The Marchand Woman

“He’ll break his neck up there if he can’t see where he’s going.”

“I figure to break his neck anyway,” Anders said with emotionless gravity. He seemed too drained to hold onto the trappings of hate; only the core remained.

“Maybe you’ll get a crack at him later. Right now I need him.”

“For what?”

“To get Harry out.”

“You’re out of your mind. They won’t go for that.”

“You know who this is? You know who his grandfather is? They need this big shit alive.” She had no energy for argument; she looked up into the dank jungle. “How do I get there? Follow these ruts?”

“There aren’t any more phony trails that I remember. Yeah, we just follow the ruts. A couple-three miles, I guess.”

“It’s not ‘we’—I want you to stay with the truck and get it fixed and wait for us.”

A residue of pride straightened Anders and he began to protest but she cut him off. “You’re in no condition to go anywhere, Gle

“You can’t go up there by yourself for Christ’s sake.”

“Well I’ve got El Creepo for company, haven’t I?”

“What is it, lady—some romantic urge to die with your lover? Is that what you want?”

Frogs chirruped and there was a racket of birds; water gurgled somewhere. She watched Anders lean forward, propped against both stiff arms, his palms on the fender of the Bronco, legs splayed, too weak to stand without support, tremors in his knees, head sagging, squeezing his eyes shut, shaking his head to clear it of dizziness. She wondered if the swollen eye was infected. She turned away from him and peered into the dense towering tangle. “If we’re not back by morning you may as well call in the police.”

He gave no sign he’d heard her. She said, “Gle

“What?”

“Don’t pass out. We’ll need this thing ru

“I told you, I’m no mechanic. I’ll try. I can’t promise anything.”

She checked her pockets: penknife, half a box of cartridges for the revolver, handkerchief, the disposable butane cigarette lighter Harry had told her to carry. The coarse denim of the jeans scraped her thighs when she turned toward Emil Draga. His lofty eyes were narrowed to slits against the light and there was no fathoming his expression.

Anders said, “What’s the point of getting yourself killed? It won’t help Harry. He’s dead anyway. He’s seen their faces—there’s no way they can afford to turn him loose.”

“Is that how you’d have felt if it was Rosalia up there?”

“Rosalia.” His lips formed themselves clumsily around the word. He pushed himself upright and turned his head balefully toward Emil Draga.

“Gle

Anders’ bleak eye blinked at her; the other eye was swollen shut now. Too wilted to resist the force of her will, he only said, “Look out for tripwires and things. And they’ll have guards posted when you get up toward those high ridges. Stay out of the road when you get up there.”

She was already walking away.

The humid forest dragged at her feet, slowing her pace. It was all uphill and her legs wobbled from the strain. Emil Draga walked ahead of her in stony silence.

After half an hour she called a halt and sat down with her knees drawn up and the revolver propped on him. Emil slid down on his haunches, ever watchful.

“I expect your grandfather has some kind of affection for you,” Carole said. “I loved my son a great deal, you know, even though most of the time I had a strange way of showing it.”

“If it pleases you to talk,” Draga said, “talk.”

“Listen to me now. I want to save the life that still matters to me. You’re the only weapon I have.”

Draga watched her; he didn’t speak.

“Maybe I’m just tired,” she said, “but it’s come to me that it’s no good sacrificing the living to avenge the dead.”

He did not stir.

“I want you to know,” she said, “that I’m not going to shoot you with this unless you force me to do it. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“You’re a fool.” He showed his contempt by tipping his head back against the tree and shutting his eyes.

“I got Harry Crobey into this,” she said doggedly, “and now I want to get him out of it. That’s what I want—it’s all I want. I don’t give a shit about you and your misbegotten counterrevolution. Do you understand me?”

No reply. Carole lifted herself on watery knees. “Get up.”

There was a tripwire and she told him to walk around through the forest to avoid it. She walked directly behind him with the gun near Draga’s spine because she didn’t want anyone taking her by surprise from the shadows. The sodden ground sucked at her boots. A gust of wind came along like a breath from an oven. She felt the overpowering burden of her guilt and forced herself to disregard it; she imposed calm upon herself and narrowed her thinking down to a slit through which only the most immediate practical concerns could pass.

She felt a tendon go, in her heel, and kept moving; she fastened her lips against the twinges.

Allegro and pianissimo now. Forget the pain in the goddamned foot. It can’t be far now.

The trees were heavy, vines thickly entwined. Orchids and lush verdure; insects about her face. A dank smell of primeval rot.

She remembered bits of Harry’s dicta. Never talk to the enemy until you’ve licked him. Well there was a time to break every rule. She worked out what had to happen and rehearsed her lines until the repetition assumed the tiresome ritual predictability of a flamenco or kabuki episode:

Send Harry out here. Send him out or I kill your precious Draga. Don’t follow us. We’ll turn Draga loose when we know we’re safe.

It was all she’d need to say to them. All the decisions that were hers to make had been made now. The final decision would be up to Rodriguez. She had nothing more to do but play it out to the end.

It probably would go against her; most likely she’d end up killed, dead in the festering jungle and no one to mourn. But she would go through with this because it was Harry. And because she had got the poor son of a bitch into this mess. And because I have got, you should pardon the expression, integrity.

She moved with extreme caution now, the revolver cocked and leveled upon Draga’s spine from inches away.

It was, she thought, suicidally and hysterically pointless. But she had to do it for Harry. And for herself.

Another tripwire; they went around its anchor; she said, “Stay in the trees now. Don’t go in the road.”

This was high ground. The primitive track skirted a jutting rock and bent out of sight, tipping down to disappear. From within, the edge of the trees she surveyed it and saw no way to cross that point without stepping into the roadway. She chewed her lip. “Well go over that rock—over the back side of it.”

“I can’t climb that rock with my hands behind my back.”

It was true. But she wasn’t going to take the handcuffs off him. Gun or no gun. He could throw a rock at her, run for it, anyway. She couldn’t afford to lose him now.

“All right. Then we’ll use the road. My gun in your back all the way—if anything happens you’re the first to die. This thing is cocked. Keep it in mind.”

She had no idea at all what might be in his head; he gave nothing away. His facade of indifference troubled her because it might mean that with Latin soldierlike machismo he was prepared to die for the sake of his comrades. She rather doubted it because he was too much the child of privilege for that sort of down-in-flames gesture, but it was a possibility and if it came true then she’d have lost.