Her voice was edgy again and her smile too bright as she said, “Can I get you a drink, Mr. Arneson? And cigarettes, perhaps? I do not smoke.”

  “That would be fine,” I said. “Both. I drink and I smoke. Too much of both, I’m afraid.”

  Just to test it I moved toward her again as she left the shelter of the piano and headed for the door. She veered away and nearly broke into a run. “I—I won’t be long. Please sit down and make yourself comfortable.”

  I did that I sat in a chair near a dead fireplace, over which a tiger mask leered at me, and I thought. She’s afraid of you, Carter! You’re making her nervous.

  How come? She had accepted my credentials. She had known I was coming. She was the sole contact I had with Malaysian Intelligence. I am a big man and have been called handsome. Been around a bit. No slob intellectually. I just didn’t get it

  I wandered to the piano and fingered out “Kitten on the Keys.” I lifted the lid of the stool and riffled through music, idly, killing time, and came up with the little Mendoza automatic. Pearl handled. .25 caliber. Neat little lady’s gun. Kill you just as dead as a .45 at the right range. I put it back and closed the lid of the seat. So what? She was in the business. I knew what it was to take precautions. And yet I wasn’t satisfied. I didn’t think she was afraid of me in any professional sense. It was something else. But if she was afraid of me in a personal sense—why?

  I heard her coming and went back to my chair. She was bare footed and wearing a golden bangle on each ankle, and she chimed as she walked. I wondered about that, too. Why the native bit tonight? She was no jungle girl.

  She came in carrying a silver bucket with ice and a bottle in it. The wine wasn’t out of the jungle, either. Balaton Riesling. Dry white Hungarian. Hmm. I reminded myself that this was Singapore.

  I sat and watched her, unmoving, as she arranged the wine and a little taboret and cigarettes and ashtrays and the whole damned works. I didn’t say anything, just let her feel my eyes on her. I didn’t know what it was with this kid, but I intended to find out.

  She was hurrying to get it done and leap away from me. I could detect a flush beneath her light brown skin. A wine glass chimed as she struck it against the bottle.

  “You would probably prefer whiskey,” she said, “but I’m afraid there isn’t any. Father only drinks wine and I never drink at all so—”

  “Wine is fine,” I told her. I made my grin as fatuous as possible. “Tell me, how did you know I was watching you? That was quite a musical clue you tossed off.”

  She finished her tasks and ran for a divan in a comer, as far from me as she could possibly get in this room. She sank on it and tucked her bare feet up under the sarong.

  “You were late, Mr. Arneson. And—”

  “Ken,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ken. Not Mr. Arneson. I only work with fellow professionals on a familiar basis.” I laid the stress on familiar and watched her face.

  “Oh!” She avoided my glance. One tapering finger went up to finger her lip. I damned the sarong again. No trace of legs or breasts. Hardly a bulge to betray that she had breasts. But I knew better. That afternoon when she bent over—I got it then. She wasn’t even wearing a conventional bra. She was native tonight! Wearing a choti. A cross band that pulled tight and flattened her breasts.

  She was staring at the polished hardwood floor. I prompted her. “I was late?”

  “What?”

  “You were saying that I was late.”

  “Yes. You were late and I was playing the Chopin and suldenly, I don’t know how or why, I felt you out there. I felt you watching me. So I played the Chasins.”

  I was watching her very closely, and I saw it. She tried to control it, and succeeded in the main, but I saw it. She shivered. A sudden involuntary muscle spasm. Then it was gone.

  Yes. She was afraid of me. I thought I had it, then. She knew what I did, who I was and why I was in Malaysia. And she didn’t like being alone with a professional killer. Too bad. Tonight looked like a strike out in the personal gratification department.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s get on with it, Mora. First things first—do you, positively, know where this Lim Yang is now? The Red Cobra?”

  “No. We did, I mean our security did, but he has moved away from his old camp. By the time our troops got there it was too late.”

  I lit a cigarette and gazed at the ceiling. She didn’t seem to like my eye on her.

  “How did you come by this information in the first place? About the location of the Cobra’s camp?”

  “Some of our Negrito troops, anti-guerrillas, captured two of his men. One died without talking. One talked. He told us where the camp was. But, as I say, when our people got there Lim Yang was gone.”

  I blew smoke at the ceiling. “You know what that means? Unless it was just coincidence that he moved at that particular time?”

  “I know. Of course I know. That is why you are here, Mr.—Ken—why you and I are here alone now. Why this thing can’t he done through official channels. We can’t trust our own Intelligence service! There are leaks. Always there are leaks. The Red Cobra was warned as soon as his man talked.”

  I knew, but I asked anyway. “The guerrilla who talked— he was subject to torture?”

  “Of course he was tortured. Why else would he talk!” She sounded a little impatient with me. That was the Malay in her. Or the Chinese. Or both. They take a different view in these parts.

  “So you have no positive knowledge of where the Cobra is now, right? Have you any information, positive or not? Rumors? Reports? Anything?” There is an awful lot of jungle in Malaysia.

  Now that we were talking business her voice sounded less strained and she had stopped jittering. I smoked and kept my eyes away from her.

  “Our last report is three days old. He ambushed a small group of our people near Kuala Lipis. That’s in the Central Highlands. Some rubber planters found the bodies.”

  I nodded and thought a moment. “How far is this Kuala Lipis from the site of his former camp? The one the captured guerrilla told you about.”

  “About thirty miles.”

  “And how long between the incidents—I mean the man talking and your Negritos raiding and the Cobra’s last attack?”

  “About ten days—maybe a day or so less. I don’t keep records here in this house.”

  Lim Yang wasn’t too mobile, then. That figured. It is damned hard to be mobile in a jungle. You move, but you don’t move very fast. If it is a real jungle, and you know it well, you don’t have to move fast. That would be the Cobra’s advantage, I thought. He might have some old guerrillas with him, at least one or two, who knew the jungle as they knew their own faces. The new recruits could do the fighting and the old ones the guiding.

  “How well is he equipped? What sort of weapons? How many and what degree of effectiveness?”

  She thought a moment. I went back to watching her again. She was leaning forward, frowning, toying with the bangle on one ankle. I remembered the view at the bar that afternoon. Why strap them down with a choti? What did that have to do with being afraid of me as a professional killer? I had a dichotomy on my hands. A personal and a professional problem. The professional end of it was going to be simple enough. Not easy maybe, but simple. Routine. About the other I wasn’t so sure.

  “Some automatic weapons,” she said. “Plenty of rifles and grenades. No shortage of ammunition as far as we know. Plenty of small arms, I mean hand guns by that. Most of the weapons are English or Japanese. Some American, especially the pistols.”

  “High explosive? Plastic stuff, TNT, dynamite—stuff like that?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know too much about those things.”

  “Put it this way—is the Cobra blowing many bridges, trains, any sort of installations?”

  She shook her head again. “Not much of that so far. He has to stay in the jungle, you know. That’s his only protection.”

  I knew. Some of the Malaysian jungle has never been explored by a white man. There are still places where you wander a mile from the road and you are back a thousand years. Whoever created guerrilla fighters also created the jungle for their special use.

  We talked another half hour or so. She began to loosen up even more. She gave me marked maps, being careful to hand them to me at arm’s length, and in general did everything she was supposed to do. In a professional way.

  I began to see that I was going to do this mission the hard way. Use myself for bait and make the Red Cobra come after me. Or send one of his little cobras.

  I began to ease into another tangent, doing it slow and easy in order to take her off guard when I was ready.

  It was a quarter after eleven. She had relaxed enough to put some Strauss on the Magnavox. To go with the wine, I suppose. And she found a box of cigars and put them on the piano where I could help myself. Then she retired to her divan, far across the room—too damned far—and tucked her aristocratic feet under the sarong, cupped her chin in her hands and stared at me. I wondered what she saw. A tiger?

  I sipped my wine—the bottle was still half full, which made me an optimist. A pessimist would have said that it was half gone.

  “Sometimes, Mora, I can do my job better if I have a fairly complete understanding of the political factors in a given situation. Other than just the military background. In my case it would be para-military, as you must know. You surely have been told why I’m here?”

  I watched her face. She didn’t react much, only nodded and kept those long almond eyes on mine. “Yes. I know. You mean to kill this man, this Red Cobra. Lim Yang.”

  “Right Now, Mora, and your answer must be truthful— just how dangerous is this man becoming? What success is he having? Why does your government send all the way to Washington to ask for help, to borrow a professional killer, if you will, to take care of one guerrilla leader with a few men?”

  I watched her eyes. She didn’t so much as blink at the word killer. So it wasn’t that?

  She put a narrow foot down and tapped the floor. The bangle chimed. She frowned at me. “I am only authorized to tell you so much, Ken. This you are asking is not part of it”

  I shrugged. “If you had rather not—”

  “But I will tell you. Maybe, as you say, it will help. And you are helping us! You have come a long way and are risking your life.”

  Right on both counts. No use in pointing out that it was my job, that I was damned well paid for it, and Hawk would fire me if I didn’t. No point at all in mentioning that.

  “Things are very bad,” she said. “Much worse than any— anyone outside the Government knows. There is a real danger of a coup if this Cobra is not found and killed very soon. We are desperate for foreign capital, Ken, and have been getting some; not enough, but some. Until this Lim Yang came along. Now that capital is beginning to dry up. The big companies, and other countries, are afraid. This is not generally known, of course.”

  I nodded. “I know. There are plenty of tourists around. Why not? There are no Commie guerrillas in the happy jungles of Malaysia.”

  She didn’t smile. “That is the impression we try to give, yes. On the surface. But the big people, they know. The ones that count. The banks in Switzerland, London, Paris and New York. Do you study the money exchanges?”

  “Occasionally. Not recently. The Malaysian dollar isn’t doing so well?”

  “Badly. And it will be worse. Unless we put our house in order. We have been told to put our house in order.”

  I could guess who had been doing some of the telling. And why Dato Ismail bin Rahman—may peace be on him—had been steered to Hawk. And who had given the orders that set Hawk in motion. And myself in motion. Stick beat dog—dog chase cat—cat eat rat—etc. All because the Indonesians hadn’t scooped Lim Yang into the net on that bloody night long ago. And yet one man?

  “The Cobra isn’t doing all that,” I said.

  She agreed. “No. But his presence is. The news is being leaked into the right ears. Wrong ears, from our viewpoint. That is why my—why we sent an envoy to Washington in such a hurry. We’re getting desperate, Ken. They are beginning to get to the young people, these guerrillas. There has been nothing in Singapore yet, but yesterday there was a student demonstration in Kuala Lumpur. Small, but enough to frighten us. This Cobra has organized something called Merdeka. Freedom!”

  I could see how the word was getting around. Peking. Ching Poo. Political and planning. They knew a good thing when they saw it. Start rumors that Malaysia was shaky and maybe it would be shaky. Fail in Indonesia and move over the Straits and start in Malaya. The bastards never give up.

  I stood up and stretched. She went tense at once, watching me. Like a lamb staked out for a tiger. Maybe I was a tiger. I went to the tiger mask over the fireplace and admired it. Might as well stick to the motif.

  “Mora,” I said, preparing to sock it to her, “Mora, I would like to ask you a personal question. Okay?”

  “I—I don’t know. What sort of question?” Her voice was tense again, wound so tight you could hear the spring vibrate.

  I stroked the soft muzzle of the dead tiger, not looking at her. “This man, this Dato Ismail bin Rahman who went to Washington? Are you his wife or his mistress? His concubine? What?”

  A Moslem can have four wives, legally, and all the concubines he can afford. If she was any of these things I was prepared to forget it. I wanted her! I had been sitting there working myself into a lather of lust. But I was not going to endanger the mission by poaching on the good doctor’s preserve. Moslems take a very dim view of that sort of thing. This was a big-shot Moslem. And I was in his country.

  The last thing I expected was laughter. I turned. She had fallen a little sideways on the divan, supporting herself on her elbows, and she was laughing. Laughter with a tinge of hysteria in it, but laughter none the less.

  I went along with it. “I made a funny?”

  I moved a little toward the divan—tiger on the stalk now—and she appeared not to notice. I doubt that she did. She was still convulsed in high-pitched mirth. Her hands were clenched into white-knuckled little fists. I took two steps toward the divan.

  “Is—is that what you t-thought? That Dato is my husband? Or my master?” Her eyes were moist as she stared at me. “Did you really think that?”

  I stayed where I was. “It seemed reasonable enough.”

  She shook her head. “He is my father! I thought you knew. I slipped when I spoke of the wine and it worried me, because there is no reason you should know of my private affairs. I go against orders to tell you this. Dato told me that the less you knew the better. But he could not trust anyone else to do this thing, arrange this meeting, and so I must do it but I was in no way to become involved with you and—oh, no! No! Don’t. Please don’t! I—”

  I knew she was vulnerable then. Just then. In three strides I was beside the divan and on it, holding her in my arms. At my touch she stiffened, went rigid, tried to fight clear of me, tried to avoid my lips on hers. But I knew. Now I really knew.

  “Mora,” I told her gently. “Mora—Mora! Don’t fight me. I won’t harm you. I want you. Look at me. Look at me, Mora! Don’t you want me?”

  She would not look at me. She fought like a little tan wildcat and pushed against my chest with her fists. I held her like a baby and stroked her shining dark hair. “It’s all right, honey. All right”

  I kissed her ear. I whispered. “You won’t need that gun in the piano stool. I’m not going to do anything to you that you don’t want done. Don’t be afraid of me, Mora. Don’t be.”

  The moment my lips grazed her ear she stopped fighting. She went lax in my arms. Her eyes were tightly closed.

  “No,” she murmured. “No—no—no. I can’t do this. I mustn’t. You don’t understand, Ken.”

  I understood.

  I shut her up with my mouth on hers. She moaned and struggled once more. Feebly. Then she gave up. Her arms went around me, and someone tossed a barrel of gasoline on the fire.

  She tugged at my ears and put her tongue deep in my mouth. I could hardly breathe and didn’t want to. She held me and began to move her mouth back and forth across mine, slowly, then faster, all the time probing with her tongue. Our breathing was dissonance in the quiet room. I touched her right breast and she arched her back and grabbed at my hand and pushed it inside the fold of her sarong, against the choti that was strangling those beautiful breasts. I was half crazy by now, my hands fumbling and trembling, and I couldn’t find the straps that loosened the damned thing.

  I had to breathe at last and I broke the kiss and kept fumbling and I gasped, “Why? Why do you wear such a damned thing?”

  Her lips came after mine, moist and hot and seeking, and she was muttering, “Don’t talk! Please don’t say anything. Don’t talk. And don’t hurry—slow, darling, slow—slow—”

  I couldn’t talk, and I didn’t want to hurry anymore than she did. There is too much hurry in the world, and it spoils most things. Lovemaking is one thing that it spoils absolutely.

  A sarong is not as easy to get off as you might think. There are no buttons, hooks or zippers and still it is not easy. She had to help me and did it without ever taking her mouth off mine. Or opening her eyes.

  I kept my eyes open. I like to see. And when at last she had guided my fingers to all the right places, and I whisked the sarong from under her and hurled it away, it was worth seeing. I found the cruel choti straps then and loosened them and her breasts fell into my hands like little velvet waterfalls. You cannot describe the smell of a rose, and you cannot put into words the softness of a woman’s breasts and inner thighs.

  I buried my face in her breasts, into the fragrance and tenderness, and let my lips find a nipple and encompass it and heard her moan something in Malay that I did not understand. No matter. I traced my mouth over her breasts and missed not an inch of velvet and felt her trembling.

  My own feeling was an admixture of tenderness and lust. I was on the verge of bursting, yet I heeded her admonition to go slowly. I knew the wisdom, yet left to my own desires I would have flaunted it and plunged ahead.