“Come on,” I said to Fat Cat, and started back down the gangplank.
I didn’t even wait for the car to stop. I ran down the path and past the guards to the office of the president. El Presidente looked up from his desk in surprise. There were several men gathered around him, but I didn’t give them a chance to speak.
“I know where Coronel Guiterrez is!”
“What has Guiterrez to do with this interruption?”
“He is also Señor Guardas,” I said. “The man with the beard, the one who escaped.”
El Presidente did not hesitate. He picked up the telephone on his desk. “Tell Capitán Borja to have a squad ready at the entrance to the office building immediately!”
He turned back to me. “Where?”
“On a Panamanian ship at Pier Seven. We must hurry; they sail in less than an hour.”
El Presidente started toward the door.
“But we dare not delay the sailing of a ship, excelencia,” one of the others protested. “It would be a violation of our international agreements!”
El Presidente turned to him angrily. “To hell with international agreements!” Then he smiled. “Besides, who would dare protest a visit from the head of state? It will be an honor.” He put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me out the door in front of him.
The ship’s captain was obviously upset. “I beg your excellency’s indulgence. If we lose this tide we sail a half-day behind schedule.”
But el Presidente was very suave. “Surely your government would be even more upset if you refused me an inspection of your ship, which I so greatly admire? I have heard much about the wonderful fleet of your great country.”
“But, your excellency—”
El Presidente’s voice turned suddenly harsh. “Capitán, I must insist. Either I inspect your ship or I impound it on charges that you have violated our hospitality by giving refuge to an asesino, an enemy of our country!”
“But we carry no passengers, your excellency. Only the crew, who have been with the ship since we sailed from our home port more than four weeks ago.”
“Have the crew stand for inspection then!”
The captain hesitated.
“Now!” el Presidente ordered.
The captain turned to his first mate. “Pipe all hands on the bow deck.”
A moment later the crew began to assemble. There were thirty-two of them and they formed a ragged double line down the center of the deck.
“Attention!”
The lines straightened up. The men stared straight ahead.
“Is this all the crew?” el Presidente demanded.
The ship’s captain nodded. “Sí, excelencia.”
El Presidente turned to Capitán Borja. “Take a detail of two and search the ship. Make certain no one has hidden out below decks.”
The captain saluted and marched off with two of his men. The remaining soldiers stood at the ready as el Presidente turned to me. “Now we will look into their faces, eh? The bearded one should not be difficult to recognize.”
But it wasn’t that easy. None of the men wore a beard. As we started down the line a second time in silence Capitán Borja reappeared. He reported that there were no other men aboard.
“Do you spot him?” El Presidente’s voice was worried.
I shook my head. But my two informants couldn’t have made up a story like that. They weren’t smart enough.
The ship’s captain came forward. There was a faint note of triumph in his voice. “I trust your highness is not satisfied?”
El Presidente did not answer. He looked at me, and I exclaimed, “No! He is here, he has to be! He obviously has shaved off his beard.”
“Then how will you know him?”
I gestured and el Presidente bent toward me so I could whisper into his ear. He smiled and nodded. He turned back to the first man in the line. “Como se llama usted?”
The sailor remained at attention. “Diego Cárdenas, excelencia.”
El Presidente continued to the next man. “Se llama usted?”
“Jesu María Luna, excelencia.”
Soon we were a third of the way down the line. El Presidente paused in front of a slim man dressed in the dirty clothing of an oiler. His face was covered with grease; even his hair was dirty.
“Se llama usted?”
The man glanced at me, hesitated, then spoke in a harsh voice. “Juan Rosario.”
El Presidente had already gone on to the next man, but I turned. “Juan Rosario what?”
“Rosario y Guard—” His voice broke suddenly, and he lunged at me, his hands at my throat. “Bastardo negro! Twice I should have killed you! This time I shall!”
I clawed at his hands, trying to free them from my neck. I could feel a burning in my lungs and my eyes began to pop. Then Fat Cat moved in behind him, and the grip on my throat was suddenly broken.
I stood there fighting for breath as I glared down at the man on the deck. He shook his head, rolled over, and glared back. His eyes were the same. Cold and cruel and implacable. He might change the color of his hair, shave his beard, even deepen his voice, but he could never alter those eyes. The one glance he had directed at me had given him away.
I loosened my jacket and reached for the knife I had concealed in my belt. I flat-edged the blade and went for his throat as I would for the neck of a chicken, but a pair of hands caught me before I could reach him. I looked up into the face of el Presidente. His voice was calm, almost gentle. “There is no need for you to kill him,” he said. “You are no longer in the jungle.”
Three months later I stood at the rail of another ship as we pulled away from the pier. I looked down and saw Amparo jumping up and down and waving. I waved back. “Adiós, Amparo. Good-bye!”
She waved and shouted something back but there was so much noise I couldn’t catch it. Slowly the ship moved out into the channel. Now the crowd on the dock had blurred into a single colorful mass. Behind them I could see the city and behind that the mountains, rich and green in the afternoon sun.
I felt my father’s arm on my shoulder, and he pressed me to his side. I looked up at him. His face was still thin and he was not yet used to the vacant sleeve on his left side, but his eyes were soft and clear and filled with a look I had never seen before.
“Look well, my son,” he said, his good arm holding me tightly against his side. “We are going to another world.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Fat Cat, and then my father spoke again and I looked back toward land.
“An old world that will be new to both of us,” he continued. “So look well, my son, and remember the city and the mountains and the plains of your native land. For when you return you will no longer be a boy. You will be a man!”
VIII
Book Two: POWER and MONEY
76
Efficiently the doctor withdrew the hypodermic needle. He turned to the youth standing at the foot of the bed. “It will make him sleep, Dax, help him conserve his strength for the crisis that may come tonight.”
The boy did not answer immediately. Instead he walked around to the other side of the bed and with a touch as tender as a woman’s wiped away the moisture from his father’s forehead. “But he will die anyway,” he said quietly, without looking up.
The doctor hesitated. “One never knows. Your father has fooled us before. It is all in the hands of God.” He felt the impact of the boy’s dark-brown eyes. They looked deep and seemed to see into him.
“We have a saying in the jungles,” Dax said. “For a man to place his fate in the hands of God he must be a tree. Only the trees believe in God.”
The boy’s voice was soft and the doctor still couldn’t get used to the soft, slurring, almost accent-free French. He still remembered the struggle the boy had with the language when he had first met him seven years ago. “And you do not?”
“No, I have seen too many terrible things to have much faith.”
Dax walked around the bed to the docto
r’s side and looked down at his father again. Jaime Xenos’ eyes were closed; he seemed to be resting. But there was a gray pallor beneath his warm dark skin and his breath was heavy and labored.
“I was going to summon a priest to administer the last rites,” the doctor said. “Do you prefer that I do not?”
Dax shrugged. He looked at the doctor. “It is not what I prefer that is important. What is important is that my father believes.”
The doctor snapped his bag shut. “I will come back this evening after dinner.”
Dax, with a last look at the bed, followed the doctor out into the hall.
When the front door of the consulate closed behind the doctor, Dax turned and went into his father’s office. Fat Cat and Marcel Campion, his father’s young French secretary and translator, came forward questioningly. Dax shook his head silently and crossed to the desk. He took a thin brown cigarrillo from the box and lit it.
“You’d better send a cable to el Presidente,” he said to Marcel. His voice was flat, controlled. “Father dying. Please advise.”
The secretary nodded and quickly left the room. A moment later the click of a typewriter came faintly through the closed door. Fat Cat cursed angrily. “By the blood of the Virgin! So this is where it ends. In this cold accursed land.”
Dax did not answer. Instead he went over to the window and looked out. Dusk was falling and it had begun to rain. The rain softened the dirty gray-black buildings down the street toward Montmartre. Somehow it seemed always to be raining in Paris.
Just as it had been that night they first came here from Corteguay seven years ago. They had looked like a group of country bumpkins, their collars pulled up against their faces as ineffective shields against the sleeting February rain, their luggage piled high on the sidewalk behind them where the cabby had dropped it.
“The damn gate is locked!” Fat Cat had called back to them. “There’s nobody in the house.”
“Try the bell again. There has to be someone there.”
Fat Cat reached up and pulled the bell handle. The clang filled the narrow street and echoed from house to house. But still there was no answer.
“I can open the gate.”
“Open it then! What are you waiting for?”
Fat Cat’s movements were almost too fast for the eye to follow. The automatic was smoking in his hand and the reverberations were like thunder in the night.
“Fool!” Dax’s father had said angrily. “Now the police will come and the whole world will know we couldn’t get into our own consulate! How they’ll all laugh at us.” He looked at the gate. “And for nothing. It’s still closed.”
“No it’s not,” Fat Cat replied, touching it with his foot.
It had swung open creakingly on its rusty hinges. Xenos looked at him for a moment, then started through, but Fat Cat’s arm blocked his path.
“I don’t like it. There is a stink to it. Better I go first.”
“Nonsense, what could be wrong?”
“There is much that is wrong already,” Fat Cat pointed out. “Ramírez should be here, yet the house is deserted. It could be a trap. Ramírez may have sold us out.”
“Nonsense! Ramírez would never do that. El Presidente gave him the post at my own recommendation.”
Still, he stood to one side and let Fat Cat lead the way up the path to the house. The grass and weeds had overgrown everything and they felt them tugging damply at their ankles. Unconsciously, Dax’s voice fell to a whisper. “Do you think the front door is locked, too?”
“We’ll see.” Fat Cat waved them to the side of the building, then, flattening himself, he reached out carefully and turned the knob.
The door had swung open silently. They peered into the darkness inside but could distinguish nothing. Fat Cat gestured to them, and the automatic appeared suddenly again in his hand. His lips moved in a soft whisper. “I go with God!”
They could hear him stumbling about in the darkness and the sound of muffled curses, then his voice came to them almost as the lights went on. “There is nobody here.”
They stood there blinking. It was as if a tornado had ripped through the rooms. There was litter everywhere, papers scattered over the floor, remnants of broken chairs piled in the middle of the room. A table in the kitchen proved to be the only furniture left in the house.
“Looters have been here,” Fat Cat said.
Dax’s father looked at him. There was a strange expression of hurt in the older man’s eyes. As if he still could not believe what he saw. Finally he spoke. “Not looters,” he said sadly. “Traitors.”
Silently Fat Cat rolled a cigarette as he watched Dax’s father pick up a piece of paper from the floor and study it. He lit the cigarette. “Maybe we broke into the wrong house,” he offered consolingly.
Dax’s father shook his head. “No, we’re in the right house.” He held up the paper so they could both see. It was a sheet of the official stationery of Corteguay.
Dax looked at his father. “I’m tired.”
The older man reached his arm out and drew his son close. He glanced around the room for a moment, then back at Dax. “We can’t stay here, we’ll go to a hotel for the night. I noticed a pensión at the foot of the hill as we came up. Come along. I doubt they can feed us but at least we’ll get a decent night’s rest.”
The neatly dressed maid had curtsied as she opened the door. “Bon soir, messieurs.”
Dax’s father wiped his feet carefully on the doormat before entering. He took off his hat. “Do you have three rooms for the night?”
A bewildered look came over the maid’s face. She glanced at Fat Cat, standing just behind the consul, his arms filled with luggage. Then she looked down at Dax. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked politely.
Now it was their turn to be confused. “Rendez-vous? You mean a reservation?” Dax’s father searched his limited French for the right words. “C’est nécessaire?”
This had proved too much for the maid. She opened a door off the small foyer. “If you will be kind enough to wait in here, I shall call Madame Blanchette.”
“Merci.” Dax’s father led the way in, and the maid closed the door behind them. From somewhere in the house they heard a faint sound of a woman’s laughter. The room was elaborately furnished, with rich deep carpeting and soft upholstered couches and chairs. A fire glowed warmly, and on the sideboard there was a decanter of brandy and glasses.
A happy sound came deep from Fat Cat’s throat. “This is more like it,” he said, walking over to the sideboard. He looked back at the consul. “Excellency, may I pour you a brandy?”
“I don’t know whether we should. After all, we don’t know whom the brandy is set out for.”
“For the guests.” Fat Cat’s logic was irrefutable. “Otherwise why would it be here?”
He poured the older man a glass and drank his own in one gulp. “Ahh, that’s good.” Quickly he poured himself another.
Dax sank into a chair in front of the fire. The warmth of the flames reached out and licked his face. He felt his eyes grow heavy with drowsiness.
The door opened and the maid ushered a handsome middle-aged woman into the room. She was faultlessly dressed in a dark velvet gown, a double strand of rose pearls around her throat and a large diamond in a gold setting sparkling on her finger.
Dax’s father bowed. “Jaime Xenos.”
“Monsieur Xenos.” She glanced at Fat Cat, then at Dax. If she objected to Fat Cat’s helping himself to the brandy she gave no hint of it. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”
“We need lodging for the night,” Dax’s father said. “We’re from the Corteguayan consulate up the street, but something seems to have gone wrong. There is nobody there.”
The woman’s voice was extremely polite. “May I see your passports, monsieur? It is a regulation.”
“Of course.” Dax’s father handed her the red leather-covered passports.
Madame Blanchette studied them for a moment, the nodde
d toward Dax. “Your son?”
“Oui. And my attaché militaire.”
Fat Cat looked pleased at his elevation, and quickly poured himself another brandy.
“You’re the new consul?”
“Oui, madame.”
Madame Blanchette returned the passports. She hesitated a moment, then spoke. “If your excellency will excuse me for a moment I shall go and see if there are any rooms available. It is late and we are rather heavily booked.”
The consul bowed again. “Merci, madame. I am grateful for your kindness.”
Madame Blanchette closed the door behind her and stood in the foyer for a moment. Then she shrugged her shoulders and went down the hall and opened a door into a room furnished even more richly than the one she had just left.
In the center of it was a gaming table, and at the table five men sat playing cards. Behind them stood several beautiful young women, dressed in the latest fashion. Two other girls sat conversing on a couch near the fire.
“Banco,” one of the players called.
“Damn!” answered another, throwing down his cards. He looked up at Madame Blanchette. “Was it anyone interesting?”
“I don’t know, Baron,” she replied. “It was the new Corteguayan consul.”
“What did he want? Information about that rascal Ramírez?”
“No,” she replied, “he wanted rooms for the night.”
The player who had just bought the bank chuckled. “The poor man probably saw your sign. I told you it would happen sooner or later.”
“Why didn’t you just send him away?” the baron asked.
“I don’t know,” Madame Blanchette answered in a puzzled voice. “That was what I intended to do. But when I saw the little boy—”
“He has his son with him?” the baron asked.
“Oui.” She hesitated a moment, then turned to the door. “I guess there is nothing I can do.”
“Un moment.” Baron de Coyne was on his feet. “I would like to see them myself.”
“What’s the matter, Baron?” the player on his left asked. “Hasn’t Ramírez stuck you for enough at this very table? He owed you more than any of us—at least one hundred thousand francs.”
Harold Robbins Thriller Collection Page 103
