Hinge hurried back into the woods, walked to the top of the ridge and sat down for a moment. It was quiet, except for the wind and faraway boom of the surf. He smiled to himself, realizing that the cigar was still in his mouth. He crumpled up the cigar and held out his hand, watching the tobacco blow away, then burned the paper bag containing the rest of the paraphernalia.
Hinge was feeling good now. It had gone off without a hitch. So much for the little thief. He took out the roll of film, held his lighter under one end and watched the flames devour it. Then he went back to his car.
Hinge did not make the call until he got back to the Honolulu airport. He dialled the 800 number and vas surprised at how fast the call went through.
‘Yes?’ the voice on the other end said.
‘Reporting.’
‘State your clearance.’
‘Hinge. Q-thirteen.’
‘Tape rolling.’
‘Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack—’
‘Voice clearance positive. ID positive. State your contact.’
‘Quill.’
‘We are routing.’
He was on hold for almost a minute before it was picked
‘This is Quill.’
‘I made the connection. The information was retrieved and destroyed.’
‘Excellent. And the connection?’
‘Terminated.’
‘Good. Problems?’
‘No problems.’
‘Sorry you had to interrupt your vacation.’
‘It worked out fine. I’ll be back at the Royal Hawaiian by dinner,’
‘Thank you. Happy New Year.’
‘The same to you. Aloha.’
4
It was an enormous room, menacing in its darkness, the hand sculpted molding around its ten-foot ceilings vaguely discernible in the eerie shadows cast by one small Oriental lamp in a corner. Bare hardwood floors glistened like the surface in an ice-skating rink; corners were pools of shadows. The only windows in the room, lining one entire wall, had once been exterior French doors, now glassed in to reveal a windowless hothouse filled with tropical ferns and flowerless leafy plants. The three or four small grow lights on the floor of the hothouse accentuated its greenery but succeeded only in creating ominous silhouettes of what little furniture there was in the main room.
The temperature in the room was exactly 82 degrees; it was always exactly 82 degrees.
The place was as quiet as a library. Except for the incessant ticking, like a time bomb ticking away the minutes of someone’s life.
Near the door was an ensemble of leather furniture: two large easy chairs and a seven-foot sofa separated by a low teak coffee table. The end tables were made of matching teak, and each held a Philippine basket lamp. The coffee table was empty except for a single oversized Oriental ashtray.
Two of the other three corners were bare except for antique temple dogs that squatted angrily under tall leafy ferns.
The other corner was dominated by a large oak campaign desk with eight hard-back chairs in front of it. The top of the desk was bare except for an old-fashioned wooden letter file, a large ashtray, a leather-bound appointment book and an elaborate red Buddha lamp with an old-fashioned fringed lampshade and a pull string.
And the box.
It was a plain white box about the size of a large dictionary. There was a red ribbon around it with a large frivolous Christmas bow.
The chair behind the desk loomed up like a throne, its giant back rising into the darkness. A cloud of smoke eddied out from the dark tombstone of the chair. ‘The only lamp on iii the room was the Buddha lamp. It slanted an eerie light over the desk, casting the white box in harsh shadows. Its heat sucked the smoke away from the chair, sent it swirling in little whirlpools, up through the lampshade.
There was a sound in the box, a scurrying. The top moved slightly, and then was still again.
The man in the chair moved forward. His long, narrow, skeletal head was topped by thin strands of white hair, carefully brushed from one side to the other. His cheeks were deeply drawn, each line and wrinkle accentuated by the light from the single lamp; his jaw tight, the -veins standing out along its hard edge like strands of wire. It was a face from the past, from history books and old newsreels and magazines, a stern, hawklike face, promising victory while defeat was still sour in his mouth, a vengeful face that conjured memories of the wrath of Moses and the zeal of John Brown.
General Hooker. The Hook. He had been called a military genius, compared by militarists and historians to Alexander the Great, Stonewall Jackson and Patton. Hooker, chased out of the Philippines by the Japanese early in the war, becoming the architect of the Pacific War, plotting every strategic move, studying every island as he edged closer and closer to the Japanese mainland.
Hooker had almost become a legend.
That son of a bitch, he said to himself. He was thinking about Douglas MacArthur. Dugout Doug, who had run the war from Australia while the Hook plodded wearily from one bleak atoll to the next in the bloody march toward Japan. True, the old bastard was quick with the praise as Hooker scored the victories, but he knew just what to say to the press, and when to say it, and ultimately the mantle of victory fell on MacArthur’s shoulders. There was no way to top the son of a bitch. On the day Corregidor fell, one of the blackest days in American history, while everyone else was in a panic over how to tell the public, the old bastard had turned the melee into a personal victory chorus with his goddamn ‘I shall return.’ It had become a slogan, a war cry, the ‘Remember the Alamo’ of World War II. But, even the Hook had to hand it to the old s.o.b., it was also a promise of victory, said with such stalwart authority that no one ever doubted him. And when he did get back, with that I have returned’ shit, everybody knew it was all over. The photographs even made the old bastard look like he was walking on water, just in case there were any heretics around.
So MacArthur became the legend, and the Hook became a mere folk hero, along with Wainwright, Chennault, Stilwell, and a few others.
After that, there was nothing but disaster ahead. Hooker could see it coming. People were tired of war. MacArthur got the sack in Korea. A hot war was brewing in Indochina. And the Hook knew the Orient, knew that Vietnam, as it would come to be known, was no place to be.
Screw it.
Let Westmoreland or some other daisy take the rap for Vietnam. The Hook hung it up and retired. There were other things to do.
Two years later the rigors of those years claimed their toll. A massive coronary almost killed Hoo.ker. The ticking in the room came from deep in his chest; a pacemaker, flawed yet effective, and much too dangerous for doctors to replace. It was a constant reminder of his mortality and would one day be a harbinger of his death. When its ominous note stopped, for that fraction of a moment before everything stopped with it, Hooker would know he was a dead man. In the meantime he continued to defy the odds; he was pushing seventy-five, but he still had the brilliance and the obsessions of a man much younger.