by Peter Albano
“For the better, Brent,” she concurred warmly.
“I agree with that.”
*
From the secluded corner booth of Haleiwa’s luxurious Konopopo Inn, Brent could see a broad vista of wind-swept sea, laced by feathery white caps stretching across the entire northern horizon. Clouds — smoky streams of altostratus, broken cumulus, and mountainous thunderheads driven south by cool breezes from the northeast were caught by the declining sun, colored infinite hues of indigo and royal purple, brilliantly highlighted by striking shades of pink, gold, and vermillion. The sea broke on a curving coastline of sparkling sand as white as an Alpine ski slope while great porous outcroppings of volcanic rock added deep browns and scarlets in streaming heaps and isolated splashes of color on the sand.
“Beautiful. Beautiful,” Brent said softly. “I never knew Hawaii could be so beautiful.” He looked across the table at Kathryn. In the dim light her flawless skin appeared translucent, full lips soft and warm.
“Here’s to the north shore,” she said, raising an exotic rum drink the house called the “Mauna Loa Rumbler.” Brent answered with his own scotch and soda, locking eyes with her.
“We may never see each other again,” she said in a barely audible voice, eyes downcast.
“That’s not true. Before I drop you off, give me the address of your home office, your aunt’s home, and any other place where I can reach you. Here,” he said, reaching into his coat pocket, “is my card. You can always reach me by addressing your letter to NIS, Washington, D. C.” He handed her the card, but she dropped it, grasping his big hand in her velvet-soft palms, held it tightly, and searched his eyes with hers. He felt his heartbeat quicken and the blood begin to pound in his temples. The erotic Kathryn was back.
“I’ll miss you. God, I’ll miss you, Brent. You kept me sane all those terrible weeks on the carrier. I lived for those mornings with you. And you saved me from that animal Konoye. I owe you — owe you. How can I ever repay you?”
“You are now, Kathryn. Just by being here.”
“No.” She leaned forward, tightened her grip, eyes hot and moist under curved black brows. “No! That’s not enough. Not nearly —”
She was interrupted by the waitress, an exquisite Polynesian with skin of gold and tar-black hair swept back severely into a bun. Her perfect body rippled under a tight-fitting lavalava, colorful with printed orchids and hibiscus. “Your salads,” she said, smiling and placing large bowls of fruit salad filled with slices of mangoes, guavas, papayas, kiwifruit, pineapple, coconut, and bright yellow apple bananas.
“Been at sea a long time, ensign?” The beauty smiled down. Kathryn stirred uneasily as Brent stared back. “Sailors always order our fruit salads when they’ve been on long voyages. It’s something they miss.”
“That’s not all they miss,” Kathryn snapped, “but I can take care of that!”
The sharp words brought Brent’s eyes back to Kathryn and sent the waitress scurrying for the kitchen. The promise in the rebuke had fanned a new hunger deep within him, and suddenly the gourmet salad in front of him held no interest. “You meant that, Kathryn,” he managed, reaching across the table and recapturing her hand.
The black eyes burned into his. “Let’s get out of here, Brent. We can eat later.”
The drive to Kathryn’s condominium at Turtle Bay was interminable. The road was narrow — so narrow a driver played Russian roulette when passing. “A military road. That’s all this is. An old military road.”
“Pillboxes,” Kathryn said, gesturing to the sharp barrier of hills crowding the road.
Stealing a glance, Brent glimpsed two low concrete structures sited high on successive ridges. “I’ll be damned, left over from World War Two.”
Kathryn became talkative, pointing and chattering like a tour guide. Waving at the beach, she said, “The Banzai Pipe Line, greatest surfing on earth.” Then passing through a thickly forested area, she added. “Waimea State Park, magnificent falls inland.” After a silence, a sudden animation followed, and a finger stabbed at a huge luxurious villa, high on a bluff. “Elvis Presley’s old place.” Then the beach again. “Sunset Beach — they get twenty-one foot waves here.”
“How many feet to your condo?” Brent demanded impatiently.
Kathryn laughed. “We’re almost there.”
Brent grunted and gripped the wheel tighter, narrowing his eyes in the failing light.
“Here! Here,” she cried excitedly as they approached a wide double drive that led to a vast area of magnificently landscaped grounds. “Turn left! Turn left!”
Entering the grounds, Brent saw a parklike setting with row after row of graceful buildings leading to the luxurious tower of the Hilton Hotel.
“Golf course, tennis courts, swimming — everything you could want.” She paused. “Well, almost everything.” Her laugh was high, shrill and nervous. “In here — turn right and park.” She pointed to a paved, shrub-shrouded parking area in front of a two-story building.
Braking to a jarring halt against a low curb, Brent fumbled with the door handle, cursing before he finally stepped onto the asphalt. As his foot came down on the pavement, a single overhead light came to life, spreading its weak rays into the gathering gloom. There were only two other cars in the lot.
“This way,” she said, indicating a narrow path leading to a dark house. “The key is hidden.”
*
Kathryn had insisted on a shower. “Jesus,” she said as she vanished into a bathroom. “I’ve been getting my baths out of a basin. I can’t wait.” Then she had handed Brent a scotch and soda and closed the door. Soon the sounds of rushing water could be heard, and Brent stared around anxiously from a wide couch in the living room of the two-story luxury apartment. From where he sat, he could glimpse a modern kitchen through a door left open when Kathryn mixed the drinks, a stairway to the second floor, a short hall leading to the downstairs bath, and another door, which he assumed led to a bedroom. Behind closed drapes to his left, a sliding glass door opened onto a golf course. The place was furnished with modern, tastefully selected furniture.
“Coming! Coming!” her voice called from a small dressing room adjacent to the shower. Brent was not prepared for what he was about to see.
Kathryn, smiling, eyes dancing with fire as if backlighted, stepped into the room wearing a hula skirt and flimsy halter, which covered only a small part of the large mounds of her breasts, leaving white half-moons heaving with her fast breathing. Like purplish dagger points, her swollen nipples stabbed through the diaphanous cloth. Then, flicking strands of her skirt, she jarred Brent with a glimpse of a slender marble thigh. “Shredded ti leaves,” she explained, watching the hunger spread across his darkening face. “I’ve gone native.” She began to sway her hips, move her hands gracefully like two love birds courting but never touching each other. “The missionaries didn’t like this,” she said, moving about the room. “They thought it was sinful, suggestive.” The trim hips moved with new vigor; thighs broke through the ti leaves, and Brent felt a pounding in his temples, a tightening in his throat. He drained his glass. She moved toward him and held out a hand.
Unsteadily, he came to his feet, took her hand and moved closer. “That’s right, big man,” she cooed. “Just do what comes naturally.” He felt her hips against his groin, pelvis moving.
Looking down into the black eyes, Brent was incapable of thought, a surge of fiery sensation spreading from his groin, overwhelming his consciousness, contracting his chest and lungs, leaving him breathless. He could feel the prickling of the hair on the back of his neck like scurrying insects, and lava poured through his veins. “My God,” he said, taking her into, his arms. “My God, what are you trying to do to me?”
She came to him hungrily, mouth open, arms circling his neck. The warm, wet crush of her lips was a physical shock, and their tongues met like dueling reptiles, darting and slithering. His hands cupped her swollen breasts, moved down her hard back, gripped her sculpted b
uttocks, pushing and twisting in the timeless motion of the aroused woman. A hand found her panties. Pushed under them to the stiff hair. Searched and plunged into her.
“No! No!”
“Why? Why?” He was frantic.
“In there, darling,” she gestured down the hall. “In there.” He followed her into the bedroom.
Before the door had closed, the skirt was on the floor and the halter thrown into a corner. She remained standing, wearing only her panties as he undressed. And her eyes swept his thick neck, broad chest, and muscular arms as he cursed and grappled clumsily with fingers of clay. Finally, he stood before her, dressed only in white boxer shorts. Why he had in his anxiety and passion left this one garment on was beyond the comprehension of his numbed mind. Perhaps the lone remaining garment they both wore represented the ultimate barrier they had to cross together — ceremoniously. Was he drunk? Was he irrational? Insane with desire? Following the impulse as old as humanity, he gripped the elastic top of her panties and she his boxer shorts. Then they pulled down together.
“Oh,” she murmured, looking down at his arousal. “You’re magnificent.” She led him to the bed.
*
Almost two hours later, Brent lay exhausted, the nude young woman curled against him like a kitten sleeping after gorging itself. He had never known such passion. She had been insatiable. The first time had been quick and violent, the banked fires of weeks of yearning exploding into a raging forest fire that brought them to quick completion. Then the lovemaking became more leisurely, and Brent walked a high plateau of sensation like a lotus eater climbing to the sun. But the sun burst and he sagged back, tired muscles going soft.
“Tired, Brent?”
“Happy. Very happy.” She had kissed the pulse in his neck. Ran her fingers through the hair on his chest, finding a hairless diagonal scar running from shoulder to diaphragm. “Accident?” she asked.
“Sabbah. In an alley in Tokyo. I killed one, left the other with no face.”
He felt her tremble. “Horrible. Horrible.” Then the lips moved through the hair, and a hand came up the powerful muscles of his thigh, finally taking him in a warm palm.
The flickering flames found new fuel, and he turned to her, pushing her onto her back.
This time fatigue had captured them both, and after the last frantic thrusts he heard her shout, “My God,” and relax suddenly, hands slipping across his sweat-covered back and dropping to the bed as if she had been suddenly drained of the last spark of life. Slipping his hands down her slender arms, he covered her limp hands with his, not moving, breathing into her ear and still feeling the hot liquid essence within her. He had never known such peace. He slept.
Her voice had awakened him. “Brent! Brent! Please — you’re heavy.” Shaking the blanket of sleep from his eyes, he had come to life, still locked between her legs. She moved. “Please, Brent. It’s been wonderful but I want to go the girls’ room!”
Rolling from her, he felt her leave the bed. Exhausted and very, very hungry, he drifted off again. But before drugged sleep returned, he heard her moving about and then the clicks — the snapping sounds of a child’s toy tin cricket repeated two or three times. Then blissful darkness.
He awoke with a start, Kathryn’s body curled close to his. Reaching to a nightstand, he switched on a lamp. “Jesus. It’s late,” he said, looking at his watch. “I’ve got to get back to the ship!”
Shaking her head, she sat up. She gestured to a phone next to the lamp. “And I’ve got to find a phone — this one’s disconnected until the tourist season.”
They both dressed quickly.
*
Walking to the jeep in the dimly lighted parking lot, Brent felt light-headed not only from the frantic lovemaking, but from the lack of food. He realized he had not eaten in almost eleven hours.
Walking at his side, Kathryn was strangely silent, moving her head restlessly as if she were looking for someone. And, indeed, she was. Just as they reached the jeep, Brent’s wide peripheral vision caught a movement to his left and slightly behind him. Whirling, he saw a man step from the bushes. Short and husky, he was a swarthy man with a sharp aquiline nose and the eyes of a hawk that sparked in the lamplight ominously.
Taking Kathryn’s arm, Brent stopped in his tracks, hand on his holster. She pulled away, turned, spoke mockingly. “Meet my friend Mana Said Hijarah. You met his brother in a Tokyo alley a few months ago and removed his face with a bottle. He’d like to discuss that matter with you.” Her giggle had the dust of insanity on it. The man remained silent.
Looking at the low crouching figure in front of him, Brent felt he was in the midst of a nightmare, back in the condo in bed with Kathryn. But the warm moist breeze on his face and the pounding of his heart in his ears and hollow emptiness in his stomach, which seemed to be dropping out of his body, told him he was wrong. This was reality. She had set him up — classically, with no food and weakened by sex. He unsnapped the holster and gripped the butt of the Otsus.
Kathryn moved to Hijarah’s side. “Hungry, Brent? Weak, Brent?” she taunted. “Of course I’m Sabbah. We had a five hundred pound egg in the Junkers for you. I hope I didn’t drain you of your strength back there.” She waved at the condo. “And, oh, by the way, while you were sleeping, I unloaded your pistol.” He pulled the automatic, ejected the magazine — empty. Worked the action — nothing. “Bitch! Bitch!”
Kathryn mocked. “And when you feel that cold, hard steel sliding into your guts, think of me, you Jew-loving, imperialist pig.” She turned and moved toward a path through the bushes. “Too bad! You were a terrific piece of ass!” She vanished into the darkness, shouting a final taunt: “And remember, you fucked yourself to death.”
There was a glint in the Arab’s hand and he stepped closer, speaking in a soft, low voice like wind through dry reeds. “I have something for you, Yankee.”
Brent knew Sabbah always killed with the knife. It was part of the tradition dating back centuries to Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah, the ruthless Persian killer called “the old man of the mountain.” Brent also knew Hijarah was probably high on hashish, making him even more reckless and dangerous.
Brent needed a weapon and, leaning into the jeep, groped in the toolbox and gripped a pipe wrench. He stepped away from the vehicle, balancing himself on the balls of his feet, pistol in one hand, heavy wrench in the other, every sense acutely tuned. He could even hear the assassin’s hard breathing as he stepped forward. Chest high, the man held a long knife, point circling slowly like an approaching cobra.
“Come for it, asshole. You were going to stick it in my back. Now let’s see what you can do face-to-face,” Brent hissed.
The man lunged. Brent leaped aside, hurling the pistol, which glanced off the Arab’s forehead, leaving a long oozing cut.
“Infidel dog. I will make sausages of you — kosher sausages for your Jew friends.” He giggled at his own wit as he wiped blood from his forehead with a sleeve.
Again the slow advance resumed, and Brent looked into the mad, pitiless eyes of a fierce bird of prey, talons extended for the kill. But fear eroded, washed away by tides of fiery rage rising from his guts. He stepped back, anger breaking from his lips in sarcasm. “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet,” he goaded.
Howling, “Allah akbar!” and charging with short choppy steps, the man leaped, bringing the knife down in a hard arc. Jumping aside and swinging the steel wrench, Brent heard the sharp fluting sound like the flight of a great insect pass his head. Then something ripped his new blue coat, left shoulder to right waist. The wrench impacted something hard but yielding. Howling with pain, Mana Said Hijarah gripped his left shoulder.
“Get ready for your hegira, you son-of-a-bitch! I’m going to send you all the way to Mecca!” Brent jeered, hoping to anger the man to recklessness.
Shrieking, the man took the bait. He charged, calling on Allah, face contorted. This time Brent did not step aside. Instead, he brought the wrench down, felt bone
crack as the heavy wrench broke the Arab’s wrist and sent the knife clattering.
Howling with pain, the man crashed into Brent, and they both stumbled against the Jeep, arms wrapped around each other like drunken lovers. The man punched with one hand. Bit Brent’s cheek. Pain shot down the American’s neck all the way to his fingertips. Fury drove him, and he attacked like a killer shark rising to the smell of blood. A blow to the Arab’s back bowed him. Knocked the wind from his lungs. Brent twisted away. Found room for the wrench. With all his strength, he brought it down in a vicious arc, missing the man’s skull but smashing into the shoulder again. Something popped like a branch pulled from a tree. The collarbone.
Moaning, the man staggered backward. Leaned against the hood of the jeep, eyes dull, arms at his sides, gasping, spittle running from his chin.
The strange primal urge to kill — to obliterate — took command of Brent again as it had in the alley in Tokyo so long ago, and with Konoye on the hangar deck.
He raised the pipe wrench high over his head and brought it down again. This time, it did not miss.
There was a sound like a dropped melon as the American drove the heavy tool into the Arab’s skull. Hijarah dropped heavily, twisting like a maimed serpent and rolling to his back.
Straddling the assassin, Brent swung the heavy weapon again and again. It was the alley all over again. No fear. No pity. No conscious thought. Just the impulse to destroy.
The bone became soft and the face was no longer a face. Finally, arms aching, the ensign came erect, wrench clattering to the pavement. “Now, Sabbah prick,” he growled, “you and your brother are twins.”
Then he noticed the lights. Red and amber lights revolving as they approached.
*
Releasing Brent from the Laie police station had been a simple procedure. After Brent’s phone call made under the watchful eye of the duty sergeant, Commander Matsuhara and four Arisaka armed seaman guards commandeered a truck and drove to the station. With his holster strap unsnapped, Matsuhara led the four guards into the small but brightly lighted police station. Instantly, the sergeant was convinced Brent was innocent of any wrongdoing and his story of the attack by an unknown assassin was accurate. The ensign was released to the custody of the commander.