It was enough to make a person wonder…
He looked at Sam Hartline. “Lowry wants the Olivier woman… sexually.”
“Yeah, I know. He can have her any time he wants her. I’ve got that all set up. She thinks by fucking him she’ll get brownie points. She’s just like all broads: keeps her brains between her legs. Let Lowry get his jollies humping her, then we’ll dispose of her. Who do you want?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What cunt do you want, Al—Lowry wants you with him when he jazzs Sabra.”
“I…” Cody shook his head. “I don’t want any, Hartline.”
The mercenary laughed. “That’s not the way we play this game, Cody. What’s the matter, Al? You like boys, maybe?”
“Good God, no!”
“Okay, then, I’ll get Little Bit for you.”
“Who?”
“Jane Moore. The blond cunt you’ve mentioned a time or two. Little Bit, I call her.”
“I don’t want her, Sam.”
“She’d be a fine romp, I’m thinking. Hell, she isn’t but about five feet tall and you know what’s said about those kinds of gals: Big woman, little pussy; little woman, all pussy.”
Hartline laughed and slapped the desk with his heavy hand.
Al Cody felt sick at his stomach. He thought he might know, now, how an animal felt trapped in a cage; or like that man riding a tiger; afraid to stay on, afraid to get off.
He fought back his sickness and wondered how he ever got involved with this sick creature who walked upright like a man.
“I’ll set it up for next week,” Hartline said, rising from his chair. “That’ll give you time to think about dipping your wick in that blond muff.” He found that hysterically amusing and stood chuckling for a moment. He sobered and looked down at Cody. “Relax, Al. You act like a man who is about to be hanged instead of a man who is about to get some prime gash.”
Cody inwardly winced at that. “That isn’t it. Look, Sam, you’ve been around the world a number of times; seen things that most other people haven’t seen. One of my agents reported something to me last week. I found it… well, odd, to say the least.”
“Oh?” Hartline sat down.
“Yes. At first I dismissed it as an overactive imagination under stress. The men were on the fringes of a dead city…”
“Where?”
“Memphis. They were looking for another suspected Rebel cell. They didn’t find that, but they… well, goddamnit, they said they saw rats in there as big as dogs!”
Hartline was silent for a moment. Cody thought the mercenary was going to laugh at him and was surprised when the man said, “I don’t doubt it. There is no telling what aftereffects the bombings might have produced. What the radiation and the germs might have done to genes in humans and animals. I’m surprised something like this hasn’t turned up before this.”
“Are you serious!”
“Sure,” Hartline said with a shrug. “Scientists don’t have—and never did have—the vaguest idea what massive doses of radiation might cause or produce in humans or animals after a period of time. There were monsters born in Japan after the bombings in ‘45—I’ve seen the pictures and read the reports; but the Japs and the Americans hushed it all up.”
“Monsters! Jesus Christ!”
“Oh, hell, Cody. I’ve seen things in Africa and Asia that would make a dog-sized rat look like something of beauty. Just tell your men to be careful; don’t get bitten by one. No telling what that might do.”
Hartline laughed at the expression on Cody’s face. He was still laughing as he walked out of the director’s office.
Cody rubbed his face with his hands. “As if Ben Raines isn’t enough to worry about,” he muttered. “Now I have monsters and boogymen and king-sized rats. What next?”
He looked up as the buzzer sounded on his intercom. “Yes?”
“Mr. Levant to see you, sir,” his secretary said.
“Send him in, Sally.” Cody leaned back in his chair. It would be good to see someone he trusted; someone who was normal. Tommy Levant was a good man, a man Cody knew he could trust. Top agent.
Wish I had more like Levant, he thought.
ELEVEN
“Something troubling you, General?”
Ben turned at the sound of the voice. He had been standing beside a huge old tree, really gazing at nothing, thinking about nothing of any importance.
“Not really, Ms. Bellever. I was letting my mind stay in neutral, so to speak.”
“I do that sometimes,” she said, stepping closer to him. She wore some type of very light perfume, and the scent played man-woman games in Ben’s head. “Or I used to, that is.”
“Having some regrets, Ms. Bellever?”
She fixed blue eyes on him. “Are you serious? God, yes, I have regrets. Don’t you?”
“No,” Ben said, his tone leaving no room for anything other than truth. “This is something that has to be done, so we’re doing it.” He smiled, the gesture taking years from him. “Satchel Paige once said ‘Don’t ever look back; something might be gainin’ on you.’”
She laughed as the dusk of late evening was casting purple shadows around the park, cloaking them in darkening twilight, seeming to make the moment more intimate, pulling them closer.
“And is that your philosophy, General?”
“Well, I’ve heard worse.”
“I’ve seen you looking at me several times.”
“You’re nice to look at,” Ben admitted. “I enjoy looking at a beautiful woman.” He smiled in the dusk and she saw the flashing of his teeth against a deeply tanned face.
“Something amusing, General?”
“I think you know what I was thinking.”
“You saw the
“Oh, yes.”
She returned his smile. “Like what you saw?”
“You on a fishing expedition?”
“Everyone likes to be stroked from time to time.”
He laughed at that. “Yes, Ms. Bellever, I liked what I saw very much.”
She waited, and Ben had a hunch he knew what she was waiting for. It had been several months since he had been with a woman, and Ben was a virile man; but he wondered about this lady. Her motives, in particular. So he waited.
After a minute had ticked by in silence, Dawn chuckled softly. “You are a very suspicious man, General Raines. Are you always this suspicious?”
“Suspicious might be the wrong choice of words. Try careful.”
“Despite what you might think, General—and I don’t blame you for thinking it—I’m not in the habit of throwing myself at men.”
“I shouldn’t think you would have to throw yourself at anybody.”
“If that’s a compliment, thank you.”
“It was.”
A night bird called plaintively, its voice penetrating the settling gloom. Somewhere in the distance, the call
