Shibumi by Trevanian Read Free Book Online Page A

buttoned one of the top two buttons of her shirt. The man smiled and cleared his throat. He was going to speak to her! The stupid son of a bitch was going to try to pick her up! My God!
    And suddenly she was sick.
    She made it to the toilet, where she knelt in the cramped space and vomited into the bowl. When she emerged, pale and fragile, the imprint of floor tile on her knees, the stewardess was solicitous but slightly superior, imagining that a short flight like this had made her airsick.
    The plane banked on its approach to Pau, and Hannah looked out the window at the panorama of the Pyrenees, snow-tipped and sharp in the crystalline air, like a sea of whitecaps frozen in midstorm. Beautiful and awful.
    Somewhere there, at the Basque end of the range, Nicholai Hel lived. If she could only get to Mr. Hel…
    It was not until she was out of the terminal and standing in the chill sunlight of the Pyrenees that it occurred to her that she had no money. Avrim had carried all their money. She would have to hitchhike, and she didn’t know the route. Well, she could ask the drivers. She knew that she would have no trouble getting rides. When you’re pretty and young… and big-busted…
    Her first ride took her into Pau, and the driver offered to find her a place to stay for the night. Instead, she talked him into taking her to the outskirts and directing her to Tardets. It must have been a hard car to shift, because his hand twice slipped off the lever and brushed her leg.
    She got her next ride almost immediately. No, he wasn’t going to Tardets. Only as far as Oléron. But he could find her a place to stay for the night…
    One more car, one more suggestive driver, and Hannah reached the little village of Tardets, where she sought further directions at the café. The first barrier she met was the local accent,
langue d’oc
with heavy overlays of Soultine Basque in which
une petite cuillè
has eight syllables.
    “What are you looking for?” the café owner asked, his eyes leaving her breasts only to stray to her legs.
    “I’m trying to find the Château of Etchebar. The house of M. Nicholai Hel.”
    The proprietor frowned, squinted at the arches overhead, and scratched with one finger under the beret that Basque men take off only in bed, in coffin, or when adjudicating the game of
rebot.
No, he did not believe he had ever heard the name. Hel, you say? (He could pronounce the
h
because it is a Basque sound.) Perhaps his wife knew. He would ask. Would the Mademoiselle take something while she waited? She ordered coffee which came, thick, bitter, and often reheated, in a tin pot half the weight of which was tinker’s solder, but which leaked nevertheless. The proprietor seemed to regret the leak, but to accept it with heavy fatalism. He hoped the coffee that dripped on her leg had not burned her. It was not hot enough to burn? Good. Good. He disappeared into the back of the café, ostensibly to inquire after M. Hel.
    And that had been fifteen minutes ago.
    Hannah’s eyes dilated painfully as she looked out toward the bright square, deserted save for a litter of cars, mostly
Deu’ches
bearing ‘64 plates, parked at random angles, wherever their peasant drivers had managed to stop them.
    With deafening roar of motor, grinding of gears, and outspewing of filthy exhaust, a German juggernaut lorry painfully navigated the corner with not ten centimeters to spare between vehicle and the
crepi
facades of the buildings. Sweating, cranking the wheel, and hiss-popping his air brakes, the German driver managed to introduce the monster into the ancient square, only to be met by the most formidable of barriers. Waddling side by side down the middle of the street, two Basque women with blank, coarse faces exchanged gossip out of the corners of their mouths. Middle-aged, dour, and vast, they plodded along on great barrel legs, indifferent to the frustration and fury of the truck driver, who crawled behind them muttering earnest