Buch lesen: «Escape from Cabriz»

1

The roar of the ocean followed Zachary Harmon across the weathered deck and inside his beach house. Shivering with cold, he pushed the sliding glass door closed and peeled off his sodden blue sweatshirt, tossing it into the oversize closet where the washer and drier were hidden. Then he hooked his thumbs under the waistband of his orange running shorts.

He was just about to remove them and send them flying after the sweatshirt when the flickering screen of the small color TV affixed to the underside of one of the kitchen cupboards drew his attention. As usual, he’d forgotten to turn it off before going out.

The pit of Zachary’s stomach did a carnival-ride pitch-and-spin as he stood there in the middle of the kitchen floor, dripping rainwater and staring.

The voice of the TV anchorman seemed to weave in and out of his consciousness. “The political climate in the small Southeast Asian country of Cabriz is worsening by the hour as warring factions grapple for control of the government. A spokesman for the State Department says Americans in Cabriz may be in serious danger… embassies being closed…”

Zachary shut his eyes momentarily against an onslaught of memories and fears. The Cabrizian man-on-the-street was a pretty laid-back guy, mostly concerned with harvesting a few acres of rice and keeping his ox from being repossessed, but some of the rebels were into imaginative atrocities.

And Kristin was in Cabriz.

The newscaster went on to another subject, after promising regular updates on the situation in Southeast Asia, and Zachary snapped off the TV set. He stood with his hands braced against the counter, mentally sifting through all the memorized data he had on Cabriz—which was considerable, since he’d spent so much time there while he’d been with the agency.

He went to the other counter and poured a cup of coffee. There were several rebel factions in Cabriz—all made up of wild-eyed fanatics bent on overthrowing the existing dictatorship. Just twenty-four hours before, the beleaguered government had broken off diplomatic relations with the United States, Great Britain and Canada because of their refusal to step in militarily.

Kristin, by an act of supreme idiocy, had aligned herself with the royal family. Zachary raised the mug of steaming coffee to his mouth and cursed when he burned his tongue. The fact that Kristin planned to marry Jascha, the crown prince of Cabriz, was still difficult to accept.

It wounded him that their time together had meant so little to her.

Zachary set the mug down with a thump. Kristin’s position was precarious, to say the least; she would be roughly as popular in Cabriz as Marie Antoinette had been in Paris after the fall of the Bastille.

The fingers of Zachary’s right hand knotted into a fist, and he pounded the counter once, to vent some of his frustration. Kristin couldn’t really be in love with that guy; it wasn’t possible.

Because he needed something to do, he reached for the telephone receiver and punched out a number he’d never forgotten.

“Perry King’s office,” a pleasant female voice chimed.

“This is Zachary Harmon,” was the brusque reply. “Put me through.”

The secretary hesitated for only a moment, then there was a blipping sound and Perry came on the line.

“Hello, Zachary,” he said warmly.

Zachary stated his business, sparing the polite preamble. “What idiot let Kristin Meyers leave for Cabriz when the damn government is collapsing?”

Perry sighed heavily. “She went there to marry the crown prince. Besides, she’s the daughter of an ambassador turned cabinet member, in case you’ve forgotten. It probably took one phone call.”

“Any plans to go in after her?”

“God knows, the Secretary wants her out of there yesterday, but we can’t forget that Miss Meyers is in the country of her own free will. After all, she’s—er—well, like I said, she’s supposed to be getting married any day now.”

A shaft of pain speared Zachary’s middle. “Dammit, P.K., that airhead socialite probably doesn’t have the first idea of what she’s messing with. Chances are, the prince is planning to use her as leverage to get the administration to step in with military aid. And you know their position on that!”

“Zach, are you volunteering to go in?”

Zachary thought of the quiet, peaceful life he’d built for himself. No demands, no pressures, no emergency missions in the middle of the night. He didn’t even have a dog to feed.

He had things set up just the way he wanted them. He taught political science at Silver Shores Junior College, because it was easy and because it allowed him to live near the ocean, and he grew tomatoes in clay pots.

“Zachary?” his friend and former employer prompted.

“Yes, dammit,” Zachary replied, thinking of defiant green eyes and long brown hair that caught the sunlight and turned it to fire. “I want to go in and get Kristin. And don’t remind me that I resigned from the agency eighteen months ago. Nobody’s better qualified, even now.”

Perry sighed again. “That’s true. But I can’t just give you the go-ahead—I have to make a few calls before I can do that. So sit tight—you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Zachary grumbled, then hung up with a crash. He was already planning to leave within the next twenty-four hours, whether the trip was sanctioned by Washington or not. He knew a thousand ways in and out of Cabriz.

An hour later, showered and clad in blue jeans, dry sneakers and a navy sweatshirt, Zachary stood at the stove, stirring a pan of canned spaghetti and watching another update on the cable news channel. The telephone jangled, and he had the receiver in his hand before the first ring faded.

“Harmon,” he snapped.

The answering voice belonged to one of the president’s favorite men—and Zachary’s least favorite—Kristin’s father. “This is Kenyan Meyers. I’ve just spent some time on the telephone with Perry King, over at the State Department. He tells me you’re willing to go into Cabriz and bring Kristin home.”

“That’s right,” Zachary replied. He wasn’t awed by Meyers; he’d dealt with more powerful men, but he was on guard because of all that had happened between him and Kristin. And because he knew the Secretary was about as benevolent as a cobra with PMS.

Meyers paused for a moment before replying. “You’re aware, of course, that Kristin may well want to stay in Cabriz. Especially if the marriage has already taken place.”

“I’ll take that chance.”

“Fine. One of our planes will pick you up in Seattle in exactly ten hours—you know the procedure, I’m sure. You’ll be briefed on the current state of affairs during the flight.”

“Thanks.” Zachary was moving to hang up when Meyers spoke again. He put the receiver back to his ear.

“Bring my daughter home, Harmon, whether she’s agreeable or not. She has no idea what kind of situation she’s gotten herself into.”

The only thing Zachary could have promised anyone at that point was that if Kristin was still alive when he arrived in Cabriz, he was going to strangle her personally. And he wasn’t laboring under any flowery delusions that Meyers’s true concerns were for Kristin. He definitely had some important political ax to grind. “I’ll be in contact with you as soon as I can, Mr. Secretary,” Zachary replied evenly, and the call was over.

Kristin’s bravado was beginning to desert her as she stood beside a veiled servant woman at one of the windows, watching as Jascha’s troops drilled in the dusty streets of the city of Kiri, Cabriz’s capital. The place seemed so different now, so unfamiliar. It was hard to believe she’d grown up only a few blocks away, in the American embassy.

With a sigh, Kristin sank into a rattan chair, one blue-jeaned leg slung over the arm, and let her head fall back. She closed her eyes and thought of the day she’d left Cabriz, at seventeen. She’d finished her high school work, with the help of her tutor, and now it was time to return to America….

“I don’t want to leave you,” she sniffled, looking up at Jascha’s face though a blur of tears. Overhead a lemon tree blossomed, dropping delicate white petals all around them, like snow.

Jascha was a prince, in every sense of the word. With his dark hair and eyes and exquisitely tailored clothes, he could have stepped out of the pages of a storybook. He kissed her lightly on the forehead, his strong hands holding her shoulders. “Do not cry, Kristin,” he said, his voice a ragged whisper. “One day you will come back to Cabriz, and you and I will reign together.”

Kristin swallowed, hardly daring to believe the fairy tale even though she and Jascha had discussed it many times. “But your father has seven wives,” she said, echoing her mother’s pet reason why nothing could ever come of Jascha and Kristin’s bittersweet romance.

Jascha traced the line of her cheek with a smooth thumb. “You will be my only wife, little lemon flower. This I promise you.”

Kristin believed him, perhaps because she was seventeen and he was the first man she’d ever loved, and threw herself into his arms even as her father called impatiently from the other side of the embassy courtyard. Jascha kissed her soundly before stepping aside, his hands caught together behind his back, to await the ambassador’s appearance.

Almost regretfully, Kristin came back to the here and now. Her parents had looked upon her earlier relationship with Jascha as a teenage infatuation and therefore hadn’t taken it too seriously, but they were strenuously opposed to the marriage that was about to take place. Even if the political system hadn’t been in chaos, they probably wouldn’t have attended the wedding.

Kristin sighed, possessed by a strange loneliness. She loved Jascha, she insisted to herself. She had loved him since childhood, when the two of them had played on the palace lawn.

But it wasn’t Jascha’s handsome face that came into her thoughts as she rose from her chair and went to stand looking out on the courtyard. It was Zachary Harmon’s.

Just the memory made her furious. She had no business thinking about Zachary—he was nothing but a self-centered adventurer, afraid of commitment and responsibility. She’d never really cared for him.

The swift, secret sensations in Kristin’s body gave the lie to that idea. Maybe the emotional attachment had ended, but she still felt a physical response every time he invaded her mind.

Mercifully, she reflected with a lift of her chin, that didn’t happen often.

She turned from the glass door and surveyed the sumptuous bedroom that would be hers until after the wedding ceremony. There was a lovely gauzy white spread on the enormous teakwood bed, and rattan chairs with bright floral cushions were everywhere. In less than twenty-four hours Kristin would leave this room for Jascha’s.

She sank her teeth into her lower lip as she went to a nearby table and picked up her camera. She wondered what kind of lover Jascha would be, then put the thought out of her mind. She would find that out soon enough.

After attaching the telephoto lens, Kristin carried her camera back to the terrace door, focused and began taking pictures of Jascha’s troops drilling in the courtyard. “The photo-diary of a future princess,” she muttered to herself.

Kristin was so involved in picture taking that she didn’t hear the door of her room open, didn’t know Jascha was there until he turned her gently to face him.

As always, she was struck by his imperial good looks. His exiled father was Asian, but his mother had come from India, and he had her round, dark eyes. He wore slacks, a jacket and a tailored shirt, putting on his uniform only for state occasions. He took the camera from her hands—a little impatiently, it seemed to Kristin—and set it aside.

“Do you wish to go back to the United States?” he asked, glancing over her shoulder at the troops she’d been capturing on film. “There could be war at any moment.”

Kristin had some feelings she didn’t want to explore just then, but she’d been well trained in the art of loyalty. She smiled, laid her hands on Jascha’s broad shoulders and shook her head. The two of them had played together as children, fallen in love as teenagers, and later Jascha had persuaded his father to allow him to go to college in Massachusetts—the same one Kristin had attended. They’d dated steadily then.

Later, when Kristin had moved to California to work on an advanced degree and Jascha had returned home, they had written each other long, soul-searching letters.

Until Zachary came along, that is. Kristin had truly thought she was in love with him—it must have been the secret-agent mystique—and even moved into his apartment.

Kristin had crawled away from that relationship, emotionally speaking, not caring whether she lived or died. It had been Jascha who had made the difference; somehow he’d learned what had happened and he’d come to her. Twenty-four hours a day he’d pursued her, sending flowers and jewelry, whisking her off to other parts of the world in his private jet, promising he would never, ever hurt her.

In her vulnerable position, it had been easy to buy into the fantasy. Now, far from her friends and family, Kristin was beginning to come out of the daze induced by her breakup with Zachary, and she could no longer ignore her doubts.

Jascha bent his head and kissed her, lightly at first and then with increasing passion. Kristin waited to feel some kind of physical response, as she had in the old days, before Zachary, but nothing happened.

Still unwilling to face the growing suspicion that she’d made a disastrous mistake, Kristin marked her coolness down to prewedding jitters.

There was a certain sadness in Jascha’s dark eyes as he drew back to look at her. The edge of his thumb grazed her cheek lightly as he muttered, “Kristin. My lovely, lovely Kristin. I am afraid for you. I should not have brought you here.”

In the distance Kristin heard the ominous popping sound of gunshots, and the drilling of the troops went on. She forced herself to smile. “Whatever happens, Jascha, I want to be with you.”

He bent to nibble at the side of her neck, and one of his hands lightly cupped her breast.

To her own surprise, as much as Jascha’s, Kristin bolted backward out of his embrace.

Jascha was not without temperament, and his well-sculpted lips formed a royal pout. “You still think of him,” he accused. “The man you lived with in California.”

Kristin shook her head, acutely aware that he was right. “No. it’s just that—it’s just that I think we should wait. Until after our wedding.”

He folded his strong arms and cocked his head to one side, and for the first time, Kristin knew he was considering forcing her. Although he had always been kind, she was well aware of Jascha’s legendary temper.

“You want to keep yourself chaste,” he said evenly. “Yet for twelve months you slept in Zachary Harmon’s bed. Surely you see that we have a contradiction in terms here.”

Kristin retreated another step. Jascha had never used this tone with her before; it had to be the stresses of his precarious political situation. “The time I spent with Zachary was a mistake,” she answered evenly. “If I could go back and change it, I would.”

Jascha advanced toward her, trapping her between himself and the bed. “You will find me a more than satisfactory lover,” he said in a low voice, pulling the tails of her cotton shirt from her jeans.

Panic wrapped itself around Kristin like a lash, sudden and strange. Where once she had burned to give herself to this man, now she was frightened, even repulsed, by his touch. “Jascha, no,” she whispered, crossing her forearms in front of her chest and struggling to stay upright.

He flung her onto the bed and held her wrists together high above her head. With his free hand, he began unbuttoning her shirt.

Kristin twisted, trying vainly to break away, filled with fear and rage. The warnings she’d heard from her parents and friends screamed in her mind. He’ll have absolute control over you—in his culture, women are property—you’ve only seen the Jascha he wanted you to see….

Just as Jascha bared one of Kristin’s breasts and closed his hand over it, the door of the bedroom opened and Mai entered, carrying tea. Although her eyes were downcast, as became a lowly servant in the presence of her prince, she obviously knew what was going on. And she wasn’t about to leave.

Jascha muttered a curse and released Kristin, storming out of the room and slamming the door behind him.

Too mortified to meet Mai’s gaze, Kristin sat up, righted her bra and buttoned her shirt. Because she didn’t know what to say, she was silent.

Mai busied herself laying out the tiny bowls in which tea was served, along with the small sweet cakes she knew Kristin loved. “Weather is hot. Perhaps Miss Kristin like to bathe in swimming pool,” she said, pretending nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Kristin felt sick. Something was wrong with Jascha—terribly wrong. In all the years she’d known him, he’d never mistreated her in any way, though she had to admit he’d been damnably arrogant on occasion. Yet only moments before, he’d been bent on raping her. Ignoring the tea, she made for the telephone at her bedside.

“I’m in no mood to swim,” she muttered, while silently cursing herself for every kind of romantic fool. She should have seen this coming. She should have known she’d only been trying to revive her old feelings for Jascha because she couldn’t bear the pain of grieving for Zachary. “I want to call my father.”

“Line’s cut,” Mai said succinctly.

Kristin felt the color drain out of her face as she lifted the ornate receiver and put it to her ear. Sure enough, there was no dial tone, only an ominous silence.

But Jascha had offered to send her home to the United States before he’d gotten so angry and thrown her onto the bed. She had to find him, tell him she’d changed her mind.

She strode to the door and wrenched it open, her rising ire lending her courage as she marched along the elegantly carpeted hallway, down the curving stairs that led to the great entryway with its glittering crystal chandeliers.

A guard was posted by the front door. “Where is the prince?” she demanded, heedless of her untucked shirt and mussed hair.

The guard’s expression didn’t change. “There,” he said in Cabrizian, pointing toward the towering double doors of Jascha’s study with the barrel of his rifle.

Kristin knocked briskly, then marched inside without waiting for an invitation. Jascha was in hushed conference with one of his generals, and his glowering expression said he did not appreciate the interruption.

“I’ve changed my mind about everything,” Kristin announced. “The wedding is off. I want to go home right now.”

For a moment she saw the old tenderness in Jascha’s eyes, but then they turned hard as ebony. “It is too late,” he bit out, while the general looked on unabashedly. “Go to your room, Kristin, and do not come out again until you are told.”

Kristin’s mouth fell open, and she stood rooted to the center of the study floor. She was twenty-seven years old, and she hadn’t been sent to her room in two decades. She wasn’t about to set a new precedent.

“Go!” Jascha said with a dismissive wave of one hand.

Instead, Kristin stepped closer to him. “What’s happened to you?” she whispered. “Why are you behaving like this?”

“This is Cabriz, not America,” Jascha pointed out. “Things are different here. Now, do as I say before I decide you must be disciplined.”

“Disciplined?” Kristin’s fury was so great that it rose into her throat and swelled, making it impossible for any more words to pass.

Jascha was livid. He called out a word Kristin couldn’t translate, and the guard from the entryway appeared. A rapid conversation passed between them, of which Kristin caught only a few words. Then the guard took her arm and dragged her roughly toward the door.

Kristin struggled, but it was no use. “Jascha!” she cried, in an angry plea for reason, as she was propelled out of the study and up the stairs.

Minutes later, Kristin was flung unceremoniously into a large room and the door was locked behind her.

Wildly, she looked around. The place was huge, and sumptuously furnished. The chairs and sofas were all upholstered in colorful silk, and heavy damask curtains surrounded the enormous bed, which stood on a dais. There was an ivory fireplace, even though the temperature in that part of Cabriz never dipped low enough for a fire, and a beautiful Louis XIV desk stood in front of the windows.

Kristin’s anger reached ferocious proportions when she realized that this was Jascha’s room, and she’d been sent here, like a mischievous concubine, to await the prince’s convenience. She hurled herself at the giant door, hammering at it with both fists and screaming, “Let me out! Damn you, Jascha, let me out!”

After a while Kristin sagged against the wood, exhausted. It was hopeless; no one in the palace, not even Mai, would dare to flout Jascha’s authority by releasing her. She was going to have to find her own means of escape.

She went to the terrace doors. For a moment Kristin had hope, but then she looked over the stone railing. It was at least a thirty-foot drop to the courtyard below, and there were no trees or trellises to climb down.

Momentarily defeated, she went back inside, out of the blazing midafternoon sun.

She searched the desk drawers for a key, but found nothing other than a stack of letters scented with some spicy perfume and written in Cabrizian. Although Kristin could understand the language if it was spoken slowly and clearly, she had never learned to read it.

Still, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the letters had been written by a woman. Feeling more a fool than ever, Kristin put the envelopes back where she’d found them and continued her exploration.

After an hour, when she’d found nothing that would aid in her escape and had exhausted herself emotionally, she collapsed in the middle of Jascha’s enormous bed. She awakened sometime later to find herself surrounded by women, all veiled, all clad in the colorful, gauzy robes worn by Cabrizian females.

Mai was not among them.

“What the hell?” Kristin gasped, bolting upright and trying to scramble off the bed, but the women wouldn’t let her pass. They gripped her arms and legs, and one of them clasped the back of her neck in strong fingers. She struggled, but there were too many of them, and they subdued her. “Who are you?” she cried. “What do you want?”

“Open mouth,” one of them ordered. Gone were the gentle, subservient tones that had always been used with her before.

“Let go of me!” Kristin ordered. “Right now!”

When the women ignored her, she threw her head back and screamed Jascha’s name.

Her right arm was wrenched behind her back and pulled painfully upward. The command was repeated.

Kristin had no choice but to obey. She parted her lips, and a bitter-tasting wine was poured onto her tongue. Not daring to spit it out, she swallowed convulsively. “Stupid,” she muttered, addressing herself, coming face-to-face with a reality she’d refused to consider before. “Stupid!”

The women were stripping her clothes away, but when Kristin moved to fight them again, she found that her muscles had turned to rice pudding. She was helpless.

Her eyes filled with tears of frustration and fear. Jascha had lied, both to her and her family. These women were his wives.

She was raised from the bed and propelled into the prince’s private bath, where an enormous tub of inlaid tiles waited, filled with steaming, scented water.

The women—she tried counting them, but could not think clearly—lowered her into the tub and, remarkably, began to bathe her. They surrounded her and their swift, firm hands were everywhere, soaping her arms and legs, lathering her hair.

After a while Kristin was lulled into a state of half consciousness. They lifted her from the tub and dried her as carefully as they’d bathed her, and then she was ushered back to the bed again.

She felt silken sheets against her bare back as they laid her down. Now, she thought dreamily, they would let her rest.

But they didn’t. They began rubbing scented oil into her skin, covering her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. Something stirred in Kristin; she felt herself drifting through space, back to another time and another place.

“Zachary,” she whispered with a soft smile.

Her skin was powdered, her hair dried and brushed. Kristin lost track of time and reality.

A familiar masculine voice disturbed her erotic dreams. “Okay, princess, wake up. We’re going home.”

Slowly, Kristin opened her eyes. For a moment she thought she was still sleeping, because Zachary’s shadowed face was looming in the darkness, only inches from hers. “Zachary?”

“That’s me,” he replied, reaching under her and lifting her off the mattress. “It’s a good thing they used powder after they greased you,” he said, holding her up with one arm and pulling rough cotton trousers onto her with the other. “Otherwise you’d be slippery as hell and I’d probably drop you right on your hard little head. Not that it would make any real difference in your thinking processes….”

The effects of the drug the wives had forced on Kristin were just beginning to wear off, but she still felt woozy and very unsteady on her feet. She shook her head. “Zachary, is that really you?”

“It’s really me, princess. And keep your voice down. If His Highness finds me in the royal boudoir, I’ll be in for a rough three or four days in the dungeon.”

He pulled a shirt over her head and forced her arms into the sleeves. Then she rested her cheek against his chest, yawning. “How did you find me?”

“That’s a long story. We’ll talk about it when we’re at least fifty miles from this place.” He caught a curved finger under her chin. “Maybe it’s a good thing you’re stoned out of your mind,” he confided. “We’re about to climb down over the terrace, and there’s always a possibility one of the guards might wake up. Whatever you do, princess, hold on tight and keep that legendary mouth shut.”

Before Kristin could lodge any kind of protest, Zachary hoisted her over one shoulder and headed toward the terrace doors. It was dark and the ebony sky was littered with stars. When she saw the stone railing approaching, Kristin squeezed her eyes shut and sucked in a breath.

“Now remember,” Zachary told her in a rough undertone, “be quiet.”

There was an awful jostling sensation, and Kristin caught hold of the back of Zachary’s belt and hung on with all her strength. The fact that she’d been drugged did nothing to ease her fear when she opened her eyes and saw that they were descending a thin rope into the dark courtyard.

If she hadn’t still been holding her breath, she would have screamed her lungs out.

Presently they reached the ground and Zachary set Kristin on her feet, where she teetered for a moment, to flip the grappling hook loose from the terrace railing and wind the rope around one hand. Kristin lifted her hand to her mouth to stifle another yawn. “You’ll never believe what just happened to me in there—”

Even in the thin light of an autumn moon, Kristin saw the muscle tighten in his jaw. “I’ve got a pretty good idea,” he responded. “Now, let’s get out of here.”

Once they’d gained the palace wall, Zachary flung the grappling hook over the top, then wrenched on the rope to make sure it was secure.

“Not again,” Kristin protested.

“Get on my back,” Zachary ordered impatiently. “And for God’s sake, stop bitching. In case you haven’t noticed, your ladyship, I’m doing all the damn work!”

Kristin put her arms around his neck and climbed onto him piggyback style. “Think of it as just recompense for all the times I had to carry out the garbage and wash your socks,” she replied sweetly, her head clearing by the moment.

He started up the wall. “You never had to wash my socks,” he retorted, his voice sounding choked.

Kristin loosened her grip slightly. “It was a metaphor,” she whispered back.

“You know,” he grunted in response, straining to pull them both up the rope, “the prince probably deserves you. Maybe I should take you back there and let them finish the ritual.”

They’d reached the top of the wall, and Kristin could just rely make out the outline of a Jeep below.

“Jump,” Zachary instructed her. “We’re like ducks in a shooting gallery up here.”

Kristin’s heart hammered in her chest. “I’m not jumping!” she protested. “It must be ten feet to the ground!”

“Aim for the bushes,” Zachary answered, and then his hand pressed into the small of her back and she went sailing off the wall. He landed in the shrubbery only a moment after she did.