"Loyal Frenchmen who have suddenly been struck blind and deaf."
"You must leave."
The hump unfolded into a shape of a nude man who stood up on the bed. He held out his hands. "Come to me, ma nymphe."
"No ... not here." The throaty tone in her voice gave away an awakening passion. "We have nothing to fear."
"Charles lives!" she suddenly cried out. "Don't you understand? Charles still lives!"
"I know," he said without emotion.
The bedsprings creaked as he stepped to the floor and padded across the carpet. He possessed a formidable body; the huge, swollen muscles, symmetrically formed layer by layer over years of disciplined exercise, rippled and strained beneath his skin. He reached up, ran a hand through his hair and removed it. The skull was shaven, as was every inch of his body. The legs, chest, and pubic area glistened bare and smooth. He took her head between iron hands and pressed her face against the pectoral muscles of his chest. She inhaled the fragrant musky scent from the light coating of body oil he always applied before they made love.
"Do not think of Charles," he commanded. "He no longer exists for you."
She could feel the bestial power oozing from his pores. Her head was swimming as a burning desire for this hairless animal consumed her. The heat between her legs flared and she went limp in his arms.
The sun seeped through the half-open drapes and crept over the two figures entwined on the bed. Danielle lay with her breasts enfolding the nude head, her black hair fanned on the pillow. She kissed the smooth pate several times and then released it.
"You must go now," she said.
He stretched an arm across her stomach and turned the bedside clock to the light. "Eight o'clock. Still too early. I'll leave around ten." Her eyes took on an apprehensive intensity. "Reporters are swarming everywhere. You should have left hours ago when it was dark."
He yawned and sat up. "Ten in the morning is a very respectable hour for an old family friend to be seen at the official residence. No one will notice my late departure. I'll be lost in the crowd of solicitous members of Parliament who are beating a path here this minute to offer their services to the Prime Minister's wife in her moment of anguish."
"You're a capricious bastard," she said, pulling the twisted bedclothes around her shoulders. "Warm and loving one moment, cold and calculating the next."
"How quickly women change their moods the morning after. I wonder if you would be half so shrewish if Charles had died in the crash?"
"The job was botched," she snapped angrily.
"Yes, the job was botched." He shrugged.
Her face took on a cold determined look. "Only when Charles lies in the grave will Quebec become an independent socialist nation."
"You want your husband dead for a cause?" he asked skeptically. "Has your love turned to such hatred that he has become nothing to you but a symbol to be eliminated?"
"We never knew love." She took a cigarette from a box on the nightstand and lit it. "From the beginning, Charles' only interest in me was a need for a political asset. My family's social standing provided him with entrde to society. I've supplied him with some sterling polish and style. But I've never been anything to Charles except a tool to enhance his public image."
"Why did you marry him?"
She drew on the cigarette. "He said he was going to be Prime Minister someday, and I believed him."
"And then?"
"Too late, I discovered Charles was incapable of affection. I once sought a passionate response. Now I cringe every time he touches me."
"I watched the news conference at the hospital on television. The doctor who was interviewed told how your anxiety and concern for Charles touched the hearts of the medical staff."
"Pure theatrics." She laughed. "I'm pretty good at it. But then I've had ten years of rehearsal."
"Did Charles have anything interesting to say during your visit?"
"Nothing that made any sense. They had just wheeled him out of the surgical recovery room. His mind was still numb from the anesthetic. He spoke mostly gibberish, raked up the past, a memory of an auto accident that killed his mother."
Danielle's lover slid out of bed and stepped into the bathroom. "At least he didn't babble away defense secrets."
She inhaled on the cigarette and let the smoke trickle from her nostrils. "Maybe he did."
"Go on," he said from the bathroom. "I can hear you."
"Charles instructed me to tell you to increase security at James Bay."
"Sheer nonsense." He laughed. "They have twice the amount of guards required to cover every square inch as it is."
"Not the whole project. Only the control booth."
He came to the doorway, wiping his bald head with a towel. "What control booth?"
"Above the generator chamber, I think he said."
He looked puzzled. "Did he elaborate?"
"Then Charles mumbled something about 'great peril for Canada if the wrong people discover'. "
"Yes, discover what?"
She made a helpless gesture. "He broke off because of the pain."
"That was all?"
"No, he wanted you to consult with somebody called Max Roubaix."
"Max Roubaix?" he repeated, his expression skeptical. "Are you certain that was the name he used?"
She stared at the ceiling, thinking back, then she nodded. "Yes, I'm positive."
"How odd."
Without further elaboration he reentered the bathroom, stood in front of a large full-length mirror and struck a pose known in muscle control jargon as a vacuum. Exhaling and sucking in his rib section, he expanded his rib cage, straining until the network of blood vessels seemed to erupt beneath the skin's surface. Next he did a side chest shot, left hand on right wrist, arm against upper torso.
Henri Villon studied his reflection with critical concern. His physique was as ideal as physically possible. Then he stared at the chiseled features of the face, the Roman-style nose, the indifferent gray eyes. When he dropped all expression the features became hard, with a satanic twist to the mouth. It was as though a savage was lurking beneath the sculptured marble of a statue.
The wife and daughter of Henri Villon, his Liberal party colleagues and half the population of Canada would never in their wildest fantasies have believed he was leading a double life. A respected member of Parliament and minister of internal affairs in the open, he walked the shadows as the veiled head of the Free Quebec Society, the radical movement dedicated to the full independence of French Quebec.
Danielle came up behind him, a sheet wrapped around her, toga-fashion, and traced his biceps with her fingers. "Do you know him?"
He relaxed and took a deep breath, slowly exhaling. "Roubaix?"