The Scorpio Illusion Read online

  It was as though Hawthorne had been struck by the bow of an ocean liner while in a fog-bound sea. For several moments he could not speak, speech was beyond him; he was capable only of lowering his eyes and doing his best to simulate normal breathing. He began to release Dominique’s hand; she abruptly stopped him, covering both with her free one. “Please don’t, my darling.”

  “He’s a lucky fellow,” said Tyrell, staring at their hands. “Is he also a nice guy?”

  “He’s sweet and devoted and very, very rich.”

  “He’s got two out of three more than I do. But devoted I would be.”

  “The rich helped, I won’t deny that. I don’t have particularly expensive tastes, but my causes aren’t cheap. And the modeling profession, which certainly afforded me a lovely apartment and glorious clothes, doesn’t care to hire crazy crusaders. I was glad to leave it behind me. I was never comfortable showing off designs barely an iota of the buying public could afford.”

  “You’re in another world, lady. You’re also a happily married woman, then?”

  “I didn’t say that,” said Dominique quietly, firmly, her eyes now focused on their entwined hands.

  “I missed something.”

  “We are a marriage of convenience, as La Rochefoucauld phrased it.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Hawthorne raised his eyes, studying her passive face.

  “My husband is a closet homosexual.”

  “Thank God for favors, large and small.”

  “He’d find that amusing.… We lead a strange life, Tye. He’s quite influential and extremely generous, not only in helping me raise funds but in the area of government assistance, which we frequently need.”

  “As in those official documents you mentioned?” said Tyrell.

  “Right to the top of the Quai d’Orsay.” Dominique smiled her engaging smile. “He says it’s little enough he can do, for he insists I’m an enormous asset to him.”

  “Obviously. No one could possibly ignore him with you at his side.”

  “Oh, he goes further than that. He insists I attract a better class of clients, for only the wealthiest could afford me, if I were available. It’s a joke, of course.” With what appeared to be warm regret, Dominique disengaged her hands from his.

  “Of course.” Hawthorne poured the rest of the wine into his glass and leaned back in his chair. “You’re out here visiting your uncle on Saba?” he asked.

  “Good Lord, I completely forgot! I really must call the bank and reach his lawyer.… Now you know what happens to me when I see you again.”

  “I’d like to believe that—”

  “You can, Tyrell,” interrupted Dominique softly, leaning forward, her wide brown eyes riveted on his. “You really can, my darling.… Where’s the phone, I’m sure I saw one.”

  “It’s in the lobby.”

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Dear old Uncle is thinking of moving again; his neighbors have become too considerate.”

  “Saba’s recluse of recluses, as I recall,” said Tyrell, smiling. “No phones, no mail, and, where possible, no visitors.”

  “I insisted on a satellite dish.” Dominique moved back her chair and stood up. “He loves to watch international soccer; he thinks it’s black magic, but he watches it constantly.… I’ll hurry.”

  “I’ll be here.” Hawthorne gazed at the receding figure of the woman he had thought was gone from his life. The rush of contradictory information was not much different from being buffeted by strong winds. The marriage had nearly drowned him; the marriage that was not a marriage at all had restored his breath, the new buoyancy exhilarating.… He could not lose her again; he would not lose her again.

  He wondered if she would think to call her uncle on Saba and tell him she’d be late returning. There were interisland planes usually every hour until the early evening, an aerial network throughout the chain. Theirs could not be a brief hello and good-bye, it was unthinkable, and he knew her well enough to realize she understood that. He smiled to himself at the thought of the eccentric uncle he had never met, the Parisian attorney who had spent more than thirty years in the swirling, back-stabbing world of arbitrage, racing from boardrooms to courtrooms, millions in the balance with every decision he made, and even then wary of panicking clients who too frequently put money before principle, voiding his hours of concentration.

  All of this for a quiet, gentle man who wanted only to get away from the energy-sapping insanity and paint flowers and sunsets, a self-proclaimed latter-day Gauguin. Upon his retirement, Dominique said, he had packed his elderly maid, left a cold, impervious wife with more than enough to continue her extravagant ways, not bothered to contact two insufferable daughters, both infected with their mother’s disease of greed, and flown off to the Caribbean “in search of my Tahiti.”

  Saba had been an accident brought about by a conversation with a stranger at the airport bar in Martinique. The man was a runaway who had decided to run back and spend his final years in the lights of Paris, and he had a modest but well-built house to sell on an island called Saba. Intrigued, Dominique’s uncle had inquired further and was shown several billfold snapshots of the house in question. Sight unseen, except for the snapshots, the retired attorney bought it instantly, drawing up the papers himself on a nearby table while his maid looked on in astonishment and not a little trepidation. He then proceeded to place a call to his Paris firm, instructing his former vice president, now president, to pay the owner in full upon the man’s arrival in Paris. His former subordinate was to deduct the purchase price from his former superior’s generous pension. There was only one proviso—delivered to the owner in the airport’s bar. The man was to reach the local telephone company on Saba and have every phone in the house removed immediately. The perplexed returning expatriate, his good fortune beyond his dreams, got in touch with the island phone office on an airport pay phone, fairly screaming his instructions.

  The Caribbean was filled with such stories, for the islands were a haven for the disaffected, the burnt out, and the progressively dissolute. It took someone with compassion to understand them, someone of substance to care. And Dominique, one of the world’s original do-gooders, cared enough for her runaway uncle to pay attention.

  “Would you believe it?” Dominique interrupted Tyrell’s reverie as she approached her chair. “The lawyer left a message for me that he was tied up and could we make it tomorrow! He made it abundantly clear that he would have phoned me on the island if there were a telephone.”

  “Logic’s on his side.”

  “Then I made another call, Commander—it was Commander, wasn’t it?” Dominique sat down.

  “Long ago,” replied Tyrell, shaking his head, “and I’ve since upgraded myself. I’m a captain now, because it’s my own ship—boat.”

  “That’s upgrading?”

  “Take my word for it, a full promotion. Whom did you call?”

  “My uncle’s neighbors, the couple are so considerate, he wants to move again. They keep coming over with fresh vegetables from their garden, bypass the maid, and interrupt his painting—or his soccer.”

  “They sound like nice people.”

  “They are; he isn’t, bless his cantankerous heart. Nevertheless, I gave them a chance to legitimately break in on him. I asked them to go over and tell him that there were problems with off-island ownership of property, that his lawyer, the bank, and I were trying to resolve them. I’d be quite late getting back.”

  “Wonder of wonders,” said Hawthorne, grinning, his full buoyancy returned. “I was hoping you’d manage to reach him.”

  “Could I do anything else, my darling? I wasn’t being polite, Tye. I’ve missed you so.”

  “I just checked out of a room down the street,” Tyrell said hesitantly. “I’m sure I can get it back.”

  “Please. Do so, please. What’s the name of the hotel?”

  “Hotel’s a little grand for what it is. It’s called the Flamboyant, also a touch out of its class.�
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  “Go there, my darling, and I’ll join you in ten or fifteen minutes. Tell the desk I’m expected and to give me the room number.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to bring you—us—a present. This is a celebration!” she said.

  They held each other in the confines of the small hotel room, Dominique trembling in Hawthorne’s arms. The gift she had brought them was three bottles of chilled champagne, all carried upstairs in ice buckets by an overtipped desk clerk.

  “At least it’s white wine,” said Tyrell, releasing her and going to the trays on the bureau, opening the first bottle. “Do you realize I haven’t had any whiskey since four days after you disappeared? Of course, I drank up the entire island’s supply in those four days and lost two charters, but that’s when the bourbon bottles went into the drink.”

  “Then my leaving you had one positive result. Whiskey was only a crutch for you, not a necessity.” Dominique sat at the small round table that overlooked the harbor of St. Barts.

  “Spare me, I’m not the same guy.” Hawthorne carried their glasses and the bottle to the table, then pulled back the chair opposite her. “What’s that corny phrase?” he said, sitting down. “ ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’?”

  “Here’s to both of us, my darling.” They drank, and Hawthorne refilled their glasses.

  “So you have a charter here?” asked Dominique.

  “No,” Tyrell thought quickly, looking briefly out the window. “I’m checking out Barts for a Florida hotel syndicate; they’re counting on the fact that gambling will be here soon and want my input. It’s happening all over the islands, the economies are screaming for it.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that. It’s sad, in a way.”

  “Very sad, and probably unavoidable. Casinos make for jobs.… I don’t want to talk about the islands, I want to talk about us.”

  “What’s there to talk about, Tye? Your life is here, mine is in Europe, or Africa, or the refugee camps in the besieged countries, where people need our help. Pour me another; you and the wine are intoxicating.”

  “What about you, a life for you?” Hawthorne filled their glasses.

  “It will come soon enough, my darling. One day I’ll come back, and, if you’re not entangled, I’ll sit on your Olympic Charters doorstep and say, ‘Hello there, Commander, take me or throw me to the sharks.’ ”

  “How soon is soon enough?”

  “Not much longer; even my strength is wearing out.… But let’s not talk about the inevitable, Tye. We must talk about now.”

  “What?”

  “Courtesy of my uncle’s neighbors, I spoke to my husband this morning. I must fly back to Paris tonight. He has business with the royal family in Monaco and wants me with him.”

  “Tonight?”

  “I can’t deny him, Tye, he’s done so much for me and demands only my presence. He’s sending a company jet to Martinique for me. I’ll be in Paris in several hours, do a flurry of packing and shopping in the morning, and meet him in Nice later in the day.”

  “You’ll disappear again,” said Hawthorne, the long-absent champagne suddenly slurring his speech. “You won’t come back!”

  “You’re so terribly wrong, my darling … my love. I’ll return in two or three weeks, believe me. But for now, for these few hours, be with me, stay with me, make love to me!” Dominique rose from the chair, removed the jacket of her white pantsuit, and began unbuttoning her blouse. Tyrell got up and removed his clothes, pausing to refill their glasses. “For God’s sake, love me!” cried Dominique, pulling them both to the bed.

  The smoke of their cigarettes floated up to the ceiling in the glow of the outside afternoon sun, their bodies exhausted, Hawthorne’s brain relaxed by the intensity of their lovemaking, along with long swallows from the bottle of champagne. “How is my love?” whispered Dominique as she rolled over on his prone, naked body, her generous breasts encompassing his face.

  “If there’s a heaven beyond this, I don’t have to know it,” answered Tyrell, smiling crookedly.

  “That’s such a terrible remark, I’m forced to pour you another glass. Me too.”

  “It’s the last bottle, and we’re overdoing the booze, lady.”

  “I don’t care, it’s our last hour—until I see you again.” Dominique reached over the bed and poured the last of the champagne in their glasses, pools of liquid in circles on her side of the floor. “Here you are, my darling,” she said, holding the glass to Tyrell’s lips. She raised her right breast and placed it next to his cheek. “I must remember every moment with you.”

  “You look and feel only outstanding … I think that’s a military term.”

  “I’ll accept it, Commander—oh, I forgot, you don’t like that title.”

  “I told you about Amsterdam,” said Hawthorne, barely coherent. “I hate the title.… Oh, Christ, I’m drunk, and I can’t remember when—I’ve been drunk before—”

  “You’re not anything of the sort, my darling, we’re just celebrating. Didn’t we agree to that?”

  “Yes … yeah, sure.”

  “Make love to me again, my dearest love.”

  “What …?” Tyrell’s head fell to the side; he had passed out, the long, unfamiliar heavy intake of alcohol too much for his blood.

  Dominique rose quietly from the bed, went to her clothes draped over the chair by the window, and dressed quickly. Suddenly, she noticed Hawthorne’s tan cotton jacket on the floor where he had dropped it; it was the common island uniform, a lightweight guayabera with four outside pockets worn over bare flesh in the hot tropic sun. However, it was not the jacket itself that caught her attention; instead, it was a folded, half-crumpled envelope bordered by blue and red stripes, the sort frequently used by governments or private clubs wishing to appear official. She knelt down, pulled it out of the pocket, and withdrew the contents, a concise and precise handwritten note. She moved to the window to read it clearly; it was written on a yacht club’s stationery:

  Subjects: Mature woman traveling with a young man approximately half her age.

  Details: Descriptions incomplete but could be Bajaratt and youthful escort as spotted in Marseilles. Names on St. Martin’s hydrofoil manifest: Frau Marlene Richter and Hans Bauer, grandchild. Bajaratt has no record of employing German names previously, nor has it been established that she speaks German, but it’s entirely possible that she does.

  Contact: Inspector Lawrence Major, chief of Island Security, St. Barts.

  Intermediary: Name withheld on demand.

  Method/Operation: Approach subjects from behind, weapons drawn. Shout out the name Bajaratt and be prepared to fire.

  Dominique squinted in the window’s afternoon sunlight as she replaced the note in the envelope, crossed back to the cotton jacket, and restored the paper to the pocket. Straightening up, she stared at the naked figure on the bed. Her magnificent lover had lied. Captain Tyrell Hawthorne, Olympic Charters, U.S. Virgin Islands, was once again Commander Hawthorne, naval intelligence, Amsterdam, recruited to hunt down a terrorist from the Baaka Valley whose journey from Marseilles had been tracked to the Caribbean. How tragic and how tragically ironic, thought Dominique as she walked to the desk and picked up her purse. She then crossed to the bedside table, snapped on the radio, gradually turning up the volume until the harsh, violent beat of the island music filled the room. Hawthorne did not stir.

  So terrible, so unnecessary … so full of a pain she dared not acknowledge, yet by denying it increasing the hurt. She had fantasized an existence that in another life she would have killed to live. An inconsequential husband who supported her causes unfailingly, leaving her to find what happiness she could without interference in a world of treachery and deceit. Would that it were all so simple, so unencumbered, but it was not! She loved the naked man on the bed, loved his mind, his body, even his suffering, for she understood them all. But this was the real world, not a fantasy.

  She opened her purse and slowly, carefully, withdrew a small au
tomatic, placing it against the pillow which she folded against Hawthorne’s left temple, her index finger curved around the trigger, millimeters from the pull, as the reggae-calypso music reached successive Crescendos.… She could not do it! She loathed herself but she could not do it! This was a man she loved, as fully as she had loved the firebrand of Ashkelon!

  Amaya Bajaratt returned the weapon to her purse and raced out of the room.

  Hawthorne woke up, his head splintered, his eyes unfocused, abruptly aware that Dominique was not beside him in the bed. Where was she? He leapt to his feet, instantly steadying himself, and looked for the antiquated phone. He saw it on the opposite bedside table and threw himself across the sheets, lifting the receiver and dialing the operator. “The woman who was here!” he shouted. “When did she leave?”

  “Over an hour ago, mon,” said the desk clerk. “A nice lady.”

  Tyrell slammed down the phone, walked into the small, inadequate bathroom, and filled the inadequate sink with cold water. He plunged his face into it, his thoughts on the island of Saba. Surely she would not return to Paris without seeing her uncle once more.… Before that he had to reach Geoffrey Cooke in Virgin Gorda, if only to tell him that his sighting was a bust.

  “Christiansted was a toilet too, old boy, and so was Anguilla,” said Cooke from Virgin Gorda. “I guess we were all chasing feathers. Are you coming back this afternoon?”

  “No, I’m following up something else.”

  “You found something?”

  “Found and lost, Geoff. It’s important to me, not to you. I’ll check in later.”

  “Please do. We’ve got two more reports which Jacques and I will cover.”

  “Leave word with Marty where I can reach you.”

  “The mechanic fellow?”

  “And then some.”

  The pontoons of the seaplane crunched down into the calm waters and taxied in a semicircle into the rockhewn cove of the private island. The pilot maneuvered the aircraft toward the short dock, where one of the lupo-armed guards stood waiting. The capo caught the overhanging wing, steadying the seaplane as Bajaratt stepped down on a pontoon, gripped the attendant’s briefly freed hands, and climbed onto the dock.