Shibumi

tugged his hair until he was half asleep. She placed her body over his, fitting her lap to his buttocks, her legs and arms over his, her warm weight protecting him, comforting, forcing him to relax. 'This is trouble, isn't it?' she whispered.

He hummed in affirmation.

'What are you going to do?'

'I don't know,' he breathed. 'Get the girl away from here first. They may think that her death would cancel my debt to the uncle.'

'You are sure they won't find her? There's no such thing as a secret in these valleys.'

'Only the mountain men will know where she is. They're my people; and they don't talk to police, by habit and tradition.'

'And what then?'

'I don't know. I'll think about it.'

'Shall I bring you pleasure?'

'No. I'm too tense. Let me be selfish. Let me bring you pleasure.'

Larun

Hel was awake at dawn and put in two hours of work on the garden before he took breakfast with Hana in the tatami'd room overlooking the newly raked sea gravel that flowed down to the edge of the stream; 'In time, Hana, this will be an acceptable garden. I hope you are here to enjoy it with me.'

'I have been giving that matter consideration, Nikko. The idea is not without its attractions. You were very thorough last night.'

'I was working out some stresses. That's an advantage.'

'If I were selfish, I would hope for such stresses always.'

He chuckled. 'Oh, will you telephone down to the village and arrange for the next flight back to the United States for Miss Stern? It will be Pau to Paris, Paris to New York, New York to Chicago.'

'She is leaving us then?'

'Not just yet. I don't want her in the open. But the reservations will be stored in the airline's computer bank, and will be immediately available to Fat Boy. It will throw them off the track.'

'And who is 'Fat Boy'?'

'A computer. The final enemy. It arms stupid men with information.'

'You sound bitter this morning.'

'I am. Even self-pitying.'

'I had avoided that phrase, but it is the right one. And it's not becoming in a man like you.'

'I know.' He smiled. 'No one in the world would dare correct me like that, Hana. You're a treasure.'

'It's my role to be a treasure.'

'True. By the way, where is Le Cagot? I haven't heard him thundering about.'

'He went off an hour ago with Miss Stern. He's going to show her some of the deserted villages. I must say she seemed to be in good spirits.'

'The shallow recover quickly. You can't bruise a pillow. When will they be back?'

'By lunch surely. I promised Benat a roast of gigot. You said you were taking Hannah to the lodge. When will you be leaving?'

'After twilight. I'm being watched.'

'You intend to spend the night there with her?'

'Hm-m. I suppose so. I wouldn't want to come back down those roads in the dark.'

'I know you don't like Hannah, but—'

'I don't like her type, thrill-seeking middle-class muffins tickling themselves with the thrill of terror and revolution. Her existence has already cost me a great deal.'

'Do you intend to punish her while you're up there?'

'I hadn't thought about it.'

'Don't be harsh. She's a good child.'

'She is twenty-four years old. She has no right to be a child at that age. And she is not good. At best, she is 'cute.''

Hel knew what Hana meant by 'punishing' the girl. He had occasionally avenged himself on young women who had annoyed him by making love to them, using his tactical skills and exotic training to create an experience the woman could never approach again and would seek in vain through affairs and marriages for the rest of her life.

Hana felt no jealousy concerning Hannah; that would have been ridiculous. During the two years they had lived together, both she and Hel had been free to go off on little trips and seek sexual diversion, exercises of physical curiosity that kept their appetites in tone and made more precious, by comparison, what they had. Hana once chided him lightheartedly, complaining that he had the better of the arrangement, for a trained man can accomplish decent levels of exercise with a willing amateur; while even the most gifted and experienced woman has difficulty, with the gauche instrument of a bumbling man, achieving much beyond lust-scratching. Still, she enjoyed the occasional well-muscled young man of Paris or the Cote d'Azure, primarily as objects of physical beauty: toys to cuddle.

* * *

They drove along the twisting valley road, already dark with descending evening. The mountains rising sharply to their left were featureless geometric shapes, while those to their right were pink and amber in the horizontal rays of the setting sun. When they started from Etchebar, Hannah had been full of chatter about the robust good time she had had that afternoon with Le Cagot, wandering through deserted villages in the uplands, where she had noticed that each church clock had had its hands removed by the departing peasants. Le Cagot had explained that removing the hands of the clocks was considered necessary, because there would be no one in the churches to keep the clock weights screwed up, and one could not allow God's clock to be inaccurate. The dour tone of primitive Basque Catholicism was expressed in a memento mori inscription on the tower of one deserted church; 'Each hour wounds, the last kills.'

She was silent now, awed by the desolate beauty of the mountains rising so abruptly from the narrow valley that they seemed to overhang. Twice, Hel frowned and glanced over at her to find her eyes soft and a calm smile on her lips. He had been attracted and surprised by the alpha saturation in her aura, uncommon and unexpected in a person he had dismissed as a peppy twit. It was the timbre of calm and inner peace. He was going to question her about her decision concerning the Septembrists, when his attention was arrested by the approach of a car from behind driving with only wing lights. It flashed through his mind that Diamond or his French police lackeys might have learned that he was moving her to a safer place, and his hands gripped the wheel as he recalled the features of the road, deciding where he would force the car to pass him, then knock it into the ravine that raced along to their left. He had taken an exhaustive course in offensive driving, in result of which he always drove heavy cars, like his damned Volvo, for just such emergencies as this.

The road was never straight, constantly curving and twisting as it followed the course of the river ravine.

There was no place a safe pass could be made, but that, of course, would not deter a French driver, whose adolescent impulse to pass is legendary. The car behind continued to close the distance until it was only a meter from his back bumper. It flashed its headlights and sounded its horn, then whipped around while they were in a tight blind curve.

Hel relaxed and slowed to let the car pass. The horn and the lights told him that this was not an assassination attempt. No professional would telegraph his move like that. It was just another childish French driver.

He shook his head paternally as the underpowered Peugeot strained its motor in its laboring effort to pass, the young driver's knuckles white on the steering wheel, his eyes bulging from their sockets in his effort to hold the road.

In his experience, Hel had found that only older North American drivers, with the long distances they habitually travel on good roads with competent machines, have become inured to the automobile as toy and as manhood metaphor. The French driver's infantile recklessness often annoyed him, but not so much as did the typical