War Lord

Twenty-five

The rooms at the Palace had been thoroughly cleaned, but that didn’t stop me checking under the bed like a nervous six year old. Satisfied that there weren’t any more surprises laying low, I opened my laptop for the first time in a while and checked my email. I ignored the in-box clogged with the usual cc’ed crap, and sent a note to Arlen letting him know that I was okay, in case he was wondering, and to provide him with some details of my travel plans. I also added that I was enjoying my vacation hugely, thereby muddying the waters if someone believed I should be someplace else, earning my pay. I sent it off and received an answer almost immediately — an automated out-of-office reply. The guy must’ve taken more vacation time and headed back to St Barts and Marnie. I could hardly blame him. A call to Delaney was next on the list.

‘Hey,’ he said, recognizing my voice. ‘Why you callin’ me? Y’all s’posed to be takin’ it easy, lookin’ at all the pretty nurses.’

‘I’m cured. It’s a miracle. Listen, can you do me a favor?’

‘So you’re not callin’ from the hospital?’

‘No.’

‘Aren’t they keepin’ you overnight?’

‘I want to thank you for all your help,’ I said.

‘No problem. I’m sorry things got so fucked up.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sounds like you’re leavin’.’

‘Tomorrow. Petinski has already left.’

‘I know. She called me.’

‘Do me a favor?’

‘Sure, what do you need?’

‘Whatever you’ve got that’s recent on Dar es Salaam — pirate activity and so forth. Plus anything you can give me on Gamal Abdul-Jabbar and his current employer, Mohammed Ali-Bakr al Mohammed. Use my secured email address.’

‘No problems.’

‘What resources has the Company got on the ground in Dar?’

‘They have a nice building, but the people there are not chilled like me. Unless it’s official, take my advice and stay off their radar. Make waves for them and they’re likely to pull y’all in and you’ll wake up somewhere out of the way, like Auckland, New Zealand.’

‘I’ll keep it in mind. And thanks for everything.’

‘Come back next year for Carnival.’

I said I would, along with a bunch of other things that added up to goodbye, and ended the call. Next, I fixed a Glenfiddich with rocks, took a sip and managed to stop myself throwing up, but only after a couple of dry retches. I cursed the doctor for putting a temporary hold on my hobby and called the concierge desk. I needed a travel agent and I figured a hotel like this would have a preferred supplier with proven reliability. An hour and a half spent patiently mucking around with airline schedules and the agent had me booked on the six a.m. to São Paulo with connections through to the only lead I had — Dar es Salaam. The trip would take thirty-six hours, and that was assuming all those connections lined up as planned. I didn’t think much of my chances but I didn’t see that I had another choice. The nuke was still out there somewhere and the clock was still ticking, but there were other agents on that. As far as I knew no other resources were looking for Randy Sweetwater, and he was still out there somewhere too. Emma Shilling was also on my mind. Who was going to avenge her?

I called room service next, ordered a club sandwich, latched the front door as well as the doors onto the balcony, and took a bath, avoiding the shower. When I was done I threw on the robe and fiddled with the TV in an attempt to get it working. I gave up, opened up the minibar again and considered giving the Glenfiddich another try. The doorbell rang and I walked over and checked the peephole. Outside in the hall was Gracia from the front desk, the tall, striking woman with the big brown eyes and thick black hair who’d found my fiancée-to-be Petinski and me a room with a busted TV. Accompanying her was a guy pushing a trolley.

I opened the door. ‘Room service, senhor,’ the room-service guy said as he wheeled in the cart, setting a silver-domed tray down on the coffee table. I checked under the dome, confirmed club sandwich, signed the docket, tipped him and off he went.

‘Senhor Cooper,’ Gracia said when he’d gone, concern on her features. She nodded at my hand. ‘You are okay now?’

‘The doc says I only got forty years left.’

The concern remained on her face. She cleared her throat. ‘Please, I wanted to come and say in person, on behalf of the Copacabana Palace, how unhappy we feel about what has happened.’

‘That’s okay, Gracia, it was just one of those things,’ I said with an offhand wave, as if finding a black mamba on the bed was like discovering a hair in my soup.

‘The bill for your stay here has been — how do you say? — canceled.’

That was a surprise. ‘Canceled?’

‘There is no charge, Senhor Cooper.’ She handed me the invoice with the balance showing zero reals.

‘Thank you. That’s very generous,’ I said. And now I wasn’t going to have to explain a bill to Air Force finance that ran to quite a few thousand bucks. I should’ve ordered lobster.

‘Also, I am sad that your woman and you, you are not…’ She muttered something to herself in Portuguese in frustration. ‘I do not know the word. Casar…’ She took a ring off her finger and put it back on.

‘She told you the engagement was off?’ I said. That was so Petinski — clearing the decks.

‘Sim.’ Gracia nodded. ‘She told me you are not get married. I am feel apologize for you.’

‘You feel sorry for me?’

‘No, no, I feel sad for you. My English is okay, but could be better. I speak some of many languages, but none so well as Portuguese.’

‘I don’t suppose you know any useful Swahili?’ I asked her on the off chance.

‘What is Swahili?’

‘It’s what they speak in Dar es Salaam.’

‘Oh, you are leaving us?’

‘Tomorrow — early.’

She gave me another brief smile and took a step toward the door. ‘Well, I must go. It has been a big day for you, I think. You rest.’

Gracia had soft brown eyes with long lashes, and as I’d already noted she was tall at maybe five eleven. Tall enough to be a topless tall. An open blouse revealed a hint of a purple and pink lace pushup bra. Looked to me like maybe Carnival was already going on under there.

‘Hey, here’s a thought,’ I said, spider-to-the-fly-like. ‘Why don’t you have a drink with me before I leave?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I must go.’

‘You’d be doing me a favor. As you said, it’s been a big day: I’ve been attacked by a killer snake, spent most of the day in an ice bath, and my fiancée has walked out on me.’

Gracia hesitated.

I spun out a little more web. ‘Never mind. Look, I understand: you’re on duty and I don’t want to get you into trouble. Thanks so much for everything.’ I held out my good hand to shake.

‘Why did your fiancée leave?’ Gracia asked, taking my hand.

‘I really don’t know.’ I looked at the floor and shook my head, the image of pathetic jilted blubber. ‘She just… left.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘Me, too.’

Gracia glanced at the clock on the DVD player, the fly not even realizing that it was caught. ‘I am not on duty now. Perhaps one drink. You have cachaça?’

‘I think so,’ I said, making a move in the direction of the minibar.

‘Please, I will do it. You must eat your dinner. You want cachaça also?’

‘Sure, I love the stuff,’ I said with every intention of leaving the drink untouched. I took the dome off my sandwich, removed the toothpicks and took a bite. It tasted good.

‘Did you love her?’ Gracia asked, setting a glass tinkling with ice down on the table.

‘Yeah,’ I said. I knew this lie was going to get difficult if I didn’t change the subject. I looked for her engagement ring. From memory it was a freshly cut diamond set in white gold, or maybe platinum, but it wasn’t on her finger. Hmm, this was tricky. Ignore it, or mention it? ‘Your ring,’ I said, rolling the dice. ‘You’re not wearing it.’

Gracia pushed the ice down into her glass with a long pink manicured fingernail. ‘My engagement. It is also…’ She made a gesture with her hand like whatever was in it had gone poof, into the air, and she couldn’t care less about it.

‘What happened?’

‘My girlfriend. She went on his Facebook. She told me there were photos.’ Gracia took a long drink, her throat moving, the ice making music in the glass. She rolled the glass between her palms. ‘I looked too. The woman he was with… it was my mother step.’

‘He was doing your stepmother?’

She nodded. ‘Sim.’

Gracia sat upright, threw her head back and held her thick hair off her neck. Then she rested her hands on my ribs and blew air upward across her face to cool down. My turn next. She blew on my chest, her lips forming a perfect O. I reached up and ran the tips of my fingers along the top of a breast, the gentle curve reaching toward a dark nipple, the sheen of perspiration on her skin. Damn, this woman had control.

‘Where’d you learn to move like that?’ I asked her.

‘Samba,’ she said, lifting her ass off my hips and rolling it in a circular motion a couple of times while keeping me inside her, demonstrating the motion. Little Coop was still hypersensitive and his jangled nerves made me catch my breath.

She stopped moving and went all serious. ‘Why don’t you stay another day, maybe two?’

‘I’d like to, but I can’t.’

Gracia got off me, kneeled on the bed and held her breasts like she was lifting fruit, presenting them to me, an offering. ‘You like these?’ she asked.

‘Sure.’

‘You have them again if you stay.’

‘That would usually be an unbeatable offer, but I have to go back to work.’

‘What is your work?’

‘I chase bad guys.’

‘Then you are a good guy?’ She shook her head. ‘No, I think you are a bad guy too. Especially with women.’

The comment made me think of Shilling. The memory of how we found her — what von Weiss had done to her — made me shudder.

‘So now you are cold?’ she asked, running her hand along the gooseflesh on my good arm. ‘This, I can fix.’

Reaching down, Gracia pulled up the sheet from the bottom of the bed and it billowed over us like a parachute canopy. As it settled, descending slowly, full of her scent and perfume, she wriggled down and I felt the warm wetness of her mouth close around me.