Warriors (29 page)

She smiled and stepped inside. She was wearing a sheer black peignoir thing that barely covered her bum. Black silk stockings held up by intricate lacy suspenders with small red ribbons at the fasteners. Black high-heeled Jimmy Choos and nothing else. Her quivering breasts were a bulging miracle encased in transparent silk. She smiled, the tip of her tongue darting out for the briefest moment before she spoke.

“My room is much nicer.”

“Pity you had to leave it.”

“We’ll see, I suppose.”

“Drink?” he said, picking up the bottle of Gosling’s by the bed.

“No. But you go right ahead. Do you need it?”

“I don’t know yet. But I think not.”

“Good boy. Look at you. You are like a little boy. So full of hope and expectation.”

“Hmm.”

“What are you hoping for, Lord Hawke?”

“At the moment? I’m hoping you’re not a lesbian.”

“I’m not, I assure you,” she said.

“Good. That’s settled, then. Thank you. Have we met before?”

“Don’t you think you’d remember these?” she said, freeing her breasts from captivity.

“Yes, I suppose I would, wouldn’t I?”

“You appear to have an erection.”

“Do I?”

“Don’t be shy. It’s flattering. The much-loved compliment left unsaid.”

“You had me at ‘Lorelei.’ Down there on the moonlit terrace.”

“I noticed. Shall we fuck, Lord Hawke? Or not?”

“I can’t think of any good reason not to.”

“I like to be on top.”

“Surprise, surprise.”

“Lie down, Lord Hawke.”

“Bossy, bossy.”

“I said, lie down!”

He did, smiling up at her, and said, “Tell me, dear. Did you leave your riding crop at home?”

She laughed and stroked his cheek.

“So sorry to disappoint you, darling. Yes, I did.”

“It wasn’t me I was concerned about. Darling.”

“What do you like, your lordship?” she said, climbing onto the bed and arranging herself astride him. Leaning toward him, she dipped the tops of her breasts creamily into the soft light of the bedside lamp.

He sighed involuntarily at the sight of her.

She smiled and took him gently in her hand, guided him slowly inside her. With another, deeper sigh of pleasure, he yanked the thin straps of the peignoir completely off her shoulders and cupped her heavy breasts in his hands, caressing her erect nipples with infinite tenderness.

“Let’s see. What do I like? Oh, yes. Sex,” Hawke said. “I do like sex. Always have.”

“Vanilla, one would suppose, m’lord. How mundane and haute bourgeois of you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You know what I mean. Tell me what you want.”

“I aim only to please, darling. Besides, you’re my guest of honor. I’ll follow your lead. Where are we going with this magical sexual mystery tour?”

“I would say a bit of kink, ordinarily. It’s where my oh-so-deviant tastes lie. The sting of the crop and all that. Delicious. But it’s so bloody hard to lug around all that kinky paraphernalia when one goes out for an evening of romance. Don’t you agree?”

“Hmm. Cumbersome. Awkward, too, arriving for a passionate fling in one’s spiffy black Range Rover towing a U-Haul for all one’s erotic bondage appliances.”

“You’re funny. I knew you would be.”

“Thanks. Now shut up and fuck.”

“Say that again.”

“Shut up and fuck.”

“Yes. Do that some more. Deeper. Yes. Like that. A little harder. And slower. Oh, yes. Yes . . . like that. Right there. On my clit.”

Harder. Slower. Harder.

“Good?” he said.

“Good. Yes.”

“You’re very beautiful, Lorelei.”

“So are you. But I’m only after your money, m’lord. You are rich, I suppose . . . oh, yes, please, don’t talk now, just fuck me.”

“I will.”

“Don’t stop that. Come. Now. I want to feel it inside me. And then if you’re a very good boy, I’ll let you make me come.”

His back arched involuntarily and a cry escaped his lips.

EXHAUSTED, THEY LAY SIDE BY
side in the dark. Two glowing orange coals hovered above their faces as they inhaled their cigarettes.

“That was good,” she said.

Hawke said, “Last time? The woman I was with said ‘Was it good for you?’ ”

“Really? What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Weren’t you there?’ ”

“Good one.”

“Do you always smoke after sex?” he asked her.

“I’ve no idea. I’ve never looked.”

WHEN HAWKE AWOKE THE NEXT
morning, the girl was gone. She’d written her mobile number in red lipstick on his bathroom mirror. A bit theatrical, he thought.

He picked up the phone to order a pot of black coffee.

A bit odd, that one. Too cute by half, perhaps. Some kind of an agenda?

He considered a moment, and then rubbed her lipstick number out with the cuff of his terry bathrobe sleeve. Uninvited trouble already came his way with sufficient regularity. The very last thing he needed was to invite more.

Little did he know that he already had.

C
H A P T E R
  3 9

P
rofessor Sir Lucian Hobdale, Nobel laureate, was a fixture at Cambridge. He was a university senior lecturer in machine learning and an advanced research Fellow and director of studies. The windows of his tumble-jumble of a corner office at Trinity College overlooked the ice-filled river Cam flowing stolidly, always reassuring somehow.

Hobdale had that leonine cast of character so frequently aspired to by not a few aging professors who affect to have no such aspirations. Thick white hair, somewhat watery gin-blue eyes, and a strongly sculpted face and jawline. Beautiful skin. His tweed suit had seen better days decades ago. But he managed to outweigh his tatty wardrobe with wit, brilliance, and a decidedly patrician air.

“Chief Inspector Congreve,” Hobdale said, swiveling round in his chair, “How marvelous to see my illustrious colleague again. I must tell you, I was thrilled with the results of our last . . . mission . . . together. The Singularity Affair, as it’s now known around here. Splendid show, that. We jolly well sent that Persian madman packing, did we not? What was his name?”

Congreve smiled. “Darius Saffari. Indeed we did, sir. And we’ve Alex Hawke here to thank for a good bit of that. You remember Alex Hawke, of course?”

Hobdale’s great head swiveled.

“Lord Hawke. Of course. An honor as always.”

Hawke strode forward with his hand extended and said, “Professor Hobdale, how kind of you to see us on such short notice.”

“Not at all, not at all. I’ve already fired up the quantum supercomputer at the U.K. Machine Intelligence Research Center in Leeds in light of your visit. Something to do with facial reconstruction and recognition this time. That poor chap found in the Sidney Master’s Garden, missing most of his face and all his fingers and teeth, according to rumor. Ghastly, just ghastly.”

Ambrose finished firing up his pipe and said, “No human being should ever be made to suffer like that, Sir Lucian. It pains me to say this, but Lord Hawke and I fear a rather fiendish type, politically motivated, is on the loose in Cambridge. A ghoul of the old-school Chinese Te-Wu persuasion. He must be stopped.”

“We’ll certainly do our best to identify the victim, Chief Inspector, I can assure you. Do sit down, both of you. I’d offer tea, but I sense you’d prefer to get down to cases. My assistant informs me you’ve brought morgue photos of the victim, yes?”

Congreve nodded and pulled a manila envelope from his tatty leather briefcase.”Here they are,” Congreve said, handing the older man the folder. “Prepare yourself, sir.”

“I’ve been doing precisely that for sixty-some years, Chief Inspector.”

Hobdale, who’d dabbled in forensic anthropology, thus waved the notion away and slit the envelope, spilling the eight-by-ten glossies across his cluttered desktop. He picked up the nearest one, studied it a moment, and then reached for his antique glass. He hovered over each section of the mutilated face, peering through the magnifier, tsk-tsking cheerily at the unmitigated horror he’d been presented with.

“Chinese torture,” he said, putting down the glass. “Fifteenth century.”

“Yes,” Congreve said, arranging his corpus in the comfortable armchair. “Most definitely Chinese handiwork.”

“
Lingchi
? That would appear to be the method.”

“My first thought as well, Professor Hobdale. But no, no knives were used during torture. The victim was suspended in a razor-sharp mesh bag called the Shining Basket that slowly collapsed and constricted under his weight. Almost every square inch of facial epidermis was removed, as you can see. Meaning he was suspended facedown. We’re hoping the quantum computer can build on the bone structure and rebuild it. Is there any hope of that, Sir Lucian?”

“Indeed there is, indeed there is, sir. Take a look at this.”

Hobdale clicked on his computer, and a geometric modeling of George Washington’s face appeared.

“It’s a program called PRISM,” the professor said, “developed in concert with Arizona State University. We brought together forensic anthropologists, digital artists, and computer scientists to effect the 3-D digital reconstruction of Washington’s face that you see here. Remarkable, isn’t it? This is exactly what the man looked like at nineteen years old! A century prior to the invention of photography! Give us the proper tools and we can literally bring the dead back to life.”

“Extraordinary,” Hawke said, peering at the eerily lifelike image on the screen.

“Would that you could,” Congreve mused, puffing seriously. “Would that you could.”

“You’re afraid the victim may have been a colleague, I take it?”

“Yes, Professor Watanabe. He’s still missing.”

“Oh, Lord. I had the pleasure of attending one of his lectures on the Rape of Nanking. Brilliant man.”

“Yes, he was. Watanabe-san was a friend, really. Changed the course of my entire life. He was—”

Congreve looked away, stricken.

“If this victim proves to be your friend, I shall help you find out who did this, Chief Inspector. Upon my word, I shall.”

Hawke put out his hand and said, “You’ll let us know as soon as you have something, Professor?”

“I shall, indeed, Lord Hawke. I bid you both good day, gentlemen. You’ll hear from me soon, I assure you. We shall get right on it. Our methods are foolproof.”

They both shook his hand and left, crossing the square and the river to Magdalene College, where their car was waiting to take them back to London.

“It’s Watanabe, isn’t it?” Congreve said, his head down, slogging through the snow.

“Yeah,” Hawke said. “I’m afraid so, Constable.”

C
H A P T E R
  4 0

S
tokely Jones Jr., a battle-hardened American warrior in his late middle age, was a large man.

Whatever.

He was big.

He was black.

Deal with it.

Stoke made his way down the long, long la-di-da hotel corridor to the elevator bank on his floor. Fanciest damn place he’d ever hung his hat in London Town, by far. Gold everywhere, huge columns in the lobby, gold-plated crystal chandeliers as big as small battleships. Mirrors everywhere, just in case you forgot who you were, you know, just walking by.

Claridge’s, they called this joint. Sounded like the name of some beachside condo in Palm Beach to him.

But just walking into the lobby of Claridge’s Hotel the first time, he felt like he oughta be wearing diamonds on the soles of his shoes. Like the old Paul Simon song. He hit the down button and stood there cracking his big knuckles, staring at the gilded angels on the ceiling, and shaking his head.

He should have known better. It was so damn predictable. What he should have done? Checking in? Gone over to Martin, the head honcho, and said, “Hey, Martin, listen up, I haven’t even seen my room and I know it ain’t good enough. All right? Help me out here.”

Handed him fifty pounds on the spot or something. But no, he hadn’t done that. And now look.

Fancha, it seems, didn’t like their room, excuse me, suite.

But.

And here’s the problem. Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. Wasn’t that the truth? Wasn’t that the single most important God’s honest truth all married men eventually come to learn for themselves sooner or later? And learn it the hard way, brother? Seriously?

The thing about it was, Stokely had been in London many times, but never once in the company of his fairly new bride, a semifamous and totally beauteous torch singer from the Cape Verde Islands named Fancha. Girl came from nothing, grew up in some ghetto, in one of the island’s tar-paper palaces where the rats ate the dogs.

But she had faith. Just like he’d had. All his life. Belief in one’s self. Yes. Said she always knew from the time she was a little girl she wouldn’t die there, not in that slum anyway. Not in that particular hell.

He knew all about that feeling.

One-name kind of entertainer now. Big time. Cher-style. The winner of the championship title match in a first-round TKO, the new Mrs. Stokely Jones Jr., she was now a woman long accustomed to the deluxe lives of the rich and famous.

All this was, of course, courtesy of her first husband, a deceased Miami nightclub impresario and gentleman of dubious distinction named Joey Mancuso.

People loved the old guy. Called the wide but vertically challenged Mr. Mancuso everything from the King of Biscayne Bay to the Mayor of Miami Beach, you know, back in the day. The Rat Pack ring-a-ding-ding days when Old Blue Eyes had really ruled the roost at the Fontainebleau on Miami Beach, knowing in his heart of hearts that Dino had the better set of pipes. Those were Joey’s salad days, baby.

Now, to be honest, Joey had departed this earth under suspicious circumstances. Leave it at that. Speaking of leaving, Mancuso had left the grieving widow, Fancha, a huge Spanish-style estate overlooking Miami’s Biscayne Bay. Not to mention butlers, Bentleys, a garage full of metallic-painted Rolls-Royces, offshore accounts up the wazoo, and a whole shitload of cold hard cash. That was Joey for you. Praise the Lord and pass the buck, baby.