Assignment - Ankara (26 page)

“I like your hair this way,” he said to her.

“Do you?” She smiled and kissed him and sat down beside him and helped herself to coffee. Her smile was inward, secretive. “Perhaps my hair is just symbolic, darling. You’ve gotten me all undone, you know.”

“Do you mind?”

“Did I act as if I did?”

Her grinned. “You’re very wonderful, Francesca.”

“You make me so, Sam.”

It had been simple and natural last night, an inevitable climax to everything that had been said and left unsaid between them, from the moment of their first meeting. She had surprised him, here in this place of private contentment. It was good to feel detached from the world for now, to step out of it and let time hang pendant on the winds of a Bosphorus spring. It could not last, he knew. It never did. Sooner or later, he would want to go home again, he thought once more; in hours or days. The world would intrude, either in the form of another sober visit from Dinty Simpson, or a coded cable from Washington ordering him back for another mission into that other world of dark deceit. And red danger would swallow him again.

He would welcome it. His business was necessary in a divided world.

But for now he was content with this hour of sun and quiet and Francesca. He saw the way her gray eyes slanted at him, anxiously, considering his lean face. He knew what still troubled her. In the warm dark hours of the night just gone by, when they lay entwined on the huge bed with the doors open to the night wind and the crescent moon hanging like an ancient symbol of Byzantium over the sea, she had talked quickly and softly, through occasional tears, of her pride and loneliness and isolation.

“I never knew what I was, before,” she had whispered. “I was too self-centered, too proud, to self-sufficient to give anything. I thought that anything coming my way was simply my due. But you taught me the truth, Sam. You and—what happened to me in Musa Karagh. A week ago I would have been merciless to Susan Stuyvers, insisting that she be held for prosecution. And I wouldn’t have understood your sympathy for her. But it’s different now.”

“Is it?” he had whispered in return.

“I want to prove it to you,” she said, moving against him like warm, smooth silk. “Now, Sam.”

There had only been brief, unhappy affairs in her life before. The men had left her. They had called her cold, selfish, unyielding. She set about to prove to Durell last night that she had changed.

Now she said, “Sam, please,” in a pleading tone, and the anxiety was no longer hidden from her gray eyes. He looked at her and smiled and she said: “Was it—was I, last night—”

“Yes, Francesca.”

“Will you stay, then?”

“As long as I can,” he said.

In a day or two, he would go home. But they were quiet now as the maid came in on slippered feet and silently served them more coffee. They sat together on the terrace and watched the sun brighten on the seas.

       THE END

of an Original Gold Medal Novel by

    Edward S. Aarons