Target Lock

Palau Piri Island 1233 Hours, Zone Time: August 16, 2008

Luncheon was served al fresco in the mansion’s central garden, the palm shade and Amanda’s air-light clothing nullifying the tropical warmth of the day. The meal itself was superb. Simple yet subtle, prawns in a butter and garlic sauce, sate, savory barbecued meat impaled on skewers of sugarcane served with a firy sambal peanut sauce made with chilies, peanuts, and coconut cream. Steamed white rice served to mellow the spices and, oddly enough, the solid Dutch-style Anker lager served with the meal perfectly counterpointed the food.

Amanda noted that on this occasion Harconan drank and enjoyed the beer as much as she. Not a Muslim, then, or maybe more just his own man. She had ten thousand questions about this individual, born out of what Tran had told her about him. But she dared not ask too many. She could only catch the scraps of information he offered.

The Chinese server who bore in the dessert tray offered the chance for one such insight.

“I notice that most of your staff here are Chinese,” she commented. “Is there a reason or is it just coincidence?”

“A reason,” Harconan replied. “I suppose you could say it’s for security’s sake. Most of the Chinese here in Indonesia are… apart from the main flow of the island culture. They are overlaid on top of it, as it were — hardworking, successful, and prosperous for the most part, but envied and held in suspicion and distrust by many Indonesians. One could call them the Jews of Southeast Asia, I suppose.”

Harconan took a sip of his beer. “Here in House Harconan, as part of my staff, they receive a good salary and are treated with the respect due good employees. Thus their allegiance is to me, without my having to worry about an excessive number of outside entanglements.”

“You make it sound almost like a feudal society.”

He flashed her a grin and lightly brushed his mustache with a knuckle. “There is no almost about it, Amanda. That’s exactly what it is and I’m quite content with it. That’s what being wealthy can do for a person. It not only permits you to live where you wish, but when as well.”

Over dessert, he introduced her to the local fruits, insisting upon personally wielding the silver fruit knife and skewers himself. She found herself sampling things she’d never even heard of before. The tuih and the zirzak, the blimbing and the honey-flavored sawo, the snake fruit that by Indonesian legend was the true apple in the Garden of Eden, and the durian that smells like an open cesspit and tastes like a blend of onion and caramel and, once sampled, is strangely addictive. Harconan let her consume half a dozen slices before casually mentioning that the durian is also supposedly an extremely potent natural aphrodisiac.

Superb chilled champagne was served with the fruit, and Amanda found the laughter and relaxed conversation flowing easily. Bit by bit her guard came down as Harconan seemed to work at diverting topics away from the task force and anything that resembled politics or world affairs. They agreed that wood was the only decent and proper material to build a sailing boat with, and they compared the points of Indonesian, European, and American design, verbally sketching out a compromise craft that incorporated the best of all three worlds.

The shadows sundialed around the lanai as they forgot time; they were reminded of it by the reappearance of Lo.

“Excuse me, Mr. Harconan, but I fear I must remind you of that conference call.” Harconan started and glanced at his black-faced Rolex diver’s watch. “Damnation, is it that time already? Amanda, you must excuse me. Duty calls in a shrill, unpleasant voice.”

Amanda found she was genuinely disappointed to have the day ending. “That’s a call I recognize all too well. Don’t worry about it. Do you have a pilot who can fly me back to the ship.”

“Nonsense, it’s barely two. The day is young. This will take me forty-five minutes, an hour at the most. Why don’t you have a swim and a sun on the east beach while I deal with this call? I’ll have a word with my chief of security and he’ll ensure you complete peace and privacy. I’ll join you there as soon as I can.”

“That sounds wonderful. Do you have a suit I can borrow?”

Harconan shrugged. “If you feel the need for one.”

A swimsuit, a French-cut backless one piece in pale green satin, awaited her in the guest room along with a short terry-cloth beach jacket and a pair of sandals. Amanda was not surprised when it, too, fit to perfection.

It must be nice to own a magic wand, she mused with irony. Beyond that, there was again the somewhat eerie sensation that her mind or at least her life was being read. If Harconan could even conjure up her clothing sizes when he wished, what else did he have in his hands?

The hundred-yard walk to the east beach followed a meticulously groomed but meandering lava gravel path through the island’s palm groves. The walk itself was an experience. Amanda had visited world-class botanical gardens that didn’t have the beauty of Palau Piri’s wild ground cover. She recognized bougainvillea, jasmine, poinsettias, and marigolds growing in their natural home environment, and a hundred more she couldn’t begin to put a name to.

The air, perfumed with its myriad scents, was almost dizzying. The atmosphere was filled with birdsong and gecko chirp as well, the birds as dazzling as mobile flowers, catching and flaring bursts of the sunlight that leaked past the palm shade, the lizards skittering explosively across the paths and up the striated palm trunks.

It was all a little overwhelming. Amanda found herself wondering just when Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were going to show up.

And then the path wound toward a brightness beyond the trees, and she found herself at the beach. Amanda brought herself up short. The walk had been overwhelming, but this was awe-inspiring.

It was real.

All the legends, all the images, all the fantasies, conjured by the whisper of “the South Seas” were real. One only had to search until one found the Island of the Princes.

Black velvet sand with snow-colored surf curling against it. A sea and sky two different grades of sapphire, clouds as white as the surf piling against the peak of Propat Agung on the Bali mainland, and the mainland itself and the more distant Menjangang island burning a vivid living green under the sun. A single great crested tern circled offshore.

If she slept a hundred years, Amanda couldn’t imagine ever dreaming of anything this perfect. For long minutes she stood and drank it all in, only to want more.

Eventually she blinked and came back into herself. Glancing around, she noted a pair of comfortable-looking chaise longues drawn back into the shade at the head of the sand, separated by a small drinks table with a cooler set ready at its feet.

Amanda could only grin in sheer admiration. The man was still ahead of her.

She noted something else as well: something tree-tall but not organic in the palm line was set a short distance back from the beach. Curious, she moved closer.

It was a security-camera mount. A gray steel pole with a remote scanning head, part of the island defenses Chris had mentioned. Currently, however, the unit had a nylon cover drawn over its camera. As Harconan had promised, she would have her privacy here.

Amanda returned to the open beach, walking a few more yards farther down. Kicking off her sandals, she found the sand was soft and pleasantly hot under the sun. Shedding her beach jacket, she took a step toward the surf. Then she hesitated, glancing down at herself.

Damn that man!

She remembered the lazy, condescending smile he had given her when she had asked about borrowing a suit. “If you feel the need for one.”

This beach, the setup, putting her alone like this.

The bastard was daring her!

Aloud, she gave an angry, frustrated yip.

If she did, he would have won yet again, maneuvering her into it. And if she didn’t, she’d lose for not having the nerve to accept the challenge.

Damn, damn, damn the man!

She fought the battle for a minute more, then the sun and the brush of the warm wind on her skin won. Her hands came up and crossed, slipping the straps from her shoulders. The discarded satin whispered off her body and pooled at her feet. Stepping out of the suit, she yielded to the pleasure and freedom of her nudity and ran down to the sea.

Plunging into the blood-temperature water, she reveled in the infinite difference between swimming in even the most minimal of clothing and swimming in nothing at all, wondering if it were possible for Harconan to have learned of her secret passion for skinny-dipping.

There was a reef some twenty yards offshore and she swam parallel with it, keeping a safe distance from its jagged coral and defending army of spiny sea urchins, yet diving intermittently to sight see the brilliant swarms of reef fish that flickered and danced among the multicolored sea fans. She should have forgotten about the suit and asked for swim fins and a face mask. Next time, that’s how she would do it.

Next time?

Before Amanda realized, she had swum a quarter mile up the beach and noticed that early-warning glow of too much skin, sun, and saltwater exposure. Paddling ashore, she sought the shelter of the shade line at the head of the sand. She was going to have to walk back to her suit bare, but that prospect wasn’t particularly unpleasant. She picked wild-growing scarlet hibiscus and tucked it into her hair as she ambled back toward the path.

She was so deep in daydreaming that she overshot the mark. She looked back in puzzlement. No, she couldn’t be mistaken: There were her sandals. This was the place she had left her suit. The beach jacket too.

They were gone, and suddenly Amanda found herself no longer merely nude but naked.

He’d done it to her again! Amanda’s hands started to move in the two classic gestures of a female caught in the predicament. Angrily she straightened and forced them down to her sides. It was not as if he had not already seen everything that was available. She was not going to lose her dignity on top of her clothing.

“Makara!” she yelled at the top of her lungs.

“Yes,” he replied casually coming down out of the deeper shade of the seaside grove. He was barefoot and wearing a beach jacket, and his gray eyes studied her with frank and open appreciation. Instinctively she started to cover herself again, catching herself once more. Angrily, she snapped at herself that this was just like having her clothes taken in escape-and-evasion training.

Only it wasn’t and she was fully aware of it.

“All right, Makara, what happened to my suit?”

“Nothing happened to it,” he said matter-of-factly, “You neither needed it nor wanted it anymore so I simply sent it back to the house. You are very lovely as you are now and I intend to keep you this way for a time.”

“That was a dirty trick!”

He sighed as if explaining something to an obstinate child. “Amanda, be reasonable, nobody tricked you except yourself.”

“Are you going to deny you set this whole thing, and me, up?”

“I admit to recognizing a potential,” he replied, grinning. “Recognizing potential is what I do best. Be fair: At most I can be accused of opening a series of doors for you, and in each case you stepped through of your volition, of your own desire.”

“I did not!”

“Of course you did. You could have stopped my stripping you like this at any time. Have you been forced, coerced, had a hand lifted against you? I think not. Even now it’s not too late. We can lie and say that this is something neither of us want. You may have my beach jacket to walk back to the house in.”

He lifted a hand now, to reach out and brush the petal of the flower in her hair against her cheek. She found her knees trembling, and her own hands came up, trying vainly to shield herself, to hide the hardening of her nipples and the other signs of the growing, uncontrollable fire within her.

“Makara, please,” she whispered. “I’m naked out here.”

The back of his fingers caressed her cheek directly this time. “Of course you are. Naked and very beautiful and vulnerable and helpless, as you wished to be, just for a little while.”

The sunset was awesome in its gold and flame grandeur. They watched it together on the scratch bed made out of the lounge mattresses. They lay on their sides, spoon fashion, Makara’s right arm under her head as a pillow, his face buried in her slightly salt-sticky hair. Both of them finally satiated after an almost frightening time when neither of them could seem to have enough of the other. And yet, the hunger for more still lived, the fires banked by sheer exhaustion.

“You’re right,” Amanda said, the first conscious word she had spoken in many hours. “I did want this, but I don’t know why.”

“I could take that as an insult, you know,” Harconan replied his voice slurring slightly as he kissed the back of her neck.

“That’s not what I mean, love,” she replied wryly, reaching back to administer a caress. “I’ll acknowledge that your very obvious charms impressed me from the beginning. I mean, why was I drawn to this particular scenario you set up? I’m usually more… straightforward about such things.”

“Must you always be so analytical?” he inquired, delivering a nip to her shoulder blade.

“Yes,” Amanda replied honestly, starting to move the backs of her thighs in a gentle massaging motion.

“Mm, well, I’d tell you my theory, but I don’t want to interrupt what you are doing.”

“I’ll stop cold right now if you don’t, mister.”

“I hear the captain coming back already. Very well, woman, here is my theory. You fell into my trap because you wished to do so. You wanted to dice with the Devil and be defeated. You wanted to lose the game and quite literally be stripped of all your control, all of your considerable power, to be left as you are now, naked and helpless. In short, you wished to lose.”

She stopped moving her hips and looked back over her shoulder, her eyes wide. “That’s crazy.”

“No, it’s not. Not for people like you and me.” Harconan closed both of his arms around her, drawing her back against him in a fond hug. “Losing is a natural human experience, a part of living. We learn from it. But you and I are different from the normal herd.”

“How so?”

“We are, as they say in your country, high rollers. We live large and the stakes are high when we gamble. When we lose, the losses are great, in money, in policy, and in lives. We must win — anyway we can, whenever we step to the table. Thus, the battlefields where we dare to lose are few and far between. You found one on my beach this day. I hope the experience was interesting for you.”

“Yes… very. Makara?”

“What, beauty?”

“I must be back at the ship soon. Before I go, do you think you could… defeat me one more time?”