Secret Agent Sam

Esther’s smile and voice were uncharacteristically wry. “There are words of wisdom and beauty to be found in every culture, dear. And, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, being out here, it’s not to get too tangled up in dogma.”

After a long and thoughtful silence, Sam put her hands on the root beside her and prepared to lever herself off it. “Well, I guess we’d better be getting on,” she said, “now that the rain’s stopped.”

But for some reason it was hard to make herself move. She felt heavy, weighed down…tired out by all the emotional turmoil. She let her eyes slide again to Hal and Tony, and her heart gave a painful leap when she saw Cory had joined them. She drew an unsteady breath and slid down from her perch, overcome with sadness and an indefinable fear.

She was turning when Esther caught at her arm, touching it briefly, just long enough to keep her there.

“It is hard work,” she said gently. “Loving someone over the long haul.” Sam stared at the frail-looking woman, wondering if she had the gift of second sight. And saw a shadow-not sadness… weariness, maybe-in her faded blue eyes. “You know, I think even the happiest, most loving couples must wonder now and then if it’s all worth the effort.”

“But,” Sam blurted out, anguish honing her voice, as it so often did, into a sound more like anger, “you’ve done it. You and Hal-obviously, you’ve made it work. So…so what’s the secret? How do you do it? Is it this…Gibran thing-the oak and the cypress? What?”

Gentle humor returned to Esther’s eyes. “I suppose I do have a secret.” Her lips curved with a sly little smile. “A small one-just one word, actually. I didn’t get it from Gibran, though. This came from a book I’m considerably more familiar with.”

“Yeah? What is it?” Sam held herself rigid, fighting back tears.

Esther’s lined face blossomed. “Forgiveness, dear.”

Sam gave a little huff of helpless laughter and turned away, disappointment leaving her with nothing at all to say. Forgiveness? How was that supposed to help her? Forgiveness pretty much had to be a two-way street, didn’t it?

Forgive? Okay, I can do that, I think I already have. The question now is, is he ever going to forgive me?

Cory was squatting, balanced on one heel, beside a patch of mossy ground on which Hal Lundquist had drawn a rough map of the island with a sharp stick.

“So,” he said, shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he stabbed the similar stick he held in his hand into a spot near the southern tip, “you figure we’re about here.” He moved the stick a couple of inches toward the center of the island and stabbed again. “And the village and airstrip are roughly here.” He looked up and pointed the stick at an imaginary point located halfway between Hal and Tony, who was, as usual, photographing the impromptu strategy meeting for posterity. “That is to say, there. No more than three or four miles that direction. That’s not too bad. We should be able to make it by dark.”

“You’re forgetting,” Hal said as he used his stick to draw a wiggly line between Cory’s two points. “The river. We’ll have to cross it.”

Cory squinted up at him over the tops of his glasses. “There must be ways. Fords…bridges.”

Hal scratched his beard and looked doubtful. “Only two that I know of. Of course there’s the bridge back at the village…”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think we want to go back there. What’s the other?”

“Farther upriver there’s a gorge-it’s not wide, but it is deep. There’s a rope bridge across it.”

“A rope bridge,” Cory said heavily, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes, envisioning the sort of swaying contraption popular in action-adventure movies. Behind him he could hear Tony blaspheming under his breath and felt sure he was on the same wavelength.

“It’s not fun, but it is doable,” Hal said, though his dour expression suggested he hadn’t much optimism about their chances of success. “Esther and I used it several times during the last rainy season-during dry weather, of course, you can cross just about anywhere.”

“I don’t see we have much choice,” Cory said, standing up and brushing at his wet and muddy knees. “If you and your wife-”

“There’s just one thing…” Hal Lundquist was still scratching his whiskers, and looking more pessimistic than ever.

“Yeah? What’s that?” Cory’s heartbeat slowed to a leaden thumping. Behind him, he felt Tony freeze in the act of putting his camera back in its case.

“Well, as I said, there are only the two crossings. Al-Rami’s men use them, too, and they won’t be any more eager to backtrack through the village than we are. Which means-”

“We may run into them at the crossing,” Cory said grimly. “Or worse, they could be set up to ambush us when we try to cross. Great.”

“I doubt they’d waste their time and ammunition,” Sam said as she joined them. “Assuming al-Rami and his men managed to escape the raid on the village, they’ll most likely have crossed the river already and are heading for their nearest hideout as we speak.”

Silently, Cory watched her hunker down beside the crudely drawn map, and he was trying not to notice the fluid slide of muscles in her back and arms and thighs that not even men’s clothing could hide. Or the matter-of-fact way she’d taken charge, with a quiet authority that could only come from absolute confidence in her superior knowledge and expertise.

Of course, she’d been doing that all along, he realized, in slightly more subtle ways. He’d noticed and wondered about it, even felt twinges of uneasiness…entertained vague suspicions. But then, he’d been distracted-to put it mildly-by the flood of conflicting emotions he’d had to deal with since finding her so unexpectedly back in his life, not to mention the reawakened desires rampaging through his system. And even more than that, he thought, he’d been blinded by the image he’d carried in his mind for so long. Sammi June…Sam…his Samantha…who he’d insisted on seeing still as the arrogant but vulnerable college girl he’d fallen in love with that day in the White House rose garden.

Where was that cheeky golden girl now? Had she ever really existed, except in his fantasies? Certainly he could find no trace of her in this tanned and toned creature in camouflage cargo pants and T-shirt, reminding him of nothing so much as the swashbuckling heroine of some action-adventure film he pictured right at home raiding ancient Egyptian tombs or swinging one-handed on a vine while firing an AK-47 and vanquishing villains with the other. He had no doubt crossing a chasm on a swaying rope would be well within her capabilities.

“Besides, they can’t even be sure we’d be coming along that way,” she went on, squinting up at Hal Lundquist-making a point, Cory noticed, to avoid meeting his eyes. “For all they know, we might have been killed in the raid, or managed to meet up with the government forces. Either way, I doubt they’d sit around waiting at some bridge crossing on the off chance we might happen along.”

“That’s a very good point,” Hal said, though he looked no less dubious as he gazed down at the map.

“Well, like I said, I don’t think we have much choice,” Cory said briskly. “How far is it to the crossing? Can we still make the village and airstrip before nightfall?”

Hall shook his head. “In terms of miles it’s not that far, but the terrain and vegetation make for slow going. Then there’s the rain, which will make things more difficult. We might make it there by tomorrow morning, if we keep going all night, but I don’t think that’s such a good idea. The truth is-” he smiled dolefully at his wife as she joined them “-I’m not at all sure we can find the path in the dark. And with all the cloud cover there’ll be no moon.”

“We’ll take it as it comes, then.” Cory glanced at Sam, assuming she’d want to weigh in on the subject. But she wasn’t looking his way, and what he could see of her expression was aloof and unreadable.

He heard her asking Esther if she could carry her cooking pot and bundle for her, and heard Esther’s serene and cheerful, “I’m quite all right, dear, but thank you for asking.” And it occurred to him as he looked at the older woman’s gaunt face and frail body that both she and her husband, intrepid though they might be, weren’t superhuman. They had to be running low on reserves of strength.

“Do you know if there’s someplace we can take shelter for the night?” he asked Hal. “Another nice big tree, maybe?”

“Oh, we can do better than that,” Esther said, beaming at her husband. “Can’t we, Hal? There’s the hunter’s hut, remember?” She transferred the smile to Cory. “It’s on this side of the gorge, very near the crossing. It’s quite