Выбрать главу

"You'd like a little sugar." He said it simply. Not a question. Not a command. He just said it.

Heidi started to say something, then stopped. "I would like some sugar," she said.

Grom poured it in for her.

"It was nice of me to pour your sugar," Grom suggested.

"It's very sweet of you to sweeten my coffee," Heidi said with a wide smile. She sipped it.

"Great joe they have here," Grom observed.

"It is wonderful!"

"I'm attracted to you Heidi. And you are extremely attracted to me."

"I am, Greg. I guess I never really admitted it to myself until this very minute."

"You are in love with me, passionately. You want me. You'd do anything for me, Heidi."

"Yes, Greg, anything. " She leaned over the table, her eyes drinking him in lustily and giving him a fine view down the front of her light cotton shirt. She looked around and surreptitiously opened a couple more of the shirt buttons. Grom's view got even better.

Heidi pulled the rubber band out of her hair, transforming her tight ponytail into a bountiful spill of cornsilk. "Let's skip breakfast and go back to my room," she suggested.

Grom leaned back, brimming with satisfaction. His future was assured. His success would know no bounds. And what better way to celebrate it all than with a morning romp with Heidi Fenstermaker? He said, "Finish your coffee for me first, will you, honey bunch?"

The cup was drained before he reached the "unch" part.

GREG GROM FONDLY recalled those first heady days spent testing the capabilities of the powder. It worked just as well as the translations promised. In fact, it seemed too good to be true. Grom kept waiting for his test subject to develop horrific medical problems or dementia or, well, something.

There were a few glitches along the way. When Heidi Fenstermaker discovered that Grom was regularly bedding nine of the fourteen female interns, she became hysterically jealous. Grom calmed her down and gave her a cup of coffee. He suggested to Heidi that she was not angry with him for sleeping with every other attractive woman in the group. As a matter of fact, Grom suggested that...

Well, that opened up whole new vistas of opportunity. Even after Grom began using his powder for other purposes he still enjoyed many and various sexual exploits. He learned from his mistakes and soon developed a very effective set of suggestions. He took his women, enjoyed them, then discarded them with a code word. They went away just as happily as they had come to him.

Grom could have gone on like that for a lifetime had it not been for the arrival of Dawn Summens. She was just some bikini model hired for a commercial. By then Grom had engineered for himself a rapid rise through the ranks of the tiny Union Island government bureaucracy and was already chief of staff to the island administrator. Grom invited Summens to dinner after the commercial shoot and, somehow, in just one evening, everything changed.

It was as if Summens had used his own powder against him, captivating him entirely. That wouldn't have been such a bad thing if she had not outsmarted him at the same time. She learned about the powder, somehow, and threatened to expose him. She had documented evidence hidden somewhere. She blackmailed him at the same time she was giving him the best sex he had ever had. He never quite got around giving her the Miytec powder until it was too late.

He had to admit that it had all turned out for the best. Summens had assumed control of his ambitious strategies and pushed them further. He rarely let her touch the powder, but she strategized how he used it. Pretty soon Grom found himself elected administrator of Union Island. He changed the office to president, and the islanders loved him for it. His tourism initiative succeeded wildly. Union Island prospered and Greg Grom got rich fast.

Could he sustain this pace? Maybe. Maybe not. There had been a lot of dried-up octopus powder in the stone jars from the Miytec ruins, but those jars emptied fast when he began sprinkling it on the hotel breakfast buffets. The supply was virtually exhausted. The synthetic version of dried-up octopus powder seemed prone to triggering side effects.

Grom was getting nervous. They were at a crucial stage. Union Island had to break away from the United States of America. U.S. restrictions were hindering his income potential. When he was the one and only rule of law on the island, he could tax tourism as much as he wanted.

But independence would come only with strong federal-level support. Since no elected official in his right mind would support Union Island independence, Grom needed the powder to make it happen.

But the powder was almost gone.

Chapter 18

The Union Island Freedom Tour bus was nearing its stop at a restaurant at one of the highest points in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. President Grom was scheduled to partake of the restaurant's famous down-home pie and fresh-brewed coffee, then make a brief speech.

Remo thought it was odd. Why here? It was picturesque, sure, but he couldn't see what connection it had with Greg Grom's independence movement.

Remo stepped off the roof and jogged easily along the hiking trail for the last few miles. The bus was straining against the incline, and it didn't take much effort for Remo to beat it to its destination. He entered the restaurant and found it to have a large two-tiered interior, giving all patrons an unobstructed view of the mountains through the glass wall. He took a table on the top tier and watched Greg Grom perform below, at the best seat in the house.

"What'll it be?" The waitress didn't even look in his direction. She was watching Greg Grom. Remo asked for steamed rice and fresh fish, only to be told there was no rice on the menu. Did he want his fish deep-fried or pan-fried?

"Steam the fish, too, would you?" Remo asked. The waitress took all of six minutes to return with a plate of smoked ham, candied carrots and mashed potatoes under a vast, gelatinous pool of auburn gravy. By then Greg Grom had finished his public pie-eating and was delivering a brief speech on the indomitable spirit on the Smoky Mountain folk. Somehow his compliments dovetailed into an exhortation for the freedom of Union Island. Remo didn't try to follow the logic. Grom made his excuses and headed for the men's room. "Second helpin's on the house," Remo informed the old man in the next booth, handing over his own untouched and inedible plate of country victuals. The old man looked as if he'd won the lottery.

Remo slipped from the restaurant without being noticed by the wait staff, who were busy discussing their brush with a world leader.

With a little fast footwork Remo got outside and under the exterior window to the men's room, but he kept on moving. Union Island staff were wandering the grounds casting their suspicious gaze on any and all patrons. Two of the agents had clearly had U.S. Secret Service training in how to blend into a crowd. The others were regular staff drafted into security duty and spent most of their time actually watching the suit-and-sunglasses twins, imitating their behavior strategies for looking natural. Remo passed through them unseen, but he wasn't sure a passle of teenagers doing a Big Stomp line dance couldn't have passed unnoticed through this self-absorbed bunch.

Still, Remo was interested in some quality alone time in the men's room, and he didn't want to be bothered. He sought a distraction.

The wide, manicured lawn was dotted with wooden lounge chairs inhabited by relaxing guests of the hotel that was attached to the restaurant. Most were elderly widows reading sleazy hack romance novels and occasionally looking up to admire the view. The lawn went down the mountainside for a quarter mile, then ended at a white picket fence. Beyond that stretched a mile-deep canyon. Even in the late-morning sunshine the verdant crevices and mountainsides were caressed by the clinging veils of mists that gave the Smokies their name.

Beautiful, Remo thought. Not the scenery, but the nifty diversion that just popped into his head. As he walked, he reached out with one foot and gave a nudge to one of the lounge chairs.