“The eight of clubs. Right?”
“Right,” she said without interest. “A good trick. You can let go of my hand now.”
He did so, and was relieved to see her shove her hands casually into the pockets of her slacks and walk with Carla toward the terrace door.
“You made a great hit then, buster,” Susler said hoarsely. “If you can play bridge, sit down.”
“His game used to stink,” Billy said.
“I’ll back it for a penny a point on the side,” Cooper said.
Schanz looked at him and pursed his lips. “Okay. Set game. You and me against Billy and Susler. Want the same bet, Garry?”
“You’re on.”
“You know the rules, Farat,” Billy said. “Cheat any way you want to, but every time you’re caught, it’s five hundred above the line for us. Cut for deal.”
Schanz won the deal. They watched him like hawks as he dealt. He picked up his hand and sorted it, said, “Two spades.”
Billy on his left said, “What do you know? I got twelve cards.”
“And I got fourteen,” Susler said. They both threw their hands toward the middle of the table. Schanz reached out with blinding speed and slapped Billy’s cards down so they could not mingle with Susler’s.
“Now let’s count those twelve cards, one at a time,” Schanz said.
“You win. There’s thirteen,” Billy said. Susler licked his pencil and gave them five hundred points above the line.
“What’s with Carla?” Susler asked.
“More pressure on the kid. But it won’t work,” Schanz said.
“Even if she levels?” Cooper asked.
“She won’t. Not with the kid,” Billy said firmly. “I pass.”
Susler suddenly looked up from his cards. “What’s that?”
They all listened. Schanz ran to the doorway to the terrace. He looked out, then turned with a slow grin. “Game’s over, boys. They’re coming in, twenty-four hours ahead of schedule. They’re blinking out there now.”
Carla came running in. She hurried to the wall, opened a small panel, threw three switches. The beach was immediately floodlighted so brightly that small dips and humocks in the sand made jet black shadows. Cooper looked for Barbara and could not see her.
There was a bone-jarring thud against the side of Cooper’s skull. His vision swam and his knees sagged. He turned and managed to make out the face of Billy, distorted with glee. Billy’s words of explanation came from a long distance. “Least we can do is let Rocko find him on his back, Carla.”
The misted arm swam up again and came down. Cooper dropped to his knees. He knew that Billy was pulling the blows, making it last. He tried to cover his head and the sap landed on his forearm, numbing his hand. Carla called out and he couldn’t make out her words. The next blow drove him down toward the rug and he melted through it down to a place where the sea had a hollow murmur and no night was ever as black.
Some white explosion of fear deep in the blackness drove him up like a rocket, bursting out into the light. He knew he was on a bed. He looked up at a ceiling, closed his eyes again. The light hurt them. He moved the arm that hurt and his fingers touched warmth and softness.
He turned his head then, opening his eyes, and saw taffy hair spilled on the white pillow, saw the straining seams of the pale blue dress Alice had worn when he carried her into the bedroom. The dress brought back all the rest of it, and brought new fear with it.
He sat up and stared into the face of Rocko Kadma. It was not the face of the pictures in the file. That had been a plump face, with the eyes set in comfortable pads of flesh, the mouth tiny and smiling and forever pursed as though held in by a taut drawstring. Now the scant flesh of the face hung in the bloodhound folds of the old stretched skin. Only the tiny mouth was the same. And the dancing glint in the little dark eyes below the high bulge of the naked skull.
Kadma wore a suit of European cut, spotless linen, burnished shoes. This was the man whose ruthlessness was legend, whose scores of victims danced forever in the deep currents of the lakes and the rivers.
He looked like the neat little proprietor of a neighborhood butcher shop. The slim foreign automatic in his lap between the plump thighs, and the long bulge of the silencer — they were anachronism.
“Go on, Allan, my best friend. Look at what you die for, my best friend. See if worth it.”
Allan reached for a cigarette. He froze with his hand in his shirt pocket. The tiny shrunken mouth of the silencer was aimed between his eyes. “Just cigarettes,” he whispered.
“Take out slow, my best friend.”
Cooper slowly pulled the half-empty pack out of his pocket. He took out the lighter with equal slowness. He lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it.
“Hand trembles now, eh? Bad nerves, my best friend?”
“You want to play cat and mouse. Go ahead.”
Kadma bowed his head on his short neck. “Thank you. Thank you.”
The room door was shut. “What do you want, Rocko?”
Rocko looked through him and beyond him. The pursed mouth twisted. “Better you should have killed me long ago. I tell you about five years. Know what five years is? This my country. I come here when twelve. Fifty-one when I go. A young fifty-one. Now fifty-six. But an old fifty-six. You see that, eh? My mirror say it too. You kill me slow, Allan. Should have been fast. Better for you.”
“I thought you’d land on your feet.”
“Over there, boy, nobody is on his feet. Twice I damn near starve. Eat garbage. Sleep in fields. You think I’m gone forever, my best friend. Not Rocko. Rocko makes new friends. Rocko can help new friends. Back on top now.”
“On top, or are you taking orders?”
The little dark eyes went completely mad for the space of three heartbeats, so mad that Cooper tensed for the impact of the slug. Then madness died. Lids slid down to cover half the eyes. He said very softly, “When I think I die over there, I think about you. You and that woman. Gives strength, my best friend. Much strength to keep living. Someday I say I find you and talk to you. Like this. In room with gun and her. Door closed. A big dream, Allan. Dream for a long time. Nice to dream when it comes true, eh?”
“What are you going to do?”
Rocko frowned. “You know me. Twenty, thirty times smart fellas try to fool old Rocko. All die, not too easy. Even when they do no harm. You, you hurt me worse than anybody in the world. Anybody. So I keep thinking. How can you die? What way is good? Hard to say. I think of hundred ways. Where you scream five, six days before dead.”
A cold hand closed on Cooper’s heart. It was tragedy and comedy. In Burma it had been the fear of torture, not the fear of death that had finally broken him. He had found the Britisher that hot airless afternoon in the small clearing. The man had lived until nightfall. Cooper could still remember his screaming, thin and endless, like the cry of an insect in the jungle.
And he had come five years and fourteen thousand miles to face it again.
“Why laughing?” Rocko asked blandly. “Funny, eh?”
“Was I laughing?”
“You come here alone. Why you do that?”
“Maybe there’s something you don’t know, Rocko. Something important.”
“Old Allan. Always one for the bluff. Drawing two pair, betting like full house. Always.”
“What will you get out of killing me?”
Rocko gave him a puzzled frown. “What do I get? I show you. Wake up her. Quick.”
Cooper shook Alice awake. She smiled out of her sleep at him and reached for him. Then something warned her. She looked over toward the chair planted with its back to the closed door. Her complexion turned to an ugly greenish yellow and her mouth sagged. She romped onto her knees, completely sober, the words bubbling wetly on her lips as she pleaded.