Renegade 28

by Lou Cameron

  Save for skin coloring and sexual enthusiasm, this Kanaka girl was not at all like the big princess. She stood less than five-foot-four in her dainty bare feet and weighed maybe a hundred and ten, all of it firm and athletic. Even her naked cupcakes felt solid as muscle against his naked flesh as she teased her nipples in his chest hair. She kissed great too, so he could hardly wait to find out what else she could do when she, obviously as curious, proceeded to reach down with one hand to unbutton his pants. He started to work his belt loose too, saying, “Let me help. What’s your name, Sweet Stuff?”

  She didn’t seem to understand the question. Once they had his pants down, it didn’t seem important to him either. The bottom of the crow’s nest was a hardwood grid that would have been as rough on her brown butt as a waffle iron. So he swung her around with her back to the mast to try for a wall job—or, in this case, mast job?

  Whatever it was, she seemed to enjoy it as he bent his knees to enter her frontally, standing up. She gasped in surprised pleasure as she felt what he had to offer in her warm, wet depths. But to help him get it all the way in, she had to be a bit ingenious, so she was. He laughed as she raised her legs one at a time to hook the arches of her bare feet on the rail behind him to either side and slide herself higher up the mast.

  As he straightened his legs to start humping her more comfortably as well as deeper, he asked, “Have you done this often up here? Never mind, I don’t really want to know. This is neat. We can watch the whole port as we screw up here, and with that canvas as high as my hips, nobody can watch us. Or at least they can’t be sure what they’re watching, right?”

  She leaned her head back against the mast, eyes closed, and seemed to be telling him she loved him, or maybe she was threatening his life while she moved her wide-open crotch astoundingly in apparent defiance of gravity.

  Whatever she was saying sure sounded passionate enough to account for what the rest of her was doing. He ejaculated in her and kept going—it was easy as well as common courtesy with such a skilled partner in such an interesting position. But when she came in turn, hissing like a steam valve and biting her lower lip, she fell off his shaft and slid weakly down the mast to lie in a ball at his feet, moaning that he’d killed her… or at least that she’d had enough for now. He supposed people who tore off casual sex with strangers a lot, with neither shame nor a need for a big buildup, probably took the whole deal as fleeting pleasure, the way his kind took a snack.

  He said, “Okay, you don’t want to make a full-course meal out of it, I won’t pester you for dessert. A guy’s got to keep his strength up, anyway.”

  She looked up at him, her big brown eyes confused. He reached down to pat her cheek, saying, “Don’t try to figure it out, Honey. Maybe this is the best way, when you study on it. Most of the things men and women feel required to say to one another when they’re fucking are a little stupid anyway. Our brains are built as different as our bodies, and …” Then he spotted something coming in over the harbor bar and swore, “Oh, son of a baby-raping bitch!”

  The girl at his feet whimpered and cowered away, frightened as well as confused by his obvious if mysterious annoyance. He shook his head down at her and said, “It’s not you. It’s what’s coming our way under a full head of steam! Get up. I’ll show you.”

  She wasn’t about to rise high enough to get slugged by a big Haole maniac who growled so at vahines. But to appease him she reached shyly up to fondle his balls. He laughed and said, “Now you tell me you want more. Come on, I won’t hurt you.”

  He pulled her to her feet and pointed. It was her turn to gasp and probably cuss in Kanaka as she saw the long gray gunboat moving into the harbor. On shore, someone was firing a ceremonial salute, and one of the gunboat’s smaller t deck guns was puffing white smoke as it fired its own blanks politely. A white, or mostly white, ensign fluttered from the yardarm above the conning tower as well. It was the battle flag of the German Kriegsmarine! He said, “That tears it. They’ve taken off the gloves.”

  His softer and sweeter fellow lookout turned to him with a puzzled stare. He said, “Never mind,” and patted his own chest, saying, “Me Dick, savvy?”

  She brightened, put a hand to one perky breast, and said, “Me Likelike.”

  He laughed and said, “That’s for sure, whether we’re talking about your name or your manners. I have to go below, Likelike. It’s been nice, ah, talking to you.”

  He started to get dressed again. She pouted, held her, breasts out to him, and managed, “No! Likelike wanna make nukinuki with mo’ Dick!”

  He sighed and said, “You dames just never want to do it when a man has the time, I wanna nukinuki you some more, too. But Jesus, Likelike, we’re really in real trouble now!”

  *

  Kuruhai agreed, when Captain Gringo roused him out on deck. But after a while it seemed obvious that whatever the German gunboat intended, it didn’t seem to be aiming its big guns at the Orotiki. They waited until it had dropped anchor out in the roads and had sent a launch ashore farther down the waterfront before Captain Gringo told the big Kanaka, “Sit tight. I’d better go ashore and see what I can find out. I can’t see even Der Kaiser acting really raw in a banana port under Uncle Sam’s protection.”

  “What if you’re wrong?” asked Kuruhai. So Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Give up without resistance, and maybe the princess can bail you out. You’re not about to stand off an armored steamer armed with one-fifty-fives! But, as you say, it’s probably no big thing as long as we’re in the harbor.”

  “You mean they’ll come after us as we leave?”

  “Wouldn’t you do it that way if you were a German skipper trying to protect a German-owned pearling outfit? Let’s not waste time talking about it. Let’s try to find out what the fuck’s really going on!”

  He moved down the gangplank before anyone off the gunboat could move that far up the quay. He moved directly across to the first cross street and made tracks for the Hotel Casa Real. La Siesta was, of course, well under way. So the streets were deserted, or he thought they were until he heard running footsteps behind him. He ducked into a doorway and turned to look back from modest cover. Two burly guys dressed blanco were moving his way pretty good, making no attempt to conceal their intent or the clubs in their hands. Captain Gringo swore softly and reached for the .38 under his jacket. He didn’t make it. As the door behind him popped suddenly inward and somebody slugged him from behind, hard, he only had time to groan, “Oh shit, suckered!” before everything around him went dark for a while.

  *

  When he came to, not knowing where or when, Captain Gringo found himself stretched out on a leather couch in what looked like an oak-paneled office. He was unbound, but when he felt for his .38, unarmed as well. His hat lay on a coffee table between him and a tall figure leaning against the only door he could see from the couch—even when he sat up, felt the back of his throbbing head, and muttered, “I’ll get you for this, Von Linderhoff.”

  The sardonic, scar-faced, one-eyed Prussian intelligence agent he’d tangled with in the past chuckled fondly and said, “So good of you to drop by, Walker. I thought it was about time we had a little talk, nicht wahr?”

  “I’ll nick your wahr the next time I catch you with your back to me, you tricky bastard! You set me up pretty good with that one doorway in sight when your bit players entered stage left.”

  Vob Linderhoff shrugged modestly and replied, “I thought so. You are not an easy man to take alive, you know.”

  “Okay, so consider me took. What happens now, you Prussian prick?”

  “Ach, Herr Walker, is that any way to talk to an old friend? As you may recall, you spaced my life one time when the shoe was on the other foot. I only wanted to return the favor.”

  “You mean you clobbered me to keep your navy from sinking me?”

  The German laughed and said, “You are not far off the mark. We have, as you may have suspected, been watching the odd behavior of the Princess Manukai
for some time with considerable interest. Until you and Gaston Verrier joined forces with those crazy Kanakas, we had little to worry about. Unfortunately, you two soldiers of fortune could confuse an already complicated game further. So let us discuss business, Herr Walker. Just how much do you want to, ah, get up from the table?”

  Captain Gringo shook his head to clear it, reached in his jacket, and found nobody had swiped his smokes. He took out a claro and fumbled for a light as he muttered, “Let me get this straight, Von Linderhoff. You’re offering us a bribe? You’re not turning me over to the American consulate here in Puntarenas for the money they’d be willing to pay yow?”

  Von Linderhoff moved forward to light his cigar courteously as he said, “I am already on a generous expense account, and we both know a hangman’s noose awaits you back in the United States. Can’t you see I am trying to be your friend, ah, Dick?”

  “Just call me Herr Walker. ‘Friend’ is putting things a little cute, Squarehead.”

  “Nonetheless, we have made deals in the past when it was in both our interests, and on one occasion I shall never forget, you spared my life when you could have killed me. Whatever we may think of one another, we ‘are both officers and gentlemen, nicht wahr?”

  Captain Gringo got his claro going good before he said grudgingly, “Okay, I’ve never caught you in an outright fib, and I’ve always kept my word with you. I gave my word to Princess Manukai, too. Even if I hadn’t, I can’t see selling out a mess of innocent natives to your higher kulture, you blackbirding Bavarian bastard!”

  “Prussian, if you please!” Von Linderhoff sighed, adding: “Whether you admire the Second Reich or not, I assure you Der Kaiser does not approve of mistreating natives, even in his African colonies.”

  “That’s not the way the Africans tell it. But let’s get back to the South Pacific. You spike-helmeted assholes don’t even own the island those pearl divers were kidnapped from!”

  “It is our understanding they are contract laborers working for private German interests, not the German government, Herr Walker.”

  “So let’s see their contracts, and how come your government’s interested at all if it has nothing to do with slave-raiding?”

  Von Linderhoff sat on the couch beside him, giving him a free shot at the distant door; but he decided to listen awhile anyway. The wiry Kraut could move fast as hell, he knew, and he knew he was still groggy. So even though he knew it was a lot of bullshit, he held still for Von Linderhoff’s saying, “Seriously Walker, Der Kaiser does have interests in the South Pacific. More important interests than the fate of a few unwashed savages. We have, as you know, claimed the Marshall Islands with no opposition save for a little whining on the part of those silly squint-eyed Japanese. At the moment we are negotiating with certain Samoan chiefs regarding the advantages of a German Samoa. It will be good for the natives. We Herren-volk are sure to treat them better than the thieving French treat their own Tahitians. But both the British and U.S. navies seem unhappy at the thought of a German naval base in those waters, and unlike the harmless Japs, they can make trouble for us should we give them an excuse.”

  “Blackbirding isn’t a good enough excuse?”

  “Goddamn it! Not one Samoan native has been forced to work against his will for the German government! This other business with the German-owned civilian firm is, I’ll -admit to you frankly, not good for the business of colonizing cannibal isles for the sake of advancing civilization. We are looking into Halle und Feldmacher’s dealings; and should we find they have been behaving badly, we shall deal with the matter discreetly. And at their offices in Bremerhaven! The last thing we want is a wild-west raid on a South Pacific Island, no matter who is at fault! So, again, how much do you and Verrier want to simply, how you say, butt out?”

  Captain Gringo gazed wistfully at the door through his cigar smoke as he replied, “You sure know how to tempt a girl. If you were anyone else, I’d take the money and run. But, yeah, we owe one another a certain officer’s honor. So thanks, but no thanks. A deal is a deal, and we’ve already set the gears in motion. What happens now?”

  Von Linderhoff sighed, got up, and opened a drawer to take out Captain Gringo’s revolver. He handed it back to the now-recovered American, saying, “I told you when you woke up this was a friendly visit. The next time, it may go harder with you, Herr Walker. It was not my wish to declare war, but if that is what you want, so be it.”

  Captain Gringo put his gun away, saying, “Thanks. You’re on your own the next time I have you in my sights, too. But you sure have been acting sort of delicate for a guy who’s already tried to kill the princess at least.”

  Von Linderhoff frowned down at him and asked, “What are you talking about? If I had ordered that big native girl executed, she’d be dead by now!”

  “You know, I halfway believe you. But if your guys didn’t toss that bomb … Never mind. Your guys were the ones who were trying to scare us off. I knew there had to be two bunches working at cross-purposes.”

  He got to his feet and waited for the rug to stop spinning under him as Von Linderhoff growled, “Always, Herr Gott, the man has to speak in riddles? What is all this nonsense about assassins and people trying to frighten you? Haven’t you learned by now we Germans favor the direct approach?”

  Captain Gringo picked up his hat, rubbed his head again ruefully, and said, “That last move still feels pretty direct. But no shit, Von Linderhoff, wasn’t it your guys who returned the dame’s things after helping themselves to her checkbook and passport?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We have printers who can furnish our agents with any sort of checkbooks or passports they might feel the need for. My people are spies, not sneak thieves!”

  “Hmm, maybe we should put our heads together, then. If you’re not just bullshitting me in the line of duty, we seem to have three sides trying to keep us from rescuing those natives just off the coast. There’s you with the clubs and gunboats; somebody playing spooky but so-far-harmless tricks; and some deadlier bastards playing for keeps! Okay, I know who you are. One of the other players is probably Halle und Feldmacher. Unless I see some labor contracts signed by the guys diving for pearls not far from here, I’m assuming they play rough. But who the fuck could the third side be?”

  Von Linderhoff shrugged and said, “You are right about us having a gunboat, and you have been warned. Others do not interest me unless they too try to get in my way,”

  “Hit ’em once for me,” said Captain Gringo as Von Linderhoff politely opened the door for him. Then, as he saw the door had never been locked, he nodded grudgingly and added, “Okay, okay, have your pound of flesh. Thanks for not killing me when you had the chance.”

  The sardonic German’s voice was grim as he replied, “Don’t count on it a second time. We are even now. You have been told, not asked, to stay away from the Guardian Bank. If you persist in this madness, it may go hard with you.”

  “It already has. You should see some of the crew we have aboard. Can I assume I’m safe from your agents here in Puntarenas for now?”

  Von Linderhoff shrugged and answered, “Here you present no threat to my own mission. If you are wise, you will not put out to sea with your crazy Kanaka princess.” They’d made it to what seemed the front entrance of whatever this was. But Captain Gringo turned in the vestibule to say, “You Seem to know a lot about her nibs and the place she comes from. While I have you in a chatty mood, is there any chance native politics could-account for at least some of the skullduggery? That spooky stuff smells sort of witch doctor to me, if I buy your story that it can’t be Black Forest Elves acting cute.”

  Von Linderhoff shrugged and said, “Princess Manukai doesn’t have to worry about the kahunas of Konakona trying to frighten her. Her proud poppa is the high kahuna as well as king.”

  “You keep track? You even have German spies on Konakona?”

  Von Linderhoff laughed in an oddly boyish manner, considering the saber scar, and asked, “What did you
think the Lutheran minister there was, a Russian spy? We have been monitoring every move the silly girl has made since she got her poppa’s permission to do whatever it is she thinks she is doing in a man’s world.”

  “I believe you. But while we’re on the subject, how come they sent a woman to do a man’s work? I mean, I know she’s pretty big, but just between us, she’s not my idea of a proud Kanaka warrior!”

  Von Linderhoff shrugged and said, “She’s not. Her volunteering caused quite a scandal back on Konakona, as a matter of fact. Her younger brother and future co-heir refused to lead the expedition. I must say, for a naked savage, the young man showed surprisingly good sense, nicht wahr?”

  They shook on it and parted friendly. Out on the deserted street once more, Captain Gringo peered back at the building he’d just left. A small brass plate by the door read, ‘Halle und Feldmacher, Puntarenas, Bremerhaven.’ He grimaced and muttered, “I might have known.”

  *

  The quaint custom of La Siesta began to make more sense as the deserted streets of Puntarenas turned to bake ovens. By one o’clock it was getting hot enough to wilt the cast-iron streetlamps, and the afternoon was early yet. But the Casa Real catered to foreigners who didn’t know any better. So a doorman dressed as fancy as a Mexican general had to stand out front under the awning anyway.

  The doorman stared thoughtfully at Captain Gringo as the big Yank joined him in the shade. The Americano was obviously too shabby to allow inside and obviously too big to argue with. Captain Gringo solved the problem by tipping generously as he explained that his friends El Señor y La Señora Verrier were expecting him. The doorman decided anyone so prosperous had to be respectable and directed him to inquire at the desk inside.

  The lobby was a little cooler and a lot darker than the dazzling sunlight he’d come in from. As he stood near the entrance letting his eyes adjust, he heard a cobra hiss and spotted Gaston lurking in a grove of potted palms. The Frenchman led him to a corner settee and said, “The princess is asleep upstairs, thank God. If you want to awaken the sleeping beauty, she’s in suite three-three-three. Here’s your duplicate key. I took the liberty of having extra ones made at a locksmith’s down the street.”