‘Thank you,’ she whispered. Then, making small talk, she asked, ‘How long have you known Jimmy Cirillo?’
‘A long time.’
‘Where did you meet him?’
‘In an alley in Boston.’
‘An alley?’
‘Yeah. I was breaking into a store and he was a cop.’
‘Are you kidding me?’
‘Nope.’ Hatcher leaned back and realized he was about to give away some family secrets. He felt comfortable doing it.
‘My old man was an architect, and not a very good one. Blew his brains out in the shower of the Boston Men’s Club one afternoon. I was ten at the time. ‘Three years later my mother ran off with, uh, hell, I don’t even know, never saw the man. Anyway, I hit the bricks. By the time I was fifteen I was one of the best cat burglars in Boston.’
‘Why, Hatch, I had no idea,’ she said in amazement.
‘That’s just the tip of the iceberg,’ Hatcher said with a smile.
‘Well, what did Jimmy do to you when he caught you?’ Ginia probed.
‘He took off his badge and his gun belt, put them carefully on the sidewalk, and beat my ass to a bloody pulp.’
Ginia broke up — she put her hands over her mouth and giggled into them.
‘And that’s not all. He got me a job; actually he got me three jobs, and I walked out on all three. So one night he grabs me, shoves me in this alley, off comes the badge and gun belt and he gives it to me again. Then he says, “I’m gonna keep whippin’ your ass until you hold a job and stop boosting my beat.” And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’
‘He made you what you are today,’ she said with mock pride.
‘Yeah,’ Hatcher said and then added rather solemnly, ‘but the guy on the dock had a hand in it too.’
‘What did he catch you doing?’
‘Going for admiral,’
‘Huh?’
‘That’s another story.’
They ate the rest of the dinner in silence. Hatcher was not one to talk and eat, but she sensed something impending. She knew he was going before he said it.
‘I have to leave for a while.’
‘Uh-huh, and just what does that mean, Hatcher, “a while”? A week, a month, ten years?’ She asked it lightheartedly.
He smiled and reached over and laid the palm of his hand softly on her cheek. ‘Longer than a week, hopefully less than a month,’ he answered.
‘Can I do anything for you?’
‘Call John Rogers at the bank and tell him I had to leave in a hurry. I’ve prepared a power of attorney for you so you can handle my market and bank accounts. If I should need money for any reason, shift funds at the bank into my drawing account.’
‘You trust me that much?’ she asked, surprised.
He smiled at her. ‘Implicitly,’ he answered.
‘When are you leaving?’
‘In the morning.’
She smiled at him, but she was already beginning to feel the longing that went with his absences. ‘Then let’s not waste time,’ she said. ‘You can sleep on the plane.’
He took her hand as she stood up and drew her close to him. He slowly unbuttoned her white button-down shirt, let it fall open, slipped his hands around her hips and drew her closer, kissing her hard stomach. Then loosening her belt and zipping down the fly, he slid her jeans off. He wrapped his arms tighter around her, his hands slipping under her buttocks, lifting her up slightly so that his thumbs slid under the edge of her panties, and began caressing her lightly with both thumbs, felt her tighten, felt her wetness as he gently probed while he moved his head lower, felt the hair under her panties, began to nibble very lightly while his hot breath caressed her. He spread his fingers up and drew down her panties and buried his face in her hair, smelling her sex, tasting her, felt her hands pressing his head harder into her. She stood on her toes, her head fell back and she sat on the edge of the table and put one leg over his shoulder. Her breath came faster, her muscles tightened, she began to move in tight little circles.
She had this wonderfully erotic habit that drove Hatcher crazy. As she neared her climax she began to count, low, almost under her breath, gasping between the numbers:
‘One . . . two . . . three . . . f-fo-ur . . uh, oh-oh, m’God. . . five, six, seven. . . uh-huh. . . uh-huh.
eight-nine-t-ten . . . my God, oh!’
Her back arched and she jammed herself against his mouth and held herself taut for ten o r twelve seconds and then, gasping, she relaxed, collapsed forward and, wrapping both hands around his head, drew him up to her, searching for his mouth and, finding it, began kissing him ravenously.
He picked her up and carried her back to the king-size bed in the sleeping cabin, laid her gently on the bed and stripped while he kissed her. Then he slid into bed beside her, drawing her tightly to him, and she felt him hard against her. She slipped one leg over his hip and pulled him to her, moving up until he entered her smoothly and without effort.
‘Oh God,’ he whispered as she surrounded him, tightening her muscles, sucking him in deeper and deeper and deeper.
Still out of breath, she whispered, ‘A month, huh?’ and he whispered back, equally out of breath, ‘Maybe .
just . . . a couple of weeks . .
She lay on her side, dozing. Hatcher moved easily off the bed, pulled a down quilt over her and began to pack. There had been a time when Hatcher’s Gurkha bag was always packed and ready to go — two suits, a casual jacket and slacks, half a dozen shirts, a couple of ties, an extra pair of shoes and his underwear and toilet articles. Basics. No frills. And he quickly fell back into the routine of preparing for the trip.
The mental checklist was still in his head: Check out his credentials, review his finances, select the right equipment, and pack everything into two pieces of luggage, his suit bag and an aluminum case, which he always hand-carried,
While Ginia slept he slid back a panel in the bulkhead over the head of the bed, opened a safe built into the wall and took out a small strongbox. He carried it back to the main cabin and checked the contents. He took out a $50,000 letter of credit from his bank, $20,000 in traveler’s checks and $10,000 in cash. He never used credit cards, too easy to trace. He also took out two passports, one his valid U.S. passport, the other a forged French passport. Both identified him as a free-lance television journalist and cameraman. Then he returned the box to its hiding place.
On the way back to the main salon, he got a medium- size aluminum Halliburton case from the closet and carried it forward. Then he got down on his hands and knees and crawled through a hatch under the stairs leading to the cockpit and into a tight compartment below the afterdeck. A waterproof chest was built into the hull. When Hatcher opened it, a light turned on automatically. Inside was a small arsenaclass="underline" two .357 pistols, an H&K 9 mm. pistol, an M-16, a 9 mm. Uzi submachine gun. There were several loaded magazines for each weapon. There were also four ten-foot reels of extension cord, which was actually C-4 plastique. One weapon was wrapped in a green Hefty bag. Hatcher took the bag, two reels of C-4, closed and locked the compartment, and went back to the main cabin.
He spread a blanket on the dining room table, took the weapon out of the Hefty bag and laid it on the blanket. It was an Aug, an Austrian automatic assault rifle that broke down into three simple components: the barrel, which was sixteen inches long; the tubular sight, which was capable of instant target acquisition; and the stock and trigger mechanism, which were high-impact plastic and rustproof. The weapon was totally waterproof. All other weapons, with which Hatcher was familiar — the M-16, Uzi and Mac 10 — were vulnerable to moisture in the barrel and would explode if water got in them. But not the Aug. It literally could be fired while coming out of the water.