“Thrillers,” wheezed Rowse. “Thrillers nowadays have to be accurate. Can’t get away with vague generalizations. Look at le Carrй, Clancy—you think they don’t research every last detail? It’s the only way nowadays.”
“Is it now? And a certain gentleman from across the water that you were talking with last night—he one of your co-writers?”
“That’s between us. You’d better ask him.”
“Oh, I did, Sass-man. This morning, by phone. And he asked me to keep an eye on you. If it were left to me, I’d have the lads drop you off a very tall mountain. But my friend asked me to keep an eye on you. Which I will do, day and night, until you leave. But that was all he asked me. So just between us, here’s a little something for the old times.”
Kane and O’Herlihy waded in. Mahoney watched. When Rowse’s legs gave way, he went down to the floor, doubling up, protecting the lower stomach and genitals. He was too low for a good punch, so they used the feet. He rolled his head away to avoid brain damage, feeling the toecaps thud into his back, shoulders, chest, and ribs, choking on the wave of pain until the merciful blackness came after a kick on the back of the head.
He came to in the manner of people who have been in a road accident: first gingerly aware that he was not dead, and then conscious of the pain. Beneath his shirt and trousers, his body was one large ache.
He was lying on his face, and for a while he studied the pattern of the carpet. Then he rolled over: a mistake. He ran a hand to his face. There was one lump on the cheek below the left eye; otherwise it was more or less the same face he had been shaving for years. He tried to sit up and winced. An arm went behind his shoulders and eased him into a sitting position.
“What the hell happened here?” she asked.
Monica Browne was on her knees beside him, one arm around his shoulders. The cool fingers of her right hand touched the lump below his left eye.
“I was passing, saw the door ajar. ...”
Quite a coincidence, he thought, then dismissed the idea.
“I must have fainted and thumped myself as I went down,” he said.
“Was that before or after you wrecked the room?”
He glanced around. He had forgotten about the tumbled drawers and the scattered clothes.
She unbuttoned his shirt front. “Jesus, that was some fall,” was all she said. Then she helped him up and led him to the bed. He sat on it. She pushed him backward, lifted his legs, and rolled him onto the mattress.
“Don’t go away,” she said unnecessarily. “I have some liniment in my room.”
She was back in minutes, closing the door behind her and giving the key a swift turn. She unbuttoned his Sea Island cotton shirt and slipped it from his shoulders, tut-tutting at the sight of the four bruises, now turning a fetching blue, that adorned his torso and ribs.
He felt helpless, but she seemed to know what she was doing. A small bottle was uncorked, and gentle fingers rubbed liniment into the bruised areas. It stung. He said, “Ow.”
“It’ll do you good, take the swelling down, help the discoloration. Roll over.”
She eased more liniment into the bruises on his shoulders and back.
“How come you carry liniment around?” he mumbled. “Do all your dining partners end up like this?”
“It’s for horses,” she said.
“Thanks a lot.”
“Stop fussing—it has the same effect on stupid men. Roll back.”
He did so.
She stood over him, her golden hair falling about her shoulders. “They hit you in the legs as well?”
“All over.”
She unbuttoned the waistband of his trousers, unzipped them, and eased them down and off without a fuss. It was no strange task for a young wife with a husband who drank too much. Apart from one lump on the right shin, there were another half-dozen bluish areas on the thighs. She massaged the liniment into them. After the sting, the sensation was of pure pleasure. The odor reminded him of the days when he played Rugby at school. She paused and set the bottle down.
“Is that a bruise?” she asked.
He glanced down toward his jockey shorts. No, it was not a bruise.
“Thank God,” she murmured. She turned away and reached for the zipper at the back of her cream shantung dress. The filtered light from the curtains gave the room a low, cool glow.
“Where did you learn about bruises?” he asked.
After the beating and the massage, he was feeling drowsy. His head was drowsy, anyway.
“Back in Kentucky, my kid brother was an amateur jockey,” she said. “I patched him up a few times.”
Her cream dress slid to the floor in a pool. She wore tiny Janet Reger panties. No bra strap crossed her back. Despite the fullness of her breasts, she needed none. She turned around. Rowse swallowed.
“But this,” she said, “I did not learn from any brother.”
He thought fleetingly about Nikki back in Gloucestershire. He had not done this before, not since marrying Nikki. But, he reasoned, a warrior occasionally needs solace, and if it is offered, he would be less than human to refuse.
He reached up for her as she straddled him, but she took his wrists and pressed them back on the pillow.
“Lie still,” she whispered. “You’re far too ill to participate.”
But for the next hour or so she seemed quite content to be proved wrong.
Just before four she rose and crossed the room to open the curtains. The sun had passed its azimuth and was moving toward the mountains.
Across the valley Danny the sergeant adjusted his focus and said, “Cor, you dirty bastard, Tom.”
The affair lasted for three days. The horses did not arrive from Syria, nor any message for Rowse from Hakim al-Mansour. She checked with her agent on the coast regularly, but always the answer was “Tomorrow.” So they walked through the mountains, took picnics high above the cherry orchards where the conifers grow, and made love among the pine needles.
They breakfasted and dined on the terrace, while Danny and Bill watched in silence from across the valley and Mahoney and his colleagues glowered from the bar.
McCready and Marks stayed at their pension in Pedhoulas village while McCready organized more men from Nicosia Station and a few from Malta. As long as Hakim al-Mansour made no contact with Rowse to indicate that their prepared story had, or had not, been accepted, the key was the Irishman Mahoney and his two colleagues. They were running the IRA enterprise; so long as they stayed, the operation would not move into the shipment phase.
The two SAS sergeants were to give backup to Rowse; the rest would keep the IRA men under surveillance at all times.
On the second day after Rowse and Monica first made love, McCready’s team was in place, scattered through the hills covering every road in and out of the area from observation posts in the hills.
The telephone line to the hotel had been intercepted and tapped. The monitoring listeners were ensconced in another nearby hotel. Few of the newcomers could speak Greek, but fortunately tourists were common enough for another dozen not to arouse suspicions.
Mahoney and his men never left the hotel. They, too, were waiting for something: a visit, or a phone call, or a hand-delivered message.
On the third day Rowse was up as usual just after dawn broke. Monica slept on, and it was Rowse who took the tray of morning coffee from the waiter at the door. When he lifted the coffee pot to pour his first cup, he saw a folded wafer of paper beneath it. He put the wafer between the cup and the saucer, poured the coffee, and walked with it into the bathroom.
The message said simply, “Club Rosalina, Paphos, 11 P.M. Aziz.”
That posed a problem, Rowse mused as he flushed the fragments of the message down the toilet. Easing Monica out of the picture for the few hours it would take to get to Paphos and back in the middle of the night
