The Israel Bond Omnibus (34 page)

Eyes closed, sweet surrender written on his dark, cruelly handsome face (in both Hebrew and Latin), his lips sought hers—but found a rigid hand pushing them away. “It can not be, Mr. Bond.”

“You called me Israel one otherworldly moment ago. Why this change of heart? Why, why, why?”

“I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you,” she stammered.

He lit a Raleigh. “Sister, is this to be the farewell speech, the verbal Dear John the Baptist letter?”

“Yes, Mr. Bond. You ask too much of me. Give up my nun’s garb; give up my faith. Why did you not ask me to give up my color as well?”

“Actually, you really could. There a an in California by the name of Earl Scheib who promises that for $29.95...” He bit his lip, realizing the horrible option he had just give her. “You know that doesn’t mean a damn thing to me. We don’t
have
to live in a decent neighborhood.”

Her hands fluttered. “At a time like this,” she said, “I wish I had not vowed to give up smoking. I have already broken one vow by even thinking of you in a secular way. I shall do penance for it, Mr. Bond, if the cardinal is understanding. Believe this, Mr. Bond. If ever I had again wanted the company of a man, a man’s man, it would have been you. What woman could resist that courage, that strength, that passion, and those great one-liners?”

“Manifestly, you are that woman, Sister.” His words were tinged with bleakness.

“Yes. And I will tell you why. When I saw the tragic innocence on the face of Pablito, I realized there were so many, many thousands like him on this island, children of the poor who need me more than you do, Mr. Bond. To give them succor I must deny that part of me which is all too human, the part that remembers too well the feeling of personal abandonment with your kind of man.”

“Sister,”... the tears were falling like rain on a case of Hunt’s Ketchup... “I have been”... his voice faded... “a rotter.”

“Oh, no, dear Mr. Bond,” and she wiped each one away with the tail of her habit. “For a person who kills as readily as you do, you are the most sensitive tender being I have ever known. Come, let us be firm friends forevermore.”

“That would be my dearest wish,” said Israel Bond. “But I would ask—no, beg—for one favor.”

“Name it, Mr. Bond. It is yours.”

“Please, please never mention to another living soul that you saw a secret agent cry.”

Dawn came to El Tiparillo, one of many English girls who had taken advantage of the low seasonal rates.

Early risers, the comical
balagoola
birds darted from tree to tree, their raucous “peterpee! peterpee!” rousing the denizens of the jungle. A bull chameleon’s sticky tongue scored its first direct hit of the day on an unsuspecting
colavito
fly. Under the canopy of the trees, where no light shone, snorting Gillette razorback hogs dug their tusks under rotted timbers searching for succulent grubs, severing the head and tail and eating just the grubsteaks. The heat, already soaring, caused a fungus mold on a log to burst into pure penicillin. And in a pool, its surface painted brownish-green by algae, a piranha and electric eel thrashed about in a fight to the death, the latter’s Ever-Ready battery losing power as they exchanged vicious bites.

Israel Bond stood on the precipice looking down into the Valley of the Blind at the Temple of Hate. His field glasses caught the sun glinting off bayonets and throwing knives. He saw Spector, in the uniform of a field marshal, and Dr. Nu walk into the paved area and the soldiers lift their rifles in salutes. He had counted five hundred of them.

His unrequited love for the nun shoved into a deep corner of his mind from whence he might extract it someday and weep about it into his egg-drop soup, Bond was very much the cold unfeeling Oy Oy Seven again.

A feathery touch on his arm made him turn. Baldroi LeFagel. “Oh, your sweet body is all cut up. Let me rub it down—with mine.”

“Damn it, LeFagel! This is no time to flounce around. There are five hundred guys down there who’ll be shooting up this place any moment now, guys who can blast the head off a pin, who blend into the jungle and strike like rattlers, who can kill you with one karate stroke.”

“Oh, worry not, you heart-stopping thing. I’ll protect that precious Herculean body of yours. I have a black belt in karate myself.”

“So have they.”

“Mine has sequins.”

The six survivors of the Israeli Peace Corps, two on crutches, all bearing the scars of the sneak attack, came to the cliff’s edge. In their eyes he could see trust and hope. He knew they looked to him for leadership in this hour of tribulation. By thunder, he would give it to them!

He lit a Raleigh; let his eyes rest on each face for a few seconds. “At a time like this when our backs are against the wall, I’d like to pose a simple question: Any of you guys ever hear of George Gipp?”

From the lack of recognition, even disinterest on their faces, he knew he’d taken the wrong tack in resurrecting The Gipper. He would start again, this time with a more whimsical approach.

“Boochereem,
it looks hopeless. I just learned the convent’s telephone line to Vera Hruba has been cut. I can’t get through to Bon Ami for men and ammo. But don’t despair. I’ll get us out of this somehow.”

Five of them smiled grimly, but he saw their faces set into masks of determination. Stout lads! They’ll give a good account of themselves. But a sixth dropped his crutches, climbed over the low retaining wall girdling the convent and jumped three thousand feet to his death.

“If he’s going to show bad faith like that we can bloody well do without him,” Bond said stonily. “Brother Thelonius!” The monk looked up from his beloved yellow billyrosebush. “There’ll be one less for breakfast.”

“Hey!” shouted one of the corpsmen. “We got company! Look, a dozen guys coming up the mountain.”

Bond’s heart leaped. Could Bon Ami have somehow learned of their plight and sent men and guns? Hot damn! With the right weapons we could hold off that army until real help comes.

Over the wall popped a red sweating face. “Hi, folks! The Rock of Ages Records’ caravan is right on the ol’ schedule! Tell Sister Sweetcakes to sound her A a few times. Marty O’Marty and the boys are in town!”

Down went his heart, pierced by an arrow of futility.
Gottenu!
Of all the times to record a religious album... with death from international Communism staring us in the face. “We who are about to die salute you, Mr. O’Marty.” And taking the recording executive aside he gave it to him straight.

“I better tell the fellas, Mr. Bond.” O’Marty beckoned to A Man Called Peter and the Padres, four thick-mopped musicians with Selmer harps, and the technicians who puff up the path bearing the tools of the trade. “It’s all off.”

“Hey, man?” said A Man Called Peter. “You mean like we ain’t havin’ no session?”

“Kid, don’t you realize that the Vi Teh Minh men, the Russkis and Fidelistas might be here any second?”

“Screw them other groups, daddy. You signed the contract with
us.”

“I shall personally lead our onslaught upon the convent,” said Nochum Spector. “You will be at my side, Dr. Nu. I’m sure it will gladden your heart to see our bullets cut down these dogs.”

“There is just one of them who interests me, my leader. Israel Bond. I shall have my revenge upon him. I want him staked out naked on a bed of ground glass in the tropical sun, watch his lidless eyes burned black by its rays, hear his screams for mercy as I place bamboo slivers under his nails and light them.”

“I shall leave the fate of the great Oy Oy Seven to you, my good Doctor. Are your insects prepared to soften them up before we move in?”

“I outlined our plan over IPECAC a few minutes ago. They will swarm over and into the convent, biting, tearing, stinging. Our job should be what the Americans call ‘shooting fish in a barrel’ after that.”

“Excellent! Let us move up the mountain. The first barrage is at 1300 hours.”

Around the table in the dining hall of OLEO, served by the solicitous nuns and Monks Thelonius and Julius, sat Bond, the Peace Corps boys, Baldroi LeFagel, Dr. Browndorf, and Marty O’Marty’s retinue.

“Delicious, absolutely delicious,” said the doctor. “What is it, Sister Butterball?”

The plump little nun blushed. “It’s what the Americans call ‘fish in a barrel.’ We nuns put mackerel, holy mackerel, of course, in a barrel and...”

“Bond! I’ve got my transistor radio working,” called out O’Marty. “At least we can get some news of the outside world.” He turned a dial. “Hey, a Miami station.”

“... identified by White House security men as the leader of the protest against our involvement in Viet Nam was Rowena Rosenthal, eighteen, of Manhattan. Miss Rosenthal said she would urge young men not only to set fire to their draft cards but also to their draft
boards
. And in Viet Nam itself, American B-52’s plastered the North Vietnamese hamlet of O Feel Yah for the third straight day. Aerial reconnaissance photos, according to an Air Force spokesman, showed that our bombers—quote—knocked out fifteen thousand trees, which will never again threaten the freedom of the South Vietnamese people, at least six small hills and a very sullen swamp—unquote. From the politically torn island of El Tiparillo comes word of new civil war this morning. West El Tiparillan forces were rushed to The Band, that neutral zone that divides the island, to meet the forces of General Obratsov from EET which launched an attack late last night. Said General Wesson y Oyl of WET—quote—We shall never, never surrender and, if we do, it will be with dignity—unquote. Early stock market reports show Calvert up a fifth, International Nickel down a quarter, International Quarter down a nickel, and Made-A-Wee Diapers unchanged. And that—”

“Turn it off, Marty. We heard the news all right and it’s lousy,” said Bond. Revolution in El Tiparillo! And WET’s army committed to the border. No, there’ll be no in-the-nick-of-time cavalry charge for us, Gunga Din.

OLEO shook violently as the first barrage whined over the wall into its side. Nuns screamed, sank to their knees in prayer. Bond looked down at his hand, sliced from heel of palm to pinky tip by a spear of a shell fragment. Dust choked his nostrils. He felt his rubbery legs giving way.

Sister caught him. “Mr. Bond, you’re hurt again!”

She tore off a strip of her garment and wound it around his gushing hand. “It’s the best I can do, my poor friend.”

He patted her hood. “You always do the best you can, Sister. Anybody else hurt?”

“Brother Julius. A slight scratch. But what are we to do?”

“Sister, only God knows. I had not foreseen this hopeless siege. This is not a slickly planned affair with predictable moves and countermoves like Operation Matzohball.”

Matzohball!

Say it again, he screamed at his brain. Say it again!

“Matzohball!”

“Brain, you used your head,” and he laughed harshly, triumphantly.

“Mr. Bond, you are acting in a highly irrational—”

“Matzohball!” he whooped in a fierce boyish joy. “That’s it! Sister,” and he hugged the bewildered nun, “have you any large kettles?”

“Kettles? Adversity has at last unhinged you, Mr. Bond. Would you throw kettles at these murderous, heavily armed, godless barbarians?”

“Come, come,” Bond chided. “No commercials for our religious beliefs. We both know that God helps him who helps himself. Kettles?”

“Only a small one or two for making tea. The soup and the stews are prepared in the cauldrons.”

“Cauldrons!
Oy mommeleh,
cauldrons! Let’s get ‘em!”

She led him into the kitchen. “There.” On top of the old-fashioned stove were a dozen four-foot-deep cauldrons.

“Tell every able hand, man and woman, to get cracking! I want them in here on the double!”

A minute later they stood hushed before him.

“You haven’t got time to tell me how crazy I am. You’ve just got time to do what I tell you to do. I’m going to work all your asses off—pardon me, Sisters and Brothers—and you won’t stop. Dear ladies, get me boiling water. And I want every man jack of you to follow me to the cellar. Let’s go. It’s time to start the ball rolling!”

“I see smoke coming from the roof,” said Dr. Nu. “Our last barrage must have set it on fire. We shall not have to wait too long now, leader of SPECTOR, Spector.”

Nochum growled. “Where are your insect allies? They should have overrun the place by now.”

“Perhaps there has been some misunderstanding, SPECTOR leader. But I feel sure—”

“Misunderstanding?” Spector’s voice was icy. “You know what the penalty is for failing SPECTOR.”

Dr. Nu almost turned white. “My leader, I’m sure that— wait! Listen! Tell the men to stop firing.”

Spector held up his hand. The shooting stilled.