Forever (39 page)

'Certainly, Miss Williams. A wise request,
to be sure. May I suggest a sailfish? There is just enough wind for
beginners. Or perhaps you are familiar with sailing, and wish to
have something larger?'

Stephanie shook her head. 'No, I don't like
sailing,' she said firmly. 'I prefer a speedboat. I wish to have it
all day.'

'Certainly, Miss Williams. A speedboat. At
once.'

She waited until midday, when the sun was
highest in the sky - and the daily provision runs from shore to
yacht would be starting to wind down.

The sun was burning hot. Wisely, she wore a
straw hat and a loose, long-sleeved silk shirt over her black,
one-piece Kamali swimsuit. Flat open-backed sandals. And carried a
few provisions in a colourful straw bag.

The red, sixteen-foot Riva was waiting at
the end of the wooden jetty. And so was the over-the-hill gigolo.
Wearing micro briefs, with four gold neck chains and a gold
medallion hanging between his well-preserved pecs.

'Ah,' he exclaimed half-mockingly. 'The
beautiful brave American, Miss Monica Williams.'

Pointedly ignoring him, she dropped the
straw bag down into the boat and squatted, starting to untie the
rope from the cleat. It was thick and stiff and unwieldy. She broke
a fingernail on the rough fibres. 'Damn!' she swore under her
breath and jerked her head back.

He bent down and took over. Flipped the rope
expertly loose. 'Perhaps it's a sign that the lamb should not run
off to the slaughterhouse?'

'Oh, why don't you just leave me alone!' she
snapped testily. 'Who are you, anyway? The Jiminy Cricket of
Marbella?'

He blinked. 'The Jiminy . . .? I am sorry. I
do not understand.'

She smiled bitterly. 'The conscience of
Marbella? Is that what you are? The conscience of a conscienceless
resort?'

'Perhaps,' he said softly, 'I am merely
trying to be a friend.' He stood there, holding the rope taut.

'Then you're wasting your time.' She hopped
down into the boat and looked up at him. 'I have no friends, Mr No
Name.'

'All the more reason to listen, Miss
Williams. You see, there are certain people in this world who are
not, how do you say? Savoury?'

'Oh, really?' She locked eyes with him,
conscious of the fact that her face was level with his skimpy
briefs. 'Are you speaking from experience?'

'What I am saying is this. The rich are
different, Miss Williams. And the very, very rich . . .' He gazed
past her, at the big yacht. '. . . They are a breed . . .' he
murmured, '. . . a law . . . unto themselves.'

'Just throw me the rope and shut up.'

'Very well.' He tossed it down to her and
got to his feet. 'But I advise you to tread softly, Miss Williams.
Very softly and very, very careful --"

At that moment, the whine of a nearby
helicopter starting up carried across the water. Both of them
turned to look towards the yacht. The whine increased in pitch and
then, like a giant metal mosquito, the Bell Jet Ranger rose
smoothly up off the sundeck, hovered for an instant, and turned in
the air before nosing sharply down the coast, the whine of its
engines and the whup-whup-whup of its rotors gradually
receding.

Stephanie glanced at her watch. Twelve noon
on the dot. She nodded to herself. The punctuality on that ship was
positively Germanic.

'Miss Williams --'

She fired the ignition. The rumble of the
powerful twin engines and the water thrashing at the stern drowned
him out.

'Miss Williams!' he shouted.

'Adios, amigo!'
she yelled over her
shoulder, and gave the boat gas. The engines roared and it surged
forward, the wind tugging at her straw hat and sending it flying.
She banked the speedboat into a wide sweeping curve and looked
back. He had caught her hat and was standing on the jetty, waving
it.

As though to flip him a birdie, she really
opened up. The bow lifted high and she kept it at a sixty-degree
angle. She grinned to herself. Time she got down to business. She
lined the Riva's pointed nose up with her target, and headed
straight for it.

Chrysalis
.

'Fool!' hissed the man as he yanked the
Spaniard into the cultivated jungle of succulents and fan palms.
'Why did you let her go?'

'Stop it!' the gigolo gasped, fingers
clawing at the forearm around his neck. 'You are strangling
me!'

Abruptly the man let go and pushed him away.
The big Spaniard, gasping for breath, stumbled over a spiky,
razor-sharp cactus. His eyes blazed with anger.

The man didn't seem to care. He ground his
teeth and clenched his fists in a rage of impotence. Then he took a
series of deep breaths to calm himself. 'You had specific
instructions, goddammit!'

'She would not listen,' the Spaniard rasped,
rubbing his throat tenderly. 'The woman is stubborn. Beautiful and
stubborn.'

'Too beautiful and too stubborn for her own
damn good.' The man shook his fists.
'Shit!'

The Spaniard drew himself up with dignity.
'Now that you have no further need of me, I shall be going.'

'Not so fast! Wait!'

'You are loco! the Spaniard pronounced,
rubbing his reddening neck, and then suddenly looked stricken. 'My
chain!' he exclaimed.

'What chain?'

'One of my gold neck chains! You broke! Is
gone!'

'Quiet down!' the man hissed. 'They'll be
able to hear you all the way to North Africa!'

The Spaniard dropped into a squat, eyes and
fingers frantically searching the ground.

'Forget the chain!'

'Forget -' The Spaniard looked up, furious.
'Twenty-two carat gold, that chain is! You know how much it
cost?'

'Here,' the man said, taking a roll of money
out of his pocket. 'Go buy yourself another male menopause
ornament.' He began peeling off bills.

The Spaniard watched greedily. They were all
one-hundred US dollar bills. Swiftly he calculated.

The American stopped at five and held them
out. 'This should more than take care of it.'

The Spaniard shook his head. 'It was a thick
chain. Big links. Like so.' He held two fingers apart. 'Nine
hundred dollars it cost.'

'Here's another five. And five more for
future services.'

The Spaniard's eyes lit up. 'Then you still
have use for me?' He snatched the money and it disappeared inside
his briefs.

'That's right, buddy.' The man draped a
comradely arm around his shoulder. 'We still got some work cut out
for us.'

'Work - cut? I do not understand.'

'You will, buddy, you wiil. Meanwhile, why
don't you go work on your skin cancer? Huh? Me, I need some time to
think!

There. Straight ahead. Growing larger, ever
larger, filling her entire field of vision, the massive yacht. It
towered majestically and seemed to defy all rules governing gravity
and flotation. The noonday sun flashed off gold-plated hardware,
expanses of bronze reflective windows, blinding white paint
accented with blue Awlgrip trim.

Stephanie stared in growing disbelief as she
hurtled towards it, unaware of the salt spray stinging her
eyes.

God in heaven, how big can it be?

She felt dwarfed, shrunken to
insignificance.

The sheer enormousness of this vessel! The
money it represented!

It suddenly sank in and gave her serious
pause.

She forced herself to continue breathing,
willed herself to hang onto the shreds of rapidly dwindling
courage, somehow found the determination to keep up the Riva's
speed.

The stranger's voice echoed inside her head.
The rich are different, Miss Williams. And the very, very rich . .
. They are a breed. . . a law. . . unto themselves.

Sudden darkness. The sun completely blocked
out now, her little speedboat swallowed up in deep cool shadow. Was
she imagining the chill? Or did the yacht give off a sinister aura,
perhaps a force shield that conjured up mephitic, Gothic fears?

Stephanie glanced up briefly, her eyes
scanning the sheer cliff of decks. Her approach had engendered a
flurry of activity: white- uniformed crew members running about,
their mouths wide open, obviously shouting down at her, their
voices completely lost in the roar of the speedboat's engines.

She wondered, What are they thinking? That
I'm stupid enough to ram them?

Just when it looked like she would, she
braced herself and cramped the wheel hard to the right, hauling the
Riva into a tight skidding turn across the yacht's transom.

The beam! Christ almighty, how wide was this
monstrosity? Forty feet? Fifty?

Crew members were gesticulating wildly as
she swept past, mere feet from where the huge Magnum nestled in its
dark, cave-like wet berth. On the deck extending out above it, the
name
CHRYSALIS
, and under it, its home port,
Rio de
Janeiro
, all in gold letters. She caught a glimpse of what, at
first, appeared to be an American flag, but no, just a variation of
it: the single stars and stripes of that maritime convenience,
Liberia.

The boat deck under the blue, tautly
stretched canvas awning.

Like a serious outdoor fitness club, it was
equipped with weights, benchpresses, incline boards, four-person
Jacuzzi, and adjoining saunas.

Zarah and Ernesto were naked, lying
face-down on side-by-side massage tables, plush blue velour bath
sheets draped over their buttocks. Their skin glowed as their
bodies were brutally kneaded, pummelled, slapped, punched, pounded.
Hers by a stout cruel- fingered Swedish masseuse with sausages of
yellow braids coiled on either side of her head, his by a black
former Mr Universe with twenty-one inch biceps.

Eduardo was nearby, working out with
weights. Curling giant chrome dumbbells. Expelling breaths like air
puffed out of a bellows.

From hidden speakers, the muted, elegant
strains of a Mozartean ensemble melded with the rhythmic slaps and
thumps of massaging hands and clanking weights.

And then, without warning, all hell suddenly
broke loose. There was the approaching roar of a speedboat; the
shouts of the crew; Colonel Valerio racing past, yelling, 'Stay out
of sight everyone! An unknown boat is headed this way!'

Gasping, Zarah jerked up into a kneeling
position. 'Oh, my God! she whispered. She pressed a blue towel
against her bare breasts. 'Ernesto!' Her eyes were wide and
frightened as she stared imploringly over at him.

'Whoever it is will not get on board,'
Ernesto assured her with a smile of calm certainty. He dismissed
the masseurs with a flick of a hand, sat up, tied a towel around
his waist, and slid off the table. He glanced over at his son as
Eduardo, with a loud clang, set his dumbbells down and bounded
across the deck, where he grasped hold of the railing and bent far
over to see what was transpiring.

'Ernesto -' Zarah whispered again, the fear
growing in her eyes.

He stroked her cheek gently and smiled.
'Haven't I always provided privacy and security?'

She started to nod, but gripped his arms
fiercely as a disembodied voice, speaking English, boomed out over
the yacht's powerful bullhorn speakers.

'Attention, unidentified vessel.' The
crackling words, amplified to the verge of distortion, were loud
enough to be heard above the din of any engine and carried far
across the water in every direction. 'This is Captain Falcao of the
motoryacht
Chrysalis
. Please move to a minimum of one
hundred metres from this ship. If you remain where you are, your
presence will be construed as an act of piracy and severe
repercussions will result. I repeat. This is a warning. For your
own safety, move at once to a minimum of one hundred metres from
this yacht.'

The message was repeated in Spanish; French,
German, Italian, and Portuguese would follow.

'Who can it be?' Zarah whispered. Her entire
body had tensed. 'Ernesto!' She stared wildly into his eyes and
repeated,' Who . . . can. . . it. . . be . . .?'

'Probably just a curious tourist,' Ernesto
soothed, 'or at worst, a nosy journalist. Who knows?' He shrugged
and smiled. 'Oh, come now! It was just a little joke. Don't worry
so much, my beautiful butterfly. Colonel Valerio won't permit
anyone to board. We are perfectly safe. You know that!'

She nodded hesitantly, disbelievingly, and
pressed herself closer against him. Seeking comfort from his body
as well as his words.

Having reached the far end of the
Chrysalis's transom, Stephanie burst out from the shadows and back
into bright sunlight. The bullhorns boomed, but she paid them no
heed. At a terrifying speed, she hurled the Riva into a tight left
turn and shot forward, parallel with the sunny side of the
yacht.

Dark egg-shaped portholes trimmed in chrome
flew past in a rushing blur, and the yacht's gleaming white length
stretched before her, seemingly without end. The hull, like some
sleek, futuristic cliff, rose to flare out high above like an
enormous white overhang. Glancing up, she could see crew members
leaning over the lip and shouting down - a continuous chorus line
of heads dipping into view exactly twenty feet ahead of her.

How comical they looked! And how truly
thrilling this was! Never before had she felt quite so magically
juvenile, so totally madcap!

Suddenly she threw back her head and roared
laughter into the wind. Now that she was back in the sunshine, all
the silly fears had vanished. Invincible, she felt. And to think
she had let the yacht's sheer size intimidate her, the mere shadow
of it frighten her!

How ridiculously silly and childish, such
notions!

Giving the Riva even more gas, she made the
bow rise, higher, higher, higher up out of the water until the boat
was at a steep seventy-degree angle. Keeping it there, she raced
forward on top of a boiling cauldron of wake.