Out of Control (51 page)
“Wait!”
“Nice try, Hank, but it’s not working. I’ll be back in a few days.”
“My notebook,” he said. “Do you have it?”
I turned to look back at him.
“If you don’t, it’s still in the safe in the hotel,” he told me, talking fast. “The key’s right here.” He tossed the ring with his hotel room key onto the basement floor, next to my feet. “Go into the safe, and get that notebook and bring it to the FBI, to a man named Joshua Tallingworth. There’s important information in that notebook, Rose. If it falls into the wrong hands—German hands—lots of good people fighting to end this war will die. But take it, and ask to see Tallingworth. Use the codeword starling and you’ll be inside his office before you blink. Go on, darling. Take the keys.”
“I already have the notebook,” I told him.
“Good,” Hank said. “Take it, and go. Tallingworth will tell you the truth about who I am—that I’m not any kind of a Nazi.”
I stared at him. Could he be telling the truth?
“Go on,” he urged. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here when you get back.”
I started up the stairs, suddenly numb. What had I done?
“And after you do get back,” he called after me, “we’re going to Maryland. Don’t think I’m going to forget your promise.”
That stopped me cold. “You still want to marry me?” I couldn’t believe it. “After what I’ve done? If what you’re telling me is true . . .”
“It is true. And Rose . . . ?” I heard him laugh, very softly. “God, I love you, too.”
“I have to get back to the village.”
“I’ll walk you,” Jones said, just as Molly suspected he would. It confirmed her belief that there were some truly nasty people floating around this mountain today.
He looked at Ken, who was repacking the knapsack Jones had sold him with the food and other supplies. “Don’t fuck with my stuff. If you need anything else, take it, but leave cash on the table. If you leave before I get back, lock the door behind you.” He wrote a series of numbers on a piece of paper. “This is the current combination. You need to punch in these numbers to secure the system. Don’t get too excited about my giving you this, because I change these numbers daily.”
“Thank you,” Ken held out his hand, and the two men shook. Then he reached for Molly’s hand. “You really saved our butts back there.”
“It seemed a shame to let two such fine butts go to waste,” she countered. “Good luck, Ken.” She glanced toward Jones’s bed, where Savannah had curled up with a copy of Double Agent. She’d fallen fast asleep, book tucked to her chest, and looked to be about twelve years old. “Try to take it slowly, if you can. Her feet must really hurt.”
He nodded, his eyes soft as he looked over at Savannah. “She’s really incredibly tough. I could take her on a five-mile run right now, and she wouldn’t say a word.”
“Just because she doesn’t say ouch doesn’t mean that she’s not hurt,” Molly reminded him. “Take care.”
“You, too.”
Jones held the door open for her, closed it tightly behind him. And then he grabbed her arm, reeled her in close and kissed the very breath out of her.
“Mmm,” he said when he finally let her up for air. “I thought they would never leave.”
“They didn’t,” she told him. “We did. And I have to get back. Right now.”
Jones kissed her neck. “Right right now? Or more like twenty minutes from now right now? Because I want to show you something I found.”
He pulled her across the glaringly hot runway toward the jungle on the other side, even though she told him, “This is not good. I cannot be returning to the village with my hair a mess and my shirt on inside out and backwards. And believe me, everyone’s going to be checking. They all know that I was with you last night and that we weren’t discussing your extremely procapitalist, anticommunist habit of overinflating the price of toilet paper.”
But then he was opening some kind of door built right into an outcropping of rock. And she followed him into a cool, damp, dim, narrow room, maybe twelve feet by three feet. There were narrow openings like you might find in a castle wall, obviously designed to shoot a gun through. Not much light came in, because it was nearly completely overgrown—except for one small area that had been strategically cleared.
“This was where I thought they could hide until the alternator came in—Ken and Savannah. But I don’t blame him for saying no. He doesn’t know me.”
She could see almost the entire runway from that spot, as well as the Quonset hut Jones called home.
“It was built by the Japanese during the Second World War,” he told her, his voice bouncing slightly off the concrete and stone walls. There was an air mattress in there, and a cache of food and water. “It’s some kind of pillbox. There’s a bunch of ’em, all around the airstrip—you really have to search to find them. I think the plan must’ve been to pretend to desert the airfield, wait for the Americans to arrive, and then shoot the shit out of them. I don’t think it worked—there’s no evidence there was ever any kind of battle out here at all. In fact, I think we didn’t even bother to invade Parwati Island during the war; it wasn’t worth the trouble.”
“So the Japanese built these things and just sat here waiting for an attack that never came?” Molly laughed softly. “Why do I find that so sad? I must be extremely twisted.”
“Yeah,” Jones said. “I think we’ve already verified that.” He came up behind her and kissed her ear, her throat, that delicate place between her neck and her shoulder. She could feel him, hot and heavy against her, aroused again. She loved the fact that he was aroused again. “What time can you get back up here tonight?” he asked.
His hands skimmed beneath her shirt, brushing the undersides of her breasts, and she heard herself moan. He took that as an invitation and filled his hands with her.
“I can’t,” she admitted. Oh, Lord, what he was doing to her felt so good. “Not tonight. I want to, Grady, God, I do, but everyone will be watching.”
“Let ’em watch.” He unfastened the top button of her shorts, slipped his hand down inside.
Oh, yeah . . . “I’m supposed to be a role model for the women in the village.”
“You’re a great role model.”
“I have to be careful,” she gasped. “Really. I don’t want to do anything that’ll make Father Bob send me home early.”
That caught his attention. “If I can’t see you tonight, when can I see you again?”
“You can certainly come to tea, but the tent flaps will be up.”
“I’ll come to tea. But let me rephrase the question—when can I make love to you again?”
“I don’t know. I’ll try to find some other excuse for taking out the boat and—”
“Now,” he said, his breath hot in her ear. “How about right now?”
“I have to get back,” she said, but she sounded far less convincing than she had the first time, particularly when he unzipped her shorts and pushed both them and her panties down to her knees. And then, God, he was inside of her, and all she could say was yes.
Ken watched Savannah sleep.
Her feet were in really tough shape, she had to be exhausted, and he felt a twinge of guilt for having to wake her and get her moving again.
He didn’t trust Jones, but he did trust Molly. He should have made an arrangement to leave Savannah with the missionaries. They would keep her safe. And he—he could do what Molly suggested. Lead the gun runners on a chase up farther into the mountains.
Except, he couldn’t do it. Even though he knew Savannah would be better off, he couldn’t let her out of his sight.
He had never been so scared in his entire life as he’d been in the village, when that helo approached. He’d never been the fastest man in the Team, but he’d broken Olympic records, racing to get back to Savannah.
Shitless. For the first time in his life, he’d been scared practically shitless and it was not a pleasant sensation.
Even now, when he thought about it, thought about what Otto Zdanowicz might have done had he come face to face with Savannah, it made him sick to his stomach.
Because Zdanowicz could well have taken out his sidearm, aimed it at Savannah’s head, and pulled the trigger. Blam. Savannah could have crumpled to the ground, dead. Executed on the spot.
And Ken—way across on the other side of the village—wouldn’t have been able to do a single freaking thing to stop it.
No, Savannah was staying with him. Close to him. Where he knew she’d be safe.
As for her feet . . . He was going to lighten their load. Take a small chunk of the cash from the attaché case, and then hide the rest of it. After he got Savannah to civilization and safety, he could come back for the money.
Until then, he’d bury it. And what better place to bury it than in the backyard of the local smuggler? This cowboy, Jones, knew damn well that Ken didn’t trust him. He’d never expect him to hide an attaché case filled with American dollars within spitting distance of his Quonset hut.
Then, with the case out of the equation, Ken would only have to carry the knapsack with their recently purchased supplies. That way, he could help Savannah—maybe even carry her part of the way.
Tunggul, the village elder—the old guy with the leather face—had told Ken that there were people who might sell him a boat if he headed up to the north side of the island—away from Port Parwati.
This was a doubly good plan, since Zdanowicz wouldn’t expect them to head away from the city.
He and Savannah were going to head toward that river he’d seen when he’d followed Beret and his army. If they could beg, buy, borrow, or steal a boat, they could travel by sea around the island to the port.
There were two major obstacles, Tunggul had warned.
First, that part of the island belonged to the local rebels. Beret was none other than Armindo Badaruddin, a revolutionary who wasn’t above using terrorist tactics when the mood struck.
Second, once they hit the open sea, they would be the potential target of pirates.
Ken, however, was confident in his ability to avoid Badaruddin’s less-than-expert patrols. An additional bonus was the knowledge that Zdanowicz would think twice about crossing into Badaruddin’s territory.
As for the pirates—yeah, just let them try to attack. Most of the pirates were poorly armed, Tunggul had admitted. Ken, however, still carried the Uzi and had enough ammunition now to start a small war.
Savannah murmured something in her sleep, and Ken couldn’t bring himself to wake her.
Instead, he took the attaché case and quietly went out the door, taking care to lock it securely behind him.
Molly kissed him again, both amusement and chagrin in her eyes. “What am I going to do about you? I tell you I have to go, or that I won’t make love in my tent, and you just steamroll right over me.”
“Hey,” Jones said. “You’ve got to give me some credit—I didn’t mess up your hair.”
She laughed. “Fair enough.”
She kissed him again, but he pulled free, his eye caught by movement outside of the Quonset hut.
What the hell . . . ? It was Ken. He was coming out of the hut, carrying that metal case in one hand, Uzi in the other.
Molly turned to look, too. “What’s—”
He quickly put his hand over her mouth, held one finger to his lips.
As they watched, Ken stood silently, watching the jungle as one minute became two became three became even more. And Jones knew what he was doing. He was making sure that they really had gone back to the village. Ken knew that Molly, inexperienced in the tricks of the special forces trade, wouldn’t be able to sit in the jungle for long without giving away her position.
Except, of course, if she were safely hidden in an old Japanese hide.
When he was seemingly satisfied, Ken vanished into the jungle, just beyond the hut.
“Shit, he’s ditching the blonde,” Jones breathed into Molly’s ear. That was just terrific. What was he supposed to do with her?
“I think he probably just needs to pee.”
“With the case?” He snorted. “No, he’s outta here. I wonder what the hell’s in there, anyway.”
“Money.”
Jones turned to look at her. “Excuse me?”
“Savannah told me there was money in that case.”
“How much?” Jesus, a case that size must hold . . . Damn, it would depend on the face value of the bills. If they were hundreds . . .
“I didn’t ask.”
Of course not. But probably more than twenty thousand dollars. Jesus Christ, if the Cessna had been able to fly, Jones could have walked away with twenty grand in cold hard cash. That hurt.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the money before?” he asked her.
“It didn’t seem important.”
“You thought if I knew about it I’d try to take it.”
Molly rolled her eyes. “Actually, that thought never crossed my mind.”
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