I was still gambling, of course. He might have outsmarted me by simply heading off across country to the nearest phone, on foot. From there he could have called his radio contact—I presumed he had one—and got word to K, wherever it was, letting Monk know there was a female traitor inside the gates, if she’d actually made it there.
With important information to be transmitted, that would have been the safe and conservative thing for Hanohano to do. There was nothing I had that he needed, and the jeep would keep. But he was tough, I reminded myself, and it was his jeep, and he wasn’t likely to walk when he could ride. He was a descendant of Hawaiian kings, and he wouldn’t make detours around any damn haoles—white men to you. At least I was betting that was how his mind would work.
Again I won my bet; he came. He came quite silently this time. I’ve done a bit of stalking myself, but I’m willing to admit you can generally hear me coming if you know I’m on the way and listen hard. This one moved like a ghost. He must have been hurried or careless or overconfident up the canyon. Perhaps he’d wanted to get into position fast so he could overhear as much as possible; perhaps he’d just figured we’d be too busy talking to notice. But now he knew that if I was here at all, I was ready and laying for him, and he gave me no warning at all of his approach.
Suddenly he was just there with the shiny revolver in his hands, slipping through the scattered canes at the edge of the road. Every few steps he’d stop to listen. Well, I can’t move that noiselessly, but I’m a real expert at holding still. I’ve had lots of practice, in everything from a duck blind to a fifty-man ambush. I just crouched there and waited him out and let him come to me. When he was within reach, I swung the belt.
He was almost too quick for me. I missed wrapping the leather around the wrist as I’d intended. But the heavy buckle smashed across his hand and sent the gun flying. He dove for it, but he had to hit short and flat to avoid being scalped by my second swing. He gave up the gun and came to his feet like a cat, facing me.
He had no shirt on. He’d shed that, perhaps because it was too gaudy or too noisy, or just because he functioned better with a minimum of clothing. He’d also shed his shoes, which seemed to be a habit of the Islands—I remembered the barefoot hula dancer in the elaborate brocade gown. The vague light from the sky gleamed on his powerful chest and shoulders. His hands and forearms swung threateningly, clublike, hinting at karate. I certainly couldn’t match strength with him, and probably not skill, either. Well, I had no idea of trying. This wasn’t a friendly match in the neighborhood gym. The man had to die before he could tell what he had heard.
“Don’t use that belt on me, man,” he whispered. “Don’t you use it, I say. I’ll tear you apart if you do.”
I laughed. “Hanohano, you’re a fraud. If I had the time, I’d beat hell out of you. As it is, I’ll be nice. I’ll merely kill you.”
His white teeth flashed in the darkness as he grinned. “So now we’ve both pounded our chests like monkeys. So now let’s fight. Coming at you, haole!”
He crouched, feinted, and sprang at me, and I sidestepped and whipped the belt across and almost got him. He had to drop and roll to escape the singing buckle. He was up again in an instant, coming in again with that clumsy-looking, weaving gait. I backed away slowly, holding the belt before me, swinging it from side to side until I saw that it held his eyes—until I saw that he had the idea I was trying to give him. Then I stepped forward and swung, giving him a long, looping teaser this time.
It was slow and easy. He had all day to grab it, and he did. He pulled hard, and I went in ahead of his pull. Braced, he was thrown off balance when he met no resistance. We came together and went down, and as we fell, I brought my little knife from behind my back and put it into him to the hilt, left-handed. I took time to strike once more, higher and more accurately, and rolled free and kept rolling. A knife hasn’t got the shocking power of a bullet. A man can be dead from a knife wound and still have plenty of time to kill you before the message reaches his brain: you’re dead.
I found my feet and looked for him, ready to dodge, or run, or step in and finish him, whichever seemed more appropriate. But he hadn’t got further than his knees. He was kneeling there by the jeep, covering his wounds with his big brown hands, looking up at me accusingly while the blood oozed between his fingers. I moved in closer to him, but not very close. There wasn’t any sense in taking further risks this late in the game.
He licked his lips. “You… you tricked me, haole!”
It was no time to apologize. He didn’t want my apologies. He wanted to know that he was dying at the hands of a man, not of a kid who would weep over his kills.
I said harshly, “I’m a pro, kanaka. I don’t fight for pleasure, just for keeps.”
He showed me his big, bright grin again. “Too bad for you, man. You’ll miss a lot of fun that way. A lot of fun…”
Then the message got through to the brain at last, and his face changed, and he pitched forward in the dirt of the cane field. I waited a little while, as you do, and checked the pulse cautiously, and couldn’t find it. He wasn’t playing possum. He was dead. And the funny thing was, I’d never known him, but I was going to miss him anyway.
I rose, assuring myself that the important thing was that Jill’s secret was safe—at least it would not be betrayed by the man at my feet. For the moment I had trouble convincing myself that any secret was that important. I got into the jeep. The key was in the ignition. I started the battered vehicle, switched on the lights, and drove around the dead man on the ground and back up the canyon to where my rented Ford was parked. Mister Glory had done a good job there. Rog was dead with a bullet in the head. Francis, with two in the chest, was going fast.
“You… you left us!” he whispered when I opened the car door and bent over him. It seemed I wasn’t living up to anybody’s idea of proper behavior tonight. “You ran away!”
“You boys had all the guns,” I said. “What was I supposed to do, just sit there and throw rocks at the guy?”
“Where is he? Hanohano?”
“He won’t be back,” I said.
“Did you… did you get him?”
“I got him.”
“Ah…” Francis was silent for a little, breathing painfully. “There’s something… That woman. McLain.”
For a moment, the name rang no bells. I’d already got used to thinking of her as Marner, which probably wasn’t her real name, either.
“What about Isobel McLain?”
“That search of her room… just a phony to make you think… Watch out for… watch out…” He stopped. I thought he was gone, but then he whispered, “Jill. Good kid. The only one of us left… Save…”
“I’ll save her,” I said.
It was a promise I might find difficult to keep, but it didn’t matter. He was dead. Everybody was dead on Maui tonight. Everybody but me.
18
At least that was the way it seemed out there in the foothills. When I got to Lahaina, I discovered that there were actually quite a few people still alive on the island; in fact, the streets were full of them. At the edge of town I got off the main thoroughfare to park the jeep, figuring that it was probably known and might attract attention, driven by a stranger. At that, it was better than the rental sedan, full of blood and bullet holes. Besides, it had a plain old foot-powered brake and a real gearbox, the kind you stirred with a big stick. I could drive it fine.
I walked into town and found a phone booth down by the dock and stood inside watching the colorful, sunburned people, local and transient, circulating through the joint on the corner, a frame hotel, restaurant, and bar that seemed to be a relic of the old whaling days when the whole Pacific came to this port to get liquored and laid. I was waiting for an overseas connection. Normally I’d have called our Honolulu relay and he’d have put me straight through, but I had to assume that the whole Hawaii apparatus was in Monk’s hands, so I was calling direct. It took a while before I heard the voice of
the girl in Washington. Then Mac came on.
“Eric here,” I said. “Uncover.”
This meant that I was through playing games and we didn’t have to waste time pretending to be what we weren’t.
“Very well, Eric. Proceed.”
“The background first, sir.”
I gave it to him fast, everything that had happened to date. As I talked, I watched a piratical character in dirty white pants and a striped jersey who’d come wandering out on the veranda of the old hotel and seemed to be very carefully not looking in my direction. All he needed was a wooden leg and a patch over one eye.
“There you have it, sir,” I finished. “If you really want to keep all this quiet, as you once intimated, you’d better get a cleanup squad here from somewhere before daybreak. Let’s hope nobody uses that road for a lover’s lane tonight. Tell them to turn at the tourist-bureau sign pointing to some petroglyphs up the canyon. The Olowalu Petroglyphs. In case you’re wondering, a petroglyph is an inscription or picture story carved on rock. We’ve got some good ones back home in New Mexico.”
“Indeed? I wasn’t really wondering, Eric. Proceed.”
“Yes, sir. They should have no trouble finding the car and its contents where I told you. The other body is back down the road about two hundred yards and off to the south in the cane about thirty yards. The jeep tracks will lead them there. Tell them to look around for Hanohano’s gun; I didn’t take time to find it. Incidentally, how does it happen these Pacific people are getting the new stainless steel model while we’ve got to make do with the old blue job that rusts on sight?”
Mac said, “At the rate you reportedly go through guns, Eric, they don’t have time to rust, so what difference does it make? Hold on while I get some people moving.”
Waiting, I glanced toward the veranda, but the pirate in the striped jersey had disappeared. Some pretty girls in muu-muus were talking to some handsome young men in the long, baggy swim trunks that seem to be fashionable nowadays, a change from the glorified jockstraps of a few years back. The men reminded me of Rog, which was nothing in their favor.
“They’ll be on Maui by midnight,” Mac’s voice said in my ear. I made note of the fact that he must have had some trustworthy people standing by somewhere in the Islands, or he could not have hoped to get them here so soon. He confirmed this by saying, “What is your plan, Eric? Will you need help?”
I said, “The only help I’ll need, where I’m going, is already there—or it isn’t. As for my plan, it’s essentially the old Trojan Horse routine: get yourself hauled inside the enemy citadel somehow and hope for the best. If Jill has made it, it should work out, with a little luck. If she hasn’t…”
“Precisely,” Mac said. “You are gambling three times, Eric. You are gambling that this place, K, is actually on Molokai. Also, you are gambling, I gather, that if you get yourself captured near enough to it, you will be taken inside alive instead of simply being killed—”
I said, “Of course, if I can locate the hideout without being spotted and slip into it unseen, I’ll do it. But those are two big ifs.”
Mac went on as if I hadn’t spoken, “And finally you are gambling that if you are brought into the place, the girl will be there and in a position to help you.”
“My luck’s been running pretty good so far tonight, sir,” I said. “I’m just going to have to take the chance that Jill gave me the right general location and that Monk will react to my presence the way I expect. I mean, he’s hated me for a long time, sir. And you can’t gloat over a dead enemy like you can over a live one. It isn’t nearly as much fun.”
“Very well, but you are dealing with a man who’s acquainted with all our techniques and equipment, a man who’s even been on assignment with you and knows the way you work. As his prisoner, you aren’t likely to outwit him without help. If the girl is not there, or if she fails you—” He was silent for a little. “Perhaps it would be better if you leave her to do what she can there, while you try to pinpoint the location cautiously, after which you call up reinforcements.”
“How? I mean, hell, we could call in the whole U.S. Navy and have them search all the Islands, and do you think Monk hasn’t thought of that? They’d eventually find where he’d been, but they’d never find him. One man he’ll maybe let come in close, particularly if that man is yours truly. He knows you almost invariably work me more or less alone. And he’s got a score to pay, or thinks he has. But the minute signals start flying and it begins to look like a group operation he’ll be long gone. And what could you tell the Navy anyway, sir? That one of our men has been acting a bit funny, and we think he’s up to something kind of big, but we don’t know what it is? But we’d like to have them turn out the Fleet and muster the Marines just the same. Hell, they’d laugh in your face, sir. Besides, he’ll have arranged to be notified of any unusual naval activity, you can bet on that.”
“The Navy was not my suggestion, Eric. Of course, I have considered it, but as you say, persuading them to take appropriate action under adequate security would be very difficult since we really don’t know what we’re up against.” He paused. “You still have no idea what Monk’s intentions are?”
“No, sir. He seems to be going in all directions at once. On the one hand, we’ve got his tame peace-in-Asia front; and on the other, we have the two mysterious specialists from Peking with whatever they brought in their luggage. I can’t imagine what technical project it could be that would have Monk asking help of a bunch of Chinese. Explosives of some kind would be the logical answer, but he’s pretty competent along those lines himself. Of course if it’s something real big and nasty and nuclear, he might not have adequate facilities—”
“That’s mere guesswork,” Mac said. “And I can’t see the Chinese, with their limited nuclear capacity, turning any material of that nature over to an American agent, even a turncoat one.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said. “But what it amounts to is that we simply don’t know which way he’s going to jump. We just know he’ll jump soon. After all, he shut up the Honolulu place with a dead man on the floor, and he knows as well as anybody that there’s a limit to how long a body can lie around without getting itself discovered. Incidentally, I should have had you tell the boys to take care of that one, too, when they get a chance.”
“I did tell them,” Mac said.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “We can assume, therefore, that Monk intends to act within, say, the next forty-eight hours. Are you still in official contact?”
“The routine Pacific reports are still coming through on schedule.”
“Sure. He wouldn’t alert you by cutting them off. But I bet you can’t reach him personally.”
“I haven’t tried. It seemed best to leave him alone.” Mac hesitated. “You are counting heavily on this girl, Eric. You realize that, of course.”
“No, sir,” I said. “On the contrary, I am counting on her very lightly. That’s just the point.”
“What do you mean?”
I said, “Hell, I don’t like to stick my neck out any better than the next man. If I knew for sure she’d got there, and if I thought she could handle it alone, I’d be strongly tempted to leave her to it. Putting myself in Monk’s hands isn’t something I really look forward to, sir. But the fact is, our Jill is a fairly weak reed. In spite of my final instructions, I’m willing to bet she won’t do the job without me, even if it’s right there to be done and she’s right there to do it. She’s a nice girl, and her intentions are swell, and she looks like a brave young goddess, but there’s something strangely lacking in the fortitude department, if you know what I mean. Look at the way she tried to pin you down with that no-risk agreement. Look at the way I had to shame her into cooperating at all. She’s just a college kid playing secret agent; she won’t act without somebody right there to hold her hand. Even then, all I’m really hoping for is that she’ll have guts enough to bring a knife when the time comes to cut the ropes.”
“I s
ee.” Mac was silent, thousands of miles away. I could visualize him frowning. “That makes the odds still heavier against you.”
I said, “However, there’s one factor I neglected to mention.”
“What’s that?”
“I promised her I’d come if I could possibly make it.” He made some kind of sound. It sounded like a snort. Apparently he thought no more of my promises to Jill than he did of his own. Well, honor isn’t taken very seriously in our line of work. I said, “Yes, sir. I will give your regards to the Monk, sir, if the opportunity arises. Eric, signing off.”
Leaving the booth, I saw my skulking pirate lounging in the doorway of the saloon. He resolutely paid no attention to me as I went into the place and got the barman to steer me to a young fellow who, for a fairly substantial consideration, was willing to take a lady and a gentleman for a cozy midnight boat ride. Having made the arrangements, I walked back to the jeep, discreetly shadowed by the gent in the striped jersey, but he made no attempt to get a car and follow me further. Apparently his jurisdiction ended at the Lahaina city limits, and now all he wanted was a phone from which to report to Pressman that I’d run my errands and was on my way home.
I glanced at my watch when I reached the hotel and was surprised at how early it was. Men had died and plans had been laid upon which might depend the fate of nations, but it was only a little past nine o’clock. I looked myself over for dirt or bloodstains that would make me conspicuous inside. I made sure I’d got my belt back through all the loops. I took out my gun. I’d got it back from Rog, who’d never fired it, which was just as well, since it was still loaded with more-or-less blanks.
I’d debated taking Francis’ gun, too, but I’d decided that I was better off with just a single gun that could be fixed not to shoot. After all, I still had to deal with the lady who’d caused me to rig it that way in the first place—but first there were some details to take care of. I loaded the weapon with real ammo and went in to take care of them.
The Betrayers Page 13