The Snake Flag Conspiracy Read online

  In the past I've played at the game with other women like Sabrina. They're a special breed, set apart from most women. For one thing, a woman like her is completely amoral. She won't conform to the rules of society. She won't behave like other women. She has a compulsion to be different, to be noticed.

  For another thing, she's intensely feminine, alive with animal vitality. Damned few men, however, can trigger a response in her because she doesn't think much of men. She despises them as weaklings.

  But when she does meet one of the rare men who can turn her on, that's when she begins to play the game. She'll use every wile in her repertoire, first to get you interested in her, and then to get you involved with her. It's a test of strength that can only end in the capitulation and destruction of one of you. Once you start the game, that's the only way it can end.

  We had reached the Public Gardens. We turned into the park without saying a word, the tension between us so high, it was almost palpable. Neither the Public Gardens nor the Boston Common are safe places to walk after dark. Like so many of the once-pleasant parks in cities all over our country, they've become hunting grounds for muggers and rapists.

  "It's supposed to be dangerous to walk through here at night," Sabrina said with pure pleasure in her voice. A swift, cool breeze blew through the park and her flying hair struck me softly across the cheek like the fur of a sleek animal that touches you in the dark and is gone.

  "There's safety in numbers," I said, lightly placing my hand on her arm as we rounded a corner.

  "I often walk here alone at night," Sabrina responded coolly. I'm never afraid."

  All the same, she began leaning slightly against me as we walked. Her body was pressed next to mine, warm and savage beneath her clothes.

  Overhead the foliage on the trees blocked out the moon and most of the light from the lamps so that we walked together in the dark. There was nothing for us to say. Silently we responded to each other in a way so primitive that speech would have spoiled it.

  In the same silence we left the Gardens and walked along Charles Street, turning the corner and striding up the incline of Mount Vernon Street to Louisburg Square. Still without a word, Sabrina unlocked the door to the house and closed it behind us without turning on the lights.

  In the dark she turned to me. Her arms came up around my neck. Along the entire length of her, from her neck through her torso to her waist, hips, pubic arch, thighs and legs, she pressed hotly against me.

  Her fingernails dug into the nape of my neck, pulling my head down, forcing my mouth against hers. She pried my lips apart, her tongue wildly searching inside my mouth for an instant, and then, like a wild jungle cat, she clamped her teeth into my neck.

  I gathered her hair into my hand and closed my fist, pulling her head away from me so I could see her face. Sabrina's eyes were closed, but I felt that if she opened them, they would be green slits glowing in the dark.

  My other hand reached out to catch the soft weave of her silken dress at the throat. In one savage wrench I ripped the material from neckline to waist.

  She moaned softly, her throat a pale arch of soft flesh in the dim light that filtered through the windows. "Oh, yes!"

  Acting instinctively, knowing it was what she wanted, I slapped her across the face.

  "You tried to kill me this afternoon, you bitch!"

  "Yes." Her breath was coming in gasps. "Yes, I did." She tried to press her nude torso against me. I held her away.

  "Why?"

  She shook her head.

  I ripped the dress from her completely. Now she was wearing only the smallest of bras and a tiny triangle of silk beneath her sheer pantyhose.

  "Why did you try to kill me?"

  In answer, her arms came up and her hands beat futilely at my face. I twisted her head savagely from side to side, still gripping her hair in my left hand.

  "Why?" I pulled away her bra. A husky moan rose from her throat, a moan filled with pleasure.

  "Make love to me!" It was a cry, beseeching and demanding, begging and imperative all at the same time. She fell to her knees, pressing her head into my groin, putting her arms around my waist.

  "Damn it, why?"

  I could feel her head moving from side to side in a silent 'no' that set my groin on fire. Quickly I stripped off my own clothes.

  Beneath us the rug was thin, and beneath the thin rug the wooden floor was hard, but Sabrina was soft and full and took me into her quickly. She was my cushion, my toy, my plaything, my animal.

  Claws raked my back; fingernails and teeth sank into my flesh; hands, arms, and thighs clutched at me. Her mouth was bloody from biting my shoulder. More than once I had to slap her to make her let go. Her moans turned to snarls. One moment she cringed beneath me, the next she fought me savagely, striking me with her fists in violent fury until I matched it with my own anger, and then she made sounds of delight and pleasure. Finally, after an eternally long spasm that shook her uncontrollably, she collapsed completely. The savagery went out of her.

  Her body became langorous; it burned with the warmth of fulfillment In the dark her sigh was like the purring of a cat, deep and full and content.

  I groped for my trousers and took out my gold-tipped cigarettes and my lighter. The flare of the flame lit her eyes. In the yellow of the small light they were green slits.

  "Give me one," she said, reaching out I gave her the cigarette I'd lit and took another for myself.

  "Why did you try to kill me?" I asked. Her head was on my shoulder. She exhaled, holding the cigarette away to look at its tip glowing in the dark.

  "I can't tell you," she said.

  "I could make you talk."

  "You won't" Sabrina said, almost casually. "You'd have to hurt me too much."

  "If I have to, I'll kill you," I told her.

  Sabrina lifted herself on one elbow and tried to look into my face. I flicked the lighter on. The tiny flame was more than enough. She looked deeply into my eyes and touched my cheek with her fingertips. She took her hand away.

  "Yes," she said soberly. "Yes, I think you would."

  "Why did you try to kill me?"

  "I was told to."

  "By whom?"

  "I don't know. There was a telephone call."

  "You do things like that when someone calls?"

  "I have to," she said. She turned away slightly. "Put out the light, please."

  I snapped the lighter shut. We were in darkness again, with only the indirect glow of the street fight coming in through the windows to make darker shadows in the gray around us.

  I reached up to touch her face. My hand felt her neck. There was a thin chain around it I felt a tiny, flat metal pendant. I moved my hand up to her chin and then to her cheek. It was wet. Sabrina was crying.

  "Please don't make me say any more. I really don't know any more," she said, shivering against me.

  "What has Alexander Bradford to do with it?" I asked.

  "Bradford?"

  Sabrina suddenly moved away from me. In the dark I made out her silhouette moving around the room. She went through a doorway and disappeared.

  I got to my feet and turned on a lamp. By the time Sabrina came back in a negligee, I was fully dressed, ready to go.

  "You're not leaving now?" She was disappointed.

  I nodded.

  "Will you come back?"

  "Perhaps."

  She came up to me. There was nothing remote about her now, nothing impersonal. The game had been played, and I had won. Sabrina touched me on the cheek meekly.

  "Please come back," she said. And then, as I opened the door to the street, I heard her swear softly, despairingly.

  Chapter Six

  I came down Mount Vernon Street, turning on Charles Street on my way back to the hotel. At that time of night — it was after three o'clock in the morning — the street was deserted. The old-fashioned, black-painted, cast iron street lamps were on, forming pools of light with large patches of dark in between. I kept t
o the outside of the narrow sidewalks until I got down the hill to Charles Street.

  There's something menacing about a city in those early hours. There seems to be danger lurking in every alleyway, in every dark entrance and at every corner.

  If I had been more cautious, I would have walked along Beacon Street around the edge of the Public Gardens, but that's the long way around, and cutting through the Gardens at a diagonal is a lot shorter. So that's what I did.

  The path takes you first to the lagoon and then part way around it before you come to the small bridge that crosses over the narrowest part of the pond. The path is very close to the willow trees that border the water's edge. The weeping willows are old and huge, thick and very tall, so their branches hang down heavily to block out most of the lamplight. The elms and maples, too, are big. They provide huge patches of darkness, and the grass is well kept and short-cropped. It bides footsteps completely.

  Not until he was on the asphalt path only a few feet behind me did I hear the slap of his shoes on the pavement as he made his final rush. The walk down the deserted streets had sharpened my senses, made me totally alert. Without conscious thought, I dropped to one knee as soon as I heard the sound of his feet. His blow went over the top of my head, missing by only inches. The momentum of his attack crashed him into me, knocking me sprawling on my face.

  He was a big man. I rolled away from him, scrambling off the pavement and onto the grass. He sprang for me again before I had regained my balance.

  Whoever he was, the only thing he had going for him was his size and his strength. He wasn't very fast and he didn't know much about how to kill a man quickly or silently.

  I fell onto my back when he made his leap. I barely had enough time to draw my knees up to my chest. As he flung himself on me, I uncurled both legs with all the power of my thighs, catching him full on the chest. The impact flung him over my head. It should have broken half a dozen of his ribs. If it did, he didn't show it.

  Twisting to my feet, I turned in time to see him stand upright. He was more cautious now. In his right hand he carried a length of lead pipe.

  He came at me for the third time, swinging the pipe first one way, and then trying a backhand stroke with it to catch me off guard. I dove in under the swing of the lead pipe. My shoulder caught him at the knees, knocking him down. I scrambled away as fast as I could.

  I didn't try to close in. To do that with a man of his size would be sheer suicide. He was more than a head taller than I am. You've seen a football lineman towering over the others, his shoulder pads making him look gigantic. That's how this one looked, only he wasn't wearing shoulder pads. It was all his own muscle.

  I moved crabwise to one side, legs apart, balancing on the balls of my feet. My assailant heaved himself upright. He took a step toward me, his arm going back for another blow. I took a short step, leaping high in the air, my right leg lashing out in a furious kick.

  Karate and savate and Thai foot boxing have one thing in common. They all make use of the fact that a man's legs are stronger and more lethal than his arms.

  The thin edge of my shoe sole should have caught him flush on the chin, just under the ear, with the force of my leg and body behind it. If you do it right, you can split open the thick canvas of a heavy, sand-filled punching bag.

  I missed.

  Not by much. My foot scraped along his jaw as he moved his head away a fraction of an inch, but that fraction was enough to save his life.

  He lunged back at me with the lead pipe, sideswiping me along the rib cage, knocking the breath out of me. A fire of pain spread out along my ribs, knocking the breath out of me. I tumbled away in a rolling fall.

  He let me get to my feet. Gasping, I moved backward away from him. He stepped menacingly toward me, measuring me for another blow. I gave ground, not letting him get set, keeping him from that one instant he needed to strike again. Step by step I retreated, staying just out of range of his powerful swing.

  I didn't want to kill him. If I had, I would have shifted Hugo into my palm the moment I heard his footsteps. I wanted the man alive so I could get him to talk. I wanted to know who'd sent him after me. This was no ordinary mugging. A mugger would have been long gone once his first attack had failed.

  Someone wanted me dead. Sabrina had set me up for the attack, but she was just an agent. I'd known from the beginning what was happening when, on our way to her house, she'd taken every opportunity to walk me under the lights. If anyone was watching us, he'd gotten a good look at me.

  The lagoon curves in toward the footbridge. There is one exceptionally tall weeping willow at the small point that juts out into the water right there. It's eight to ten yards from the steps that lead up onto the bridge itself. The footpath goes under the bridge. At that point, it's only a few feet wide, with the stone buttresses of the bridge on one side and the water of the lagoon on the other.

  I backed away under the bridge so that he would be able to come at me only from the front. One step at a time he advanced, the lead pipe in his big fist swinging threateningly from side to side, his body crouched to make it difficult for me to lunge at him.

  There was one moment when we faced each other in the darkness under the bridge when it seemed that the whole world had paused in silence to await the outcome of our duel. There was no one walking on the bridge over our heads. The few nighttime noises of the city were too far away to break the deadly quiet. There was only the sound of a lone cricket nearby and the sound of my assailant's breath coming in gulping heaves as he dragged air into his lungs. Mano a mano. One on one.

  But he wanted me dead and I wanted him alive — if possible. The advantage was all on his side.

  As he began to pull back his arm for another swipe at me, I spun away on my heel and ran a dozen yards. In front of the wooden dock where the swan boats are tied up at night, I stopped abruptly and whipped around again. He'd taken the bait and had run after me. He was off balance when I sprang at him. My left arm knocked the lead pipe to one side, my right forearm slammed him across the throat as he tried to swing the pipe. I wasn't quite fast enough to evade it completely. It sideswiped me just above the left ear. Suddenly the sky was full of more stars than I'd ever seen before.

  Staggering backward along the wooden planks of the dock, I tried to clear my head. His shadow was huge and ominous. The pipe was still in his hand.

  By now we were only a foot or two from the edge of the dock. There was no place left for me to go, except onto the nearest swan boat itself, and its metal-framed wooden-slat seats were too close to each other to give me room to maneuver.

  I realized that my chances of taking him alive were pretty slim. At this point, it was a case of saving my own life.

  He took a moment, to measure me for what he probably thought would be a last crippling blow. As he ran at me, the pipe came up head height and then flashed down.

  I moved a hairsbreadth to one side. The bludgeon missed me by inches. As his hand and arm came across my chest, I seized his right forearm in one hand and clamped the other behind his elbow. Pivoting from the waist, I slammed my hip into his and bent myself almost double. His momentum is what did it. That and the leverage I exerted on his locked arm.

  Involuntarily he rose up off the ground in a giant arc, swinging over my head, flying over the end of the dock to come crashing down on the hard, unyielding edges of the metal and slat seats of the swan boat.

  Under the impact of his more than 200 pounds, the swan boat dipped sideways in the water, bobbing up again and then down before it returned to a level keel. Ripples spread out in concentric arcs across the still water of the pond. He lay in a broken, unnatural attitude, his head and neck supported by one seat edge, his knees and legs by the seat back in front of him.

  Panting, I moved slowly onto the swan boat, waiting for him to stir. He made no movement. I pulled Hugo from his sheath and pressed the blade gently against his throat, ready to shove hard in case he was feigning unconsciousness.

  H
e wasn't. He was dead. The back of his neck had come down with the full weight of his body on the thin edge of the back of the seat and crushed the vertebrae.

  His face was toward me. The man was in his middle thirties. His slacks and shirt were expensive and tight fitting. Heavy facial features were topped by a shock of lank blond hair that fell across his forehead.

  I turned him so that I could reach into his hip pocket, pulling out his wallet and putting it away in my own pocket. I'd look at it later. Right now I had to make him look like the victim of an ordinary mugging attack. His wristwatch was a Patek Phillipe. The least expensive models cost several hundred dollars, and this one was far from the least expensive in their line. I took his watch, too.

  And then, suddenly, I changed my mind. I decided I wanted his death to attract more than ordinary attention. I wanted word to get back to the opposition that he'd failed to carry out his assignment. I wanted them to send someone better for the job — someone I could track back to the top. I was going to stir up public attention. If Bradford — whether or not he was in the conspiracy — hated publicity, then the others must share the same feeling.

  Well, I'd give them publicity. The morning papers would carry the story of the tourist who'd had his head blown off by a camera. Tomorrow's evening rags were going to have an even juicier item.

  I looked around. There was still no one in sight. Considering the lateness of the hour, that wasn't unusual. I bent and heaved his heavy, limp body across my shoulder. Stepping back onto the dock, I struggled to the far end of the boat.

  It took a few minutes to do what I had to do. When I finished, I knew it would make the front page of every newspaper in town.

  He looked quite natural.

  It had taken a lot of effort on my part, because you just don't heave around an inert 200-pound body without exertion, but it was worth it. He now sat on the bicycle seat between the great white wings of the wooden swan. I'd lashed him upright with the tiller ropes, and I'd put his feet on the pedals and tied them there. Except for his head drooping forward onto his chest, he looked as if he were waiting for morning to come, ready to propel the swan boat filled with children in a quiet, pleasurable ride around the islands of the lagoon.