Boris came in, sat down on the bench, and laid the long cutlass across his knees.
“Everybody asleep?” asked Burt.
“All cabins dark, sir. But I think nobody sleep in number three.”
“Oh?”
“The woman go there, meet the hairy man outside. Kiss-kiss. Go inside. Lights off. One hour ago.”
Burt frowned; he couldn’t imagine that Bunny would risk Rolf’s displeasure by sneaking off on her own. Maybe Rolf had thrown the woman to Ace to keep him quiet. Bunny was nothing if not adaptable.
“Watch the body,” said Burt, rising and stretching. “Don’t let him bother you.”
Boris smiled thinly and touched the cutlass. “I had no fear when he living. Now he is out of it.”
Burt sat in the tower. Across the water came the distant sound of a dog barking idiotically, incessantly. Above him the stars sent down a frantic, coruscating brilliance. Below him the surf was a brilliant white snake which held the island in a triple coil, expanding and contracting. He smelled the sea and felt the rain washed breeze on his face. He perceived tranquility, but didn’t feel it. Something evil was slithering over the island; something worse than the rats, because it wore the body of a man.
“Burt, you up there?”
Burt jumped at the nearness of Rolf’s voice. How had the man moved up so quietly?
“There’s hardly room for two,” said Burt.
“What are you doing—” a soft, breathy grunt, and Rolf was over the parapet and kneeling beside him “—watching the stars?”
Burt kept taut despite the friendly sound of Rolf’s voice. Only a yard away lay a five-hundred foot drop to the rocks.
Rolf looked up at the stars and drew a deep breath.
“They are beautiful tonight, sort of washed by the rain. Orion, Cassiopeia, the pale disc of Andromeda. We’re looking out into time, Burt, six billion years into the past. You know how that makes me feel?” He went on without pausing. “It’s all a game, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes,” admitted Burt. “I feel that I’m also involved in the game, which means bound to follow the rules.”
“You play by the rules because you don’t trust your own nature.”
“Does your master know you’re out?”
Rolf laughed. “Satan? I wonder if you aren’t right,” He chuckled softly, obviously pleased. “I came up to talk, Burt. Killing does that; it enlarges me, intensifies my senses.” He leaned forward. “Can’t you feel the pygmies down below us? Their petty emotions boiling, their fears? Joss lying asleep in the club with her bottle beside her? Thinking of... what? Strange whirling shapes and curtain-calls she missed and men she didn’t kiss. Old Jata with her door nailed shut against Damballa and a dozen other red-eyed beasts; her daughter twitching beside her, fighting those teenage chemicals with the brain of an eight-year-old...”
“How about Ace and Bunny?”
Rolf darted him an oblique look. “Sleeping the sleep of satiety, I suppose.” He paused. “I shouldn’t be surprised that you know. You have your own spy network, haven’t you?”
Burt grunted. “I thought you had her under better control. You disappoint me.”
“And you disappoint me for not understanding. Weren’t you watching Ace at dinner? Of course you were. Jumpy, scared... wanting. There’s a close correlation between fear and the sex urge. Look at wartime illegitimacy—”
“So you threw him Bunny.”
“He’d have grabbed her anyway. Islands have that effect on people, Burt. You tend to think of direct solutions to your problems. Look at Joss. She wants a man, she makes a blunt physical appeal. If that doesn’t work, she offers booze, free meals, a pad. She uses what she has. Ace there. He’s a man of violence. Lives by the gun. He wants a woman, he’ll take her. A man gets in his way, kill him. Simple and very effective... on an island. Who’d have defended her? You, March?”
Burt sighed; he was tired of Rolf.
“It’s all hypothetical.”
“Sure, because I didn’t allow it to become real. Now Ace will awaken in a tranquil state, a little less afraid—”
“What’s he afraid of?”
“Of you, now that he knows you’re a cop. You represent society, and in his eyes that makes you bigger than you really are.” He laughed softly. “It also makes him more dangerous to you, since Ace destroys what he fears.”
“I suppose everyone tries—”
“I don’t.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Everything.” Rolf laughed without humor. “And therefore nothing. Hostility surrounds me; there is nowhere to run. And so I don’t run.”
“And your wife? What’s she afraid of?”
Rolf looked narrowly at Burt. “You’re very interested in Tracy. I wonder why.” When Burt said nothing, Rolf went on in a musing manner. “Actually, I don’t know what Tracy’s afraid of. Something, certainly, but I can’t pin it down. I’ve never been able to reach her, which is why—” He broke off, then went on in an abrupt, businesslike voice: “I have to know if you’re with me. Tonight.”
Burt felt his stomach tighten; he’d been expecting the question. “If I say yes, how will you be sure of me?”
“You’ll be given a job to do. Kill Ace.”
Burt caught his breath then let it out slowly. “Why?” Rolf ignored the question. “You could do it your way. Get him cornered, box him in, taunt him until he makes a try at you. Then you cool him. Self-defense; I’ve seen other cops do it.” He laughed shortly. “You can’t lose, March. Neither of us can.”
Burt forced down his anger; he wanted to learn more. “I want to know the rest of the deal. All of it.”
Rolf was silent a moment, then sighed. “All right. Briefly. It started with a mordida, a bribe. A cabinet minister in a small Latin-American country — you’ll excuse me if I slip the specifics — was getting rich on pay-offs from foreign firms who wanted to do business there. I paid — several times — and I got to know him. He lived austerely by politico standards, only one mistress, one Cadillac, one mansion. What did he do with the money? I was curious, and I told Bunny to find out. But then came the revolution, the insurgents won concessions from the government, among which was the purge of the corrupt minister. He made a run for it and got himself cut down by machine-gun fire. Bunny had learned only one thing; the country’s ambassador to the U.S. was his closest friend. The ambassador also got caught in the purge, but he claimed asylum and holed up in a beach villa on Florida’s east coast. Bunny and I returned to the States, where she met the ambassador and — in the direct manner of hers — quickly insinuated herself into his favor. It took her a year to learn his secret; not an easy year, either. The man was a greasy troll with the manners of a swamp rat. The minister had been converting his loot into diamonds and sending them to the ambassador in sealed diplomatic pouches. The diamonds were now in a strongbox locked in a safe in the villa. I had already begun building my organization. You may appreciate the way it was done, March. I went to a sleazy part of Miami, pretended to be rolling drunk, and flashed a few big bills. As I expected, three men followed and cornered me in a doorway. I’ll never forget the surprised look on their faces when they realized that their victim had become an assailant. You see, I too had learned that one may kill legally in self-defense. I have left more than one unidentified body in alleys for the police to find. I killed one, leaving Hoke and Charlie alive. They were frightened, and since fear is the seed of loyalty — perhaps the only way to insure the loyalty of such men — I decided to use them. They led me to Ace Smith, who had just finished an eight-year sentence for armed robbery. I wanted to make the theft look like an ordinary burglary, you see, so that they’d never connect it with me. And to shorten the tale, I now have nearly a million dollars in diamonds.”