His harsh voice cleared some of the cobwebs that swirled through her mind. Clara nodded, and her head cleared a little more.

"All right, Jack. What do you want me to do?" Her very docility was unnatural, she sensed, but he wasn't arguing.

"The keys are somewhere in that pile of pads." He indicated a jumbled heap of quiltlike furniture pads in the rear corner. "You'll have to dig through them and then unlock my handcuffs. That's all you have to do. I'll take it from there."

Clara nodded. Anything to keep him happy, she told herself, so that he wouldn't yell at her. She could not take any more violence. It was hard to walk with her head swimming and the truck jouncing over potholes and around turns, but she made it to the pile of pads. Then, gritting her teeth against the pain that even the slightest movement brought, she began to pull the pads off the pile one by one. Finally, with a jingle, the key ring clattered into view. Another tiny p.r.i.c.kle of hope awoke within her. This time she let it flicker. Bending carefully so as not to jar her hand, she picked up the keys and turned to McClain. He nodded his approval.

"Good girl. Now unlock these." He turned his back to her. It took Clara a few moments and a few false tries to find the right key, and a few more false tries before she got it to click open the lock, but at last she did. The cuffs came off. He turned, rubbing his wrists, and reached for her. She went into his arms without thought, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. As though she belonged there. She felt a pressure against the top of her head and wondered if it was his lips. Looking up, she saw that his jaw was set and his eyes were that familiar brilliant green.

"Now at least we can give Rostov a run for his money," he said, his eyes glowing. Danger excited him, exhilarated him, she remembered. He got high off it, just like some people did off drugs.

"You're crazy," she muttered with conviction. He leaned down and kissed her mouth hard.

"I'm sorry I got you into this. Sorry you got hurt. Sorry I didn't stop the b.a.s.t.a.r.d sooner." Her head was tucked into the hollow of his neck now; the words were muttered into her hair. Clara nestled closer, forgetting everything but the security he offered. A stab of pure agony shot from her broken finger. She moaned, stepping back from him, cradling her injured hand. Her finger was aching terribly, so badly that it made her stomach heave. She felt dizzy again, and leaned her head forward to rest it against McClain's chest. His hands came up to grasp her shoulders in quick concern.

"You need to lie down, don't you? Let's get these things off first." He was unlocking her handcuffs as he spoke, gently easing them off her wrists so as not to hurt her more than he had to. Hurriedly he piled a few of the pads into a makeshift bed next to the wall, then swept her up in his arms and carried her over to it, staggering a little with the motion of the truck. She mewled a tiny protest as he laid her down, and he apologized with a quick kiss on her lips. Folding a pad under her head like a pillow and covering her with another, careful not to touch her injured hand which rested on top of the quilt, he made her as comfortable as he could. Then he smoothed the hair out of her face, straightened, and moved away.

Clara watched him as he prowled around the trailer, checking the door to be sure it was locked, testing the strength of the walls and corners, looking at the miscellaneous items lying around the floor. Besides the rusty looking generator, which must have once graced somebody's farmhouse, and the pads, there were other typical movers' items: a pair of dollies, ropes, a couple of empty boxes, and a small fire extinguisher. There was also half a case of warm beer. McClain lugged it over to where Clara lay on the pallet of quilted pads, fished a beer out of the case, popped its top, and held it out to her.

"Drink up."

Clara shook her head, unmoving. "I don't like beer."

"Now why did I guess that, I wonder?" He shook his head at her. "A lady to the bitter end, aren't you, baby? Will you please, as a favor to me, drink this beer? You'll feel better, I promise you."

Before she could answer he was settling himself behind her and propping her against his shoulder, then holding the can to her lips. Clara could either drink or drown. She drank, gasping and choking as the liquid came too fast. But when he let her come up for air she had to admit she did feel a little better. Warmer, more aware, if a little woozy.

"I told you," he said when she admitted as much. She didn't even feel like glaring at him. Having him take care of her was too comforting. As long as he cosseted her she could pretend everything was nearly normal. That they weren't going to die when Rostov returned.

"Let me fix your finger for you, baby. I know it must hurt like h.e.l.l. I can make it better if you'll trust me."

Those two little words set off warning bells in her brain, but she ignored them. When he settled her back down in her bed of pads and told her not to look, she obediently put her good arm across her face. When she felt him gently take her injured hand in his, she let him. Even when she felt his fingers probing her injured pinky while his other hand encircled her wrist she made no protest. Then he repaid her trust by grabbing the end of her poor broken finger and jerking with all his might. The pain was so excruciating that she screamed. And then at last she fainted.

"I'm so sorry, so sorry I had to hurt you," he was whispering to her, cradling her in his arms when she started the slow swim back to consciousness. "Poor sweetheart, poor baby, poor little girl..."

"I am not," Clara said, revolted, "a poor little girl."

He lifted his head a little to look down at her. The smallest glimmer of a smile quivered at the corners of his mouth.

"No, you're not, are you? I beg your pardon," he said gravely, then bent to press a quick kiss on her soft lips. He disentangled himself, got to his feet and reached for another beer. Hunkering down beside her, he popped the top, then took a long swallow himself before offering it to her. Clara didn't even argue this time. She drank thirstily. Her mother might swear that ladies never, but never, drank beer, but she didn't suppose that any ladies of her mother's acquaintance had ever found themselves in a situation quite like this one.

"My finger doesn't hurt quite so much," she said, discovering that she could move her hand without a shaft of agony jolting her clear down to her toes.

"I had paramedic training in the marines. It's almost as good as new. See?"

Her eyes followed his to her hand. He had fashioned a makeshift splint out of the stiff cardboard of the beer case and a soft maroon strip wound with an inch-wide section of white elastic, both of which reminded her forcibly of his underwear. She touched the funny looking bandage with a tentative finger.

"Yours?" she asked, looking up at him. He grinned a little.

"Sacrificed to a good cause. How does that burn feel? I don't have anything to put on it, but it doesn't look too bad."

"It stings a little, but I'll live." As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn't. The truck was still lumbering through the North Carolina countryside, but it had to stop sooner or later. And when it did, Rostov would rejoin them, and despite McClain's increased mobility they would die. Even McClain was no match for five gorillas armed with rifles.

"We're going to die, aren't we?" She started shivering violently.

"No, we d.a.m.ned well are not. We're going to get out of this with our skins intact and live to laugh about the whole d.a.m.n thing." But his very vehemence told her that he was as uncertain as she. Her shivers intensified. The thought of what Rostov would do to her- to them- when he returned was too terrifying to contemplate.

"Hold me, Jack," she whispered, scrambling onto her knees as she reached for him. His arms went around her and he cradled her against him, his hands stroking her back, his bristly cheek pressed against the softness of her own.

"Listen to me," he said. "We're going to get out of this."

But she was beyond listening. She was beyond anything but an urgent need to affirm that she was alive. That she could smell and taste and touch and see and hear and feel... Her shivers intensified until she was quaking in his arms, her body pressed to his from knees to chest. Her hands burrowed beneath his sweatshirt to find the heat of his skin, pushing the shirt up and over his head in her greediness to absorb his warmth so that his movements were hampered by the cloth that stretched from elbow to elbow. She was mindless now, acting solely on instinct; primitive instinct intent on affirming her body's life-force.

Her open mouth ran along his neck, down through the curling black thatch on his chest, over his hard stomach to the waistband of his jeans. She nuzzled her face lower, pressing her mouth against his crotch, biting at the swelling bulge she could feel straining against the stiff blue denim. He jerked, sucking in his breath. She didn't stop, couldn't stop. Her hands were urgent, tugging at his snap, working down his zipper so that his manhood fell free, unconfined by the underwear he had sacrificed to bind her finger, huge and hot and pulsing and alive. She took it in her mouth, cupping the soft sacs beneath with hands that shook, rubbing and stroking and caressing the twin roundnesses while her lips and teeth and tongue staked their claim to his shaft.

"For G.o.d's sake, Clara..." He was kneeling; her head was in his lap as she crouched in front of him. Unable to fend her off with the shirt tethering his arms, he tried to rise. Her teeth sank into him viciously, making him yelp and sink back. Then she pushed him hard, turned into a feral creature with her need to affirm life, to keep the darkness of fear away. He sprawled backward, unable to save himself without the use of his hands. Immediately she was over him, tugging at his open jeans, pulling them down around his hips as her mouth once again found and claimed him. This time he didn't try to stop her. Through the haze that she was lost in she heard the harsh gasps of his breathing, but still she didn't stop. She bit and sucked and kissed and caressed until he was groaning and jerking and needing her as she needed him.

"Ride me, baby. Please. Ride me." The hoa.r.s.e plea was accompanied by urgent movements of his pelvis. Clara ran her tongue up the length of him one last time, then sat back on her heels to survey her victim. With his shirt binding his arms and his jeans down around his thighs, he was naked and vulnerable to her. His manhood jutted enormously upright from its nest of black hair, thick and pulsing and wet from her ministrations. She bent her head to kiss it again.

He jerked sideways. Her lips met the furred skin of his belly.

"Ride me, Clara." His voice was hoa.r.s.e.

She stared at that pulsing shaft, felt an urgency start in her own loins, and straddled him. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were covered by silk and flannel and wool, but only the flimsiest of silk and lace kept the part of her that needed him most from him. Moving aside the wide lace-edged leg of her teddy, she held him tightly while she settled herself on him. Delicately, so delicately, the hot thick quivering shaft probed, slid inside. He gasped. She gasped. Then she closed her eyes, her muscles clenching, closing around him. He was so big, so hot.

She moaned, her fingers clenching in the hair on his chest, her head thrown back, her muscles contracting. He surged upward, violently, unable or unwilling to let her set the pace any longer. She cried out, riding him, her movements matching his, her urgency matching his. She needed him, needed him, needed him...

When the release came it was an explosion. Her nails dug into his chest, her neck arched, and she cried out as exquisite convulsions claimed her. He cried out too, pushed over the edge by her ecstasy, his hips coming up off the floor as he ground himself inside her. When it was over, she collapsed limply on his chest. Beneath her ear she could hear the pounding of his heart.

"G.o.d in heaven," he said after a moment, his eyes still closed. "If that didn't kill me nothing will."

The fervent mutter brought her back to awareness. She became abruptly conscious of her position, sprawled across his lap, naked flesh still pressed to naked flesh. The haze of fear was crowding in on her again. It was hard to remember exactly what she had done. She had a feeling that, under normal circ.u.mstances, she would be mortified beyond bearing by the wantonness of her actions. But confronted with her own helplessness in the face of pain and death, she could not worry about such things as pride. She just wanted to stay alive.

"I'm scared," she whispered forlornly, starting to shiver again. His eyes opened, dark as pine forests as they rested on her face.

"Don't be scared," he said swiftly, sitting up with her still atop him and pulling his shirt back over his head. Then he rolled with her onto the pallet, careful of her injuries, and lay with her wrapped in his arms, her head pillowed on his chest. "It doesn't do any good at all. The best you can do is just concentrate on how you feel this moment, and let what happens later take care of itself."

Clara thought about that, thought about how she felt at that moment with his long hard body next to hers and his arms around her and his breath in her hair, with the memory of their pa.s.sion in her heart. If she refused to think of what horrors later might bring, she felt warm, cared for, content. Happy.

"Talk to me," she murmured against his chest, enjoying the way the soft hairs tickled her nose. "Tell me everything about Jack McClain. I want to know it all. Please."

"You know most of it," he said after a moment, with an air of humoring her. His hand was stroking almost absently over her back. Her head was resting on his shoulder, her injured hand cradled carefully on his chest. "About how I grew up on a farm with five bossy sisters, and-"

"Did you go to college?" Clara interrupted.

"Yup. Texas Christian University. I was their star quarterback. What about you?"

"I hate football."

"I meant did you go to college."

"Oh. Wesleyan."

"La-de-dah."

"My mother's like that."

"Is she? Stuck up?"

Clara shook her head. "Not stuck up. Just... just a lady, I guess. We still have them, you know, in the South. She always knows the right thing to do, does it and looks marvelous all the while. Wesleyan was the right college to go to; her mother went there, she went there, and she wanted me to go there. So I did."

"She sounds formidable as h.e.l.l. Tell me about her. From the sound of her we don't have anything like her in my neck of the woods."

So Clara told him all about her mother. About the fur coats and pearls and men she collected like some women collected porcelain. About her four husbands and the current candidate for number five. About the ballet lessons and piano lessons and equestrienne lessons that her mother considered essential to a young lady's education and how hopeless she had been at all of them. About white gloves and white gowns and cotillions. About the battle they'd had over her debut. For the first time in her life Clara had stood up to her mother and flatly refused to be presented at the annual debutantes ball in Richmond. Her mother threw it up to her to this day, insisting that her daughter's stubbornness over the matter was the sole reason she wasn't married at age thirty. About her retreat to the world of books to escape a real world she had never felt quite adequate to cope with, and how her writing had grown from that. About her mother's feelings on her daughter's career: a nice, genteel way to pa.s.s the time until she got married. To her mother, marriage was the be-all and end-all of a woman's existence.

"Good G.o.d, how do you stand her?" McClain asked wryly when she paused for breath.

Clara shook her head. "It's not a matter of me standing her. It's more like how does she stand me? I certainly wasn't the daughter she was expecting. I'm hopeless at all the things she considers important, and I don't even have an urgent desire to get married. A total washout. But she loves me anyway. And I love her too. We're just... different from one another, that's all."

"My mother's not like that at all," he said after a moment. "She never wears any makeup and screws her hair up anyhow and more often than not has a rip in her dress. All the animals on the farm follow her everywhere she goes. So do the grandkids. When I was in Nam and found myself in real trouble, I even caught myself wishing my mother was there. She's a terror in defense of children or animals. I kept thinking that if she were only there she'd take care of those Cong in a second. She'd go to h.e.l.l barefoot in defense of her baby boy."

"She sounds wonderful." Clara giggled; she supposed the beer had gone straight through her empty stomach to her head. "I can't imagine you as anyone's baby boy."

He chuckled, the sound rich in the darkness. "Hard, isn't it? I only revert when I'm home. Which is probably why I don't go home more often. It's tough being fussed over by six women."

"It sounds tough." Clara was smiling. She felt happy, at peace. If one just thought of the present, it was easy, she found. There was a brief pause, and then Clara bethought herself of something that needed to be said. In case she didn't get another chance.

"Jack."

"Hmm?" He sounded sleepy.

"I want to apologize."

"For what?"

"For not believing in you earlier.For doubting you. I should have known better."

"You should have."

Clara paused again. There was something else she had to know or she had a feeling she would never understand him at all.

"Jack." Her voice was hesitant. "Did you really have some sort of a breakdown? Or was Thompson making that up to get me on his side?"

There was a brief silence. Beneath her head she felt a tenseness in his shoulder. When he spoke his voice was expressionless, carefully even.

"No, he was telling the truth. I spent six months in a hospital about four years ago. I had a breakdown."

He seemed the least likely person in the world to have that kind of problem. Something horrendous must have happened to bring it on- something that he hated to remember even now. She could hear it in the starkness of his voice.

"Can you... tell me about it, Jack?"

There was a long silence. She thought he wasn't going to say anything, that he would refuse to talk about it. Then he sighed.

"Why not? I was working undercover in Hungary. There was a cell, a network of agents, spies if you will. My cover was a writing a.s.signment for a national news magazine; I was really supposed to find out who in our organization there was leaking information to the other side. I found and identified the traitor; a supposed student, just as I was a supposed journalist. I reported to my superiors and was told to eliminate him. The rest of the story's a cla.s.sic. While I was over there I'd met a girl, a beautiful Hungarian named Natalia. She was young and sweet, and I was so in love with her I was planning to take her back to the U.S. with me when I left. I was a deep cover operative, trained to tell no one- no one- what my job in Hungary or wherever really was. But I told Natalia. She had a family, parents whom she loved, brothers and sisters. I wanted to give her a chance to say good-bye. Whenever I left a country it was usually in a hurry, and as I said I planned to take her with me.

"My only excuse- and it's not an excuse, but an explanation for such a lapse in judgment- was that I was drinking a lot then. I'd been going on occasional benders ever since Nam, and the drinking got worse in Hungary; there was d.a.m.ned well nothing else to do, and I thought I could handle it, not let it make a difference to my work.

"I told Natalia the truth the night before I was to carry out the operation. So she'd have just a little time. I was tight. Not drunk, mind you, but tight. Feeling no pain. I loved her, I thought. But pillow talk can kill, and mine was deadly. Of course she had connections with the KGB. She was a G.o.dd.a.m.n plant, because they suspected me. I should have been on to her in five minutes. But I missed all the signs. And there were signs all over the place, I realized later. But I didn't suspect a thing. I went on with the a.s.signment to eliminate Casanova- that was our codename for him. He was a good looking kid with a string of women. I was going to take him out from a window across the street from his flat, nail him with a silencer equipped, high-powered rifle. I got into position and waited. After two hours- the kid was normally as regular as clockwork- it became clear that something had gone wrong. I went to see my contact. He was dead, shot in the head in his flat. The backup man was dead, too. I went to the apartment that served as a meeting place for our cell and found one survivor, a sixteen-year-old kid who'd managed to hide. He told me that the entire cell had either been killed outright or picked up. The ones that were already dead were the lucky ones. The others would be tortured to death. I knew I had to get out of there fast if we'd been betrayed. There'd be time to deal with the traitor later. I went back to my own flat. Natalia was there. She confessed everything, laughing at my gullibility, and then the knock sounded at the door. The b.i.t.c.h had set me up all the way around. I went out a window while she ran to let the goons in. I managed to save my a.s.s, but a lot of the good guys had gone down because of me. Then Hammersmith- he was my superior officer- found out that Natalia had betrayed us. He was going to have her taken out. I lied, told him I'd already done it. I couldn't stand the idea of any more killing because I'd screwed up. Hammersmith believed me. But the guilt ate at me, and I went on the mother and father of all benders as soon as they had me safely back in Berlin. While I was drinking, I vowed to get my own revenge on Natalia sooner or later. Then it occurred to me: I was the real traitor. I'd gone against my training and compromised my contacts. Then I went a little crazy. I think I believed I could wipe out the whole KGB singlehandedly. I sure as h.e.l.l tried. The agency rounded me up, hustled me into a sanitorium, dried me out, shrank my head a little, and when I got out gave me a job. A desk job. That's all they were willing to trust me with, and I don't blame them. Once a traitor, always a traitor, they say.

"That was four years ago. Then Yuropov, whom I had known some years before, defected. He asked for me, Hammersmith, who had also been rea.s.signed to a desk job on the strength of my screwup, vouched for me, and they gave him to me. And now this." He broke off, shook his head. "Christ, when you're hot, you're hot."

That feeble attempt at humor told Clara more than any amount of soul baring could have how much he still despised himself for what had happened. She took his hand and held it to her breast in wordless comfort. There was nothing she could say to ease his pain, she knew.

"I'm glad you told me," she said finally.

"Yeah."

"I think you're pretty wonderful." The words came out of nowhere. Clara wasn't even sure that she meant them. But the urge was strong in her to offer him what solace she could.

"Go to sleep." From the sound of his response, he didn't think she meant them either. Clara hesitated, wondering if she should say something else, try to ease the tension she felt in him. But what could she say? There was no solace she could offer for his particular brand of bruised and battered soul.

"Only G.o.d never makes a mistake, Jack," she whispered. He didn't even bother to reply.

XIX.

He sat through the night, wide awake, thinking. The truck had stopped, but no one had attempted to enter the trailer. They probably had orders to wait for Rostov to return. McClain half smiled. It would take a while for Rostov to discover that Puff was not in the pound. And when he did, he was going to get very, very angry. But it wouldn't matter even if he did find the cat. Because there was no microfilm to be found on the furball.

Oh, it had been there, all right. He had hidden it in Puff's blue vinyl collar during that miserable night spent in the log in the woods. It had occurred to him while he was lying there sleepless, sneezing his head off, that if he were caught and searched, and the microfilm found, that would be the end of the story right there. There were lots of places he could have hidden it- forests are full of hiding places- but he preferred to keep it close at hand in case he should need it in a hurry. For a moment he had thought about hiding it on Clara without telling her, but he'd decided against that almost instantly. Of course, if they were taken, they would search her too. Then his eyes had lit on the furball, and the perfect solution had occurred to him. The cat's collar was rolled and st.i.tched blue vinyl, presumably fairly waterproof, a perfect size and the last place anyone would look. It had taken some doing and a badly scratched hand to separate the cat from his collar, but McClain, with what he modestly considered real heroism, had done it, sneezing all the while. Then he had slit the end of the collar open, tucked the microfilm inside the narrow tube, pushed it as far down as he could with the aid of the screwdriver, and replaced the collar around the spitting fury's neck. Voila! And if Rostov or anyone had ever found it there he would have kissed their fannies for them.

The microfilm was in Ramsey's hands now. The general was strictly a by-the-book military man, which McClain never had been, but he was known to have an almost fatherly feeling for those who had ever served under him. McClain had realized almost at once that Ramsey was his best, and possibly his last, shot at getting someone to listen to him before he got his head blown off, as seemed all too likely. So as Clara had been led away he had requested private speech with the general in the interests of national security. And Ramsey, bless his paternalistic heart, had heeded the call of the old outfit and granted his request, posting an armed guard outside his office door but otherwise seemingly content to meet alone with the crazy McClain knew he'd been made out to be.

Not that Ramsey had believed his story, of course. That would have been too much to ask. But he'd listened without interruptions, then asked about proof. Which was when McClain had made the gamble of his life and told him about the microfilm. The general had barked an order over the telephone, and after a wait of about fifteen minutes the cat had been brought in. Puff was wrapped in a blanket so that only his head showed, but he was hissing and spitting like a demon straight from h.e.l.l. The young marine who carried him in looked like he thought he had a man-eating tiger by the tail. Which, McClain thought as the bundle was dumped on his lap with an air of relief by the young man, who saluted and hurriedly retreated, was exactly what he had. Puff was no ordinary p.u.s.s.y. Having learned to move fast and ruthlessly with the furball, McClain just managed to get the collar over Puff's head before he erupted from the blanket with as much fire and fury as Mount Saint Helen's. As Puff tore around the general's office like a dervish with claws before winding up crouched on top of one of a set of built-in walnut bookcases, hissing at the world, McClain succ.u.mbed to a violent fit of sneezing.

"Here, kitty." The general went to stand under the bookcase while McClain worked to extricate the microfilm, which he finally managed to do by slitting open the entire collar with the aid of Ramsey's letter opener. When at last he had the capsule containing the tiny roll of film in his hand, the general had coaxed Puff down from the bookcase and was holding him on his lap, stroking his head. As McClain gaped, Puff, who had been purring under Ramsey's ministrations, looked across the desk at him and hissed.

"I don't think he likes you," General Ramsey said with some humor.

"He hates me," McClain said, eyeing Puff with revulsion. "And I'm not too crazy about him, either."

"Ah, animals can always sense the way you feel about them. I'm a cat man, myself. Always did like them."

"He obviously likes you," McClain said. Puff's acceptance of the general's touch did more to elevate Ramsey in his mind than any of the heroics he had heard the man had performed on the field of battle. Any man who could coax a purr out of that benighted feline was a miracle worker, no less. McClain's respect for his former C.O. soared to new heights.

"So, did you find it?" Despite the enormous gray cat rumbling on his lap, the general was suddenly all business. By way of an answer, McClain held out his hand. The yellow and red capsule rested in his palm. Ramsey reached over and picked it up between his thumb and forefinger, then separated the two sides of the capsule. The miniscule roll of film fell out.

"By d.a.m.n!" Ramsey sounded mildly surprised. He picked up his phone again and spoke through it, presumably to his secretary.

"Marge, get Captain Spencer in here, would you please? On the double." He put the phone down and looked over at McClain. "Spencer's a good man. I'd trust him with my life. I'll have him check this out."