The Betrayers mh-10

by Donald Hamilton

  As she passed me, the strange girl gave me an impersonal little smile from under the board: just a friendly early riser greeting a kindred spirit. She stopped beyond me to launch her gaudy plank, and straightened up to give a hitch to the bottom of her bikini, or perhaps just to reassure herself that she hadn't misplaced the essential scrap of cloth somewhere. She posed there briefly, breathing the fresh morning air, slowly running her fingers through her uncovered hair, pushing it back from her face.

  On the beach, you can tell a lot about a girl by the way she treats her hair. If she comes down to the shore all ratted and lacquered and paddles around in shallow water like a stiff-necked turtle, obviously thinking of nothing but keeping the precious stuff dry, you might as well forget about her. You aren't man enough to get her mind off her coiffure. Nobody is.

  If she takes the bathing-cap route and really swims, there's hope for her, but she's either incurably optimistic or not very bright, since the cap hasn't been in-vented yet that'll keep all water out. But if she just dives in and lets her hairdo wash where it will, you'd better grab her quick before some smart guy beats you to her. She may look a little stringy come evening, but she'll probably be worth it. At least she knows there are more important things in the world than hair.

  I watched the blonde girl throw herself onto the surfboard and paddle out to sea with strong simultaneous strokes of her brown arms. The contrast between soft round girl and hard flat board was very intriguing. When a wave splashed over her, it didn't bother her a bit. Obviously she'd come to the water to get wet, hair and all. Obviously also, she was thinking of nothing but getting out to where the big ones were breaking. The fact that a man was watching her couldn't have concerned her less. Obviously.

  I sighed and turned away to get my towel and sandals. Under other circumstances, having had such a nice show put on for me, I might have done something impulsive like trying to scare up a beach boy to rent me a surfboard. Not that I knew how to work one, but that wouldn't matter. My early-morning seasprite would be glad of the excuse to teach me, I was fairly sure.

  Please understand, I don't normally figure every blonde on the beach is posing just for me, even when she does the fingers-through-the-hair bit and there's nobody around but the two of us. Girls do scratch their heads upon occasion, just like everybody else, and it doesn't necessarily mean a thing, even when it's accompanied by the deep-breathing, isn't-it-a-glorious-morning act.

  However, this wasn't a normal situation. I'd been right in thinking there was something familiar about the girl. She wasn't Claire, but I'd seen her picture recently on the screen in the recognition room in the basement of a certain house in Washington, D.C. It had taken me a little while to locate the memory, but I had it now; code name Jill, station Pacific, one of our more promising young recruits in this operational area-that is to say, one of the Monk's more promising young recruits.

  It could be just coincidence that she'd picked this morning and this hotel for her pre-breakfast date with the breakers, but I didn't believe it for a moment. Nor did I think I'd have to go to a lot of trouble to make her acquaintance. In fact, I had a hunch I couldn't lose her if I tried.

  Chapter Four

  NAGUKI HAD MADE the morning papers. Breakfasting on the terrace outside the hotel's dining room, I read about the accident, which had occurred on the Pall, wherever that might be. Apparently I wasn't the only agent who knew how to put the traffic statistics to good use.

  There was a picture of the blanket-covered body be-. side the twisted wreckage of what had been a light Ford sedan a year or two old. It could have been the second car that had tailed me from the airport yesterday. Maybe, feeling Monk closing in on him, Naguki had been trying to make contact with me. If so, he hadn't helped my situation any more than I'd helped his.

  In spite of what I knew of the Monk, I was a little surprised, not at the murder-that wasn't unexpected- but at the way he'd boldly signed his name to it by his call to me. Of course, he had been trying to get me to betray myself, but still it indicated that he felt safe and powerful out here, almost invulnerable. Well, he'd always had delusions of grandeur.

  "Miss, what's the Pall?" I asked the waitress.

  "Pall is cliff or precipice, sir," she said. "Up there in the mountains. On the other side is very steep, the Pali. Also, the highway, very steep, the Pali Drive. Goes to windward side of island. More coffee, please?"

  "Thanks," I said, wondering if she were Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiian, or a little of each. It was hard to tell. Anyway, she was a pretty, friendly girl with a nice smile, and she undoubtedly considered herself American, just as American as a guy who'd called himself Bernard Naguki, or for that matter, a character named Matthew Helm.

  Afterward, I checked for mail at the desk and found a note from the management inviting me to a hotel-sponsored cocktail party that evening. Reading this, I laid a small bet with myself that I knew where our girl Jill would make her next move. It would save her from having to pull some corny meet-cute stunt like dropping a glove or hanky or surfboard at my feet. You can get acquainted with anybody at a cocktail party and make it look quite natural.

  In any event, the initiative was obviously in the hands of the opposition for the time being. There was nothing for me to do but play tourist, so I looked up the phone number of a car-rental place. They sent a small bus to transport me to their office where, for very little money, I was provided with a crippled French Simca that could barely fight its way out into the street. I let its dying struggles carry it back onto the lot and traded it for a British Sprite at twice the rental-but at least the two-seater gave a healthy roar when I tickled it with my foot.

  Also it provided me with an excuse to do some moderately progressive driving: you don't rent a sports car to stand still in traffic. Our boy Francis, alias Bill Menander, was back on the job, and I took sadistic pleasure in running him around Honolulu for most of the day, at speeds that had his little Datsun crying for help.

  We saw the aquarium where a porpoise jumped through a hoop and got everybody wet and the botanical gardens where orchids grew like weeds. We spent a good deal of time in various historical museums, making a study of Hawaiian royalty. The first five kings were easy, they were all named Kamehameha. After that they started showing individuality, and I lost track of them, but I was careful not to let Francis lose track of me. He escorted me back to the hotel in time for me to change for cocktails: the invitation had specified jacket and tie.

  Fully dressed according to specifications, I wandered into the party, given on a terrace covered by a trellis of giant vines in lieu of a roof or awning. I was passed from hand to hand through the receiving line and introduced to some people from New York who were no more interested in me than I was in them, but I saw Jill across the room with orchids in the long blonde hair that hung loose down her back, very striking and, in spite of her morning's swim, not stringy at all.

  I was aware when she broke away from her companions, and I turned my back so she could have the satisfaction of sneaking up on me from behind. The stout woman in front of me, in a gaudy new Hawaiian garment quite similar to that worn by the pineapple-juice lady at the airport, was telling me all about crossing the Pacific on the liner Lurline. It sounded great if you liked organized fun on shipboard.

  Then there were footsteps behind me and the voice of a woman on the hotel staff saying to somebody, "I'm sure you'll have a lot in common. Mr. Helm is from Washington, too."

  I turned with my face ready to recognize Jill and my voice ready to make some reference to our early-morning encounter-why make it hard for the girl?-but it wasn't Jill. Jill was standing some distance away with a frustrated look on her pretty face. In front of me, smiling in a bored and world-weary way, stood a very handsome dark-haired woman wearing dark glasses that made her look like a movie star incognito. I'd never seen her before, even in photographs.

  I was sure of this. She wasn't anybody you'd forget if you'd seen her once. The New Yorkers were being led away t
o meet some other fascinating people, leaving me alone with her. I didn't figure I'd lost anything by the trade, and Jill could wait.

  I flagged down a boy with a pitcher of the rum punch that was going around, but, as I should have guessed from her aloof-not to say snooty-appearance, my new companion couldn't drink from the common pot. She bad to have Scotch, and a particular brand of Scotch at that. We retired to the bar that had been set up in a corner of the terrace for the hard-to-please.

  When her glass had been properly replenished, she made a small gesture of raising it to me, drank, and nodded approvingly. We stood there for a while in silence: two strangers forced into each other's company with nothing much to say. The lady's attitude made it clear that she didn't really give a damn whether she talked with me or not. As for me, after years of getting acquainted with people for devious purposes, I find it difficult to do the social bit for its own sake.

  At last I said, "I'm sorry, but I didn't catch your name."

  "McLain," she said. "Isobel McLain."

  I glanced at her left hand. "Mrs. Isobel McLain?"

  She smiled briefly. "Yes. Mrs. Kenneth McLain, to be exact."

  "My name's Helm, Matthew Helm," I said.

  "Yes," she said.

  "Have you been in the Islands long, Mrs. McLain?"

  Well, you can requisition a few yards of that dialogue from stock and cut it to fit. She hadn't been in the Islands long. In fact, she'd only arrived a couple of days ago. She smiled again and gestured toward her smart, sleeveless black cocktail dress.

  "Not long enough to go native, Mr. Helm, as you can see. I'm still breaking the rules by wearing real clothes. They'll probably throw me out of the hotel if I don't buy a muu-muu pretty soon, but these primitive costumes leave me cold."

  I had a hunch that a lot of things and people left Mrs. McLain cold, but somehow she made it seem like a challenge. The implication was that, for a very few special things and people, she could be quite warm indeed, and that it was very much worth an effort to find out if you were one of the favored few.

  She was really a strikingly good-looking woman, particularly in that company. I mean, at least half the ladies present, Jill included, were sporting the bright native dresses. They apparently came in all conceivable variations of the basic Mother Hubbard theme: long and short, tight and loose, plain and flowered. And while the style isn't unattractive, it doesn't make a woman look particularly well-dressed, at least not to my conservative Mainland eyes. I am also unalterably opposed to bare legs and sandals under dress-up conditions. Pardon me for being stuffy, but if the rules require me to put on coat and tie, the women can damn well struggle into stockings and high heels. Besides, they look prettier that way.

  Against that background of shapelessly fluttering prints, Isobel McLain looked unique and priceless in her unobtrusively well-fitting black dress. She gave the impression of being fairly tall, but that was only an illusion, I discovered, looking down at her from my six-feet-four. Without her heels, she'd have been a full foot shorter. Her proportions were attractive, decidedly feminine without being vulgarly spectacular. Her hair was dark brown, done in a smooth, restrained bubble with the ends tucked in, one of the nicer styles evolved from those giant bird's-nest hairdos of a few seasons back.

  Her features were regular, her teeth were good, her skin was good, her posture was good, and you could say the same of a thousand women you'd never turn to look at twice. The simple fact was that she was a knockout, at least in the adult division. A man whose taste ran exclusively to leggy, breathless juveniles might not have been as impressed as I was. I put her age between thirty and thirty-five, although she could have passed for less.

  I asked, "Is your husband here, Mrs. McLain?"

  She shook her head. "No. Kenneth and I are taking separate vacations this year. He finds it restful to watch dice bounce around a table. Or horses run around a track. Or roulette wheels just go around and around and around." She shrugged. "Unfortunately, I don't. And after a while one gets tired of pretending, don't you know?"

  A faint uneasiness made me look at her more sharply; she'd said a little too much in answer to a simple question. I mean, the cool, reserved, bored lady she was supposed to be would hardly have let a perfect stranger so far into her private life so soon.

  Or maybe she would, away from home with a couple of Scotches inside her-I noticed she'd already set her glass back on the bar for another refill. Still, it was a jarring note, a reminder that in our world of deceit and intrigue nothing was necessarily what it seemed, not even an attractive woman. Particularly not an attractive woman.

  "Do I understand that you live in Washington, D.C., Mrs. McLain?" I asked, and we went on from there to discuss the nation's capital and its dreadful summer climate.

  I set a couple of casual traps for her-I'd brought up the subject for that purpose-but they caught nothing. Whether or not she actually lived there, she knew the city. She got out of me that I was an underpaid government employee blowing my savings on an extravagant vacation, and we played the do-you-know-Joe game half-heartedly. Neither of us was greatly surprised to discover that, apart from a couple of headwaiters, we had no Washington friends or acquaintances in common. That pretty well finished the supply of cocktail-party conversation on both sides, and the silence was getting awkward when the industrious hotel hostess broke in on us again.

  "Here's somebody who insists on meeting you, Mr. Helm. She says that anybody who gets up at dawn to go swimming must be worth knowing."

  Our girl in Honolulu had made it at last.

  Chapter Five

  AS I TURNED TO Jill, introduced as Miss Darnley, I was aware of Isobel McLain being led away in invisible chains. Perhaps it was just as well. I hadn't really been making a red-hot impression there, or if I had, the lady had concealed it bravely.

  Jill, alias Miss Darnley, was obviously going to be a different proposition. Her eager expression said she was just waiting to be impressed by me, no matter how stupid and boring I turned out to be.

  I noticed that she was dutifully drinking the rum punch, and she seemed to be impersonating, as far as her fair complexion would permit, a cute Hawaiian maiden just converted to modesty and Christianity, in a flowing, flowered muu-muu thing that reached the floor. In addition to the orchids in her hair she had an orchid lei around her neck. This sounds pretty fancy and expensive, I guess, but as I've already intimated, in Hawaii orchids grow like dandelions back home.

  I said, "Goody, it's the little girl with the big board. How was the surfing this morning, Miss Darnley?"

  "Not very good. We had to wait forever between sets."

  "Sets, like in tennis?" I asked.

  She laughed. "Big waves come in sets, or groups, of half a dozen or more, Mr. Helm. There'll be a long calm spell when you just sit on the board waiting, and then somebody yells 'outside' and you see the first wave of a set humping up against the horizon. Then you paddle like hell to where you figure the break is coming. Generally you let the first few waves of a set go by, hoping for one big enough to give you a good ride. That's in little summer surf like here off Waikiki. In big winter surf, like off Sunset Beach-that's down at the other end of Oahu-you've got to be careful you don't catch one too big for you to handle and get wiped out."

  She was pretty tense, now that she'd finally reached me, and she rattled off this lecture a little too fast, like a kid trying to show off before a grownup-or maybe 1 wasn't being quite fair. Maybe she'd have seemed to be acting quite naturally if I hadn't known who she was and guessed approximately what she was up to.

  "Wiped out," I said, dryly. "Sets. Outside. Why, it's a foreign language."

  She flushed slightly. "I gather you're not a surfer, Mr.

  Helm." She gave me a cool, appraising glance. "Well, it's not a middle-aged pastime, I guess."

  I grinned. "Yes, little girl," I said. "Grandpa's rheumatiz do trouble him something fierce."

  She laughed. Having insulted each other, we were now friends.
She said, smiling, "You asked for it, being so stuffy. All sports have their jargon. And actually, they're mostly all kids out there; they even treat me as if I were an old lady."

  "Fancy that," I said. "A mere infant like you? But it seems odd. You'd think that all these plush hotels, with an interesting sport growing right in their front yards, so to speak, would make a big effort to sell it to the tourists old enough to have a little dough to throw around."

  "Well, surfing is fairly strenuous and just a bit dangerous."

  "So's skiing," I said. "And look how they're cashing in on that back home… What's the matter?"

  "The mix-'em-up lady is heading back our way. I don't really want to meet any more enchanting people, do you?"

  It was nicely done. Now that we'd found each other, she was suggesting, we didn't need anybody else. Any man would have been proud to have an attractive blonde so attach herself to him, even a blonde wearing something that, stylewise, resembled nothing so much as my grandmother's winter nightgown. Of course the orchids helped. I put out of my mind the fact that she was undoubtedly acting strictly according to instructions- Monk's instructions-and I let myself expand visibly at the implied flattery.

  I said, "Well, I was getting kind of tired of the social whirl myself, Miss Darnley. I suppose we could slip out between those bushes and find sanctuary over there at the open-air bar or whatever they call it. What do you say?"

  "I say that would be very nice, Mr. Helm."

  She set her glass aside, took my arm, and gathered up her voluminous garment with her free hand, displaying rudimentary sandals and a discreet amount of slim brown legs. Shortly we were being seated under a giant tree on the seaside terrace in front of the bar or cocktail lounge, a rustic building that had been shuttered that morning but was now exposed to the breezes from several directions, more a pavilion than a house.