The Betrayers

Chapter Twenty-two

ALMOST THE FIRST thing you learn in this business is to hell with the dead and wounded. I heard the pistol fire. I heard the bullet strike. I heard Isobel gasp and fall. Rushing back to cradle her in my arms and shake my fist at the hidden sniper would have looked great on TV, but it wasn't really practical. As a matter of fact, I never even paused to consider it. I was heading in the other direction.

I hit the tangled stuff hard and went through it like a bulldozer. There are two ways of handling a situation like that. Either you spend all day at it, sneaking around like an Indian trying to catch the guy at a disadvantage, or you rush him right now. I had only my little knife against his gun, but in the jungle that wasn't as great a handicap as it would have been elsewhere. He wouldn't see me, anyway, until I was right on top of him.

I dove into the vines and brush, swung left, and fought my way toward the spot from which the shot had come. I wouldn't have tried it against an automatic weapon, of course, or even against a shotgun. With a good spread of lead you can shoot at sounds with some hope of hitting the guy who made them. But with the revolver I'd glimpsed, the guy couldn't just spray the jungle and hope; he didn't have that much firepower. He probably didn't have that much ammunition, either.

He had to wait until he saw me over the sights at close range, and hope to make the first shot good.

I caught a hint of movement in the brush ahead. He was sneaking off to the right, away from the pool and the motionless body on the ground. I got an impression of a gaudy red-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt and white pants, almost the same costume Hanohano had been wearing. Maybe it was an omen. I didn't stop to figure out whether it was good or bad.

I just gave a loud yell and charged, screaming like a Comanche in full war paint. I mean, there was no chance of his not hearing me coming through that stuff, and people do get nervous, waiting for a clear shot at a howling wild man. Besides, there's a theory to the effect that the louder you shout the better you fight. Anyway, I just felt like yelling. Maybe I was mad.

I broke through the brush and saw my target right there. The gun was my target. I didn't even look at the guy holding it; I focused on the weapon. I had to put it out of action before it killed me; and an instant before I figured the shot was due, I dove in low, beneath the probable course of the bullet. My shoulder cut the guy down, and my hand reached up and got the wrist as we fell together. I slammed the hand and arm against a convenient tree, and the thing was done. Nothing remained but to cut the murdering bastard's throat and smile at him pleasantly as he died.

"Matt! Matt, please. It's me, Jill! Matt, don't…

The voice seemed to come from a long way off. I guess I had been a bit mad, at that. I drew a long breath and sat up, looking at what I had there, pinned to the ground. It was Jill, all right, in sneakers and a pair of those white jeans that are running the blue ones off the market, although I can never see why. Who wants to be washing jeans all the time?

Hers needed washing badly, I noticed. As a matter of fact, with her muddy pants, torn shirt, and tangled hair, she was well qualified to join our castaways' club-and there was a probable opening in the membership, now.

I said harshly, "What the hell are you doing here? Besides shooting people in the back, I mean?"

"Matt, I couldn't help it! She had a gun; she was going to shoot. What could I do?"

"She couldn't have hit you with a sawed-off shotgun and a full box of twenty-five shells."

"How could I know that? How do you know that? Anyway, I didn't shoot her in the back. Are you going to sit on me all day?" I got up slowly. I folded my knife and put it away, while Jill rose and brushed herself off. She said with an effort at lightness, "When you come, Eric, you really come, don't you? I tried to call to you, to tell you who I was, but you were making so much noise you didn't hear me."

"You might have called before shooting, instead of afterward." I pawed around in the vines and leaves until I found her gun, another one of those stainless steel jobs the Monk seemed to pass around like Christmas cards. It wasn't a bad-looking weapon, for a belly-gun. The bright finish had a look of class quite unlike nickel plating. Jill put out her hand, but I stuck the revolver into the top of my pants. "To hell with you, doll. I don't like trigger-happy people around me with guns. Let's go see how much damage you've done. You first."

She started to speak angrily, but checked herself. She licked her lips, and moved off ahead of me. Even in pants, from behind, she was a very good-looking girl, which is something many attempt and few achieve. At the moment, however, I found it hard to appreciate my fine rear view of her glorious young figure. This was the girl I'd come a long way to find, but it was hardly the reunion I'd expected.

I guess what really bugged me-aside from the simple, incomprehensible fact of her being here at all-was that I was entirely in the wrong, blaming her for what had happened. Isobel had picked up my gun. She had been about to shoot. Jill's strategy in sneaking up on us without warning might be criticized, but her reaction to the threat could not, considering how she'd been trained.

It seemed to be just one of those sickening damn-fool things that happen when you leave guns around carelessly-and I was the guy whose gun it was, who'd left it there. If I'd taken care of my weapon as I should, the thing would never have happened.

The figure by the pool did not move as we approached. The faded, incongruous silk dress no longer seemed like a good joke on stuffy old civilization. It was just a small indignity added to the greater indignity of death. I was reasonably sure, anyway, but I knelt beside the body and lifted it gently. There was no need to turn it over completely to see the great, shiny spill of blood below the left breast. I let her down again slowly.

I knelt there for a little, holding her, telling myself I was getting too old for this work, or something. Hell, people died all the time, even attractive women. They got smashed up in cars, they got shot by jealous boyfriends, they caught diseases antibiotics couldn't cure, and if nothing else worked they took sleeping pills by the fistful in the spirit of do-it-yourself. I had a job to do, even if I still didn't quite know what it was. I shouldn't be wasting time or emotion on one lousy society dame dead on a crummy Pacific island, even if she had died kind of by mistake.

I heard Jill's young voice: "Aren't you taking this awfully big, Eric?"

She was right, of course, but I looked up at her and said, "Children should be seen and not heard. Comb your damn hair and shut your damn mouth."

She said stubbornly, "I mean, if you want me to say I'm sorry, I'll say it. But really, if you're going to make a career of this business, you can't have a spastic over every enemy agent you kill. Can you?"

I stared at her for a long moment. "Come again?"

She frowned, surprised. "You mean you didn't know? I heard them talking. I heard all about her. Her code name is-was-Irma, and she was one of Moscow's best in the Asiatic division. Maybe that's why you never came across her dossier; you never worked against that bunch, did you? She disappeared for a while and now she turns up here, calling herself first Isobel McLain and then, I gather, Isobel Marner, your loving sister-in-law. Just how they worked that I didn't hear. It may have been kind of tough on the real Isobel Marner, if any. Of course, they may simply have gambled on your being in no position to check on whether or not such a person actually exists." Jill looked down at me in a speculative, adult way. "I see you don't believe me, Eric. The woman must have been very good. Very convincing. But maybe you'll believe this. Where's her purse?"

I hesitated briefly, and jerked my head toward the battered-looking white kid purse that lay beside a pair of battered-looking white kid pumps on the nearby rock. Jill got it and opened it.

"How do you think I knew where to come?" she said. "I came here to warn you. Monk knows you're here. He's been tracking you ever since you turned Halawa Point at the end of the island early this morning. Look."

She had a familiar cigarette lighter in her hand. She slid the cover off to show me the interior mechanism. Half was what you'd expect to find inside an ordinary butane lighter, slimmed down in one dimension. The other half looked like a mass of dirty spaghetti with bugs in it, which is the way most of that fancy electronic equipment looks to the uninitiated.

"A beeper," I said softly. "By God, she was carrying a beeper all the time!"

As I spoke, I felt the woman I held stir minutely in my arms.