Cleopatra's Perfume. Jina Bacarr

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ right cross to the Nazi’s chin. The Aryan ducked, surprising him, then came back at him with a double punch to his gut. They exchanged blows, skin splitting open, sweat mixing in a macabre blurring of male flesh and hard muscle into one blur until the Nazi retrieved the gun. Chuck kicked it out of the man’s hand and he went down on the sand. He jumped on top of him, but the Nazi threw dirt into his face. Eyes burning like hell, he reached out blindly, withstanding the man’s punches, until his hands wrapped around the German’s neck and he pushed down on his windpipe hard, not letting up, until he went still beneath him.

      He sat back on his haunches and caught his breath. Eyes wide open, shock of blond hair hanging down low over his face, the Nazi had the look of a demonic creature cast in stone. He checked his pulse. He was dead.

      Wiping the sweat out of his eyes, Chuck looked toward the lake. No movement, no splashing. Nothing. What happened to the Englishwoman? A sharp pain tore at his gut, eating him up with dread. He jumped to his feet and dived into the crystalclear water, afraid of what he’d find.

      An hour later—or was it two?—the dead Nazi lay in the mud on the lake bottom with two large rocks tied around his ankles. Chuck came up again to get some air, his lungs bursting. No sign of the Englishwoman. No blood, no body. Nothing. Again and again he searched the area, but it was as if she’d dived into the lake and disappeared. He almost believed she was a mermaid and had swum out to sea.

      God, he was losing his mind. Nothing made sense. The platinum blonde. The SS officer. What had he stumbled into? An intricate Nazi plot to pick him up? No, that was impossible. No one could have known he’d duck into the Hotel Adlon to get some rest after he’d been shot down during a bombing mission over Berlin. He was an American flier in the RAF and he’d been on the run for two, three days, trying to escape into the human blur that swarmed through the hotels in a never-ending bustle, moving at night when the city was thrust into darkness to evade the British bombers. Living on cold pasta tossed out from Italian restaurants, since food was rationed. His crew had been captured, but he escaped into the woods, burying his uniform jacket then stealing clothes drying on a line from an unsuspecting Hausfrau.

      He wiped the water from his eyes, but he couldn’t wipe away the doubts, the puzzle that eluded him. It didn’t make sense. He dived in again, searching the lake that must have been over two hundred feet deep in the middle. And cold. Still nothing. He had no choice but to give up the search and find his way back over the German lines to the Allies. Forget what she said about a diary. Why should he risk his own life to retrieve a piece of female vanity?

      Dressing quickly in the dead Nazi’s silver-and-black uniform—he intended to dump it as soon as possible—he got behind the wheel of the Mercedes 260D diesel car and drove off. He found himself weaving from one lane to another, his mind troubled. A hint of her spicy fragrance wafted off the black ribbed seat and hung in the air around him, torturing him with its power. What happened to the Englishwoman? Lady Eve Marlowe of Mayfair was how he’d known her in Cairo. Where was she? Though her beauty haunted him, her death haunted him more. Nothing was left to show she’d ever been there, shivered in his arms, teased him with her beguiling smile, pleasured him when he stroked her with his cock until she cried out at the peak of her desire.

      Nothing. Just the redolent scent of her perfume.

       Damn her.

      It took him less than five minutes to change his mind and turn the car around and head back toward Berlin. It wasn’t that he faced a nearly impossible journey in enemy territory to get to France and the underground that made him change his mind. He’d survived worse. It wasn’t that he was certain Lady Marlowe had cash in her suite he could use in his escape, since when he searched through her clothes and purse before tossing them behind some brush, he’d found nothing. No, it was something he didn’t dare put into words. A hunch that this gorgeous woman was mixed up in more than sex and decadence, that she’d begged him to help her and if he didn’t, her life would have been in vain. Whatever they’d had in Cairo, it ended here, today. He couldn’t change that. He could change course, play out this insane caper and see where it led him. He hated the feeling eating at his insides, that her death was his fault. He owed her that much.

      An hour later, he parked the big, black sedan blocks away from the Adlon then ducked in under the hotel awning and strode past the doorman and into the lobby, saluting and mumbling “Heil, Hitler!” to anyone who crossed his path. He avoided the black-suited desk clerk and the admiring eyes of the uniformed bellboy wearing white gloves and made his way upstairs, then grabbed a maid and threatened her with gestures and grunts until she allowed him access to the blonde’s suite. Who would deny an SS officer? He didn’t know more than a few words of German, but it worked. He was inside.

      There, in the middle of the room, was a steamer trunk. It stood three feet long and two feet high with four rollers, edged in leather with wood strapping and brass rivets. He tapped his fingers over the cracking Damier pattern, noting the tiny tears in the canvas covering the trunk—

       Rrring.

      He waited.

      The phone rang again and again and still he did nothing. He dare not answer it, but the presence of its irritating sound filled the air between himself and the unknown caller. Then the ringing stopped and the silence became his ticking clock. He glanced at the phone then looked at the door. Whoever had called could be on their way up here.

      What was he waiting for? Staring at the trunk wasn’t going to bring back the Englishwoman. He tugged on the brass lock, but it wouldn’t give. Locked.

      And no key in sight.

      That wouldn’t stop him. He had plenty of practice picking the lock on his father’s gun cabinet when he was a kid, so he could practice shooting tin cans with his kid brother when the old man was away. He searched through the female items on the vanity table until he found what he needed: a nail file and a long hatpin. With the hatpin in one hand and the nail file in the other, he got to work on the lock. Using the hatpin, he picked the lock by raising the pins to their so-called breaking point as a key would, then used the nail file to rotate the cylinder to operate the cam at the rear of the lock’s cylinder to unlock the mechanism. It took a few tries, but it wasn’t long until he heard the welcome click and the lock popped open. Inside, he found a blue suit, navy pumps, chemises, garters and silk stockings. Beneath the clothes, he found a square box wrapped in black velvet about the size of a small jewelry box. He felt along the bottom of the trunk until it gave way and he uncovered a red silk-bound diary, its deep lush color still as fresh as the blush of a rose. He opened the book and the scent wafting from its pages overpowered him. Her scent. Spicy and pungent, like a kaleidoscope of powerful fragrances shuffled together that emitted a slightly different aroma every time he turned a page. Florid, feminine handwriting flowed from the linen sheets, jumping out at him as though the writer had jotted her thoughts down in a hurry. Voluptuous scenes, lusty descriptions, all filled with savagery.

      Fascinated by what he’d seen, he flipped back to the first entry. It was all there in her handwriting. Loneliness, pleasure, the desire to submit, the indiscretions. All the passions of a woman possessed by the secret of what she called Cleopatra’s perfume. No wonder her image, her touch, her scent held him captive and wouldn’t let him go. He no longer saw her fluffed up in feathers and jewels and he a man filled with the raw need to conquer his own demons, but two people caught up in a dangerous game of intrigue and obsession. She revealed the past to him by way of the erotic tableaux she described, while the mysterious perfume emitting from the diary pages overwhelmed his senses with an intimate and intoxicating intensity.

      And so he entered her world.

      2

       СКАЧАТЬ