Topaz - Leon Uris [123]
“And so, we cook our meals because a meal has to be cooked. But we don’t go into the kitchen filled with joy because what we are doing is going to bring happiness to our husbands. We cook to protect our position, for praise or just because it’s our duty. And when we make love we do what is necessary and expected for our own selfish reasons. How many women make love to a man because of the joy it gives him? Yet only through that joy can a woman really know what it is to be a woman. I’ve never known, Michele, because to be a woman is to give. And you’ve known that from the beginning.”
Michele turned her head to the pillow.
“Don’t cry and don’t pity yourself. You didn’t ask for an easy way when you set sail with a man like François.”
“Mamma ... is it too late for you and Papa?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
The girl’s eyes fluttered, then closed from the sedative. Nicole leaned over and kissed her cheek. André was in the hallway and the bedroom door was open. She wondered if he had heard.
“We’ll get her through this,” Nicole said.
As André stared at his wife, that old feeling which had never entirely gone came back strongly. He wanted to reach out and touch the half dozen strands of gray hair at her temples. A short time ago she would have been worried sick about them. But now they seemed so in place and so charming. It was nice that Nicole was accepting her age gracefully and without panic and self-pity.
Yes, he wanted her but he knew that in the morning he would want Juanita de Córdoba more. So, he would have neither.
“Will you be leaving for Montrichard soon?”
“Tomorrow. I’ll see that she gets to Paris when you have free time.”
“Thank you, for everything.” He turned for his study.
“Is there anything I can get you?” she asked.
“No.” André entered his study, adjusted his glasses, and hunched over his papers. He looked up to her and they stared through the open door for a long time. She realized she had come to him too late and perhaps with too little. Her husband belonged to Juanita de Córdoba. Strangely, she felt no malice. But she also knew that there would never be another man for her but André Devereaux and she would wait.
10
AS SOON AS RICO PARRA’S chauffeur drove the car into the grounds of Casa de Revolución to bring Juanita to his boss, she had an ominous feeling that something was wrong. But then, there was always something ugly about the place. They drove along a long palm-lined dirt road that hugged the Bahía del Sol. It was unusually quiet, devoid of the general activity of the guards and gardeners and men working on the pier. She got out of the car and looked around. Rico’s speedboat bobbed at the anchor buoy. A gloomy overcast was moving in from the sea, dulling out the defeated sun. It would be a long, cold, morbid weekend.
The chauffeur followed her into the villa.
Juanita screamed as she saw Hernández, Rico’s bodyguard, on his back staring up to her in death with blood still oozing from the bullet wounds in his fat stomach and chest.
The door slammed behind her and a pair of G-2 men seized her and another pair disarmed Rico’s driver and held him at gunpoint.
The room was in a shambles!
Muñoz came from the bedroom with a wet rope whip in his hand. The room swayed around Juanita as the nightmarish scene closed in but she steadied herself quickly realizing what had taken place. She walked toward the bedroom. Muñoz stepped aside and ushered her in with a mock bow.
Rico was spread-eagled, lashed at the wrists with leather thongs and tied to a pair of wooden ceiling beams. From the appearance of Muñoz’s men, Rico had not been an easy customer to take alive.
Once they had gotten him strung up in the crucifix position he had still been able to get off a good kick that landed between Muñoz’s legs. Then his feet were tied together and he was raised so that his toes barely touched the floor.
Even so, Muñoz got close enough to be spat on. A gag was shoved in Rico’s mouth.
Muñoz had worked