It's Getting Harder All The Time

by Troy Conway

  “Eight …” she counted. “Nine …”

  I couldn’t give her a clout—not while she had the barrel of her pistol starting me in the face—but maybe, just maybe, I could do something about that pistol.

  It was about two feet from my head.

  If I grabbed for it, she could fire before my hands got any where near it.

  But my knees were another matter.

  They were directly underneath her gun-hand.

  I could jerk them up in a split second, and before she had a chance to realize what was happening the thirty-eight would be pointing harmlessly at the ceiling.

  “Ten …’ she said, and just as she did, my knees jerked up.

  There was an awe-inspiring instant of total silence, then a deafening report, as fire belched from the pistol’s barrel and a bullet whiningly crashed into the ceiling.

  My right hand closed around her wrist. My left closed around the pistol barrel. I jerked the weapon out of her grasp.

  Then I did give her a clout—a god, solid backhander. If sent her flying, away from the bed and on to the floor. When she staggered to her knees, a small river of blood had materialized at the corner of her mouth.

  I knew it would be far more dangerous to kill her than to let live. Douzi might buy a cockamamie story from her about how she had killed me because I lured her to my room and tried to rape her. But even at his most gullible he’d never but any story about why I had killed her, his beloved mistress.

  I slowly took the remaining shells front the pistol’s chamber. Then I handed the pistol back to Su Wing.

  “I’m keeping the radio,” I told her. “Now get of here you’re getting on my nerves.”

  She nodded, wiped some blood from her mouth, and started silently toward the door. When her hand was on the knob, she turned to face me. “I know that you won’t take any orders from me under these circumstances, Damon, but I hope you’ll permit me to make a request.”

  “Go ahead,” I scowled.

  “Please, please, Damon, don’t be so talkative on the radio. I realize that you don’t want to die in an attack by PUF. But it BELSO learns that you’re spying on Douzi, you’ll die anyway—at the hands of executioners far less merciful than the blast of a bomb. I’ve been tortured by BELSO, Damon, so I know what I’m talking about. They torture slowly … painfully …so slowly and painfully that a victim of their tortures would accept death a hundred times over in place of just one more minute of torture.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  “And one thing more, Damon. Please, please, don’t be so zealous in your quest of Douzi’s secrets that you disarm his guards and leave them tied up half-naked in the cabs of armored trucks. Douzi has no reason to suspect right now that it was you who disarmed the guard this morning at the treasury, but you were lucky to get away without getting caught. Please be more careful in the future.”

  I saluted her with one of the bullets I’d emptied from her pistol. My smile told her that I wasn’t going so say thanks-for-the-advice more than once.

  The corners of her mouth jerked upward in what was half a smile, half an unspoken goodbye. Then she opened the door and walked out, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  Amendment: alone with my thoughts and with Lumombe. The unshakeable eunuch came breezing into the room as soon as she had left.

  My thoughts were more interesting to me than he was, so I ignored him and concentrated on them.

  So, I mused, nobody knew I was responsible for the fracas at the treasury vault. That was a good sign.

  And I had managed very neatly to avoid getting my head blown off by Su Wing’s pistol. That was a good sign too.

  Maybe my luck had taken an upswing after all.

  Or had it?

  Now that I thought about it, if my luck were really good, I would’ve found the bombs in the treasury vault and I wouldn’t have had to take the pistol from Su Wing because she never would’ve pulled it on me!

  Nope, I hadn’t gotten lucky again yet.

  And as development of the evening later showed, I wasn’t about to for quick some time.

  When dinner and the social hour were over, I returned to my room to take on the evening’s procession of sex-seekers.

  Vera, the big-breasted beauty, was first. I gave her the same spiel I had give Tania a few days earlier, and she told me what she knew. Bad Break Number Four: she didn’t know anything that Tania hadn’t told me already.

  Nadia, a brunette named Svetlana, and an Oriental chick named Mai followed in short order. Bad Breaks Numbers Five Through Seven: they couldn’t shed any further light on the situation either.

  Tania came next. Bad Break Number Eight: she hadn’t found out anything new.

  After we had made love, I told her about my plan to break the language barrier that separated me from Olga. The plan was simple. In fact, it was so simple that I was kicking myself for not having thought of it earlier.

  What is boiled down to was this: Olga dug sex. Ever since the afternoon when I’d given her a sample of my talents on the bench in Douzi’s bath, she had delighted in all the little bed-games we have played together. Now, with Tania’s help, I was going to invite her to a slightly different kind of bed-game—a game involving three players instead of two. Tania would be the third player, and as chance would have it, the interpreter who would translate into Russian the questions I wanted to ask Olga, then translate into English the answers she supplied.

  “When you see her tomorrow at the laboratory,” I told Tania, “tell her what I have in mind. I’m pretty sure she’ll like the idea. Then, tomorrow night, both of you come to my room together. May be we’ll get to the bottom of this crazy business then.”

  Tania agreed, we made love again, and she left. She promptly was followed by a blonde named Marta, whom I pitched just as I had pitched the other four girls. Bad Break Number Nine: she had nothing to tell me either.

  Finally Olga came in for her customary finale. We swung until the nine o’clock curfew, and she left. More tired than I could ever remember being, I dropped off to sleep, and I slept like a baby until seven the following evening, when Lumombe woke me up to tell me it was time to dress for dinner.

  I hurried to the dining room, hoping to find out it Tania had set up the threesies shot with Olga. Bad Break Number Ten: Olga had dropped out of sight.

  “I spoke to her this morning,” Tania reported, “and was very enthusiastic about the idea of all of us making love together. In fact, she was so enthusiastic that although she hasn’t said ten cordial words to me in the past month, she threw her arms around me as though we were intimate friends, She and I agreed that we would come to your room together tonight after the other girls had had their turn. Then we left the laboratory for lunch.

  “After lunch, Olga went to Douzi’s study —a daily ritual with her—but she never returned to the lab. By five this evening I became concerned. I asked the girls if they had seen her, and they said they hadn’t. Finally, when I went to my room to dress, I asked my eunuch to find out from her eunuch where she was. He replied that both she and her eunuch where she was. He replied that both she and her eunuch had been driven somewhere by one of the palace chauffeurs. He didn’t know where they’d been given to, but he agreed to question the other eunuchs in an attempt to find out. A few minutes before I came to the dining room he told me what he had learned. The place they’d been driven to was the village of Colon, a small town deep in the belgravian rain forests, neat the Republic of Congo border.”

  I gulped.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.

  “I’m thinking,” I said, “that the bombs are stores in the village of Colon, and that has gone there on very official business.”

  “you’ve thinking what I’m thinking,” she nodded, her expression very much one of concern.

  I thought about it all thought the meal. In fact, I thought so much about it that I hardly minded the baked elephant feet—or whatever it was that I was eating
. Then, when the meal was over, I made my decision.

  “I’m tired of playing sitting duck for PUF, for BELSO and for CHILLER,” I told Tania. “I’m going to steal a car and break out of this crazy place. Than I’m going somewhere I can find a telephone, and I’m not coming back until I have half the United States Marine Corps with me. If you’d like to join me, you’re welcome to.”

  “Promise that you’ll make love to me while we’re waiting for the Marines to land?” she asked.

  “I promise.”

  “Then I’m ready when ever you are.”

  I waited until Superman and the femme physicists had begun filing into the recreation room. Then, talking Tania’s hand, I fell in at the rear of the line.

  Connection the recreation room and the dining room was a small corridor. Midway down the corridor was a door leading to the ground floor of the building. We ducked through the door, down a flight of stairs, along another corridor, into an empty sitting room, through door and out into the night.

  Thanks to my many strolls about the place grounds during my attempts to out-walk Mazimba and Lumombe, I had learned the layout of the place as well as I knew the layout of my own bedroom. The knowledge now came in handy.

  Leaving Tania in a tree-shaded alcove at the intersection of two walking lanes, I hightailed it to my room. There I picked up Lin Saong’s transmitter and the gun I had taken from the guard at the treasury building. With these all-important items tucked safely into my pockets, I returned to the alcove.

  Then clutching Tana’s hand, I cut across one of the intersecting paths, through a flower graden, down another path, over a small knoll and in to the clearing that served as the palace motor pool.

  The motor pool was guarded by two armed sentinels. One of them stood alongside the small shack at the entrance, while the other paced around the clearing’s perimeter. Crouching behind a canvas-covered truck, I waited for the pacing sentinel to come my way.

  He ambled by a few minutes later, his rifle slung over his shoulder, his pith helmet cocked back jauntily atop his head. I let him get past me. Then I sprang front behind the truck, and in one quick motion, I whipped off his helmet with one hand while my other hand brought the butt of the pistol crashing into his skull. He went out like a light.

  I took his rifle and tossed it into the seat of the truck, and after whispering some quick instruction to Tania, I cut across the motor pool, crouching low and keeping in the shadows of the nearly parked rows of vehicles.

  When I was in place behind the jeep that nearest to the other sentinel’s shack, I tossed a pebble over my head in Tania’s direction. There was a loud ping! as it bounced off the roof of a sedan. Then a motor whirred to life, and the canvas-covered truck roared out of its parking place.

  The sentinel in the shack came running out of the door as soon as he heard the motor. Tania wheeled the truck down the lane which passed the shack, The sentinel waved his arms frantically for her to stop. She did—about five feet in front of him, just as I had told her to. Unholstering his pistol, he advanced toward her.

  I waited until he was few steps from her door. Then I leaped out from behind the jeep. He turned as I neared him, but his reflexes weren’t fast enough. Before he could point his pistol at me, the butt of my pistol cracked into his face. He took a step backward, his eyes rolled skyward and his legs fell out from under him.

  I relieved him of his pistol, climbed behind the wheel of the truck and heard for the main gate. About a hundred feet before I would’ve reached it, I stopped the truck and whispered a few more hasty instructions to Tania. Then I got out, slipped into the woods alongside the road, and carefully worked my way toward the gate guardhouse.

  The sentinel in the guardhouse was stretched out in a chair, leafing through a French girlie magazine. I watched through the window as he pored over the pictures, his face a portrait of carnal desire. He looked up when Tania, who had timed my movements, dropped the trucks into gear and came rolling down the road. Then, scowling at this interruption of his photo voyeurism, he tossed the book on a desk, stepped out of the guardhouse and waved to her to halt.

  By this time I had my routine down so pat that I could’ve gone through it blindfolded. Once again my arm whistled through the air. Once again my gun butt made contact. One more sentinel bit the dust.

  Taking the key ring that was clipped to his belt, I hurried to the gate. The first key I tried didn’t fit the lock. Nor did the second. Nor did the third.

  I was fumbling with the fourth when I heard a sedan roar around the corner. It turned onto the main road several hundred yards behind the truck. Its headlights gleamed wildly as it bore down toward me.

  With feverish fingers I tried the fourth key. It turned the lock. I pushed open the heavy iron gate, then scurried toward the truck.

  A bullet whistled over my head as I neared the door.

  I crouched low and returned fire.

  Another whistled by as I reached or the doorhandle.

  I pressed my body against the door and returned fire again.

  Then there was a third bullet.

  Only this one didn’t whistle by.

  Would you believe, Bad Break Number Eleven?

  I felt a numb sensation in my shoulder, and my pistol fell from my hand. “Take off, Tania!” I heard myself yell. Then everything went black.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I came to in the back seat of a limousine that was speeding along a narrow, winding road. The wound in my shoulder had been crudely bandaged. My wrists were bound behind my back.

  Sitting next to me was Tania. Her wrists were bound behind her back also, making her full, round breasts strain against the bodice of her mini-dress like a pair of grapefruits straining against a tight sack. Despite the pain in my shoulder, I couldn’t help but glance down at her tights. The hem of her mini was hiked high, and the warm white flesh of her bare legs gleamed invitingly in the bright moonlight.

  In the jump seat opposite me was my eunuch, Lumombe. He had a pistol trained on my head, and the look in his eyes told me he was just dying to pull the trigger.

  In the jump seat opposite Tania was the pint-sized President of Belgavia himself, Dr. Albert Douzi. He sat with his legs crosses and his arms folded self-satisfiedly across his chest. His eyes were darting back and forth from Tania’s legs to my face, as if he were following the ball in a fast-moving ping-poing match. “Ah, Damon,” he beamed when he noticed that my eyes were open, “you’ve rejoined the land of the living.”

  I managed a weak smile. “Better aim next time, Doctor.”

  He chuckled. “It wasn’t a question of poor aim, Damon. It was a question of not killing a goose that might lay a golden egg.”

  “You can thank me for that, Damon,” came a voice from the front seat. “I pointed out to Dr. Douzi how you’d be much valuable to him live than dead.”

  I didn’t have to look to identify the speaker. It was Su Wing. Douzi winced at the interruption—not much, but just enough so that I could see he thought she should keep her pretty little mouth shut.

  “To whom would I be more valuable, baby?” I challenged, exploiting the situation’s possibilities or stirring up internal strife. “To him … or to you?”

  “How could you possibly be valuable to me?” she asked edgily, apparently not realizing that she was getting herself in deeper with every word.

  “The same way I was valuable every other time you felt the need for sexual servicing,” I grinned. “And don’t try to deny it, because Tania here is a witness.” I nudged Tania’s knee with my thigh. “Remember the time you came to my room, honey, and found Su Wing and me making love?”

  “Which time was that?” my pretty seatmate purred with deliciously feigned innocence. “The time you were doing it in bed, or the time you were doing it standing against the wall?”

  There was a pregnant silence. Then Douzi chukled softly. “Clever psychology on your part, Damon, trying to create animosity between Su Wing and me. But it won’t work. She already
warned me you might try something like this.”

  I grinned evilly and started him straight in the eye, “Did she also warm you that PUF plans to attack your palace a week from now?”

  His chuckle was louder. “As a matter of fact, she did—three days ago.” Then, suddenly, he stopped chuckling. “But how did you know about the attack?”

  “He knew, darling, because he was the person my so called comrades chose to deliver the message to me,” she put in quickly. “He told me the day he arrived at the palace, and I told you the very same night.”

  “Why would they choose me to deliver the message?” I shot back. “According to the timetable, I was supposed to be in the palace when the attack took place.”

  Douzi scratched his head. “This is getting very confusing. Damon, if you were supposed to be in the palace when the attack took place, why didn’t you simply refuse to come to the palace?”

  “Because,” I ad-libbed, “I didn’t know about the attack until after I had arrived at the palace. Su Wig told me about it after the first time she and I made love, and she promised to get me out of the palace with her because she didn’t want to lose my services as a lover.”

  “He’s lying, dearest,” she rebutted. “He came to the palace knowing that the attack would take place because he had been promised that both he and I would be rescued before it actually did.”

  I tried to put myself in Douzi’s shoes as the person who ad to decide which of the two stories was true. I decided that I’d think twice before I accepted either of them.

  Douzi didn’t think twice. “Nice try, Damon,” he said, smirking. “But you don’t fool me. I’m onto your game.”

  “What’s my game?” I asked.

  “You want desperately to save your skin, and you’re saying anything that comes to your mind in the hope that I’ll believe you and turn against Su Wing.”