The Betrayers Read Online Free PDF Page A

contrast between soft round girl and hard flat board was very intriguing. When a wave splashed over her, it didn’t bother her a bit. Obviously she’d come to the water to get wet, hair and all. Obviously also, she was thinking of nothing but getting out to where the big ones were breaking. The fact that a man was watching her couldn’t have concerned her less. Obviously.
    I sighed and turned away to get my towel and sandals. Under other circumstances, having had such a nice show put on for me, I might have done something impulsive like trying to scare up a beach boy to rent me a surfboard.Not that I knew how to work one, but that wouldn’t matter. My early-morning seasprite would be glad of the excuse to teach me, I was fairly sure.
    Please understand, I don’t normally figure every blonde on the beach is posing just for me, even when she does the fingers-through-the-hair bit and there’s nobody around but the two of us. Girls do scratch their heads upon occasion, just like everybody else, and it doesn’t necessarily mean a thing, even when it’s accompanied by the deep-breathing, isn’t-it-a-glorious-morning act.
    However, this wasn’t a normal situation. I’d been right in thinking there was something familiar about the girl. She wasn’t Claire, but I’d seen her picture recently on the screen in the recognition room in the basement of a certain house in Washington, D.C. It had taken me a little while to locate the memory, but I had it now; code name Jill, station Pacific, one of our more promising young recruits in this operational area—that is to say, one of the Monk’s more promising young recruits.
    It could be just coincidence that she’d picked this morning and this hotel for her pre-breakfast date with the breakers, but I didn’t believe it for a moment. Nor did I think I’d have to go to a lot of trouble to make her acquaintance. In fact, I had a hunch I couldn’t lose her if I tried.

4
    Naguki had made the morning papers. Breakfasting on the terrace outside the hotel’s dining room, I read about the accident, which had occurred on the Pali, wherever that might be. Apparently I wasn’t the only agent who knew how to put the traffic statistics to good use.
    There was a picture of the blanket-covered body beside the twisted wreckage of what had been a light Ford sedan a year or two old. It could have been the second car that had tailed me from the airport yesterday. Maybe, feeling Monk closing in on him, Naguki had been trying to make contact with me. If so, he hadn’t helped my situation any more than I’d helped his.
    In spite of what I knew of the Monk, I was a little surprised, not at the murder—that wasn’t unexpected—but at the way he’d boldly signed his name to it by his call to me. Of course, he had been trying to get me to betray myself, but still it indicated that he felt safe and powerful out here, almost invulnerable. Well, he’dalways had delusions of grandeur.
    “Miss, what’s the Pali?” I asked the waitress.
    “Pali is cliff or precipice, sir,” she said. “Up there in the mountains. On the other side is very steep, the Pali. Also, the highway, very steep, the Pali Drive. Goes to windward side of island. More coffee, please?”
    “Thanks,” I said, wondering if she were Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiian, or a little of each. It was hard to tell. Anyway, she was a pretty, friendly girl with a nice smile, and she undoubtedly considered herself American, just as American as a guy who’d called himself Bernard Naguki, or for that matter, a character named Matthew Helm…
    Afterward, I checked for mail at the desk and found a note from the management inviting me to a hotel-sponsored cocktail party that evening. Reading this, I laid a small bet with myself that I knew where our girl Jill would make her next move. It would save her from having to pull some corny meet-cute stunt like dropping a glove or hanky or surfboard at my feet. You can get acquainted with anybody at a