Chapter 7
The pool was on the west side of the house and was half surrounded by distant mountains, giving an amphitheater effect. It was enormous and there were several cabanas situated around the sides where uniformed waiters served drinks and food and where bathers could change into their trunks or bikinis or get a massage or take a nap or even make love.
Over half the guests had arrived and John McCandless noticed some very familiar faces, members of the international set who had too much money and were bored and exhausted trying to think of amusing ways to spend it. The boredom and the exhaustion showed in their faces, for the most part, even through the facelifts which had been performed by a mysterious and highly skilled plastic surgeon in Lausanne.
There was the usual sprinkling of starlets and high-priced whores and young wives of rich, old men, and McCandless thought wryly that there were a few present who could claim title to all three.
He recognized two middle-level British politicians, obviously uncomfortable in the jet-set glitter that pervaded the atmosphere. They were here to try to beg some time on the tanker deal, McCandless guessed. Then he smiled inwardly. Perhaps he'd be able to give them a hand. The British were a decent lot and good friends to the United States.
A Greek band was playing someplace but McCandless couldn't see them from his beach mat and he didn't feel like changing his position. In fact he could hardly hear them over the sound of splashing water and high-pitched, laughing voices.
He had noticed the tall woman before. She was in her sixties and her face was brown and wrinkled and she had had too much to drink. Her husband was a South American diplomat who doubled as one of the largest couriers in the world of top grade heroin. The dope was smuggled into his country from the Laotion mountains at the lower tip of the infamous Golden Triangle where ninety per cent of all the world's opium-producing poppies are grown. He then brought the deadly white powder into the United States under the cover of diplomatic immunity. But not for long, McCandless reflected with a grim smile. He had seen the man's name on a CIA death list just two weeks before. It was second from the top. McCandless had even been a little surprised to see him still alive, here at the pre-nuptial celebration. He was getting high on martinis, not heroin.
The brown-skinned, wrinkled woman waved her own martini glass and shouted for silence in a fuzzy, high-pitched voice.
"All right everyone," she said when it had quieted down. "We're going to have an auction."
There was a scattering of drunken applause and she held up her hands for silence again.
"Now everyone over twenty-one get out of the pool, and everyone under twenty-one get in. Then we'll have open bidding for your bathing suits," she said, laughing and slugging down the last of her martini. A waiter appeared at her side with a fresh one, taking the empty glass before she shattered it on the tile around the pool.
There was a general scurrying in and out of the pool, with lithe, tan young bodies hurling themselves into the tepid water and old, gnarled ones sheepishly getting out, dripping, and wrapping towels around themselves. Those starlets and young prostitutes who could get away with it stayed in the water even though some of them were pushing thirty but no one protested and the bidding commenced.
"What's the money for?" a slurred voice demanded.
"Charity!" the drunken woman shouted. "All these tender young asses and boobs for charity."
"I'll bid a thousand francs for the yellow bikini top," a fat man with a French accent cried.
"And I'll add a thousand marks for the bottom."
The deep-voiced German drew some dirty looks for his obvious reference to the fact that the mark was more solid and stable than the franc but it was all the same to the green-eyed young Belgian beauty who stripped off the yellow bikini, top and bottom, and threw the skimpy wet garments to the successful bidders.
"She has to get out of the pool now," the Frenchman cried, licking his fat lips.
"That's not in the rules," the wrinkled woman said, but the young woman, who had movie ambitions, needed no further urging. She climbed out and paraded nude around the pool, her ample breasts and luscious buttocks bouncing and quivering as she walked, while her wedge-shaped thatch of black pubic hair swung tantalizingly from side to side with the motion of her body.
McCandless noticed one of the guests taking pictures from beneath his straw beach hat, snapping quickly and efficiently with a tiny Minox. The man hadn't taken a drink all day and it was clear to McCandless he was there on business. Whether he was being paid by an international magazine, a newspaper, or a foreign government didn't make much difference.
The tall American sighed and decided it was time for him to go to work, too. It was a shame. He was just beginning to get a tan.
He thought wistfully of Tina. He hadn't seen her yet this morning. He had called her room and was told that she had left early to do some shopping for the wedding but she had left a message: she was looking forward to another steam bath and would call him as soon as she got back.
Why was it the children who always got hurt when nations decided to look after their self-interest?
He sighed and got up to look for a telephone to call Pericles Vassilikos and Claire Clayborn.
The Belgian starlet was making a second tour around the pool and the other young girls, and some of the boys, who were still in the pool were getting impatient to get their own clothes off.
McCandless wished he could stay and watch.
"It's so good to see you again, John," Claire Clayborn said, accepting his kiss on the cheek. "Thanks for coming and please forgive me for not calling last night. I was exhausted and went straight to bed and I slept until an hour ago."
In fact an hour ago she was bent over the back of an armchair in her bedroom with her nightgown pulled up around her waist with Pericles Vassilikos' hard, thrusting penis moving in and out of her vaseline-covered anus. She could still feel her anal muscles twitching deliciously from him as she sat down with Pericles and her old friend John McCandless, and as happy as she was to see John, she was eager to get whatever it was he wanted out of the way so she could get Pericles' hard rod back in between the cheeks of her bottom. She turned to smile at her fianc‚ but she saw that he was looking at McCandless with his black, shrewd eyes narrowed and speculative as though he wasn't going to like what John had to say.
"Would you like a drink, Mr. McCandless?" Pericles said without smiling.
"No thank you, Mr. Vassilikos," McCandless said. "As a matter-of-fact I'm not here entirely as a wedding guest."
Claire looked at him with a trace of surprise and Vassilikos took a long pull on his cigar, knocking the ash off and sitting back in his chair.
"What do you mean, John?"
"I think your fianc‚ has probably guessed," McCandless said, watching his host.
"I think I have," the powerfully-build Greek tycoon said guardedly.
"Will someone please tell me what this is all about?" Claire demanded.
"He's here to stop the wedding," Vassilikos said. His voice was calm as though he had it purposely under control and was marshalling his forces for a decisive battle.
"What?" Claire exclaimed. "What do you mean?"
"Listen to me for just a moment, Claire," McCandless began. "Listen first of all about yourself and what you are to your country."
"All right, I'm listening John," she said, but her voice had a cold edge to it.
"Obviously Claire you're a grown woman and can make your own decisions. And you're a widow, legally and morally free to marry whomever you choose. But you're also something else ... call it a living legend, a national ideal, the wife of a fallen hero ... and the people of your country have invested a lot of faith and hope in you," McCandless said.
"No more than in any other celebrity," Claire said coolly. "Like a movie star. And I'm very tired of being a celebrity, John. It's time I had some peace and contentment."
"Claire, some of us are just not made to have any peace in our lives. We have too many obligations to our country. like kings and queens, we have to put the good of our people above our personal happiness. like it or not, that's the way it is. When you married Roger Clayborn you were signing up for life. There can be no abdications."
"This is ridiculous, John, Roger is dead. What possible effect can I have on the United States now, except in the pages of some trashy fan magazines."
Pericles Vassilikos smoked his cigar and watched the two of them. He particularly watched Claire, as though trying to fix her beauty in his mind so that he would be able to remember her.
John McCandless got up and began to pace back and forth across the large room, his hands clasped behind his back.
"Claire, you know that even though I'm a Democrat I do a lot of confidential work for the President," he said.
"Yes, of course," she said. "You also happen to be one of his oldest friends. Weren't you at Harvard together?"
"Harvard Law. He took his undergraduate work at a college in Ohio. Some Baptist school," McCandless said. He paused, wondering how to word what he had to say. Then: "Yes, Claire. The President and I are good friends, even though we belong on opposite sides of the fence. But we have one thing in common-we both care a great deal what happens to the country. Nov think back to the election. The President won his party's nomination on the fourth ballot. It was a hell of a fight and he had to make a lot of compromises to win, especially in the north with the labor unions. That's why he took Dawson as his vice-presidential candidate. Dawson is hand-in-glove with every labor racketeer in America and is a dishonest and ruthless man. The President thought that he could put up with him for four years, bury him by giving him little or nothing to do and then dump him. Well you know it hasn't worked out that way. Dawson has grabbed his own headlines, especially over this communist thing and it would be practically impossible to keep him off the ticket next year."
"But what has all that to do with me and my private life?"
"I'm coming to that. Ordinarily, Dawson could be allowed to run again and win again and then forced either to keep his mouth shut or resign."
"Well why doesn't the President do that? He's certain to win again," Clair said.
"No he's not," McCandless said grimly. "The President is not even going to run for a second term."
"But why not?" Clair said, aghast.
"Because he's going to be dead."
"What are you talking about?"
Pericles Vassilikos was sitting up in his chair, alert now, no longer watching his fianc‚ but hanging on every word McCandless was saying.
"He's got terminal cancer of the large intestine. They went inside and took a look and just sewed him back up again without touching him. Half his insides are eaten up and the other half are going fast. He's got about three months. Which means that Dawson will be the candidate for the Republicans next year and will stand a damned good chance of winning. And if he's President it will take a hundred years to undo the bribery, corruption, and plain inefficiency he'll leave in his wake. Even the President would rather see a Democrat win."
"I agree, John, it's a terrible thing to have happen. But what can I do about it?" Claire said.
"Cancel your wedding."
"But why? How are the two things connected? Roger is dead. He can't run against Dawson," she said.
"But Paul can. And will. And with your help he'll beat the socks off of that tinhorn son-of-a-bitch," McCandless said.
"Paul? Paul Clayborn?"
"That's right. Roger's younger brother. He's been a Congressman for two terms now. I've talked to Robertson in New York and Paley in Chicago. They'll support him. Fremont in California is wavering and Senator Boswell thinks he can take the south. The only thing he's got to do to get the nomination is say yes ... which he's ready to do ... and stay completely clear of even the barest hint of scandal," McCandless said.
"But Paul and I have always been close, except for that last time when the family tried to talk me out of the marriage. Even then I could tell that he sympathized with me despite what his parents felt," Claire said.
"Exactly!" McCandless said forcefully. "You've always been close, expecially when Roger was alive. Now we already know what the Dawson people will do. They'll try to link Paul and you, and by deliberate implication, Pericles Vassilikos. They'll portray Paul as a jet-setter, a spoiled rich kid who's in the hands of special international interests. It would even cost him the nomination."
"Oh God, why did this have to happen?"
Claire Clayborn said, putting her hands to her face.
"It's already starting, Claire. A teenage girl just stripped her bikini off and went parading around the pool stark naked. There's a photographer out there taking pictures of the whole thing with a miniature camera. That sort of thing will be the losers, not you or your husband."
Pericles Vassilikos went over behind his wife and softly stroked her hair.
"Mr. McCandless, obviously the internal affairs of the United States are important to me, inasmuch as whatever happens inside the government of a superpower has a lasting effect on all of us in ... lesser and weaker countries," he said. "But my fianc‚ has sacrificed a husband to her country. The father of her son. I think she has done enough. Let someone else sacrifice. Go away and leave us alone."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Vassilikos, but I can't do that. I'm afraid I'll have to insist," McCandless said in an even voice. "It may interest you to know that nine separate indictments are being prepared by the United States Department of Justice against you and your various companies. I believe they have something to with certain payments that were made to an illegal organization of Sicilian origin which operates in major American port cities. It seems this organization settled some trouble for you and your American-based companies. At the time the F.B.I, had some of their people in undercover positions on the docks. That's how we got wind of the whole thing. But a President can kill indictments."
"You're horrible, John," Claire Clayborn said, looking up at him with red, tear-stained eyes.
"Sometimes I have to be, Claire," he said in a soft, slightly-weary voice. "I'm sorry."
"Could it be that you yourself are in love with my fianc‚?" Vassilikos said.
"It could very well be, Mr. Vassilikos," McCandless said. "In fact I am in love with her. So much so that I wouldn't touch this thing if I could see any other way out of it."
He avoided Claire's eyes.
"Could it also be that you intend to run with Paul Clayborn as the vice-presidential candidate?" Vassilikos went on.
"Sorry," McCandless said, shaking his head. "I'm getting completely out of this dirty game as soon as I've finished this one last bit of business ... this favor I'm doing for a dying friend who also happens to be a great man."
"As for me, Mr. McCandless, my answer is no. I love Mrs. Clayborn very much," Pericles Vassilikos said. "And I've been under indictment before."
McCandless had to admire the Greek tycoon's dignity.
"Claire?" he said, looking at her.
She waited for several moments, deciding, before answering. Finally, in an unwavering voice she said:
"I'm sorry, John. I'm going through with the wedding."
McCandless looked down at her, realizing how very much in love with her he really was and knowing that what he was about to do would cost him not only any chance he ever had of marrying her but her friendship as well. But a man was holding himself together with nothing but will and courage behind a big desk in Washington and expecting something of him. He walked to a small table where he had left a miniature tape cassette. He paused for just a moment before taking the tape cartridge from his pocket. Then he slipped it into the machine and turned it to "PLAY".
"Is that enough, my pet?"
The voice on the tape was that of Pericles Vassilikos. Claire Clayborn felt a cold chill around her heart.
"I ... I think so," the woman's voice said. "Maybe you'd better stop."
The voice was Claire's.
"Of course," the voice of Pericles said.
There were certain unmistakable noises then the voice of Pericles said:
"Is it all out?"
"Yes," said the voice of Claire. McCandless ran the tape forward, then slowed it back down to normal speed. "Pericles?" the woman's voice said. "Yes my sweet."
"Would you beat me."
"If you deserved it."
"Do you like the feeling of my cock in your ass-hole?"
It was the voice of Pericles Vassilikos again. "Oh yes ... yes ... yes..." the woman's voice whimpered.
Claire got to her feet.
"I think we've heard enough, John," she said wearily.
"You are not an honorable man, Mr. McCandless," Vassilikos said. "But then governments do not deal in matters of honor any more. However, on a purely practical basis, all you have on that tape is some vicious and easily denied gossip. We could live through it."
"I also have a tape involving you and your daughter, Tina," McCandless said. "I'd rather not play it, but be assured that it does exist. The military men who run your country are a rather strait-laced bunch. If it got into their hands certain ... concessions you have been enjoying might suddenly be withdrawn."
Vassilikos sat down in an armchair, looking suddenly very old.
"I had heard your C.I.A. was an efficient organization. I hadn't realized until today how efficient," Vassilikos said. He was sitting in a slumped over position and his voice sounded weary and beaten.
"What does it matter, Pericles," Claire Clayborn said. "If we got married they'd just hound us until they ruined you and made you hate me for causing it. When the security of America is at stake my people can be quite ruthless." She gave McCandless a withering look. "Even the ones you thought were decent."
"Claire, I ... " McCandless began, then didn't know how to continue.
Claire Clayborn crossed over to him and slapped him sharply across the face.
"I suppose you'll want me to fly back to Washington with you," she said, her voice cold and under control. "As proof."
"There's an Air Force jet waiting for us at the Athens airport. We can leave first thing in the morning."
"I'd rather go this afternoon. I'll be ready in two hours," she said. "There are three conditions."
"Name them," McCandless said. "I won't campaign for Paul. I won't go near the family," she said, then paused.
"That's only two, Claire," John McCandless said, knowing what the third would be.
"The third condition is that once we land I will neither see nor hear from you again."
"Agreed," McCandless said. "On all three points."
He clicked the cartridge out of the cassette and put it in his pocket, then turned to Vassilikos:
"For what it's worth those indictments will be quashed."
Vassilikos remained slumped in his chair, his head supported by one hand. He looked like an old man.
"It's not worth very much, Mr. McCandless," he said.
"I know what's happening is your fault," Tina said as he packed. "You're on a mission for your government ... to prevent my father from marrying Claire. And you've succeeded, haven't you? And you've also succeeded in making my father very unhappy."
"Tina," McCandless said. "If it could have been any other way ... any other way ... I wouldn't have done it. It's cost me quite a bit, too. More than I ever thought it would."
He threw his formal dinner clothes into the suitcase. He wouldn't have an occasion to wear them for quite a while. One thing he knew for sure-he was through with politics and with the Clayborn family forever.
Tina had shown up in his room a few minutes after the session with Claire and her father. He had no idea how she had found out so quickly. It had been decided not to tell the guests the wedding was off until after he and Claire had taken off. That way she would at least be spared the harassment of the European press.
"My father was crying," Tina said. "He loves her very much."
She was wearing a terry-cloth beach robe tied tightly around her waist. It barely extended past the cheeks of her bottom in back and he couldn't tell if she had anything on underneath or not. He found her almost unbearably fresh and young and beautiful.
"He also got a telegram from my brother Nico this morning. He's getting married in London. Today. Some woman psychiatrist from New York-maybe you know her-Helen Carlisle," Tina said.
"She's written a couple of books," he said, "but I don't know her personally. But isn't she a lot older than your brother?"
"That's one of the things worrying my father," she said. "I guess it's good that I'll be staying here with him."
"I thought you wanted to marry that fellow ... what's his name? Stavros something," McCandless said.
"He's going to America," she said. "He wrote me a note telling me he was too young to get married and that there was no future for him in Greece. I have a sneaking suspicion my father might have had something to do with it-his decision was awfully sudden. But I don't really care. I was tired of him anyway. I need an older man."
He turned to face her and suddenly she was in his arms, pressing her firm young breasts against his chest and kissing him passionately on the mouth, her eager young tongue darting between his lips.
"Oh darling, stay here. Don't leave me alone. I've got to stay with my father until he's feeling better, then we can go away together ... but please stay with me now. I don't care what happened between you and my father and Claire and I don't even care if you're in love with her. She won't marry you, ever, and I need you and I love you and I want you to fuck me, right now. Here...."
As she pushed up against him, pressing her pelvis against him, nuzzling him, he reached around and cupped her lush buttocks in his hands. She wasn't wearing anything under the terry cloth robe.
"Tina ... Tina..." he said, brushing his lips over her soft, fragrant hair.
He felt her hand fumbling with his trousers and then the fly was open and her fingers were inside his shorts, wrapped around his hardening penis as she thrust herself against him.
"Don't you see that I love you, John?" Tina said.
"Tina, sweetheart, you're only a child," he said.
"My mother was married when she was my age. Greek girls are women when they're twelve," she whispered.
By now she had his penis free of his pants and sticking out like a flagpole. Quickly shucking off the terry cloth robe she put her arms around his neck and wrapped her legs around his waist, fastening herself to him, and impaling her wet vagina on his erect shaft as he stood, holding her like a clinging little animal.
He made his way to the bed, taking short, quick steps, and sat down with her straddling his waist.
"You see, I won't let you go," she said, working her bottom up and down so that her vagina shifted on and off his throbbing rod like the finger of a glove.
He started to move with her and he could hear her soft, passionate moans in his ear as she softly bit the lobe with her sharp, white young teeth and darted the tip of her tongue inside.
Again he could feel and smell and taste her all at the same time and she occupied his senses and erotic feelings like no woman ever had before.
As she began to have her first orgasm he could feel her vaginal muscles close tightly around his erection, squeezing it as she moved up and down over it, smacking her bare, soft buttocks against his thighs. He reached around and began to explore her tight anus with his finger, guiltily remembering the contents of the C.I.A. tape and wondering if Greek women were as fascinated by anal stimulation as Greek men were.
His answer came as she began to thrash around frantically on his lap, pushing her bottom down on his finger and bucking like someone possessed.
"Ohhhhhhh, sweetheart," she whimpered, "I adore that. Keep it up."
Then he felt her start her first orgasm, pumping and flowing, the hot, steamy, sticky liquid coursing out from between her vulva lips like syrup and then she began her second, and her third, as he felt the hot wash begin in his pelvis and flood his loins and then come channeling through his penis as his whole body stiffened with frantic pleasure and he was thrusting so hard against her open thighs he thought sure he was hurting her but her moans were moans of pleasure as he finished inside her, shooting his rocketing, splashing, exploding stream upward into the farthest reaches of her fragrant, tender, pulsating vagina as their two bodies stiffened simultaneously and came together and froze while the last drops of warm juice were wrung from each of their bodies.
And then she collapsed against him, her head against his chest and her arms still around him as drops of perspiration flowed between her gorgeous breasts and down over her flat, supple stomach and into her soaking, shining, bushy mound of silky black pubic fur. She kissed him frantically and desperately, convinced that now he had finished with her he would leave her, and trying with all her girl-woman honesty and intensity to make him stay.
He held her softly and gently in his arms, his wilting rod still pressed between her supple thighs, folded into her vagina where she kept it and held it tenderly, like a pressed flower, held between the pages of a diary.
The phone by the bed rang and John reached over for it.
"Don't answer it!" Tina said frantically, su-perstitiously, as though the ringing of the instrument was some sort of ancient signal of doom.
"I have to, Tina," he said, picking it up and listening. "I'm nearly ready," he said into the mouthpiece. "Yes, I'll be right there."
He hung up and looked into her coal-black eyes, dark with the tragedy of centuries. She began to cry.
"I'll come back to see you, Tina. I swear I'll be back," he said lamely.
"No you won't," she said, weeping now, her head pressed against his chest and her arms clinging to his neck.
"Yes I will," he said, gently taking her arms away, knowing it was a lie.
The Helicopter that rose from the lift pad on the highest terrace was not the Black Hellenic Airways Sikorsky this time, but a U.S. Air Force Ranger, bearing the special C.I.A. twin stripes across the fuselage and the five-star emblem which reserved it for the private use of Generals of the Army and above.
Pericles Vassilikos stood beside his daughter and the wash of the huge propellers swept through his wavy, silver hair and her straight dark hair like a hurricane wind, giving them the wild, tormented look of characters in a Greek tragedy.
In the huge olive drab aircraft Claire and Timothy Clayborn sat side by side, across the aisle from John McCandless. The boy was fascinated by the array of instruments he could just barely see by stretching and straining against his seat belt and peering through the open cockpit door. Neither of the adults spoke. Instead they looked out of their respective windows at the rapidly receding Vassilikos mansion and the two tiny figures standing alone on the launching pad. On one of the lower terraces McCandless noticed that the swimming party was still going on but he didn't see any nude girls so he guessed the auction was finished.
From her window Claire saw Pericles Vassilikos wave. She waved back and hoped he could see her. In any event her vision became blurred and by the time she wiped away the tears the machine had swung around and the house could no longer be seen from her side.
The last thing John McCandless saw before the helicopter eased between two mountain peeks was Pericles Vassilikos putting his arm around the shoulder of his daughter.
"When are you going to tell the others, Papa?" Tina said, leaning her head against her father's shoulder as the aircraft disappeared.
"Oh there's lots of time," he said. "Let them enjoy themselves. Remember Tina, they're our guests."
"Yes, Papa," she said. Then: "Are you still worried about Nico?"
He shook his head, running one thick, gnarled hand through his silver hair, straightening it after the burst of wind from the rotors.
"We all have to find happiness where we can, Tina. Perhaps Nico has found his in London with his wife. I hope so anyway," he said. Then: "Why don't we go back to the house. I feel like resting a little bit and perhaps later on you and I can take a swim all by ourselves, the way we used to when you were little."
"I'd like that, Papa," she said.
They began to walk back through the garden, slowly, arm in arm.
"Papa?"
"Yes, Tina?"
"Do you think we can find our happiness here, just the two of us?"