“Not an army, and not forever; but it would be a costly position to take.” He took a semiautomatic rifle with telescopic sights from its rack and gave it to her. “Can you use this weapon?”
   “Well… I suppose so.”
   “I see. Well, the important thing is that you shoot if you see anyone approaching up the gully who is not carrying a xahako. It doesn’t matter if you hit him or not. The sound of your fire will carry in these mountains, and within half an hour help will be here.”
   “What’s a… ah…?”
   “A xahako is a wine skin like this one. The shepherds and smugglers in these hills all know you are here. They’re my friends. And they all carry xahakos. An outlander wouldn’t.”
   “Am I really in all that much danger?”
   “I don’t know.”
   “But why would they want to kill me?”
   “I’m not sure they do. But it’s a possibility. They might reason that my involvement would be over if you were dead, and there was nothing more I could do to repay my debt to your uncle. That would be stupid thinking, because if they killed you while you were in my protection, I would be forced to make a countergesture. But we are dealing here with merchant and military mentalities, and stupidity is their intellectual idiom. Now let’s see if you can manage everything.”
   He rehearsed her in lighting the stove and space heater, in drawing water from the trap door over the stream, and in loading clips into the rifle. “By the way, remember to take one of these mineral tablets each day. The water running under the floor is snowmelt. It has no minerals, and in time it will leech the minerals out of your system.”
   “God, how long will I be here?”
   “I’m not sure. A week. Maybe two. Once those Septembrists have accomplished their hijack, the pressure will be off you.”
   While he made supper from tinned foods in the larder, she had wandered about the lodge, touching things, thinking her own thoughts.
   And now they sat across the round table by the glass wall, the candlelight reversing the shadows on her soft young face on which lines of character and experience had not yet developed. She had been silent throughout the meal, and she had drunk more wine than was her habit, and now her eyes were moist and vague. “I should tell you that you don’t have to worry about me anymore. I know what I’m going to do now. Early this morning, I decided to go home and try my best to forget all this anger and… ugliness. It’s not my kind of thing. More than that, I realize now that it’s all—I don’t know—all sort of unimportant.” She played absently with the candle flame, passing her finger through it just quickly enough to avoid being burned. “A strange thing happened to me last night. Weird. But wonderful. I’ve been feeling the effects of it all day long.”
   Hel thought of the alpha timbres he had been intercepting.
   “I couldn’t sleep. I got up and wandered around your house in the dark. Then I went to the garden. The air was cool and there was no breeze at all. I sat by the stream, and I could see the dark flicker of the water. I was staring at it, not thinking of anything in particular, then all at once I… it was a feeling I almost remember having when I was a child. All at once, all the pressures and confusions and fears were gone. They dissolved away, and I felt light. I felt like I was transported somewhere else, someplace I’ve never been to, but I know very well. It was sunny and still, and there was grass all around me; and I seemed to understand everything. Almost as though I was… I don’t know. Almost as though I was—ouch!” She snapped her hand back and sucked the singed finger.
   He laughed and shook his head, and she laughed too.
   “That was a stupid thing to do,” she said.
   “True. I think you were going to say that it was almost as though you and the grass and the sun were all one being, parts of the same thing.”
   She stared at him, her finger still to her lips. “How did you know that?”
   “It’s an experience others have had. You said you remembered similar feelings when you were a child?”
   “Well, not exactly remember. No, not remember at all. It’s just that when I was there, I had the feeling that this wasn’t new and strange. It was something I had done before—but I don’t actually remember doing it before. You know what I mean?”
   “I think I do. You might have been participating in the atavistic—”
   “I’ll tell you what! I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt you. But I’ll tell you what it’s like. It’s like the very best high on pot or something, when you’re in a perfect mood and everything’s going just right. It’s not exactly like that, because you never get there with hooch, but it’s where you think you’re going. You know what I mean?”
   “No.”
   “You never use pot or anything?”
   “No. I’ve never had to. My inner resources are intact.”
   “Well. It was something like that.”
   “I see. How’s your finger?”
   “Oh, it’s fine. The point is that, after the feeling had passed last night, I found myself sitting there in your garden, rested and clear-minded. And I wasn’t confused any more. I knew there was no point in trying to punish the Septembrists. Violence doesn’t get you anywhere. It’s irrelevant. Now I think I just want to go home. Spend a little time getting in touch with myself. Then maybe—I don’t know. See what’s happening around me, maybe. Deal with that.” She poured herself out another glass of wine and drank it down, then she put her hand on Hel’s arm. “I guess I’ve been a lot of trouble to you.”
   “I believe the American idiom is ‘a pain in the ass.’”
   “I wish there were some way I could make it up to you.”
   He smiled at her obliquity.
   She poured another glass of wine and said, “Do you think Hana minds your being here?”
   “Why should she?”
   “Well, I mean… do you think she minds our spending the night together?”
   “What does that phrase signify to you?”
   “What? Well… we’ll be sleeping together.”
   “Sleeping together?”
   “In the same place, I mean. You know what I mean.”
   He regarded her without speaking. Her experience of mystic transport, even if it was a unique event prompted by an overload of tension and desperation, rather than the function of a spirit in balance and peace, gave her a worthiness in his eyes. But this new acceptance was not free from a certain envy, that this vague-minded muffin should be able to achieve the state that he had lost years ago, probably forever. He recognized the envy to be adolescent and small on his part, but this recognition was not sufficient to banish the feeling.
   She had been frowning into the candle flame, trying to sort out her emotions. “I should tell you something.”
   “Should you?”
   “I want to be honest with you.”
   “Don’t bother.”
   “No, I want to be. Even before I met you, I used to think about you… daydream, sort of. All the stories my uncle used to tell about you. I was really surprised at how young you are—how young you appear, that is. And I suppose if I analyzed my feelings, there’s a sort of father projection. Here you are, the great myth in the flesh. I was scared and confused, and you protected me. I can see all the psychological impulses that would draw me toward you, can’t you?”
   “Have you considered the possibility that you’re a randy young woman with a healthy and uncomplicated desire to climax? Or do you find that psychologically unsubtle?”
   She looked at him and nodded. “You certainly know how to put a person down, don’t you? You don’t leave a person much to cover herself with.”
   “That’s true. And perhaps it’s uncivil of me. I’m sorry. Here is what I think is going on with you. You’re alone, lonely, confused. You want to be cuddled and comforted. You don’t know how to ask for that, because you’re a product of the Western culture; so you negotiate for it, bartering sex for cuddling. It’s not an uncommon negotiation for the Western woman to engage in. After all, she’s limited to negotiating with the Western male, whose concept of social exchange is brittle and limited, and who demands earnest money in the form of sex, because that’s the only part of the bargain he is comfortable with. Miss Stern, you may sleep with me tonight if you wish. I’ll hold you and comfort you, if that’s what you want.”
   Both gratitude and too much wine moistened her eyes. “I would like that, yes.”


* * *

   But the animal lurking within is seldom tethered by good intentions. When he awoke to her attentions and felt emanating from her the alpha/theta syncopation that attends sexual excitation, his response was not solely dictated by a desire to shield her from rejection.
   She was exceptionally ripe and easy, all of her nerves close to the surface and desperately sensitive. Because she was young, there was a bit of difficulty keeping her lubricated, but beyond that mechanical nuisance he could hold her in climax without much effort.
   Her eyes rolled back again and she pleaded, “No… please… I can’t again! I’ll die if I do again!” But her involuntary contractions rushed closer and closer together, and she was gasping in her fourth orgasm, which he prolonged until her fingernails were clawing frantically at the nap of the rug.
   He recalled Hana’s injunction against dimming Hannah’s future experience by comparison, and he had no particular impulse to climax himself, so he brought her back down slowly, stroking and cooling her as the muscles of her buttocks, stomach, and thighs quivered with the fatigue of repeated orgasm, and she lay still on the pile of pillows, half-unconscious and feeling that her flesh was melting.
   He washed in frigid meltwater, then went up to the overhanging balcony to sleep.
   Some time later, he felt her approach silently. He made space for her and a nest in his arms and lap. As she dipped toward sleep, she said dreamily, “Nicholai?”
   “Please don’t call me by my first name,” he murmured.
   She was silent for a time. “Mr. Hel? Don’t be scared by this, because it’s just a passing thing. But at this moment, I am in love with you.”
   “Don’t be foolish.”
   “Do you know what I wish?”
   He did not answer.
   “I wish it were morning and I could go out and pick you a bunch of flowers… those Eyes of Autumn we saw.”
   He chuckled and folded her in. “Good night, Miss Stern.”

Etchebar

   It was midmorning before Hana heard the splash of a slab of rock into the stream and came from the château to find Hel rearranging the sounding stones, his trouser legs rolled up, and his forearms dripping with water.
   “Will I ever get this right, Hana?”
   She shook her head. “Only you will ever know, Nikko. Is Hannah safely set up at the lodge?”
   “Yes. I think the girls have heated the water by now. Do you feel like taking a bath with me?”
   “Certainly.”
   They sat opposite one another, their feet in their habitual caress, their eyes closed and their bodies weightless.
   “I hope you were kind to her,” Hana murmured sleepily.
   “I was.”
   “And you? How was it for you?”
   “For me?” He opened his eyes. “Madame, do you have anything pressing on your schedule just now?”
   “I’ll have to consult my carnet de bal, but it is possible that I can accommodate you.”


* * *

   Shortly after noon, when he had reason to hope the local PTT would be functioning at least marginally, Hel placed a transatlantic call to the number Diamond had left with him. He had decided to tell the Mother Company that Hannah Stern had decided to return home, leaving the Septembrists unmolested. He assumed Diamond would take personal satisfaction in the thought that he had frightened Nicholai Hel off, but just as praise from such a source would not have pleased him, so scorn could not embarrass him.
   It would be more than an hour before the viscous and senile French telephone system could place his call, and he chose to pass the interval inspecting the grounds. He felt lighthearted, well-disposed toward everything, enjoying that generalized euphoria that follows a close call with danger. For a whole constellation of impalpable reasons, he had dreaded getting involved in a business that was trammeled with personalities and passions.
   He was wandering through the privet maze on the east lawns when he came across Pierre, who was in his usual vinous fog of contentment. The gardener looked up into the sky and pontificated. “Ah, M’sieur. Soon there will be a storm. The signs all insist on it.”
   “Oh?”
   “Oh yes, there is no doubt. The little clouds of the morning have been herded against the flank of ahuñe-mendi. The first of the ursoa flew up the valley this afternoon. The sagarra turned its leaves over in the wind. These are sure signs. A storm is inevitable.”
   “That’s too bad. We could have used a little rain.”
   “True, M’sieur. But look! Here comes M’sieur Le Cagot. How finely he dresses!”
   Le Cagot was approaching across the lawn, still wearing the rumpled theatrical evening dress of two nights ago. As he neared, Pierre tottered away, explaining that there were many thousands of things that demanded his immediate attention.
   Hel greeted Le Cagot. “I haven’t seen you in a while, Beñat. Where have you been?”
   “Bof. I’ve been up in Larrau with the widow, helping her put out the fire in her belly.” Le Cagot was uneasy, his badinage mechanical and flat.
   “One day, Beñat, that widow will have you in the trap, and you’ll be… What is it? What’s wrong?”
   Le Cagot put his hands on Hel’s shoulders. “I have hard news for you, friend. A terrible thing has happened. That girl with the plump breasts? Your guest?…”
   Hel closed his eyes and turned his head to the side. After a silence he said quietly, “Dead?”
   “I’m afraid so. A contrabandier heard the shots. By the time he got to your lodge, she was dead. They had shot her… many, many times.”
   Hel took a long, slow breath and held it for a moment; then he let it out completely, as he absorbed the first shock and avoided the flash of mind-fogging fury. Keeping his mind empty, he walked back toward the château, while Le Cagot followed, respecting his friend’s armor of silence.
   Hel had sat for ten minutes at the threshold of the tatami ’d room, staring out over the garden, while Le Cagot slumped beside him. He refocused his eyes and said in a monotone, “All right. How did they get into the lodge?”
   “They didn’t have to. She was found in the meadow below the ravine. Evidently she was picking wildflowers. There was a large bunch found in her hand.”
   “Silly twit,” Hel said in a tone that might have been affectionate. “Do we know who shot her?”
   “Yes. Early this morning, down in the village of Lescun, two outlanders were seen. Their descriptions are those of the Amérlo from Texas I met here and that little Arab snot.”
   “But how did they know where she was? Only our people knew that.”
   “There is only one way. Someone must have informed.”
   “One of our people?”
   “I know. I know!” Le Cagot spoke between his teeth. “I have asked around. Sooner or later, I shall find out who it was. And when I do, by the Prophetic Balls of Joseph in Egypt, I swear that the blade of my makila will puncture his black heart!” Le Cagot was ashamed and furious that one of his own, a mountain Basque, had disgraced the race in this way. “What do you say, Niko? Shall we go get them, the Amérlo and the Arab?”
   Hel shook his head. “By now they are on a plane bound for the United States. Their time will come.”
   Le Cagot smashed his fists together, breaking the skin over a knuckle. “But why, Niko! Why kill such a morsel? What harm could she do, the poor muffin?”
   “They wanted to prevent me from doing something. They thought they could erase my debt to the uncle by killing the niece.”
   “They are mistaken, of course.”
   “Of course.” Hel sat up straight as his mind began to function in a different timbre. “Will you help me, Beñat?”
   “Will I help you? Does asparagus make your piss stink?”
   “They have French Internal Security forces all over this part of the country with orders to put me away if I attempt to leave the area.”
   “Bof! The only charm of the Security Force is its epic incompetence.”
   “Still, they will be a nuisance. And they might get lucky. We’ll have to neutralize them. Do you remember Maurice de Lhandes?”
   “The man they call the Gnome? Yes, of course.”
   “I have to get in touch with him, I’ll need his help to get safely into Britain. We’ll go through the mountains tonight, into Spain to San Sebastian. I need a fishing boat to take me along the coast to St. Jean de Luz. Would you arrange that?”
   “Would a cow lick Lot’s wife?”
   “Day after tomorrow, I’ll be flying out from Biarritz to London. They’ll be watching the airports. But they’re spread thin, and that’s to our advantage. Starting about noon that day, I want reports leaked to the authorities that I have appeared in Oloron, Pau, Bayonne, Bilbao, Mauléon, St. Jean Pied de Port, Bordeaux, Ste. Engrace, and Dax—all at the same time. I want their crosscommunications confused, so that the report from Biarritz will be just one drop in a torrent of information. Can that be arranged?”
   “Can it be arranged? Do… I can’t think of an old saying for it just now. Yes, it can be arranged. This is like the old days, eh?”
   “I’m afraid so.”
   “You’re taking me with you, of course.”
   “No. It’s not your kind of thing.”
   “Holà! Don’t let the gray in my beard fool you. A boy lives inside this body! A very mean boy!”
   “It’s not that. If this were breaking into a prison or blowing away a guardpost, there is no one I’d rather have with me. But this won’t be a matter of courage. It must be done by craft.”
   As was his custom when in the open air, Le Cagot had turned aside and unbuttoned his trousers to relieve himself as he talked. “You don’t think I am capable of craft? I am subtlety itself! Like the chameleon, I blend with all backgrounds!”
   Hel could not help smiling. This self-created folk myth standing before him, resplendent in rumpled fin-de-siècle evening clothes, the rhinestone buttons of his brocade waistcoat sparkling in the sun, his beret tugged low over his sunglasses, his rust-and-steel beard covering a silk cravat, the battered old makila under his arm as he held his penis in one hand and sprayed urine back and forth like a schoolboy—this man was laying claim to being subtle and inconspicuous.
   “No, I don’t want you to come with me, Beñat. You can help most by making the arrangements I asked for.”
   “And after that? What do I do while you are off amusing yourself? Pray and twiddle my thumbs?”
   “I’ll tell you what. While I’m gone, you can press on with preparations for the exploration of your cave. Get the rest of the gear we need down into the hole. Wet suits. Air tanks. When I get back, we’ll take a shot at exploring it from light to light. How’s that?”
   “It’s better than nothing. But not much.”
   A serving girl came from the house to tell Hel that he was wanted in the château.
   He found Hana standing with the telephone in the butler’s pantry, blocking the mouthpiece with her palm. “It is Mr. Diamond returning your call to the United States.”
   Hel looked at the phone, then glanced down to the floor. “Tell him I’ll get back to him soon.”


* * *

   They had finished supper in the tatami ’d room, and now they were watching the evening permutations of shifting shadow through the garden. He had told her that he would be away for about a week.
   “Does this have to do with Hannah?”
   “Yes.” He saw no reason to tell her the girl was dead.
   After a silence, she said, “When you get back, it will be close to the end of my stay with you.”
   “I know. By then you’ll have to decide if you’re interested in continuing our life together.”
   “I know.” She lowered her eyes and, for the first time he could remember, her cheeks colored with the hint of a blush. “Nikko? Would it be too silly for us to consider becoming married?”
   “Married?”
   “Never mind. Just a silly thought that wandered through my mind. I don’t believe I would want it anyway.” She had touched on the idea gingerly and had fled instantly from his first reaction.
   For several minutes, he was deep in thought. “No, it’s not all that silly. If you decide to give me years of your life, then of course we should do something to assure your economic future. Let’s talk about it when I return.”
   “I could never mention it again.”
   “I realize that, Hana. But I could.”

Part Four.
Uttegae

St. Jean de Luz/Biarritz

   The open fi shing boat plowed the ripple path of the setting moon, quicksilver on the sea, like an effect from the brush of a kitsch watercolorist. The diesel motor chugged bronchially and gasped as it was turned off. The bow skewed when the boat crunched up on the pebble beach. Hel slipped over the side and stood kneedeep in the surging tide, his duffel bag on his shoulder. A wave of his hand was answered by a blurred motion from the boat, and he waded toward the deserted shore, his canvas pants heavy with water, his rope-soled espadrilles digging into the sand. The motor coughed and began its rhythmic thunking, as the boat made its way out to sea, along the matte-black shore toward Spain.
   From the brow of a dune, he could see the lights of cafés and bars around the small harbor of St. Jean de Luz, where fishing boats heaved sleepily on the oily water of the docking slips. He shifted the weight of the duffel and made for the Café of the Whale, to confirm a telegraph order he had made for dinner. The owner of the café had been a master chef in Paris, before retiring back to his home village. He enjoyed displaying his prowess occasionally, particularly when M. Hel granted him carte blanche as regards menu and expense. The dinner was to be prepared and served in the home of Monsieur de Lhandes, the “fine little gentleman” who lived in an old mansion down the shore, and who was never to be seen in the streets of St. Jean de Luz because his physiognomy would cause comment, and perhaps ridicule, from ill-brought-up children. M. de Lhandes was a midget, little more than a meter tall, though he was over sixty years old.


* * *

   Hel’s tap at the back door brought Mademoiselle Pinard to peer cautiously through the curtain, then a broad smile cracked her face, and she opened the door wide. “Ah, Monsieur Hel! Welcome. It has been too long since last we saw you! Come in, come in! Ah, you are wet! Monsieur de Lhandes is so looking forward to your dinner.”
   “I don’t want to drip on your floor, Mademoiselle Pinard. May I take off my pants?”
   Mademoiselle Pinard blushed and slapped at his shoulder with delight. “Oh, Monsieur Hel! Is this any way to speak? Oh, men!” In obedience to their established routine of chaste flirtation, she was both flustered and delighted. Mademoiselle Pinard was somewhat older than fifty—she had always been somewhat older than fifty. Tall and sere, with dry nervous hands and an unlubricated walk, she had a face too long for her tiny eyes and thin mouth, so rather a lot of it was devoted to forehead and chin. If there had been more character in her face, she would have been ugly; as it was, she was only plain. Mademoiselle Pinard was the mold from which virgins are made, and her redoubtable virtue was in no way lessened by the fact that she had been Bernard de Lhandes’s companion, nurse, and mistress for thirty years. She was the kind of woman who said “Zut!” or “Ma foi!” when exasperated beyond the control of good taste.
   As she showed him to the room that was always his when he visited, she said in a low voice, “Monsieur de Lhandes is not well, you know. I am delighted that he will have your company this evening, but you must be very careful. He is close to God. Weeks, months only, the doctor tells me.”
   “I’ll be careful, darling. Here we are. Do you want to come in while I change my clothes?”
   “Oh, Monsieur!”
   Hel shrugged. “Ah well. But one day, your barriers will fall, Mademoiselle Pinard. And then… Ah, then…”
   “Monster! And Monsieur de Lhandes your good friend! Men!”
   “We are victims of our appetites, Mademoiselle. Helpless victims. Tell me, is dinner ready?”
   “The chef and his assistants have been cluttering up the kitchen all day. Everything is in readiness.”
   “Then I’ll see you at dinner, and we’ll satisfy our appetites together.”
   “Oh, Monsieur!”


* * *

   They took dinner in the largest room of the house, one lined with shelves on which books were stacked and piled in a disarray that was evidence of de Lhandes’s passion for learning. Since he considered it outrageous to read and eat at the same time—diluting one of his passions with the other—de Lhandes had struck on the idea of combining library and dining room, the long refectory table serving both functions. They sat at one end of this table, Bernard de Lhandes at the head, Hel to his right. Mademoiselle Pinard to his left. Like most of the furniture, the table and chairs had been cut down and were somewhat too big for de Lhandes and somewhat too small for his rare guests. Such, de Lhandes had once told Hel, was the nature of compromise: a condition that satisfied no one, but left each with the comforting feeling that others had been done in too.
   Dinner was nearly over, and they were resting and chatting between courses. There had been Neva caviar with blinis, still hot on their napkins, St. Germain Royal (de Lhandes found a hint too much mint), suprême de sole au Château Yquem, quail under the ashes (de Lhandes mentioned that walnut would have been a better wood for the log fire, but he could accept the flavor imparted by oak cinders), rack of baby lamb Edward VII (de Lhandes regretted that it was not cold enough, but he realized that Hel’s arrangements were spur of the moment), riz à la grècque (the bit too much red pepper de Lhandes attributed to the chef’s place of birth), morels (the bit too little lemon juice de Lhandes attributed to the chef’s personality), Florentine artichoke bottoms (the gross unbalance between gruyère and parmesan in the mornay sauce de Lhandes attributed to the chef’s perversity, for the error had been mentioned before), and Danicheff salad (which de Lhandes found perfect, to his slight annoyance).
   From each of these dishes, de Lhandes took the smallest morsel that would still allow him to have all the flavors in his mouth at once. His heart, liver, and digestive system were such a ruin that his doctor restricted him to the blandest of foods. Hel, from dietary habit, ate very little. Mademoiselle Pinard’s appetite was good, though her concept of exquisite table manners involved taking minute bites and chewing them protractedly with circular, leporine motions confined to the very front of her mouth, where her napkin often and daintily went to brush thin lips. One of the reasons the chef of the Café of the Whale enjoyed doing these occasional suppers for Hel was the great feast his family and friends always enjoyed later that same night.
   “It’s appalling how little we eat, Nicholai,” de Lhandes said in his surprisingly deep voice. “You with your monk’s attitude toward food, and I with my ravished constitution! Picking about like this. I feel like a rich ten-year-old in a luxurious bordello!”
   Mademoiselle Pinard went behind her napkin for a moment.
   “And these thimblesful of wine!” de Lhandes complained. “Ah, that I have descended to this! A man who, through knowledge and money, converted gluttony into a major art! Fate is either ironic or just, I don’t know which. But look at me! Eating as though I were a bloodless nun doing penance for her daydreams about the young curé!”
   The napkin concealed Mademoiselle Pinard’s blush.
   “How sick are you, old friend?” Hel asked. Honesty was common currency between them.
   “I am finally sick. This heart of mine is more a sponge than a pump. I have been in retirement for—what? Five years now? And for four of them I have been of no use to dear Mademoiselle Pinard—save as an observer, of course.”
   The napkin.
   The meal ended with a bombe, fruit, glacés variées —no brandies or digestifs —and Mademoiselle Pinard retired to allow the men to chat.
   De Lhandes slid down from his chair and made his way to the fireside, stopping for breath twice, where he occupied a low chair that nevertheless left his feet straight out before him.
   “All chairs are chaises longues for me, my friend.” He laughed. “All right, what can I do for you?”
   “I need help.”
   “Of course. Good comrades though we are, you would not come by boat in the dead of night for the sole purpose of disgracing a supper by picking at it. You know that I have been out of the information business for several years, but I have orts and bits left from the old days, and I shall help you if I can.”
   “I should tell you that they have got my money. I won’t be able to pay you immediately.”
   De Lhandes waved a dismissing hand. “I’ll send you a bill from hell. You’ll recognize it by the singed edges. Is it a person, or a government?”
   “Government. I have to get into England. They’ll be waiting for me. The affair is very heavy, so my leverage will have to be strong.”
   De Lhandes sighed. “Ah, my. If only it were America. I have something on America that would make the Statue of Liberty lie back and spread her knees. But England? No one thing. Fragments and scraps. Some nasty enough, to be sure, but no one big thing.”
   “What sort of things have you?”
   “Oh, the usual. Homosexuality in the foreign office…”
   “That’s not news.”
   “At this level, it’s interesting. And I have photographs. There are few things so ludicrous as the postures a man assumes while making love. Particularly if he is no longer young. And what else have I? Ah… a bit of rambunctiousness in the royal family? The usual political peccadillos and payoffs? A blocked inquiry into that flying accident that cost the life of… you remember.” De Lhandes looked to the ceiling to recall what was in his files. “Oh, there’s evidence that the embrace between the Arab oil interests and the City is more intimate than is generally known. And there’s a lot of individual stuff on government people—fiscal and sexual irregularities mostly. You’re absolutely sure you don’t want something on the United States? I have a real bell ringer there. It’s an unsalable item. Too big for almost any use. It would be like opening an egg with a sledge hammer.”
   “No, it has to be English. I haven’t time to set up indirect pressure from Washington to London.”
   “Hm-m-m. Tell you what. Why don’t you take the whole lot? Arrange to have it published, one shot right after the other. Scandal after scandal eroding the edifice of confidence—you know the sort of thing. No single arrow strong enough alone, but in fascine… who knows? It’s the best I can offer.”
   “Then it will have to do. Set it up the usual way? I bring photocopies with me? We arrange a ‘button-down’ trigger system with the German magazines as primary receivers?”
   “It’s not failed yet. You’re sure you don’t want the Statue of Liberty’s brazen hymen?”
   “Can’t think of what I’d do with it.”
   “Ah well, painful image at best. Well… can you spend the night with us?”
   “If I may. I fly out of Biarritz tomorrow at noon, and I have to lie low. The locals have a bounty on me.”
   “Pity. They ought to protect you as the last surviving member of your species. You know, I’ve been thinking about you lately, Nicholai Alexandrovitch. Not often, to be sure, but with some intensity. Not often, because when you get to the bang or whimper moment of life, you don’t spend much time contemplating the minor characters of your personal farce. And one of the difficult things for egocentric Man to face is that he is a minor character in every biography but his own. I am a bit player in your life; you in mine. We have known one another for more than twenty years but, discounting business (and one must always discount business), we have shared perhaps a total of twelve hours of intimate conversation, of honest inquiry into one another’s minds and emotions. I have known you, Nicholai, for half a day. Actually, that’s not bad. Most good friends and married couples (those are seldom the same thing) could not boast twelve hours of honest interest after a lifetime of shared space and irritations, of territorial assertions and squabbles. So… I’ve known you for half a day, my friend, and I have come to love you. I think very highly of myself for having accomplished that, as you are not an easy man to love. Admire? Yes, of course. Respect? If fear is a part of respect, then of course. But love? Ah, that’s a different business. Because there is in love an urge to forgive, and you’re a hard man to forgive. Half saintly ascetic, half Vandal marauder, you don’t make yourself available for forgiveness. In one persona, you are above forgiveness; in another, beneath it. And always resentful of it. One has the feeling that you would never forgive a man for forgiving you. (That probably doesn’t mean much, but it rolls well off the tongue, and a song must have music as well as words.) And after my twelve hours of knowing you, I would capsulize you—reduce you to a definition—by calling you a medieval antihero.”
   Hel smiled. “Medieval antihero? What on earth does that mean?”
   “Who has the floor now, you or I? Let’s have a little silent respect for the dying. It’s part of your being Japanese—culturally Japanese, that is. Only in Japan was the classical moment simultaneous with the medieval. In the West, philosophy, art, political and social ideal, all are identified with periods before or after the medieval moment, the single exception being that glorious stone bridge to God, the cathedral. Only in Japan was the feudal moment also the philosophic moment. We of the West are comfortable with the image of the warrior priest, or the warrior scientist, even the warrior industrialist. But the warrior philosopher? No, that concept irritates our sense of propriety. We speak of ‘death and violence’ as though they were two manifestations of the same impulse. In fact, death is the very opposite of violence, which is always concerned with the struggle for life. Our philosophy is focused on managing life; yours on managing death. We seek comprehension; you seek dignity. We learn how to grasp; you learn how to let go. Even the label ‘philosopher’ is misleading, as our philosophers have always been animated by the urge to share (indeed, inflict) their insights; while your lot are content (perhaps selfishly) to make your separate and private peace. To the Westerner, there is something disturbingly feminine (in the sense of yang-ish, if that coinage doesn’t offend your ear) in your view of manhood. Fresh from the battlefield, you don soft robes and stroll through your gardens with admiring compassion for the falling cherry petal; and you view both the gentleness and the courage as manifestations of manhood. To us, that seems capricious at least, if not two-faced. By the way, how does your garden grow?”
   “It’s becoming.”
   “Meaning?”
   “Each year it is simpler.”
   “There! You see? That goddamned Japanese penchant for paradoxes that turn out to be syllogisms! Look at yourself. A warrior gardener! You are indeed a medieval Japanese, as I said. And you are also an antihero—not in the sense in which critics and scholars lusting for letters to dangle after their names use (misuse) the term. What they call antiheroes are really unlikely heroes, or attractive villains—the fat cop or Richard III. The true antihero is a version of the hero—not a clown with a principal role, not an audience member permitted to work out his violent fantasies. Like the classic hero, the antihero leads the mass toward salvation. There was a time in the comedy of human development when salvation seemed to lie in the direction of order and organization, and all the great Western heroes organized and directed their followers against the enemy: chaos. Now we are learning that the final enemy is not chaos, but organization; not divergence, but similarity; not primativism, but progress. And the new hero—the antihero—is one who makes a virtue of attacking the organization, of destroying the systems. We realize now that salvation of the race lies in that nihilist direction, but we still don’t know how far.” De Lhandes paused to catch his breath, then seemed to be ready to continue. But his glance suddenly crossed Hel’s, and he laughed. “Oh, well. Let that be enough. I wasn’t really speaking to you anyway.”
   “I’ve been aware of that for some time.”
   “It is a convention in Western tragedy that a man is permitted one long speech before he dies. Once he has stepped on the inevitable machinery of fate that will carry him to his bathetic denouement, nothing he can say or do will alter his lot. But he is permitted to make his case, to bitch at length against the gods—even in iambic pentameter.”
   “Even if doing so interrupts the flow of the narrative?”
   “To hell with it! For two hours of narcosis against reality, of safe, vicarious participation in the world of action and death, one should be willing to pay the price of a couple minutes worth of insight. Structurally sound or not. But have it your way. All right. Tell me, do the governments still remember ‘the Gnome’? And do they still scratch the earth trying to find his lair, and gnash their teeth in frustrated fury?”
   “They do indeed, Maurice. Just the other day there was an Amérlo scab at home asking about you. He would have given his genitals to know how you came by your information.”
   “Would he indeed? Being an Amérlo, he probably wasn’t risking much. And what did you tell him?”
   “I told him everything I knew.”
   “Meaning nothing at all. Good. Candor is a virtue. You know, I really don’t have any very subtle or complicated sources of information. In fact, the Mother Company and I are nourished by the same data. I have access to Fat Boy through the purchased services of one of their senior computer slaves, a man named Llewellyn. My skill lies in being able to put two and two together better than they can. Or, to be more precise, I am able to add one and a half plus one and two thirds in such a way as to make ten. I am not better informed than they; I am simply smarter.”

   Hel laughed. “They would give almost anything to locate and silence you. You’ve been bamboo under their fingernails for a long time.”
   “Ha, that knowledge brightens my last days, Nicholai. Being a nuisance to the government lackeys has made my life worth living. And a precarious living it has been. When you trade in information, you carry stock that has very short shelf life. Unlike brandy, information cheapens with age. Nothing is duller than yesterday’s sins. And sometimes I used to acquire expensive pieces, only to have them ruined by leakage. I remember buying a very hot item from the United States: what in time became known as the Watergate Cover-up. And while I was holding the merchandise on my shelf, waiting for you or some other international to purchase it as leverage against the American government, a pair of ambitious reporters sniffed the story out and saw in it a chance to make their fortunes—and voilà! The material was overnight useless to me. In time, each of the criminals wrote a book or did a television program describing his part in the rape of American civil rights, and each was paid lavishly by the stupid American public, which seems to have a peculiar impulse toward having their noses rubbed in their own shit. Doesn’t it seem unjust to you that I should end up losing several hundred thousand worth of spoiled stock on my shelves, while even the master villain himself makes a fortune doing television shows with that British leech who has shown that he would sniff up to anybody for money, even Idi Amin? It’s a peculiar one, this trade I’m in.”
   “Have you been an information broker all your life, Maurice?”
   “Except for a short stint as a professional basketball player.”
   “Old fool!”
   “Listen, let us be serious for a moment. You described this thing you’re doing as hard. I wouldn’t presume to advise you, but have you considered the fact that you’ve been in retirement for a time? Is your mental conditioning still taut?”
   “Reasonably. I do a lot of caving, so fear doesn’t clog my mind too much. And, fortunately, I’ll be up against the British.”
   “That’s an advantage, to be sure. The MI-5 and –6 boys have a tradition of being so subtle that their fakes go unnoticed. And yet… There is something wrong with this affair, Nicholai Alexandrovitch. There’s something in your tone that disturbs me. Not quite doubt, but a certain dangerous fatalism. Have you decided that you are going to fail?”
   Hel was silent for a time. “You’re very perceptive, Maurice.”
   “C’est mon métier.”
   “I know. There is something wrong—something untidy—about all this. I recognize that to come back out of retirement I am challenging karma. I think that, ultimately, this business will put me away. Not the task at hand. I imagine that I can relieve these Septembrists of the burden of their lives easily enough. The complications and the dangers will be ones I have dealt with before. But after that, the business gets tacky. There will be an effort to punish me. I may accept the punishment, or I may not. If I do not, then I shall have to go into the field again. I sense a certain—” He shrugged, “—a certain emotional fatigue. Not exactly fatalistic resignation, but a kind of dangerous indifference. It is possible, if the indignities pile up, that I shall see no particular reason to cling to life.”
   De Lhandes nodded. It was this kind of attitude that he had sensed. “I see. Permit me to suggest something, old friend. You say that the governments do me the honor of still being hungry for my death. They would give a lot to know who and where I am. If you get into a tight spot, you have my permission to bargain with that information.”
   “Maurice!—”
   “No, no! I am not suffering from a bout of quixotic courage. I’m too old to contract such a childhood disease. It would be our final joke on them. You see, you would be giving them an empty bag. By the time they get here, I shall have departed.”
   “Thank you, but I couldn’t do it. Not on your account, but on mine.” Hel rose. “Well, I have to get some sleep. The next twenty-four hours will be trying. Mostly mind play, without the refreshment of physical danger. I’ll be leaving before first light.”
   “Very well. For myself, I think I shall sit up for a few more hours and review the delights of an evil life.”
   “All right. Au revoir, old friend.”
   “Not au revoir, Nicholai.”
   “It is that close?”
   De Lhandes nodded.
   Hel leaned over and kissed his comrade on both cheeks. “Adieu, Maurice.”
   “Adieu, Nicholai.”
   Hel was caught at the door by, “Oh, Nicholai, would you do something for me?”
   “Anything.”
   “Estelle has been wonderful to me these last years. Did you know her name was Estelle?”
   “No, I didn’t.”
   “Well, I want to do something special for her—a kind of going-away present. Would you drop by her room? Second at the head of the stairs. And afterward, tell her it was a gift from me.”
   Hel nodded. “It will be my pleasure, Maurice.”
   De Lhandes was looking into the fading fire. “Hers too, let us hope,” he muttered.


* * *

   Hel timed his arrival at the Biarritz airport to minimize the period he would have to stand out in the open. He had always disliked Biarritz, which is Basque only in geography; the Germans, the English, and the international smart set having perverted it into a kind of Brighton on Biscay.
   He was not five minutes in the terminal before his proximity sense intercepted the direct and intense observation he had expected, knowing they would be looking for him at all points of departure. He lounged against the counter of the bar where he was taking a jus d’ananas and lightly scanned the crowd. Immediately, he picked up the young French Special Services officer in civilian clothes and sunglasses. Pushing himself off me bar, he walked directly toward the man, feeling as he approached the lad’s tension and confusion.
   “Edxuse me, sir,” Hel said in a French larded with German accent. “I have just arrived, and I cannot discover how to make my connection to Lourdes. Could you assist me?”
   The young policeman scanned Hel’s face uncertainly. This man filled the general description, save for the eyes, which were dark-brown. (Hel was wearing noncorrective brown contact lenses.) But there was nothing in the description about his being German. And he was supposed to be leaving the country, not entering it. In a few brusque words, the police agent directed Hel to the information office.
   As he walked away, Hel felt the agent’s gaze fixed on him, but the quality of the concentration was muffled by confusion. He would, of course, report the spotting, but without much certainty. And the central offices would at this moment be receiving reports of Hel’s appearance in half a dozen cities at the same time. Le Cagot was seeing to that.
   As Hel crossed the waiting room a towheaded boy ran into his legs. He caught up the child to keep him from falling.
   “Rodney! Oh, I am sorry, sir.” The good-looking woman in her late twenties was on the scene in an instant, apologizing to Hel and admonishing the child all at the same time. She was British and dressed in a light summer frock designed to reveal not only her suntan, but the places she had not suntanned. In a babble of that brutally mispronounced French resulting from the Britisher’s assumption that if foreigners had anything worth saying they would say it in a real language, the young woman managed to mention that the boy was her nephew, that she was returning with him from a short vacation, and that she was taking the next flight for England, that she herself was unmarried, and that her name was Alison Browne, with an e.
   “My name is Nicholai Helm.”
   “Delighted to meet you, Mr. Hel.”
   That was it. She had not heard the m because she was prepared not to. She would be a British agent, covering the action of the French.
   Hel said he hoped they would be sitting together on the plane, and she smiled seductively and said that she would be willing to speak to the ticket agent about that. He offered to purchase a fruit juice for her and little Rodney, and she accepted, not failing to mention that she did not usually accept such offers from strange men, but this was an exception. They had, after all, quite literally run into one another. (Giggle.)
   While she was busy dabbing her handkerchief at Rodney’s juice-stained collar, leaning forward and squeezing in her shoulders to advertise her lack of a bra, Hel excused himself for a moment.
   At the sundries shop he purchased a cheap memento of Biarritz, a box to contain it, a pair of scissors, and some wrapping paper—a sheet of white tissue and one of an expensive metal foil. He carried these items to the men’s room, and worked rapidly wrapping the present, which he brought back to the bar and gave to Rodney, who was by now whining as he dangled and twisted from Miss Browne’s hand.
   “Just a little nothing to remind him of Biarritz. I hope you don’t mind?”
   “Well, I shouldn’t. But as it’s for the boy. They’ve called twice for our flight. Shouldn’t we be boarding?”
   Hel explained that these French, with their anal compulsion for order, always called early for the planes; there was no rush. He turned the talk to the possibility of their getting together in London. Dinner, or something?
   At the last moment they went to the boarding counter, Hel taking his place in the queue in front of Miss Browne and little Rodney. His small duffel bag passed the X-ray scanner without trouble. As he walked rapidly toward the plane, which was revving up for departure, he could hear the protests of Miss Browne and the angry demands of the security guards behind him. When the plane took off, Hel did not have the pleasure of the seductive Miss Browne and little Rodney.

Heathrow

   Passengers passing through customs were directed to enter queues in relation to their status: “British Subjects,” “Commonwealth Subjects,” “Common Market Citizens,” and “Others.” Having traveled on his Costa Rican passport, Hel was clearly an “Other,” but he never had the opportunity to enter the designated line, for he was immediately approached by two smiling young men, their husky bodies distorting rather extreme Carnaby Street suits, their meaty faces expressionless behind their moustaches and sunglasses. As he always did when he met modern young men, Hel mentally shaved and crewcut them to see whom he was really dealing with.
   “You will accompany us, Mr. Hel,” one said, as the other took the duffel from his hand. They pressed close to him on either side and escorted him toward a door without a doorknob at the end of the debarkation area.
   Two knocks, and the door was opened from the other side by a uniformed officer, who stood aside as they passed through. They walked without a word to the end of a long windowless corridor of institutional green, where they knocked. The door was opened by a young man struck from the same mold as the guards, and from within came a familiar voice.
   “Do come in, Nicholai. We’ve just time for a glass of something and a little chat before you catch your plane back to France. Leave the luggage, there’s a good fellow. And you three may wait outside.”
   Hel took a chair beside the low coffee table and waved away the brandy bottle lifted in offer. “I thought you had finally been cashiered out, Fred.”
   Sir Wilfred Pyles squirted a splash of soda into his brandy. “I had more or less the same idea about you. But here we are, two of yesterday’s bravos, sitting on opposite sides, just like the old days. You’re sure you won’t have one? No? Well, I imagine the sun’s over the yardarm somewhere around the world, so—cheers.”
   “How’s your wife?”
   “More pleasant than ever.”
   “Give her my love when next you see her.”
   “Let’s hope that’s not too soon. She died last year.”
   “Sorry to hear that.”
   “Don’t be. Is that enough of the small talk?”
   “I should think so.”
   “Good. Well, they dragged me out of the mothballs to deal with you, when they got word from our petroleum masters that you might be on your way. I assume they thought I might be better able to handle you, seeing that we’ve played this game many times, you and I. I was directed to intercept you here, find out what I could about your business in our misty isle, then see you safely back on a plane to the place from whence you came.”
   “They thought it would be as easy as that, did they?”
   Sir Wilfred waved his glass. “Well, you know how these new lads are. All by the book and no complexities.”
   “And what do you assume, Fred?”
   “Oh, I assume it won’t be quite that easy. I assume you came with some sort of nasty leverage gained from your friend, the Gnome. Photocopies of it in your luggage, I shouldn’t wonder.”
   “Right on top. You’d better take a look.”
   “I shall, if you don’t mind,” Sir Wilfred said, unzipping the bag and taking out a manila folder. “Nothing else in here I should know about, I trust? Drugs? Subversive or pornographic literature?”
   Hel smiled.
   “No? I feared as much.” He opened the folder and began to scan the information, sheet by sheet, his matted white eyebrows working up and down with each uncomfortable bit of information. “By the way,” he asked between pages, “what on earth did you do to Miss Browne?”
   “Miss Browne? I don’t believe I know a—”
   “Oh, come now. No coyness between old enemies. We got word that she is this moment sitting in a French detention center while those gentlemen of Froggish inclination comb and recomb her luggage. The report we received was quite thorough, including the amusing detail that the little boy who was her cover promptly soiled himself, and the consulate is out the cost of fresh garments.”
   Hel couldn’t help laughing.
   “Come. Between us. What on earth did you do?”
   “Well, she came on with all the subtlety of a fart in a bathosphere, so I neutralized her. You don’t train them as you did in the old days. The stupid twit accepted a gift.”
   “What sort of a gift?”
   “Oh, just a cheap memento of Biarritz. It was wrapped up in tissue paper. But I had cut out a gun shape from metal foil paper and slipped it between the sheets of tissue.”
   Sir Wilfred sputtered with laughter. “So, the X-ray scanner picked up a gun each time the package passed through, and the poor officials could find nothing! How delicious: I think I must drink to that.” He measured out the other half, then returned to the task of familiarizing himself with the leverage information, occasionally allowing himself such interjections as: “Is that so? Wouldn’t have thought it of him.” “Ah, we’ve known this for some time. Still, wouldn’t do to broadcast it around.” “Oh, my. That is a nasty bit. How on earth did he find that out?”
   When he finished reading the material. Sir Wilfred carefully tapped the pages together to make the ends even, then replaced them in the folder. “No single thing here sufficient to force us very far.”
   “I’m aware of that, Fred. But the mass? One piece released to the German press each day?”
   “Hm-m. Quite. It would have a disastrous effect on confidence in the government just now, with elections on the horizon. I suppose the information is in ‘button-down’ mode?”
   “Of course.”
   “Feared as much.”
   Holding the information in “button-down” mode involved arrangements to have it released to the press immediately, if a certain message was not received by noon of each day. Hel carried with him a list of thirteen addresses to which he was to send cables each morning. Twelve of these were dummies; one was an associate of Maurice de Lhandes who would, upon receipt of the message, telephone to another intermediary, who would telephone de Lhandes. The code between Hel and de Lhandes was a simple one based upon an obscure poem by Barro, but it would take much longer than twenty-four hours for the intelligence boys to locate the one letter in the one word of the message that was the active signal. The term “button-down” came from a kind of human bomb, rigged so that the device would not go off, so long as the man held a button down. But any attempt to struggle with him or to shoot him would result in his releasing the button.
   Sir Wilfred considered his position for a moment. “It is true that this information of yours can be quite damaging. But we are under tight orders from the Mother Company to protect these Black September vermin, and we are no more eager to bring down upon our heads the ire of the Company than is any other industrial country. It appears that we shall have to choose between misfortunes.”
   “So it appears.”
   Sir Wilfred pushed out his lower lip and squinted at Hel in evaluation. “This is a very wide-open and dangerous thing you’re doing, Nicholai—walking right into our arms like this. It must have taken a great deal of money to draw you out of retirement.”
   “Point of fact, I am not being paid for this.”
   “Hm-m-m. That, of course, would have been my second guess.” He drew a long sigh. “Sentiment is a killer, Nicholai. But of course you know that. All right, tell you what. I shall carry your message to my masters. We’ll see what they have to say. Meanwhile, I suppose I shall have to hide you away somewhere. How would you like to spend a day or two in the country? I’ll make a telephone call or two to get the government lads thinking, then I’ll run you out in my banger.”

Middle Bumley

   Sir Wilfred’s immaculate 1931 Rolls crunched over the gravel of a long private drive and came to a stop under the porte cochère of a rambling house, most of the charm of which derived from the aesthetic disorder of its having grown without plan through many architectural impulses.
   Crossing the lawn to greet them were a sinewy woman of uncertain years and two girls in their mid-twenties.
   “I think you’ll find it amusing here, Nicholai,” Sir Wilfred said. “Our host is an ass, but he won’t be about. The wife is a bit dotty, but the daughters are uniquely obliging. Indeed, they have gained something of a reputation for that quality. What do you think of the house?”
   “Considering your British penchant for braggadocio through meiosis—the kind of thing that makes you call your Rolls a banger—I’m surprised you didn’t describe the house as thirty-seven up, sixteen down.”
   “Ah, Lady Jessica!” Sir Wilfred said to the older woman as she approached wearing a frilly summer frock of a vague color she would have called “ashes of roses.” “Here’s the guest I telephoned about. Nicholai Hel.”
   She pressed a damp hand into his. “So pleased to have you. To meet you, that is. This is my daughter, Broderick.”
   Hel shook hands with an overly slim girl whose eyes were huge in her emaciated face.
   “I know it’s an uncommon name for a girl,” Lady Jessica continued, “but my husband had quite settled on having a boy—I mean he wanted to have a boy in the sense of fathering a son—not in the other sense—my goodness, what must you think of him? But he had Broderick instead—or rather, we did.”
   “In the sense that you were her parents?” Hel sought to release the skinny girl’s hand.
   “Broderick is a model,” the mother explained.
   Hel had guessed as much. There was a vacuousness of expression, a certain limpness of posture and curvature of spine that marked the fashionable model of that moment.
   “Nothing much really,” Broderick said, trying to blush under her troweled-on makeup. “Just the odd job for the occasional international magazine.”
   The mother tapped the daughter’s arm. “Don’t say you do ‘odd jobs’! What will Mr. Hel think?”
   A clearing of the throat by the second daughter impelled Lady Jessica to say, “Oh, yes. And here is Melpomene. It is conceivable she might act one day.”
   Melpomene was a substantial girl, thick of bosom, ankle, and forearm, rosy of cheek, and clear of eye. She seemed somehow incomplete without her hockey stick. Her handshake was firm and brisk. “Just call me Pom. Everyone does.”
   “Ah… if we could just freshen up?” Sir Wilfred suggested.
   “Oh, of course! I’ll have the girls show you everything—I mean, of course, where your rooms are and all. What must you think?”
   As Hel was laying out his things from the duffel bag, Sir Wilfred tapped on the door and came in. “Well, what do you think of the place? We should be cozy here for a couple of days, while the masters ponder the inevitable, eh? I’ve been on the line to them, and they say they’ll come up with a decision by morning.”
   “Tell me, Fred. Have your lads been keeping a watch on the Septembrists?”
   “On your targets? Of course.”
   “Assuming that your government goes along with my proposal, I’ll want all the background material you have.”
   “I expected no less. By the bye, I assured the masters that you could pull this off—should their decision go that way—with no hint of collusion or responsibility on our part. It is that way, isn’t it?”
   “Not quite. But I can work it so that, whatever their suspicions, the Mother Company will not be able to prove collusion.”
   “The next best thing, I suppose.”
   “Fortunately, you picked me up before I went through passport check, so my arrival won’t be in your computers and therefore not in theirs.”
   “Wouldn’t rely on that overly much. Mother Company has a million eyes and ears.”
   “True. You’re absolutely sure this is a safe house?”
   “Oh, yes! The ladies are not what you would call subtle, but they have another quality quite as good—they’re totally ignorant. They haven’t the slightest idea of what we’re doing here. Don’t even know what I do for a living. And the man of the house, if you can call him that, is no trouble at all. We seldom let him into the country, you see.”
   Sir Wilfred went on to explain that Lord Biffen lived in the Dordogne, the social leader of a gaggle of geriatric tax avoiders who infested that section of France, to the disgust and discomfort of the local peasants. The Biffens were typical of their sort: Irish peerage that every other generation stiffened its sagging finances by introducing a shot of American hog-butcher blood. The gentleman had overstepped himself in his lust to avoid taxes and had got into a shady thing or two in free ports in the Bahamas. That had given the government a hold on him and on his British funds, so he was most cooperative, remaining in France when he was ordered to, where he exercised his version of the shrewd businessman by cheating local women out of antique furniture or automobiles, always being careful to intercept his wife’s mail to avoid her discovering his petty villainies. “Silly old fart, really. You know the type. Outlandish ties; walking shorts with street shoes and ankle stockings? But the wife and daughters, together with the establishment here, are of some occasional use to us. What do you think of the old girl?”
   “A little obsessed.”
   “Hm-m. Know what you mean. But if you’d gone twenty-five years getting only what the old fellow had to offer, I fancy you’d be a little sperm mad yourself. Well, shall we join them?”


* * *

   After breakfast the next morning. Sir Wilfred sent the ladies away and sat back with his last cup of coffee. “I was on the line with the masters this morning. They’ve decided to go along with you—with a couple of provisos, of course.”
   “They had better be minor.”
   “First, they want assurance that this information will never be used against them again.”
   “You should have been able to give them that assurance. You know that the man you call the Gnome always destroys the originals as soon as the deal is made. His reputation rests on that.”
   “Yes, quite so. And I shall undertake to assure them on that account. Their second proviso is that I report to them, telling them that I have considered your plan carefully and believe it to be airtight and absolutely sure not to involve the government directly.”
   “Nothing in this business is airtight.”
   “All right. Airtight-ish, then. So I’m afraid that you will have to take me into your confidence—familiarize me with details of dastardly machinations, and all that.”
   “Certain details I cannot give you until I have gone over your observation reports on the Septembrists. But I can sketch the bold outlines for you.”
   Within an hour, they had agreed on Hel’s proposal, although Sir Wilfred had some reservations about the loss of the plane, as it was a Concorde, “…and we’ve had trouble enough trying to ram the damned thing down the world’s throat as it is.”
   “It’s not my fault that the plane in question is that uneconomical, polluting monster.”
   “Quite so. Quite so.”
   “So there it is, Fred. If your people do your part well, the stunt should go off without the Mother Company’s having any proof of your complicity. It’s the best plan I could work up, considering that I’ve had only a couple of days to think about it. What do you say?”
   “I don’t dare give my masters the details. They’re political men—the least reliable of all. But I shall report that I consider the plan worth cooperating with.”
   “Good. When do I get the observation reports on the Septembrists?”
   “They’ll be here by courier this afternoon. You know, something occurs to me, Nicholai. Considering the character of your plan, you really don’t have to involve yourself at all. We could dispose of the Arabs ourselves, and you could return to France immediately.”
   Hel looked at Sir Wilfred flatly for fully ten seconds. Then they both laughed at once.
   “Ah well,” Sir Wilfred said, waving a hand, “you can’t blame me for trying. Let’s take a little lunch. And perhaps there’s time for a nap before the reports come in.”
   “I hardly dare go to my room.”
   “Oh? Did they also visit you last night?”
   “Oh, yes, and I chucked them out.”
   “Waste not, want not, I always say.”


* * *

   Sir Wilfred dozed in his chair, warmed by the setting sun beyond the terrace. On the other side of the white metal table, Hel was scanning the observation reports on the PLO actives.
   “There it is,” he said finally.
   “What? Hm-m? There what is?”
   “I was looking for something in the list of contacts and acquaintances the Septembrists have made since their arrival.”
   “And?”
   “On two occasions, they spent time with this man you have identified as ‘Pilgrim Y’. He works in a food-preparation service for the airlines.”
   “Is that so? I really don’t know the file. I was only dragged into this—unwillingly, I might mention—when you got involved. What’s all this about food preparation?”
   “Well, obviously the Septembrists are not going to try to smuggle their guns through your detection devices. They don’t know that they have the passive cooperation of your government. So I had to know how they were going to get their weapons aboard. They’ve gone to a well-worn method. The weapons will come aboard with the prepared dinners. The food trucks are never searched more than desultorily. You can run anything through them.”
   “So now you know where their weapons will be. So what?”
   “I know where they will have to come to collect them. And that’s where I’ll be.”
   “And what about you? How are you going to get arms aboard for yourself, without leaving trace of our complicity in this?”
   “I’ll carry my weapons right through the checkpoint.”
   “Oh, yes. I’d forgotten about that for a moment. Naked/Kill and all that. Stab a man with a drinking straw. What a nuisance that’s been to us over the years.”
   Hel closed the report. “We have two days until the plane departs. How shall we fill our time?”
   “Loll about here, I suppose. Keep you out of sight.”
   “Are you going up to dress for dinner?”
   “No, I think I’ll not take dinner tonight. I should have followed your example and forsaken my midday lie by. Had to contend with both of them. Probably walk with a limp the rest of my life.”

Heathrow

   The plane was almost full of passengers, all adults, most of them the sort who could afford the surcharge for flying Concorde. Couples chatted; stewards and stewardesses leaned over seats making the cooing noises of experienced nannies; businessmen asked one another what they sold; unacquainted pairs said those inane things calculated to lead to assignations in Montreal; the conspicuously busy kept their noses in documents and reports or fiddled ostentatiously with pocket recorders; the frightened babbled about how much they loved flying, and tried to appear casual as they scanned the information card designating procedures and exits in case of emergency.
   A muscular young Arab and a well-dressed Arab woman sat together near the back, a curtain separating them from the service area, where food and drinks were stored. Beside the curtain stood a flight attendant who smiled down at the Arab couple, his bottle-green eyes vacant.
   Two young Arabs, looking like rich students, entered the plane and sat together about halfway down. Just before the doors were closed, a fifth Arab, dressed as a businessman, rushed down the mobile access truck and aboard the plane, babbling to the receiving steward something about just making it and being delayed by business until the last moment. He came to the back of the plane and took a seat opposite the Arab couple, to whom he nodded in a friendly way.
   With an incredible roar, the engines tugged the plane from the loading ramp, and soon the bent-nosed pterodactyl was airborne.
   When the seat-belt sign flashed off, the pretty Arab woman undid her belt and rose. “It is this way to the ladies’ room?” she asked the green-eyed attendant, smiling shyly.
   He had one hand behind the curtain. As he smiled back at her, he pressed the button on which his finger rested, and two soft gongs echoed through the passenger area. At this sound, each of the 136 passengers, except the PLO Arabs, lowered his head and stared at the back of the seat before him.
   “Any one of these, Madam,” Hel said, holding the curtain aside for her to pass through.
   At that instant, the Arab businessman addressed a muffled question to Hel, meaning to attract his attention while the girl got the weapons from the food container.
   “Certainly, sir,” Hel said, seeming not to understand the question. “I’ll get you one.”
   He slipped a comb from his pocket as he turned and followed the girl, snapping shut the curtain behind him.
   “But wait!” the Arab businessman said—but Hel was gone.
   Three seconds later he returned, a magazine in his hand. “I’m sorry, sir, we don’t seem to have a copy of Paris Match. Will this do?”
   “Stupid fool!” muttered the businessman, staring at the drawn curtain in confusion. Had this grinning idiot not seen the girl? Had she stepped into the rest room upon his approach? Where was she?
   Fully a minute passed. The four Arabs aboard were so concerned with the girl’s failure to emerge through the curtain, an automatic weapon in her hands, they failed to notice that everyone else on the plane was sitting with his head down, staring at the seat back before him.
   Unable to control themselves longer, the two Arab students who had sat together in the waist of the plane rose and started back down the aisle. As they approached the smiling, daydreaming steward with the green eyes, they exchanged worried glances with the older businessman and the muscular lad who was the woman’s companion. The older man gestured with his head for the two to pass on behind the curtain.
   “May I help you?” Hel asked, rolling up the magazine into a tight cylinder.
   “Bathroom,” one of them muttered, as the other said, “Drink of water.”
   “I’ll bring it to you, sir,” Hel said. “Not the bathroom, of course,” he joked with the taller one.
   They passed him, and he followed them behind the curtain.
   Four seconds later, he emerged, a harried expression on his face. “Sir,” he said confidentially to the older businessman, “you’re not a doctor by any chance?”
   “Doctor? No. Why?”
   “Oh, it’s nothing. Not to worry. The gentleman’s had a little accident.”
   “Accident?”
   “Don’t worry. I’ll get help from a member of the cabin crew. Nothing serious, I’m sure.” Hel had in his hand a plastic drinking cup, which he had crushed and creased down the center.
   The businessman rose and stepped into the aisle.
   “If you would just stay with him, sir, while I fetch someone,” Hel said, following the businessman into the service area.
   Two seconds later, he was standing again at his station, looking over the passengers with that expression of vague compassion airline stewards affect. When his gaze fell on the worried muscular young man beside him, he winked and said, “It was nothing at all. Dizzy spell, I guess. First time in a supersonic plane, perhaps. The other gentleman is assisting him. I don’t speak Arabic, unfortunately.”
   A minute passed. Another. The muscular young man’s tension grew, while this mindless steward standing before him hummed a popular tune and gazed vacantly around, fiddling with the small plastic name tag pinned to his lapel.
   Another minute passed.
   The muscular lad could not contain himself. He leaped up and snatched the curtain aside. On the floor, in the puppet-limbed sprawl of the dead, were his four companions. He never felt the edge of the card; he was nerve dead before his body reached the floor.
   Other than the hissing roar of the plane’s motors, there was silence in the plane. All the passengers stared rigidly ahead. The flight crew stood facing the front of the plane, their eyes riveted on the decorated plastic panel before them.
   Hel lifted the intercom phone from its cradle. His soft voice sounded metallic through the address system. “Relax. Don’t look back. We will land within fifteen minutes.” He replaced the phone and dialed the pilot’s cabin. “Send the message exactly as you have been instructed to. That done, open the envelope in your pocket and follow the landing instructions given.”
   Its pterodactyl nose bent down again, the Concorde roared in for a landing at a temporarily evacuated military airfield in northern Scotland. When it stopped and its engines had whined down to silence, the secondary entrance portal opened, and Hel descended on mobile stairs that had been rolled up to the door. He stepped into the vintage 1931 Rolls that had chased the plane across the runway, and they drove away.
   Just before turning off to a control building, Hel looked back and saw the passengers descending and lining themselves up in four-deep ranks beside the plane under the direction of a man who had posed as senior steward. Five military buses were already crossing the airstrip to pick them up.


* * *

   Sir Wilfred sat at the scarred wooden desk of the control office, sipping a whiskey, while Hel was changing from the flight attendant’s uniform to his own clothes.
   “Did the message sound all right?” Hel asked.
   “Most dramatic. Most effective. The pilot radioed back that the plane was being skyjacked, and right in the middle of the message, he broke off, leaving nothing but dead air and the hiss of static.”
   “And he was on clear channel, so there will be independent corroborations of your report?”
   “He must have been heard by half a dozen radio operators all across the North Atlantic.”
   “Good. Now, tomorrow your search planes will come back with reports of having found floating wreckage, right?”
   “As rain.”
   “The wreckage will be reported to have been picked up, and the news will be released over BBC World Service that there was evidence of an explosion, and that the current theory is that an explosive device in the possession of Arab skyjackers was detonated accidentally, destroying the plane.”
   “Just so.”
   “What are your plans for the plane, Fred? Surely the insurance companies will be curious.”
   “Leave that to us. If nothing else remains of the Empire, we retain at least that penchant for duplicity that earned us the title Perfidious Albion.”
   Hel laughed. “All right. It must have been quite a job to gather that many operatives from all over Europe and have them pose as passengers.”
   “It was indeed. And the pilots and crew were RAF fellows who had really very little check-out time on a Concorde.”
   “Now you tell me.”
   “Wouldn’t have done to make you edgy, old man.”
   “I regret your problem of having a hundred-fifty people in on the secret. It was the only way I could do it and still keep your government to the lee of the Mother Company’s revenge. And, after all, they are all your own people.”
   “True enough. But that is no assurance of long-term reliability. But I’ve arranged to manage the problem.”
   “Oh? How so?”
   “Where do you imagine those buses are going?”
   Hel adjusted his tie and zipped up his duffle. “All hundred-fifty of them?”
   “No other airtight way, old boy. And within two days, we’ll have to attend to the extermination crew as well. But there’s a bright side to everything, if you look hard enough. We’re having a bit of an unemployment problem in the country just now, and this will produce scads of openings for bright young men and women in the secret service.”
   Hel shook his head. “You’re really a tough old fossil, aren’t you, Fred.”
   “In time, even the soul gets callused. Sure you won’t have a little farewell drink?”

Part Five.
Shicho

Château d’Etchebar

   His muscles meltin g in the scalding water, his body weightless, hel dozed as his feet enclosed Hana’s in slack embrace. It was a cool day for the season, and dense steam billowed, filling the small bathing house.
   “You were very tired when you came home last night,” Hana said after a sleepy silence.
   “Is that a criticism?” he muttered without moving his lips.
   She laughed lightly. “On the contrary. Fatigue is an advantage in our games.”
   “True.”
   “Was your trip… successful?”
   He nodded.
   She was never inquisitive about his affairs; her training prohibited it, but her training also taught her to create opportunities for him to speak about his work if he wanted to. “Your business? It was the same sort of thing you did in China when we met?”
   “Same genre, different phylum.”
   “And those unpleasant men who visited us, were they involved?”
   “They weren’t on the ground, but they were the enemy.” His tone changed. “Listen, Hana. I want you to take a little vacation. Go to Paris or the Mediterranean for a few weeks.”
   “Back only ten hours and you are already trying to be rid of me?”
   “There may be some trouble from those ‘unpleasant men.’ And I want you safely out of the way. Anyway”—he smiled,—”you could probably use the spice of a strong young lad or two.”
   “And what of you?”
   “Oh, I’ll be out of the enemy’s range. I’m going into the mountains and work that cave Beñat and I discovered. They’re not likely to find me there.”
   “When do you want me to leave, Nikko?”
   “Today. As soon as you can.”
   “You don’t think I would be safe here with our friends in the mountains protecting me?”
   “That chain’s broken. Something happened to Miss Stern. Somebody informed.”
   “I see.” She squeezed his foot between hers. “Be careful, Nikko.”
   The water had cooled enough to make slow movements possible, and Hel flicked his fingers, sending currents of hotter water toward his stomach. “Hana? You told me that you could not bring up the subject of marriage again, but I said that I could and would. I’m doing that now.”
   She smiled and shook her head. “I’ve been thinking about that for the past few days, Nikko. No, not marriage. That would be too silly for such as you and I.”
   “Do you want to go away from here?”
   “No.”
   “What then?”
   “Let’s not make plans. Let’s remain together for a month at a time. Perhaps forever—but only a month at a time. Is that all right with you?”
   He smiled and nestled his feet into hers. “I have great affection for you, Hana.”
   “I have great affection for you, Nicholai.”
   “By the Skeptical Balls of Thomas! What’s going on in here?” Le Cagot had snatched open the door of the bathing room and entered, bringing unwelcomed cool air with him. “Are you two making your own private whiteout? Good to see you back, Niko! You must have been lonely without me.” He leaned against the wooden tub, his chin hooked over the rim. “Arid good to see you too, Hana! You know, this is the first time I’ve seen all of you. I shall tell you the truth—you are a desirable woman. And that is praise from the world’s most desirable man, so wear it in health.”
   “Get out of here!” Hel growled, not because he was uncomfortable with nudity, but because Le Cagot’s tease would go flat if he didn’t seem to rise to the bait.
   “He shouts to hide his delight at seeing me again, Hana. It’s an old trick. Mother in Heaven, you have fine nipples! Are you sure there isn’t a bit of Basque in that genetic stew of yours? Hey, Niko, when do we see if there is light and air at the other end of Le Cagot’s Cave? Everything is in readiness. The air tank is down, the wet suit. Everything.”
   “I’m ready to go up today.”
   “When today?”
   “In a couple of hours. Get out.”
   “Good. That gives me time to visit your Portuguese maid. All right, I’m off. You two will have to resign yourselves to getting on without my company.” He slammed the door behind him, swirling the scant steam that remained in the room.
   After they had made love and taken breakfast, Hana began her packing. She had derided to go to Paris because in late August that city would be relatively empty of vacationing bourgeois Parisians.
   Hel puttered for a time in his garden, which had roughened somewhat in his absence. It was there Pierre found him.
   “Oh, M’sieur, the weather signs are all confused.”
   “Is that so?”
   “It is so. It has rained for two days, and now neither the Eastwind nor the Northwind have dominance, and you know what that means.”
   “I’m confident you will tell me.”
   “It will be dangerous in the mountains, M’sieur. This is the season of the whiteout.”
   “You’re sure of that?”
   Pierre tapped the tip of his rubicund drunkard’s nose with his forefinger, signifying that there were things only the Basque knew for certain, and weather was but one of them.
   Hel took some consolation in Pierre’s assurance. At least they would not have to contend with a whiteout.


* * *

   The Volvo rolled into the village square of Larrau, where they would pick up the Basque lads who operated the pedal winch. They parked near the widow’s bar, and one of the children playing pala against the church wall ran over and did Hel the service of bashing the hood of the car with a stick, as he had seen the man do so often. Hel thanked him, and followed Le Cagot to the bar.
   “Why are you bringing your makila along, Beñat?” He hadn’t noticed before that Le Cagot was carrying his ancient Basque sword/cane under his arm.
   “I promised myself that I would carry it until I discover which of my people informed on that poor little girl. Then, by the Baby-Killing Balls of Herod, I shall ventilate his chest with it. Come, let’s take a little glass with the widow. I shall give her the pleasure of laying my palm upon her ass.”
   The Basque lads who had been awaiting them since morning now joined them over a glass, talking eagerly about the chances of M’sieur Hel being able to swim the underground river to the daylight. Once that air-to-air exploration had been made, the cave system would be officially discovered, and they would be free to go down into the hole themselves and, what is more, to talk about it later.
   The widow twice pushed Le Cagot’s hand away; then, her virtue clearly demonstrated, she allowed it to remain on her ample bottom as she stood beside the table, keeping his glass full.
   The door to the W.C. in back opened, and Father Xavier entered the low-ceilinged bar, his eyes bright with fortifying wine and the ecstasy of fanaticism. “So?” he said to the young Basque lads. “Now you sit with this outlander and his lecherous friend? Drinking their wine and listening to their lies?”
   “You must have drunk deep of His blood this morning, Father Esteka!” Le Cagot said. “You’ve swallowed a bit of courage.”
   Father Xavier snarled something under his breath and slumped down in a chair at the most distant table.
   “Holà,” Le Cagot pursued. “If your courage is so great, why don’t you come up the mountain with us, eh? We are going to descend into a bottomless pit from which there is no exit. It will be a foretaste of hell for you—get you used to it!”
   “Let him be,” Hel muttered. “Let’s go and leave the silly bastard to pickle in his own hate.”
   “God’s eyes are everywhere!” the priest snarled, glaring at Hel. “His wrath is inescapable!”
   “Shut your mouth, convent girl,” Le Cagot said, “or I shall put this makila where it will inconvenience the Bishop!
   Hel put a restraining hand on Le Cagot’s arm; they finished off their wine and left.

Gouffre Porte-de-Larrau

   Hel squatted on the flat slab that edged their base camp beside the rubble cone, his helmet light turned off to save the batteries, listening over the field telephone to Le Cagot’s stream of babble, invective, and song as he descended on the cable, constantly bullying and amusing the Basque lads operating the pedal winch above. Le Cagot was taking a breather, braced up in the bottom of the corkscrew before allowing himself to be lowered into the void of Le Cagot’s Cave, down into the waterfall, where he would have to hang, twisting on the line, while the lads locked up and replaced the cable drum.
   After ordering them to be quick about the job and not leave him hanging there, dangling like Christ on the tree, or he would come back up and do them exquisite bodily damage, he said, “All right, Niko, I’m coming down!”
   “That’s the only way gravity works,” Hel commented, as he looked up for the first glimpse of Le Cagot’s helmet light emerging through the mist of the waterfall.
   A few meters below the opening into the principal cave, the descent stopped, and the Basque boy on the phones announced that they were changing drums.
   “Get on with it!” Le Cagot ordered. “This cold shower is abusing my manhood!”
   Hel was considering the task of carrying the heavy air tank all the way to the Wine Cellar at the end of the system, glad that he could rely on Le Cagot’s bull strength, when a muffled shout came over the earphones. Then a sharp report. His first reaction was that something had snapped. A cable? The tripod? His body instinctively tightened in kinesthetic sympathy for Le Cagot. There were two more crisp reports. Gunfire!
   Then silence.
   Hel could see Le Cagot’s helmet lamp, blurred through the mist of the waterfall, winking on and off as he turned slowly on the end of the cable.
   “What in hell is going on?” Le Cagot asked over the phones.
   “I don’t know.”
   A voice came over the telephone, thin and distant “I warned you to stay out of this, Mr. Hel.”
   “Diamond?” Hel asked, unnecessarily.
   “That is correct. The merchant. The one who would not dare meet you face to face.”
   “You call this face to face?”
   “It’s close enough.”
   Le Cagot’s voice was tight with the strain on his chest and diaphragm from hanging in the harness. “What is going on?”
   “Diamond?” Hel was forcing himself to remain calm. “What happened to the boys at the winch?”
   “They’re dead.”
   “I see. Listen. It’s me you want, and I’m at the bottom of the shaft. I’m not the one hanging from the cable. It is my friend. I can instruct you how to lower him.”
   “Why on earth should I do that?”
   From the background, Hel heard Darryl Starr’s voice. “That’s the son of a bitch that took my piece. Let him hang there, turning slowly in the wind, the mammy-jammer!”
   There was the sound of a childish giggle—the PLO scab they called Haman.
   “What makes you think I involved myself in your business?” Hel asked, his voice conversational, although he was frantically playing for time to think.
   “The Mother Company keeps sources close to our friends in England—just to confirm their allegiance. I believe you met our Miss Biffen, the young model?”
   “If I get out of here, Diamond…”
   “Save your breath, Hel. I happen to know that is a ‘bottomless pit from which there is no exit.’”
   Hel took a slow breath. Those were Le Cagot’s words in the widow’s bar that afternoon.
   “I warned you,” Diamond continued, “that we would have to take counteraction of a kind that would satisfy the vicious tastes of our Arab friends. You will be a while dying, and that will please them. And I have arranged a more visible monument to your punishment. That château of yours? It ceased to exist an hour and a half ago.”
   “Diamond…” Hel had nothing to say, but he wanted to keep Diamond on the other end of the line. “Le Cagot is nothing to you. Why let him hang there?”
   “It’s a detail sure to amuse our Arab friends.”
   “Listen, Diamond—there are men coming to relieve those lads. They’ll find us and get us out.”
   “That isn’t true. In fact, it’s a disappointingly pallid lie. But to forestall the possibility of someone stumbling upon this place accidentally, I intend to send men up to bury your Basque friends here, dismantle all this bric-abrac, and roll boulders into the pit to conceal the entrance. I tell you this as an act of kindness—so you won’t waste yourself on fruitless hope.”
   Hel did not respond.
   “Do you remember what my brother looked like, Hel?”
   “Vaguely.”
   “Good. Keep him in mind.”
   There was a rattling over the headphones, as they were taken off and tossed aside.
   “Diamond? Diamond?” Hel squeezed the phone line in his fingers. The only sound over the phone was Le Cagot’s labored breathing.
   Hel turned on his helmet light and the ten-watt bulb connected to battery, so Le Cagot could see something below him and not feel deserted.
   “Well, what about that old friend?” Le Cagot’s half-strangled voice came over the line. “Not exactly the denouement I would have chosen for this colorful character I have created for myself.”
   For a desperate moment, Hel considered attempting to scale the walls of the cave, maybe get above Le Cagot and let a line down to him.
   Impossible. It would take hours of work with drill and expansion bolts to move up that featureless, overhanging face; and long before that, Le Cagot would be dead, strangled in the harness webbing that was even now crushing the breath out of him.
   Could Le Cagot get out of this harness and up the cable to the mouth of the corkscrew? From there it was barely conceivable that he might work his way up to the surface by free climbing.
   He suggested this to Beñat over the phone.
   Le Cagot’s voice was a weak rasp. “Can’t… ribs… weight of… water…”
   “Beñat!”
   “What, for the love of God?”
   A last slim possibility had occurred to Hel. The telephone line. It wasn’t tied off firmly, and the chances that it would take a man’s weight were slight; but it was just possible that it had fouled somewhere above, perhaps tangled with the descent cable.
   “Beñat? Can you get onto the phone line? Can you cut yourself out of your harness?”
   Le Cagot hadn’t breath enough left to answer, but from the vibration in the phone line, Hel knew he was trying to follow instructions. A minute passed. Two. The mist-blurred helmet lamp was dancing jerkily up near the roof of the cave. Le Cagot was clinging to the phone line, using his last strength before unconsciousness to hack away at the web straps of his harness with his knife.
   He gripped the wet phone line with all his force and sawed through the last strap. His weight jerked onto the phone line… snatching it loose.
   “Christ!” he cried.
   His helmet light rushed down toward Hel. For a fraction of a second, the coiling phone line puddled at Hel’s feet. With a fleshy slap, Le Cagot’s body hit the tip of the rubble cone, bounced, tumbled in a clatter of rock and debris, then lodged head-downward not ten meters from Hel.
   “Beñat!”
   Hel rushed to him. He wasn’t dead. The chest was crushed; it convulsed in heaving gasps that spewed bloody foam from the mouth. The helmet had taken the initial impact but had come off during the bouncing down the rubble. He was bleeding from his nose and ears. Hanging head down, he was choking on his own blood.
   As gently as possible, Hel lifted Le Cagot’s torso in his arms and settled it more comfortably. The damage he might do by moving him did not matter; the man was dying. Indeed, Hel resented the powerful Basque constitution that denied his friend immediate release into death.
   Le Cagot’s breath was rapid and shallow; his open eyes were slowly dilating. He coughed, and the motion brought him racking pain.
   Hel caressed the bearded cheek, slick with blood.
   “How…” Le Cagot choked on the word.
   “Rest, Beñat. Don’t talk.”
   “How… do I look?”
   “You look fine.”
   “They didn’t get my face?”
   “Handsome as a god.”
   “Good.” Le Cagot’s teeth clenched against a surge of pain. The bottom ones had been broken off in the fall. “The priest…”
   “Rest, my friend. Don’t fight it. Let it take you.”
   “The priest!” The blood froth at the corner of his mouth was already sticky.
   “I know.” Diamond had quoted Le Cagot’s description of the cave as a bottomless pit. The only person he could have heard it from was the fanatic, Father Xavier. And it must have been the priest who gave away Hannah’s place of refuge as well. The confessional was his source of information, his Fat Boy.
   For an endless three minutes, Le Cagot’s gurgling rasps were the only sound. The blood pulsing from his ears began to thicken.
   “Niko?”
   “Rest. Sleep.”
   “How do I look?”
   “Magnificent, Beñat.”
   Suddenly Le Cagot’s body stiffened and a thin whine came from the back of his throat. “Christ!”
   “Pain?” Hel asked stupidly, not knowing what to say. The crisis of agony passed, and Le Cagot’s body seemed to slump into itself. He swallowed blood and asked, “What did you say?”
   “Pain?” Hel repeated.
   “No… thanks… I have all I need.”
   “Fool,” Hel said softly.
   “Not a bad exit line, though.”
   “No, not bad.”
   “I bet that you won’t make so fine a one when you go.”
   Hel closed his eyes tightly, squeezing the tears out, as he caressed his friend’s cheek.
   Le Cagot’s breath snagged and stopped. His legs began to jerk in spasms. The breath came back, rapid gasps rattling in the back of his throat. His broken body contorted in final agony and he cried, “Argh! By the Four Balls of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph…”
   Pink lung blood gushed from his mouth, and he was dead.


* * *

   Hel grunted with relief from pain as he slipped off the straps of the air cylinder and wedged it into an angle between two slabs of raw rock that had fallen in from the roof of the Climbing Cave, He sat heavily, his chin hanging to his chest, as he sucked in great gulps of air with quivering inhalations, and exhalations that scoured his lungs and made him cough. Sweat ran from his hair, despite the damp cold of the cave. He crossed his arms over his chest and gingerly fingered the raw bands on his shoulders where the air tank straps had rubbed away the skin, even through three sweaters under his parachutist’s overalls. An air tank is an awkward pack through rough squeezes and hard climbs. If drawn up tight, it constricts movement and numbs the arms and fingers; if slackened, it chafes the skin and swings, dangerously threatening balance.
   When his breathing calmed, he took a long drink of water-wine from his xahako, then lay back on a slab of rock, not even bothering to take off his helmet. He was carrying as little as possible: the tank, all the rope he could handle, minimal hardware, two flares, his xahako, the diving mask in a rubberized pouch which also contained a watertight flashlight, and a pocketful of glucose cubes for rapid energy. Even stripped down to necessities, it was too much for his body weight. He was used to moving through caves freely, leading and carrying minimal weight, while the powerful Le Cagot bore the brunt of their gear. He missed his friend’s strength; he missed the emotional support of his constant flow of wit and invective and song.
   But he was alone now. His reserves of strength were sapped; his hands were torn and stiff. The thought of sleep was delicious, seductive… deadly. He knew that if he slept, the cold would seep in, the attractive, narcotic cold. Mustn’t sleep. Sleep is death. Rest, but don’t close your eyes. Close your eyes, but don’t sleep. No. Mustn’t close your eyes! His eyebrows arched with the effort to keep the lids open over the upward-rolling eyes. Mustn’t sleep. Just rest for a moment. Not sleep. Just close your eyes for a moment. Just close… eyes…


* * *

   He had left Le Cagot on the side of the rubble heap where he died. There was no way to bury him; the cave itself would be a vast mausoleum, now that they had rolled stones in over the opening. Le Cagot would lie forever in the heart of his Basque mountains.
   When at last the blood had stopped oozing, Hel had gently wiped the face clean before covering the body with a sleeping bag.
   After covering the body, Hel had squatted beside it, seeking middle-density meditation to clear his mind and tame his emotions. He had achieved only fleeting wisps of peace, but when he tugged his mind back to the present, he was able to consider his situation. Decision was simple; all alternatives were closed off. His chance of making it, alone and overloaded, all the way down that long shaft and around Hel’s Knob, through the gargantuan chaos of the Climbing Cave, through the waterfall into the Crystal Cavern, then down that foul marl chute to the Wine Cellar sump—his chances of negotiating all these obstacles without belaying and help from Le Cagot were slim. But it was a kind of Pascal’s Bet. Slim or not, his only hope lay in making the effort. He would not think about the task of swimming out through the pipe at the bottom of the Wine Cellar, that pipe through which water rushed with such volume that it pulled the surface of the pool tight and bowed. He would face one problem at a time.
   Negotiating Hel’s Knob had come close to ending his problems. He had tied a line to the air tank and balanced it on the narrow ledge beside the stream rushing through that wedge-shaped cut, then he undertook the knob with a strenuous heel-and-shoulder scramble, lying back at almost full length, his knees quivering with the strain and the extra weight of rope crosscoiled bandolier style over his chest. Once past the obstacle, he faced the task of getting the tank around. There was no Le Cagot to feed the line out to him. There was nothing for it but to tug the tank into the water and take up slack rapidly as it bounced along the bottom of the stream. He was not able to take line in quickly enough; the tank passed his stance underwater and continued on, the line jerking and bobbing. He had no point of belay; when the slack snapped out, he was pulled from his thin ledge. He couldn’t let go. To lose the tank was to lose everything. He straddled the narrow shaft, one boot on the ledge, the cleats of the other flat against the smooth opposite wall where there was no purchase. All the strength of his legs pressed into the stance, the cords of his crotch stood out, stretched and vulnerable. The line ran rapidly through his hands. He clenched his jaw and squeezed his fists closed over the rope. The pain seared as his palms took the friction of the wet line that cut into them. Water ran behind his fists, blood before. To handle the pain, he roared, his scream echoing unheard through the narrow diaclose.
   The tank was stopped.
   He hauled it back against the current, hand over hand, the rope molten iron in his raw palms, the cords of his crotch knotting and throbbing. When his hand touched the web strap of the tank, he pulled it up and hooked it behind his neck. With that weight dangling at his chest, the move back to the ledge was dicy. Twice he pushed off the smooth wall, and twice he tottered and fell back, catching himself again with the flat of his sole, his crotch feeling like it would tear with the stretch. On the third try he made it over and stood panting against the wall, only his heels on the ledge, his toes over the roaring stream.
   He moved the last short distance to the scree wall that blocked the way to the Climbing Cave, and he slumped down in the book corner, exhausted, the tank against his chest, his palms pulsing with pain.
   He couldn’t stay there long. His hands would stiffen up and become useless.
   He rerigged the tank to his back and checked the fittings and faceplate of the mask. If they were damaged, that was it. The mask had somehow survived banging against the tank. Now he began the slow climb up the corner between the side of the shaft, and the boulder wall under which the river had disappeared. As before, there were many foot– and handholds, but it was all friable rottenrock, chunks of which came off in his hands, and grains of stone worked their way into his skinless palms. His heart thumped convulsively in his chest, squirting throbs of blood into his temples. When at last he made the fiat ledge between two counterbalanced boulders that was the keyhole to the Climbing Cave, he lay out flat on his stomach and rested, his cheek against the rock and saliva dripping from the corner of his mouth.
   He cursed himself for resting there too long. His palms were growing sticky with scab fluid, and they hinged awkwardly, like lobster claws. He got to his feet and stood there, opening and closing his hands, breaking through the crusts of pain, until they articulated smoothly again.
   For an immeasurable time, he stumbled forward through the Climbing Cave, feeling his way around the house-sized boulders that dwarfed him, squeezing between counterbalanced slabs of recent infall from the scarred roof far above the throw of his helmet light, edging his way along precariously perched rocks that would long ago have surrendered to gravity, had they been subjected to the weather erosion of the outside. The river was no guide, lost far below the jumble of infall, ravelled into thousands of threads as it found its way along the schist floor of the cavern. Three times, in his fatigue and stress, he lost his way, and the terror of it was that he was wasting precious energy stumbling around blindly. Each time, he forced himself to stop and calm himself, until his proximity sense suggested the path toward open space.
   At last, there was sound to guide him. As he approached the end of the Climbing Cave, the threads of water far below wove themselves together, and slowly he became aware of the roar and tympani of the great waterfall that led down to the Crystal Cave. Ahead, the roof of the cave sloped down and was joined by a blocking wall of jagged, fresh infall. Making it up that wall, through the insane network of cracks and chimneys, then down the other side through the roaring waterfall without the safety of a belay from Le Cagot would be the most dangerous and difficult part of the cave. He would have to rest before that.
   It was then that Hel had slipped off the straps of his air tank and sat down heavily on a rock, his chin hanging to his chest as he gasped for air and sweat ran from his hair into his eyes.
   He had taken a long drink from his xahako, then had lain back on the slab of rock, not bothering to take off his helmet.
   His body whimpered for rest. But he mustn’t sleep. Sleep is death. Just rest for a moment. Not sleep. Just close your eyes for a moment. Just close… eyes…

* * *

   “Ahgh!” He started awake, driven from his shallow, tormented sleep by the image of Le Cagot’s helmet light rushing down toward him from the roof of the cave! He sat up, shivering and sweating. The thin sleep had not rested him; fatigue wastes in his body were thickening up; his hands were a pair of stiff paddles; his shoulders were knotted; the nausea of repeated adrenaline shock was clogging his throat.
   He sat there, slumped over, not caring if he went on or not. Then, for the first time, the staggering implications of what Diamond had said over the phones burst upon his consciousness. His château no longer existed? What had they done? Had Hana escaped?
   Concern for her, and the need to avenge Le Cagot, did for his body what food and rest might have done. He clawed his remaining glucose cubes from the pouch and chewed them, washing them down with the last of his water-wine. It would take the sugar several minutes to work its way into his bloodstream. Meanwhile, he set his jaw and began the task of limbering up his bands, breaking up the fresh scabbing, accepting the gritty sting of movement.
   When he could handle it, he slung the air tank on and began the hard climb up the jumble of infall that blocked off the mouth of the Crystal Cave. He recalled Le Cagot telling him to try a bit to the left, because he was sitting in the line of fall and was too comfortable to move.
   Twice, he had to struggle out of the tank harness while clinging to scant points of purchase because the crack he had to wriggle through was too tight for a man and tank at once without risking damage to the mask slung from his chest. Each time, he took care to tie the tank securely, because a fall might knock off its fitting, exploding the cylinder and leaving him with no air to make the final cave swim and making all this work and torture futile.
   When he achieved the thin ledge directly above the roaring waterfall, he directed his lamp down tire long drop, up which mist rose and billowed in the windless air. He paused only long enough to catch his breath and slow his heartbeat. There could be no long rests from now on, no chances for his body and hands to stiffen up, or for his imagination to cripple his determination.
   The deafening roar of the falls and the roiling 40° mist insulated his mind from any thoughts of wider scope than the immediate task. He edged along the slimy, worn ledge that had once been the lip of the waterfall until be found the outcrop of rock from which Le Cagot had belayed him during his first descent along the glistening sheet of falling water. There would be no protecting belay this time. As he inched down, he came upon the first of the pitons he had driven in before, snapped a carabiner into the first and tied off a doubled line, threading and snapping in another at each piton, to shorten his fall, should he come off the face. Again, as before, it was not long before the combined friction of the line passing through these snap links made pulling it through difficult and dangerous, as the effort tended to lift him from the scant boot jams and fingerholds the face provided.
   The water and the rope tortured his palms, and he clutched at his holds ever harder and harder, as though to punish the pain with excess. When he reached the point at which he would have to break through the sheet of water and pass behind the falls, he discovered that he could no longer drag down slack. The weight of water on the line, the number of carabiners through which it was strung, and his growing weakness combined to make this impossible. He would have to abandon the rope and climb free from here on. As before, he reached through the silver-and-black surface of the falls, which split in a heavy, throbbing bracelet around his wrist. He felt for and located the sharp little crack, invisible behind the face of the falls, into which he had wedged his fingers before. Ducking through the falls would be harder this time. The tank presented additional surface to the falls; his fingers were raw and numb; and his reserves of strength were gone. One smooth move. Just swing through it. There is a good ledge behind the cascade, and a book corner piled with rubble that made an easy climb down. He took three deep breaths and swung under the face of the falls.
   Recent rains had made the falls twice as thick as before and more than twice as heavy. Its weight battered his helmet and shoulders and tried to tear the tank from his back. His numbed fingers were pried from the sharp crack; and he fell.


* * *

   The first thing he became aware of was the relative quiet. The second thing was the water. He was behind the falls, at the base of the seres pile, sitting hip-deep in water. He may have been unconscious for a time, but he had no sense of it. The events were strung together in his mind: the battering of the water on his back and tank; the pain as his skinless fingers were wrenched from their hold; clatter, noise, pain, shock as he fell to the rubble pile and tumbled down it—then this relative silence, and waist-deep water where, before, there had been wet rock. The silence was no problem; he was not stunned. He had noticed last time how the falls seemed to muffle the roar once he was behind it. But the water? Did that mean recent rains had seeped down, making a lake of the floor of the Crystal Cavern?
   Was he injured? He moved his legs; they were all right. So were his arms. His right shoulder was hurt. He could lift it, but there was gritty pain at the top of its arc. A bone bruise, maybe. Painful, but not debilitating. He had decided that he had come through the fall miraculously unhurt, when he became aware of a peculiar sensation. The set of his teeth wasn’t right. They were touching cusp to cusp. The smallest attempt to open his mouth shocked him with such agony that he felt himself slipping toward unconsciousness. His jaw was broken.
   The face mask. Had it taken the fall? He tugged it from its pouch and examined it in the light of his lamp, which was yellowing because the batteries were fading. The faceplate was cracked.
   It was a hairline crack. It might hold, so long as there was no wrench or torque on the rubber fittings. And what was the chance of that, down in the ripping current at the bottom of the Wine Cellar? Not much.
   When he stood, the water came only to midshin. He waded out through the largely dissipated waterfall into the Crystal Cavern, and the water got deeper as the mist of frigid water thinned behind him.
   One of the two magnesium flares had broken in his fall; its greasy powder had coated the other flare, which had to be wiped off carefully before it could be lighted, lest the flame rush down the sides, burning his hand. He struck off the flare on its cap; it sputtered and blossomed into brilliant white light, illuminating the distant walls, encrusted with glittering crystals, and picking out the beauty of calcite drapery and slender stalactites. But these last did not point down to stumpy stalagmites, as they had done before. The floor of the cave was a shallow lake that covered the low speleotherns. His first fears were supported: recent rains had filled this nether end of the cave system; the whole long marl chute at the far end of the cave was underwater.
   Hel’s impulse was to give in, to wade out to the edge of the cave and find a shelf to sit on where he could rest and lose himself in meditation. It seemed too hard now; the mathematics of probability too steep. At the outset, he had thought that this last, improbable task, the swim through the Wine Cellar toward light and air, would be the easiest from a psychological point of view. Denied alternatives, the weight and expanse of the entire cave system behind him, the final swim would have the strength of desperation. Indeed, he had thought his chances of making it through might be greater than they would have been if he had Le Cagot to belay him, for in that case he would have worked to only half the limit of his endurance, needing the rest to return, should the way be blocked, or too long. As it was, be had hoped his chances would be almost doubled, as there was no coming back through that force of water.
   But now… the Crystal Cave had flooded, and his swim was doubled in length. The advantage of despair was gone.
   Wouldn’t it be better to sit out death in dignity, rather than struggle against fate like a panicked animal? What chance did he have? The slightest movement of his jaw shocked him with agony; his shoulder was stiff and it ground painfully in its socket; his palms were flayed; even the goddamned faceplate of his mask was unlikely to withstand the currents of that underground pipe. This thing wasn’t even a gamble. It was like flipping coins against Fate, with Fate having both heads and tails. Hel won only if the coin landed on edge.
   He waded heavily toward the side wall of the cavern, where flowstone oozed down like frozen taffy. He would sit there and wait it out.
   His flare sputtered out, and the eternal spelaean darkness closed in on his mind with a crushing weight. Spots of light like minute crystal organisms under a microscope sketched across the darkness with each movement of his eyes. They faded, and the dark was total.
   Nothing in the world would be easier than, to accept death with dignity, with shibumi.
   And Hana? And that insane Third World priest who had contributed to the death of Le Cagot and Hannah Stern? And Diamond?
   All right. All right, damn it! He wedged the rubberized flashlight between two outcroppings of aragonite, and in its beam attached the mask to the air tank, grunting with pain as he tightened the connections with his flayed fingers. After carefully threading the straps over his bruised shoulder, he opened the inflow valve, then dipped up a little spit water to clear the faceplate of breath mist. The pressure of the mask against his broken jaw was painful, but he could manage it.
   His legs were still unhurt; he would swim with legs only, holding the flashlight in his good hand. As soon as it was deep enough, he laid out on the water and swam—swimming was easier than wading.
   In the pellucid water of the cave, unclouded by organisms, the flashlight picked up underwater features as though through air. It was not until he had entered the marl chute that he felt the influence of the current—more a suction downward than a push from behind.
   The pressure of the water plugged his ears, making his breathing loud in the cavities of his head.
   The suction increased as he neared the bottom of the marl chute, and the force of the water torqued his body toward the sunken sump of the Wine Cellar. From here on, he would not swim; the current would carry him, would drag him through; all his effort must be bent to slowing his speed and to controlling his direction. The pull of the current was an invisible force; there was no air in the water, no particles, no evidence of the tons of force that gripped him.
   It was not until he attempted to grasp a ledge, to slop for a moment and collect himself before entering the sump, that he knew the power of the current. The ledge was ripped from his hold, and he was turned over on his back and drawn down into the sump. He struggled to reverse himself, tucking up and rolling, because he must enter the outflow pipe below feet first if he was to have any chance at all. If he were carried head first into an obstruction, that would be it.
   Inexplicably, the suction seemed to lessen once he was in the sump, and he settled slowly toward the bottom, his feet toward the triangular pipe below. He took a deep breath and braced his nerves, remembering how that current had snatched away the dye packets so quickly that the eye could not follow them.
   Almost leisurely, his body floated toward the bottom of the sump pit. That was his last clear image.
   The current gripped him, and he shot into the pipe. His foot hit something; the leg crumpled, the knee striking his chest; he was spinning; the flashlight was gone; he took a blow on the spine, another on the hip.
   And suddenly he was lodged behind a choke stone, and the water was roaring past him, tearing at him. The mask twisted, and the faceplate blew out, the broken pieces cutting his leg as they flashed past. He had been holding his breath from fear for several seconds, and the need for air was pounding in his temples. Water rushed over his face and eddied up his nostrils. It was the goddamned tank! He was wedged in there because the space was too narrow for both his body and the tank! He gripped his knife with all the force of his body focused on his right hand, as the water sought to twist the knife from his grasp. Had to cut away the tank! The weight of the current against the cylinder pressed the straps against his shoulders. No way to slip the knife under. He must saw through the webbing directly against his chest.
   White pain.
   His pulse throbbed, expanding in his head. His throat convulsed for air. Cut harder! Cut, damn it!
   The tank went, smashing his foot as it rushed out under him. He was moving again, twisting. The knife was gone. With a terrible crunching sound, something hit the back of his head. His diaphragm heaved within him, sucking for breath. His heartbeat hammered in his head as he tumbled and twisted in the chaos of foam and bubbles.
   Bubbles… Foam! He could see! Swim up! Swim!