Clarisse began to stir when we were halfway to Aixen-Provence. The highway was unwinding itself monotonously in the beams of the headlights when she finally awoke. She put a hand to her head, staring blankly out the window of the car.
“Merde!” she said, more ruefully than in anger. “I hurt.”
“Sorry about that, chérie,” I said.
“What happened?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“No. We were on the beach, making love. Now I’m in a car. I’m fully dressed. I don’t remember anything,” she said, puzzled. “Were you that violent with me?”
I chuckled. French women are really something. “You fell and hit your head,” I told her, not taking my eyes off the road.
“Moi-même je me coupe?” she asked dubiously.
“Oui. You fell and cut yourself,” I said in French. “It was quite a blow you took.”
“I don’t remember,” she said, a tiny frown making small creases in her brow. “Isn’t that strange, Nick? I remember that the beach was full of rocks of all sizes, but I don’t remember falling down.”
“You hit one when you fell.”
“And you are a liar,” Clarisse said almost conversationally. “Because if that’s what happened to me, then why aren’t we on the road to Bandol? Why aren’t we going back to our hotel? This is the way to Aix-en-Provence. You think I don’t recognize the highway just because it’s dark?”
“I’m a liar,” I said cheerfully.
Clarisse moved closer to me so that we touched all alone the right side of my body. I could feel the weight and the heat of her breast pressing against my arm. She put her head on my shoulder.
“Is it a little lie, or is it something too important for me to know?” she asked, snuggling closer with a small squirm of her body.
“It’s a little lie, and it’s also something of utmost importance.”
“Ha! Then I shall not ask questions. You see how nice I am not to ask questions that would embarrass you to answer?”
“You are very nice,” I agreed.
“Where are we going?”
“To a hotel in Aix-en-Provence.”
“To make love?”
“You are hurt,” I pointed out. “How can we make love?”
“I’m not hurt that much,” she protested, a mischievous grin on her pixie mouth. She shook her short ash-blonde hair against my cheek. “Besides, it is only my head that pains me. An aspirin will take care of it.”
Clarisse was quite a girl. If Hawk only knew how much I had sacrificed!
“We will make love when I come back,” I told her.
“You are going away?”
“Tonight.”
“Oh? What is so important that you must leave tonight?”
“I thought you weren’t going to ask questions.”
“I’m not,” she said quickly. “I just want to know...”
“No questions,” I said firmly.
“All right.” Petulant. Lower lip thrust out moistly in a tiny pout. “When are you coming back?”
“As soon as I can.”
“And how soon is that?”
Her hand was on my right thigh, moving slowly in a most intimate caress. “I don’t want to wait forever, cheri.”
I pulled the car over to the side of the road, set the handbrake and switched off the lights. Turning, I took her in my arms and put my lips to hers.
Her slender arms went around my neck. She made a quiet, amused sound in her throat and said, “How wonderful! I haven’t made love in a car for years!” and bit me in fierce, but controlled nips that traveled the length of my neck. Her hands slid inside my shirt.
One moment we were dressed, and the next, there were no clothes between us. My hands cupped the plump, ripe contours of her breasts as her lips found their way to mine again and our tongues explored each other’s mouths, warm and wet and teasingly hot.
And then we explored the most intimate warmth and the wetness of our bodies, Clarisse exclaiming in breathless whispers about my hardness and I savoring her softness. The car was filled with the musky aroma of passion. Clarisse squirmed down onto the seat beneath me as I thrust myself into the slippery cave of her body.
“Quel sauvage!” The sound was half a whisper, half a cry, pain and pleasure, delight and agony all in one phrase, and then I was caught in the wine press of her thighs as they wrapped tightly around me, extracting the juices of my body in one final, explosive tremor that she shared.
When I finally started the car again and turned back onto the highway, Clarisse reached up and touched my cheek with her palm.
“Come back as soon as you can, mon amour,” she said languidly.
Hawk looked even more rumpled and disgruntled than usual. I don’t know whether it was because of the time of day, or because I’d caused him to leave the comfort of his office. We hadn’t bothered to drive back to Dupont Circle. We were sitting in a room at the Marion Hotel just across the Alexandria Bridge. Pick a hotel at random and pick a room in that hotel at random — the chances are damned good that you won’t be bugged.
“Go ahead,” he said, lighting up one of his cheap cigars. “Let’s hear what made you drag me out here.”
In self-defense against the stench of his smoke, I lit one of my own gold-tipped cigarettes, inhaling deeply. Hawk was sitting in a big easy chair. There was a pot of coffee on the low table between us.
“Hawk, what does an insurance company do with its money?”
“Is this a quiz on economics?” the head of AXE asked tartly. “Is this what you hauled me out here for? Get to the point, Nick!”
“Be patient. Just answer the question. It’s important, believe me.”
Hawk shrugged. “They invest it, of course. Any idiot knows that. They have to earn money with the money they take in.”
“And banks?”
“Same thing.”
“What do they buy, Hawk?”
He cocked a shaggy eyebrow at me and then decided to humor me a little longer.
“Stocks, mostly.”
“What would happen,” I asked him, “if, on a given day, several of the largest insurance companies in the country suddenly dumped every share of stock they owned?”
Hawk snorted. “Assuming that improbability, they’d lose their shirts. The stocks would plummet to practically nothing. They’d have to be crazy to do something like that.”
“Suppose they didn’t care if they lost every penny. What would happen, Hawk, if hundreds of millions of shares of stock — stock of every major corporation in the country — flooded the market simultaneously?”
Hawk snorted and shook his shaggy gray head. “Preposterous! It couldn’t possibly happen!”
I persisted. “But just suppose it did happen. Tell me what the result would be if that situation arose.”
Slowly, deliberately, as though talking to a child, Hawk said, “What would happen would be the worst financial panic this country’s ever had. It would ruin us completely! I shudder to think of the consequences.”
“That’s right, Hawk. Unlike a communist state where the government owns everything and determines the value of everything, this country lives on trust. Trust in pieces of paper. Paper money, stocks, bonds, mortgages, leases, letters of credit, IOU’s, bank books, deposit slips — you name it. Take stocks, for example. None of them are worth more than someone is willing to pay for them. If the value of a stock is seventy-two, that means someone’s willing to pay seventy-two dollars a share for it. Now, what makes that stock worth seventy-two dollars, Hawk?”