God, how he hated her. And yet, h was still attracted by her sensuality. He wondered if her body had changed through the years and he thought about her, lying naked beside him. For three years it had been a state secret . Only Garvey knew.
The general, only six months a widower, sleeping with a seventeen-year-old house girl and then sending her away after she bore his son. God, how the magpies at the Officers’ Club would have chirped over that. And his superiors? They would have destroyed him.
Now he hated her all the more because, in his own weakness, he had lived a lie for three years and now it was coming back to haunt him. Staunchly Christian, he was needled by guilt as he stared at her. ‘You should be shot as an enemy agent,’ he told her.
‘I want my son back alive,’ she said...
plane crash,’ O’Hara was saying.
‘I beg your pardon,’ Hooker said, snapping back to reality.
‘I said Robertson, of The Stone Corporation, was killed in a private plane crash.’
‘Yes. Wasn’t supposed to fly himself, y’know. Company policy. But when you’re president of the corporation, who does the chastising, eh? That put us back a bit. We were close to an agreement with Stone when the accident occurred. There was also that chap in, uh, Dallas...’
‘David Fiske Thurman, Alamo Oil.’
Hooker looked at him, obviously surprised. ‘You’ve certainly done your homework, young fellow. Thurman always was a madman behind the wheel. Unless I’m mistaken, he had several close calls before that.’
O’Hara pressed on, clarifying information before forcing the issue of Chameleon.
But the general began to slip again.
What nerve. To give him, the second highest ranking officer in the Pacific command, an ultimatum. He was infuriated.
‘Here’s what I think of that bastard,’ Hooker said to the woman. He grabbed the lizard, held it out with one hand and squeezed its writhing body until it was dead. The creature dangled from his fist. He threw it back in the box.
‘Take that back to the son of a bitch with my compliments.’
‘You will let him kill Molino?’
‘His name is Bobby.’
‘His name was Molino until you stole him from me. What a coward you are.’
‘Woman, you’re pushing my patience beyond its limits.’
She, too, had lost her composure. ‘I want that agreement. It is the least you can do. You left him once...’
‘Left him! It was an act of fate. I didn’t abandon the boy,
‘The boy. The boy. That’s all he ever was to you, the boy. You took him away from me once. Unless you do this thing, I will tell them that you raped me in your house at Bastine, that you—,
‘Raped you! I’ve never seen a pair of legs open faster in my life. He’s my son and I’ll call him what I want to call him. You have no claim on him. He’s mine, adopted on record. All other records have been destroyed. You couldn’t prove ... anything.’
‘He is my son. They will kill him. You must do as—’
‘Goddammit, woman, how dare you threaten me with lies and blackmail? Don’t tell me what they will and won’t do.
Anger and guilt overwhelmed him.. Images clouded rationality. Sins of the flesh. Calvin and his cane of lightning. The American flag. Images that catalysed his hatred. Here she stood before him, an enemy consort, threatening blackmail. His rage burned uncontrollably.
‘I don’t know how you got here but it’s the end of the line for you. I’m having you arrested and charged with high treason. I’ll pull the trap on your gallows myself.’
‘And how do you propose to have me arrested without revealing that I am your son’s mother?’
‘No one will believe you. A Filipino whore turned Jap agent? Hah!’
Her dark, flashing eyes revealed her frenzied state. She threw back her head and spat across the desk into his face.
He got up slowly, walked around the desk and stood very close to her. ‘I’ll teach you to respect what I stand for, you slant-eyed little bitch!’
She reared back again, growling with hate, and his own hatred erupted. He quite suddenly reached out and clamped his hands around her throat. His large bony hands first crushed her cries, then her windpipe, then her larynx. He kept squeezing, twisting. .
He could still hear the sound of it, like the sound of twigs being twisted and broken.
‘General?’
‘Yes!’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, yes, I ... my mind, uh, drifted off there. It’s been a difficult day for me.’
‘I’m sorry. I just have a couple more questions.’
