Free Understrike by John Gardner

room, their M1911/A automatics at the ready.
    *
    The groaning had stopped, and Chicory’s hysteria was now reduced to a whisper. One of the men was talking urgently into the telephone. The other, who had been applying a makeshift tourniquet to Siedler’s arm, suddenly raised himself from the stooping position over the bed. A choking sound came from Siedler’s throat. Boysie saw him twitch twice, and watched the white bubble of foam come slavering from his lips. Siedler took two great gulps of air, then seemed to deflate, his head falling loosely on to the pillow.
    “ Joe’s not goin’ to need the antivenom, nor a doctor,” said the cop to his colleague. “Musta been the shock, or his heart. Poison wouldn’t have worked that quick.”
    The other man went on talking into the telephone. Boysie looked down at the still, ashen figure of Joe Siedler. He felt numb and his bowels had turned watery. Through the confused and shocked thoughts, jumbled in his mind, Boysie reflected that he was a natural Jonah: a magnet for violence: a carrier of death. This kind of thing had happened before. He remembered a villa in Southern France, and a young girl’s body spurting its lifeblood over the bonnet of a car, and the corpses of nearly thirty people whose deaths he had caused—one way or another—since the day when smooth Mostyn had offered him a post with the Department of British Special Security. Now, the gay, friendly Joe Siedler, whom he had met only a few hours before, lay dead; two tiny swelling punctures in his wrist.
    “ He’s not ...?” Chicory looked up, her dark eyes ringed with the puff of tears.
    Boysie nodded and went over to her. She clutched his hand, her fingers moving against his in the nervous caress of fear.
    “ Who are you?” she asked, frightened and low.
    “ Boysie Oakes,” he whispered. “A bloody leper.”
    “ OK, there ain’t much more you can do here.” The policeman had put down the telephone. “We’ve gotta get you on your way, fast as we can. The lady would like to freshen up a bit first?”
    Chicory nodded and went slowly, trembling, to the bathroom.
    “ Joe was a great guy,” said the other cop.
    “ A great-hearted guy,” said his colleague. “Mr Oakes, I guess we ought to get a few details straightened out.”
    Boysie answered their questions about the arrival of the parcel, the character and connections of Miss Priscilla Braddock-Fairchild, and the actual events which had filled the room with half a minute of terror. Together, they examined the box in which the horrific gift had arrived. It was lined with a kind of protective foil—which retained unpleasant traces of the former occupant. The reptile had been coiled securely, obviously by an expert, between a series of forked prongs set in a spiral at the bottom of the box. The lid contained similar prongs. The snake—which they had pushed carefully into a corner and covered with a sheet—had, presumably, been drugged and fitted snugly into its lair, where it had lain, immobile, until the dope had worn off and the lid was lifted to free it to the attack.
    “ Nice-minded sort of character who thought this one up,” said the cop as Chicory rejoined them. “OK, Mr Oakes? Miss Triplehouse?” He looked briskly at his watch. “Time to get moving. Joe’s office say they’ll be keeping an eye on you, and that you’ll be moved off the bus at the first opportunity. We got some of their boys coming over to square the hotel and get things done nice for Joe.”
    “ He was a great guy,” mused the other man. “A regular guy.”
    They took Boysie and Chicory out of the hotel, by a back exit, to a stunned and silent Avallon who drove them through the hot blaring streets to the crowded Port Authority Bus Terminal. The big, air-conditioned Scenicruiser growled out into Dyer Avenue, bound for Los Angeles, dead on noon.
    “ Ya change buses at Flagstaff, Arizona—that’ll be day after tomorrow,” the driver had said examining their