by John Brunner
“When I tinkle this,” I said to Diego, showing him the lid of the bucket, “make your move.”
“Right. Good luck!”
I took a very deep breath, balanced the tray on my left hand, and knocked at the office door. “The whisky for Don José!” I called.
“Good, come in.”
That was Moril’s voice. I complied… and found that what I’d been banking on, was so. The room was in darkness, to make the glass dividing it from the reception desk act as a kind of one-way mirror and prevent ordinary clients who might come to collect their keys from noticing that the owner was being held at gun-point.
I could see the head and one shoulder of Moril’s driver, Tom, who was posing as the clerk on duty, but he was looking the other way.
In here: Sarita Redón in a chair with its back to the door, slumped to one side with a hopeless expression on her face and her eyes closed; Moril in her usual chair behind the desk, with his gun in front of him, staring worriedly out into the lobby; the other bodyguard, Jerry, perched on a table from which papers had been swept to the floor. Beside him was a walkie-talkie, twin to the one I’d seen outside. I could assume that all Moril’s units were in constant contact. Jerry had picked up his gun as I knocked, but more by reflex than because he was suspicious, and now used it to gesture that I should park the tray on the table beside him.
On entering, I’d been silhouetted against the bright passage behind me, which prevented my features being recognized. Now, keeping my head well down and trying to hide the fact that my jacket had been meant for a man three inches shorter, I headed for the table, leaving the door ajar but not open wide enough to see through. Setting my burden down carefully, I lifted the lid of the ice-bucket and knocked it against the whisky-bottle. It made a melodious dinging sound.
“Don’t bother with that,” Moril said irritably. “Leave it and get out—What the devil was that?”
Outside in the passage, a shrill cry: Diego in falsetto. “But they’ll kill you, Señor Curfew! They’ll kill you!”
“Curfew!” Moril breathed, and Jerry leapt off the table and dashed towards the door. In the same second I pushed shut the antenna of the walkie-talkie—I didn’t have time to find the off-switch, but that ought to eliminate the risk of our being overheard—and retrieved my gun. Moril was half out of his chair, eyes fixed on the door, and reaching for his own gun by touch. I was faster.
I let the cold muzzle of mine, fresh from the kiss of the ice, brush his nape, and said very softly, “Señor Moril, if you want to live, sit down again.”
There was a thud from the doorway. Sensibly, on finding himself covered by Diego, Jerry had let fall his pistol and was now backing into the room. Moril looked, in the dim reflected light, as though he wished he were a million miles away.
Not surprising.
Diego entered, shutting the door, and urged Jerry into a corner. Sarita had taken this long to react, but now she almost erupted from her chair.
“Señor Curfew, I—”
“Keep your mouth shut,” I ordered roughly. “I don’t want that bastard at the desk to hear anything. If you give us away…!”
She reacted for a moment with hurt dismay, and then belatedly remembered that she wasn’t supposed to be on my side, or indeed to know anything more than gossip about my activities.
“You’re wearing stockings? Or tights?” She had been on all the occasions I’d so far seen her, though it was too dark to tell right now.
“Y-yes!”
“Take them off—and be quick.”
Jerry’s eyes followed her every move. It was stockings she had on. Fine. Nylons are splendid for tying people up with. I snatched them from her.
“Okay, Moril,” I said. “Don’t try anything. I could strangle you with one of these as easily as I could tie you up.”
He glowered at me, but he must have believed my promise, because he didn’t struggle as I knotted the napkin from the ice-bucket into a gag and forced it into his mouth, then lashed his wrists and ankles tightly together. Diego kept me covered.
I finished the job and breathed a sigh of relief. So far the bored man outside hadn’t even glanced around. Probably he’d been ordered not to.
“Now, you!” I said to Jerry, who looked as though he was about to throw up. “Slide back this window and tell your chum to come in here—and remember my gun is in your ribs! You, señora! Sit down where you were—I don’t want him to realize anything has changed.”
Trembling, she obeyed, and sat with her hands tightly clenched on the chair-arms.
When the other bodyguard came in, Diego—who had been waiting in ambush behind the door—cracked him expertly on the head, and I did the same to my man. They hit the floor together.
“Right, Diego!” I handed him the walkie-talkie.
“Where are you?”
“At the club where Lorreo is singing, what about that?”
“Great idea.” He extended the antenna of the radio and said excitedly to it, relying on the frequency-clipping effect to disguise his voice, “Quick, they’ve spotted Curfew at the Club Zafiro! Get after him right away!”
Fifteen minutes later, equipped with the keys to Sarita’s car which was parked near the service entrance, we left the hotel the back way, having made sure the Sabatanos had dutifully adjourned to the Club Zafiro. We were pushing a service-trolley from the dining-room on which a bundle covered by a table-cloth squirmed and grunted. Diego opened the car and jumped in the front. I got in the back, holding a rope which I’d tied to the trolley. Down on the roads closer to the sea there was a lot of noise, bustle and traffic, but here, a few blocks inland, the street was nearly deserted.
Diego drove cautiously to the middle of the next intersection, from which the street slanted slightly downhill, and I lined up the trolley with a tug on the rope and cast it loose. I was delighted to see it start rolling obediently down-slope, keeping a steady course between two lines of parked cars.
It was a shame we couldn’t stick around. I doubted that Don José Moril’s majiz’ would survive the experience he was due for when someone removed that cloth and displayed him to the crowds of strollers gagged, bound, blindfolded and wearing nothing but a placard on which I’d written with Sarita’s lipstick:
This maricón of a Sabatano put me in a cell meant for slaves. Criné!
TWENTY
Near enough to the Tres Hojas to catch the faint sound of music borne on the breeze, we ran the car off the road among some dense-leaved shrubs. Diego faded into the darkness; while he was gone, I occupied myself by wiping the interior clean of fingerprints. Mine didn’t matter—they knew I was involved in this, whether or not they had my prints on file, but there was just a chance nobody had yet identified Diego.
He came back as quietly as he had gone. If I hadn’t been expecting him he might have surprised me. Good, for such a heavy-set man.
“Yes, that car is there, and the wipers are parked on the wrong side.”
“Thank goodness.” I was growing more afraid by the moment that we were due to run out of luck, but that was the signal I’d arranged by phone, and it meant all clear, come on. “You’re sure García will help you on your way?” I added.
“Certain. We’re old friends, you know. And now you’ve flushed the blagro I’m sure I can trust him.”
“So we’ll rendezvous tomorrow at dawn.”
“You can find the spot?”
“You gave me a very clear description, and I have been as close to it as the Hotel Santiago.”
“Good, then. Everything seems to be under control.” He hesitated. Then abruptly he extended his hand.
“My compliments and thanks, Max. You have the—the gall that we in our movement had at first, but lost a year ago and never rediscovered. Perhaps the example you’ve set will trigger off a whole new wave of activity.”
“I hope so,” I said. “I’d hate to have stuck my neck out for nothing.”
I stole across the parking-lot of the Tres Hojas, e
ffectively invisible. I’d abandoned the waiter’s white jacket, of course, and in addition my own, which I’d given to Juan at the hotel with instructions to burn it at once, and I was in dark shirt and dark pants.
The car I was looking for was parked in the darkest corner, too, close to the fence. As promised, the tailgate door was unlocked. I slipped inside, discovering by touch an inflated plastic air-bed, a rolled beach umbrella, a bag containing swimsuits, and a couple of absolutely enormous towels, one damp, the other dry. I folded myself up on the floor and hid under the dry one. Then I waited.
It must have been about twenty nerve-wracking minutes before I heard a key put to the lock of the driver’s door. The seat sighed as weight landed on it, the door slammed, the engine started.
“It was a damnfool idea to go to Latanores,” I said. “Has he heard about that yet?”
“Who’s going to tell him?” she retorted. “I’m not, and Latanores won’t either!” She let off the parking-brake and set out for the road with a roar and a jolt.
“Take it easy,” I said. “You don’t want to be booked for speeding.”
“Sorry. This isn’t my scene like it is yours. I guess I need practice.”
“Follow my advice, then, and we might come through with whole skins.”
“Yes, okay.”
So she drove at a properly decorous, sight-seeing kind of pace, and I stayed hidden and didn’t see a thing, though I could tell by the way the car’s rear end waggled when we reached the approach to the Ocean Bridge.
“Is Gilbert still at the embassy?” I asked at one point.
“Far as I know. He called up to tell me he wouldn’t be home for dinner, and I said I’d probably go out for a drink and he said okay.”
“Did he ask where?”
“Yes, but I said I’d drive into Brascoso and stop wherever looked interesting.”
“You heard about my arrest from him?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Last night or this morning?”
“This morning. There was a call from the embassy while we were having breakfast, and he dropped everything at once. But all he wanted to tell me was that there’d been an urgent problem come up, and they were sending a car for him right away. I had to pester and practically beg him to tell me what was going on, and finally I did wear him down just as the car arrived. But he only told me that you were here, and that you’d been arrested.”
“Not about the jail-break?”
“Hell, no.” She laughed bitterly, and added after a pause, “You know, I think it’s dawning on him that I don’t exactly worship him any more. It’ll take a long time to filter through his vanity, but… Well, after these cool months it was bound to happen eventually. So of course I was crazy with worry, and the only thing I could think of doing was rushing off to find this lawyer I’d heard about, who sometimes defends people locked up by the Sabatanos.”
“Okay, it was a kind thought,” I said. And reflected on the succession of miracles which had prevented it from screwing me up completely.
“He was so smug yesterday evening,” she said, “I was sure something must have happened. But of course I never suspected the truth.”
She reached over the back of her seat to find and squeeze my shoulder through the enveloping beach-towel.
“Keep your mind and your hands on the wheel,” I said. “When Gilbert called back from the embassy, did you ask why he was being kept there so long?”
“No, he wouldn’t be drawn. But obviously the last thing they want is for the liberation movement to start up again.”
She interrupted herself. “Oh, there’s the bridge! I—I hope I bring this off, Max!”
“You think I don’t?” I grunted.
After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “Max, thank you for giving me the chance, anyway. I’ve been so angry with myself for so long—for not blowing Gilbert’s cover in London, for not doing anything to prove I really believe in what I tell myself I do.”
I folded myself up as small as I could, reached for the inflated air-bed and tugged it forward at a casual angle on top of me… and hoped. There was a smell of rubber in my nostrils from the floor-mats, and somewhere in the transmission there was a squeak that ought to have been seen to.
Abruptly the road ceased to twist and turn; we were on the bridge. I could hear Dolly’s breathing growing quicker, and wondered how much it was going to affect her voice.
But when she stopped in answer to the guards’ challenge and wound down her window, she spoke up brightly and convincingly enough.
“Good evening! I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish—I’m American.”
Oh, lord, why tell that unnecessary lie? In fact she spoke pretty good Spanish, though with a poor accent. Still, maybe she trusted her voice more in her native tongue.
“Papers,” a man answered briefly, and she clicked the glove-compartment open. There were rustling noises.
“And where you go?”
“Oh, that big hotel at Lastilas. The Santiago. I thought it would be a nice drive to go there at night.”
Pause. Then: “Carry on, Mrs. Quentin. Thank you.”
Fine, I was safely clear of Grand Madrugada. And even though when he was in a fit state to think again Moril was bound to assume I might have made it to another island, just about the last vehicle anyone would suspect of carrying me would be this one, proved by the records to be on hire to an employee of the CIA.
I didn’t know how Diego planned to get across the Toblino to our rendezvous at dawn. I’d judged it more prudent not to ask.
TWENTY-ONE
With a quaver in her voice which hadn’t been there when she was talking to the guards, Dolly said suddenly, “Max, I need to stop for a bit. I’m shaking!”
“Can you wait until we’re out of sight of the bridge?” I countered. I wasn’t surprised, though.
“Y-yes. Out of sight of everywhere, I think. I know this bit of road. There’s a stub-end of track around the next bend that doesn’t go anywhere now. Used to lead to a stand of good timber, but it’s all been logged off and there’s nothing left except scrub.”
She added with a humorless chuckle, “Found it on my first visit. I had turismo. I absolutely had to get out of the car and squat down.”
A sharp right turn. A bump or two. The car stopped. I heard the click as she switched off the lights, then another click, the glove-compartment lock again, and the snap of a lighter.
Nothing else. Thank goodness for that. Although the easiest place to pick me up, if I had been betrayed, would have been at the Tres Hojas, I was terribly on edge. A lonely side-turning “out of sight of everywhere” would be an ideal spot to mount an ambush.
“Want a cigarette, Max?” she said after a moment. “You can get up if you want to. There’s not a light to be seen except the moon.”
Okay, no ambush. I straightened by slow degrees. While I was doubled over that muscle on the inside of my thigh which Pieter Gevelhoud damaged and which healed a fraction of an inch short had begun to ache. Head still low, I stared in all directions and found she was right—this old logging trail was thoroughly screened.
I took a deep breath. The air smelled of air and leaves and flowers, and just a little of the sea. There were animals rustling in the nearby undergrowth. The sky was deep black like a cat’s fur and the moon shone on it like a slice from a new-minted silver coin. It seemed incredible that we were in one of the oldest surviving dictatorships, whose people were enslaved by superstition, ignorance and fear. The world just looked too beautiful for such a country to exist in it.
I took the cigarette Dolly offered, and saw her for the first time tonight. Moonlight through the windshield showed her clearly. She was wearing a locally-made blouse of the kind I’d seen in many Brascoso stores, with a low boat-shaped neckline almost to the points of her shoulders and three encircling frills in a contrasting color, above—as I saw when she gave me a light—very tight red pants. No jewelry tonight, not even a wedding-ring. And
she’d brushed her hair loose to her shoulders.
“You’re—you’re used to this kind of thing, aren’t you?” she said eventually. “Being on the run, I mean. Being hunted.”
“Yes, it’s happened to me in a lot of countries. But it isn’t something you can ever adjust to.”
“You take it so calmly, though!”
“Do I? I wish I did.” Dragging on my cigarette I stared past her, watching the moonbeams reflected on shiny leaves stirred by a hint of wind, as though on ripples in deep dark water. “No honey, it’s on the surface, that. Inside…” I spread my hands.
“But, Max, you’re—”
“What I am,” I interrupted, “is a damned fool. Look at me! Here I am in a country I don’t care for, a country I’d never paid any attention to before a few weeks ago, because I got crazy-mad at a friend of mine being shot and took a liking to someone I might never have met. And yet…”
“What?” She had twisted around on her seat to look at me directly over its back.
“Oh, shit!” I sighed. “Funny! It must be habit-forming because I’ve done it before. Bad habit, though. I don’t have any business still being alive, you know: I’ve taken so many damnfool chances, laid traps and baited them myself, been thrown in more jails than I can count, and here I am doing exactly the same thing again, when I wasn’t supposed to do more than pick up some data—here I am with the whole fucking corps of Sabatanos after me!” I hesitated. “Still, there was something very special about the jail they put me in here.”
“What?”
“It was where they used to lock up newly-delivered slaves before selling them. You can still see the rings on the cell-walls that the poor buggers were chained to, to keep them quiet.”
She drew in her breath with a hiss. “So that’s what they meant!”
