The Vulcan Disaster

Chapter Seventeen

“My name is Harry Archer,” I said, “and I am Miss Komarova’s new astrologer.”

“So?” the blonde said, unimpressed. She flipped her convertible shades up and had another look at me. “And who sent you out here to bother me? What is that to me?”

I gave her another look up and down. What I could see was something like ninety-nine percent lovely bronzed skin and the rest rubberized cloth. There were maybe forty other people on the beach.

A week had passed. Hawk had pulled strings to expedite the mating dance of getting me my new job, and now here I was in the south of France in my new denim windbreaker, boating shorts and espadrilles, getting the eye from another one of Alexandra Komarova’s hired help. I was getting fidgety. “I... I was sent here by the little man at the desk,” I said.

“Ah, Philippe,” she said. Her smile was wry. “He’s a bit Spoleto for your taste? A wonder you did not get assaulted. Ah, he always sticks me with the orientations. But now that I see you...” The red lips pursed thoughtfully. We were on a sort of semi-private beach at Nice, where Alexandra Komarova maintained a residence, an office, and a personal staff to manage them when she wasn’t cruising the seven seas on her father’s yacht, the Vulcan. I’d checked in at the big building less than an hour before, been assigned a suite and shown around the service floor, and, on the little male receptionist’s advice, had changed and gone in search of further enlightenment. And here she was, my assigned tour guide, a gorgeous peroxide blonde with skin tanned — all over — the color of good Utah honey. The way that little swim suit kept hitching this way and that I figured that if there were six square inches of flesh she hadn’t shown me yet it must be on the bottoms of her feet.

“Well,” she said at last. “You’ll do, I guess.” Her smile mocked me, but not in contempt. “I am Vicki Weiner. Welcome to our... operation. Whatever you may choose to call it.” I was trying to peg the accent. No dice so far. She stooped now and picked up her little beach bag, sitting on the sharp pebbles next to her tall wooden clogs. When she made any kind of extreme move like that the little swim suit just gave up in disgust. “So,” she said, standing. “I see it’s my job to... how you say...”

“Show me the sights?” I volunteered. “Miss Weiner, I am at your disposal.”

“Splendid,” she said. And she wheeled and walked away, inviting me to follow. The view from the back was every bit as nice as the front view had been. I kept the pace behind her.

The beach all but vanished around a rock abutment, though, and she had to go ankle-deep in the cold Mediterranean to get around it. I took my shoes off and followed. The thinning crowd that had spotted the earlier strand disappeared altogether here. The beach was totally empty for a couple of hundred yards before a sheer cliff cut it off, plunging into the sea in an almost vertical line. White water-birds slicing across the black rock gave the place a sort of solarized-photo look broken only by the blue sea and sky.

As soon as our feet touched dry land again she turned and matter-of-factly handed me the beach bag. “Here,” she said, unzipping its top as I held it and pulling out a rolled blanket. “I’ll spread this. You reach down in the bottom of the bag and get our lunch out.”

There was a little wind blowing sand my way; I turned my back and blocked the dirt headed for the bag. She came prepared: sandwiches, salad, everything in its little plastic container; even a couple of bottles of golden Pilsner Urquell beer. “Lunch for two?” I said, puzzled, picking the bag out and setting the little knapsack down. “You were expecting me?”

“No,” she said behind my back. I dug in the canvas bag looking for a bottle opener. “I had an appointment with someone else. He did not show up.”

“The more fool him,” I said, turning. “Now me, I’m totally at your disp...”

That was one sentence I never finished. Probably I never will. There was Miss Weiner stepping daintily out of those tall clogs, those delicious breasts bared to the warm sun by the little bra she was engaged in folding and dropping softly on the blanket. As I watched, her hands went to the side-straps of her Lilliputian bikini pants and shoved them down... all the way down to her ankles.

And damned if she wasn’t a real blonde after all.

I looked up and caught her eyes on me. They were sea-green, humorous, self-assured. The red lips on the wide, witty mouth smiled mockingly at me. “Well, Mr. Archer?” she said. “This is France, you know. Surely you’re not shocked.” She sank down on the blanket, sitting crosslegged like a yogi.

“Come, join me, Mr. Archer,” she said. “And what part of the United States did you say you were from? Iowa? Kansas?”

“I didn’t say,” I said. I sat down beside her, dug into the bag again, and found the opener this time. I cracked the pilsner caps and handed her a beer. I won’t say I didn’t get an eyeful. That golden body just jumped out and socked you a good one. I don’t think even Philippe, with his distinct disinclination going for him, could have looked away from her right then. She touched her bottle to mine with a tiny clink. “Prost,” she said.

“Votre santé,” I said. “I have here one paté sandwich, I think, and one... hmmm...”

She saved me the trouble; she grabbed the second one and sank strong white teeth into it. She smiled at me, chewing. I shrugged and bit in. It was pate, and it was excellent. The sun, the cool breeze, the food, the beer, and the beautiful woman stark naked beside me on the beach blanket on this utterly deserted beach... I was beginning to like this leg of the trip, even if I didn’t have the foggiest idea where it all was leading.

“You,” she said. “You... read the stars?”

I had another sip of beer. “Well, yes. I...”

“And you believe that these little dots up in the sky affect our lives?” Her smile was mocking as ever. “That in alignment of the planets can make this man rich, this man poor?”

That wasn’t my favorite subject, really. I wanted to change it somehow. “Well,” I said, “the contemporary astrologer doesn’t tend to speak of these things in terms of cause and effect any more, you know. The concept of synchronicity...”

“Oh, no matter,” she said. “Mr. Archer, I think you are a phony. That is the word, right? Phony?”

“What do you mean?” The alarm bell went off. Quietly.

“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t expose you. Ah... at least not that way.” She smiled, not so mockingly this time, and reached both golden arms over to pull the zipper of my wind-breaker down slowly, all the way. Then her hands pulled it gently away from my chest.

She stopped when she saw the bandage — but only for a moment. Her lips made a sympathetic moue. “Oh, you’re hurt. Here, let me...” And this time she was a little gentler with me, taking the coat the rest of the way off.

“I see,” I said, “that I’m going to have another one of those weird suntans.”

“My... how did you do that?” she said. I’d debated doing something with body makeup about the bruises that stuck out from under the bandages all around — dark blue-black bruises on shoulders and arms and kidneys — but had given up on it An integrated excuse was best all around.

“Auto accident,” I lied. “I... ah... rolled an Aston Martin near Carmel. That’s how I lost my last job. The employer was in the back.”

“Remind me not to ride with you,” she said. “What happened? Had he found you out?”

“What makes you think I’m a phony?” I said. “You...”

“Oh, that,” she said. She waved one tanned hand at me, up and down. “Astrologers are unhealthy little men who look like night clerks at some dingy off-season hotel,” she pronounced it clark; British education, then. I was still working on the accent. Not French, German or Italian. Three down. “You, on the other hand, weigh perhaps...”

“One eighty,” I said. “That’s pounds. I wouldn’t know how many kilos offhand.”

“Yes, and you are athletic. No. I would not buy you for a star-gazer, Mr. Archer. I do not know what your game is, but...”

“I haven’t got any game,” I said, biting down hard on the sandwich again. “I’m just earning a living.”

“Oh, come now,” she said. One brown hand was on my thigh. “You don’t have to hide it from me, just Alexandra. And perhaps Elsa, and Boris, and Michel. All the rest of us are phonies just like you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, take Philippe. He is supposed to be La Komarova’s personal secretary. He is not. He is her hashish connection. I, I am supposed to be her hairdresser. Hal Alexandra does not need a hairdresser. She...”

“I’ve never seen her,” I said. That part was the truth, anyhow.

“I’ll point her out. If, indeed, you do not know her immediately from her manner. She is a rich father’s brat. She is all the brats of all rich fathers rolled into one. But hairdresser? Bah! I am a painter, Mr. Archer, and a good one. I am here because she wants her portrait done. Not once but many times. Always when she is on drugs. All...” She did not blush, after all, but she did stop and start again. “All nudes. She has terrible taste. The intention is always erotic. She will bring a lover in and pose, ostensibly for me, actually for him. She will talk — bed talk — to him as I paint her. You realize she is very high during all this. For her I hardly exist any more. All the better. If she is concentrating on her lover of the moment I hardly have to go through the motions of painting her. She never asks to see the portrait, anyhow. All the better, I say. As long as her lovers keep her busy she does not grow amorous toward me. I remember once...” But she shuddered here. She looked at me again. “You, Mr. Archer. Who hired you?”

“Why, I suppose Philippe did. He handled the application I sent in with my photographs.”

She shuddered again. “You see? You’re a phony too. If you cast so much as a single horoscope while you are on board the Vulcan it will be a miracle.” Her mouth shut tight in a wry smile; the brown hand gripped my leg hard. “I... I’m sorry...” The green eyes, looking up at me, were penitent. Were something else, too; she was near tears. There were goosebumps on her naked shoulders.

And there was a moment there when my lovely, blonde, naked blanket partner nearly melted into my arms... and it passed. She picked up my jacket and threw it over her shoulders; her gaze, pointed out to sea, was full of self-loathing. The green eyes brimmed with bitter tears.

“If you don’t like it,” I said, “why don’t you leave?”

She looked at me oddly. “Yes,” she said. “Why don’t I?” But she didn’t answer me. She bit her lip and shook the jacket off her body and lay back, taking the sun. She forced all expression off her lovely face, looking up at the sun like that, and only then put on a pair of dark glasses from the beach bag. She didn’t say anything more.

“I gather,” I said, “we’re going on a cruise shortly.”

“Yes,” she said at last. “The Vulcan is due in port tomorrow. It will lie off Nice at anchor; we will go out in a motor launch.”

“Where’s it coming from?” I said. “Philippe didn’t tell me.”

“Oh... outside Gibraltar, I think. The Canaries, perhaps. The African coast. I’m not sure. Does it matter?”

“I guess not. Where’s it going?”

“Greece. Cyprus. The Levant.”

I’ll bet, I thought. I didn’t believe that business about the Canaries, either. Not with Angola on the way. I couldn’t wait to start finding out what the devil was going on. Anyhow, I would have put a month’s pay, right then, on the incidence of another Middle Eastern outbreak before the year was out. That orientation Hawk had given me on Komaroff’s arms operation had been enough to raise the hair on my head every time I thought hard about it. Where Komaroff trod, the grass died and would grow no more. It was as simple as that. “Do you ever see much of Mr. Komaroff?” I said. “I mean, I understand he and Alexandra Komarova have their own different worlds.”

“Komaroff?” she said. “No, no. He very much sticks to his own quarters these days. I think he has been ill. Why? He does not concern you.” She raised her upper body on her elbows, looking at me. “Come, Mr. Archer. The sun will heal your bruises...”

She looked up suddenly. Past my shoulder, at something behind me. No, make that someone behind me: his long shadow advanced along her brown legs. Her expression was one of quick rage.

I turned as fast as I could without shaking the ribs up any worse than I had to. It wasn’t fast enough. A fist as big as Walter Corbin’s caught me one over the ear and laid me out across Vicki Weiner’s brown body. The ribs felt like somebody had shot me there with something like an elephant gun.

“Constantin...” the girl said. She was trying to push me off. It didn’t help the ribs any. I shoved loose, gritted my teeth, and rolled over past her, keeping her between me and whoever had hit me until I could get my legs under me.

When I did — struggling up to my feet, muttering unkind words under my breath — I got a look at him at last. He was one of your beach-boy types, with the bunched-up bicep and deltoid muscles that look so good under the lights in posing contests. Strong as hell. Not somebody to let close to you. His eyes were on me but his words were for her. “Here... what you do with this... this swine...”

“None of your business!” she yelled. It was a good lusty yell; I had to say that for her, she didn’t screech like a fishwife. “I told you I come and go where I please. I gave you one more chance and you did not come.” And there it went off into rapid-fire French, as quick on the tongue as the incredible Spanish the women talk in Madrid. She still had an accent, I noticed, but she had a fine vocabulary of gutter argot. It began with telling him his mother was a cow and went rapidly downhill from there.

I stood up and circled away from her. I noticed she’d gotten into my jacket. I didn’t think a good look at me would scare him. I don’t, after all, have those pretty bunched-up muscles and all, having trained for the kind you can actually do something with. And the rib bandage only added to his self-confidence: he was going to be insufferable in a minute.

I gave him another look. He was about my height; his hair was a shock of unruly black, and there was that Levantine olive cast to his skin and that definitely Mediterranean nose that told me he wasn’t standing too far from his birthplace. “Come on,” I said disgustedly. “I don’t feel like chasing you, and I haven’t got all day to wait for you to come to me. Let’s get it over with.”

He showed me a lot of white teeth. And the bellow he let out at me as he charged was dark and full of phlegm. The big fists were raised; one of them cocked back as he came forward in a rush.

I didn’t feel like screwing around this time. My ribs hurt and I was feeling nasty. I’d have a nice headache after that wallop he’d given me. I stepped aside and gave him a nice medium-strength karate chop in the Adam’s apple, not enough to put him out, just enough to drop him to his knees, gasping and holding his throat. Then I aimed another one at his collarbone and only pulled it at the last moment. It landed him on his face on the rocky beach.

I looked down at him. He was still awake. I picked him up by the shirtcollar and dragged him to the waterline and dropped him on his kisser in two inches of ice-cold water. It woke him up all the way. He got up looking worse than I felt. He didn’t even think about coming my way. He did give me a bad glare though. I shrugged and felt my aching ribs with one hand, watching him plod heavily away.

I turned and looked at the girl. She held the two halves of her swimsuit in one hand; the jacket was still thrown over her shoulders. She was looking at me with new eyes, and precisely what was in them I couldn’t say. After a moment her eyes dropped; she turned her back and slipped into her ridiculous little suit under the jacket.

“What,” I said, “was that the hell all about?”

“He thinks I am his. I have not encouraged him. I had a date with him earlier, just to keep the peace. He was late. I went with you to spite him.” She turned to face me, the bikini in place now. She handed me the jacket. “I am afraid you have made a terrible enemy. I do not know what he will do. I am sorry. I was foolish. I have caused you great trouble. Please... please forgive...”

“Never mind,” I said. “You could show me where the booze cabinet is, though. The doctor who put me in this corset is going to kill me when he sees this.”

“Poor Mr. Archer.” She moved close to me and put one soft hand on my arm. “I... I will try to make it up to you, for my foolishness. Please let me. Please forgive...”

And now she did melt into my arms. Briefly. And the green eyes that looked up at me out of that lovely face were concerned, deeply troubled. Then she kissed me, quick and hard, and it was my turn to step back and do a double-take. “No problem,” I said. “Not if you can find me a drink. And... Miss Weiner...”

“Vicki, please...”

“Okay, Vicki. And it’s Harry, right?”

“Oh, yes.” She smiled again and took my hand, leading me around the headland again. When we reached the beach I’d found her on I felt both of her little hands on mine, grasping hard, as she walked close, very close to me.

It’d been a hell of a meeting. No place to go but up.