The Casanova Embrace (24 page)

When she thought in these terms, she would force herself to
imagine terrible atrocities committed at Benotti's behest--tortures, killings,
brutalities beyond even her ability to conceive. But Eddie hadn't told her what
they were.

She was thankful that Clyde's was crowded. It helped her
keep worrisome thoughts out of her mind.

When she returned to her apartment after work, the old
chain of disturbing thoughts began again. She lay in bed, wide awake, unable to
assuage her physical fatigue while her mind spun like a top. Then she
remembered the woman across the street. She had not noticed her when she
entered the building. This is ridiculous, she told herself, as she sprang out
of bed and padded across the cold floor to the window. Opening the blind a
crack, she looked out. The woman was still there, watching, alert, as consumed
as ever. Couldn't be, she decided, and when she looked again after an hour or
two of additional tossing, the woman was gone. Relieved at last, she felt her
body relax, grow drowsy. The last thing that passed through her mind was a
picture of Eddie, coming toward her, his arms outstretched. It was only an
image, an apparition.

She managed to get through the next day by expending
enormous energy cleaning her apartment. She scoured the kitchen, crept around
on her hands and knees and scrubbed the floors. Then she washed down the walls
and polished the wood furniture to a bright sheen. When she got to the windows,
she pulled the blinds and sprayed the glass with cleaning fluid. It was only
then that the memory of the woman came back, and looking downward into the
street again, she saw her. It was cold, and vapor came out of the woman's
mouth, but she seemed alert, watchful, driven. The sudden opening of the blinds
seemed to have caught her attention. She looked upward briefly, then turned her
eyes away.

When Frederika went to work in the early evening, the woman
was still there. Later, preparing for bed, Frederika again glanced through the
blinds. The woman persisted in her vigil. Perhaps she is mad, Frederika
thought. But the idea quickly left her consciousness. It was Eddie that rose
again to dominate her mind. No. She was not quite the disciplined soldier she
was expected to be.

She must have dozed off. The telephone rang, shrill,
demanding. Eddie. She reached for the phone.

"I have wonderful news."

"Oh, Eddie!" Hearing his voice left her
speechless with emotion.

"I will be there shortly." He hung up and
Frederika felt renewed again, on the verge of happiness, the sense of
expectation delicious. Her body began to focus on her lover.

He must have been close by. Hearing his key in the door,
she bounded out of bed and switched on the lights. He was there, his skin
chilly against hers as she held him in her arms, reveling again in the taste of
him. Kissing her deeply, he lingered, then moved her away as he began pacing in
agitation.

"Carlos Lantissa in London." He made a motion
with his hand, slicing it sideways across his throat. "Another beast
struck down in the jungle."

"London!"

He stopped pacing and slapped his thigh.

"We got him in a restaurant. Poison. It was
magnificent. The information was letter perfect."

"Anyone else?" she asked, feeling her chest
constrict.

"I don't understand."

"It was not like the plane crash?"

He moved toward her and held her in his arms, patting her
hair.

"One other." He paused. "We had to be
certain. It was necessary. In a war, innocents are exposed."

"I know." She did not want him to see her courage
falter.

"Besides, they killed many of us in their prisons.
After torture. Three of our people were gunned down in Caracas yesterday."

She wondered if they were the men she'd seen at the
airport, but she dared not say that she had observed them. Only that he was
here with her now--that was all that mattered. The rest was part of some bad
dream. She debated telling him about her mistake, her forgetfulness, but she
held off. Not now. She drew him toward the bed, watched him as he undressed,
and soon she was locked in his arms, pinned to him, shuddering with the joy of
his nearness, knowing that what she was doing was worth the effort ... for
this.

"I love you, I love you," she whispered,
endlessly repetitive, like a mantra. Then later she told him about her mistake.
He listened quietly, without emotion.

"I was sick with apprehension."

"You must steel yourself," he said as he lay back
looking into the ceiling. "We must assume the worst."

"I already did that."

"It is a game of great tensions, great dangers.
Sometimes one wonders if they know all the time what is happening."

"Who?"

"The CIA. Perhaps the DINA."

"And they simply let it happen?"

"It might serve their sense of expediency."

"Then what is the point?"

"I don't think about anything beyond the destruction.
The objective is to kill as many of the butchers as possible, as quickly and
efficiently as possible."

She shivered. He is bloodthirsty, she thought. She looked
at him. And beautiful. Being with him reassured her, although his objectives
were sometimes murky, at least to her.

"The problem is to sustain one's alertness," he
said suddenly. "It is very tiring. Paranoia is a double-edged sword."

She held his face in her hands and kissed him. As she had
learned, paranoia could be painful. Then she remembered the woman in front of
her building.

"There is one thing." She pictured the woman
outside, the relentless vigil. "An odd detail. Perhaps it is purely my
imagination. There are two hundred tenants in this building."

She could feel his sudden alertness, a reflex.

"There is a woman watching this building," she
said.

He jumped out of bed, moved toward the blinds, and lifting
a slat, his eyes searched the street.

"Where?"

Frederika got up and stood behind him, pointing to the spot
where the woman had stood.

"She is gone now. She does not usually stay this
late." She looked at the radio with its luminescent clock. It was four
A.M.

"Usually? Then it has been a regular routine?"

"Why, yes." She hesitated. "You might say
that."

"What does she look like?"

"Tall, thin. A rather bony face. Middle-aged. You
might call her..." She searched for the right word. "...patrician.
She was dressed rather mannishly, in a trench coat and pants."

She watched his face, observing the gathering concern, the
beginnings of agitation.

"Do you think she was out there when I arrived?"

"I don't know." Then she checked herself quickly.
"She was there earlier. She would have been there at that time. Yes."
He looked into the street again, narrowing the blinds. Touching his bare
shoulder, she felt his tension.

"What is it, my darling?" she asked gently. He
remained silent for a long time, although the tightness of his shoulder muscles
indicated that he was reacting. "What is it?" she repeated.

"How was her hair cut?" he asked, his voice
clipped, businesslike.

"Short, like a man."

"And the color?"

"Graying."

"And the color of the trench coat?"

"Navy." She was surprised that she had absorbed
so much detail.

He turned, let the slat fall, and began pacing the room.
The apartment was chilled and she slipped back into bed, watching him as he
walked about.

"What is it?"

He didn't answer.

"It is my fault," she said, feeling the whole
facade of this new life crumbling.

"What have I done, Eddie?" He stopped briefly,
looked at her, his face drawn, his lips tight. "Please, Eddie." Then
he turned away.

In his look, she read her own fate. I can't bear it, she
told herself.

"I'll do anything, Eddie. Anything. I'm such a
fool."

But he continued to ignore her, his mind elsewhere.
Occasionally, he would peek through the slats again.

"Is she one of them, the enemy? I should have warned
you."

He stopped his pacing and began searching for his clothes,
saying nothing, his anger controlled, although she felt it in the room, the
heaviness palpable, overwhelming.

"Eddie, please." She ran out of bed and grasped
him in her arms, holding him tightly, kissing his face, the tears beginning. He
made some halfhearted efforts at placation, but his response was cold. She felt
his indifference and saw whatever emotion he might have felt suddenly lost,
squandered by her absent-mindedness.

"It's my fault, Eddie. My stupidity."

"No." She sensed his bitterness.

"I can correct it, Eddie. You'll see. I'll do whatever
you tell me has to be done." She released him and he continued to dress.
"Don't hate me, Eddie. I'll make it up, you'll see, Eddie." She
swallowed hard, the bile boiling in her throat.

"It has nothing to do with you," he said.

"No. You're trying to humor me. I've endangered
everything, right, Eddie? She is the enemy. She has found out. I've bungled
it." She jammed a fist into her palm. "Please, Eddie. Give me the
chance. I'll make it right. I can do it. I have the courage to do it." A
panic was gripping her. I must not lose him, she told herself. I cannot lose
him.

"It's not what you think," he said gently.

The thought confused her.

"You mustn't lie to me, Eddie. I know what I have to
do. I can do it. I know I can do it." He had finished dressing. He turned
to her.

"Do nothing," he said. "Nothing." His
eyes narrowed. She imagined she could see his contempt for her. "Please,
Frederika. Do nothing."

"And you? What will you do?"

"I'll be back," he said, moving toward the door.

"No!" she said. "You won't! You are leaving
me! You are going away!" She was losing control now, feeling the weight of
hysteria. "I'll kill her!" she cried.

His slap hit her sharply across her cheek, the sound almost
as painful as the blow. Then he was gone.

Dobbs pushed away the file, first extracting the color
Polaroid photograph of Miranda Ferrara Palmero, holding it out between his
thumb and middle finger. He slanted it in the direction of the window light, as
if the natural, now fading light might offer more insight than the yellowish
lamplight that arched over the table.

Perhaps he was missing something, he asked himself,
although the question had become the essence of his enigma. He was a fish in
strange waters. The truth of that undermined all of his previous self-praise
about his professionalism, his thoroughness. His superiors had cited him again
and again for what they believed was his instinctive understanding of human
frailty, human motivation, human psychology. And he had accepted these honors,
believing them. This Palmero case only reinforced what he had secretly begun to
believe about himself--his own ignorance, his incompetence. It was, he knew, a
strong condemnation. But no one was bugging his brain and he could afford to be
honest with himself. No textbook could provide more than surface answers to
human passions.

Miranda's picture revealed nothing, a flat image, devoid of
humanity, and he did not have the imagination to superimpose it with life. Not
like Eduardo! He could feel himself reaching out to Eduardo, barely touching.
Perhaps it was Miranda's hatred that had brought them closer.

"But when you first married him, did you love
him?" the interrogator had pressed.

"I told you. I detested him even then."

There seemed a special delicacy in the next question, as if
the interrogator was aware of the rituals of the oligarchy.

"An arrangement?"

"There was more to consider than the mere emotions of
the principals." She had spat out the words with contempt. "The
merger of two great fortunes took precedence over the merger of people."
The interrogator had noted a long silence. "I loathed him."

"Why?"

"Perhaps because he was forced upon me."

"And his feelings?"

She had put out a cigarette, stood up, paced the large
room, looking upward as if imploring God. When she finally returned to within
earshot of the interrogator, she had fixed her eyes on him, glaring, two burnt
coals glowing.

"I could have told him to jump off the highest
mountain in Chile and he would have done so. I could have told him to slit his
throat with a knife and he would have done so. I could have told him to put a
bullet in his brain and he would have done so. He was beyond logic, obsessed
with me."

"So the marriage was more than an arrangement."

"All right, I'll tell you. I was the ransom, his
father's bribe to him to keep him out of politics, to be a good little boy. I
was the candy." She mocked, imitating a child, "I will give you this
candy if you will only play like a good little boy and not get into mischief. I
pleaded with my own father not to allow this."

"Why did he?"

"Money. Property. Greed. He was an old-fashioned man
and I was an only daughter, the spoiled beauty. For him, the marriage was the
moment of truth. He demanded continuity from me. And Eduardo's father was a
subtle one, sly. He bid quite high. He presented an offer that could not be
refused. And my father demanded my consent." She had dabbed her eyes.
"A woman's tears mean nothing. And I adored my father. I worshipped
him."

"And your mother?"

"She had been pampered beyond endurance and had long
ago succumbed to my father's disciplines. She was nothing." The flashing
eyes moved away from the interrogator's face. The full lips barely moved as the
voice continued.

"It was the most lavish wedding in Santiago. Five
hundred guests and the two fathers puffed up like peacocks at the stew they had
cooked up for us. We were the darlings of Chile, the envy of the world. The
virgin princess led to the slaughter."

The interrogator must have offered a confused expression
and Miranda had cackled nervously.

"Hard to believe? Yes, I know. I had often wondered
who would believe me when the time came to tell it." She had held out her
arms in a pantomime of display of her physical assets. "I am still fine to
look at. My body is good. It was perfection then. See my teeth? Still white.
And the purple eyes. Little bags beginning, but more than the hint of what they
were." She picked at her skin, pinching a cheek, stretching the wafer of
flesh, which bounced back to the skull. "The skin still good. There."
She pointed to a picture, a painting in an ornate gold-leafed frame. "That
was me then. I had what is the stuff of men's dreams. To Eduardo, I had come
down from heaven." There was another long silence, more pacing of the
large room.

"Then why was the bargain not kept?" the
interrogator asked finally. It was, after all, the heart of the exercise.
"In less than a year he was back in politics. They had sent him to put out
their party organ in Valdivia. He betrayed you."

"Yes," she snapped. "He betrayed me."

"Why?"

"He would not accept what he had bought. He had
assumed he was getting fire. He got ice instead."

Eduardo would always remember the sound of the sea beating
against the jagged rocks two hundred feet below and the pounding of the wind
against the window of their bedroom. The gale had come up suddenly and soon the
thunder rolled above them with explosive force, shaking the ground on which the
house perched precariously at the edge of the mountain.

Her father had given her the house, his vacation retreat on
the coast sixty miles above Santiago. Miranda had gone there as a child, but
lately her father had used it to entertain his various mistresses and it was
one of the gifts proffered in the bargain struck between the heads of the two
families. Isolated, built of granite and marble from the nearby quarries, it
seemed--in her father's mind, at least--the perfect spot for a woman to find
the love of a man. Obviously it had worked for him many times, and her father
must have sensed that it was, in his daughter's case, the badly needed medicine
to smooth her passage to womanhood.

If there had been protests to the marriage on her part,
Eduardo had blocked them from his mind. Certainly Miranda did not, in their six
month courtship, give any hint of defiance. If she was quiet, aloof, he
imagined it was her way, although he certainly knew that she did not love him.

"In time," his father had assured him. Nor did he
inquire as to the details of the bargain. Beyond having her, everything else
was of little consequence to him. Every ounce of his being cried out for her,
overcoming his doubts. She was something worth living for, he told himself.
Nothing else could possibly matter. He had not, in those six months, done
anything more than caress her fingers, the touch of them sending shivers
through his body, creating palpitations and swellings in his loins. The mere
sight of her could stir him, and sometimes his desire for her grew so powerful
that he dared not face her without first relieving himself of the burden of his
own sexuality.

And if she knew she was the object of his obsessive
fantasies, she hardly spoke of it, revealing, actually, nothing of her true
feelings.

If she was not affectionate, she was polite, and although
he was not yet tortured by her indifference, he pushed these anxieties from his
mind. There was nothing he would not do to possess her. Politics paled. If
necessary, he was prepared to go to law school and step into the role of patron
of the family under his father's tutelage. Up till then, he had no regrets,
only fears that we would not ultimately please her.

As the moment of truth approached, he waited in the drawing
room, watching the turbulent sea, listening to the wind and the exploding
thunder, wondering if it stirred her desire to be protected by him. I will
never let harm come to you, he vowed silently, his eyes searching the ominous
maelstrom beyond the thick glass panes. The servants had prepared a lavish
dinner and they had sipped champagne. He had even toasted her, silently, since
his throat was too tight to speak coherently and his mind and heart too
overflowing with the ecstasy of having won her. She is mine now, became a
repetitive phrase in his brain as he watched her, the golden princess of his
dreams. What did it matter how he had won her?

When he had waited an appropriate length of time, he
climbed the wide staircase to the master bedroom suite, knocking politely at
the door, his legs like jelly. There was no reply and he opened the ornate door
into the darkened room, revealed suddenly by the flash from a bolt of
lightning. She was already in the bed, although he could not see her face, only
that her hair had been let down and lay spread along the pillow.

"Darling," he whispered. Still no answer came. He
came toward the edge of the bed. Her eyes were closed, her breathing quiet.
Bending over her, he put his lips on hers, feeling instantly his desire surge.
Her lips did not respond. He shook her lightly, heard a brief gurgle as a
breath caught in her throat. Perhaps it was the champagne, he thought, still
trusting. He moved away from the bed and into the large adjoining bathroom. Her
makeup case was open. She had obviously done her nightly ablutions. Her
toothbrush hanging beside his in the rack was damp.

It was only when he saw the little opened vial of pills
that his curiosity deepened. He lifted the vial to his nostrils, smelled them.
They were odorless. Then he looked at the label. "Take two before
retiring." Sleeping pills. A brief panic seized him, but then he
overturned the vial into his palm. There were many still left. It was hardly an
overdose.

He ran to the bed again.

"Miranda," he called, his voice rising as he said
her name. She did not stir. He felt a sob grow in him as he reached over and
took her in his arms, kissing her cheeks, her eyes, her hair. Her eyelids
fluttered at his touch. He imagined they opened briefly, then, leaden, they
closed again. She was in a dead sleep.

Undressing, he crept in beside her. She was naked. Her
flesh felt cool, and despite his anger, his anxiety and humiliation, his penis
remained hard. He slipped an arm under her and drew her toward him, whispering
her name in her ear, tears welling over his eyelids, falling to her cheek. He
could not tell how long he held her in this position, his body stirring,
although his anger grew as the night wore on, excited by the sounds of the
storm roaring outside. Perhaps the storm had frightened her, he wondered. But
what she had done had extinguished the luminosity of the moment, his moment.
And he had determined that he would not, could not disappoint her. Had she
forgotten and simply took the pills as part of her nightly routine? The idea
softened his anger, but only for the moment. Love me, he cried into the night,
holding her, feeling her soft flesh next to his own. You must love me.

Later, as he lay there, still holding her, listening to the
storm's abatement, he began to curse his own vulnerability. Why had he
consented to this idea? He had let it happen, had let his father manipulate the
event. He cursed what he had become, although he could still feel some pride in
the possession of her. But she is mine. It is her duty, he railed, getting out
of bed and pacing the floor. Finally, he threw the covers off her, watching her
nakedness, feeling the force of his anger and sexuality. Then he moved over
her, spreading her legs roughly, placing his penis up against the dark thatch
where her legs met. He wanted to cry, scream out his anguish. You are mine, he
pleaded, conscious of his own self-loathing as he checked himself from moving
his body further. Instead, he continued to hold her, kissing her. She did not
stir. Love me, he pleaded as he felt desire roar through him and the joy begin
somewhere deep in his brain, the storm lashing out again inside of him, the sea
angry again, the wind shuddering, the thunder explosive. He felt ashamed of his
pleasure, rolling over her to his side of the bed. She had wanted that, he
decided, his logic suddenly clear. I did not give her that satisfaction. He was
convinced of his insight, also of his love for her. He lay awake the rest of
the night, watching the dawn come, then the morning.

The sky had cleared into a deep blue. The sun had risen
high when she finally stirred beside him. He watched her come out of the deep
narcotic slumber, insisting that his face be the first object she would see.

"Why?" he asked, when her eyes finally squinted
into the sun. It was already late afternoon and he had not slept. He knew she
was gathering her senses, trying to surmise whether the act had been done. The
realization dawned. She was still virginal.

"Are you disappointed?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, Eduardo," she said. "I could not
face it."

"Am I so repugnant?" It was a question that
gnawed at his pride. He wished he did not have to ask it. She closed her eyes
again.

"I could not face it," she said. He reached out
and touched her cheek, feeling the coldness. His penis rose instantly. He could
not will his desire into submission.

"If only you knew how much I love you," he said.
Her lips curled. It seemed to him to be contempt. Not even a smile for his
weakness.

"I know, Eduardo. I am truly sorry."

He began to caress her again. Surely there was some way to
reach her. He knew he could forgive her.

"I can't help myself," he said.

"Nor can I, Eduardo."

"In time.... "His words trailed off. He
remembered how his father had said it, with such confidence, such wisdom. But
he had trusted him once before. The image of Isabella was branded into his
mind. Again, I am cheated, he thought, feeling the backwash of self-pity.

He moved her body close to his again, kissing her lips,
feeling again her coldness.

"I love you," he said again. And when she did not
move, a lump of clay in his arms, he said, "It is a curse."