"I'll see you, Art. The rest of The Dragon has yet to fall."

"What?" He didn't understand me.

"Tooth and Nail. I just got Tooth-Nail is more subtle."

"We're going to need a statement."

"You'll get it."

"How will-"

I interrupted him with, "I'll call you."

CHAPTER 13.

At daylight the rain stopped and the music of sunlight played off the trees and gra.s.s at dawn. The mountains glittered and shone and steamed a little, and as the sun rose the sheen stopped and the colors came through. I ate at an all-night drive-in, parking between the semis out front. I sat through half a dozen cups of coffee before paying the bill and going out to the day, ignoring the funny looks of the carhop.

I stopped again awhile by the Ashokan Reservoir and did nothing but look at the water and try to bring seven years into focus. It was a long time, that. You change in seven years.

You change in seven days too, I thought.

I was a b.u.m Pat had dragged into a hospital to look at a dying man. Pat didn't know it, but I was almost as dead as the one on the bed. It depends on where you die. My dying had been almost done. The drying up, the withering, had taken place. Everything was gone except hopelessness and that is the almost death of living.

Remember, Velda, when we were big together? You must have remembered or you would never have asked for me. And all these years I had spent trying to forget you while you were trying to remember me.

I got up slowly and brushed off my pants, then walked back across the field to the car. During the night I had gotten it all muddy driving aimlessly on the back roads, but I didn't think Laura would mind.

The sun had climbed high until it was almost directly overhead. When you sit and think time can go by awfully fast. I turned the key, pulled out on the road and headed toward the mountains.

When I drove up, Laura heard me coming and ran out to meet me. She came into my arms with a rush of pure delight and did nothing for a few seconds except hold her arms around me, then she looked again, stepped back and said, "Mike-your face!"

"Trouble, baby. I told you I was trouble."

For the first time I noticed my clothes. My coat swung open and there was blood down my jacket and shirt and a jagged tear that was clotted with more blood at my side.

Her eyes went wide, not believing what she saw. "Mike! You're-you're all-"

"Shot down, kid. Rough night."

She shook her head. "It's not funny. I'm going to call a doctor!"

I took her hand. "No, you're not. It isn't that bad."

"Mike-"

"Favor, kitten. Let me lie in the sun like an old dog, okay? I don't want a d.a.m.n medic. I'll heal. It's happened before. I just want to be left alone in the sun."

"Oh, Mike, you stubborn fool."

"Anybody home?" I asked her.

"No, you always pick an off day for the servants." She smiled again now. "You're clever and I'm glad."

I nodded. For some reason my side had started to ache and it was getting hard to breathe. There were other places that had pain areas all their own and they weren't going to get better. It had only just started. I said, "I'm tired."

So we went out back to the pool. She helped me off with my clothes and once more I put the trunks on, then eased down into a plastic contour chair and let the sun warm me. There were blue marks from my shoulders down and where the rib was broken a welt had raised, an angry red that arched from front to back. Laura found antiseptic and cleaned out the furrow where the two shots had grazed me and I thought back to the moment of getting them, realizing how lucky I was because the big jerk was too impatient, just like I had been, taking too much pleasure out of something that should have been strictly business.

I slept for a while. I felt the sun travel across my body from one side to the other, then I awoke abruptly because events had compacted themselves into my thoughts and I knew that there was still that one thing more to do.

Laura said, "You were talking in your sleep, Mike."

She had changed back into that black bikini and it was wet like her skin so she must have just come from the water. The tight band of black at her loins had rolled down some from the swim and fitted tightly into the creva.s.ses of her body. The top half was like an artist's brush stroke, a quick motion of impatience at a critical s.e.x-conscious world that concealed by reason of design only. She was more nearly naked dressed than nude.

How lovely.

Large, flowing thighs. Full, round calves. They blended into a softly concave stomach and emerged, higher, into proud, outthrust b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her face and hair were a composite halo reaching for the perfection of beauty and she was smiling.

Lovely.

"What did I say, Laura?"

She stopped smiling then. "You were talking about dragons." I nodded. "Today, I'm St. George."

"Mike-"

"Sit down, baby."

"Can we talk again?"

"Yes, we'll talk."

"Would you mind if I got dressed first? It's getting chilly out here now. You ought to get dressed yourself."

She was right. The sun was a thick red now, hanging just over the crest of a mountain. While one side was a blaze of green, the other was in the deep purple of the shadow.

I held out my hand and she helped me up, and together we walked around the pool to the bathhouse, touching each other, feeling the warmth of skin against skin, the motion of muscle against muscle. At the door she turned and I took her in my arms. "Back to back?" she said.

"Like prudes," I told her.

Her eyes grew soft and her lips wet her tongue. Slowly, with an insistent hunger, her mouth turned up to mine and I took it, tasting her again, knowing her, feeling the surge of desire go through me and through her too.

I let her go reluctantly and she went inside with me behind her. The setting sun threw long orange rays through the window, so there was no need of the overhead light. She went into the shower and turned on a soft drizzle while I got dressed slowly, aching and hurting as I pulled on my clothes.

She called out, "When will it all be over, Mike?"

"Today," I said quietly.

"Today?"

I heard her stop soaping herself in the shower. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"You were dreaming about dragons," she called out.

"About how they die, honey. They die hard. This one will die especially hard. You know, you wouldn't believe how things come about. Things that were planted long ago suddenly bear fruit now. Like what I told you. Remember all I told you about Velda?"

"Yes, Mike, I do."

"I had to revise and add to the story, Laura."

"Really?" She turned the shower off and stood there behind me soaping herself down, the sound of it so nice and natural I wanted to turn around and watch. I knew what she'd look like: darkly beautiful, blondly beautiful, the sun having turned all of her hair white.

I said, "Pat was right and I was right. Your jewels did come into it. They were like Mrs. Civac's jewels and the fact that Richie Cole was a jewel smuggler."

"Oh?" That was all she said.

"They were all devices. Decoys. Red herrings. How would you like to hear the rest of what I think?"

"All right, Mike."

She didn't see me, but I nodded. "In the government are certain key men. Their importance is apparent to critical eyes long before it is to the public. Your husband was like that. It was evident that he was going to be a top dog one day and the kind of top dog our Red enemy could hardly afford to have up there.

"That was Leo Knapp, your husband. Mr. Missile Man. Mr. America. He sure was a big one. But our wary enemy knew his stuff. Kill him off and you had a public martyr or a great investigation that might lead to even greater international stuff and those Reds just aren't the kind who can stand the big push. Like it or not, they're still a lousy bunch of peasants who killed to control but who can be knocked into line by the likes of us. They're shouting slobs who'll run like h.e.l.l when cla.s.s shows and they know this inside their feeble little heads. So they didn't want Leo Knapp put on a pedestal.

"Control comes other ways, however. For instance, he could marry a woman who would listen to him as a sounding board and relay his thoughts and secrets to the right persons so that whatever he did could be quickly annulled by some other action. He could marry a woman who, as his official Washington hostess, had the ear of respected persons and could pick up things here and there that were as important to enemy ears as any sealed doc.u.ments. He could find his work being stymied at every turn.

"Then one day he figured it all out. He pinpointed the enemy and found it within his own house. He baited a trap by planting supposedly important papers in his safe and one night while the enemy, his wife, was rifling his safe with her compatriot who was to photograph the papers and transport the photos to higher headquarters, he came downstairs. He saw her, accused her, but blundered into a game bigger than he was.

"Let's say she shot him. It doesn't really matter. She was just as guilty even if it was the other one. At least the other one carried the gun off-a pickup rod traceable to no one if it was thrown away printless. His wife delayed long enough so she and her compatriot could fake a robbery, let the guy get away, then call in the cops.

"Nor does it end there. The same wife still acts as the big Washington hostess with her same ear to the same ground and is an important and inexhaustible supply of information to the enemy. Let's say that she is so big as to even be part of The Dragon team. He was Tooth, she was Nail, both spies, both a.s.sa.s.sins, both deadly enemies of this country."

Behind me the water went on again, a downpour that would rinse the bubbles of soap from her body.

"All went well until Richie Cole was killed. Tooth went and used the same gun again. It tied things in. Like I told you when I let you be my my sounding board-coincidence is a strange thing. I like the word 'fate' even better. Or is 'consequence' an even better one? Richie and Leo and Velda were all tied into the same big situation and for a long time I was too d.a.m.n dumb to realize it. sounding board-coincidence is a strange thing. I like the word 'fate' even better. Or is 'consequence' an even better one? Richie and Leo and Velda were all tied into the same big situation and for a long time I was too d.a.m.n dumb to realize it.

"A guy like me doesn't stay dumb forever, though. Things change. You either die or smarten up. I had The Dragon on my back and when I think about it all the little things make sense too. At least I think so. Remember how when Gorlin shot the radio you shook with what I thought was fear? h.e.l.l, baby, that was rage. You were p.i.s.sed off that he could pull such a stupid stunt and maybe put your hide in danger. Later you gave him h.e.l.l on the phone, didn't you? That house is like an echo chamber, baby. Talk downstairs and you hear the tones all over. You were mad. I was too interested in going through your husband's effects to pay any attention, that was all.

"Now it's over. Tooth is nailed, but that's a joke you don't understand yet, baby. Let's just say that The Dragon is tethered. He'll sit in the chair and all the world will know why and nations will backtrack and lie and propaganda will tear up the knotheads in the Kremlin and maybe their satellite countries will wise up and blast loose and maybe we'll wise up and blast them, but however it goes, The Dragon is dead. It didn't find Velda. She'll talk, she'll open up the secrets of the greatest espionage organization the world has ever known and Communist philosophy will get the h.e.l.l knocked out of it.

"You see, baby, I know where Velda is."

The shower stopped running and I could hear her hum as though she couldn't even hear me.

"The catch was this. Richie Cole did make his contact. He gave Old Dewey, the newsstand operator, a letter he had that told where Alex Bird would take Velda. It was a prepared place and she had orders to stay there until either he came for her or I came for her. He'll never come for her.

"Only me," I said. "Dewey put the letter in a magazine. Every month he holds certain magazines aside for me and to make sure I got it he put it inside my copy of Cavalier Cavalier. It will be there when I go back to the city. I'll pick it up and it will tell me where Velda is."

I finished dressing, put on the empty gun and slid painfully into the jacket. The blood was crusty on my clothes, but it really didn't matter anymore.

I said, "It's all speculation, I might be wrong. I just can't take any chances. I've loved other women. I loved Velda. I've loved you and like you said, it's either you or her. I have to go for her, you know that. If she's alive I have to find her. The key is right there inside my copy of that magazine. It will have my name on it and Duck-Duck will hand it over and I'll know where she is."

She stopped humming and I knew she was listening. I heard her make a curious woman-sound like a sob.

"I may be wrong, Laura. I may see her and not want her. I may be wrong about you, and if I am I'll be back, but I have to find out." The slanting beam of the sun struck the other side of the bathhouse leaving me in the shadow then. I knew what I had to do. It had to be a test. They either pa.s.sed it or failed it. No in-betweens. I didn't want it on my head again.

I reached for the shotgun in the corner, turned it upside down and shoved the barrels deep into the blue clay and twisted them until I was sure both barrels were plugged just like a cookie cutter and I left it lying there and opened the door.

The mountains were in deep shadow, the sun out of sight and only its light flickering off the trees. It was a hundred miles into the city, but I'd take the car again and it wouldn't really be very long at all. I'd see Pat and we'd be friends again and Hy would get his story and Velda-Velda? What would it be like now?

I started up the still wet concrete walk away from the bathhouse and she called out, "Mike-Mike!"

I turned at the sound of her voice and there she stood in the naked, glossy, shimmering beauty of womanhood, the lovely tan of her skin blossoming and swelling in all the vast hillocks and curves that make a woman, the glinting blond hair throwing tiny lights back into the sunset and over it all those incredible gray eyes.

Incredible.

They watched me over the elongated barrels of the shotgun and seemed to twinkle and swirl in the fanatical delight of murder they come up with at the moment of the kill, the moment of truth.

But for whom? Truth will out, but for whom?

The muzzle of the gun was a pair of yawning chasms but there was no depth to their mouths. Down the length of the blued steel the blood crimson of her nails made a startling and symbolic contrast.

Death red, I thought. The fingers behind them should have been tan but weren't. They were a tense, drawing white and with another fraction of an inch the machinery of the gun would go into motion.

She said, "Mike-" and in that one word there was hate and desire, revenge and regret, but above all the timbre of duty long ago instilled into a truly mechanical mind.

I said, "So long, baby."

Then I turned and walked toward the outside and Velda and behind me I heard the unearthly roar as she pulled both triggers at once.

THE SNAKE.

For Bob Fellows, who knows Mike from too many angles.

And Donna, who knows Bob the same way.