"The long way, I think. Find a hole and disappear, maybe for a couple of days while they get swiveleyed and impatient. Alternatively, we might swim to the ship after dark and take it over, leaving the Three Musketeers on the island. We don't want to prove anything, do we?"

"Well... not exactly."

He spoke reluctantly, and when she saw him glance at her badly swollen mouth she knew his mind and said, "Well, let's find a hole first, then see how things go."

"Okay. We've got the best part of two hours." He put the handcuffs in the haversack, the keys in a pocket of his dinner jacket.

Modesty said, "We can pick up a little food to keep us going. Just easy stuff. Rock seaweed, sh.e.l.lfish, and maybe some nettles or dandelions."

Willie grimaced. "I might go on a fast. I was the least squeamish kid in the orphanage, but I wish I 'ad your stomach."

She smiled and picked up the hem of her skirt. "I had early training in diet. Hack this off short for me, Willie. It's a pity I wasn't wearing slacks."

He dropped to one knee and began to cut the skirt to above midthigh. There might be no immediate need for this if they were going to ground, but she was taking nothing for granted, and if action came sooner than expected she wanted no skirt to hamper her movements. When he had finished Willie put the cut fabric in his haversack on the principle that it might be useful. In circ.u.mstances like these, you could never tell.

At noon the ship's launch headed for the sh.o.r.e, an Asiatic seaman at the tiller. Brightstar sat with the carbine across his knees, silent and impa.s.sive. Crichton carried his hunting rifle and wore a widebrimmed hat with a strip of leopard skin round the crown. Van Rutte nursed his Uzi and had changed his baseball cap for a camouflaged steel helmet.

On the deck of the Ambato Bellman sat in his wheelchair with Sandra beside him. A pace or two away, watching them uneasily, was the ship's master. Captain Ricco Burrera was a worried man with an ingratiating manner. He was well aware that whatever was about to happen was entirely illegal, in fact that it almost certainly involved a double killing, and he was concerned that this might, if discovered, be held against him.

He cleared his throat noisily to make his presence known and said, "I hope there will be no troubles afterwards, senor."

Bellman did not put himself out to turn and look at the man as he said, "I own you, Burrera. You and your miserable ship. Go away and don't bother me."

"Of course, senor. Thank you." Burrera made a placating gesture and moved unhappily away.

Gazing towards the island, Bellman said, "Soon be over now, my darling. Do you think I'm a wicked man to take revenge like this?"

"No!" She took his hand and spoke fiercely. "You've been good to me since the day I came to you all those years ago, and they did this to you. They destroyed you. They're evil, and I hate them." She hesitated, then went on with fading vehemence. "I want them to know how it feels. I want them hunted and destroyed."

There was a silence, and Bellman reached out to pat her hand. After a moment she said, "It wasn't true, was it? I mean, what they said about you. About drugs."

He turned his head to look at her, smiling a little. "Can you even begin to believe it of me?"

She leaned over to rest her cheek against his. "Oh, I'm sorry, please forgive me. It was just... he seemed not the way I'd always imagined. Willie Garvin, I mean. Well, both of them."

He nodded and squeezed her hand. "Yes. They're very clever, you know."

She straightened up and sighed. "Of course. I was being stupid."

Only by courtesy could the hideaway be called a cave. It was a broad, tapering slot running through a low spur of rock that projected into a valley bottom. The entrance was perhaps three feet high and twice as wide. Within, the roof rose briefly to five feet, then sloped down, and the width gradually narrowed to a smaller opening into the valley some twenty feet away on the far side of the spur.

Willie Garvin lay asleep, head pillowed on his folded dinner jacket. Modesty sat crosslegged near the mouth of the cave, holding the Colt in her lap, the haversack and bottle of water beside her. Willie stirred, opened his eyes and was immediately awake. He sat up and straightened his bowtie. "I feel a bit overdressed for this caper," he remarked. "You fancy another little catnap for 'alfanhour, Princess?"

"No, I'm well rested now, thanks. Have you got a comb, Willie?"

He produced one from his jacket and crawled forward to sit beside her. She took the comb, pulled pins from her chignon and began to comb out her hair. "Where had you been in that rig?"

"The dinner jacket? Oh, I bought a couple of tickets for us. That charity film premiere you fancied, with the dinner and dance after."

She looked puzzled. "You didn't tell me."

"No, I rang Weng and he said you'd got a gentleman in the offing so I left it. Then when Sandra cropped up, I asked 'er along." He grinned suddenly. "Did Weng mean Crichton?"

Modesty frowned, tugging hard at her hair. "I suppose so. Yes."

Willie chuckled, and she said, "Ha! Big joke! You got conned by Sandra, anyway."

"Don't remind me. And I'd seen 'er before. Well, back view."

Modesty sighed and began to plait her hair in two short pigtails behind her ears. "I met Crichton three nights ago at a party and he made himself pleasant. He came to the cottage for some shooting yesterday morning, and by the time we left for town I was off him."

Willie moved to kneel behind her. "I'll do it, Princess. You 'ang on to the gun."

She felt him take over the combing and plaiting, and remembered the first time he had done this for her, years ago in The Network days when she had been wounded and he had sicknursed her. She said, "Bellman's destroyed himself with hating us. It would have been better to put him down."

"Much. Better for 'is customers and for us, too. But he wouldn't fight."

"That was the trouble." She was silent for a few moments, then, "We never did find out who that girl is. It's just a feeling, but I don't think she was for sleeping with."

"I 'ad the same notion." He completed a plait and tied it with a thin strip from the offcut of her skirt. "D'you mind if I cut your jerkin up?"

She looked surprised for a moment, then understanding dawned. "No, it's a good idea."

A quarter of a mile away Crichton moved along the foot of a low ridge, rifle under his arm. Binoculars hung from his belt, and an object like a small radio was suspended from his neck so that it rested on his chest. From the top of it a twelveinch loop aerial projected. Crichton halted and turned the aerial slowly, watching a dial set in the cha.s.sis beside it. A needle moved up the dial to a midpoint on it, began to fall, then rose again as he finetuned the direction of the loop. He looked up, sighted along the loop, then moved on.

In the cave, her plaits completed, Modesty sat watching from just within the entrance. Willie had cut a triangle and several thin thongs from the soft leather of her jerkin and was fashioning a sling. She said, "I think we can have a mouthful of water each now," and reached for the waterbottle. She uncorked it, moistened two fingers and tasted, then corked the bottle again. "Willie, he's given us strong salt water."

Willie knotted a final thong to a corner of the leather triangle. "Well, if he's playing it that way..."

"Yes." She broke open the Colt, shook out the cartridges and pa.s.sed one to him. As he examined it she lifted the gun to look down the barrel. "Don't bother, Willie, they'll be live all right. The barrel's blocked solid halfway down. He was hoping I'd blow a few fingers off."

Willie started to speak, but she stopped him with a quick hand on his knee, then edged back and lay on her stomach. He eased down beside her, looking out into the sunshine. A hundred yards away at the top of a slight incline Crichton stood fiddling with a small black object that hung from his neck. After a few moments he took binoculars from his belt and looked directly towards the cave entrance.

They lay still, using material cut from her skirt as cowls to mask their faces, confident that they could not be detected in the deep shadows. Modesty whispered, "He's using some sort of gadget and he's found us much too d.a.m.n quickly."

"Could be a little directionfinder. But we'd 'ave to be carrying something for it to home in on."

She said, "The water was salt, the gun was b.o.o.bytrapped. That leaves the knife."

He looked at the bowie knife, in his hand now. "A homer, fixed inside the 'ilt."

"And big white b.l.o.o.d.y Crichton didn't fancy clay pigeons because they can't hit back," she said, tightlipped. "Don't throw that knife, you might break the homer and it's too useful to waste."

"That's what I was thinking." He laid the knife on the ground. At the top of the slope Crichton had put down the mini d.f. He checked his rifle carefully, then began to move towards the cave, crouching, taking cover behind a boulder or in a shallow gully of the seamed ground as he moved.

Modesty said, "He's putting on a nice act. Wants me to take a shot when he's close."

"Then you get your 'and blown apart and he comes in quick over the last bit and blasts us while we're wondering what 'appened."

She said softly, "I really hate that b.a.s.t.a.r.d. All right, I'll play bait. You slip out the back way and take him from the flank."

Crichton lay behind a low outcrop of rock, enjoying himself as he visualised what would be happening in the cave. They would have seen him, of course, but she was far too smart to use the Colt at long range. They would be watching his approach, confident that she could drop him before he could sight her, and then they would have his rifle to use against Brightstar and Van Rutte. He peered round one end of the outcrop, the binoculars to his eyes. Adrenalin was pumped into his bloodstream as he saw her hand and forearm resting on the ground fifty yards away, just clear of the cave's shadows. The Colt was in her hand, aimed in his general direction, but she would not fire yet.

He prepared for a quick dash forward to the next piece of cover, a low hump in the ground, then set off at a crouching run. This would bring him to within a dozen paces of the cave, and when he made the next dash she would surely fire. This would leave her hand shattered and Garvin briefly frozen by shock. Then it would be easy- Crichton's thought ceased abruptly, for his senses were splintered and he was sent sprawling to the ground, stupefied by a savage blow from nowhere. Watching from the cave, Modesty caught her breath in surprise as she saw the missile that fell with him - not a pebble from a sling, but the full and heavy waterbottle, which had hit him squarely on the side of the head. Willie Garvin's accuracy in throwing was not confined to knife or club. He was equally capable with anything from a coin to a fellingaxe.

The waterbottle was less damaging, less potentially lethal than a pebble slingshot, and as Willie came into her field of vision, running hard, she knew he had chosen it simply to disarm Crichton for long enough to reach him. Yes, she thought, touching fingers to her bruised and swollen mouth, that figures.

Crichton had got to his knees and was peering about for his fallen rifle when a hand of frightening strength took him by the back of the neck. He was hauled to his feet and spun round to face a man in a stained and crumpled dress shirt, looking at him with blistering blue eyes.

Willie Garvin said, "The name's Crichton, I believe?" Then his arm swung in a shattering backhand blow across Crichton's mouth and the man was flung sideways as if by a silent bomb blast, unconscious before he hit the ground. Willie heard Modesty's approach and turned to face her, palms raised in placatory protest. "Don't go on at me, Princess. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d 'it you while you were 'cuffed. I 'ad to get that off me chest."

"You could always have had counselling," she said solemnly, then smiled. "I know, Willie love, and I'd smile more if it didn't hurt. You're so oldfashioned." She looked at Crichton. "D'you think his neck's broken?"

"Well, I wasn't trying for that, but I wouldn't shed tears." Willie moved to examine the limp form. "No, he's okay. Might need a bit of dentistry sometime, that's all."

"Some people have all the luck. Let's get him into the cave."

Two minutes later the bowie knife lay near the top of the slope where Crichton had first appeared. In the cave, Modesty lay with Crichton's rifle covering the area where the knife with its concealed homer had been planted. Behind her Crichton lay facedown, still unconscious, wrists handcuffed behind him. Willie sat beside her studying a handdrawn map he had found in a pocket of Crichton's bushjacket.

"It's a nice map," said Willie. "Relief shading and contour lines, but three straight lines dividing the island into three separate sections marked B, C and V. I reckon that means separate 'unting grounds for Brightstar, Crichton and Van Rutte, with us in Crichton's patch."

Modesty relaxed slightly but kept her eyes on the ridge. "That figures," she said. "We have to a.s.sume that Brightstar and Van Rutte also have d.f. gadgets, so they'd have been here by now if there were no restrictions. But why set it up like this?"

Willie frowned at the map. "I wish we knew. It could be a big 'elp."

Crichton groaned faintly and began to stir. Modesty turned her head to look back at him thoughtfully. "Willie," she said, "I've just had a bit of an idea."

A little under a mile away, Bellman sat in his wheelchair staring towards the island. Sandra came from the galley with a tray of cold meats and salad, setting it down on the small table beside him. He shook his head impatiently and lifted binoculars to his eyes.

Sandra shivered. "I wish it was over," she said in a low voice, and seated herself in the canvas chair beside him. After a brief silence she went on, "May I ask you a question? It's strange, but I've never asked you this over all the years."

Bellman lowered the gla.s.ses. "What is it, darling?"

She gazed out over the sea, eyes focused on memories. "I was... how old? Eleven, I think, when you bought me on the virgin market in Buenos Aires, child of an Englishborn prost.i.tute recently murdered, father unknown." She shook her head. "I was so scared, but you never touched me. You just treated me as if I were your own daughter. Educated me, looked after me. And when I grew up you were never jealous about men, only caring and protective. Even while you were in the mines you made sure I was in safe hands with a good family. All the time you just gave, and you seemed to want nothing in return. Can you tell me why?"

Bellman gazed blankly at the far horizon. "I suppose," he said slowly, "... I suppose I needed somebody. Needed a friend."

"You?" She was bewildered.

He smiled weakly. "Somebody to care for. Somebody who would care about me, as you have done."

"But you know hundreds of people. All kinds, all over the world. I don't understand."

"All business acquaintances, Sandra. It isn't the same, you know."

She bit her lip, looking towards the island with a troubled air as she put a hand on his. "Do you have to go through with... what you're doing? Is it too late to stop? I just feel it isn't the kind of thing you've taught me. Oh, I thought I wanted it too, but now that it's real I feel different. This thing... it isn't like you."

"Sandra, look at me." His voice was ragged. "Look at me and remember. I'm not like me any more, am I? Remember how I was? Do you want them to have done this to me and go laughing on their way?"

After a little while she said wearily, "No. I hate them for it. But then I hate them all... Charlie Brightstar and Van Rutte and that Crichton creature." She closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair. "Maybe myself, too."

Crichton was conscious again, and very unhappy. The fact that his face hurt intolerably was overshadowed by apprehension of worse to come. He had been searched by Willie Garvin who had taken his pipe, matches, wallet, keys, tobacco pouch and handkerchief. He lay on his front now, wrists handcuffed behind him, head turned to watch Willie's hands as they used one end of a thin leather thong to form a small slipnoose round the trigger and triggerguard of the Colt, drawing the noose almost tight so that any further pressure would pull the trigger.

"Interesting, isn't it?" said Willie. He laid down the Colt, grasped Crichton's left ankle and bent the leg so that from knee to foot it was vertical. Craning his neck, Crichton saw him tie the other end of the thong round the raised ankle. He picked up the gun, thumbed back the trigger, and next moment Crichton felt the weapon being pushed down his back under the bushjacket he wore. There was very little slack between the ankle and the point where the thong disappeared over Crichton's collar.

Willie turned to Modesty. "The gun's not much cop for shooting," he said, "but it makes a ducky little bomb." He smiled cheerfully at Crichton. "You know something, bwana? You're definitely on our side now, because if we don't come back your leg's going to get tired and the gun'll go bang and you'll get a slipped disc or something."

Sweat beaded Crichton's face as he croaked, "For G.o.d's sake...!"

"Just don't wriggle," Willie advised earnestly, adjusting his bowtie, "and keep your fingers crossed for us." He picked up the map and haversack. "It might 'elp if we knew how your mates are working, but I wouldn't ask you to gra.s.s on 'em." He moved at a crouch towards the cave entrance. "All set, Princess?"

"Let's get on with it." Holding the rifle, Modesty made as if to leave the cave.

Crichton said desperately, "Wait!" She paused, looking back at him impatiently, and he hurried on. "We surveyed the island last week. Split it in three sections. We hunt independently, Bellman's orders. No poaching. You're in my area."

Modesty gave him a hostile glare. "He's playing for time, Willie. Use that knife to gut the b.a.s.t.a.r.d and let's get going."

Willie nodded. "Okay, I'll just disconnect the gun first-"

"For Christ's sake it's true!" Crichton broke in, his voice a screaming whisper. "It's b.l.o.o.d.y true! We're being paid all expenses and five thousand each for the job. There's a bonus of another five thousand for whoever makes a kill. Each kill."

Modesty said, "Anything else?"

He gave a very minimal shake of the head, terrified to move. "Nothing, I swear! But watch out for Brightstar."

Willie said, "There. I knew you wanted us to come back." Modesty turned, crouching, and moved out of the cave.

Crichton panted, "Oh Jesus, don't leave me like this!"

From the entrance, Willie looked back at him. "Like this you've got a chance," he said grimly. "And you were set to kill us. Don't tempt me."

Outside the cave Modesty was squatting on her haunches studying the map. As Willie joined her she put a finger on it and said, "Suppose we plant the knifehomer there?"

"Let's 'ave a look. Ah, yes. Just where Charlie Brightstar's shooting rights join Van Rutte's. Seems to be a long gully running across the demarcation line there."

She nodded. "So they should come from opposite directions, north and south, and we can lay for them."

"Sounds fine." They stood up and he said casually, "I'll take Brightstar, then?"

"Willie, we're on a caper," she said gently. "That's when you stop being a courteous and protective gentleman. You've done enough of that for today. We think Brightstar is the sneaky one, and we have a rifle and sling between us. I can't use a sling or throw rocks. Whoever has the rifle must take Brightstar."

Willie sighed. "You're right," he acknowledged. "Sorry."