Oath of Office

Lucile Fournier used her left hand to distribute the oil, keeping her right hand dry. Clasping with her thighs, she leaned forward, digging into the fleshy back with her forearms and elbows now, paying particular attention to the base of the disgustingly flabby neck — searching for just the right spot. Gaspard’s hair was well groomed but longish, the dark curls reaching below his collar, had he been wearing a shirt. Good. That would help to hide what she had in mind.

He moaned under her rough ministrations, his alligatored skin shining bronze in the sun.

Plouc, Fournier thought. Such a slob. Gaspard might have money, but he would never have class. But she laughed as though she were oh-so-lucky to be riding on this fat pig. She shot a quick backward glance under the crook of her arm, checking the location of the three bodyguards. As she suspected, they were behind her, slumping on the gunwales of a couple of fishing skiffs that were pulled up on the sand, more than twenty meters away. The black bottoms of her swimsuit had a small rip over her left cheek, and she was certain that all three men, including the more astute Farrin, were completely mesmerized by the flexing muscles of her toned derriere as the rip opened and closed and opened again in concert with her movements.

“Have you been in Portugal long?” she asked.

Gaspard grunted in time to her kneading. “Now… you start… the small talk…”

She ignored the gibe. “Do you know sebastianismo?”

“I confess that I do not,” he said.

“King Sebastião,” she said. “He was also a rich man. Like you, he too had an important meeting, his against the Moors. Unfortunately, he was forever lost in the deserts of North Africa. The word sebastianismo comes from that. A failed venture — hope for something that can never be.”

“Stop,” Gaspard said, sounding pained. “Your history lesson depresses me.”

“As you wish,” she said. “But I do like the word. Sebastianismo…”

She leaned forward now, kneading with her left arm, pressing her breast against Gaspard’s back. Her right hand slipped into the paperback book at her knee and retrieved the MSP derringer hidden in the hollowed pages. A whirring noise above her head, like a dragonfly — or a passing bullet — almost caused her to fumble with the pistol. She regained her composure and brought the gun up quickly before the bodyguards could see it, covering it with a cupped palm. Pistol secure, she turned, looking for the source of the noise, half expecting to see Farrin standing there, ready to blow her head off. Merde! She released a pent-up breath. Nothing but a blinding sun. Maybe it really was a dragonfly. She willed her body to relax and become more fluid, and then returned to the task ahead.

The Soviet-era Malogabaritnyj Spetsialnyj Pistolet fit her hand perfectly — better, in fact, than the Beretta she customarily carried. The Small Special Pistol had first seen action with KGB units in the early 1970s. Its specialized ammunition utilized a captive piston inside the brass casing that drove a 7.62x37 projectile, similar to that of an AK-47, out a short barrel at a speed just shy of five hundred feet per second. The gases from the detonated propellant — and nearly all the resulting noise — remained trapped inside the cartridge, rendering the MSP very close to “Hollywood quiet.” The ballistics were quite limp, something around half of the diminutive .32 auto. But the Russians had proven many times over the last four decades that a Spitzer bullet delivered at point-blank range more than made up for the round’s middling performance.

Lucile leaned forward slightly, digging in with her elbow to draw a grunt of pleasure from Gaspard. She nodded to herself. That would be plenty loud enough to cover the noise.

He groaned. “Masterful. Are you certain you are not French?” He clenched his buttocks beneath her groin, making her want to vomit. “I am usually the one to do the riding,” he mumbled. “If you know my meaning.”

Pistol hidden between her breasts now, Lucile clutched with her thighs to retain her balance and leaned farther forward, lips touching Gaspard’s ear. The smell of his sweat was nauseating.

“…courir sur le haricot,” she said. Literally “run on the bean,” the phrase more figuratively meant he had gotten on her last nerve.

Gaspard froze, suddenly realizing Lucile was not who she’d said she was.

“Tu es française,” he whispered, face still buried in his towel. You are French!

Instead of answering, Lucile dug deep into the muscles of his back with her left elbow. With her right hand, she pressed the MSP against the depression at the base of his neck, just below his skull, aiming downward. She pulled the trigger in perfect time with the resulting grunt brought on by her elbow.

Gaspard sagged in the sand, all the air leaving his lungs with a heavy, gurgling groan, his brain stem clipped at the base. Fini.