The 34th Degree

30

C aptain Erin Whyte turned out to be none other than the shapely woman Andros had seen in the swimming pool the night before. The daughter of Scots Presbyterian missionaries in China, the fresh-faced captain was the protegee of Major William Fairbairn, the British supercop known as “the Shanghai Buster” whose skills were honed after thirty years in the streets of the most violent, drug-infested city of the Far East. Now SOE’s femme fatale of the martial arts, silent killing, and other dirty tricks looked Andros over as they stood outside the manor.

Erin was twenty-nine, a knockout five-seven in her gray fatigues. She wasn’t a glamorous, exotic beauty like Aphrodite, thought Andros. But her athletic build, shoulder-length blond hair, and natural good looks beguiled him. Especially the freckles on her small, upturned nose, which crinkled as she squinted at him in the sunlight. He couldn’t imagine this girl hurting a flea, much less teaching him the finer points of killing.

“Last thing we need is some American gunslinger in Athens spraying bullets,” she warned him, “blowing away Nazis at every corner.”

Her tough talk seemed completely at odds with her tender voice. Yet her words possessed unusual power. Perhaps it was her very proper British accent, courtesy of the empire and its outstanding schools in the Far East. That might explain how she could draw him in with her down-to-earth Scottish warmth and still keep him and other men at a safe distance with a formal air that seemed to say, “I’m not that kind of girl, so don’t get any ideas.”

“Since you won’t be packing your iron, you have to be trained in unarmed combat, learn to kill with stealth and speed. Understood?”

Andros nodded curiously as she walked over to a straw-filled dummy and placed a German helmet on its head.

“Remember,” she told him, “you’ve always got a weapon in your pockets: a nail file, a pin, a fountain pen. Any one of them can produce instant death if you know how to use them. So can your hands, knees, head, elbows, and fingertips. Now, watch me.”

She proceeded to attack the dummy with a flurry of hard punches. The relentless body blows began to build to an excruciating crescendo, and it was with some relief that Andros witnessed the final, brutal kick to the miserable dummy’s head. When it was all over, the straw brains of the decapitated German lay strewn across the ground, and Erin Whyte smiled with satisfaction.

Andros could only marvel in wonder at this force of nature. He began to pity the fools in the field who underestimated her. Fools whose heads were filled not with straw but with dreams. Fools like him.

“Always go for the side or back of the head, never the top,” she said as an afterthought, picking up the helmet and hanging it on the dummy’s stump of a neck. “Now you try.”

For the next few hours Andros did his best to follow her instructions. They were rather long and complicated, although they invariably ended with the same final instruction: “And then kick him in the groin.” This last bit of advice she demonstrated with unusual relish. But when she ordered him to dismember the straw guts of the dummy-or rather, what was left of the German-he couldn’t hide his reluctance.

“What is it?” she demanded.

“I’d just as soon use my Colt. 45,” he explained somewhat sheepishly. “It’s…cleaner.”

“Death is death,” she replied. “Just because you make it clean doesn’t make it less cruel.”

Andros realized she had a point.

“War is a dirty business,” she went on contemptuously. “You must put aside all pretense when it comes to fighting. There is no decency. No soldier’s honor or etiquette. Only victory or defeat. Survival or death.”

Andros asked, “What if I simply want to search a prisoner?”

“Kill her first.”

Kill her first. Kill her. A chill shot up Andros’s spine, and he snapped his head up at Erin, whose pretty face revealed nothing. Did she mean he had to be prepared to strike at women as well as men? Or was that a slip about Aphrodite? A sudden dread stirred inside his stomach. Maybe that explained the real reason for Captain Erin Whyte’s presence-to get him used to the unthinkable notion of silencing a beautiful woman like Aphrodite…

“What if that’s inconvenient?” Andros asked, surprised to hear his voice falter.

She must have seen something in his eyes, because her voice softened somewhat. “Make him lie face to the ground, hands out in front of him,” she said. “Knock him out with the butt of your pistol-should you have one-or with the heel of your shoe. Then search him.”

Andros nodded but didn’t take his eyes off hers. They were an earthy brown, he finally noticed, and they seemed to regard him with true affection, almost pity, before they looked away.

“But never, never stop just because you’ve crippled the enemy,” she reminded him, toughening up as she went along. “If you’ve broken his arm or leg, it’s valuable only because it makes it easier to kill him and-”

But she had already confirmed his fear.