Orchids to Die For (Jim Morgan Adventure Series) (13 page)

Eunice turned to the Senator. John stood and began a narration on the orchid hunt, “Two students from Brasilia University will guide the girls to White River. They will act as interpreters and they are familiar with the fields you will be hunting in, east of Rio Branco.” The Senator took a sip of wine and pointed to Morgan.

“Mister Morgan, will spend the night in Sao Paulo. He will join you ladies the next day. Miss Harris, I’m sorry, but you will have to...”

The Senator’s outline was horribly interrupted by a loud shout behind him, “Who is Morgan?”

The Senator turned to see a gun aimed at his chest by an Arab looking, teenager that shouted, “In the name of Allah!” And he fired two shots into the Senator’s chest that sent him to the floor, slow -- with an outstretched arm held up in the air like a student wanting to ask a question.

Three more shots rang out... But not from the Arab’s weapon. The Arab kid spun around with his back to the table of stunned and stupefied guests. A dark figure emerged from the den and fired yet two more shots into the still standing Arab who went into a backward stagger and fell dead on top of the dying Senator.

Morgan stood and placed his body in front of Catherine in an effort to protect her. One of the girls screamed. One ducked under the table. Eunice stood up trying to see where the Senator had fallen. The two servers ran to the kitchen dropping the foods they were holding.

“Oscar? Oscar Bradley?” Morgan went to the Senator and threw the dead punk aside like a little piece of garbage that he was. Bradley knelt down beside Morgan on one knee.

The Senator was alive, he looked into Morgan’s eyes, “Get that bitch, Jim...” And he passed out with blood exiting from the side of his lips.

Eunice came over and was hovering above them, “Is he okay? I’ve called 911. I asked for an ambulance.” She knelt down and placed her hands on his face and wiped the blood from his lip, she was sobbing, “John. Oh John, I’m so sorry, John. Can you hear me, John?”

Morgan stood, asking, “Anyone a Doctor, or a nurse?” No one came forth.

Sam entered from the kitchen, “Eunice is a Doctor.”

Mureatha pushed past Sam with a “Humph,” as she came bursting out from the kitchen yelling, “I’s a LPN, almost,” and hurriedly went to Eunice’s side.

“Help him, Mureatha.” Eunice had tears flowing from her eyes.

Catherine came up to see, close up, and took up Morgan’s coat sleeve. She was feeling faint. But didn’t say so, hoping it would pass.

Morgan softly told Catherine that he was going to take Eunice outside for some air, “I’ll be right back, kiddo.”

Catherine nodded out in assent, released his sleeve, and took a step backward. Then fainted dead away – right on top of the profusely bleeding but very dead Arab.

* * *

Catherine awoke in their suite; Morgan was applying a cold towel to her forehead, Eunice was observing with her arms folded in a show of exasperation. If one of the ESP girls were to look into her mind at that moment they would have found themselves swimming in an abyss of nothingness. Literally, Eunice was in shock.

The paramedics arrived, in eleven minutes. The Senator was taken to Bethesda, in Maryland. The Arab was pronounced, D.O.A, dead on arrival. Police, CIA, FBI, and a host of other D.C. dignitaries began sealing off the crime scene.

Catherine came to semi-awareness twice since her faint some twenty-minutes earlier. Morgan carried her to their suite, undressed her and checked to make sure she wasn’t shot. Her dress was matted in Middle Eastern blood and was placed in a plastic bag by Eunice.

A medic came to the suite, directed by the D.C. Medical Examiner fresh on the scene. He sat down his utility bag and produced a smelling salt and held it under Catherine’s nose. It worked instantly. She looked to Morgan and he went to her.

The Medic asked Eunice if she was all right, “Yes. Yes.” She snarled, and then asked with a hint of doubt present in her voice, “Is that normal, to faint for -- twenty minutes?”

“She was obviously drinking, she’ll be fine. Let her rest as long as she wants. She was most likely experiencing some shock. Do you know of any other reason for her to pass-out, faint, is she pregnant?”

“No. Well? I don’t know.” Eunice looked at Morgan, “Jimbo, is she pregnant?” And she emphasized the “Jimbo.”

Morgan asked Catherine, “Are you pregnant, kiddo?”

“Not unless it’s yours.” And then she smiled. And then Morgan smiled. And Catherine sat up, pulling up the sheet and snuggled into his shoulder. Then she began recalling what had happened, “Oh my God, how’s the Senator?”

The medic heard her question, “She’ll be okay now, Miss North,” and he closed his bag and moved to leave. “We’ll be here a while if you need us.” And he closed the door behind himself.

“The Senator is on his way to Bethesda, Cath.” Morgan added, “He’s alive,” and then he looked at Eunice but didn’t say anything. He had only said he was alive because no one had said he was dead.

Eunice, not having anything to add, excused herself, “I’m going downstairs. I’m sure I’m needed there, for something.” And as she pulled the door shut behind her she wondered why she was there with Morgan and not perched at the Senator’s side?

Chapter Eighteen

Private eye, Oscar Bradley, had never shot anyone before that Thursday evening. He had never been to Washington D.C., either. As Oscar waited for the Medics to arrive, he called his office in Chicago and as he punched in the numbers he was amazed at how shaky his hand was responding to the simple task. He made a second call to his attorney whom he kept on a verbal retainer.

“Relax, Oscar.” His attorney friend advised him. “From what you’ve told me, you shouldn’t need council. The shooting of Senator is a Federal Offense. The FBI will have jurisdiction, I suggest you only talk with them. Keep your answers short and sweet. You’ll be okay. If you want me to get you a local attorney, there, just let me know?”

And that was exactly what happened. Everyone wanted to question him. But Oscar stated his right to speak with the FBI, and only the FBI. To Oscar’s dismay, everyone backed off and bowed to the FBI’s authority.

By midnight, the official report read, “Accidental Shooting of the Senator. Mistaken identity by a crazed gunman.” The D.C. Coroner with the FBI’s permission removed the Arab, as yet unidentified, to the local morgue. The band and caterers were released under a gag order to not discuss the case. Sam, who had returned to the bar as the police began to arrive, was considered too intoxicated to give a valid statement.

Eunice had called her lawyer and he was present when she was finally interviewed.

Catherine knew nothing and spoke openly to whoever asked as to what she had observed.

Morgan, who was put under all kinds of duress, said as little as possible. He recalled a couple of the questioning CIA agents that had debriefed him when he had returned from Madagascar. And they had remembered him, also. One even called him, “Sir Morgan.” Everyone was told, “Do not leave town.” The orchid mission was officially on an FBI investigative hold.

* * *

Margolova was escorted out of the Rio airport in a wheelchair guided by two uniformed Brazilian medical attendants. The contagion emblem sitting atop her blanket-covered briefcase insured her delivery into a waiting ambulance. If she were to be challenged on her way out of the concourse, the Lugar held in her covered hand and her instinctive survival wits would give her a fair chance of escaping, without a trace.

They were not stopped. No one questioned her presence. No one even looked in her direction as she was wheeled through customs and out into the street. She placed the gun back into her briefcase while refusing the actual ambulance ride.

She looked for a cab that was beat-up and abused, knowing that it would be driven by a new hire, or be owned by a gypsy independent. And she found the perfect taxi and driver who negotiated a fair fare, for her evil intent. Then paid him, up-front, to take her all the way up to Sao Paulo, with the promise of a large tip when she made her destination, a tip that would be paid out to him from the barrel of her 9mm Lugar.

Ames woke to a barely audible ringing phone out in the cubes, as the cubicles were called. Had he known it was his old cubicle’s phone ringing? He surely would have made a mad dash out to the floor, to his old cube, to answer it.

Instead, he fluffed up his sports coat that he was using as a pillow and went back into a deep sleep.

* * *

At two in the morning, Morgan and Catherine were excused to retire for the night. They showered together, a quick shower by two mentally exhausted novae lovers. With the lights out and Morgan softly stroking Catherine’s back, came some serious questioning from the Harris court.

“Jim?”

“Yes.”

“Just before the Senator was shot, he was addressing me, saying he was sorry or something.”

“Yes. We had talked about your safety...out by the pool. There’s a lot going on with this trip that I wasn’t aware of, until I talked to him.”

Morgan moved his hand to the small of her back and continued the gentle circular motion of his open hand, “The Senator developed a plot to draw out the terrorists responsible for his daughter’s death.” He paused his gentle rub and then continued, “He’s using me as bait.”

“What?” Catherine exclaimed. “Jesus Murphy! How could he do that? Something sounds very wrong here.”

Morgan went on to tell her everything. He even mentioned the love he had held for Sophie. And then let his hand swipe slow across her ass with deliberate intentions of arousing her.

Catherine rolled onto her side and held up her chin with the palm of her hand and looked at him in the darkened room, “I heard an agent from the FBI call you ‘Sir Morgan’ what was that all about?”

“Oh. I was... I am, an honorary Knight for saving the life of an English, secret agent.”

“So, you really are -- a knight in shinning armor?”

“Well, I am a knight.”

Catherine placed her hand on Morgan’s face and rolled in on him to kiss him on the lips. As she did so, their bodies came full against each other and it felt pleasant, and comfortably warm under the down-feathered bedding. She then placed her leg over his hip so that he could enter her with very little effort, and asked, “What do we do now, Jim?”

“I’m going down to Brazil, for the Senator. I need to do it for me, too.” Morgan made an attempt to enter her but was ever so slightly off.

Catherine reached his erection and guided it into her, “I want to go, too. I am going to be with you,” and she drew him into her with her with a pelvic push that came all the way from within her heart. And, after some intense and passionate thrusts, when she knew, and fully felt him climax warm inside of her, she allowed herself a sexual release so intense that stars sparkled behind her tightly closed eyes, and Eunice, two full rooms away, readying herself for sleep, heard the ecstatic primeval cry of, “Oh my God!” A scream so explosive that it reverberated uncontrollably through the pre-twilight morning and entrained the entire upper story of the massive Tudor with one hell of a colorful moment of carnal embellishment as Cathy came into a whole new galactic knowledge of universal satisfactions.

And Morgan enwrapped her with his arms and held her lovingly in her frenzy and he sensed more than knew that his cuddling of her at that instant had kept her from soaring out into the Milky Way and other cosmic constructions unknown yet to human observance. And as she calmed into the deep breathing of orgasmatic recovery, Morgan’s eyes closed and his over-taxed psyche sent him slam-dunk into a nasal humming snore of oblivion.

Catherine’s elation subsided to a sweaty, content with the world, vibrancy so highly conducive to sleep that she never heard Morgan’s nasality. And from her lips emerged a loving epitaph that in and of itself ended with a heave of her ample breasts, “I love you... Jim.”

Chapter Nineteen

Friday morning dawned foggy on the Potomac River which doormats the Institute’s western acreage. Security was stepped up to a ridiculous, to Eunice, fortification of one man per hundred foot of the vast perimeter.

The northern section, where the Arab kid had walked in, now had a ribbon of yellow police tape outlining his every step. Along with every step that Oscar Bradley made as he followed the suspicious kid, right up to the point that Oscar made the decision to use deadly force to succumb the Middle Eastern religious zealot. Nothing will ever justify an earlier response on Oscar’s part to stop that terrorist’s onslaught. Oscar Bradley was exonerated for his actions, on the scene, and the FBI’s lead investigator formally submitted the paperwork for a citizen’s award for heroism on Oscar’s behalf.

The FBI put Oscar Bradley on a plane back to Chicago with a pat on the back, a promise that he would not be named as the shooter, and a suggestion that he follow some cheating wives for a while. Oscar would view two sunrises that Friday morning.

* * *

Eunice didn’t sleep well – at all. She scanned the grounds from her lanai and counted over thirty vehicles that didn’t belong there. The government was now protecting them. She looked at the shallow fog drifting across the gray water of the Potomac River and felt that some of it was floating around in her own head not allowing her to focus on what she personally needed to accomplish.

Eunice went back in time, rethinking her stubbornness to forgive Morgan of his drunken infidelity on the night he asked her to marry him three years earlier. She saw, in her mind’s eye, her balled up fist slamming into the topless dancer’s nose and saw the blood pouring down her chin. And she wondered why it wasn’t Morgan that she so precariously socked on the button. And then for an ever so brief flash in time she wondered if anything really mattered, anything at all.

Eunice shook her head, clearing away the fog. And then she began talking to herself, “The next halfway good looking male that crosses my path... Had better be ready for me.”

The sliding door to the patio/lanai from the guest suite wobbled open and Jim Morgan, barefooted, wearing nothing but a pair of gray sweatpants and a Camel cigarette dangling from his lips, slipped out onto the deck, “Good Morning, Eunice. Mind if I blast a cigarette?” And, without waiting for an answer, he pulled the glass door closed behind him.