To Free a Spy Read online

  He sent that promise along with complimentary Trophy Club membership to every man and woman in the U.S. House and Senate, to all the president’s cabinet members and to U.S. ambassadors to fifty countries. To the governor of every state, field-grade officers in the military, and to appointed top officials in all three branches of government. To well-known high-stakes gamblers, and even the heads of all the other Boardwalk casinos. To his friends in the business world and hundreds in the entertainment field. The promotion alone cost five million dollars up front but now the Trophy Club’s game rooms and other reserved areas bustled with the people Gallardi wanted in them. Most of the casinos on the Boardwalk were owned by large corporations with unlimited budgets and were twice the size of the Golden Touch, but Gallardi didn’t care about size. He’d built the Golden Touch for close to a billion dollars and by now had paid off his loans and owned it outright, and the Trophy Club’s success had earned him the respect—and envy—of the other casino owners.

  * * *

  On the twelfth floor, the man Karly Amarson called Jag stood at his window overlooking the Atlantic in what could pass for reverence for the power of the sea as wave after wave slammed against the shore. The cold December rain had stopped for now and the few who ventured out onto the Boardwalk, perhaps to seek better fortune at another casino, were shapeless figures, changing from dim to dimmer and back to dim in the sea mist as they passed from one lamppost to the next. Hostile ocean waves like the ones below had always held a strange appeal for Jag. Despite their might, or maybe because of it, he felt in control. He could taunt them with his closeness, yet with all their fury they could do him no harm.

  He nodded unnoticeably at the thought of seeing Karly tonight, and wondered, as he’d done since meeting her three years earlier, what was so different about her. Women before her had been plentiful but his interest in them was usually measured in hours. Karly was mysterious. Smart. Not too available. Never to be taken for granted. In a dream one night, he could never get a clear look at her because of a whorl of smoke between them. He could see her tempting smile, the suggestion of her perfect body through a sheer covering, and hear her call out to him, but when he tried to approach her she turned her face to him and flashed her long eyelashes tauntingly as she disappeared into the mist.

  Karly had known he’d be in town tonight but told him on the phone this morning she was busy. She would try to work it out. He tolerated her bullshit games, but the other side of the coin was that she demanded nothing of him. No visits to the boutiques or restaurants downstairs and no guilt-trip lectures even if he didn’t call or show up for weeks. Just the wad of hundreds he put into her hand when he would leave her, which he could afford. And liked. It was a small price for the freedom to appear and to leave when he wanted to, to not be expected to account for his whereabouts. For anything. A mutually-rewarding relationship that existed on weekends, when he’d leave the government and his wife and head for Atlantic City. There he could dismiss his personal armor whose week-long job it had been to defend against all the official intrusions on his limited time and allow his hormones that had been pushed aside all week to take their inalienable role. That’s when he would become Jag, as Karly had branded him the first time they met. But that tag was between them and he intended for it to stay that way.

  He downed his second Glenfiddich 18 and checked to be sure he had all the parts to his tux. He’d bought a red bow tie with gold stripes to wear this time. There needed to be some distinction between the servers and the served. As he shaved, he thought about the party. He still had time to see Karly before it started if she called, but if not he’d see her afterwards and spend the night in her suite upstairs, as usual when he was in Atlantic City.

  The phone rang as he was about to hit the shower. He couldn’t deny his thin smile as she breathed how she had managed to get free for the evening. “All for you, Jag.” Did she think he fell for her obvious manipulations, he wondered, but it didn’t matter. The party downstairs did matter. He was a politician and seeing and being seen by the right people was life blood. But as he showered, his thoughts were on Karly—her scent, her smoothness, the silky hair, her voice rasping her where-the-hell’ve-you-been- I’ve-needed-you fodder, her sculpted calves and thighs that would wrap him in a prison of soft yarn…and those green eyes. He knew the thinness of her adoration and figured she knew that he knew. Just part of the charade they would continue this weekend.

  He checked the time again. Less than two hours until he was downstairs among the Who’s Who of Washington, and here he was thinking of Karly. He had sworn off of her once but didn’t remember why just now. It sure wasn’t because of the marriage vows he’d taken. He doubted now if he loved his wife even years ago when maybe he thought he had. Now their marriage, beyond hostile, worn-out, wasted away like property values in a D.C. ghetto.

  But there was no way out of the marital union. His father-in-law was a retired United States Senator from Jag’s own state who liked Jag from the beginning and catapulted him into politics. Now, more than twenty years later, the old man, a national icon, still wielded enormous power: An advisor to presidents and a favorite of television news types who went to him and others like Henry Kissinger for a weighty utterance on the international crisis du jour. If Jag feared any man, it was his father-in-law. He could doom his son-in-law’s political future, including his fertile hopes for the White House that lived in the back of Jag’s mind, with no more effort than required to pick up the phone. And it looked like the old Washington warrior was going to live forever.

  But Jag didn’t worry much about his wife stirring things up for him. She had her own reasons for hanging onto their marriage. She never seemed to mind being seen with him at high-profile Washington balls or finding her picture on the society pages. He wondered for a moment whether she was involved with someone, but rolled his eyes at the thought: That would involve sex.

  He’d fantasized about a future without his wife but knew Karly Amarson would have no place in it. There’d be no need for the secrecy she offered. And even if she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, the most uninhibited lover, she was still who she was, simply a high-priced whore. But she was convenient now. He could fly her to meet him in New York for plays and museums and shopping at Saks and Tiffany’s and dinner at Fiorio’s on West Fifty-Second where he wouldn’t be recognized and the music was seductive and they could dance and then go to their hotel suite and make love and sleep it all off, and he’d go back to Washington and she’d return to the Golden Touch Casino & Hotel and a life he never allowed himself to think about.

  But today he was in Atlantic City and he’d see Karly for the first time in two weeks, or was it three, and distancing himself from her was not in his immediate plans. She was an elevator ride away, his ambivalence was banished, and for the weekend Karly Amarson was everything he wanted.

  * * *

  Karly finished dressing, poured herself another drink and leaned back in a leather chair in the living room, taking a minute to survey her place. It hadn’t been that hard to swing, actually. She had proposed the deal to a reluctant Frank Gallardi one morning after he’d had a blockbuster month in the casino. “Frank, I can bring my clients to the Golden Touch or I can take ’em somewhere else. They don’t give a damn where my bed is. Before and after they’re through with me they’re gonna play the tables downstairs or in the Trophy Club. Give you their money. You know it’s true, and all you have to do is give me a furnished suite. One I can live in. Like an apartment. No checking in and out at the front desk. And I want maids when I call them. No knocking on the door, ‘…Sorry, just checking your room, Ma’am….’ That’s a fatal interruption if my customer’s about ready to buy me a new ring—one, I might add, I can help him pick out in one of your nifty jewelry shops downstairs.”

  Frank had suppressed a smile when she playfully ended her proposal with a modified curtsey that day and lifted her skirt to reveal much of her legs. He walked to the window of his office
and looked out at the ocean for a couple of minutes before returning to her.

  “Okay, I’ll do it, Karly, but it’s strictly business. I’m not into sport sex and I run a business here. I ever get the idea it’s not paying off for me in dollars, that’ll end it. There won’t be any discussion. Understood?” Then he walked over to where she was standing and enveloped her with his arms. Secretly, Frank loved her like the daughter he never had.

  That was three years ago, and Frank put everything into her suite she had asked for. He threw in an allowance for room-service meals and gave her access to old Doc Ricardo, the house physician who’d been with Frank since Day One. Gallardi didn’t go out of his way to promote sex, but he wasn’t naïve either. It was going to happen with or without Karly Amarson, with or without the Golden Touch, and with or without Frank Gallardi.

  Karly and Doc Ricardo had become close friends. He never judged her and he frequently examined her in his small office on the third floor to be sure she was still healthy. He never hit on her but they would often have dinner together at a good restaurant at one of the other casinos. They were possibly Frank Gallardi’s most loyal business associates within the hotel and casino. Karly knew that Doc, who had no specific duties other than an occasional guest or patron emergency, kept his eyes and ears alert for anything business or personal that might be harmful to Frank or the casino or hotel. Like Karly, he lived in the hotel and she felt like she could call on him for anything at any time.

  She had selected the furniture and artwork for her suite, the kitchen appliances, designer cookware (as if I’m going to cook!) and the finishes for the walls and floors. She insisted on the precise shades of rust and cream in the rugs to complement the Italian marble and now she thought how well they looked together.

  Karly walked over to the bookcases that framed the fireplace, where a blown-glass vase in a swirl of sunrise reds pointed to the sky and occupied its own shelf. Leather-bound books lined other shelves and Karly pulled down The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James. The book fell open, allowing a bookmark to flutter to the floor. She sat on the sofa and read a couple of passages to remind herself what was happening when she last put it down. There’ll be plenty of time for reading after tonight. She took in her place once again and thought how different her life was now compared to the two years she spent in New Orleans a decade ago. Yet another phase would begin tonight!

  As she was finishing her drink Jag’s signature rat-a-tat-tat on her apartment door broke the silence. She made a final mirror check. Everything she had on, he’d given her. Like the diamond necklace and earrings, which she figured were fake. They might be CZs but she didn’t mind: The rocks were big and no one could tell cubic zirconium from diamonds anyway. But the diamond ring was real for sure. She was with Jag at Tiffany’s in Manhattan when he bought it for her. She had asked for their initials to be engraved inside the ring’s gold band and he had agreed to “KA & JAG”. She touched the rim of the blue bottle of perfume he’d bought for her in New York. It was called “Angel” and he’d said it was named just for her.

  That New York evening at dinner he had told her the gifts were for never expecting anything of him. That was when she knew Jag had big bucks and would shell them out. Who besides a fool would spend that much money on a hooker unless he had a ton of it? Jag sure wasn’t some backwater on his first trip to the city who’d get caught up in the glamour atmosphere of beautiful girls and fast-flowing whiskey and max out his American Express card. What she didn’t like so much was having his security detail, usually just one man, follow them around when they went out of Atlantic City. He was always out of sight, but she felt his presence nonetheless. Jag told her the shadow was a necessary fixture in his life in government. She wondered if that was a fact. She was adjusting an earring when he knocked again. “Just a minute,” she sang, downing a second Valium for insurance, which Doc Ricardo supplied to her.

  She scanned the living room and dimmed the lighting another notch. As she stood by the door, she mentally ran through her lines that she would use later in the evening and nodded to herself. Game time. She cracked the door and gave Jag a mischievous look until he pushed it open wide and took her into his arms. At that very, most inopportune, moment, Maria Sanchez walked by in the hallway. The hotel’s head of housekeeping flashed Karly an embarrassed grin and picked up her pace. Karly had gone out of her way to make friends with Maria soon after occupying the apartment. Her housekeeping staff could be an ally or they could be a nuisance, and Karly often sent small gifts and flowers to Maria. They had become friends and Karly had called Maria for lunch many times over the years to unload her problems on her. Even The Bad need a shoulder to cry on sometimes, Karly told herself. But there was something in it for Maria, too, Karly knew: Straight-laced Maria was able to glimpse a world that was forbidden to her.

  “Don’t you look great!” Karly chirped after Maria passed, clinging to Jag’s neck. “Sorry I kept you waiting, Big Guy.”

  * * *

  Jag had drawn away. “Who was that?” he said, peering down the hallway.

  “Nobody important,” she whispered, pulling him into the room.

  “Who was it?” he said, wanting to know who’d seen him there.

  “Jaaag, come on. It was only Maria, the executive housekeeper.”

  “The maid in the blazer! Always nosing around.”

  He was over it now. He smiled as he pulled Karly close and craned around her shoulder to get a better look at the back of her. The bottom of the cocktail dress revealed her thighs, and her tiptoeing made her calves so very appealing. She was wearing nothing under the dress, and he felt the familiar excitement as he caressed her neck.

  “How much time do you have?” she asked.

  “Hour or so. It’s downstairs at seven, then back here little later.” He followed her to the sofa near the window overlooking the ocean. “I could use a drink.”

  “Great, and I’ve got your stuff, of course,” she said, prancing over to the stereo. She was more playful than usual.

  She put on a CD and said she’d do the drinks. “You can take the cheese into the bedroom. I mean, if the bedroom’s okay with you,” she said teasingly.

  Jag liked the idea of having a drink or two, lying in bed with her, lights low, touching her skin, and it was okay with him if they put off lovemaking until later. For one thing, time was not unlimited now, and he’d have something to anticipate during the roast downstairs. After it was over, they’d have all night. All weekend.

  Karly set their drinks on the bar and disappeared into the bathroom. Jag put them with the cheese on the bedside lamp table, sliced off a sliver, popped it into his mouth and drowned it with Scotch. Pepper cheese, it was. His favorite. He lowered the lamp, undressed and was propped up in the bed when Karly came out of the bathroom. Joe Cocker’s You Are So Beautiful wafted through the dim light. Jag recognized the black silk wraparound he’d picked out the last time he saw Karly. She let it drop to the floor and stood before him for a moment, the fair skin of perfect breasts blushing softly in the muted light. He wondered whether there could possibly be another woman as desirable as Karly. So much for putting sex off until later.

  “Thought this moment would never come,” she whispered as she slid between the silk sheets. She ran her fingers through the hair on his chest and slowly let them work their way down to his sex. “Such a man, Jag, you’re such a man. I love looking at you.” She cooed it in a soft way he could almost believe. He always listened for sincerity on the many times Karly had told him he was the best of all of her lovers, how great his body was, how good he looked. No matter the level of a man’s self-confidence, he’d told himself, he doesn’t mind hearing those things. After they made love they lay quietly in each other’s arms for a few minutes before he handed her drink to her and sliced off more cheese. They chatted about tonight’s party and their plans for later. Life didn’t get any better than this. Karly drained her glass and lay silently for maybe a minute.

  He didn
’t give it much thought at first, but sensed she’d withdrawn a bit. He leaned back against his pillow and let another slug of the Scotch work. “You okay?”

  After a slight pause, “Pretty well.” Her courage was waning.

  Code words, he thought. “So what’s wrong?” He looked at Karly, thinking how quickly the moment had changed. Her face was pale.

  The Valium and alcohol had failed her and Karly knew she had to reveal her plan before she was ready. She hesitated for several seconds. “Okay, since you asked.” She said it with the release of a deep breath, and swallowed hard. “Pretty soon, Jag…, I, uh, I will be too old for this work. I need you to help me with my, my retirement.” Her voice was a little hoarse now.

  He sat up and leaned on his elbow. “Why in hell are you bringing this up now, Karly?” He was amused and annoyed at the same time.

  She started to speak but Jag went on: “Anyway, you need to talk to a financial man about that kind of question, not me.” He settled back to the bed.

  “No. No. Wait.” She put a finger to his lips. “Twenty-nine is ancient in this business, Jag. I need…” She paused when her voice broke.

  “Say it.”

  “Okay, look, Honey, I need a couple million dollars.” She delivered it in a little-girl voice.

  He stared at her, not understanding.

  “Now, Jag,” she sang. “I know all about this. If I invest it now I can have five, six maybe even eight million when I’m old.”