‘How do you know all that?’ she had asked and he told her, then, about his years in the diplomatic, his time in East Europe.
It was the first personal conversation they had ever had; they had sat on in the diner, drinking beer, for a long time, then he drove back to the motel and walked her to her room, following her inside, letting the door slam behind him.
She remembered the way her legs had started to shake when he bent and kissed her mouth hard. This was how all her fantasies about him had started; she couldn’t believe they were coming true at last.
As he lifted his head a moment later she stepped away from him a little, and he flushed, thinking she was rejecting him.
‘Sorry,’ he had said. ‘I’m a little drunk, I guess,’ and began to turn back to the door only to stop dead, his lips parted in a silent intake of air as he saw her take off her glasses and drop them on a little table before beginning to undo her silk shirt.
She could still remember the heat inside her, the fast beating of a sensual drum in her veins. She hadn’t hurried, she had kept her eyes fixed on him, stripping slowly, with ritual movements, as if to music, dropping her clothes on the floor, lifting a languid hand to release her hair from the neat chignon, letting it flow down over her shoulders.
She had worn it long, in those days; she had changed her hairstyle to mislead people into believing her indifferent to men. That first night Don had stared, pupils wide and shiny, as if he was hypnotized by the body she unveiled for him – her round, firm breasts and smooth hips, her long legs and the dark curly hair between her thighs.
She had heard his thick breathing quicken as she put a hand out to his shirt and began to unbutton it. Neither of them said a word. He let her undress him; he let her make all the moves now. When she had stripped him they stood there, face to face, in silence, until she put her hands on his bare shoulders and pushed him down on to his knees.
Grabbing his hair, she thrust his head forward until his face was buried in the dark bush he hadn’t been able to stop staring at. While his tongue probed her she stroked his hair, her bare thighs brushing his face, huskily groaning, ‘Yes, there . . . good . . . that’s good . . .’
When she had been aroused to the right pitch, she grabbed him by the shoulders again and pushed him backwards on to the floor. She remembered his incredulous face staring up at her as she mounted him, her hot, moist body sucking him into it; the high-pitched cry he gave as she began fiercely riding him, driving herself up to a frenzy of pleasure. Don had helplessly writhed under her, abandoned to her. The violent explosion of passion was brief and shattering. Afterwards she remembered they had lain on the floor like fish out of water, gasping and shuddering.
Only afterwards did she realize that she had hit upon his own secret fantasies, the first woman who ever had, but maybe he had never admitted them openly even to himself? Don, like her, had had a Puritan upbringing. He found it hard to admit what he wanted, needed. He had been as conservative in his sexual encounters as he was in the rest o
f his life. That night she had been so aroused that she had driven for her own satisfaction and in dominating him had discovered what turned him on. From that moment on, she had the whip-hand in their relationship. As the years went by Don had become addicted to what she did to him in bed.
Watching him with these British politicians now, her mouth was dry. She fought to keep her expression cool, but triumph glittered like jagged glass behind her eyes.
He was hers; when he was president she would rule him and, through him, the whole of America, the whole of the world. The very fact that her dominion would be a secret made it all the more satisfying. She didn’t want anyone to know. She relished the shadowy nature of her power.
As the last man left and they were alone in the conference room, he turned towards her at last, one brow lifting in enquiry. Quietly she gave him the message and saw all the colour drain from his face.
‘She mustn’t reach Cathy,’ he muttered. ‘Why in God’s name is she still alive? She must not reach Cathy.’
Sophie had never been to this part of England before. She had a difficult journey, having to change trains and wait for over an hour before a local stopping train arrived to take her to her final destination. It had been a very slow train too; now she stood on the platform of a small local railway station in Buckinghamshire, in cool early afternoon sunlight, and listened as the train vanished down the lines and silence returned; a silence which gradually filled with other little sounds she had not heard at first. Birds called in the fields on either side of the station; from the bare, black-boughed trees, from the dark green hollies, the tangled hedges of blackthorn. The wind blew in the trees, bent the grasses in the fields, made the station sign rattle. Another passenger had got out here, a woman in a black leather jacket and trousers, who was ahead of her, vanishing out of the station.
The ticket collector was busy outside the station, shifting heavy wooden crates from which chickens chirped and protested.
‘Thanks, miss,’ he said, sticking her ticket into the band of his hat.
‘Can you tell me how to get to Arbory House? Is it far?’
He stared at her. ‘Arbory House, is it? Well, now, that’s a few miles from here, I’m afraid. You could have got a taxi, if he had been here, but our usual taxi driver is down with flu. You’ll have to get the bus; there’s one in ten minutes. It stops right outside, you can’t miss it.’
Steve was walking through the lobby of their hotel at that moment, on the way up to his room. He stopped at the desk to pick up his key and was about to turn towards the lifts when he heard someone asking for Sophie.
‘Miss Narodni?’ the receptionist repeated. ‘I don’t think she is in, sir. I’ll ring her room for you, but I believe I saw her leave the hotel several hours ago.’
‘Well, maybe she’s back, huh?’ There was a strong foreign intonation to the voice and Steve recognized it as very similar to Sophie’s accent. ‘Please to try her room, OK?’
The receptionist smiled politely and turned away to dial. Steve strolled closer, studying the man’s profile; a huge nose dominated it, and below that a thick moustache, grizzled with grey.
Suddenly the other man stiffened and turned to stare back at Steve with dark, melancholy eyes that held wary suspicion, the fear of being watched, being followed, that was the legacy of years of repression.
Steve handed him a friendly smile and held out his hand. ‘Hello, I’m Steve Colbourne, a TV reporter – I heard you asking for Sophie. She’s working as a researcher on my team.’
A big hand engulfed his and he got back an aggressive but not unfriendly grin. ‘Ah, you’re that guy; sure, she tells me she comes to Europe with you, she left a message on my answerphone while I was out, and I already talked to Theo and Lilli in New York and heard all about what’s been bloody going on, which she should have told me herself, but she works for me, Colbourne, firstly and foremostly she works for me.’
‘Of course,’ Steve said. ‘I know that. That is quite understood. You are Vladimir, I take it?’
The yellow walrus teeth were bared, nicotine-stained but big as piano keys.