Conspiracy Read Free Page B

sixteen-ounce can of beer. It was safe to heft the thing because the firing mechanisms of the grenades weren’t activated when they were in storage. “We got the best goddam leader since Ike was in the White House, but the goddam Wall Street—”
    He stopped talking abruptly when he saw a shadow cross the entrance way at the top of the metal steps.
    Then he thought he heard something crunch the dust and sand outside on the road.
    “I know what you mean,” said the corporal. “What we need is—”
    The sergeant motioned him to cut the chatter. Then he went for the steps, jerking his head to indicate the corporal should follow.
    His leather-soled boots made surprisingly little noise on the steel-grid treads. When he reached the top of the steps, he kept low behind the open steel door and waited for the corporal. “I’m going for the radio,” he said quietly.
    The corporal pulled off his mask. “How do we know it’s not the inspection team?” 
    “No signal.” The sergeant patted the beeper on his belt. “Now, give me cover.”

7
     
    Rachel Quinn fixed her gaze past the hot white studio lights, below the glowing red bulb on Camera Two, onto the dark lens opening. She gave no sign of nervousness. Her gray-green eyes, cool and appraising, never faltered. Her long black hair, heavily sprayed both before and during makeup, remained firmly in place, showing a healthy sheen on the studio monitor. Her thin lips, glossed with dark red, looked firm and decisive.
    But she knew that soon she would need more cocaine.
    Did it always have to be this way? thought Rachel. Why couldn’t that little Russian gymnast have just showed up on time?
    She stared at the UBS broadcast studio clock. At this particular moment she had planned to be four miles away, in the “old” section of Madrid. There, in the Ritz Hotel, the British Football Association had taken a suite for British players and their guests to watch the opening game. Rachel had been invited.
    At the suite would be Rachel’s lover and, lately, her connection for cocaine: Alec Conroy, the blond, “angel-haired” teenage British rock singer, now twenty-eight and in semi-retirement as a naturalized American citizen.
    At the suite would also be liquor, which was Alec’s weakness. And women, Alec’s other weakness.
    Rachel had met Alec at a similar gathering in Manhattan, an opening-night party given by a Broadway producer. She had come alone. Alec had brought a frizzy-haired little redhead, as wide-eyed as Little Orphan Annie and barely out of her teens. Rachel could still remember the girl’s hurt, betrayed stare from across the room at the end of the party when Alec, slurring his words only slightly, had whispered, “C’mon, luv,” against Rachel’s ear and directed her toward the door. 
    Rachel had gone along, partly following her reporter’s impulse to get a closer look into the private life of a celebrity, and partly out of curiosity. At thirty-seven, she had slept with her share of men, good lovers and bad, but she had heard rumors that Alec Conroy was really something not to be missed. She had no intention of developing anything like a serious relationship; she knew enough to realize that night was neither the first nor the last time for him to leave one woman for another. She was not about to put herself in the same position as that pathetic little redhead.
    When they first made love that night, she didn’t climax. 
    The second time, roughly a half hour later, she did. 
    When he drew her to him a third time and she felt his hardness, she giggled like a schoolgirl, “Don’t you ever get enough?” and he whispered, “Do you?” 
    He entered her at the same moment, and she experienced a kind of release. A hidden reserve of desire suddenly warmed her and then she was no longer thinking, only moving with him, flushed and shuddering with pleasure. 
    Four more times that night, he awakened her. Each time the hot surge of delight seemed to grow more