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Authors: Donald Hamilton
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an hour.”
I said, “Let’s see if I can’t make just one more reasonably good ride so I know I’ve got the idea.” I kicked my feet a bit to keep my board from swinging away from hers, and looked down into the clear water, some six feet deep. The coral down there looked brown and slimy alive, not bright and clean like the dead stuff you see in the stores. I said, “I hope you don’t have any sharks around here. California’s having a rash of them, from what I read in the papers.”
Jill shrugged. “Oh, once in a while somebody reports seeing one, generally a hysterical tourist.”
“Yeah,” I said dryly, “I know those hysterical tourists with arms and legs bitten off. You can’t trust those people not to exaggerate.”
Jill laughed, and we waited for a wave, rocking gently so far from the beach that it felt like the middle of the ocean. I’d never been so far offshore without a real boat to support me, but I was gaining confidence in my board and my swimming ability—it occurred to me that I’d been doing a lot of swimming lately, in various parts of the world, with various companions, some of whom wereno longer alive. It wasn’t a happy train of thought, and I shunted it out of my mind.
The sun was up now and the water was suddenly warm and pleasant. The beaches were filling with bathers. A couple of tiny sailboats had ventured out from shore and were jockeying around to seaward of us. Both of them caught a wave at an outer line of breakers and came planing in toward us. One got crosswise and capsized, but the two kids in bathing suits flipped it back up with hardly an effort and scrambled back aboard, laughing.
I swung my board around, expecting the same wave to reach us, but it died before it got that far and rolled by as a smooth and useless swell. I watched a water-skier go by far out, bouncing along behind a small speedboat with an enormous outboard motor. It seemed kind of unnecessary to get hauled around the ocean by all that horsepower when there were waves you could slide on for free.
“Matt?” Jill said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Is that what you really think?”
“What?”
“What you’re reported to have said in Washington. About… about our involvement in Asia.”
I regarded her for a moment, with some irritation. She was straddling her red board casually, riding it like a horse, obviously just as comfortable on it as a cowboy in his favorite saddle. Her soaked blonde hair streamed down her back, and her slender body, practically naked, was brown and wet and intriguing. I was annoyed withher for breaking the pleasant, lazy mood of the morning. I was even tempted to play along with her a little, just to maintain our happy relationship, but it would have been out of character and I couldn’t take the chance.
I said, “Too bad, kid. We could have had a lot of fun together in the line of duty. Maybe some day you’ll learn not to press too hard. See you on shore.”
I flopped down on my board and headed for the hotel. I heard her calling my name, but I kept on paddling. Pretty soon I heard the splash of her strokes behind me and the hiss of her board going through the water much faster than mine—she really knew how to drive the thing.
“Matt!” she said, drawing alongside. “Matt, wait! I didn’t mean—”
I stopped paddling. We coasted along side by side, losing speed. “I suppose you’ve got a waterproof tape recorder buried somewhere in this balsa,” I said grimly.
“It isn’t balsa, it’s polyurethane,” she said. “And there’s no recorder.”
“Well, it’ll sound good in the report, anyway. ‘By shrewd interrogation, subject was led to confirm political opinions attributed to him, saying, quote…’” I shook my head. “Baby, do you really think I’m stupid enough to pull the same boner twice? Okay, so I once made a casual statement in answer to what I thought was a casual question, which was my mistake. Maybe I was even drunk enough to try to back
I said, “Let’s see if I can’t make just one more reasonably good ride so I know I’ve got the idea.” I kicked my feet a bit to keep my board from swinging away from hers, and looked down into the clear water, some six feet deep. The coral down there looked brown and slimy alive, not bright and clean like the dead stuff you see in the stores. I said, “I hope you don’t have any sharks around here. California’s having a rash of them, from what I read in the papers.”
Jill shrugged. “Oh, once in a while somebody reports seeing one, generally a hysterical tourist.”
“Yeah,” I said dryly, “I know those hysterical tourists with arms and legs bitten off. You can’t trust those people not to exaggerate.”
Jill laughed, and we waited for a wave, rocking gently so far from the beach that it felt like the middle of the ocean. I’d never been so far offshore without a real boat to support me, but I was gaining confidence in my board and my swimming ability—it occurred to me that I’d been doing a lot of swimming lately, in various parts of the world, with various companions, some of whom wereno longer alive. It wasn’t a happy train of thought, and I shunted it out of my mind.
The sun was up now and the water was suddenly warm and pleasant. The beaches were filling with bathers. A couple of tiny sailboats had ventured out from shore and were jockeying around to seaward of us. Both of them caught a wave at an outer line of breakers and came planing in toward us. One got crosswise and capsized, but the two kids in bathing suits flipped it back up with hardly an effort and scrambled back aboard, laughing.
I swung my board around, expecting the same wave to reach us, but it died before it got that far and rolled by as a smooth and useless swell. I watched a water-skier go by far out, bouncing along behind a small speedboat with an enormous outboard motor. It seemed kind of unnecessary to get hauled around the ocean by all that horsepower when there were waves you could slide on for free.
“Matt?” Jill said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Is that what you really think?”
“What?”
“What you’re reported to have said in Washington. About… about our involvement in Asia.”
I regarded her for a moment, with some irritation. She was straddling her red board casually, riding it like a horse, obviously just as comfortable on it as a cowboy in his favorite saddle. Her soaked blonde hair streamed down her back, and her slender body, practically naked, was brown and wet and intriguing. I was annoyed withher for breaking the pleasant, lazy mood of the morning. I was even tempted to play along with her a little, just to maintain our happy relationship, but it would have been out of character and I couldn’t take the chance.
I said, “Too bad, kid. We could have had a lot of fun together in the line of duty. Maybe some day you’ll learn not to press too hard. See you on shore.”
I flopped down on my board and headed for the hotel. I heard her calling my name, but I kept on paddling. Pretty soon I heard the splash of her strokes behind me and the hiss of her board going through the water much faster than mine—she really knew how to drive the thing.
“Matt!” she said, drawing alongside. “Matt, wait! I didn’t mean—”
I stopped paddling. We coasted along side by side, losing speed. “I suppose you’ve got a waterproof tape recorder buried somewhere in this balsa,” I said grimly.
“It isn’t balsa, it’s polyurethane,” she said. “And there’s no recorder.”
“Well, it’ll sound good in the report, anyway. ‘By shrewd interrogation, subject was led to confirm political opinions attributed to him, saying, quote…’” I shook my head. “Baby, do you really think I’m stupid enough to pull the same boner twice? Okay, so I once made a casual statement in answer to what I thought was a casual question, which was my mistake. Maybe I was even drunk enough to try to back
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