"A predator… a sleek cat with claws. Remove your underwear… and we'll have you ready for Tony when he arrives."
His breath was coming in gasps now, so strained that he could hardly utter the words. He was perspiring heavily, and his chest was heaving with obvious effort.
"Your… flesh… excites… me…"
Suddenly she stopped trying to get away from him. The rage faded from her face, replaced by a smile. Her eyes narrowed as the idea took hold, and her body became pliant under his hands.
"My body… it pleases you?" she purred.
"Shouldn't do this… dangerous… for me."
"Let go of my arm so I can take off my bra."
"Yes… beautiful…"
Leaning forward so her scent filled his nostrils, she lifted her legs and slipped off her pumps. Clasping both hands behind her neck, she stretched languidly, like a cat, breasts thrusting upward.
Hessling clasped his own hands to his chest, as if by doing so he could ease the incredible pain he could feel building inside it. He tried to look away, but he found it impossible. Her eyes and her body challenged him to ignore her, to be unaware of what she was offering.
She shrugged and the ripped dress slid over her shoulders, arms, and hips, falling in a heap at her feet. Her figure was exquisite, a voluptuous jewel of perfect proportions. She leaned down to retrieve the dress, full breasts moving impatiently in the tight confines of her bra.
She smiled, placing the dress over a chair. Touching her lower lip with her tongue, she concentrated on rolling the black sheen of panty hose to her ankles, then stepped free. The stomach was flat, the legs firm and delicately muscled, the lines of her body free from bloat or softness.
He gasped in admiration, as much for the practiced performance as for the undeniable beauty.
The lacy bra was so tight it cut into the smooth flesh. Unhooking it, she pulled it down over her arms. Her breasts were high, conical, and tipped with delicate pink.
With a smooth action of her hips, she removed the black panties, tossing them away.
"That's… enough, for now," he choked, thumping his chest with his meaty fists. "We shall wait for the boy…"
"What for?" she chided, running her hands under and over her breasts.
She stepped forward and took one of his hands. It was balled into a tight fist.
Holding his wrist with one hand, she raked the nails of the other hand down to the curled fingers. When they opened, she thrust the hand between her legs and clamped her thighs over it.
"Oh, God… oh, God…"
She pulled his head between her breasts and squeezed their soft fullness with her elbows.
Involuntarily, his hand began to move between her legs. Her perfume made his mind reel, and even as he felt breath leaving him, he blubbered between the twin mounds of soft flesh that denied him air.
"Ox…oxygen…" he gasped, his free hand snaking across the desk.
She saw the movement and stopped it with her own hand.
She speeded up her gyrations. A moaning sound joined his labored breathing. His body was heaving now. and he began to whine. And then the whine turned into a rattle.
Suddenly he lurched, sending her against the desk. He swayed to his feet, clutching his chest, and then toppled with a dull thud to the floor.
"Pig," she hissed, tears streaming from her eyes. "Dirty pig!""
She didn't want to touch him again, but she had to. She practically had to grind her fingers into the folds of flesh at his neck before she was sure he was dead.
She dressed quickly. She found the buttons that had been pulled from her dress and dropped them into her purse. With paper clips, she fastened the dress, and then returned the stacks of bills to the briefcase.
Then, briefcase and purse in hand, she stood at the door and surveyed the room a last time.
The glass. It was all she had touched besides the front doorknob.
She cleaned the glass with her skirt and used the garment again on the knob as she let herself out.
Barely taking a breath, she ran all the way to her car and tumbled inside.
Then she fell apart.
It was twenty minutes before she could make her fingers work to put the key in the ignition.
As she drove past Hessling's in the predawn darkness, she saw a tall, handsome young man pushing the button.
Five
There was nearly an hour and a half between flights. Carter guessed that Lisa's layover would be about the same.
His first guess as to where she would spend the time was right on the button: the cocktail lounge in the Pan Am concourse of Frankfurt-am-Main Airport.
The way she had sounded on the phone the previous evening. Carter guessed she could use several Bloody Marys.
When he entered the lounge he recognized her immediately even behind the dark glasses and the new, shorter hair style. She was wearing an ice-blue dress that accented high breasts, a slender waist, and softly rounded hips.
Somehow she sensed his approach and spun to face him on the armed stool. Her eyes were even with his, and he wondered what they were doing behind those dark shades.
She didn't smile. Carter hadn't expected she would. He wondered if she were remembering — as he was — that night: the ambush in the hotel room, the chaos of gunfire, the smell of cordite, and the wild ride to the hospital that they had barely reached in time.
"Hello, Lisa."
"Hi. Want to compare scars?"
Now she smiled and the ice broke. He planted his lips gently but firmly on hers, and slid up onto the adjacent stool.
"Thank you for coming."
"I'm on vacation," he shrugged, and nodded to the bartender. "One of those, not too hot."
"This may be just Delaine, you realize. We may be sisters, but we're quite different. She has a tendency to get a little frantic."
Carter sipped the Bloody Mary and smiled. "I'll do what I can, but I really came to see you."
"Let's hope Berlin is just fun."
"Yeah, let's hope."
His antennae were vibrating. It was the sixth sense that every good agent acquired over the years, if he stayed alive.
As Lisa continued to speak, Carter listened with one ear and let his eyes travel around the small lounge; an old woman with a young blond-haired boy; a couple of coed types with hair so long they were sitting on it; a short, gray-haired man reading the morning paper; an older couple in the midst of a quiet argument.
Carter moved his gaze back to the gray-haired man. The eyes behind half glasses came up from behind the pages to meet Carter's.
They stared at each other for a few seconds, and then the man folded his paper. He checked his tab, placed a bill on the table, and left.
The bill was carefully folded and refolded until it resembled a star.
"Lisa…"
"Yes?"
"Excuse me for a second, will you? Nature calls."
"Of course."
A waitress was trying to unfold the bill without tearing it as Carter passed. He heard her grumble something about big tip or no big tip, she wished customers wouldn't try to be so cute.
The man was washing his hands as Carter pushed through the door. He saw legs under one of the stall doors, and moved to the door two down.
Their eyes met in the mirror, and both heads barely nodded.
It took almost five minutes before the man emerged from the stall, washed his hands, and left.
"How was your flight from Paris?"
"Fine."
"You are on Pan Am Nine-two-two, I believe."
"Yes, to Berlin."
"Very convenient. Peter Limpton received a call very early this morning in London from one of his West German contacts."
"A buyer or seller?" Carter asked.
"It would appear a seller." He pulled a thin manila envelope from his inside jacket pocket and set it on the mirror tray in front of Carter. "His name is Oskar Hessling. All we have on him is in there."