The ship was moving south through the Cyclades, before swinging a great arc past the Peloponnesus, and northwest to the Adriatic at a steady fifteen knots. Two hundred miles at an unwavering fifteen knots. They would be in Venice in three days.
After breakfast Craig went to the swimming pool on the foredeck. Naxos, he learned, was cloistered with his secretaries; Philippa was still asleep. There was time for a swim. At the other end of the pool Pia lay on a mattress, her body dark, even in the sunlight, and glistening with oil. She waved to Craig, and he went into the water in a flat, smashing dive, then swam toward her, using an ugly, powerful crawl, whose only virtue was utility. It was fast. He'd learned to swim like that in the cold North Sea. He heaved himself up from the water beside Pia, and a steward came up and handed him a towel.
'VVould you like a drink, sir?' asked the steward.
'He'll have some of mine,' said Pia. 'Bring a glass.'
The steward brought a tumbler, and Pia reached for a jug, poured out two glasses of a shining, golden fluid.
'Orange juice?' asked Craig.
'In a way,' Pia said.
'What does that mean?'
'It is diluted with champagne,' said Pia.
'Don't you ever give up?' Craig asked.
'Kicks,' she said. 'I've got to live for kicks. After all I am a starlet.'
She sipped her golden firewater and Craig lay down beside her. As he did so his foot slipped on the wet tiles by the pool, kicking his glass into it.
'Sorry,' he said, '111 get another one.'
'Don't bother,' Pia said at once. 'We'll share mine.'
She wasn't that good an actress. All that had gone into the pool was orange juice and champagne. She sipped again, and held the glass to Craig's hps.
'Nice?' she asked.
I'll learn to live with it,' said Craig.
She was sitting up beside him, her weight supported on her arms, that were thrust out behind her. The pose brought her torso into superb relief, emphasizing its rich curves, the firm, heavy roundness of flesh that the scarlet bikini did an irreducible minimum to conceal. Her eyes held his, then she breathed in, hard.
'I like your dress,' said Craig.
She breathed out in a burst of laughter, then leaned over him, the weight of her breasts just touching his chest, her lips soft on his mouth. Craig's arms came round her, held her for a moment, then let her go.
'Who will I have to fight this time?' he asked.
T am sorry about last night. Honestly,' said Pia. 'Next time, I promise you, he won't be anywhere near.' The waiter came back.
'Suntan oil, sir?' he asked, and handed a bottle to
Craig.
'Thanks,' said Craig, and lay down again. 'I will rub your back,' said Pia.
He felt the cool smoothness of the oil on his back, then rolled over to feel it on his shoulders, his chest, Pia's fingers moved slowly, dehghtfully across his body, then paused at the rawness of the scar he'd received from Bauer.
'Were you in an accident?' she asked.
'Skin diving,' Craig said. 'I cut myself on a clam
shell.'
Tt must have been very sharp.' 'Like a knife,' said Craig. 'Tell me about your pictures.'
They had been religious epics mostly, and Pia the
Aad virgm from the right just before the hons came on. 5red had two tests for English companies, one for Hollywood. They'd come to nothing.
'That is how it goes,' she said. 'But it will change. There is time. I'm just twenty-six. With luck I've got ten years.'
'And then?'
'I'll sleep,' she said. 'Sleep and sleep. Without pills and all by myself.' She paused. 'Perhaps you—sometimes if I wake up—' her nails nipped the muscles of his thigh; he stared into the richness of her breasts. She was stupid, sweet, and probably dangerous, but she held tremendous sexual promise. Craig all but groaned aloud when Philippa came up and lay down beside them.
'John,' she said, 'you do smell pretty.'
She wore a white beach robe. Below it her legs were long, rounded, golden.
'That's the suntan oil you keep,' said Craig.
'No,' said Pia. 'I cheated. I used mine. You smell just like me.' She offered a brown shoulder to Craig, who sniffed delicately at the little mole in the center.
'If I went back to London now, I'd be arrested,' he
said.
Pia was looking beyond him into Flip's blue eyes. She saw the signal there, rose, and stretched.
T think I'll just look over my things for tonight,' she said. 'Bye, John.'
Craig watched the slow ticktock of her hips as she
left.
'She's working hard on you,' said Flip. 'Are you tMnking of being a producer?'
'Too dangerous,' said Craig.
She unloosed the cord of her robe, let it slip from her shoulders. Below it she wore a one-piece swimsuit of white nylon, high in the front, low in the back. Against it her skin was pale gold, her hair almost white. Craig reached out for the suntan oil.
'Shall I rub your back?'
'No,' she said. T might like it. Let's swim instead.'
For a while they swam, fooling, splashing, competing half-seriously, each testing the other. She was a magnificent swimmer, and she dived neatly, elegantly, without fear. Craig worked hard to keep up with her. Then more guests arrived, and Craig climbed out of the pool and dried himself. The carafe of orange juice gleamed in the sunlight as if there were a light inside it. Beside it something else lay glittering. The botde of suntan oil the waiter had brought. Craig picked it up and went to his cabin.
The oil was delicately scented, heavy, silvery-clear, as the maker's label claimed it would be. Craig poured a little on to the white-painted wood of his bed, and watched. Nothing happened. He grinned, shook his head, and sat down to think about Venice. About this Trottia character. They all had to be watched. It was just as well he'd made Andrews send word for Grierson to join them. There were Pia, Swyven, and Tavel to be watched too. Or maybe he should leave that to Grierson. Grierson investigating Pia— a labor of love. He decided on a drink before lunch, showered, and started to put on his clothes. From the corner of his eye he could see that there was a bug of some kind on his bed. The brown showed up against the white paint. He went over to it and looked more closely. The bug was just the woodwork, showing up where the paint had been eaten away by the suntan oil. He took a piece of paper from his writing table, and held it to the wood. It was thick paper, heavy, expensive. The acid on the woodwork melted it like polythene in a flame. He looked at his watch. It took twenty minutes to act, but then it worked like hghtning. He thought of his back, and Pia's hands.
* Chapter 10 «?
There were too many languages. The man Dyton-Blease spoke English, always, and English she could manage very well, but in the palazzo the servants spoke Italian to each other, and Trottia sulked sometimes because she could speak no French. Trottia and the servants presented other problems, too. Trottia was the first man she had ever met who liked to pretend that he was a woman, and who disliked women at that. This meant that he disliked her, and therefore had to be watched. Her father had warned her to beware of Frangistani enemies; they had no honor, they were worse than Arabs. The servants presented another problem. They were not, Dyton- Blease assured her, slaves. On the contrary. Sometimes they seemed more like masters, so that when one of them, a seamstress, had stuck a pin in her at a fitting and she had slapped her, a swinging, open-handed smack,
