The soldier I had karate chopped was coming to life again, beginning to rise. I folded him back and pinned him to the ground with another quick burst.
I had expected the dogs to leap at me immediately. But on the contrary, they had turned on their helpless master who had so cruelly abused them, and were chewing savagely at that gory remnant of a man.
Now I peeled my coveralls and after checking to see that the stylus and the little leather code book, complete with deciphering notes, were still in the pocket of my suit jacket, I pivoted toward the monster-like boulders. Lifting and spreading my arms generously, I sent the girls a broad signal of victory and welcome.
For a moment I watched them scramble from the rocks and race toward the embankment, their wheat-blonde heads bobbing in the sun. Then I recovered the Luger and stiletto from the ground near Pilar. I stood above her and thought: how evil, how beautiful. What a waste!
I turned to leave, then with an afterthought whose purpose was not greed, I opened her blouse and removed what she had described as a thick girdle of currency — namely a money belt.
Carrying it with me, I ran toward the copter. I had checked the fuel gauge, had nearly cried with joy when I discovered the tank was full, and was warming the motor, the big blade twirling, when the girls ducked under and climbed aboard.
I brought the rotor up to speed, adjusted the pitch, and we left the ground like a great wingless bird startled by the boom of a hunter’s shotgun. Below the complex of buildings that had housed the fatal conspiracy of Knox Wamow and Anton Zhizov seemed to melt into the terrain as we rose and slipped away.
Whirling through the notch between the mountains, passing the gigantic upstretched finger of rock, we had almost lost sight of the compound.
But in another minute, it was awesomely defined for us as it was blasted, burned, pulverized by the atomic explosion that I had been expecting at any second as I kept checking my watch. As the sound reached us, so did the shock waves. The copter was lifted and bounced and spun around as if teased by a giant hand.
The searing white glare was so intense we were forced to look away. But when the cork-on-rough-water tossing of the copter ceased, we again gazed at the site of the explosion, and saw the pale-smoke mushroom of the rising, expanding cloud.
I nodded to the tortured, buttercup faces of the twins, and I said, “Yes, that’s right It was the big one, the grandaddy of explosions. And I knew it was coming. Do you wonder I saw no point in warning you? You would have been hysterical, in panic.”
“And why weren’t you in panic?” Terri asked reasonably.
“Because the threat of death is almost routine to me,” I answered. “On every assignment it walks at my elbow.”
“Assignment?” said Jerri. “What assignment? Tell us what you do. Tell us what the whole horrible business is all about.”
“Who were those people?” Terri asked. “And what was in those buildings?”
“What buildings?” I said. “What people? There were no people. There were no buildings. They never existed.”
“News of the explosion will reach the papers in headlines and then we can tell all our friends what happened,” said Jerri.
“It will never reach the papers,” I said. “And if asked, I will deny the least knowledge of the explosion and the events surrounding it. Subject closed. Period!”
“How can you be so mysterious in the face of—” Terri began.
“My work is a mystery,” I said. Then, with a smile, “And I am a phantom with no real existence — just an image of your dreams.”
I handed the money belt to Terri and I said, “I owe you, sweetheart, and there’s a little down payment. I owe you both. And I suspect that there’s enough in that filthy-rich girdle to open a dress shop.”
Twenty-Four
Two days later I was stretched out between the satiny sheets of a bed as big as a regulation size tennis court in the most expensive and luxurious suite of the Royal Curasao Hotel on Pescadera Bay. In one hand was an iced glass of the dry orange liqueur that takes its name from the island, in the other was a baby-blue telephone. In my ear was the voice of David Hawk, who was Just then giving me an unusually cheerful sign off from his throne in Washington, D.C.
“And don’t forget to send the money!” I told him.
“Sunny?” he shouted. “Well, its not sunny here. Been raining all day!” Then he softly chuckled.
“Send the money by wire!” I shouted back at him. “I am a man of infinite patience. Therefore, anytime in the next hour will do nicely. And if it is indeed raining there, be sure to wear your rubbers!”
I put down the phone.
I rolled over and winked at Rona Volstedt who lay next to me, propped by pillows and drinking a glass of the same native concoction.
“Hawk wanted to know if we’d like a bonus vacation on the government,” I told her. “He suggested a leisurely Caribbean cruise.”
Rona made a sour-lemon face. Then she chuckled. “I didn’t know the old guy had a sense of humor.”
“He keeps it well hidden,” I answered. “And only drags it out when there’s some special occasion worthy of a little smile. Like when the entire nation has been saved from city-by-city atomic devastation.”
Rona sipped her drink. “And what else did he say?”
“Only that, following my directions, his boys located all the suitcase bombs. He’s informed the Russian government that the death’s-head conspiracy has been smashed; the file is closed.”
“My God,” she groaned. “And that’s all there is to the whole caper? A little cruise, some shots fired, a dip in the ocean, a torture chamber, more shots, and a piddling explosion?”
She grinned. “So what’ll we do for excitement?”
I didn’t say a word.
But just the same, I spent the next two weeks answering that question.