The Deep

She put a hand on his knee and shook her head, sniffling and swallowing. “They didn’t. One of them held my legs and spread them apart. I’ve never felt anything like that in my life… helpless, open. It was awful.”

“But they didn’t hurt you?”

“No. The next thing I felt was like a finger running all over me… down there…

from my belly button on down. But it wasn’t a finger. It was softer, kind of hairy. I still don’t know what it was. A brush, I guess.”

“A brush?”

“Look.” Gail lifted her nightgown above her hips and lay back on the bed.

Sanders felt panicked and had to force himself to look.

He remembered a time, years before, when a doctor friend had invited him to watch an appendectomy.

Sanders had worn a surgical mask, and the patient, a teen-age girl, had assumed he was the doctor. Lying there, with her privates exposed and shaven, she had begged him to make the scar as small as possible, so it wouldn’t show above her bikini.

Sanders found himself fascinated, mildly (and ashamedly) excited, and, finally, when the first incision was made, repulsed.

Gail noticed his discomfort, and she said, “It’s okay. Look.”

There were six red smears on her groin, rough lines running crosshatched-from pubis to navel, hip to hip, pubis to each hip, and hip to navel. The design, such as it was, looked like a kite.

“What is it?” Sanders asked. “Paint?”

“No. I think it’s blood.”

“Not yours.”

“No. Animal blood of some land.”

“How do you know?”

“I tasted it. It tastes salty, like blood.”

She sat up and lowered her nightgown.

“Did they say anything?”

“Nothing. Neither did I. I was so scared… as long as they weren’t hurting me, I didn’t dare say anything. The whole thing took less than a minute. Then Slake said, “Now maybe you think again.” He let me go, but I didn’t move.

Then one of the others put that thing on my stomach.”

She pointed to the shoe box. “He said it was a present from Cloche.”

Sanders leaned over and unfolded the tissue paper in the shoe box. “Oh, Christ,” he said.

“I don’t ever want to see it again.” Gail stood and walked to the bathroom.

Sanders put the shoe box on his lap and removed the doll. It was crude-linen wrapped around straw-but its meaning was clear: the hair on the doll’s head was human, exactly the color of Gail’s. Her appendectomy scar was stitched to the right of the silver sequin that represented the navel. And there were six red streaks on the doll’s groin, in the same pattern the men had painted on Gail. But the streaks on the doll had been slashed with a knife, and from them tufts of red and blue cotton hung grotesquely down the legs.

Sanders stared. His fingers felt cold; his mouth was dry and cottony. He had never known a fear like this.

Threats to himself he thought he could handle, but this was beyond his control-which, he was sure, was what Cloche had in mind. He heard water running in the bathroom.

“It’s blood,” Gail called. “It comes off easily.”

“Do you think they really would…” Sanders started to ask.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Sanders pitched the doll across the room.

He went to the telephone and, when the hotel operator answered, said, “Get me Pan American, please.”

Gail came out of the bathroom. Her hair was combed, and she held a glass of whiskey in her hand. “This should help,” she said. “It’s…” She stopped when she saw Sanders on the phone.

“Oh, for…” Sanders said into the phone.

“Okay, thanks.” He hung up.

“What were you doing?”

“Trying to get us the hell out of here. The airlines don’t open until nine in the morning.”

“You mean home?”

“Damn right.”

“But he’ll follow us.”

“Let him.”

“I’m all right.” She saw that the hand holding the glass of scotch was shaking, and she smiled. “I’ll be all right.”

Sanders paused. “I don’t think they’re kidding. Neither do you.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then what’s the argument? It’s not worth the risk, not even the smallest chance that somebody really would rip your guts out. Treece said it: We’re here on holiday, our honeymoon, for God’s sake. We’re not here to get murdered by a maniac.”

“It’s not us you’re worried about, is it? It’s me.”

“Well, not—”

“You think you can take care of yourself.”

When he said nothing, she continued. “Don’t worry about me. We can’t spend the rest of our lives terrified. Besides, we have to stop Cloche from getting those drugs. He’ll use them to ruin lives, to kill innocent people; he doesn’t care. Well, I do. I’m going to do what I should have done all along: go to the government. I have to.”

“What do you mean? Treece told you: It won’t do any good.”

“Maybe not, but I can’t walk away from it.” Her hand still trembled, but there was a look of fierce intensity on her face. “It wasn’t you they threw on the bed; it wasn’t your crotch they painted.

I’m staying, at least until I talk to the government.”

Sanders looked away.

She went to him and touched his face. He put his arms around her and kissed her forehead.

“What did you find tonight?” she asked, her head against his chest.

“Ampules. Boxes of the damn things. They’re there, no question.”

“Any Spanish stuff?”