The Unlikely Spy(16)

"Now, unless you gentlemen have any more bad news for me, I'm going to get a few hours of sleep. It's been a very long night."

They all rose as Hitler walked up the stairs.





5


NORTHERN SPAIN: AUGUST 1936





He is standing before the doors, open to the warm night, holding a bottle of icy white wine. He pours himself another glass without offering to refill hers. She is lying on the bed, smoking, listening to his voice. Listening to the warm wind stirring the trees off the veranda. Heat lightning is flickering silently over the valley. His valley, as he always says. My f*cking valley. And if the mother-f*cking Loyalists ever try to take it from me I'll cut off their f*cking balls and feed them to the dogs.

"Who taught you to shoot like that?" he demands. They went hunting in the morning and she has taken four pheasant to his one.

"My father."

"You shoot better than me."

"So I've noticed."

The lightning is quietly in the room again and she can see Emilio clearly for a few seconds. He is thirty years older, yet she thinks he is beautiful. His hair is gray-blond, the sun has made his face the color of oiled saddle leather. His nose is long and sharp, an ax blade. She wanted to be kissed by his lips but he wanted her very fast and rough the first time, and Emilio always gets what he f*cking wants, darling.

"You speak English very well," he informs her, as if she is hearing this for the first time. "Your accent is perfect. I could never lose mine, no matter how hard I tried."

"My mother was English."

"Where is she now?"

"She died a long time ago."

"You have French as well?"

"Yes," she answers.

"Italian?"

"Yes. I have Italian."

"Your Spanish is not so good, though."

"Good enough," she says.





He is fingering his cock while he speaks. He loves it like he loves his money and his land. He speaks of it as though it is one of his finest horses. In bed it is like a third person.

"You lie with Maria by the stream; then at night you let me come to your bed and f*ck you," he says.

"That's one way of putting it," she answers. "Do you want me to stop with Maria?"

"You make her happy," he says, as if happiness is grounds for anything.

"She makes me happy."

"I've never known a woman like you before." He sticks a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and lights it, hands cupped against the evening breeze. "You f*ck me and my daughter on the same day without blinking an eye."

"I don't believe in forming attachments."

He laughs his quiet, controlled laugh.

"That's wonderful," he says, and laughs quietly again. "You don't believe in forming attachments. That's marvelous. I pity the poor bastard who makes the mistake of falling in love with you."

"So do I."

"Do you have any feelings?"

"No, not really."

"Do you love anyone or anything?"

"I love my father," she says. "And I love lying by the stream with Maria."

Maria is the only woman she has ever met whose beauty is a threat to her. She neutralizes that threat by pillaging Maria's beauty for herself. Her mane of brown curly hair. Her flawless olive skin. The perfect breasts that are like summer pears in her mouth. The lips that are the softest things she has ever touched. "Come to Spain for the summer and live with me at my family's estancia," Maria says one rainy afternoon in Paris, where they are both studying at the Sorbonne. Father will be disappointed, but the idea of spending the summer in Germany watching the f*cking Nazis parading around the streets holds nothing for her. She did not know she would be walking straight into a civil war instead.

But the war does not intrude on Emilio's insolent enclave of paradise in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It is the most wonderful summer of her life. In the morning the three of them hunt or run the dogs, and in the afternoon she and Maria ride up to the stream, swim in the icy deep pools, sun themselves on the warm rocks. Maria likes it best when they are outside. She likes the sensation of the sun on her breasts and Anna between her legs. "My father wants you too, you know," Maria announces one afternoon as they lie in the shade of a eucalyptus tree. "You can have him. Just don't fall in love with him. Everyone is in love with him."





Emilio is talking again.

"When you return to Paris next month there's someone I want you to meet. Will you do that for me?"

"That depends."

"On what?"

"On who it is."

"He will contact you. When I tell him about you he will be very interested."

"I'm not going to sleep with him."

"He won't be interested in sleeping with you. He's a family man. Like me," he adds, and laughs his laugh again.

"What's his name?"

"Names are not important to him."

"Tell me his name."

"I'm not sure which name he's using these days."

"What does your friend do?"