Betrayal

triumph.'

'How 'bout this, Ron: Without warriors, evil couldn't attack.'

'So it's chicken and egg, is that it? Which came first? No'-he put his hand on hers, took it away as though it burned him-'listen. My point is this: There is always going to be evil and, yes, it will attract evil warriors. You buy that so far?'

She managed a small nod.

'Okay,' he went on. 'So evil and its minions are a given, right? Right. Come on, you admit that. You've just admitted it. And, P.S., it's true.'

She hesitated, then said, 'Okay. Yes. So?'

'So once evil's on the march, what's going to stop it except a greater force for good?'

She sat back and folded her arms. 'The greater force doesn't always have to be physical. It can be spiritual. Look at Gandhi, or Martin Luther King. Fighting should be a last resort. I think a lot of so-called warriors are really warmongers picking fights to justify their own existence.'

'Sometimes they are, yeah. And Gandhi and King, great men, both of them, no question. And both assassinated, I might point out. And neither used their nonviolence in an actual war. Okay, they fought evil, but it wasn't on the march. It wasn't to the warrior stage yet. But even so, for every King or Gandhi, you've got a Neville Chamberlain or somebody who doesn't want to fight. It's not till you get yourself a warrior-like, say, Churchill-that you really can stop active evil. You think Hitler would have stopped by himself? Ever? Or Saddam Hussein, for that matter?'

'We did stop him, Hussein,' she said. 'He wasn't a threat.'

Nolan let his shoulders relax. His face took on a peaceful neutrality. His voice went soft. ' Tara, please, you've got it backward. If he wasn't a threat, it was because we did already stop him once. Our warriors stopped him in Kuwait. That's the only thing he understood.'

Tara was twirling her cup around in its saucer, biting on her lower lip. Eventually she raised her eyes. 'I don't like to think about this, Ron. About evil's place in the world.'

He kept his voice low, met her eyes, again put his hand over hers and this time left it there. 'I don't blame you, Tara. Nobody likes to think about it. And some places, like here in the U.S., and on a gorgeous afternoon in this great city, it can seem so far away as to be nonexistent. Thank God. I mean, thank God there are islands where the beast is kept mostly at bay. It's in its cage. But the thing to remember is that somebody, sometime, had to put the beast in there, and has to keep it there. And that's why we need-we all need, the world needs-warriors. How did you feel about Evan being a cop?'

Her frown deepened, her head moving from side to side. 'I don't think I was exactly thrilled, but that was different.'

'How?'

She worried her lip for another moment. 'Soldiers, their job is to kill. Cops, they mostly protect.'

'And sometimes to protect, don't they have to kill?'

'But it's not the main job.'

'Could that be because individual bad guys don't need an army to defeat them?' He took his hand away from hers and sat up straighter, lifted his cup to his mouth, put it back down. Looking at her, he saw that her eyes had gone glassy and tears hung in their corners. 'I'm sorry. I don't mean to ruin your day and make you cry. We can stop talking about this.'

One tear fell, leaving its streak on her face. 'I don't know what I'm going to do. It's so hard.'

'It is,' he said. 'I know.'

'I'm trying to do the right thing.'

'I can see that.'

'I should at least read his letters.'

'That might be nice.'

'But I'm still…' She stopped, looked at him, shook her head again. 'I don't have any answers. I don't know what I should do.'

'You don't have to decide anything today. How's that?'

She gave him a grateful smile. 'Better.'

'Okay, then,' he said. 'I think that's about enough philosophy for one day. Why don't we blow this pop stand?'

One of the landmarks of old San Francisco was Trader Vic's, the restaurant where the mai tai was purportedly invented and a favorite hangout for the famous columnist Herb Caen and his pals. The original Vic's had gone out of business decades ago, but a couple of years back, they'd opened a new one near City Hall. It had a great buzz and was the same kind of place-a Pacific-island-themed destination spot serving enormous 'pu-pu' platters of vaguely Asian appetizers that could be washed down with mai tais or any other number of generous rum drinks, many of them served for two out of hollowed coconut shells.

Nolan and Tara had ordered one of these when they sat down and then had another with their dinner. Their relaxed sightseeing and later the intense conversations had drawn them closer somehow and blurred the distinction between date and nondate, and by the time the waiter cleared the dinner trays and left them the check, Nolan was beginning to let himself consider the possibility that this incredible woman might like something in him after all. Clearly, Tara had an ambiguous commitment, at best, to Evan Scholler, and she seemed to be enjoying his company-laughing, teasing, drinking. Not quite outright flirting, certainly not coming on to him overtly, but giving him a lot of her time and attention, her foot nowhere near the brakes. His personal code of honor regarding a fellow warrior wouldn't permit him to pursue her if she claimed any sort of allegiance to Evan, but she'd rather definitively avoided that, and if she responded to one of his overtures later, then that would be a clear answer in itself.

Nolan had known that they had valet parking at Trader Vic's, but as a general rule he wasn't too comfortable letting valet attendants get behind the wheel of his Corvette. So, keeping his eyes open, a few blocks before they'd reached the restaurant, he had spied a miraculous section of free curb and he'd pulled into it without much thought. It had still been warm, with a certain softness to the dusk light, and walking a few extra blocks with Tara had seemed both natural and appealing.

Now, outside, it had grown dark. In typical San Francisco summer fashion, the temperature had dropped twenty degrees in the past two hours and a chill, biting wind off the Pacific was scouring the dust off the streets and making the very air gritty. They were on Golden Gate Avenue, an east-west street that funneled the blow and intensified the unpleasantness.

Tara said, 'How'd it get this nasty this fast?'

'The city got the patent on this weather back in the Forty-Niner days. It was supposed to keep out the riffraff. I don't think it's worked too well, but they've kept it up. Why don't you go back inside and I'll get the car and come back for you?'

'We don't have to do that. It's not that far. I can take it.'

'You're not too cold?' Tara was wearing sandals and shorts and a T-shirt with the midriff showing- California summer gear. Now ridiculously inappropriate.

But she just laughed. 'It's only a few blocks. It's invigorating, don't you think?'

Nolan, in civilian shoes, khaki-colored Dockers, and a Tommy Bahama silk shirt, nodded and said, 'Invigorating. Good word. You sure?'

'Let's go.'

At the first corner they hit, Polk Street, they stopped at the curb for the light. He noticed that her teeth were beginning to chatter. 'It's closer going back to Trader Vic's than it is to the car. You're sure you don't want to do that?'

'You think I'm that much of a wimp?'

'I never said that. But you do seem cold.'

'I'll be fine. Promise.'

'Okay, then.' He put his arm around her. 'This is for warmth only,' he told her. 'Don't get any ideas.'

Perhaps a little tipsy, she folded her arms across her chest and leaned slightly into him. 'Warmth is good,' she said, then added, 'Come on, light, come on.'