He felt helpless, but she seemed to know what she was doing. A small bottle was uncorked, and gentle fingers rubbed liniment into the bruised areas. It stung. He said, “Ow.”
“It’ll do you good, take the swelling down, help the discoloration. Roll over.”
She eased more liniment into the bruises on his shoulders and back.
“How come you carry liniment around?” he mumbled. “Do all your dining partners end up like this?”
“It’s for horses,” she said.
“Thanks a lot.”
“Stop fussing—it has the same effect on stupid men. Roll back.”
He did so.
She stood over him, her golden hair falling about her shoulders. “They hit you in the legs as well?”
“All over.”
She unbuttoned the waistband of his trousers, unzipped them, and eased them down and off without a fuss. It was no strange task for a young wife with a husband who drank too much. Apart from one lump on the right shin, there were another half-dozen bluish areas on the thighs. She massaged the liniment into them. After the sting, the sensation was of pure pleasure. The odor reminded him of the days when he played Rugby at school. She paused and set the bottle down.
“Is that a bruise?” she asked.
He glanced down toward his jockey shorts. No, it was not a bruise.
“Thank God,” she murmured. She turned away and reached for the zipper at the back of her cream shantung dress. The filtered light from the curtains gave the room a low, cool glow.
“Where did you learn about bruises?” he asked.
After the beating and the massage, he was feeling drowsy. His head was drowsy, anyway.
“Back in Kentucky, my kid brother was an amateur jockey,” she said. “I patched him up a few times.”
Her cream dress slid to the floor in a pool. She wore tiny Janet Reger panties. No bra strap crossed her back. Despite the fullness of her breasts, she needed none. She turned around. Rowse swallowed.
“But this,” she said, “I did not learn from any brother.”
He thought fleetingly about Nikki back in Gloucestershire. He had not done this before, not since marrying Nikki. But, he reasoned, a warrior occasionally needs solace, and if it is offered, he would be less than human to refuse.
He reached up for her as she straddled him, but she took his wrists and pressed them back on the pillow.
“Lie still,” she whispered. “You’re far too ill to participate.”
But for the next hour or so she seemed quite content to be proved wrong.
Just before four she rose and crossed the room to open the curtains. The sun had passed its azimuth and was moving toward the mountains.
Across the valley Danny the sergeant adjusted his focus and said, “Cor, you dirty bastard, Tom.”
The affair lasted for three days. The horses did not arrive from Syria, nor any message for Rowse from Hakim al-Mansour. She checked with her agent on the coast regularly, but always the answer was “Tomorrow.” So they walked through the mountains, took picnics high above the cherry orchards where the conifers grow, and made love among the pine needles.
They breakfasted and dined on the terrace, while Danny and Bill watched in silence from across the valley and Mahoney and his colleagues glowered from the bar.
McCready and Marks stayed at their pension in Pedhoulas village while McCready organized more men from Nicosia Station and a few from Malta. As long as Hakim al-Mansour made no contact with Rowse to indicate that their prepared story had, or had not, been accepted, the key was the Irishman Mahoney and his two colleagues. They were running the IRA enterprise; so long as they stayed, the operation would not move into the shipment phase.
The two SAS sergeants were to give backup to Rowse; the rest would keep the IRA men under surveillance at all times.
On the second day after Rowse and Monica first made love, McCready’s team was in place, scattered through the hills covering every road in and out of the area from observation posts in the hills.
The telephone line to the hotel had been intercepted and tapped. The monitoring listeners were ensconced in another nearby hotel. Few of the newcomers could speak Greek, but fortunately tourists were common enough for another dozen not to arouse suspicions.
Mahoney and his men never left the hotel. They, too, were waiting for something: a visit, or a phone call, or a hand-delivered message.
On the third day Rowse was up as usual just after dawn broke. Monica slept on, and it was Rowse who took the tray of morning coffee from the waiter at the door. When he lifted the coffee pot to pour his first cup, he saw a folded wafer of paper beneath it. He put the wafer between the cup and the saucer, poured the coffee, and walked with it into the bathroom.
The message said simply, “Club Rosalina, Paphos, 11 P.M. Aziz.”
That posed a problem, Rowse mused as he flushed the fragments of the message down the toilet. Easing Monica out of the picture for the few hours it would take to get to Paphos and back in the middle of the night would not be easy.
The problem was solved at midday, when fate intervened in the form of Monica’s shipping agent, who called to say that the three stallions would be arriving from Latakia in the port of Limassol that evening, and could she please be present to see them signed for and settled in their stables outside the port?
She left at four o’clock, and Rowse made life easier for his backup team by walking up to Pedhoulas village and ringing the manager of the Apollonia to say that he had to go to Paphos that evening for dinner and what, please, was the best route? The message was picked up by the listeners and passed to McCready.
The Rosalina Club turned out to be a casino in the heart of the Old Town. Rowse entered it just before eleven and soon saw the slim, elegant figure of Hakim al-Mansour seated at one of the roulette tables. There was a chair vacant next to him. Rowse slid into it.
“Good evening, Mr. Aziz. What a pleasant surprise.”
Al-Mansour inclined his head gravely. “Faites vos jeux,” called the croupier.
The Libyan placed several high-denomination chips on a combination of the higher numbers. The wheel spun, and the dancing white ball elected to fall into the slot number four. The Libyan showed no annoyance as his chips were swept away. That single throw would have kept a Libyan farmer and his family for a month.
“Nice of you to come,” said al-Mansour as gravely. “I have news for you. Good news, you will be pleased to hear. It is always so agreeable to impart good news.”
Rowse felt relieved. That morning, the fact that the Libyan had sent the message to him instead of an order to Mahoney to lose the Englishman forever among the mountains had been hopeful. Now, it looked even better.
Rowse watched as the Libyan lost another pile of chips. He was inured to the temptation of gambling, regarding the roulette wheel as the most stupid and boring artifact ever invented. But the Arabs compare only with the Chinese as gamblers, and even the cool al-Mansour was entranced by the spinning wheel.
“I am happy to tell you,” said al-Mansour as he placed more chips, “that our glorious Leader has acceded to your request. The equipment you seek will be provided—in full. There. What is your reaction?”
“I’m delighted,” said Rowse. “I’m sure my principals will put it to ... good use.”
“We must all fervently hope so. That is, as you British soldiers say, the object of the exercise.”
“How would you like payment?” asked Rowse.
The Libyan waved a deprecatory hand. “Accept it as a gift from the People’s Jamahariya, Mr. Rowse.”
“I am very grateful. I am sure my principals will be, too.”