“I’d rather we didn’t, General. The noise…” Cisco indicated the quiet hum of the sensitive apparatus around them but his resistance had nothing to do with the equipment. Thirty minutes earlier, when he’d seen this interview clip the first time, Goodman’s brainless performance had discomfited him, and he was only Isabel’s doctor not her husband, let alone a military hero who, judging by his bearing and the tight pursed lips under his pencil moustache, could probably suffocate an enemy just by sucking in the air from around him.
Ed reached for the remote control and pumped up the volume. Cisco blinked, held his breath and began an intense scrutiny of the ceiling tiles.
… arrogant, when you come down to it, simple as that. And it’s exactly because of her big-city rich-folks’ attitude why we don’t want people hikin’ on their own up here. Especially…
Cisco had counted thirteen squares when a newsflash thankfully cut off Goodman’s even more offensive comments.
We apologise for this interruption. We’re holding for an announcement from the White House. Our Washington newsroom expects it will be President Foster nominating a new vice-president. Stay tuned.
Cisco’s eyes edged warily back over to Ed, expecting anger over Andy’s distasteful remarks, but Ed’s mask of cold fury sent a shiver up his spine.
68
BUTAKA ISLAND’S FRONT-LINE staff had just finished hand-brushing the last grains of sand off the blue welcome carpet on the tarmac when the jet engines whirred to a hush and its steps lowered. Though it was only sunrise, the temperature was already a comfortable 23°C, lucky for the waiting line-up of the resort island’s valets, with their perfect bodies and crimson loincloths.
The fifteen valets stepped forward for the traditional welcoming ceremony, sprinkling petals of a rare crimson tulip along the carpet from the steps to each one of the sparkling yellow beach buggies. That this exclusive Caribbean island didn’t grow tulips was, to those who knew the proprietor, the whole point. And these guests knew him well. They’d all been here before, mostly with Ed Loane. The proprietor had fought alongside many of them in Grenada in ’83. After discharge, he came here, buying the island soon after and eventually making it off-limits to all but the super-rich, and his friends.
Mario, who’d been allocated as Niki’s personal valet for her stay, whisked her away to her private grass hut, one of fifteen luxury bungalows scattered in remote seclusion around the island. Butaka was one of those elite resorts never covered in the weekend travel section. In all these decades, Butaka had never advertised, not once. No journalist had ever been invited, and none could afford to pay. It had no website, and even managed to appear as a vague unnamed dot on most Caribbean tourist maps. Butaka actively shunned publicity, which played to its privileged clientele. Any place that could charge so much had to be perfect… and it was. But for Loane’s Rangers there were no charges. Never.
Mario showed Niki through her thatched cottage. She threw her tote bag and black stilettos onto the bed and dismissed him, noting his quiet grace as well as the bulge beneath his loincloth, but this wasn’t the time. There’d be plenty of that later. With her Red Sox cap planted firmly on her head, twisted to the right as she preferred it, she strolled out onto the fine cream sand and padded down to her personal strip of surf.
Mario occupied himself by polishing his buggy outside her hut. He wolf-whistled, silently, as he watched her sidle toward the water, the sunrise with enough swing to it so that the black cocktail dress she’d been wearing since last night clung to her most intimate places. He loved his job.
He leant on the buggy and reassembled himself under his loincloth as he watched Niki wriggle her toes in the 24°C shallows. In the year he’d been here, the waters had rarely fallen below that. Mario tossed back his wavy black hair and tied an elastic around it at the back. Twisting into the buggy, he grabbed a tube of sun cream from the seat, squeezed a dollop onto his palm and slowly rubbed it into his hairless chest, waiting. He didn’t have to wait long.
Niki crossed her arms over in front of herself, curled her fingers under the hem of her dress and in one sweep, drew it over her head, careful not to knock her cap off, and flung it behind her onto the sand. Hmm, Mario nodded. No underwear; he’d won that bet with himself. Niki stood for a moment with her hands on her hips, and her head cocked to the side, insolent to the waking sun, as though daring it to admit it had met its match.
By the time she slipped into the sea, leaving her cap on her dress on the sand, Mario had unfurled two towels from her bathroom rail and was walking them down to the water’s edge for her… and hopefully for him.
Service with a smile was Mario’s motto.
69