Mareta’s body was warm and damp against mine in the afternoon heat as we lay drowsily in the aftermath of love. She raised her head from my chest and kissed me tenderly on the forehead.
“Poor old LaRoche,” she murmured as her fingers gently probed the bumps and tufts of stitches on my head. “You’re my horrible monster.”
“I’ll be Colonel Schneider’s horrible monster if he ever catches me,” I said, cupping her breast in my hand. “And Tama’s too. I think I was under his jurisdiction when I jumped out that window.”
Laughing, Mareta sat up on the bumpy mattress and raised her arms to fiddle with her hair. I admired the sleek curve of her neck and the taut contours of her breasts. “I wish I could have seen that, the escape of Robin Hood from the Sheriff of Nottingham.”
“Errol Flynn should feel so lousy,” I muttered. I climbed reluctantly to my feet and followed Mareta out to the back yard, where we stood under a cold-water showerhead in a galvanized-tin shed. I pulled her to me and her body molded itself to mine as we relished the cool water flowing over our bodies.
“You better be going,” I said when we finally broke apart and began wielding the soap. “I overhead Schneider saying he’d had a beeper put on my car yesterday morning, which must have been while Payton and I were being shouted at in Tama’s office. If they were tracking me then, they know I went to the hospital—hell, I told them that—and then to your place in town. But they don’t know I came up here in your car. So sometime they’re going to be coming around to your place in town. Buy yourself a bag of groceries on the way in, and if they wonder where you’ve been, tell them you’ve been to the beach and then shopping. Okay?”
She stood on tiptoe to kiss the end of my nose. The tips of her nipples brushed disturbingly across my skin. “Of course, my conspirator. And then I come back here?”
I began to towel off. “Better not. They’ll probably want to search your house to make certain I’m not hiding under the bed. Let them. Then turn on lots of lights and hang around in the house in full view so they can see you easily if they’re snooping around. If you do have to come back here—for some real emergency either try to use another car and make sure you’re not tailed, or make certain they haven’t put a beeper on your station wagon.” I told her where to look for one, without much hope that she’d be able to spot it.
I pulled her against me and tried to smile encouragingly. It wasn’t easy. “If everything goes as planned I’ll be able to march up to your place leading a brass band tomorrow.” Her dark brown eyes looked up at me uncertainly, and she grabbed my face with both hands. Her mouth found mine and kissed it with desperate hunger, then she pushed herself away abruptly. She turned and began to pull on a pair of shorts. “If everything goes as planned,” she murmured ironically.
“Yeah.” I swallowed uncomfortably. “If.”
* * * *
But the first part of my plan worked to perfection: the afternoon ticked away, the sun set behind Moorea right on schedule, and darkness covered the land.
After that it got a little chancier.
At 9:30 I revved up the stolen Yamaha and drove it without the headlight at a walking pace down the rutted dirt road. It was a cloudless night, with a quarter moon to light the way, and I managed the 400 yards to the paved road without breaking any bones. A few dogs barked at my passage but no one came out to investigate.
Once on the pavement I flicked on the lights and tucked myself low behind the handlebars. From this point on it was going to have to depend on speed.
I zipped down to the main road without meeting any traffic and came to a stop at the intersection. As luck would have it, a motorcycle tore by at that moment on its way to town, and after a moment’s reflection I took after it in hot pursuit. I caught it 300 yards down the road and slowed to maintain an interval of five yards between us. Any camouflage was better than none, and the cops would be looking for solitary cyclists, not a pair riding together. Or so I could always hope.
It was only five minutes into town, and whether we passed any policemen or gendarmes on the way I didn’t know. In any case, no one came roaring after me, sirens wailing, or called ahead to get the barricades raised. Just after passing the entrance to the cemetery where the bodies of Bob and Susan Wood lay moldering in the Tahitian earth we peeled off to the waterfront road. On the left was the Olympic swimming pool, and on the right a bit further the headquarters of the gendarmes’ motorcycle brigade. There were two choppers parked on the sidewalk, but the small corner office was unlighted.
The traffic signal at Avenue Bruat was flashing orange, as it did in the evenings. I sailed on through, past the post office and the Vaima Center, made a U-turn around the divider, and came back up the other side of the waterfront. The width of the sidewalk separated me from the dozens of yachts tied up for the night. I passed The Book of Dreams and wondered idly if Hiro and Billy had talked themselves out of jail yet. I hoped not.
Fifty yards further along, the black outline of the Aventurier bulked against the sky. No gendarmes appeared to be lurking in ambush anywhere in the vicinity, so I slowed as much as I dared and examined it carefully as I rolled by. I couldn’t see any lights, either on deck or below, but it was hard to be certain in the few seconds I had.
Back at the Avenue Bruat intersection I made another U-turn and headed back the way I’d originally come. When I passed the Vaima Center, however, I kept on going, leaving the yachts behind me, until I reached the Banque de Polynésie on the corner of Rue Gauguin. From there I made my way out of town to the Commune of Pirae, where I’d so guilelessly checked in six eons ago at the Hotel Taaone.
This time, however, I didn’t go that far. Between the football stadium and a military center were a couple of residential blocks. I knew from Tama that what I was looking for was somewhere in there. The stadium was in darkness as I drove behind it, turned left, and then left again. I cut the engine and peered into the darkness.
I was on an unlighted but paved road that dead-ended seventy-five yards away in a tangled mass of bushes. Enormous trees shaded the road and blocked off what little moonlight was available. As my eyes adjusted I could make out vacant lots ahead of me on the right, and the shadowy hulks of at least a couple of houses partially hidden by hedges and bushes on the left. Glints of light were visible here and there.
My heart pounding, I slowly pushed the motorcycle down to the end of the road. I turned it around and came back the same way, this time peering cautiously into the inhabited grounds, ready to flee at the tiniest provocation.
The first house was set well back from the road and the only light appeared to be the soft flicker cast by a television set. There was a Hobie Cat sailboat sitting in the front yard. It didn’t ring quite right, so I moved on.
The next house had been recently built, and the plantings hadn’t as yet grown much. A low wire fence ran along the road, and behind that a scraggly hibiscus hedge. I poked my head into a gap, and through an open window found myself looking almost directly into a well-lighted dining room.
There was a roar of laughter and Jérôme Baudchon, the largest and darkest of the three paras, leaned forward at the table to pour wine for someone out of sight to my left. Facing him at the table, so that all I could see of his head was his cropped white hair, was Yves-Louis Buisson. I watched for another thirty second and heard only the muffled din of half a dozen voices in high spirits. The paras were having a party.
I pushed the motorcycle a few more yards and looked in the driveway. Sure enough. There were three cars parked beyond the closed gate.
I’d seen everything I needed to.
More quickly now, I shoved the hog to the end of the road, fired up the boiler, and was off again through the night.
On one end of Avenue Bruat are the Gendarmerie, the Commissariat, the Palais de Justice, and all the rest of the mischief-making arms of Government. As if in compensation, on the other end where it runs into the harbor, are four or five nightclubs and bars of varying degrees of sophistication. The Pitate, right on the corner, was putting forth a cacophony of Tahitian music, and a dozen or so Tahitians stood on the sidewalk peering through the open windows at the debauch within.
Around the corner, just in front of the UTA airline office, there were five motorcycles parked together. I added mine to the fleet on the old hide-a-tree-in-a-forest principle and stepped quickly across the road.
Thirty seconds later I was dropping cautiously onto the stern of the Aventurier. I tiptoed up to the closed hatchway and tried to see if any light was showing around the edges. There was none that I could make out, and there was limit to how long I could skulk furtively in plain view of any passerby, so I drew a deep breath and slowly turned the handle. It was unlocked.
That should have made me think. Instead I poked my head in.
The interior of the boat was a black pit. I stepped blindly down the ladder and came to a halt at the bottom. I stood there motionlessly until my eyes became accustomed enough to the feeble light coming in through the portholes to distinguish the outline of the main cabin. Reluctantly I left the relative comfort of being next to the escape-way and moved deeper into the boat. The first door I came to opened noiselessly to my touch. The blood was pounding in my ears as I stood there until I could see that it was empty. I left the door open and turned to the cabin on the other side. I began to push its door open, but a slight creak brought me to a halt with one foot in midair. I posed there for what was probably no longer than three or four years, my senses straining, then let out a soft breath and put my foot down.
I tried lifting on the handle as I pushed, and this time the door swung open silently. I could vaguely make out two bunks against the wall. They seemed to be empty. I stepped in to make completely certain, and from six inches away a voice whispered in my ear, “What a pleasant surprise.…”
About the time my heart stopped beating, the Golden Gate Bridge collapsed on me.