as he pumped her harder and harder, until he fell full against her, lathered in sweat, his breathing irregular, and then he was sobbing, clutching her waist, and off to her side she could see he was still clutching a picture of his wife. A moment later he staggered back from her, collapsing on the bed. “Get… get… out, you slut!” His voice was hoarse, and the next time he spoke, barely audible. “I’ll get her back — you’ll see. I’ll get her back—”
Francine ran toward the bedroom door, expecting it to be locked, but this time it sprang open. She didn’t know how he’d done it — the place was full of buttons and traps — and she didn’t care, moving quickly out into the living room, lifting the phone, punching the bar button. “Jimmy — you gotta help me, I—”
“You in the penthouse?”
“Yes. For God’s sake, Jimmy, he’s—”
“He use the knife on the bra?”
“What — yes, why?”
“Get out, I’m on my way up. Meet you at the elevator— Francine?”
“Yeah?”
“You get out real quick. He’s not finished, babe. Next cut won’t be your clothes.”
Francine dropped the phone, slipped off the chain, and a moment later was standing out in the hallway next to the elevator.
In the Il Trovatore, Jimmy had called over a waiter to fill in, walked quickly into the elevator and pushed the button for the penthouse floor. The moment the doors slid open, in she came, stark naked. Jimmy gave her his bar jacket, his other hand holding down the bypass lever, his thumb pushing the button for the thirteenth floor. She was shivering. “This is the only building in New York with a thirteenth floor,” Jimmy said suddenly. “Wanta know why?”
“He’s crazy.” Her eyes were closed, her breathing rapid.
“He has it to show he’s not superstitious,” said Jimmy. “Says he doesn’t believe in voodoo — destiny’s in your own hands. Always quoting some guy called Neatcha.”
“He’s crazy.”
“No doubt about it. But the money’s good.”
“Not if you’re dead.”
“You mean you won’t keep it?”
“I mean I’m never going back.”
“Sure,” said Jimmy, watching the floor lights flit by. “And I’m Father Christmas.” The elevator came to a halt. “A grand’s good money.”
“I mean it,” she said.
“I know you do. Listen, if you want a good proctologist — a few stitches — five hundred bucks. No questions. That leaves you with five, sweetass.”
“That supposed to be funny, Jimmy?”
“Don’t get shitty, Francine. Just a joke. You’re in one piece. Look on the bright side — you could be his wife.”
“Huh — wonder why she divorced him?”
“Not divorced,” said Jimmy, walking her to her apartment door. “Separated, honey. He isn’t finished with her yet — or her boyfriend, the crackerjack ace.” Jimmy seemed to like the idea. They heard someone coming up the exit stairs. They walked faster. Whoever it was stopped, then kept going up to the next floor.
“One of the boys,” said Jimmy. “Probably wants to make sure you’re still on the premises.”
“Oh my God,” she said.
“What?”
“My damn keys — I forgot my keys!”
“No sweat,” said Jimmy, taking a credit card from his wallet and working open the door.
Once inside, she handed him back the jacket. “Thanks, Jimmy.”
“Don’t try to leave him, babe, like that Lana Brentwood dame. If I know anything, he ain’t finished with her yet. And remember Hailey.” Jimmy could see she didn’t recognize the name. “Congressman,” he explained. “Didn’t do what La Roche wanted him to. Something about having his wife transferred. Congressman Hailey had an accident. La Roche’s tabloids said it was suicide. Months later La Roche’s wife was transferred to the Aleutians— another congressman in his pocket, I guess. So you be careful, hear?”
“Yeah.”
“Francine?”
“Yeah?”
“You enjoy it?”
CHAPTER NINE
For Marshal Yesov, Beijing had given the answer, his forward observers reporting that from the ruins of Kublai Khan’s Xanadu, 190 miles north of Beijing, on the Great North Plain, as far north as Manzhouli, just south of Siberia’s Argunskiy Mountains, and in the northeast as far up as the Black Dragon River that formed the northernmost Siberian-Chinese frontier, Chinese garrisons were being reinforced to repulse any incursion by the Americans through northern China’s river valleys into Siberia.
Yesov was so pleased with the Chinese action that he ordered all his forward observers and consulate liaison officers, like Ilya Latov in Harbin, to simply refer to the Amur as the “jiang”—the river — in deference to Chinese sensitivities. And if so much as one American footprint or one shell or one American helicopter was sighted straying, even for an instant, across the border, both Siberian and Chinese headquarters were to be notified immediately. Given their common watchdog duty, some of the Chinese and Siberian junior ranks formed congenial relations during their daily radio reports to each other on the status of the wide ribbon of frozen river, where temperatures had dropped to minus thirty in the passes. The cold was no special travail for the northern troops from Shenyang Military Region in China, or for the Siberians, but it was a torture for the Chinese regiments who came from south of the Yangtze. These southern Chinese regiments, some from as far away as Canton, hated the cold and were grateful that patrols were kept to a minimum so that the American helicopters buzzing up and down the border during the cease-fire would see nothing else but normal Chinese patrol activity along the western part of the Amur hump where the northern part of China’s Inner Mongolia jutted like a blunt spearhead around Hulun Lake into the northeasternmost sector of Siberian Mongolia.
Finding that his eyes got tired after only a small time at the computer screens, Freeman had the reports run out on hard copy and was now going over them for any signs of an earlier than normal thaw, at the same time trying to put himself in Yesov’s shoes should the Siberian commander decide to attack across the westernmost defensive line of the cease-fire, namely Lake Baikal. Freeman marked off possible Siberian jump-off points on the west bank of the four-hundred-mile lake, especially those down around the small port of Baikal at the southern end, which now lay in American hands under the terms of the cease-fire. If Yesov attacked, Freeman decided he would send in Stealth bombers to try to take out the line along the cliffs that formed the southern arm of the Trans- Siberian as it curved about the lake before dipping south into Mongolia. Even with Smart bombs, however, a rail line was notoriously difficult to take out, as ties and rails could by replaced in a matter of hours.
He poured another black coffee and looked at his watch. It was 0400, with only the cease-fire skeleton staff on duty. Even Dick Norton, who tried to keep pace with the general, had gone to bed. At times Freeman felt guilty for not having the time to think more about the welfare of his staff. He hadn’t even thought much about Doreen, his wife, who had died only a short time before and for whose funeral he couldn’t return — the battle for Ratmanov Island raging at the time. But he knew his first responsibility was to Second Army as a whole, knowing that a surprise attack, which neither Washington nor London nor any of the other Allies expected, could presage a disaster. Doreen, he was sure, would have been the first to understand. She had been the ideal serviceman’s wife — uncomplaining, ready to follow at a moment’s notice, and, if the truth be known, the source of much of his earlier strength when, as a young officer, he was trying to make his mark in a field crowded with other veterans of the Iraqi war. He had experienced both hosannas and hoots, the former when he’d led the raid on Pyongyang and
