go; the brownstone was on Seventy-first Street between Park and Madison.
The senior aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would park the Cadillac in a prearranged space in front of the building and watch the general get out of the car and walk up the steps to the bolted entrance door. He would not say anything, but a feeling of sadness would sweep over the major as he waited.
Until a slender woman-dressed in a dark silk gown with a diamond choker at her throat-reopened the door in three and a half or four hours and flicked the front lights. It would be the major's signal to come up and collect his passenger.
"Hello, Tony!" The woman swept across the dimly Ut hallway and kissed the general's cheek. "How are you, darling?" she said, fingering her choker as she leaned toward him.
"Tense," replied Blackburn, slipping his arms out of his civilian overcoat, held by a uniformed maid. He looked at the girl; she was new and lovely.
The woman saw his glance. "She's not ready for you, darling," she commented, taking his arm. "Perhaps in a month or two. Come along now, we'll see what we can do about that tension.
We've got everything you need. The best hashish from Ankara, absinthe from the finest still in Marseilles, and precisely what the doctor ordered from our own special catalogue. Incidentally, how's your wife?" "Tense," said the general quietly. "She sends you her best." "Do give her my love, darling." They walked through an archway into a large room with soft, multi-colored lights that came from unseen sources; circles of blue and magenta and amber revolving slowly across the ceiling and the walls. The woman spoke again.
"There's a girl I want to have join you and your regular. Her background is simply tailor-made, darling. I couldn't believe it when I interviewed her; it's incredible. I just got her from Athens. You'll adore her."
Anthony Blackburn lay naked on the king-sized bed, tiny spotlights shooting down from the mirrored ceiling of blue glass. Aromatic layers of hashish smoke were suspended in the still air of the dark room; three glasses of clear absinthe stood on the bedside table. The general's body was covered with streaks and circles of waterpaint, fingermarks everywhere, phallic arrows pointing to his groin, his testicles and erect penis coated in red, his breasts black, matching the matted hair of his chest, the nipples blue and joined by a straight fingerline of flesh- white. He moaned and whipped his head back and forth in sexual oblivion as his companions did their work.
The two naked women alternately massaged and spread thick globules of paint on his writhing body. As one revolved her breasts about his moaning, moving face, the other cupped his genitalia, groaning sensually with each stroke, uttering false, muted screams of climax as the general approached orgasm-halted by the professional who knew her business.
The auburn-haired girl by his face kept whispering breathless, incomprehensible phrases in Greek. She removed herself briefly to reach for a glass on the table; she held Blackburn's head and poured the thick liquid onto his lips. She smiled at her companion, who winked back, Blackburn's red-coated organ in her hand.
Then the Greek girl slid off the bed, gesturing toward the bathroom door.
Her associate nodded, extending her left hand up toward the general's head, inserting her fingers into his lips to cover for her companion's brief indisposition. The auburn-haired woman walked across the black carpet and went into the bathroom. The room resounded with the groans of the general's writhing euphoria.
Thirty seconds later, the Greek girl emerged, but she was no longer naked. She was dressed now in a dark tweed coat with a hood that covered her hair. She stood momentarily in the shadows, then stepped to the nearest window and gently pulled back the heavy drapes.
The sound of shattering glass filled the room as a rush of wind billowed the curtains. The figure of a broad-shouldered, stocky man loomed in the window; be had kicked in the panes, and now leaped through the frame, his head encased in a ski-mask, a gun in his hand.
The girl on the bed swung around and screamed in terror as the killer leveled his weapon and pulled the trigger. The explosion was muted by a silencer; the girl slumped over the obscenely painted body of Anthony Blackburn. The man approached the bed; the general raised his head, trying to focus through the mists of narcotics, his eyes floating, guttural