A little anger showed in her eyes. "That isn't what I was going to ask, Matt. I don't think about money all the time. I'm a pretty good judge of men-I've only made one bad mistake in my life-and I'm fairly sure that if you can, you'll pay off. I'll gamble on that, without any papers that probably wouldn't mean anything legally, anyway."
I said, "Thanks. Then what's bugging you?"
"I want to know, if I do everything you ask, will I be a traitor to my country? I mean, I still have no proof of who you are."
I looked at her for a moment, but her expression told me nothing. I said, "Make up your mind, Isobel. Either you're a good judge of men or you aren't."
She shook her head. "It isn't that easy, where politics is concerned. I mean, a man may be quite dependable in every other respect, but he'll still do dreadful things if he gets it into his head that he's saving the world or something."
I said, "It's still a stupid damn question and I'm ashamed of you for asking it."
"Why is it stupid?" she demanded. "I think it's fairly important, myself. I'm not the greatest patriot in the world, but just the same-"
"Important, sure," I interrupted, "but look whom you're asking! You're not going to get an answer from me: not an answer you can trust. So all you're really doing is asking me to give your conscience a tranquilizer, so you can save yourself the trouble of looking at me and deciding for yourself whether I'm an immaculate Patrick Henry or a dirty Benedict Arnold. Well, to hell with that, Duchess. It's your conscience. Don't ask me to talk to it. You tell it what it wants to hear."
She said sharply, "You're not being much help!"
"Hell, it's nothing I can help you with, and you know it. Suppose I were to tell you that the fate of the U.S. depends on our efforts, and that if we're successful you'll be a national heroine and get your face on a postage stamp. That's what you want to hear, isn't it? But if I say it, will you believe it? If you do, you're better at fooling yourself than I think you are."
There was a little silence; then she laughed. "You're either a very honest man or a very clever one."
"Can't I be both?" I asked plaintively. Neither of us said anything for a while, and the subject kind of died by default. At last I pointed out the window. "Look, there's Molokai already."
"That's the leper colony, isn't it?"
I said, mechanically, "You're not supposed to call it leprosy these days. It's Hansen's disease. That makes it much more respectable."
We watched the island approach. Down below, I saw a white powerboat smashing through the trade-wind chop at a pretty good clip, judging by the wake. It could be a speedboat belonging to a man called Monk, I reflected, although he was supposed to pick night for the run as a rule. It could have aboard a girl called Jill, and if this had been a TV show she'd have been equipped with a convenient electronic gadget that would have allowed me to track her in my midget sub, if I'd had a midget sub.
Unfortunately, we were dealing with a smart and experienced man, not a TV villain. Asking Jill to plant a tracking device on the Monk would have been equivalent to asking her to commit suicide. He would have thought of all such logical possibilities, and he'd be ready for them all, somehow. 1 wasn't going to beat the Monk with gadgets. With his experience with explosives and detonators, he was a much better gadget man than I was.
The only way I'd trip him up would be by doing something quite untechnical and illogical. I still hadn't figured out just what.
Chapter Fourteen
WE GOT A VIEW of the flat western end of Molokai with its geometrical red-earth pineapple fields, but the mountainous eastern end was pretty well covered by the clouds that tend to collect over higher elevations in the Islands. On Oahu, I'd already discovered, you can stand in Waikiki in bright sunshine, and watch it raining like hell up on the Pali. High up among the mountains of Kauai there's supposed to be a rain-soaked region that's the wettest spot on earth. Molokai was apparently no exception to this weather rule.
The visibility, angle, and distance were poor for the particular stretch of windward coast in which I was interested. Well, I could hardly expect Hawaiian Airlines to fly reconnaissance for me, although it would have been convenient. I did, however, get a chance to observe that, as the maps had indicated, the next stretch of water wasn't nearly as wide as the first one we'd crossed.
Then we were coming up on the island of Maui with a small mountain range at one end and a tremendous, cloud-capped volcanic peak at the other: Haleakala, the House of the Sun. I'd seen ten-thousand-foot mountains before, plenty of them, but mainly in the western U.S., where they rise out of country that's a mile high to start with. This one came straight up out of the sea.
The backup man was waiting for us at the Kahului Airport. My hawk-faced shadow with the briefcase was off the plane before us, but he stopped inside the terminal to light a cigarette, timing it so that his match flared just as Isobel and I walked past. I scanned the room surreptitiously and spotted the man for whom we'd been pointed out. He was lounging casually by the windows.
This was another one we had no record of-another of Monk's unlisted reserves-a big, golden-brown, good-looking Hawaiian character with a red-flowered sport shirt hanging outside white duck pants and bare brown feet stuck into leather sandals. Although well into his thirties, he had the friendly, boyish look that's characteristic of the race, but I didn't put too much faith in it. History says that while they were generally just about the sweetest people on earth, they could turn very mean upon occasion, as Captain Cook discovered. They knifed him on a beach a couple of islands away from this one when he tried to get tough with them. Then, because he'd been considered a god of sorts, they cleaned the flesh off his bones and passed them around for good luck.
I spoke to Isobel as we walked through the building.
"Remember that I called ahead from Honolulu. That means the opposition has had plenty of time to make any preparations they like in our rooms and in the car we're picking up here at the airport. So don't say anything in either place you don't want anybody to overhear."
Her eyes were- bright. "You mean they could even have bugged the car? How quaint! That's the right word, isn't it, bugged?"
"That's right," I said. "Bugged. Now if you really prefer to be chaste this evening, I think you'd better have a headache. We'll stop in town to get you some aspirin for it. It's probably a result of that blow on the head last night. It's making you feel pretty bad, and you're sorry but you'd like to go to bed early, alone."
"But…" She glanced at me sharply, a little disconcerted. Obviously she hadn't expected me to be quite so considerate of her virtue. "Oh. I see. You have something you want to do tonight. Alone."
"Check."
She moved her shoulders. "Yes, Master. To hear is to obey… That beach-boy type over by the windows. Could he be the man you said might be waiting for us here?"
"He could, but we're not supposed to know it. At least I don't think we are. And you're not supposed to be clever and observant, Mrs. Marner. You're just a stupid, self-centered, society bitch and don't you forget it. Bright people get hurt."
She laughed. "All right, Mail I'm warned again." Her momentary resentment had faded. She took my arm, walking close to me. When she spoke again, her voice was mischievous: "It's really too bad you're going to be so busy. I just happened to bring along a very pretty nightie-quite by accident, of course."
I grinned. "I've seen your damn nighties, doll. I'm the guy who cleans up your room nights, remember? For your own sake, just stick to the script, please. I want to keep you out of this as much as possible. So don't louse things up by getting irresistible at the wrong time."
Her fingers pressed lightly on my arm. "Well, at least it's reassuring to know that you think I can."
The car they gave us was a reasonably new Ford sedan, equipped with every gadget to make life miserable for an old sports car hand like me. The power steering would throw you into the ditch before you knew you'd turned the wheel; the power brakes would hurl you thro
ugh the windshield before you knew you'd found the pedal; and the automatic transmission would run you through a stoplight before you even thought of touching the accelerator. Detroit makes the most comfortable and reliable cars in the world, for the price, but they're designed for people who want the car to do the driving. After a stint in Europe, I was accustomed to docile, obedient little vehicles humbly ready to serve me, not great arrogant mechanical monsters with minds of their own.
The hooknosed man had apparently turned me over to his relief. I saw him go to a parked car and ride off without a backward glance, but the golden boy was right behind us in a battered old jeep as we drove into town-well, let's call it driving. I found that the only way to beat the hydraulic gremlins at their own game was to keep one foot ready on the instant brake to cancel the mistakes of the instant gears. This made our progress a bit jerky, but it saved a lot of wear and tear on telephone poles and pedestrians.
"Are you doing that for fun, or are you just learning to drive?" Isobel asked as we took off impulsively after buying aspirin. She patted her hair into place and tightened her seat belt. "When you get tired of it, I'll be glad to take over."
"I hope you're not going to turn out to be one of these competent damn females," I said. "I like the helpless type much better. Anyway, I've handled everything from a gull-wing Mercedes to an Army six-by-six; I'm going to lick this Supermarket Special if it takes au night."
"Well, you're not doing my headache one bit of good."
"So take an aspirin, doll," I said. "That's what we bought them for."
Having established, if anyone was listening electronically, that the course of true love wasn't running quite smoothly, we drove south across the narrow waist of the island and up along the curving leeward shore under a clear blue sky. Behind us loomed the giant mass of Haleakala, still wreathed in clouds from about five thousand feet up. I gather you can see the top occasionally, but you have to get up early in the morning to do it.
The coast highway was a two-lane blacktop road flanked by feathery trees, identified in the guide book by the local name of kiawe. They looked to me just like plain old Texas mesquites that had got plenty of vitamins. I didn't stop in the historic little coastal village of Lahaina that I'd described to Isobel, but I did drive through slowly enough to make sure that, as I'd expected, there was a long dock holding pleasure and fishing boats of every description. At least one of them ought to be for hire, I reflected, and Molokai was just around the corner, nautically speaking.
As a matter of fact, the island of lepers was clearly visible across the water to the north as we drove on. To my landlubber eyes, it looked like a long and risky small-boat voyage, and it was a pretty obvious gambit anyway, but I might as well play at it until something better turned up. I could at least go through the motions of making the arrangements. That would give the golden boy and his hawkfaced friend something interesting to report and the more interest I aroused here, the less would be left over for Jill, wherever she was.
Then we were passing a group of elaborate resort hotels and a beautifully manicured golf course where athletic characters, male and female, were getting lots of healthful exercise in little electric carts. The shoreline got more rugged as we continued north until we spotted a hill overlooking a lovely, sandy cove. Spilling down the sides of the hill was a rambling hostelry that somebody had obviously used a lot of expense and ingenuity in designing; a little less might have been more in keeping with the spirit of the Islands.
But this was a high-class joint that didn't intend to be mistaken for anything else. As we drove up, I saw Isobel break out the repair kit and attend to her hair and lipstick. She lit a cigarette in her quick, nervous way and dropped the lighter back into her purse.
"I'm about ready for a drink," she said. "I'd like a drink before I change for dinner."
"I get the message," I said. "No further repetition is necessary. We'll get you a drink. We might even get me one, too. I'm going to need it if you're planning to have a headache all evening."
She said, "It's not my fault if I got hit on the head by a mysterious prowler…"
We carried this bickering act into the hotel bar, and then to the rooms, which did not adjoin but were several doors apart: the best I'd been able to do on such short notice. I made a perfunctory gesture toward seeing that she was settled in hers, and started to leave. She called me back.
"Matt."
"Yes?"
She walked past me and closed the door and turned to face me. "I really do have a dreadful headache, darling," she said. "You might sympathize a little instead of acting as if I were just trying to be difficult." She seemed very sincere; she was really a pretty good actress.
I hesitated, figuring what would sound best to the eavesdroppers, if any. Finally I said, "I'm sorry. I'm a selfish louse, baby. Kick me."
She laughed and came up to me, took my face in her hands, and kissed me on the mouth-but what had started out as a friendly peck of reconciliation quickly grew, under her deliberate and expert guidance, into something considerably more passionate and breathless. This was obviously not part of the plan I'd laid out for her. I was sure of it when her arms went around my neck, and various other things happened, all quite disturbing to a man who'd been celibate for weeks.
"You bitch!" I whispered fondly, freeing myself enough to speak.
Both malice and mischief showed in her face. She pressed her cheek against mine and spoke in my ear: "What's the matter, can't you keep your mind on your work, Mr. Secret Agent? You're going to be busy tonight, remember? And I've got such a terrible headache. Simply awful. You said so yourself."
There was no real reason for me to put up with this nonsense. I mean, I'd been noble in Honolulu, but a young girl trying to impersonate Mata Hari was one thing. A grown woman playing sex games was something else. I'd generously offered her an excuse to stay reasonably clear of the action. If she didn't want to use it, that was her business.
I said harshly, reaching for her, "Sabotage is what it is. I told you not to get irresistible, damn you!"
Her voice mocked me. "Remember the microphones, darling."
"To hell with the mikes."
I took hold of her and pulled her hard against me, doing some minor violence to the integrity of her costume as I kissed her again. This brought a quick protest.
"Matt, don't! You'll ruin my-"
"And to hell with that, too," I snapped. "You should have thought of it before you started this. I warned you to go easy, doll, but you had to prove how sexy you are. Now just come over to the bed and get raped like a good girl."
She said angrily, resisting me, "I loathe masterful men! I can't stand them! I told you. I want to be asked."
"Will you please step over to the bed and get raped, Mrs. Marner, ma'am?"
"That's better," she breathed. "That's much better. Yes, Mr. Helm, sir, if you'll give me a moment to slip out of a few clothes, I'll be delighted to step over to the bed and get raped."
Chapter Fifteen
LATER, WE HAD ANOTHER drink out on the hotel terrace-well, on one of the several terraces jutting from the seaward hillside like random bookshelves from a wall. It was getting dark and the bathers had deserted the beach below. An attendant in swim trunks was putting half a dozen small boats to bed. That is, he was taking down the colorfully striped, triangular little sails and hauling the tiny vessels out on the sand. They looked like the same kind of sailing planks, twelve or fourteen feet long, that I'd seen used by kids in the surf off Waikiki.
Where we were, on the western shore of the island, the trade winds couldn't hit us directly, but far out beyond the lee of the land the ocean looked rough and choppy in the growing dusk. There was a low island out there in line with the sunset: that would be Lanai. To the north was the brooding, cloud-wrapped mass of Molokai. Between here and there, according to the chart I'd studied, was something called the Pablo Channel, ten miles wide and some hundred and thirty fathoms deep.
I'd once, long ago,
been exposed to a bit of rudimentary seamanship in the line of duty. A course in basic boat-handling had been required at the time, since we were operating along the coasts of Europe, and reliable nautical help wasn't always to be had. I still remembered that one fathom was equal to six feet. Not that it mattered. You can drown in six inches of water if you put your mind to it.
"Is it permitted to disturb the Master at his meditations?" Isobel asked respectfully.
I looked up. "Only for matters of the utmost importance."
"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry."
I grinned. "Now there's a way to make a man feel he's given real satisfaction. The dame regrets, yet."
"I didn't mean that." Isobel didn't smile. "I was merely apologizing for being a perverse bitch. I know you were being nice and trying to protect me as much as possible, and I do appreciate it."
"Sure," I said. "Well, let's figure how much damage has been done. We'll have to assume that they overheard what we said, but even if they didn't, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that a wench who's in bed with the guy before the bellboy's even made it back to the desk obviously isn't a wench who's reluctantly keeping her part of a distasteful bargain. So that story's out. What's the matter?"
"Nothing," she said. "I didn't say anything." There was a certain coolness in her voice.
I laughed at her. "I know, you'd rather I put it in a more dignified way, Duchess. Well, I'm sorry, but I'm trying to look at it through the eyes of the opposition. You'll never make them believe you're an unwilling patsy now, not after our little high-temperature interlude. Whether or not they heard you say it, they'll assume that you know what I am, as you do. They'll probably think you know what I'm doing, even though you don't. They may even think you're an agent yourself, sent out to help me, maybe somebody I've worked with before."
"Worked?" Isobel smiled. "One day you'll have to tell me all about your work, Mr. Helm. Some of the details sound fascinating."
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