Бретт Холлидей - Count Backwards to Zero

“I’ll have to explain,” he said. “It may take me a minute, because it’s such a damned uncharacteristic thing for me to be doing.”

“Mike—”

“No, wait. I don’t know how much a bomb like that is worth in terms of money. It isn’t something you pick up in the A & P. With Geller and Diamond bidding against each other, it could be a fantastic deal for the man in the middle. Look at it that way, and every minute counts. Something can happen to one of the bidders. He can die, for example. If all I cared about was money — and that’s an incredible remark coming from me — I would have held onto Geller. I’d ask him to give me a price, then I’d find out how Diamond reacted, and let it go to the side that could produce the most cash. But it’s not that simple.”

She relaxed slightly. He touched her knee.

“I want us to do this together, Anne. Between Israel and the Arabs, you must know which side I’m on. But that’s not the important thing.” His hand moved along her leg. “Is it?”

She forced herself to respond, but he could feel her tension.

“It’s the important thing to me, the only important thing. It’s my life. I see what you mean — dimly — and you realize how much I’m attracted to you. But right now we have to — I feel—”

She made a distracted gesture.

“It’s time to stop rushing,” Shayne said. “Everybody’s been doing too much of that. I want to stop and start over. We should have been working together all along. I want to get a room. All right?”

The hand that a few moments ago had been pointing a gun at him reached up to touch the harsh stubble at the edge of his jaw.

“Mike, tomorrow and the next day and the week after that. But not now. You can come out with us on the plane, or tell me where you want me to meet you.” She shivered. “But God, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could?”

“We can,” he assured her. “Let’s invest a few minutes and establish that we’re really on the same side. Then we can talk about it.”

She hesitated. “I think I’m too wound up. I wish I could.”

“Let’s try,” he said gently. “If we sit here firing questions we’ll never get anywhere. We don’t have to press too hard. See what happens.”

After a moment she nodded. “It doesn’t feel right to me, but if you think it would help—”

Touching the back of her neck, he guided her in against him. They kissed. At the same time, with his left hand, he reached along the steering column and pulled the ignition fuse.

“Darling,” he said.

He went into the office. The woman on duty was the wife of an old friend.

“Mike Shayne, in the flesh,” she exclaimed. “I put your girl in Room 22, on the balcony. But isn’t she a little young for you?”

“Patsy, you’ve been reading too many dirty novels,” Shayne said. “I want another room. Keep looking at me. There’s a girl outside in my car. If she slides over into the driver’s seat, tell me. Let me have a registration card.” Shayne scribbled his name and paid for the room. “Is the other girl still here?”

“Miss Cecily Little, of Camberwell, England. She came in a few minutes ago for ice cubes. Before that she was phoning like crazy.”

“Who to?” Shayne said quickly.

“I didn’t write them down — all Miami calls.”

Shayne thought briefly. “Do something for me, Patsy. If she phones again, ring me and cut me in on the call. Can you do that?”

“I can, but would it be ethical?”

“Absolutely, especially if nobody knows about it. And can you watch the stairway for me? I want to know right away if she goes out. Some fairly important things are riding on this, including my health and well being. How many rooms do you still have vacant?”

“Two, Mike. Business has been slow all week.”

He added two more twenties to the bills on the counter. “Put up your No Vacancy sign so you can concentrate. Give me two quick rings if she goes out.”

“Don’t worry, Mike,” she said, impressed. “If I have to go to the bathroom or anything, I’ll get Pete to stand in for me.”

She gave him the key to a ground-floor room. He took it back to the car, with a plastic container of ice cubes, dropped the key on the floor, and while he was retrieving it, replaced the fuse.

“Can you drink cognac? It’s all I have.”

“Mike, do we have time for a drink? It seems more and more impossible that this can really be happening.”

He moved the Buick into the slanted opening in front of their room, and took the cognac out of the glove compartment before locking the car. Inside, they saw the usual motel furniture, the principal item, of course, being beds.

Anne stood nervously at the side of one bed, holding her purse in both hands, while Shayne made the drinks.

“Mike, this is ridiculous. I’ve never felt less sexually inclined in my life.”

“People say it’s relaxing. We need to relax.”

He held out a glass. She took it, and came in against him to hug him with her free arm.

“Mike, I’m a dedicated girl. I’ve been doing this work for two and a half years, and nothing remotely like this has ever happened. Most of the time it’s been paperwork, going through technical journals, not the way the novelists describe it at all. And now all at once—”

She gestured with her glass, and drank some cognac. She coughed.

“I’m not that much of a drinker,” she explained.

Setting the drink on the bedside table, she unbuttoned her blouse. A sensible girl, she was wearing nothing underneath. She killed the light and continued undressing in the dark.

“I’m also a little shy, you’ll find,” she said. “Of course you’ve already seen me undressed. In your cabin on the Queen?”

“I remember it well. If I hadn’t just been jumped by those two guys, I would have been more polite.”

“My feelings weren’t hurt. Mike, don’t dawdle. I think I see what you’re driving at, but try to understand how I feel, too. I hear clocks ticking all around me.”

He had poured three fingers of cognac into one of the drinking glasses the motel provided inside a paper envelope. He drank it in one pull, waited till he could feel it begin to course through his body, and began deliberately to undress.

Unable to wait, she came to help. Their fingers became tangled. As his clothes came off she kissed him impatiently. But when he came down on the bed beside her the tempo changed.

Presently they were moving easily together, everything synchronizing nicely. He heard a phone ringing in his Buick, outside the window, but whoever that was would have to wait. At the end, completely at ease with him, Anne was laughing softly against his face.

“You were right,” she said as they separated. “So incredibly right, Michael. I’m in a different time zone.”

“Do you mind if I turn on a light?”

“No, dear.”

He snapped on the bedside light and found his cigarettes, which had spilled out of the package onto the floor. He poured more cognac for himself before joining her against the pillows.

“Even so, we rushed it a bit, didn’t we? Next time will be better. God, I love the way you feel.” She smiled and touched him.

They lit cigarettes.

“Now,” he said, breathing out smoke. “About Geller. How long you’ve been with him, how you found out about all this.”

“I wish we didn’t have to talk about anybody but us, but I’m not that carried away, I guess. Did you hear your car phone a few minutes ago, or did I imagine it?”

“I’ll get it the next time it rings.”

“Then about Sam. He was one of the people who helped arm Israel in the early days. I was his secretary before — well, before we moved on from there. It was an assignment, you see. I’m a lieutenant in the Israeli army, all right? To get that out of the way. I turned in reports on the various things Sam was doing. He keeps a dozen irons in the fire, sometimes working for us, sometimes for himself. And then somebody in the organization picked up on what was happening with Quentin. Dessau and Diamond were seen together, and we knew Diamond was working for the Arabs. When they separated, our person followed Dessau to Camberwell, where we found him having nightly meetings with an important British physicist.”