"Okay," he finally said. "See you tomorrow, son."
I couldn't look at him. "Right."
Hawk moved on around the garden, and I left. I didn't feel like going right back to my hotel. I needed a drink. I took a taxi to the El Jardín because I felt lonely and somehow I associated that place with the girl at the clinic. When I got inside, I was surprised to see her sitting at a corner table. She was by herself, sipping a glass of wine. She saw me immediately.
Nor will you contact the Vigilantes or anybody connected with this mission, not even the personnel at this clinic.
I turned away from her and went to a table across the room. I felt a terrible urge to go to her, to tell her the problems I'd had, to take her to bed with me. But she herself had forbidden me to make contact. A waiter came, and I ordered a cognac. When he left, I looked up and she was standing beside my table.
"Good evening, Rafael." She sat down beside me. She was even more beautiful than I'd remembered.
Her first name suddenly came to me, out of the depths of my subconscious. "Your name is… Tanya." I looked into her eyes. "I'm not supposed to know that, am I?"
"No, but I think I know why you do. It's all right."
"I'm not supposed to be with you, am I?"
"I've been asked to contact you. To see how you feel and to make sure you have been accepted as Nick Carter."
"I've been accepted," I said. "But the one called Hawk is a little too concerned about my well-being. I was introduced to the President this evening, and it was pretty rough for a minute. But I think I've convinced Hawk that I'm all right."
Tanya's lovely face grew somber. "Hawk is the one man who can abort this entire mission. You must keep him convinced in any way you can that you are Nick Carter and that you are able to carry out your assignment at the conference." Her voice was strained and urgent. "It is imperative that you have access to the conference room at the noon recess."
"I understand, Tanya," I said. I wanted to take her in my arms and kiss her. "Come up to my room," I said. "For just a little while. It's… important to me."
"Hawk may be watching you," she said softly.
"No, he isn't. Please come, just for a while."
She hesitated for a minute, then reached over and touched my face gently. I knew she wanted me. "I will be there in half an hour."
"I'll be waiting."
Forty-five minutes later we stood in the semidarkness of my hotel room, and I took Tanya roughly in my arms. I kissed her and her tongue slid into my mouth. She moved her hips up against me.
"Oh, Rafael," she breathed.
"Take your clothes off," I said.
"Yes."
We undressed in the dark. In a few seconds we were both standing there nude, looking hungrily at each other. Tanya was one of the most beautifully built women I'd ever seen. My eyes devoured the full, round breasts, the small waist, curving hips, and long, smooth thighs. And I was captivated by her smooth, sensual voice. The voice that had spoken to me so softly and persuasively at the clinic. There was an extra magnetism between us because of that special relationship. I hungered for the body that belonged to that lulling, inviting voice, the voice that had such power over me.
We walked to the bed together and I kissed her there, pulling her close to me and feeling her taught breasts against me, moving my hands down over the swelling curves of her hips.
We were both breathing hard. I released her, and she lay down on the bed, her full curves creamy against the whiteness of the sheets. I remembered the passionate moments in my room at the clinic. Suddenly I had another memory, the one from the dream I'd had at the clinic. I saw Tanya stretched out on a sofa instead of the bed, her entire body inviting me to join her. Had it just been a dream? Or had it really happened? I was terribly confused.
I got into the bed and lay close beside her, facing her. I touched her burning lips with mine, then moved my mouth across her throat and shoulder.
"Do you have an apartment in Caracas?" I asked between kisses.
"Why, yes," she answered, startled.
"Do you have a wide sofa in the apartment?"
She looked at me, and I thought I saw fear in her eyes. "Why do you ask?"
"That was where we first made love, wasn't it?" I said. "Before the clinic. It wasn't in my apartment, as you told me. My apartment doesn't have a sofa like that one." They had shown me a couple of pictures of my apartment on Avenido Bolivar.
Tanya seemed upset. "Is it important?" she asked.
"Not really," I said, kissing the hollow of her throat. "It just came to me when I saw you lying here."
Her face relaxed again. "You're right, Rafael. It was my apartment. I was just testing you at the clinic to see if you could remember."
"Because of the mission?"
"Because of my female vanity." She smiled and pressed insistently against me.
I stopped worrying about it and forgot everything but the urgency of my desire and the velvet softness of her flesh.
Eight
Hawk, Vincent, and I went to the White Palace early the next morning. Most of the regular security force had been there all night. By six a.m. it was already a madhouse. Hawk told Vincent and me to check out the conference room and adjacent rooms before nine-thirty, when the conference was scheduled to begin. I was very jumpy. It gave me a weird feeling to be making all these security checks, moving so easily among the people who were there for the sole purpose of stopping me. If I hadn't been so nervous, I'd have enjoyed the irony of it all. The security men nodded and smiled at me, never suspecting I was the one who'd see to it that no one left the conference room alive.
Throughout the morning the faces from the orientation room came back to me over and over again, and every time it happened, I'd break out in a cold sweat. The intensity of my hatred was tearing me apart. I wanted to get on with it, to get the job done, to rid the world of those two evil men.
"Well, here it is an hour before conference time," Hawk said to me, "and we have nothing more to go on than we had when we left Washington. Except that we can look for a tall man that nobody but you has seen."
"That isn't my fault," I said sharply.
Hawk studied my face, and I realized I'd done it again. I avoided his piercing eyes.
"Who the hell said it was?" he snapped back.
"I'm… sorry, sir. I guess I'm a little edgy because of the conference."
"That isn't like you at all, Nick," he said seriously. "You always keep your cool. That's why I consider you my best. What is it with you, anyway? You know you can level with me."
I looked at him. He had a strange effect on me, and I couldn't figure out why. I liked the man, and somehow I felt very close to him, though I'd never laid eyes on him before yesterday morning. It was weird. "I'll be all right, sir," I said. "You can count on me."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure."
"All right. If you discover anything, you can find me at the security headquarters."
When he left, I felt like punching my fist into a wall. I might look like Nick Carter, but I wasn't acting like him. And Hawk was noticing. If I wasn't more careful, I'd blow the whole mission.
By conference time, the palace was impossibly hectic. The halls were jammed with people. There were hundreds of reporters from all over the world. Flashbulbs were going off every minute, and there was a great deal of shouting and gesturing. When the principals arrived at the conference room, the crowd around them was so thick you could barely see them.
Seeing them again at close range, I felt such hostility, such open hatred for them that I had to turn away. I couldn't even watch them go into the room. After a few minutes everyone was inside, and the big double doors were shut behind them. The conference had begun.