Assignment - Amazon Queen

by Edward S. Aarons

  "What kind of cash?"

  "Italian lire, sir."

  "Do you have the envelope the tickets came in?"

  The Italian spread his hands regretfully. "I am sorry, signor. It was thrown out."

  "Do you remember the postmark?"

  "Ah. Of course! An Ethiopian airmail stamp. My son collects stamps, sir. I saved it only, not the envelope. They came from your friend who waits for you in Addis Ababa."

  On the flight over the Mediterranean, Belmont said quietly, "I've been thinking of Delacroix, Sam."

  "The artist?" Weyer asked.

  "No. You wouldn't remember this one, in the business. He was in the Resistance Movement in France, during the Nazi occupation. A Belgian, really. He ended up as a colonel in NATO intelligence, and about five years ago he just dropped out of sight."

  Durell said, "He ran the Nazis on a paper-chase scheme, too. Swiped some of their loot, led them from one clue to another, and in the end, booby-trapped and killed them." Durell paused. "But Delacroix is dead. He was killed in the Congo, where he'd gone to retire."

  Belmont nodded. "What about Mansciewicz? Polish. He liked elaborate schemes, too. I remember a game he played on the Russians, three years ago, when there was a worker's strike and a local uprising—"

  "They shot him for it," Durell said.

  Belmont's cadaverous face was calm. "Do you have any prospects in mind, Cajun?"

  "Three. A monster named Dr. Mouquerana Sinn, first. I ran into him in Sri Lanka—Ceylon—not long ago. He took over Madame Hung's private intelligence apparatus that used to operate out of Singapore. He might be the sort to amuse himself with this. There's also a Rumanian, Titus Telescu, who defected to Canada a year ago. A mischief-maker, very bright and dashing, but with a macabre sense of humor. His father was an agronomist, by the way. And his mother a chemo-biologist. His escapades are all on his dossier. The KGB would like to get then: hands on him, but Telescu went into deep black, the moment he hit Canada. Out of sight."

  Belmont said, "You're saving the third man for last."

  "He's a part-Portuguese born in Goa, the former enclave-colony in India. Then he went to Mozambique as chief security officer against the black terrorist rebels, and worked in Portuguese East Africa on a campaign that led the activists into one complicated trap after the other. He was remarkable. A devotee of gamesmanship. He never did anything the simple way. It was one devilish trick after the other: ambush, booby-trap, plot and counterplot."

  "Does he have a name?"

  "Colonel Paolo Bom Jesus da Santana. Short, built like a circus acrobat. Given to native women in various styles and outlandish techniques. Killed some of them sexually, I understand. His mother was a low-caste Indian woman with some English blood; his father was a petty clerk in the colonial service. No guessing where he came from. Before Santana went into intelligence, he ran whorehouses and gambling joints from Mozambique to .Macao, and then Rio. The way he cleaned out the terrorists in Mozambique was by weird and brutal tortures. Call him amoral. Although he has a Portuguese name, he could really be anything. Willie Wells might know about him, since he was a mercenary in Africa for a couple of years. And as I said, I'm calling for a reliable team-member from Lisbon Central."

  "Where do we pick up Willie?"

  "In Ethiopia."

  Wells always reminded Durell of a stalking black leopard, as intent on reaching his prey as any jungle animal, although he had been raised in Philadelphia ghettos, fought in Vietnam with distinction, then renounced the U.S for a time to drift around the world as a competent, deadly, efficient fighting man, offering his services to anyone and any cause, as long as the pay was sufficient. He had come to K Section through Durell, and Durell had good reason to respect the black man's capacities. They were friends—as friendly as Durell permitted himself to be with anyone in the business.

  "Someone hung this on me," Wells said soberly, when they met at the hot, dusty airport, debarking from the Air Ethiopia 707. "I was in the market killing time, looking at what these locals produce. Bought a parchment painting, these three guys with spears." He showed Durell the yellowed scroll painted with a Byzantine style, showing three warriors in scarlet and yellow. "I didn't want it, but the stallkeeper practically shoved it at me for nothing. So I took it. Lo and behold, gentlemen! A message for the Cajun on the back."

  Durell said, "So they spotted you, too?”

  Belmont was angry. "Either they're mindreaders, or they've infiltrated our position—or we have a traitor working with us."

  Andy Weyer clipped sun lenses over his horn-rimmed glasses and coughed delicately in the dust. His hair was long and unkempt, and he had assumed a stoop-shouldered posture. "Not necessarily. Durell thinks the paper chase is organized by someone who was once high up in the business. Somebody who works for the inventor of the Zero Formula. What does the message say?"

  “We go to Johannesburg this afternoon."

  Belmont said, "I'm getting a cramped butt from all these air hops."

  "It's just begun, I think," Durell said.

  5

  From Johannesburg they were directed to fly to Tokyo. Durell no longer bothered to check out the messengers. They were either ignorant or innocent. Yet every step of the way had been meticulously planned for them on a timetable. In the third-rate Tokyo hotel to which they were directed, a message from Kevin Kendall and another from Charley Weintraub waited for them. Durell was not surprised that McFee was monitoring their global hops. The terms of the ultimatum concerning the Zero Formula had stipulated that no other K Section teams follow on Durell's heels; but local Centrals had kept track of them, when Durell reported in on his passage.

  Kendall's message was pleasingly definitive:

  "We have learned that among the alleged legitimate teams being sent to the auction—wherever it may be held —there are also two 'rogue' groups. One is a dissident faction from Red China, a splinter branch of war hawks from the Black House in Peking. They are headed by Po Tsu-tse, whom you doubtless know, and an Albanian as a front named Guerlan Stepanic. They are in Lisbon at the moment. The British are in Hong Kong, the Russians in Havana. The legitimate Chinese have not yet left Shanghai, where their team is assembled.

  "The second rogue group is from Africa. I fear that the State Department's trust in Prince Tim as a balancing factor in the keystone independent black state of Pakuru has been disappointing and ill-founded. He has left Pakuru with his sister, the new Queen Elephant of Pakuni, and several of his mercenary intelligence people. Prince Tim has struck it rich, of course, with new finds of oil' and diamond mines in his emerging nation. It seems to have gone to his head. His nation's ancient feud with the 'Neighbors' may be his motivation. Do not count on the fact that you once saved Atimboku's life. He has changed, and none for the better, I fear. Please be careful."

  The second message was from Charley Weintraub, in K Section's laboratory:

  Dossiers at K/NSA/DIA/FBI all negative. Negative from London G6 and Paris Surete and Interpol. Two repeat two possibilities: Paolo de Santana and Titus Telescu. No whereabouts defined. Biochemist Albert Hagen, Baltimore, and Soviet Science Award winner Josef P. V. Makomin, and British Lord Henry Rawdon, Nobel winner in wave-length studies to sterilize insect pests, and Japanese Hokutsi Okura all worked on life-wave modulation destruct projects. All men vanished. Take your pick, Cajun. Maybe all three. Maybe none. McFee says you are going to Brazil. Have fun with cucarachas.

  Durell shared the messages with Wells, Andy Weyer and Belmont. None made any immediate comment. Wells was always quiet, impassive. Belmont simply looked annoyed. Andy Weyer opened a new box of nuts and raisins and said quietly,

  "I'm being followed, Cajun."

  Durell looked at his academic face. "By our people?" "No. A Chinese. Two of 'em, as a matter of fact. Ugly characters. You told me to stick to you like a shin-plaster, but then you sent me to the Embassy for these messages, and that's where I was picked up." "Did they follow you here?" Weyer said simply, "I think they trie
d to kill me." Belmont drew a deep breath. "Tell us, Andy." "They were in one of these little Tokyo taxis. Kamikaze drivers, all right. I took our rented car around the Ginza, headed east toward the bay, took some counter-measures to shake them. They were like glue. Finally parked and went into a pachinko parlor to see what would happen. They stood in the doorway, watching. They didn't try to keep their surveillance in the black." Andy Weyer grinned. "So I called a cop."

  Wells was startled. "You what?"

  "I went up to a cop on the comer and asked him how to get back to this fleabag, using some of the Nisei Japanese I learned in California, one time. Then I pointed to the two Chinese. They were surprised, and vanished. But when I got back to the car, they were waiting. Two shots. Each had a pop at me. Both missed. So I ran. I mean, I jumped into the rental and took off like a cat with a firecracker on his tail. And got here okay."

  Belmont wondered aloud, "Why you, Andy? It's Sam who carries the loot. He's the big Indian chief among us. So why did they pick on you?"

  "I don't know," Weyer said.

  Durell said, "The trails are coming together. They have to, eventually, in a day or two. Not all of the teams will have compunctions about wiping out the others to keep them from the auction."

  A messenger knocked on the hotel-room door.

  They were to leave at once on a flight over the Pacific, to Lima, Peru. For the first time, a two-lap directive was given. From Lima they were to fly over the Andes to Belem in Brazil.

  Andy Weyer packed his bag and kept eating his nuts and raisins.

  Chapter Five

  Paramaquito sprawled under a steamy sun between the Amazon and the confluence of the Rio Xapajos, a broad tributary of copper-colored water that added its sullen torrent to the four-mile wide O Rio Mar. In 1910 the town had been a busy depot for the inland rubber plantations, enjoying a delirium of profit and bitter shame, instant fortunes made through the cruel exploitation of Indians who were little more than slaves. Two years later the boom collapsed when Southeast Asian plantations won the market with rubber taken from Amazon seeds. The seringueros, those tribesmen forced to work at gunpoint tapping the trees in the virgin forests, lapsed into dismal poverty— those who survived. Now the descendants of these seringueros lived in shanty towns built of palmetto matting, a few scraps of tin, and flattened oil drums. A miasma of despair hung over the slums.

  Unlike Manaus, the bustling, resurgent city at the Rio Negro, which flowed into the Amazon with a mighty two-hundred-foot depth that flushed out forest and swamp, Paramaguito enjoyed no rebuilding, no skyscrapers, no new boom. Its once-elegant opera house reflected only crumbling splendor; its iron fishmarket, where Indian women offered acara-acu, pira ricu, and the giant piraiba catfish that sometimes reached 350 pounds, was a wide, hot area of stinking garbage, humming with green flies.

  The steamboat docked under the sullen control of Ma-noel at the wheel, amid floating rafts of fishermen's canoes, all offering their wares in soft tones under the brazen morning sun. The mist had burned off the river. A youngster paddled his canoe under the main deck and offered slices of a giant anaconda he had trapped. Other Indians held up marmosets, cats, parrots, hawks, and dogs. On the dock, a man laid out finely woven hammocks for sale.

  "Get some of those," Durell said to Wells. "Where is Agosto?"

  "Coming," the black man said.

  "And Belmont?"

  "Tailing Stepanic. He went ashore with the first rush of passengers. You know how he feels about what happened to Andy in Belem. I'll pick up the hammocks, but I don't know what we want 'em for."

  A girl who looked American in cut-off dungarees and a shirt with tails flapping over her buttocks waved to Durell and held up bamboo birdcages, one containing bright flycatchers, some kiskadees, and a fierce harpy eagle, a bird the Indians referred to as winged wolves. Then she lowered the cages, grinned, and sat in the shade of a tin-sided waterfront shed on the dock. He noted her location, then saw Agosto come down the ladder from the main deck. Most of the passengers had already crowded down the gangway. The crew worked stolidly at unloading the meager cargo of the Duos Irmdos.

  "How do you like it?" Agosto asked, smiling.

  He had put on the khaki and red-pipped uniform of a Brazilian police colonel, with elegantly polished boots.

  "You look the part, Agosto," Durell said.

  "My credentials are in order. It may give us the clout you asked for." The brown eyes of the Brazilian slowly swung over the dock, came back, swung left again. "Who is the girl with the birds, senhor?"

  "A friend, I hope. Arranged for her in Belem."

  "You think of everything, Senhor Cajun."

  Agosto's gray-streaked hair shone in the hot sun as he took off his cap and looked inside at nothing at all. His middle-aged face was solemn. His muscular chest heaved as he drew in a deep breath and put on sunglasses. "It stinks here."

  "Tell us something new," Wells sighed.

  "Yes. Well, O'Hara sneaked off the boat the moment we touched land. And Inocenza wants to talk to you, Cajun."

  Durell nodded. "Right. You and Willie go to the Hotel O Rei Felipe. Wait for me. I'll be along soon."

  Willie said, "You're carrying the letters-of credit, Sam. We shouldn't leave you alone, Sam."

  "Go ahead," Durell insisted. "Wait for Belmont at O Rei Felipe. I won't be gone for long."

  2

  Inocenza looked solemn and contrite, as beautiful as a dark, wind-grown orchid. In her plush, pink-lighted stateroom, she determinedly threw dresses, shoes, lingerie and boots into a battered suitcase. She wore old tennis shoes and tight-fitting slacks that emphasized the ripe contours of her rump. A white cotton bra held her firm breasts, and the gold chain with its crucifix delved between them. She had put a red bandana around her black hair, and her every move betrayed a resolution to carry out an important decision.

  "Come in, Sam," she said, when he knocked.

  "I'm sorry I had to do what I did last night."

  She shook her head. "It is I who suffer a dor —sorrow. If I had understood you meant to do something bad to that ugly O'Hara, I would have helped you willingly. But I am finished here now. Nothing under o ceu —the sky—' could keep me on this boat any longer."

  "What will you do, Inocenza?"

  She stared, her dark skin glowing. "Am I not pretty?"

  "Beautiful."

  "You did not think so last night!"

  "I did. But there was something else to be done."

  "Ah, well. A pretty woman never has any problems in these river towns."

  "You don't want to do that, Inocenza. Come with me."

  "Oh? Now, you ask?"

  "I still need your help. You can be paid for it."

  "To work for you, Senhor Cajun? At what? I do not know if you are o ladrao —a thief—or a policeman, or what."

  "I'm neither."

  "What could I do? For a moment in my bed, I thought you were only o moco —a boy. I know better, of course." She faced him, challengingly. "What do you want me to do?"

  "Take me to where O'Hara stays in Paramaguito."

  "No! Never, never, will I go back to that pig."

  "Just take me to his place here?"

  "You will be cruel to him?" she asked anxiously.

  "If I have to be."

  "Ah. Then I come with happiness to help you."

  The girl with the birdcages still lingered on the dock. When she saw Durell on the gangway, she stood up and the harpy eagle screeched, its yellow eyes malevolent. The little kiskadee flycatchers in the other bamboo cages twittered in terror. The girl went into the rusty warehouse with her birds.

  "You already have another lady-friend?" Inocenza asked.

  "It's business."

  "Ho. Ha. I do not like your job."

  The girl in the cut-off jeans had taffy-colored hair and dirty bare feet. The warehouse smelled of fish and lumber and sawdust, stale food and bat droppings.

  "Hi. I'm Connie Drew," she said. "You're the Cajun, right? I u
sed to be here in the Peace Corps. A real grump. When we were all fired, I stayed on, teaching the Indians in shanty-town."

  "I know. We've kept track of you."

  "We? I didn't think anybody cared what I was doing." She was suddenly hostile. "So who's keeping an eye on me? Are you Big Brother?"

  "In a way. Just cool it, Connie. We need your help for a bit. Did you get the GK-12 transceiver flown in to you from Belem?"

  "Sure. I can work it, too. Who is ‘we'?"

  "Uncle Sam, if you want to call it that."

  "Hell."

  "Me, if you prefer."

  She eyed him. "You don't look too awful." "All we want you to do is monitor the GK-12 'for a few days. You should be getting a message from me, I hope."

  She was suspicious. "You with the oil people? The Companhia Meridional de Mineracao? They're doing a geological survey inland with some snappy new radar stuff that can look sidewise and see through clouds. They say there are iron-ore deposits up the Rio Xapajos, which is why it runs red, they say." "Could be."

  "But you're not, are you? You're looking for somebody?"

  "Connie, if in three days or so, I ask for help, like a plane, can you get one in to me?"

  "Depends, if it can land where you happen to be." "There will be a hundred dollars in it for you." "Hell, you can shove your bribe, mister. My ass!" "The Indian kids you teach might be able to use it." "Oh." She grinned. "You're a tricky s.o.b., I can see that. Make it two hundred, in that case. You must be loaded."

  "It's a deal."

  "Want to buy one of my birds?"

  Durell looked at the vicious harpy eagle. "No, thanks."

  3

  The place was a mile upriver on the outskirts of Paramaguito. The morning sun made it an inferno. Flies and mosquitos and a hundred other varieties of insects, oversized and overly aggressive, buzzed, swarmed, hopped and clicked in the thick saw grass along the path. A battered taxi had taken them to the end of the dusty road leading out of town. The Rio Xapajos was a vast rust-red stream moving sluggishly toward the overpowering Amazon at their rear. Smoke from brush fires stained the pale sky.