Subject: Do as you are bid
The message was empty when he brought it up.
"Damn that woman!" he swore. Did she have to deny him even the most paltry of acknowledgments?
Furiously he typed out a reply.
To: Kali@yug.net
From: Commodore@net.org
Subject: Can we discuss this in person?
Then, in the body of the letter, he added a lowercase, perfectly centered "Please?"
A lonely hour passed before he gave up waiting for a response. Then he picked up the telephone and set in motion events that had not been factored into the master plan...
At least, not in his master plan...
Chapter 21
UN Secretary-General Anwar Anwar-Sadat returned from a dismal day of resolutions and Security Council foot-dragging and temporizing to an e-mail message that made his heart leap with undisguised joy. If the members of the international community could have seen Anwar-Sadat in his Sphinx-decorated Beekman Place high-rise apartment dropping into the chair before the blue terminal, they wouldn't have recognized the profile of the diplomat who was called Old Stone Face behind his back.
His dusky features were wreathed in joy. His fingers leaped for the keyboard he had for years disdained. Functionaries formerly input his commands for him. He was above such tasks. As the son of an upper-class Cairo politician, he had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Until he was packed off to military school at the age of twelve, his hand never touched that spoon or any other with his mouth. Servants fed him by hand.
But not here. Not in the privacy of his private world of romance and desire. Here he moved his own mouse and input his own commands.
The message was from Mistress Kali.
The subject line read, "Opportunity."
Anwar-Sadat brought up the message. Its crisp blue lines made his heart sing, but it was no message of longing and love. Rather, it was a very serious communication:
I have it on the highest authority, my Anwar, that U.S. Coast Guard forces last night sank a Canadian submarine in disputed waters.
"All waters are disputed," Anwar-Sadat muttered, his features resuming their stiff, stony lines. Such a face the Great Sphinx of pharaonic Egypt wore when it was whole and uneroded and complete of countenance.
He absorbed the remainder of the message.
This incident is being suppressed by both sides to spare diplomatic feelings, but it may be but the opening skirmish in a wider conflict. It might behoove you to bring this to the attention of the international community, so that your views are given the proper credit and respect they so richly deserve.
Anwar-Sadat nodded in agreement. "I will do it," he announced. Then, remembering the medium of communication, he guided the cursor to the reply icon and tapped out his very words, adding a "My Sweet Sphinx."
The message sped through fiber-optic lines to its unknown destination. As he watched the system perform its sacred duties, Anwar Anwar-Sadat only wished he were a beam of light that could follow it to the waiting arms of his love-to-be.
He yearned for those arms and the gentle caresses of Mistress Kali's fingers. He could almost feel them on his brow, his lips and in other places it was not good to think about when he was alone.
Still, the thoughts had come unbidden.
Going to a bookcase, he took from its place a book of old erotica, the Kama Sutra.
It was going to be a long night. There was no telling when Mistress Kali would reply again, if at all. But for his mind to concoct the speech he planned to give on the morrow, it must be agile.
Certain hormones facilitated his thinking processes. He only wished that their release did not require a naughty book and his own manipulations ....
It was very undignified. If only he had a snakehipped, kohl-eyed personal slave to apply the necessary unguents to the needy portions of his anatomy, which more and more felt the distress of a fish caught on a hook.
A very stimulating hook, he had to admit.
Chapter 22
The death of Tomasso Testaverde would have amounted to as much as his ill-spent life were it not for the fact that Tomasso Testaverde was of Sicilian blood.
After the autopsy his bluish corpse was released to his next of kin.
The trouble was no one wanted the remains.
Not his mother, from whom he was estranged.
Not any of his hardworking uncles.
Finally his father's father, Sirio Testaverde, agreed to take possession of the late Tomasso Testaverde. Sirio showed up at the Barnstable County morgue and said simply, "I have come for my grandson, Tomasso."
"This way," the bored morgue attendant said.
They walked the antiseptic corridors of death in silence. The still, cool air smelled of pungent chemicals. These things did not bother Sirio, who had skippered Grand Banks schooners in the golden era of the cod schooners. Although he hadn't gone to sea in two decades, there were still fish scales under his fingernails and salt grime caking his hairy nostrils. He was a greaser, as Sicilian-born fishermen were known.
The body was slid out of the morgue drawer and a sheet thrown back.
Sirio saw the blue design on the unrecognizable face of the only son of his only son and said, "Minga! This is not Tomasso."
"Dental records say it is."
"What is that on his face?"
"That's how he was found. The funeral home will clean him up for interment."
"He was found this way?" Sirio muttered, his old eyes squinting.
"Yes."
"That means someone did this thing to him," he growled.
"You'll have to take that up with the Coast Guard. They have the full report on file."
Sirio Testaverde did. He learned the unpleasant details of his grandson's passing, the fish inserted where fish should not go, the face painting, all of it. And although he had disowned his grandson many years ago for dishonoring the proud Testaverde name, the thin blood in his thready veins leaped hot and fast.