and O — the Chesapeake and Ohio — barge canal. Barges loaded with goods and passengers used to be towed along by mules. You can still see the towpath. It’s that bare strip on the grass beside the canal.

“As I recall someone telling me, the canal used to run the whole way up to Cumberland, Maryland, which must be almost two hundred miles. At this end, it was connected by some sort of viaduct over the Potomac to Alexandria. For a hundred years, the barges ran along the canal, then it was closed just about the time World War I ended.”

“What do they do with it now?” Candy asked.

“It’s been preserved by the National Park Service,” I explained, “and people just use it for hiking or bike riding along the towpath. I don’t know whether they still do it or not, but when I was down here a few years back, there was a barge that still ran on the canal for sightseeing. It wasn’t one of the original ones, of course, just a replica. They tell me it was a real fun trip, complete with a mule to pull the barge. It must have made a great day’s outing.”

As the women looked out the window, exclaiming again and again over the beauty of the scenery along the canal route, I was keeping an eye on the way Bedawi was handling the big car. He was an excellent driver, despite being on unfamiliar roads, alert to every passing sign or turn-off. At one point, he caught sight of me watching him in the rear-view mirror and a tight smile crossed his face.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Carter,” he said stiffly, “I shall get us there safely.”

“We’ll be coming into the George Washington Parkway soon,” I said, as if to explain my attention to him and the road. “We keep right on going on it until it becomes MacArthur Boulevard. Then we can swing off it at just about any point and head into the horse country up around Potomac, Maryland.”

“My lady,” he said quickly, “wasn’t there someplace you wanted to go for sightseeing up that route?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Great Falls. It’s supposed to be beautiful there. Is it out of our way, Nick?”

“Not at all. MacArthur Boulevard leads right to it. And it’s really something to see.”

In a few minutes the car was swinging smoothly into the parking lot of the Great Falls recreational area. There were surprisingly few cars. I suddenly realized it was a weekday and most of Washington was at work.

Sherima, Candy and I headed for the Falls. Bedawi stayed behind. When I turned to see what he was up to, he was leaning over the open hood, apparently tinkering with the motor.

As we started for the walkway over what once had been a canal lock, three men who had been standing near the Park Service office in an area that was formerly the site of a canal rest-stop and inn, began heading that way, too. From the almost compulsive way they had been taking pictures of each other in front of a nearby sign, and from the collection of cameras that hung around the neck of each of them, I had suspected they were Japanese. I saw I was right as we got closer and they crossed to the other side of the canal.

“Come on,” one of them called to his companions, looking at his watch. “We must hurry if we are to take pictures of the Falls and still get to the city in time to photograph the Capitol and the Washington Monument.”

I smiled to myself, thinking how typical was their drive to record everything they saw on film. Then it suddenly struck me that what was unusual about the scene was that the apparent leader of the trio had spoken in English rather than Japanese. As I watched them hasten along the canal bank and head into the budding trees and shrubbery, a little warning bell rang at the back of my mind. While Sherima and Candy crossed the walkway over the canal, I stopped and looked back toward the spot where Bedawi was still tinkering under the upraised hood. I realized that ours was the sole car in the big lot, with the exception of a Datsun parked at the far end. Apparently, the group of tourists who had returned from the Falls as we arrived had departed in the other cars. Obviously, too, Sherima’s bodyguard thought we had gone into the Park “Service building, otherwise he would have been coming after us.

“Nick! Come on!” Candy was waving at me from the turn-off into the woods. I waved and headed after them, pausing just for a moment to turn once more to see if Bedawi had heard her and would start after us. He hadn’t lifted his head. Probably has the motor running and can’t hear anything, I decided.

When I caught up to Sherima and Candy, they were busily reading a brass plaque attached to a huge boulder beside the trail to the Falls. The Japanese camera bugs were nowhere in sight, which didn’t surprise me, but I had expected to hear them on the twisted path that lay ahead. The forest was quiet around us, however, with the women’s chatter the only sound.

I moved past them, then waited until they caught up at a footbridge over the first of the little rushing streams that flowed noisily through the woods. As they peered down at the frothy water below us, Candy asked, “Why is it so foamy? The water doesn’t seem to be moving so fast that it would make all that froth.”

“It’s not nature making those bubbles. That’s plain old American pollution,” I said. “That foam is just what it looks like — soap suds. Detergent, to be exact. They get into the river from upstream, then when they get swirled by the fast current here, the foam starts to form, just like in the washing machine.”

We moved on to another footbridge that passed over a swifter current which had cut a deeper ravine in the rock formation. Sherima pointed out to us one spot where the rushing water had dug out a pothole; inside the hole a small rock was trapped and the water that flowed through the pothole spun it about frantically. She started to tell Candy about a glacier garden she had visited in Lucerne, Switzerland. I took advantage of their interest in the discussion of water being able to make little stones out of big ones, and slipped ahead on the trail.

About twenty yards further on, the sudden snap of a branch to the side and slightly in front of me froze me in my steps. I waited an instant, then, hearing nothing more, stepped off the path and slipped into the underbrush, moving in a wide circle.

“Where are they?”

The whisper was in Japanese, off to my left, closer to the Falls trail. Creeping forward, I found myself staring at the backs of two of the Japanese tourists, who were crouched behind a huge boulder.

“Shut up,” the second man hissed in reply to his companion’s anxious question. “They’ll be along soon.”

The nervous one wasn’t to be silenced. “Why are there three of them? We were told there would be just two women. Are we to kill the man, too? Who is he?”

“I don’t know who he is,” the other one said. I recognized him as the English-speaking clock-watcher.

It was difficult to translate the Japanese whispers, and I wished he were using English again. “Whoever he is, he must die like them. There are to be no witnesses. That is the Sword’s order. Now be quiet; they will hear you.”

Japanese and working for the Sword! Wait until Hawk hears about this, I thought, then added to myself, if he ever does. I was pretty certain I could handle the pair in front of me, despite the silencer-equipped pistols both of them held. It was the third one who had me worried. I didn’t know just where he was, and the women would be along any moment. Praying that the pothole and the swirling rock would hypnotize them just a few minutes longer, I slid Wilhelmina from the belt holster and let Hugo drop into my hand from the forearm sheath. Both of the waiting assassins would have to die at the same time, With no noise. Slipping off my jacket, I wrapped it around my left hand and the Luger. It was a very makeshift sort of silencer, but it would have to do.

I swiftly moved four paces forward, bringing myself right behind the pair before they were aware of my presence. At the instant the cloth-swaddled Luger touched the back of the nervous Japanese man’s neck, I pulled the trigger. I had made certain that the muzzle was tilted upward, so the slug tore through his brain, exiting from the top of his head. The bullet continued its path skyward, as I had calculated. I couldn’t have afforded the noise that would have been inevitable if it had struck a rock or a tree when it left his skull.

Even as his head jerked backward in a death contraction, my knife was sliding between the discs of the other’s spine, severing the cords that controlled his nervous system. My arm with its jacket wrapping came forward and closed over the dead man’s mouth, just in case he might scream, but there wasn’t even a gasp for air. I swung a hip to pin the first dead man to the boulder as I lowered the second one quietly to the ground, then let his companion slide down silently beside him. As I did, I heard a call from back along the trail.

“Nick, where are you?” It was Candy. They must have realized I was no longer around, and perhaps had become frightened in the stillness of the woods.

“Up here,” I called back, deciding that I had to let the third killer find me. “Just keep coming along the trail.”

Arranging the jacket so that it looked like I had casually tossed it over my arm, I stepped out onto the trail and began walking. I knew he had to be nearby — they wouldn’t have separated too far apart — and I was right. As I rounded a huge slab of granite that practically formed a wall beside the path, he suddenly stepped into view, blocking my progress. A silencer-fitted pistol was leveled at my gut

“Don’t shoot; I’m the Sword,” I whispered in Japanese. His hesitation marked him as a non-professional and it cost him his life. The slug from my jacket-wrapped luger caught him in the heart and coursed upward, lifting his body for a moment before he started to slump forward. I caught him and dragged him behind the granite slab, dumping him there. A grisly burbling came from his gaping mouth. I couldn’t risk having Sherima or Candy hear him as they passed by, so I tore loose a clump of grass and shoved it deep between the lips that already were turning blue. Blood welled from around my makeshift gag, but no sound penetrated it Turning and running back the few feet to where the other dead Japanese lay, I pulled them around the boulder where they had set up their ambush, working swiftly as I heard Sherima’s and Candy’s voices coming closer. By the time they reached me, I was back standing on the trail, my jacket once more draped casually over my arm so that the bullet holes didn’t show, my collar and tie loosened. I had transferred my gun, holster, and wallet to my pants pockets.

Candy asked the question that was on both their faces. “Too warm, Nick?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I drawled. “This hiking surely is hot work on such a balmy day. I hope you ladies don’t mind.”

“I certainly don’t,” Sherima said. “This wool pants suit is starting to feel pretty uncomfortable, too.”

“Mine, too,” Candy chimed in. “In fact, I think I’ll just put this jacket around my shoulders.” She slipped off her jacket and, as I helped her adjust it around her shoulders, I noticed that she had settled on a bra under today’s man-tailored white shirt. It didn’t quite succeed in restraining her ample breasts. She seemed to sense my critical appraisal, because she turned just enough to brush her right breast against my chest, then looked up innocently at me. I played the game with her, lifting a hand as if to brush back an errant strand of my hair, but making certain my fingers trailed across the bulging shirtfront. Her quick, muted gasp told me that she was feeling the same desire that was rising in me.

“Guess we better move on,” I said, moving away from her and taking the lead once more on the path. “It’s only a little way to the Falls now. You can hear the water if you listen carefully.”

“That must have been the noise I heard,” Sherima said, turning to Candy. “But I thought it was you, Nick, moving around in the underbrush ahead of us after we missed you at that place with the pothole.”

“It must have been the Falls,” I agreed, thankful for the increasing noise that was reaching us as we walked on. “I decided to go on while you two looked at the locks. I’m a camera fancier and I thought I might catch up to those Japanese tourists and see what kind of equipment they had with them. They must’ve listened to the one who was so worried about the time, though, because they’re not around, and probably way ahead of us by now. We’ll see them at the lookout point at the Falls.”

By that time, the roar of the water rushing over the cataract ahead was quite loud, then, as we rounded a bend, the full beauty of the huge, steep cascade struck us.

“My God, it’s fantastic,” Sherima exclaimed. “So lovely and so frightening at the same time. Is it always so violent, Nick?”

“No,” I said as we moved up to lean against the metal piping that served as a fence around the lookout spot created by nature and the Park Service. “The water’s high this time of year with the spring thaws. They tell me that sometimes it becomes just a trickle, but that’s pretty hard to believe looking at it now. And from what I remember of my last visit here, the floods seem to have washed away quite a bit of the banks around here.”

“Is there any dang now?” Candy asked, backing away a bit from the guard rail.

“No, I’m sure it’s safe, or there’d be someone from the Park Service to keep us out,” I said. I draped my jacket over the railing, then turned to take her hand and pulled her forward again. “Look, you can see that the water still has quite a way to rise before it gets to here.”

When she — had satisfied herself as to the safety of our vantage point, I called their attention to the other side of the river. “That’s the Virginia side,” I explained. “The land’s higher over there. It forms palisades, something like those on the Hudson across from New York City, only not so steep. There’s a highway along that side, too, and on that sort of plateau over there is a great spot to look down at the rapids. They’ve set up a little picnic grove there, too. Maybe you’ll get a chance to see Great Falls from there some — Hey! Darn it!”

“Oh Nick, your jacket!” Candy cried, leaning over the railing and sadly watching my jacket’s rapid progress through the air and into the water.

I just sighed, and she and Sherima groaned in sympathy as it fell into the water and was carried away on the foaming current below us. While I had drawn their attention to the opposite shore, I had eased the jacket over the guard rail. Perhaps Hawk wouldn’t be too happy that part of any expensive wardrobe had been disposed of so readily, but I wouldn’t have been able to wear it again anyway. Nobody would have believed that the two round, singed holes were the latest in men’s fashions — not even in Texas.

“Oh, Nick, your lovely jacket,” Candy moaned again. “Did you have anything valuable in it?”

“No. Luckily, I carry my wallet and most of my papers in my pants,” I said, displaying the billfold and hoping that they would think the bulge of the Luger on the other side was my “papers.” I added, “It’s a habit I got into in New York City after a pickpocket lifted just about everything I was carrying while I was telling him how to get to Times Square.”

“Nick, I feel responsible,” Sherima said. “You must let me replace it for you. After all, you’re here because. I wanted to see the Falls. I wish now that Abdul’s friend never had suggested it.”

“I’m here because I wanted to be here,” I told her. “And don’t you worry about replacing it; you know how much money we folks in the oil industry throw away on expense accounts, lobbying in Washington.”

She looked at me oddly for a moment, then she and Candy burst into laughter as my smile told them I had been kidding. If only they knew, I thought, just where my expense account came from!

I looked at my watch and said we better start back to the car and go on with our househunting. As we retraced our steps, I said, “I’d hoped that we could have lunch somewhere nice around Potomac, but I reckon that with me in my shirtsleeves, we’ll have to settle for a Big Mac.”

“What’s a Big Mac?” they both asked at once, surprise and amusement mingled in their voices.

“That’s right,” I said, slapping my forehead, “I’d forgotten that the two of you have been out of the country for so long that you’ve never had the taste-treat of the century. Ladies, I promise you that if we can find a McDonald’s you are in for a real surprise.”

They tried to persuade me to tell them the secret of the Big Mac as we walked on, and I persisted with my game, refusing to explain anything further. I kept them involved in that laughing discussion as we passed the section where three corpses littered the underbrush, and they walked by without noticing any hint of the bloodshed that had recently occurred there. We had just reached the bridge where the women had been watching the swirling rock in the pothole when Abdul came charging up to us. I had wondered why he hadn’t shown up earlier, considering his reputed dedication to the role of watchdog, but he had an explanation ready.

“My lady, forgive me,” he begged, almost prostrating himself before Sherima. “I thought you had gone into that building near the parking lot, so I began to check the car’s engine as I had wanted to do before we left. Only minutes ago did I discover that you weren’t there, and I came after you right away. Forgive me.” Again his bow almost touched the ground.

“Oh, Abdul, that’s all right,” Sherima said, taking his arm so that he had to rise. “We’ve been having fun. We just walked to the Falls and back. You should have been along—” Seeing that he had mistaken her meaning, taking it as a reprimand, she hurried on to explain, “No, I mean that you should have been there to see the Falls. They are spectacular, just as your friend told you. And you could have watched Mr. Carter’s jacket float away on the soapsuds.”

He seemed completely mystified by her last words, and by the time she finished explaining my loss to him, we were back at the limousine. He looked at me speculatively as we got into the car, and I decided that he probably was wondering what kind of a careless idiot I was to lose a valuable jacket the way I did, but he only politely expressed his regrets, then got in and started driving back toward Falls Road.

We just had started through Potomac when the little dagger that had been stabbing at my thoughts suddenly made its point: What friend of Abdul’s had told him about Great Falls? He’s never been in this country before. So when did he meet a friend here? Twice, Sherima had mentioned that the suggestion for the side trip to the Falls had been made by that unknown friend, and twice, my brain had registered it, then gone on to other things. I made another mental note to try to find out, either from Candy or through her, just where Abdul had met this acquaintance.

The next couple of hours were spent just driving around the area, allowing Sherima to see the types of estates that dotted it and the rolling countryside that went with them. We had to stop several times as she admired a herd of horses grazing in a pasture, or when she went into rapture over a private steeplechase course that extended almost to the roadside.

We never did find a McDonald’s, so T finally had to tell them about the burger chain and its menu. For lunch, we settled on a little country inn, after I had checked it out to make certain I could be served without a jacket.

I excused myself at one point to go to the men’s room, heading instead for the phone booth I had spotted near the cashier’s desk. I was surprised to find Abdul there before me. He had declined to have lunch with us; when we were inside, Sherima explained that he preferred to prepare his own food, sticking strictly to his religious dietary laws.

He spotted me almost at the same time I saw him in the phone booth and he quickly hung up and stepped out to make way for me.-

“I was reporting to the embassy where we were,” he said coldly. “His Majesty might want to contact my lady at any time and I am ordered to let our ambassador know our whereabouts regularly.”

It seemed like a logical explanation, so I said nothing, simply allowing him to pass and watching until he went out to the car. Then I called Hawk to make a report myself. It was unnecessary to worry about the absence of a scrambler on a pay phone. He got a bit upset when I asked to have someone tidy up the landscape at Great Falls. I left the details of how to collect the three corpses without arousing the suspicions of some Park Service employee up to him, and just gave him a quick rundown on what our schedule was for the rest of the afternoon, then told him that I would contact him when we returned to the Watergate.

Just before I hung up, I asked if Communications Section had been able to get into Sherima’s suite to plant our bugs. His grunt of disgust told me that the listening devices hadn’t been put in place, then he explained why. “It seems someone phoned the Adabian Embassy and suggested that Sherima might feel more at home if some native paintings and handicrafts were sent around to decorate the suite while she was out. Anyway, the First Secretary has been in the suite almost from the moment you all drove away, and he’s had people carrying things in and out all day. We’re ready to move in as soon as they get out of there, but it looks to me as if the First Secretary wants to be on hand when Sherima returns so he can take credit for the decorating job.”

“Who phoned to suggest all this?”

“We haven’t been able to find out — yet,” Hawk said. “Our man in the embassy thinks the call went directly to the ambassador, so it would have had to have come from Sherima herself, your Miss Knight, or, perhaps, from that Bedawi fellow.”

“Speaking of him,” I said, “see if you can find out if he knows anyone at the embassy, or has had any opportunity to contact a friend here.”

I went on to tell him how our side trip to Great Falls had been suggested. Hawk said he would try to have an answer for me by the time we got back.

Then, pitching his voice to an almost admonishing tone, he said, “I’ll take care of those three packages of Japanese goods you mentioned leaving behind at the Falls, but please try to be more careful in the future. Collection service of that type is rather difficult to arrange in this area. The competition among the agencies that might have to be involved is so hot, one of them might find it to their advantage to use the information against us, businesswise.”

I knew he meant he would have to make some arrangements with either the FBI or the CIA to cover up the fate of the trio of would-be assassins. Asking for assistance of that kind always upset him, for he was certain he would have to repay the favor ten fold at a later date. “I’m sorry, sir,” I said, trying to sound as though I was. “It won’t happen again. I’ll stay behind myself next time.”

“That won’t be necessary,” he said brusquely, then hung up.

Returning to Sherima and Candy, I found that lunch had arrived. We all were hungry from our hike, and since I had indulged in a bit more exercise than the others my stomach was screaming for anything, and the food was good. We finished quickly, then spent another hour touring the hunt country, with Candy busily making notes as Sherima told her what sections particularly interested her. They decided that Candy would begin to contact real estate agents the following day. Hopefully, they would find a home within the next week or two.

It was shortly after six P.M. when Abdul swung the limousine into the Watergate driveway again. By then, we had decided to have dinner in Georgetown. I insisted that they be my guests at the 1789 Restaurant, an excellent dining spot housed in a building that dated back to the year that gave the restaurant its name. Sherima again was hesitant about imposing on me, but I convinced her to agree by accepting her invitation to be her guest the following evening.

As we got out of the car, Sherima instructed Abdul to return at eight-thirty to pick us up. I suggested that we could easily go to Georgetown by taxi, and that Abdul might enjoy a night off.

“Thank you, Mr. Carter,” he said with his usual iciness, “but I require no night off. It is my job to be at my lady’s disposal. I shall return at eight-thirty.”

“All right, Abdul,” Sherima said, sensing, perhaps, that her faithful bodyguard’s feelings might have been hurt. “But you be certain to get something to eat.”

“Yes, my lady,” he said, bowing. “I shall do so at the embassy immediately. I can drive there easily and be back here as you instructed.” He closed the discussion by stepping quickly around the car and driving off.

“Abdul takes his job very seriously, Nick,” Sherima said as we rode up to our floor in the elevator. “He does not mean to be impolite; it is just his manner.”

“I understand,” I said, stopping at my door while they continued to their suite. “See you in the lobby.”

Moments later, I was on the phone to Hawk, who had some information for me.

“For one thing,” he began, “that fool First Secretary didn’t give up waiting for Sherima until about fifteen minutes ago. We never got into the suite, so don’t count on the bugs.”

I started to say something about an unscrambled phone, but he broke in to say that, if nothing else, Communications hadn’t wasted the day at the Watergate entirely. “A scrambler has been installed in your phone, so you can talk freely.”

“Great! What about my three friends at the Falls?”

“Just about now,” he said slowly, “their totally incinerated corpses are being removed from the wreckage of their Datsun on MacArthur Boulevard near the Naval Research Center. A tire must have blown out, for they suddenly swerved and hit a gasoline tank truck just waiting to swing into the Center. A couple of officers from Naval Intelligence happened to be passing at the time, and they saw the accident. Fortunately, the driver of the tank truck jumped clear just before the explosion. From what the Naval Institute witnesses told the Maryland State Police, the truck driver’s in the clear. It was just an accident.”

“Were you able to find out anything about them before the accident?”

“Their photographs and prints were taken, and we’ve established that they were members of the Rengo Sekigun. We thought most of those Japanese Red Army fanatics had been rounded up or wiped out, but apparently, these three had fled Tokyo and made their way to Lebanon; they’d been taken in by Black September.”

“How did they get here?”

“We haven’t pinned that down yet, but we’re working on it. The Beirut office says it had a report that some Japanese being trained by Black September had decided that the September organization wasn’t militant enough for them so they made contact on their own with the Sword’s Silver Scimitar boys. He may have arranged to have them sent here for this job on Sherima.”

“So they didn’t think the Black September was militant enough,” I mused. “What did they think that little massacre their fellow countrymen pulled at Lod Airport in Tel Aviv a couple of years back was — an exercise in pacifism?”

“What are your plans for the evening?” Hawk wanted to know. “Do you want any back-up assigned?”

I told him about our dinner at the 1789 Restaurant, then rang off. As if on cue, there was a knock at my door.

Loosening my tie as I crossed to the door, I swung it open. Candy pushed past me immediately, closing it quickly behind herself.

“Don’t you ever just walk into a room?” I chided her.

“You never can tell who’s out there,” she replied, then threw her arms around my neck and kissed me deeply. Our tongues played games for a while, then she pulled her mouth away, saying, “Umm. I’ve been wanting to do that all day, Nick. You have no idea how hard it was being good while Sherima was around.”

“You have no idea how hard it was for me, too, but what about Sherima?” I asked, not entirely distracted by the fact that she was opening my shirt, loosening my belt, and guiding me toward the bed.

“She took a quick shower, then said she was going to nap until seven forty-five,” Candy replied, sitting on the bed and gesturing for me to join her. “That means we have over an hour together before I have to get back there and get dressed myself.”

I sat next to her, taking her face between my hands.

“You don’t mind living dangerously with our little secret, do you?”

At first, she smiled in response to that, but suddenly her face clouded over, and the large hazel eyes looked past me toward the door. A strange sort of bitterness rung in her voice as she said abstractedly, “Everyone has a’ secret. We all do, don’t we? You, me, Sherima, Abdul…” That last was uttered with a shadowy grimace, and I wondered for a second why. “Even his High and Mighty Majesty Hassan…”

She realized I was watching her closely as she spoke, and seemed to snap from her mood, snaking her slender arms around my neck and pulling me down.

“Oh, Nick, hold me. No secrets now — just hold me.”

I covered her full mouth with mine and kissed her. She ran her fingers through my hair, then trailed them over the back of my neck, returning my kiss long and deeply. We undressed each other. She moved to the bed.

She lay on her back, her long, wavy hair spread out on the pillow over her head. Her eyes were partly closed, and her face had become more relaxed. I ran a finger over her chin, then down around her long, classical neck, and she let a deep sigh escape her lips as my caresses became more intimate. She turned to her side, kissing me urgently.

For several minutes, we lay side by side, not speaking, touching each other almost tentatively, as though each of us expected the other to object in some way. I could see that she had slipped back into her own thoughts. Occasionally, she would shut her eyes tightly, as though erasing some thought from her mind, then open them widely again to look at me and allow a smile to cross over her lips.

Finally, I asked, “What is it, Candy? You’re doing a lot of thinking about something or another.” I tried to sound as off-handed as possible.

“Nothing — it’s really nothing,” she answered softly. “I–I only wish we’d met ten years ago…” She rolled to her back again and put her arms over her head. “Then so much wouldn’t have happened… With you to love…” She fell silent, staring up at the ceiling.

I raised myself on one elbow and looked down at her. I hadn’t intended to have this beautiful woman fall in love with me. But then I also hadn’t intended to find myself feeling as much as I did for her.

There was nothing I could say in response to her words that wouldn’t betray the fact that I knew much more about her own secret past — and what she probably was talking about just now — so I filled the silence with a long kiss.

In a moment, our bodies were saying everything that had to be said for the time. We made slow, easy love, the way two people who have known each other for a long time do, giving and receiving equal pleasure.

Later, as we lay quietly, Candy’s head on my shoulder, I could feel that she was relaxed, the tension of her previous thoughts vanished. Suddenly, she bolted upright.

“Oh, my God — what time is it?”

Taking my watch from the bedside table, I said, “Exactly seven-forty, ma’am,” affecting an exaggerated drawl.

She laughed. “I just love the way you talk, Nick.” And then, “But now I have to run.” Gathering her clothes and virtually jumping into them, she mumbled like a schoolgirl nearing the curfew hour. “God, I hope she didn’t wake up yet… Well, I’ll just say I had to go down to the lobby for something… Or that I took a walk or something…”

Dressed, she leaned over the bed and kissed me again, then turned to rush out of the room. “See you in forty-five minutes,” I called after her.

As I showered, I realized that no matter where I was focusing my thoughts, they always returned to form around the image of Candy, and to echo her words. People had secrets — that was a fact. And perhaps my secret from her was the biggest one of them all. But there had been something in her tone that bothered me.

This was turning into much more than the simple assignment of protecting the former Queen. There was a mystery that entangled the lives of these people, and although it might be a personal thing, it still intrigued me. Yet, there seemed to be more than personal considerations: and they seemed to focus around Abdul.

Bedawi could simply be jealous of the way in which I was usurping his role. He’d surely seemed humiliated about slipping up on his responsibilities back at the Falls, and his coldness toward me had only increased after that. Still, I couldn’t, help feeling that there was more to the formidable looking bodyguard than met the eye. The AXE backgrounder on him had been far too incomplete.

Hoping that Hawk would have more information on Bedawi’s Washington friends, I stepped from the shower under the warming rays of the overhead lamp. I’d have to put my speculations to rest for a while, I told myself, until I had more solid information to go on.

Selecting a dinner jacket that wasn’t without the Texas touch, I began dressing, laughing silently at the way Hawk hadn’t missed a single detail in my wardrobe. The jacket, although formal, had buttons with the logo of my supposed business.