Obsession (Year of Fire) Read online

  “Original,” Diana said with irony.

  “It popped into my head at the time because I was already thinking of you for this mission. You’re ready now.”

  Diana hid the pleasure that this comment gave her behind the hardened mask that her face had become. Of course she was ready for any mission. Takumi and Al-Saud had spent a lot of time training her, and she wasn’t going to disappoint them. They had been generous and she, receptive. They didn’t just teach her about weapons and war, but had also trained her in various martial arts. Al-Saud had even showed her how to hide her Sig Sauer P226 in her underwear and to open a hole in her skirt to access the weapon quickly and easily.

  “You know what Bouchiki looks like,” Al-Saud continued, “from the days we spent in Ness-Ziona. The meeting will be in a public place, as I suspect that his room will be bugged with cameras and microphones, in addition to taps on the phone lines. We’ll communicate the time, day and place of the approach through Filippo Maréchal, his account manager at Credit Suisse. Dingo will give you the details later. You’ll have to pass as a scientist at the convention. He will give you the pen and you’ll give it to Dingo in the way we planned. Until he comes back and gives you the signal that the photographs are all there, don’t move away from Bouchiki.”

  “How are we going to get Bouchiki out of Cairo?”

  “Dingo will take care of that, but first Peter will have to get rid of the katsas from Mossad who will be following him like a shadow.”

  “Ramsay is good at that.”

  “Yes, he is. Now let’s eat lunch. I’m starving.”

  The five of them ate in a little room on the bottom floor that looked out onto the Andalusian patio. Leila happily shook her hands and made little noises to get the attention of Matilde, who managed brilliantly in understanding and speaking to her in her precarious French. After lunch, when the table was cleared, Sándor and Diana took Leila on her Sunday outing, to Bois de Boulogne to ride horses. She wanted Matilde to help her put on her coat. Matilde adjusted her scarf, pulled on her wool hat and kissed her on the nose.

  The house sank into silence after the Huseinovic siblings left.

  “What would you like to do this afternoon?”

  “I’d like to go back to a place in your house that impressed me.”

  “My bed?”

  “Your bed,” said Matilde, with a sensual air, “is the place in your house that excites me the most. But I’d like to go back to the room where there’s a pool.”

  In the attic, above the gymnasium, in a room with a glass ceiling and large steamy windows, there was a huge rectangular pool lined with teak boards and surrounded by long chairs and rattan armchairs with cushions. Matilde walked barefoot on the wooden deck toward the pool and breathed in the air, which was thick with steam and the smell of chlorine. Al-Saud had taken off his robe and was watching her, naked, from the other side of the room. She was also wearing a white robe with the George V coat of arms on it. She took it off deliberately; first she unveiled her shoulders, and then he saw her shoulder blades and how her back curved in at the waist. The fabric caressed her perky behind and Al-Saud had an erection. The robe fell onto the teak floor and Matilde turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder.

  “Catch me. If you can.” She dove headfirst into the pool. Eliah followed her in. The pursuit lasted longer than he had planned. Matilde moved with speed and agility and kicked when he tried to grab her ankles. Exhausted, she swam to the edge of the pool, and Eliah covered her with his body, still smiling and panting. Matilde was resting her cheek on her arms and exhaling through her mouth.

  “You’re good at wriggling out of things,” he said.

  “Juana and Ezequiel could never catch me.”

  Little by little they calmed down. The stirred-up water rippled against them, and his torso rubbed against her back. Al-Saud’s hand wandered over Matilde’s legs and ended up in the cleavage of her buttocks. Her head reared back and she let out a grunt that sounded more scandalized than excited.

  “No,” said Al-Saud, and his rough, severe voice transmitted the urgency that had overtaken his spirit. “Don’t turn around. I want to take you like this, in this position. From behind.”

  Matilde jammed her fingers into the spaces between the teakwood boards to resist the pain throbbing up from between her legs; her hard nipples hurt too and she pressed them against the pool’s ceramic wall. From behind, she repeated, and it brought to mind a chapter in The Perfumed Garden: The Coitus of the Sheep. She grew cold when he went off to get a condom and counted to forty-seven, the time it took him to return. Al-Saud brushed his chin over her shoulders with his day-old prickly beard while his hands worked on Matilde’s breasts and clit to elicit the little screams that so fascinated him.

  “Mon Dieu. Comme tu me fais bander!”

  Though he had spoken in French, Matilde understood him. Juana had discovered that bander meant sexually excited; they had been told that it was a pretty vulgar expression.

  “Please, Eliah, please…”

  “Please, what?”

  Matilde turned her face toward him and offered him her mouth.

  “Please,” she begged him, “kiss me while you penetrate me.”

  Eliah felt as though his body would melt away in the warm water. He took her by the smallest part of her waist and guided her toward his penis. At the same time as he entered her sex, he filled her mouth with his tongue. Matilde clutched the teakwood planks with one hand and with the other, in an instinctive act, squeezed Eliah’s buttocks, trying to push him deeper inside her. The orgasm was devastating. Matilde’s feet didn’t reach the bottom and she would have sunk if Al-Saud hadn’t held her up against his chest. He spun her like a rag doll until she was facing him. Matilde rested her head against the edge of the pool, her mouth half-open, her eyelids closed, her breasts floating in the water and her nipples still hard. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life, Eliah thought. He didn’t say so out loud because he hated being repetitive; the thought came to him every time she relaxed after an orgasm.

  They got out of the pool and Al-Saud dried Matilde before wrapping her in her robe and putting her on one of the cushioned rattan chairs, where he joined her seconds later after drying and covering himself. Matilde curled up on his chest.

  “It was impossible for me to imagine how wonderful sex is,” she commented, still languid. “My prudish mind wasn’t prepared for this. I’m so happy.”

  “There’s something I want to discuss with you,” Al-Saud declared, and Matilde grew nervous because she thought he was going to mention the Congo again.

  “I don’t know how to discuss things properly. Juana says that I always end up losing negotiations, that I give in too easily.”

  “You’ll win this one, I promise. I don’t want to use condoms with you, Matilde.” She turned and looked him in the eyes. “With you I want to feel everything to its fullest extent.”

  “And with the condom you don’t feel everything fully?”

  “No. It’s like wearing gloves. You lose a lot of sensitivity.”

  “But…”

  “Tomorrow, I’ll go have blood taken to eliminate any doubts. I’ve always been extremely careful, I’ve never had unprotected sex and I get tested regularly. Regardless, I want to be very sure and so tomorrow I’ll get tested again. They’ll be ready in a week. Until then, we can keep using condoms.” They fell silent, looking at each other. “Are you taking care of yourself? I know, I know. It’s a stupid question. Of course not.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Then do you agree?” Matilde nodded. “Thank you, my love.” Her consent didn’t provoke the happiness he expected. Matilde had grown withdrawn. “Are you okay?” he whispered above her temple.

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Matilde, my love, look at me.” She obeyed. “If you prefer to use condoms, it’s no problem. I don’t want you to feel pressured to…”

  Matilde put her index f
inger on his lips to stop him talking. She sat up again and took his face in her hands.

  “Eliah, it makes me happy that you want to feel everything with me. It makes me think that I’m important to you.”

  “You are, Matilde! Don’t you know that by now? But I noticed your mood changed after I mentioned it.”

  “It’s just the sleepless night catching up with me. Eliah, I want you to know that, after Roy…well after it happened, I did the ELISA test, the one that detects lymphocytes…well, it doesn’t matter. The test to find out if there was HIV in the blood. I let the three-month window pass and I took it. I didn’t feel safe because I knew that Roy had a lover, so I took the test. It came back negative. Just in case, I repeated it last November and it came back negative again.”

  Al-Saud didn’t say a word and kissed her on the top of her head. As she seemed tense, he uncovered her arm and caressed it languidly.

  Around eight in the evening, Matilde woke up in Eliah’s bed. She opened her eyelids a crack and saw him. He was watching her. He kissed her neck and warm cheeks. She laughed.

  “Your beard is tickling me.”

  “You said that you liked it!”

  “I love it! You’re the most handsome, virile man I’ve ever known, Eliah Al-Saud. I still don’t know why you chose me.”

  “Treasure Chest Martínez? Could it be that little tarantula ass that you have?” He slipped his hand under the robe and stroked it. “God…your ass turns me on so much just thinking about it.”

  He pushed open the neck of the robe with his chin until he had exposed one of her breasts. Her nipple hardened as soon as he touched it with the tip of his tongue. Matilde closed her hand on the nape of his neck and moaned. Al-Saud looked for the other nipple and savored it at length.

  “How can you ask me why I chose you?” Matilde writhed when his breath hit her now moist nipple. “I don’t think that there’s a man alive who wouldn’t choose you.”

  Matilde never would have told him that Celia was the right type of woman for him, long-legged, beautiful and, above all, worldly and experienced. She, on the other hand, was five feet two and her body wasn’t particularly harmonious—at Garrahan they had nicknamed her “the sexy cork.” She was a simple pediatric surgeon who found meaning in her life through her profession.

  “Matilde, I feel like making love. And you? How do you feel?”

  Without sitting up, Matilde took off the robe, leaving it under her naked body. They looked at each other and, after a silence pregnant with eye contact, Eliah disrobed and mounted her. When they finished, with him still inside of her, both of them still trembling, locked in an embrace, Matilde said into his ear, “I have to go.”

  “No…” Al-Saud lamented. “Please, don’t go.”

  “My God!” Matilde complained. “It’s so hard to leave you.”

  “I’d like to keep you in this house so no one else can see you, or want you, or admire you, or touch you. You’d be just for me!” he said, squeezing her tighter.

  “I am just for you. Never doubt that.”

  “Never.”

  Eliah took her to Rue Toullier and they said good-bye on the bottom floor of the building. They found it difficult to separate from each other. Eliah urged himself to take his hands off her; he couldn’t summon the willpower to do it.

  “Tomorrow, after the blood test, I’m going on a trip. I’ll be back on Tuesday morning so we can go for lunch.” Although she would have liked to ask where he was traveling and why, Matilde couldn’t pluck up the courage. “Will you come to meet me at the George V on Tuesday?”

  “Yes, I’ll be there.”

  “Matilde, my love.” She lifted her face and he brushed her hair from her forehead. “I want you to take care of yourself for me. Are you going to?” She nodded. “Medes is at your service. Wherever you want to go, he can pick you up and take you. Agreed?” She nodded again. “Do you promise that you’ll take care of yourself?”

  “Yes, I’ll take care of myself.”

  They prolonged their good-bye kiss for several minutes. Finally, Matilde wriggled out of the embrace and, without saying a word, ran to the second floor. Al-Saud stood at the foot of the stairs until he heard the door shut behind her. When he got into the Aston Martin, he breathed in deeply, letting the air out slowly. What he was experiencing with Matilde was the most enchanting, disconcerting experience of his life. In his almost thirty-one years, after having been a war pilot, fighting in the Gulf War, being part of an elite NATO troop and becoming the director of one of the few private military businesses in the world, he had run into a woman who turned his world upside down. The ringing of his cell phone surprised him.

  “Allô?”

  “It’s now or never.” Peter Ramsay’s voice indicated urgency. “Roy Blahetter just went into Au Bascou.” Ramsay was referring to a bistrot on Rue Réaumur. “He’s alone and looks depressed.”

  “I’ll arrange everything right now. Thanks, Peter.”

  He dialed the numbers on his cell phone and held the apparatus to his ear.

  “Allô?”

  “Zoya, it’s me.”

  “Hello, sweetie.”

  “I need you right now.”

  “I’m always ready for you, mon chéri.”

  “It’s the one I was telling you about, Roy Blahetter, the brother of Ezequiel Blahetter, the advertising model. Do you have his photo handy?” Zoya said that she did. “You’ll find him in the bistrot Au Bascou, down on…”

  “I know where it is.”

  “Perfect. You can take it from here, then.”

  Juana came out of her bedroom in her pajamas when she heard the jangling of keys. Matilde closed the door and ran across the room to her friend.

  “So? Did it happen the way you hoped it would?” Matilde, blushing, nodded. “Hooray!” The hardwood floor creaked under Juana’s jump for joy. “Yippee, girl!” They hugged and cried together. “How are you? How do you feel?”

  “Happy, Juani. I’ve never felt as happy as I do right now. I didn’t know it could be so marvelous. Nothing you told me came anything close to it.”

  “Girl, it’s just right that you ended up with a stallion for a lover! The best! It was worth the wait.” She saw the bags under her eyes and dialed back her enthusiasm a little. “How do you feel? I mean, are you okay?”

  “Actually my vagina stings a little, the skin is sensitive and strained.”

  “No problem, as Alf would say! I saw that your aunt has some mallow leaves in the pantry. I’ll soak them in a bath and problem solved. Come on, get changed and I’ll run it for you.”

  “I didn’t take my medicine today.”

  “I’ll bring the pills to you in the bedroom.”

  “Thanks, Juani. And you? How was it? I felt bad for abandoning you all day.”

  “Matilde Martínez.” Juana grabbed her by the shoulders. “If you felt guilty for one second, I’ll slap you. You hear me? I want you to act as though I’ve disappeared from Paris. I want you to live out your romance with the stud in full, without thinking about anything or anyone else. Don’t be the usual Matilde, worried about everyone except herself. I’m begging you!”

  “Agreed. Thank you, friend. I love you so much.”

  “No more than I love you.”

  “And Shiloah?”

  Juana sighed.

  “It was nice while it lasted, but tomorrow morning he’s going back to Tel Aviv. He’s been away from his country for a month, neglecting his businesses and obligations. I don’t think we’ll see each other again. As soon as he gets to Israel, he’ll be swept up in his political campaign. You know how it is.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Juana shrugged.

  “The truth is, I don’t want to get tangled up with someone else right now. It’s better this way, to be free.”

  Later, when Matilde had finished her sitz bath, feeling soothed, she went into Juana’s bedroom and lay down next to her.

  “Tell me about the party. I feel as though
I escaped from a catastrophe.”

  “Do I have permission to put a bullet in your imbecile of an ex’s head? What a jerk, Mat! He threw a fit when he realized that you had disappeared. And I have something bad to tell you. This morning Ezequiel called and told me that Jean-Paul sent Celia to a detox clinic. Last night she passed out from an overdose of drugs and alcohol.”

  Matilde sat up with a quick jolt.

  “Where did they commit her? I want to see her!”

  “Impossible. Ezequiel said that she’ll be isolated for at least a month. She can’t have any visits from relatives or friends, or even speak to anyone on the phone. Clinic policy.”

  “My God, Juani. It’s the curse of alcohol that torments my family.”

  * * *

  * * *

  CHAPTER 12

  * * *

  * * *

  “Getting another test?” Yasmín was surprised. “Has your sex life been so intense and careless over the last five months?”

  “I’m not going to talk to my little sister about my sex life.”

  “Why not? It’s almost the twenty-first century. We’re young and modern!”

  “I’m not modern enough to talk to you about these things.”

  “Who is she?” Yasmín strapped on a rubber band to make his veins stand out, which was actually unnecessary, she pondered, since on her brother Eliah’s well-trained body, they did so naturally. “You’re not going to tell me?”

  “Yasmín, don’t bug me. Finish up, I have to take a trip in an hour.”

  “Mmm…this test must be pretty important if you came here today with a trip coming up.”

  “When will I have the results?”

  “If you tell me her name, in a week. If not, fifteen days.”

  “You little blackmailer!” Yasmín inserted the needle into Eliah’s vein, grinning cheekily. “Matilde. That’s her name.”