Donald Hamilton: The Betrayers

"If you don't know him, what do you care?"

I said, "For Christ's sake, if you've got something to say, say it. If you don't, get off the damn line and let me go to bed. It's been a long day and airplanes make me tired."

Monk's voice said heavily, "If you don't know Naguki, I guess you don't mind if we kill him a little."

I said, "Hell, draw and quarter him if you like. He's all yours. I give you Naguki, whoever he may be. No charge. Now can I go to sleep?"

Monk said nothing. He just cut the connection. I replaced the phone gently in its cradle and looked at myself in the mirror of the dresser across the room, but that was a mistake. The guy in the glass looked like a cold-blooded son-of-a-bitch, the kind of callous louse who'd sacrifice a man's life without turning a hair. I told myself that nothing I could have said would have helped Naguki once the Monk decided to grab him. It was probably the truth but it didn't make me feel any better.

I went to bed. After a while I even went to sleep, to awaken suddenly at the sound of somebody nearby crying out a shrill warning. I went into the standard surprised-in-bed routine without stopping to think-if you think about it you often don't survive to do it-and wound up on the rug six feet away, gun in hand, facing in the direction from which the noise had come. I was surprised to discover that it was morning. There was nobody in sight.

I had closed the lanai shutters before turning in, since I don't like sleeping in full view of the outdoors. Why make it easy for a guy with a rifle and telescopic sight? Nothing moved, inside or out. Nobody spoke or screamed. I rose cautiously and backed away and inspected the bathroom and dressing room. Having made sure no danger lurked behind me, I returned to the bedroom and stood there, frowning. Everything was very quiet; then the sharp, hysterical cry that had awakened me came again.

I strode across the porch and yanked back the shutters and looked out from my second-story vantage at a couple of birds about the size of starlings on the shingled roof of the bungalow across the way. They were having a hell of an argument. I grimaced, wondering if perhaps I really needed the vacation I wasn't going to get. I went back to the bedroom dresser and leafed through a pamphlet I'd brought with me and identified the little feathered squabblers as mynah birds. While I was at it, waiting for my circulatory and nervous systems to re turn to normal, I looked up the unlikely-looking red flower on the table: anthurium.

My watch read barely six-thirty, local time, but I didn't feel sleepy enough to get back into bed. Instead I shed my pajamas, dug out swim trunks and sandals, put them on, and grabbed a towel. When I got down to the beach, I had it all to myself. A large outrigger canoe with the hotel's name on it was drawn up on the sand. The water was blue and clear. The slow waves rolling up to the shore didn't look very big, but half a mile out an occasional one would break into white foam as it stumbled over a reef or shelf out there.

Leaving my sandals and towel on the stone sea wall, I walked out onto the sand and looked around. It was my first real view of Waikiki Beach. If I'd had any childish illusions about the place, they'd have died right there. If you're still dreaming of a long, curving strip of white sand shaded by tall tropical palm trees, forget it. There are a few palms, to be sure, but what you'll find is a long, curving strip of white sand shaded mainly by tall luxury hotels. Even the frowning mass of Diamond Head, the great rock guarding the eastern end of the Bay, hasn't escaped the promoters. Right at the tip, like pimples on Oahu's aristocratic nose, are several monstrous complexes of glass and concrete at least a dozen stories high.

Well, I have no doubt that some financial genius has great plans for filling in the Grand Canyon to make a nice level spot for a tourist resort. The fact that the tourists will then have no view left to look at has been taken into consideration: there'll be a swell eighteen-hole golf course instead.

I guess I was a little disappointed, after all. I told myself, what the hell, I'd known I wasn't coming to a desert island, why should I be surprised that people had built houses on it? I waded into the water, a little chilly at that hour of the morning, and swam out a distance but discovered that I could still touch bottom. Out here, however, it was no longer sand but weeds and coral, nothing you'd care to walk around on barefoot. Not knowing what kind of tropical sea monsters might lurk in the crevices, I paddled hastily back to where I could see what I was stepping on.

After getting to my feet in the shallows, I started to wade shoreward and stopped abruptly. A slender, sunburned, blonde girl in a scanty white bikini was just coming down to the beach, balancing a red-and-white surfboard on her head. Considering that the board was eight or ten feet long, a couple of feet wide, and probably weighed well over thirty pounds, this was quite a sight in itself, but it wasn't the athletic trick that had startled me. For a moment I'd thought there was something familiar about the approaching figure. I mean, let's face it, Claire had worn a white bikini on occasion.

It wasn't Claire, of course. Claire was dead half a world away, and this was a taller girl with a rangier build. She was just as brown as the girl I'd known in Europe, but her streaky blonde hair was darker-more like light brown hair bleached by the sun-and longer, reaching well down her shoulders. Claire's had been quite short, just a light silvery cap.

As she passed me, the strange girl gave me an impersonal little smile from under the board: just a friendly early riser greeting a kindred spirit. She stopped beyond me to launch her gaudy plank, and straightened up to give a hitch to the bottom of her bikini, or perhaps just to reassure herself that she hadn't misplaced the essential scrap of cloth somewhere. She posed there briefly, breathing the fresh morning air, slowly running her fingers through her uncovered hair, pushing it back from her face.

On the beach, you can tell a lot about a girl by the way she treats her hair. If she comes down to the shore all ratted and lacquered and paddles around in shallow water like a stiff-necked turtle, obviously thinking of nothing but keeping the precious stuff dry, you might as well forget about her. You aren't man enough to get her mind off her coiffure. Nobody is.

If she takes the bathing-cap route and really swims, there's hope for her, but she's either incurably optimistic or not very bright, since the cap hasn't been in-vented yet that'll keep all water out. But if she just dives in and lets her hairdo wash where it will, you'd better grab her quick before some smart guy beats you to her. She may look a little stringy come evening, but she'll probably be worth it. At least she knows there are more important things in the world than hair.

I watched the blonde girl throw herself onto the surfboard and paddle out to sea with strong simultaneous strokes of her brown arms. The contrast between soft round girl and hard flat board was very intriguing. When a wave splashed over her, it didn't bother her a bit. Obviously she'd come to the water to get wet, hair and all. Obviously also, she was thinking of nothing but getting out to where the big ones were breaking. The fact that a man was watching her couldn't have concerned her less. Obviously.

I sighed and turned away to get my towel and sandals. Under other circumstances, having had such a nice show put on for me, I might have done something impulsive like trying to scare up a beach boy to rent me a surfboard. Not that I knew how to work one, but that wouldn't matter. My early-morning seasprite would be glad of the excuse to teach me, I was fairly sure.

Please understand, I don't normally figure every blonde on the beach is posing just for me, even when she does the fingers-through-the-hair bit and there's nobody around but the two of us. Girls do scratch their heads upon occasion, just like everybody else, and it doesn't necessarily mean a thing, even when it's accompanied by the deep-breathing, isn't-it-a-glorious-morning act.