by Barry, Mike
His first shot went wild, the bearded man in reflex getting to the floor even as the shot spanged off. It hit one of the mirrors at the front of the bus, bounced, glanced off the dead driver who was now lying lengthwise in the small entering corridor. The bearded man screamed, less from fright, Wulff knew, than from simple rage and the need to spin it off for further concentration; then he had his gun up and Wulff could feel everything slow down. Momentarily he was in a long, narrow, grayly-illuminated tube, just he and the bearded man, the bearded man readying his shot and then the shot came off, but Wulff knew even as he heard the sound that it was also too high and it went somewhere into metal above him, ripping open beams, letting a little sunlight through. Both of them were reacting to the climate, it must be something about the thin atmosphere that blocked true concentration; or then again maybe bullets followed a different course in thinner air. That was something to think about. He would have to discuss it with a physicist, the differing effects of atmospheric content upon the pathway of bullets; it was certainly an effect that he had not been prepared for … And, bringing the gun into his hand, Wulff aimed the shot low, trying for the man’s knees, and landed a shot dead into the man’s stomach.
Blood erupted, like long-hidden gold coming to light for the scavengers. Blood boiled out of the man’s stomach, geysered lightly into the air, then falling back, it covered the man like a blanket, a clear opaque panel of blood locking him in from waist to face—another aspect of the thin atmosphere, Wulff thought wryly. That must be it, the pressures under which the blood was driven took it much further under low air-pressure … But on the other hand, if that were so, if the pumping action of the heart enabled the blood to move more rapidly and higher, then why did one become lightheaded in thin air? Why was circulation reduced? Well, this was something to think about; all of this was something interesting to think about he supposed; he could call not only a physicist but a doctor into this hypothetical conference of his on varying phenomena in the mountains and at sea level … but no time for it now.
The passengers were still screaming thinly, those of them that could get breath; they sounded vaguely like seals croaking to themselves in a captive pool. Wulff, rising from his seat, had an impression of their staring eyes, their desperate attention, as he worked his way toward the front of the bus, almost stumbling over the corpse of the driver, then clearing himself and moving to the well. The driver was quite dead. His face, looking out leanly from the mess his body had become, was curiously detached, his tongue lay against his teeth; he seemed on the verge, in fact of making some kind of comment which would be summary, which would clear up all the mysteries of his death—pure illusion, of course, for the driver said nothing. Nor did the bearded assassin, still pooling richly in the aisle somewhat further on, the blood running freely in the little corridor of the aisle. Some of the passengers had lifted their feet instinctively, avoiding the rush of blood. One fat man toward the back had his camera out and in a curiously abstracted way was taking pictures, lashing images into his camera, his hands quivering behind the lens. Each to his own, Wulff thought. Each to his own.
He felt impelled to make an announcement. Foolish impulse perhaps, but then again this was his responsibility; it was his presence on the bus, not the driver’s, not any of theirs, which had made their entrance into the lost city of the Incas so spectacular. “I’m sorry” he said, “I’m truly sorry,” and then abandoned that line; that was absolutely foolish, death was nothing to apologize for, it was just a constant like sex or life itself and the sooner that most of these people got used to it the better off they would be. He backed down the stairs into the well. There were little pieces of glass all around, splinters of glass seemed to be beating around the air like flies but he avoided them. He got one foot on the ground, the other still in the well, feeling the ground rock beneath him. Unsteady terrain.
“I think it would be best if you walked in,” Wulff said. Turning, he could see, just beyond an outcropping of rock, what appeared to be a depot. The assassin had probably been waiting there, had lost patience—who was to blame him?—had come out of the depot, fearful that he would somehow miss the entrance of the bus, and coming just up the line, had met them there. One thing was clear to Wulff, it was a suicide attack. The assassin would have had forty witnesses; he hardly could have proposed to kill everyone on the bus. That would not have been his intention at all.
Well, Calabrese certainly got men to work for him. You could say that he commanded a certain amount of loyalty.
“It’s a short walk, a very short walk; nothing to it folks,” Wulff said, taking on the aspect of a guide shuffling along a group of tourists to exhibit B. Putting his pistol away he headed toward the depot. He had absolutely no idea who would be waiting for him there, or if the men Stavros had promised would meet him would even show up. Or if there were any police.
Come to think of it, he thought grimly but kept on plowing through the terrain, really gasping now, the bearded assassin might himself have been one of the men whom Stavros had promised. Why not? Like Calabrese it would have been foolish of Stavros to send him out of town to do what he could have easily done face to face … but when you were dealing with solid figures, really great leaders and individualists like Stavros or Calabrese, there was no saying, absolutely no saying at all, how they might see a situation. They just did not function like ordinary men.
VIII
Stavros thought he had it figured out. Killing the man Dillon had shaken him (killing was nothing but if it were all the same he just did not want to get involved with Calabrese; it would be best not to stir that man’s wrath if he could help it, but then again he had had no alternative to killing Dillon) but only for a little while. Now he felt more positive than ever that he had handled this situation right, that he was making the best use of it. He had not expected anything like Wulff coming into the Crillon, had not even known that he was there until he had seen him, as a matter of fact. But once he was confronted by the man’s presence, how could he let him go without trying to make arrangements with him? He simply could not.
The stuff had to get out of Peru, that was all there was to it. Stavros had known that for a long time; it was just entirely too difficult a situation to bluff through. You could go on and on with something like this for a long time—set it up and keep it going so that you even thought you had some kind of autonomy—but sooner or later someone like Calabrese would pick up the word. It would leak through; there was too much at stake not to have a leak somewhere. And once Calabrese or someone like that got word of what was going on here, what Stavros had, what Stavres planned to do, it would be all over. He could fight off one of them, or even ten, but he could not possibly fend off the resource of the full organization to the north … and whatever internal problems that organization was having they were not fools; if they knew what Stavros was up to they would mass together in any way to take it away from him because the alternative was too dangerous.
So he knew he had done the right thing. The shit had to get out. Putting it into Wulff’s hands was insanely dangerous for many reasons; the primary insanity might be that Wulff was absolutely committed to its destruction … and there was a very slight likelihood, if any, that the goods would arrive intact at the delivery point to the north. It would be a miracle if they did.
But that was not the point. Stavros had gone through hours of agony about that one, seeing a shipment like this irrevocably lost. But in the last analysis he had to go along with it and, in fact, even be grateful. Because saving the shipment was not the primary thing. It would be a bonus if it could be done, unquestionably, and it would be nice to be able to hold onto it for its profit potential and for the leverage it would give him. But the main thing was to get it out of Peru. It was a survival matter. If they found it here, not only would it be destroyed but he would be destroyed also. They would see it and trace it back and comprehend quickly enough what he had had in mind to do, and they would deal with him mercilessly. From his p
oint of view he could hardly blame them. It was business. It was purely a business proposition. There would be no feeling as they killed him, they would kill him simply because it would obviously be too dangerous to let him live … but nothing personal. Nothing was really personal in the organizational politics of these people. It was like the practices of another part of his life, a part which he refused even to think about now in which there also had been nothing personal, in which what had been done had been done by men who did it not for the joy but only the sense of it … and took no responsibility. There was no responsibility. It simply originated in circumstances.
All right. Get it out then. Get it out any way he could. He did not trust Wulff ever to turn the shipment over, but if he knew one thing it was where interests could lie, where the checks and balances of relationships truly rested, and Wulff and he were in perfect accordance on this one point: Wulff needed to get out of the country, the drugs needed to get out of the country; if each was the only way that the other could, then they would. Then they certainly would.
Stavros sweated it out, then. If things were going according to the schedule he had prepared, Wulff was at that moment in Cuzco, arranging the transfer. At this moment, as Stavros sat in his office and ran the progression of scenes through his mind, he was heading under escort for the helicopter which would take him the first leg of the way. But what if he were not? What if Calabrese had informants deep, deep within his organization and had anticipated all of this, was already working on a counter-thrust? What if—Stavros jumped as he had the thought—what if Wulff had been intercepted and shot down?
No. He would not think of it. Life was real, rational, earnest and he was cleverer than Calabrese. He had planned for all of this; unlike Calabrese he had never been so stupid as to present the enemy on his very ground the means of his salvation as Calabrese had done. He must have faith that now as before he was superior to Calabrese and that when their two intelligences meshed lock-to-lock through the agencies of other men he, Stavros, would be the superior. His instincts told him this was so. And he knew many things that Calabrese did not.
He waited and he waited and toward nightfall he received a clear psychic flash that he had won. Somehow Wulff had gotten through. He had gotten into Cuzco, Calabrese’s men having been either unalerted to his coming or unsuccessful in their attempts to block him. He had gotten into Cuzco, had taken over the shipment and now was on the next level of operations. As the impact of this hit him Stavros almost gasped, his body becoming a fist as it cramped over, then he relaxed and smiled. He believed profoundly in his psychic input; it had saved him all his life, it would not fail him now. If the inference was that Wulff had made it, then he could accept this. He could accept the inference. He was halfway out of it and toward survival.
He celebrated. He sat alone in his working suite and poured himself a victory drink of scotch, three fingers, taken neat. They made him feel good, and another three fingers made him feel even better. The sons of bitches thought that they could overcome Stavros but he had showed them. He had showed them! Then he remembered that the sons of bitches had thought nothing, probably, because they did not even know of the trade that Stavros was trying to set up, which was the reason they had not tried to overcome him, and this made him intensely solemn. He took another three shots of scotch to quench the solemnity.
And so he made it through the evening, made it through the evening in his own unique and individual way, just, he thought, as Wulff had to, as all of them had to … until one of his lieutenants got him on the phone and said that he had something to tell Stavros and said it was important and Stavros said okay, tell him, and the lieutenant came in and in a very grave and distracted way told Stavros that the helicopter in Cuzco had gone down somewhere in the mountains. Natives had seen the pieces. The pieces were unmistakable. They had brought the reports right into the Crillon and the associate knew it and now Stavros knew it too.
IX
The first thing that got you, Wulff thought, was the incredible height, the sense of distance in the terrain; unlike America where everything was impacted, driven in upon itself, here in the lost city of the Incas there was a sense of distance unknown to the north, a scale of landscape entirely different from that on which all the assumptions of America had been based … that life was controllable because compressed. Doubtless that was why the pioneers had cut away at the awesome continent above, closed it in with walls and cities, to restrict the unimaginable emptiness. But Peru, outside of the cities which were American imports, was a different culture; here it was not life but death, or at least acceptance of it, which was celebrated, and in these ranges one could see the outlines of one’s death coming upon one as clearly and closely as if it were perceived in sleep. And this was perhaps, or perhaps not, the key to Peru; to the lost city of the Incas it was dreamlike. The conquistadors might have had that feeling of unreality as they closed ground upon the ancient civilization, a feeling of consequences simultaneously heightened and reduced because what was happening here was not happening in the ordered sense of Western civilization. Death was a constant here but not disproportionate; it co-existed with life, that was all. Life and death, two sides of the same great balance wheel and little discrimination to be made between the two.
Perhaps this was why no one at the depot had paid any attention to him as he came in except for the two men who were evidently waiting for him. Two men had died just beyond that turn in the road, one by Wulff’s hand, but it made no difference; death being the omnipresent quality it was, it could hardly bestir any excitement. The two men recognized him immediately and came toward him; they reached toward him with a shared intensity as if they were wired through the same electrical socket, were being powered by the same impulse, but at the last instant each of them withdrew and Wulff saw that they were not going to touch him. He looked from one face to the next, trying for some kind of differentiation, but there was none. They looked the same—their heavy, blunt faces, their compressed aspect, the black, expressionless clothing they wore which might have been business suits if they were wearing ties, the pointed shoes and in their lapels some kind of obscure emblem which he could not fathom. More than anything else, they looked like paired miniatures of Stavros.
“What is it?” he said, “where are we supposed to go?” They looked at him without curiosity, miniature men, miniaturized eyes; in a moment he realized that they were not going to answer him and that language had not been one of the factors keyed into them, at least in this instance. Truly, there was nothing to say; he should have understood that. Much of life here was sub-verbal.
They motioned, both of them in the same gesture, and Wulff followed, trudging from the bus depot. As he came out of the enclosure, the dry hot air of the mountains hitting him fully again and filling his lungs with emptiness, he thought that something was going to happen this time to yank the situation around; for there, up the hill, were the passengers from the bus trudging slowly downward, some of them looking at him, a few waving langorously (actually they were waving frantically but in the climate could not generate much energy; Wulff knew that) and Wulff had a vivid image of flight, pursuit, entrapment, and a long, ringing collision with stone as he fell down the faces of the mountains … but nothing whatsoever happened. Most of what went on occurred within the spaces of his own mind, and in truth, at least here, people were simply not that interested in him. He followed the wide, flat backs of the two men, carefully putting one foot in front of the other, concentrating upon the activity of walking in the way that a child might—one step, two step, pause, hesitate, one step, two step, reaching out for the oxygen and the will to power himself between strides.
A few yards down from the depot there was an old car, a 1951 Oldsmobile he thought it might be, already idling. One of the men gestured for him to get into the rear seat and Wulff did, a faint, ominous sweetness coming up from the cushions and the floor like cyanide although it could only have been age. The man to his side slammed the door on h
im, got into the passenger seat while the other walked slowly around, got into the driver’s seat and then sat there breathing for a few moments while his respiration slowed to normal. They acted as if they had all the time in the world. Perhaps that was exactly the point; they did have all the time in the world. American versus warm-climate concepts of time. The car began to move. Hydramatic transmission, rough on the shifts, two-speed as all of them had been until 1955 when Oldsmobile along with the other GM cars had introduced the three-speed, the what-did-you-call-it, the turbo-hydromatic automatic transmission. First shift point in normal driving at 12 miles an hour, second shift point at 27. That was a hell of a good transmission except that they had a way of going bad at forty thousand miles or so; Olds couldn’t get the bands right. Of course the two-speed was nothing to rave about; generally speaking you could expect to drop two transmissions on an Oldsmobile Futuramic 88 within three years of delivery and each replacement was a cool two hundred dollars. Why was he thinking of all this? Why did it all come back to him, why was his mind racing through ancient Oldsmobile specifications when he was supposed to be picking a milliondollar load of shit out of the Andes, running it back in exchange for his freedom to some unknown destination up north. Who the hell knew? He guessed that it probably had to do with the atmosphere here; he was still lightheaded. Then again, that was no excuse.
“Where is it?” Wulff said, the car rolling, “where are we going to go?” In front of him the two heads bobbed, unspeaking. “I said,” Wulff said, “where are we supposed to go for the shit?”
There was a longer, thicker pause here and he realized that they were not going to say anything. Probably they did not speak English, although that in itself was no excuse for ducking the inquiry; they could have nodded, demonstrated to him with their hands, at least, that they would be delighted to converse with him but did not know what he was saying. Bastards.
