"What about the Walther you had?" I asked.
"Mr. Soo took that back. It was his. Didn't you recognize it just now?"
"All right," I said, releasing her. "Sorry if it hurt." She rubbed her fingers and spoke without looking at me. "You're a lousy, treacherous bastard, aren't you? I saved you, and instead of being grateful-" I said wearily, "Bobbie, cut out the corn. Didn't they teach you anything about this business except how to imitate a movie-mad kid from Arizona?" She didn't speak, and I went on: "We're not playing kid games with grateful and ungrateful. I have a job to do. Mr. Soo has a job to do. The two assignments are, let us say, incompatible. Therefore you'd damn well better forget about converting the whole world to non-violence, at least for the moment, and make up your mind whose side you're on."
She was silent for several seconds. "I don't know!" she breathed at last. "Can't you understand, Matt, I don't know any longer. Everything's changed. It all looks so different from when I came over here. Oh, God, I wish I were still the same stuffy, dedicated, brainwashed little creep who came over here so cocksure she knew exactly what was right and noble and Marxist-and what was wrong and decadent and capitalist!" She made a face. "I really don't know what's the matter with me, darling! It isn't as if this country of yours had been particularly good to me. You'd think I'd had a wonderful time over here and everybody'd treated me swell, the way I'm talking, but I haven't and they didn't. It's been a hell of a grind, even apart from knowing that sooner or later I'd get the word from somebody and have to start earning my keep…" She stopped, and drew a long breath. "I don't want to be a goddamn spy!" she said. "Not for them or for you. I just want to… All I want is to be left alone to live my own life, don't you understand?"
I said callously, "Sure, so did that cop. So, undoubtedly, did Dr. Osbert Sorenson, not to mention our girl O'Leary, and a colored pugilist type named McConnell, and five Cosa Nostra characters who were shot to death in their drugged sleep. They all wanted to be left alone to live their own lives, such as they were."
She said, "I know, darling, I know! That's why I
Oh, I'm just so damned mixed up! I don't know what-" She was silent again, briefly; then she sighed. "I suppose I've got to go back there."
"Why would you want to do a silly thing like that?"
"I didn't say I want to. I said I've got to." Bobbie hesitated. "I've got to, because they spent a lot of time and money on me, and I'd be dead now if they hadn't.
No, don't bother to tell me again that they did it strictly for their own sinister purposes. I know that. The fact is, they did it, and I benefited from it. There's got to be a little… a little loyalty, even a little gratitude although you make fun of it. There are just too damn many people making up too damn many beautiful reasons for switching sides these days. I'm not going to be one of them."
There was nothing I could say to that. The fact that the people to whom she was returning, dutifully and gratefully, might very well shoot her for setting me free would, I knew, make no difference to her, so I didn't bother to point it out. Nor did I trouble to warn her that if she rejoined them I might have to shoot her myself. She knew all that, and considered it irrelevant. When their consciences get into the act, no logic has any effect on them.
I suppose I could have overpowered her and tied her up to prevent her from making a serious mistake. There are people who make careers of saving other people from themselves-Charlie Devlin, for instance-but it's not my line of. work. Anyway, I didn't know how much of a mistake she was actually making, practically speaking. She might just as easily get killed if I kept her with me.
So I said only, "I have to have the station wagon. Sorry."
"Of course." There was a hint of scorn in her voice. "I wouldn't dream of depriving you of it." She opened the door and stepped out into the road. "Good-bye, Matt."
"Good-bye, Bobbie."
She looked at me for a moment longer. Neither of us found anything more to say. She turned abruptly and marched away towards the tiny group of vehicles in the distance. Her back was very straight and she never glanced around. I remembered the slinky satin Hollywood-blonde she'd been impersonating when I first met her. I remembered the nice girl-next-door type in crisp linen to whom I'd made love. I remembered the reckless tomboy-in-jeans who'd been so eager to help me take care of five armed and dangerous Mafia hoodlums… She wasn't any of those girls now. I guess I'd found the real Roberta Prince at last.
I should, of course, have been feeling greatly relieved by the turn of events, and diabolically clever to boot. After all, my hands and feet were free. I had my gun and knife. I even had a car. I was back in business. I'd gambled that, whoever she was, the kid would come through for me, and she had. There was no reason for me not to savor my moment of triumph, except that I just didn't feel particularly triumphant.
I got behind the wheel of the big Ford wagon, started the engine, and drove ahead slowly towards the piсon-studded mountains ahead. Somebody would come after me, I was sure. Mr. Soo couldn't afford to let me reach a telephone. I hoped he'd send the right man ahead to take care of me. He did.
From a vantage point on the shoulder of the mountain, with the station wagon parked out of sight down the road, I saw the white jeep heading my way, dragging a plume of dust behind it. I watched it approach, disappearing here and there in the dips and folds of the terrain, but always reappearing a little closer. Once it remained invisible for several minutes. When it showed again, there were two figures behind the windshield instead of one. Obviously, Willy had met the girl trudging down the road and stopped to question her. He'd brought her along. Well, I couldn't let that make any difference to me. I'd pointed out to her the choice she had to make, and she'd made it.
I checked the loads in the revolver I'd retrieved from her, but it was not at the moment my primary weapon. Trying to shoot somebody out of the seat of a fast-moving vehicle with a snub-nosed.38 Special is not recommended as surefire homicide. Even if you solve the problems of lead and timing correctly, there's always something to deflect the bullet. I had to get him out of his car… I got back into the station wagon and sent it slowly up the road, watching the rearview mirror.
It was the usual twisty, unpaved mountain road carved into the side of the slope; not exactly the ideal spot for a two-ton family vehicle almost six feet wide, even though it did have all the power anybody could want who didn't have drag racing ambitions. I cruised along deliberately, waiting for my man to catch up with me. When he burst into sight behind me in the bouncing and swaying jeep, I hit the gas pedal as if I hadn't really expected pursuit; as if I'd been panicked by his sudden appearance.
It was quite a race for a while, up into the pass and down the other side. In sports cars, it might have been fun, but neither of our vehicles had been designed for competitive mountain driving. I could see him, behind me, sweating over the wheel of the sturdy four-wheel-drive job that wanted to plow right off the road in the curves. I had the opposite problem. The heavy rear end of the wagon had a tendency to whip around whenever I got gay with the power.
He was a good driver. I remembered being told that he'd been a motorcycle racer once. He may have been better than I was, although I'd done a bit of sports car racing in my time, but it didn't really matter. The road was too narrow and my car was too wide and had too much power for him to get up alongside, and a little ahead, where he'd have to be to nudge me over the edge. At last, desperate at being blocked every time he tried it, he stuck his big revolver out the jeep's window, left-handed, and fired a couple of shots. However, there are very few men who can shoot well from a moving car, particularly if they have to steer the car, and neither of the bullets hit the station wagon.