still seemed an odd sight to some people. She caught the discreet stares of the other diners and guessed their thoughts to pass the time. A date who's been stood up? A wife on the make? A hooker taking a dinner break? The latter was her favorite.
A man came in and was seated two tables behind her. The restaurant was dimly lit and all she could tell about him as he passed was that he was tall. She was tempted to turn around and give him an appraising gaze, but could not overcome her inbred standards of modesty.
Suddenly she sensed a presence standing at her side, and her nostrils picked up the vague scent of a mari's shaving cologne.
'I beg your pardon, gorgeous creature,' a voice whispered in her ear, 'but could you see it in your heart to buy a poor, destitute wino a glass of muscatel?'
Startled, she cringed and looked up, her eyes wide.
The intruder's face was shadowed and indistinct. Then he came around and sat down opposite her. His hair was thick and black and the candlelight reflected a pair of warm sea-green eyes. His face was weathered and darkened by the sun. He stared at her as if anticipating a greeting, his features cool and expressionless, and then he smiled and the whole room seemed to brighten.
'Why, Heidi Milligan, can it be you don't remember me?' She trembled as a tide of recognition swept over her. 'Pitt! Oh my God, Dirk Pitt!'
Impulsively she placed her hands on his temples and pulled him toward her until their lips touched. Pitt's eyes took on a bemused look, and when Heidi released him, he sat back and shook his head.
'Amazing how a man can misjudge a woman. All I expected was a handshake.'
A blush tinted Heidi's cheeks. 'You caught me in a weak moment. I was sitting here feeling sorry for myself, and when I saw a friend…... well, I guess I got carried away.'
He held her hands in a gentle grip and the smile faded. 'I was saddened to hear of Admiral Bass's passing. He was a good man.'
Her eyes grew dark. 'The end was painless. After he went into a coma he just slipped away.'
'God only knows how the Vixen affair might have turned out if he hadn't volunteered his services.'
'Remember when we met?'
'I came to interview the admiral at his inn near Lexington, Virginia, where he retired.'
'And I thought you were some government official who wanted to badger him. I treated you dreadfully.'
Pitt paused and stared at her. 'You two were very close.'
She nodded. 'We lived together for nearly eighteen months. He came from the old school, but he wouldn't consider marriage. Said it was stupid for a young woman to tie herself to a man with one foot in the grave.'
Pitt could see the tears. beginning to form and he quickly changed the subject. 'If you don't mind my saying, you're the image of a high-school girl on her first prom date.'
'The perfect compliment at the perfect moment.' Heidi straightened and peered around the tables. 'I don't mean to take you away from anything. You're probably meeting someone.'
'No, I'm stag.' He smiled with his eyes. 'I'm between projects and decided to relax with a quiet supper.'
'I'm glad we met,' she said shyly.
'You have but to give the command, and I'm your slave till dawn.'
She looked at him and the sights and sounds of the dining room faded into the background.
She stared demurely down at the table setting. 'I'd like that very much.'
When they entered Heidi's hotel room, Pitt tenderly picked her up and carried her to the bed.
'Do not move,' he said. 'I'll do everything.'
He began to undress her, very slowly. She couldn't remember ever having a man undress her so completely, from her earrings to her shoes. He made as little contact with his fingers as possible and the anticipation mushroomed inside her to an exquisite agony.
Pitt was not to be hurried. She wondered how many other women he had sweetly tortured like this. The passion began to reflect in Pitt's depthless eyes and it excited her to an even higher level.
Suddenly his lips came down onto hers. They were warm and moist. She responded as his arms tightened around her hips and pulled her to him. She seemed to dissolve and a moan escaped her throat.
Just when the blood felt as though it would burst inside and her muscles pulsated uncontrollably, she opened her mouth to scream. It was then Pitt penetrated her and she came and came in a sweeping rage of pleasure that never seemed to end.
The most luxurious hour of sleep comes not in the beginning or middle but just prior to awakening. It is then that one dream falls upon another in a kaleidoscope of vivid fantasies. To be interrupted by the ringing of a telephone and thrust back to conscious reality is as tormenting as the scraping of fingernails across a blackboard.
Heidi's agony was compounded by an accompanying knock on her hotel room door. Her mind fogged from sleep, she lifted the receiver and mumbled, 'Hold on a minute, please.' Then she slid from bed and stumbled halfway across the room before realizing she was naked.
Grabbing a terrycloth robe from her suitcase, she threw it over her shoulders and cracked the door. A bellhop slipped around the barrier with the ease of an eel and set a large vase of white roses on a table. Still in a haze, Heidi tipped him and returned to the phone. 'Sorry for the delay. This is Commander Milligan.'
'Ah, Commander,' came the voice of Jack Murphy, the Senate historian, 'did I wake you?'
'I had to get up anyway,' she said, disguising the urge-to-kill tone in her voice.
'I thought you'd like to know your request triggered a recollection in my mind. So I ran a search last night after closing time and came up with something most interesting.'
Heidi rubbed the cobwebs from her eyes. 'I'm listening.'
'There were no photographs on file of a treaty signing during nineteen fourteen,' said Murphy. 'I did find, however, an old shot of William Jennings Bryan, who was Wilson's secretary of state at the time; his undersecretary, Richard Essex; and Harvey Shields, identified in a caption only as a representative of His Majesty's government, entering a car.'
'I fail to see a connection,' said Heidi.
'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to mislead you. The photograph itself tells us very little. But on the back there is a small penciled notation in the lower left corner that is barely legible. It gives the date, May twentieth, nineteen fourteen, and says: 'Bryan leaving White House with North American Treaty.' Heidi clutched the phone. 'So it really existed.'
'My guess is it was only a proposed treaty.' Murphy's pride at successfully meeting a challenge was obvious in his tone. 'If you would like a copy of the photograph we must charge a small fee.'
'Yes…... yes, please. Could you also make an enlargement of the writing on the back?'
'No problem. You can pick up the prints anytime after three o'clock.'
'That will be terrific. Thank you.'
Heidi hung up the phone and lay back on the bed, happily basking in the feeling of accomplishment. There was a connection after all. Then she remembered the flowers. A note was attached to one of the white roses.
You look ravishing out of uniform. Forgive me for not being near when you awoke.
Dirk
Heidi pressed the rose against her cheek and her lips parted in a lazy smile. The hours spent with Pitt returned as though observed through a pane of frosted glass, the sights and sounds fusing together in a dreamy sort of mist. He was like a phantom who had come and gone in a fantasy. Only the touch of their bodies lingered with clarity, that and a glowing soreness from within.
With reluctance she forced the reverie from her mind and picked up a Washington phone directory from the nightstand. Holding a long fingernail beneath a tiny printed number, she dialed and waited. On the third ring a voice answered.
'Department of State, can I help you?'
Shortly before two o'clock in the afternoon, John Essex pulled up his coat collar against a frigid north breeze and began to check the trays of his raft-culture grown mollusks. Essex's sophisticated farming operation, situated on Coles Point in Virginia, planted seed oysters, tending and cultivating them in ponds beside the Potomac River.
The old man was engrossed in taking a water sample when he heard his name called. A woman bundled in
