“Security systems in?” he asked.
In addition to the luxury upgrade, Aeroconsultants was installing antiterrorist detection and protection systems which included bomb detectors and infrared and radar threat sensors. More executives who flew internationally were becoming nervous about drug-toting maniacs with Stinger missiles. The pilots who flew for them were treated to two-week workshops in defensive and evasive flying tactics conducted by Wyatt, Barr, Hackley, and Zimmerman.
“They’re mostly in,” she said.
He climbed the airstair and slipped inside, turning on an overhead lighting strip.
She followed.
Much of the interior panelling had been replaced with laminated teak. The new carpeting had not yet been laid and the sofa and chairs — reupholstered in new, soft leather — had not been reinstalled as yet. Snugged up against the rear bulkhead, behind a fitted fiberglass door that folded to either side, was a full-sized bed.
“The bed work?” he asked.
“Hasn’t been tested.”
“Should it be?”
She moved in close and wrapped her arms around his waist. The heat of Washington was still on him, musky. She could feel the strength in his arms as he pulled her to him.
She tilted her head back to look up at him and said, “Around here, we double-test everything.”
Wyatt woke at five-thirty.
He was in his own bed, which felt a little strange. The first early morning light was sliding into the bedroom through the large and undraped window which overlooked his backyard. The overgrown, dense shrubbery and trees which completely enclosed the yard made it private, even though it was small. The grass was also overgrown; the neighbour’s boy was a day or two behind on his mowing.
Wyatt’s house was forty or fifty years old, located in a quiet residential area of northeast Albuquerque. Since buying it, he had painted it inside and out, installed new carpet, then added air-conditioning. It was the first house he had ever owned, and after three years, he still wasn’t certain how he felt about his ownership. His feet were still attuned to Air Force ways, ready to move on at any moment.
The queen-sized bed dominated the room, which was the largest of the two bedrooms, and left little space for the nightstands and dresser. The bedspread was crumpled in one comer, where he had tossed it at two o’clock.
He sat up, worked his way backward, and leaned against the headboard.
Jan opened one eye.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I know. You like to watch the sun come up.”
She opened her other eye, and both eyes came alive, a vibrant green in the soft light. Slithering her way up beside him, the sheet fell away from her full breasts.
Wyatt raised his left arm and put it around her shoulders, tugging her close.
“You’re worried, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Who, me? Worry?” he said, but he was. He was putting a lot of lives on the line, more than ever before. And he found himself thinking about the people attached to those lives, the wives and the families.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do. I made a commitment.”
“Make this the last one.”
“The commitment is four years old.”
She knew that. He had told her. Church had given him five million dollars as the fair price of having Wyatt on tap for undetermined years into the future. More than that, Church had known Wyatt better than he knew himself. Church had known that Wyatt lived up to his promises.
She turned slightly and put her hand on his chest. She locked her eyes on his. “The company is doing very well. We don’t need the covert contracts anymore.”
“I also believe in what I’m doing, Jan.”
That was true, also. There wasn’t one operation he had performed for Church for which he felt any regret whatsoever. His actions — or Bucky’s or Norm’s or Karl’s — were necessary in some degree toward maintaining stability in one part of the world or another. His people felt the same way, he thought.
Her dark red hair was tousled. There was an impressed line on her cheek from a wrinkle in the pillowcase. Her hand felt warm on his chest.
He slid his left hand along her upper arm.
“So,” she said, “you’re only going to make one commitment in your life? To God and country, but mostly country?”
“That’s the pressing one right now, Jan.”
She pulled away abruptly, spun around, and sat on the edge of the bed with her back to him.
He leaned toward her and put his hand on her shoulder.
She shrugged it off.
“You don’t think I should fulfil my promises?”
“Maybe you should make more of them, Andy. Maybe you should think more about the company, about the people who work for you.”
“Well, damn it! I am.”
“Bullshit!”
She stood up, crossed to the dresser, and scooped up her clothing. Clutching them to her stomach, she turned toward him. Her breasts heaved, and he saw a tear in the corner of one eye.
“You need to rethink your priorities, Andy.”
“Jan…”
When she went through the doorway, she slammed the door behind her.
Wyatt sighed, leaned back, and waited for her to come back.
She had had temper tantrums in the past, and she got over them quickly.
He waited three minutes.
Then heard the yelp of tires on his driveway.
He scrambled out of bed, jerked the door open, and trotted down the hall and into the living room. Through the front window, he saw his carefully tended and lovingly treated 1965 Corvette roadster in a four-wheel drift as it rounded the comer at the end of the block.
Then she gunned the 396 cubic-inch V8, and black smoke boiled off the rear tires.
“Are you married?” she asked.
“I was,” Ahmed al-Qati told her. “My wife and two children were killed when the Americans bombed Tripoli.”
She put her hand to her mouth. Her fingers were long and slim, expressive. They danced against her lips, which were lightly defined with pale pink. “I am so sorry.”
“Many would say it was God’s will. I do not know.”
The waiter interrupted to pour more coffee, then backed away with tiny, servile bows. He was seeking a tip that would last him a month, no doubt. Foreigners with money still visited Libya, but not in the droves of previous decades. Tobruk was no longer a thriving and bustling resort city; most of the tourists who stayed here came for reasons other than simple relaxation. Foreigners rented the hotel rooms while they worked on government contracts. There were Russians, Frenchmen, Germans, Dutch, even a few Americans.
Sophia Gabratelli had her reasons. When al-Qati had first met her, almost three months before, she had told him simply that she was hiding out until her divorce was finalized. She had not elaborated, but al-Qati, ever the perfectionist when it came to information, had conducted his own inquiry through friends in Libyan intelligence.
He had learned that Sophia Gabratelli — her maiden name — was indeed awaiting a final divorce decree from a French court. She had established a residency in the south of France since the Italian courts would not acknowledge her right to leave her husband of two years, a Sicilian named Aragone. Moreover, the husband was a known Mafia chieftain, and that fact alone explained her desire to lead a low-profile life in Tobruk.
Al-Qati had learned more than that, of course. He knew that she had a small appendectomy scar on her lower torso and that her small toe on the right foot had been broken once. He knew the names of her parents, who lived in northern Italy. He knew that she had once aspired to a career in filmmaking or modelling, a dream worthy of the classic, high-cheekboned lines of her face, the smouldering dark eyes beneath full lashes, the perfectly smooth, olive skin, and the straight, flashingly white teeth revealed by her ready smile. She was petite, and though she wore loose-fitting, non-revealing, and conservative dresses — perhaps in deference to the mores of the country — al-Qati was aware that the curves she attempted to disguise were abundant and lush. He had imagined them out of disguise more than once.