LACKING VIRTUES (18 page)

“Yes, a virgin. Isn’t that ridiculous at my age?”

Steven ran his fingers lightly across her beautiful, tear-streaked face. “I would say it’s a cardinal sin.”

She sniffled and took a deep breath. “When you said all that about your parents, how they had great plans for your life that you didn’t give a damn about, it struck a chord. I lacked the courage to rebel. I guess I’m stuck on the baseline. Forgive me, Steven, but this is ridiculous. I don’t know why I’m bothering you with my personal problems. I hardly know you.”

He squeezed her hand. “Maybe that’s why. I’m an outsider. You’re in this closed society where everyone thinks the same way. They tell you that you have it all, and if you don’t happen to agree, they make you feel like a leper.”

She withdrew her hand and wiped her eyes. “Look, I should go. I wanted to ask you a favor but I’m losing my nerve.”

“For Christ’s sake, Nicole, you can talk to me. If you leave now, I’ll feel as horrible as you do.”

“Why are we so distant, Steven?” she sobbed. “Why can’t we just go somewhere and sleep together?”

He thought he would swallow his tongue. “It must be the oysters speaking. Nicole, you don’t really want this.”

She giggled and moved closer to him so she could whisper in his ear. “It’s not the oysters,
américain
, it’s you. It started that night I was having dinner with my father and you came into the restaurant in your jeans. You did everything you weren’t supposed to do. You even started talking to me across the tables. I really couldn’t believe it. It would make you very conceited if I told you all the things that went through my mind. It’s gotten a lot worse since. Steven . . . I don’t care whether you love me or not as long as you’re nice to me. I want you to make love to me.”

He took a deep breath. This was incredible. He was supposed to be the seducer and here he was getting himself propositioned. That made dealing with his conscience a lot easier – didn’t it?

“Nicole,” he whispered, “I’ve been crazy for you, too, ever since I saw you for the first time. I want to make love to you, don’t get me wrong. But I also like you. I care about you. Are you sure this is the right thing for you? Are you sure it won’t complicate your life even more?”

She dug her nails into his thigh. “I don’t care. Let’s just do it. All right, Steven? All right?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, motioning for the check. “We can go over to my place right now. We’ll be completely alone. It’s a secluded little summer house down the coastal road toward Cannes. Belongs to a friend of a friend. You wear my helmet. People will think you’re Darth Vader.”

Chapter Eighteen

On the back of his motorcycle at dusk, hiding behind the dark glass of his helmet, Nicole felt she was experiencing the fears and exhilaration of her entire missed adolescence. But when she stepped into Steven’s summer cottage and fell into his arms, she knew it had been a lot more than just her adolescence she had missed.

When he left her briefly to close the shutters, they had not shed one article of clothing. Yet she had already reached a state of sexual arousal she had never dreamed possible. He came back and carried her to the bedroom. He seemed to know exactly where to touch her, how to kiss her, what to say to her – which was very little and very nice.

Her knees grew weak and she sat on the bed. He unlaced her sandals and kissed her calves and thighs, then came and sat beside her. He unbuttoned her sun dress and lifted it over her head. She tried to take off her bra and panties but he wouldn’t let her. He kissed her in the most exquisite way, gently stroked her body and whispered her name until she lost all track of time.

It grew dark outside. Wind rattled the shutters. The minutes stretched into hours, her pleasure reached heights she knew could never be surpassed. Then he would do something else and her pleasure would grow even more intense.

Slowly he undressed her, admiring, kissing and loving each newly exposed patch of flesh. When he at last entered her, she cried out so loudly she thought she must have awakened her father in Paris.

It was supposed to hurt the first time. If this was pain she wanted more of it. She was aware of something wild and urgent in her movements now, though she didn’t know how she was moving or what she was doing. He kept slowing her down as she approached some burning mystery her body seemed ravenous to uncover. When he finally let her go, and helped her with a robust hunger of his own, the waves of pleasure kept coming and coming until she thought she would die if he didn’t stop.

But he didn’t stop. He would hold her and talk to her while she halfway recovered and make her drink a few sips of champagne. Then his hands would be stroking her again in the same magical way in the same forbidden places. His lips and tongue would find her breasts, and soon her body would be pulsing with desire.

She didn’t remember when it all ended, but she would never forget waking up the next morning. Light was pouring in through the shutters, church bells were ringing in a nearby village and the angry honking of car horns rose from the coastal road. She looked at Steven. He was asleep, his blond hair a tousled mess. He was, she thought, the most spectacular man she had ever seen.

She sat up, still naked, and stretched. Her breasts felt different, larger, more sensuous. Her belly tingled with sensations that were strange and wonderful.

And then it hit her. It was morning! She had not gone home, she had not even bothered to call. Françoise was probably at the police station right now reporting her absence.

What had Steven done to her? God, it was incredible.

She rushed through a shower, dressed and decided to go down to the beach. She would buy some running clothes and put them to the test. When she got home, her absence would look like a repeat of her previous early-morning excursion. She would claim she had spent the night in the villa, that she had slept on the porch or in another room, and that Françoise had assumed the worse. As long as she stuck to her story, she was safe! Only she and Steven knew what had happened. It was a good plan.

She went back to the bed to kiss him but the phone rang first. He answered sleepily. She could hear the irate voice of Monsieur Denis du Péage the elder coming through the receiver, and she had to suppress a laugh. He held the phone out so she could better follow the old man’s tirade, looking very blasé about the scolding, and kissed her playfully while they listened.

“I’ve got to go,” she said. “I’ll have some explaining to do when I get home. Steven . . . it was . . . wonderful. Thank you.”

“You sound like it was the last time. I hope it’s only the beginning. It was good for me too, Nicole. Very good.”

“We have two weeks. Françoise will be watching me like a hawk, but I don’t care.”

“Two weeks? You mean you’re throwing me over when we get back to Paris?”

“Paris?”

“That’s where I live. Didn’t you know?”

“You live in Paris? Oh my God, Steven. I thought you were on exchange from that tennis club in the States that took Philippe. You really live in Paris?”

“Yes. Is that bad? Did you only want me for my body?”

She broke down, laughing and crying. “I’m so happy. I mean, I guess I’m happy. It’s going to be complicated, Steven. You have no idea. There’ll be secret service agents and paparazzi all over the place, not to mention Françoise and my father. You’ll be sick of me in one day.”

He took her in his arms. “Don’t kid yourself, Nicole. If you want to see me, the entire French Army couldn’t keep me away. Come here.”

She pulled herself away and stood up. “No, not now. You’ve got to get to the tennis club and I’ve . . . got to decide where I’ve been.”

“Don’t make me wait forever.”

“I won’t. I couldn’t if I wanted to.” She gave him another quick kiss and stepped out the front door, only to realize that her car was in St. Jean-Cap-Ferrat. 

Chapter Nineteen

Claussen parked Stein’s Audi in a section of the Bronx where he knew it would not survive the night and took a cab to his hotel at Kennedy Airport. He stretched out on the bed, feeling tired for the first time since his arrival in the States.

His work was over. The Feds were blaming the Seattle break-in on a clumsy Iraqi attempt to circumvent the embargo on aircraft parts, and Hassan Aziz had induced them to take another giant step in the wrong direction by committing suicide on the third day of his incarceration.

The deaths of Wayne Jenkins and four other Boeing employees, murdered in their homes the night of the break-in, were likewise attributed to the Iraqis. When Boeing’s security procedures came under harsh attack at a press conference, a Boeing spokesman tried to defend the company by implying that the dead men might have been collaborators. This possibility was obvious to everyone, but the image of a young boy with his throat slit seemed the greater crime by far and kept public outrage focused on Iraq.

In the aftermath of the break-in Boeing had conducted a painstaking search of its inventory. Other than the missing 747 parts found in the van in front of Hassan Aziz’es apartment, the search revealed no irregularities. The case seemed too cut-and-dried to warrant further investigation. Attention shifted to Washington, where diplomatic initiatives were in full swing and a resumption of the bombing against Iraq had not been ruled out.

As for Stein, he was a notorious loner who often put his sign in his window and left Seattle for his cabin in the northwest woods for months. He had not been missed and probably wouldn’t be until late autumn. His concrete grave in the second basement of the shop had been drying for a week now, and Claussen doubted it would ever be disturbed.

All quiet on the western front.

He had visited Bendix and GE on his drive east. Last night Claussen had wrapped up the Pratt & Whitney stage of his mission, which was far and away the easiest.

Claussen’s oldest collaborator at the jet engine facility, David Melchior, was the chief quality control engineer. Since his job required him to select items from the parts inventory for random testing, Melchior was able to substitute Claussen’s counterfeits for originals without appearing to do anything abnormal.

Melchior was delighted with the $300,000 Claussen had offered him as payment for the trifling assignment. He was a bon vivant, American style. Claussen believed he would have enjoyed the money, had he not succumbed to an apparent coronary 12 hours ago . . .

He glanced at his watch. Time to shower and dress for his evening flight. He was anxious to get home now, where he could announce his checkmate to Michelet and company, return to the composition of his memoirs and wait for the fireworks to begin.

PART II

Chapter Twenty

Jim Hutchinson knew the statistics. He smoked, drank, ate what he wanted and limited his physical exercise to an occasional round of layover adultery. He was at the high risk end of a high risk group. Retirement age at United Airlines was 60; life expectancy for the company’s international pilots was 62. If you believed the charts, this 757 pilot already had one foot in the grave.