Assignment - Amazon Queen

by Edward S. Aarons

  "Good. I could use the sleep."

  "Belmont," Durell said, "don't go off half-cocked again."

  "You're the boss, Cajun."

  The hammock was soft and comfortable. Sleep tugged at all his senses. Even the insects were no longer a torment, now that the wind moved through the Amazon forest. He listened to the night birds, the sound of branches creaking, the distant rumble of the river. He thought of the Duos Irmaos, still regretting having had to destroy it; but it had been necessary to keep everything in balance. He could not have allowed Mr. Soo or Vodaniev to strand him in Sao Felice.

  Someone crept up to the head of his hammock.

  He did not move or betray his awareness. He had no weapon, only his hands. He lay still, nerves suddenly tingling, his muscles ready to bunch and spring.

  "Sam?"

  It was Sally Hukkim.

  "Come in," he whispered.

  She stood where he could dimly see her face in the fitful light of the clouded moon. The wind made a branch fall somewhere in the swampy forest nearby. Sally's dark face was in the shadows. Her fine nose and arched brows were highlighted, and he saw that she had tied up her long, silken hair in a knot at the nape of her neck, to relieve herself from the heat. She reached out and touched him.

  "May I?"

  "Come in," he repeated. "How did you get away from Atimboku?"

  "My royal, murdering brother thinks it's safe for me now. I have no place to go, out here in the forest. He knows I have to stay with him now."

  "Stay with me," he suggested.

  She slid gently into the hammock with him. Her body was warm and soft, pliant against him. He remembered their two weeks in Mozambique so long ago. She had gone back then to Pakuru, to assume her royal duties when the old Queen Elephant, her mother, had suddenly died. He remembered the turquoise look of the Indian Ocean, the bending coconut palms, the hotel cottage they had shared.

  "Has Atimboku threatened you again?" he whispered.

  "Only to make you take him along."

  "Would he really hurt you?"

  "He tried to kill me once, you remember; when he thought I stood in his way to power in Pakuru. He's much worse now. Almost paranoid. The country lives under his constant threat of terror; he's a tyrant, Sam. And now that Pakuru is rich, he will not be stopped from anything he wants. Yes, he would hurt me, kill me if necessary, to make you cooperate."

  "He wants the Zero Formula that badly?"

  "He'd sell our whole country, mortgage it forever, to get it. He is so hungry for power, he's a bit mad."

  Durell sighed and held her closer. "Stay with him for a little while longer, please."

  "Yes, if I must. But Sam—do you remember the times when you and I—"

  "I remember."

  She somehow managed to smell fresh and clean here in the Amazon's swampy forests. The moon came out briefly and he saw her luminous golden eyes, her face close to his in the broad striped hammock. He reached for her and kissed her lightly. Her mouth reacted hungrily to his. The forest around them suddenly seemed to go silent. She wore nothing under her loose Pakuran skirt and blouse.

  "Sam?" she whispered.

  "Hush."

  "Sam, for two years I thought of you—wondered if I had made a mistake to go back to my country—"

  "You did the right thing."

  "I know, but—"

  "Hush," he said again.

  The hammock was very comfortable for the two of them.

  Chapter Nine

  The insects forced them up before dawn. There was no sun. Gray clouds tumbled overhead, seen through the high umbrella of trees branching overhead. Belmont was up, his hammock already packed. Sally had slipped away and returned to her brother's little camp. The Chinese were the last to get themselves ready for the trek. Belmont, in his tattered, wide-brimmed straw hat and gaunt, bronzed face looked the part of a halfbreed guide, wearing his loose white jacket and floppy trousers supported by the length of rope.

  O'Hara seemed better. Inocenza made some coffee for them all, watching Durell with curiously bitter eyes. When he drank the steaming liquid in the vaporous gray dawn, she spoke in a voice like a spitting jungle cat.

  "Was she that good?"

  "We're old friends, Inocenza."

  "Ha! Because my Portuguese skin, always in the sun, is a bit darker than her Chinese and black and whatever-it-is her mother had—is that why you—"

  "Nothing like that."

  "I saw you first, I offered you anything you wished— but you did not find me desirable, is that it?"

  "No, that's not it," he said patiently.

  "Was she good? You made to love for a long time, eh? I was not asleep. I saw her sneak to you, the African bitch. Who does she think she is? She is no better than I! I know how to love a man—"

  "Please help O'Hara get started," he said.

  Willie Wells had picked up a compass in Sao Felice, along with other supplies. They began walking southwest, after Belmont spoke to the bleary-eyed O'Hara. There were no trails in the endless gray forest to show where they were going. The ground was squashy underfoot, and twice before nine o'clock they had to wade through hip-deep bogs and over swampy islets in a colorless miasma that seemed to go on forever. The sky, the forest, the trees were all gray. They were like ghosts struggling through an eternal mist. It soon became a desperate, despairing business. They stumbled, tripped and fell, got up to climb over massive windfalls of huge, half-rotted logs, then bogged down again in the squashy, quaky forest floor. Within the hour after they started, it began to rain, a warm wet drizzle that soon soaked them all to the skin, compounding their misery. They panted, cursed, and struggled forward. In the swampy areas, Agosto and Belmont went ahead to beat the water with branches to frighten off snakes. They could not see the sky through the overhanging branches of the tall trees, and soon few of them had the strength or inclination to look forward beyond their next footstep.

  Insects were another plague added to the mud. Clouds of them in all shapes and sizes descended on them, crawling into their shirts and up their trousers, biting and stinging, fighting to get into their mouths and eyes. Few of them were familiar, and the size of the largest was appalling. There seemed to be no escape from them. One of the Russians, stung more virulently than the others, suddenly screamed and flung himself face down into a thick puddle of mud and water, thrashing about and plastering his face with the mud in an effort to ease the torment.

  Orchids hung from the gray tree branches, and now and then a mass of brightly colored birds flocked around them as they pushed on desperately. The beauty of the birds and the tropical foliage belied the primeval dangers of their trek. No one spoke to his neighbor. Wading knee-deep through the mud to the next relatively high area of the forest floor, Inocenza clung desperately to Willie Wells, and Sally, trying to go on with solemn fortitude, suddenly moaned and fell to her knees.

  "Sam! Sam!"

  He turned back to her. The warm, sullen rain, that sometimes came in bursts Like a waterfall, streamed down her face, plastered her thick black hair to her head, made her torn clothing cling to every rich curve of her body. Durell helped her to her feet, noting that Prince Atimboku and his bodyguard ignored her.

  "You have to go on," he said gently.

  "I know, but—"

  "Come on," he urged her.

  The others trudged past without looking at them. Sally looked at the Chinese and the Russians with bitter eyes. "What kind of people are they?" she whispered. "What kind of a man are you, Sam? I know they have orders, but must they be inhuman? This awful place—"

  "Hush," he said. "I'll help you."

  She clung heavily to him, and slowly he got her to walk again. There was some relief from the insects when the rain grew heavier, but the absence of that evil was more than lost because of the increased slipperiness of the mud and water through which they slogged. Once, he heard a wild pig grunt, and he looked up to see the beast facing them, the tusks gleaming, the tiny eyes red and cruel. Its sh
aggy body was enormous. Everyone came to a halt, hesitating to display any weapons he should have discarded for the "truce." Durell pushed Sally behind him, and for a moment there was no sound except the distant chittering of monkeys and the hiss and thunder of the rain. But then the great beast suddenly changed its mind about charging them, snorted twice, and trotted off among the colorless, rain-dripping trees.

  Time became meaningless, measured only by each step forward. It was another hour before the exhausted party reached the old railroad bed. It suddenly loomed up through the rain like a solid barrier, the crushed stone of the ballast making a wall ahead of them. Everyone halted, bent as if under the weight of the pounding rain, mud-stained, scratched and beaten by branches and vines as if by whips. Belmont scrambled up the incline and waved a white-clad arm. His straw hat was shapeless, dripping with water. His dark eyes were sunken in his head, cadaverous, too bright.

  "Aqui. Aqui mestno!" he croaked. "Here, right here!"

  The others scrambled painfully up onto the roadbed with groans of relief. Durell looked to right and left along the gentle curve of the right-of-way. The ties were still in place, but the iron rails had long ago been stripped from the bed. Weeds grew waist-high in the cinders and stones, and vines curled down from trees that had been axed and grown up again. Here and there were other, younger trees that had taken root in the middle of the track. Great brakes of bamboo, thick and flowery, twenty and thirty feet high, grew in the ditches and walled them in. But it was road that could be followed, clear and distinct.

  Durell gave O'Hara a hand up the embankment. The old man puffed and his face was waxen under his weathered skin.

  "Ain't been here for thirty, forty years," O'Hara grunted. His beard dripped rain. "Hell of a place. Full of ghosts. We were all boys then, full of piss and vinegar. Lots of 'em dead and gone now. Good Southern boys, some of 'em kin to the finest Confederate families." The old man managed a lopsided grin. "Their pappys and granddaddies come here after the Civil War and left their kids all over the place, amongst the Indians and locals."

  "Which way?" Durell asked.

  O'Hara squinted at the wet, sullen sky. "To the right, I reckon. We go south some more."

  "Just keep your mouth shut to the others, all right?"

  "How much do you pay me for that, sonny?"

  "The government will decide about that. We'll double what you received from the people at Don Federico's."

  "Ain't enough. They'll likely kill me."

  "We'll talk about it later. Are you all right?"

  "Inocenza is with me," the old man said.

  The others, the four Chinese and the Russian, Vladim Vodaniev, with Atimboku, Sally, and their two warriors, scrambled up the embankment. At that moment, as if on signal, the skies opened and the rain became a thunderous, torrential downpour. It spit, hissed, poured, and hammered at them like a waterfall. It came without warning and did not let up. The curtains of water were blinding and suffocating.

  "It's what the Indians called a pacatu," O’Hara yelled. "We gotta get out of here."

  "We walk," Durell said. "We're late enough as it is."

  The others huddled inward on themselves as if for shelter. Durell started off down the old rail embankment. If not for the solid ballast underfoot, they would all have been mired down in mud and streaming water. Belmont moved in beside him as they trudged into the walls of rain. His lips moved, but Durell could not hear him. Then Belmont pretended to slip and went down on all fours, and as Durell knelt to help him up, Belmont spoke in his ear.

  "I've got an extra gun. A Browning. Take it."

  "Good." Durell slid the heavy weapon into his waistband and took Belmont's arm. "You look sick."

  "I'm okay. I've got an old map, too. There's just one stop between Sao Felice and the plantation. A place called Dixie, can you beat that? Maybe a ghost town, because the Indians say it's cursed and nobody lives in this area now."

  Durell squeezed Belmont's arm. "How far?"

  "Maybe six or seven miles, I think."

  The Russian, Vodaniev, came up, his squat figure hunched against the thundering rain. Mr. Soo loomed behind him. "What is it?" Vodaniev asked.

  "The guide slipped and hurt his leg. He says he doesn't want to go on, anyway."

  "Why not?"

  "He says this whole place is haunted."

  "We must go on," Soo interrupted. "Our time is growing quite limited."

  "All right, then."

  They marched in a straggling column, each group still keeping to itself. Durell felt better with the cold weight of the Browning against his stomach. Presently he heard footsteps stagger up behind up out of the thundering rain. He turned to see Prince Atimboku. The man's eyes were bloodshot with anger.

  "It is outrageous. Must we walk like this?"

  Durell waved a hand. "It would be a long wait if you expect a train." He smiled at the furious African. "You can always turn back, Tim."

  Atomboku said, "I never liked you. I don't feel I owe you anything for getting me out of Pakuru that time. You were simply doing a job." The tall black man wiped rain from his face with the flat of his palm. His clothing had suffered rips and tears and looked ragged, but he still managed to emanate a sense of royal, unpredictable power. "Your duty now is to buy the Zero Formula, am I right?"

  "Correct."

  "But I intend to buy it. How much do you want, Durell?"

  Durell looked up at the sky. A wind had risen above the treetops and it drove the torrential rain into their faces.

  "I'm not for sale," Durell said.

  "You name the price," Atimboku insisted.

  "You can't buy everything you want, Tim. And of all the things you've set your rotten heart on, the Zero Formula is one of the things you will not have."

  "You bastard, nothing will stop me, you hear? You won't hve to open your mouth for the bid, understand?"

  Durell looked at the man's enraged face, the red muddy eyes in a handsome face gone flabby with self-indulgence. "Go back to Sally," he said. "She has more good in her Ut-tle finger than you have m your whole rotten carcass."

  "Sally will not live, either," Atimboku said. "I know you two are plotting against me. But what I do is for the good of my nation, for Pakuru, for my people." Atimboku drew in a deep, shivering breath. "I have given you fair warning."

  "Thanks for nothing."

  2

  The rain slackened after two weary, drenching hours. Durell slogged on steadily, comforted by the Browning thrust into his pants. Agosto walked with Belmont, up ahead. Durell dropped back to O'Hara, who had suddenly sat down in the middle of the causeway, holding his fat stomach in both hands. Inocenza knelt beside him, concerned. Vodaniev stood there, too, and looked up at Durell as he walked back.

  "Why do we need this degenerate sack of lard?" the Russian demanded. "Why do you insist we take him with us?"

  "He knows the country. And I owe him something for blowing up his steamboat."

  "We owe him nothing. He knows nothing. He is only a drunken fool. Mr. Soo and I have been discussing some things that trouble us, Comrade Durell. Your guide, for example. He is more American than Brazilian. And this fat old riverman. And his—his daughter."

  Inocenza looked at Durell and said, "O'Hara is sick."

  "I need a drink," O'Hara mumbled.

  "There's nothing to drink," Durell said. "Get up."

  "Can't. This place is haunted. I'm scared."

  "I know you're scared, but it isn't because of the ghosts. Get on your feet, O'Hara."

  The old man rocked on his fat bottom. The rain shone on his bald head and dribbled into his bristly gray beard. He looked slyly this way and that. "I reckon we're near Dixie, huh?"

  "It can't be far. Maybe we can shelter there and rest for a time. Let's go."

  "You don't have to go through the town," the old man muttered. "I know a short cut. Railroad took a bend, see? Like a loop, cutting across a neck of land made by the river. Save us ten, fifteen miles, at least."

/>   "We can't go through the swamps after this rain," Durell said. "It will be up to our necks."

  "It's still easier," O'Hara insisted.

  Vodaniev muttered something to Mr. Soo, who nodded and said quietly, his Chinese face suddenly smiling, "If Mr. O'Hara knows a short-cut and we could save time—"

  "Look at the swamps." Durell waved an arm. "If you want to swim for five miles, go ahead. We'll stick to the causeway."

  The rain had raised the water level of the surrounding flooded Amazon forest at least two or three feet in the past two hours. Foam and debris, broken limbs and rotting logs, moved in an ominous current northward, piling up along one side of the railroad embankment. There were no hummocks in sight. Overhead, through the long straight cut in the forest made by the roadbed, the gray clouds tumbled in oppressive density. The rain had slackened, only to be replaced by the steady rush of water through the swamp on either hand.

  The Russian hesitated. "Perhaps you are right, Durell. We will continue. If this fat old man objects, we will leave him here. His—ah—woman seems to want to take care of him."

  O'Hara said, "That's right. Lemme alone. I'll stay right here." His words were an incoherent mumble for a moment. "Too many ghosts in Dixie. Ain't nothin' there, anyway. Jungle's took back all the houses, the whole damned town. Too many dead men there."

  "Get up, O'Hara, or I'll blow a hole in your gut right now," Durell said.

  O'Hara made a gurgling sound. "You got a gun?"

  Durell saw Vodaniev stiffen and said calmly, "I think we all have guns. It's past time for us to be kidding each other."

  Mr. Soo said, "You have not kept your word, Durell?"

  "Have you?"

  Inocenza said, "You would not—in cold blood—"

  "Yes, I would. I want O'Hara with us."

  She began to tug at O'Hara's arm. "Get up, Capitdo. He is a bloodthirsty animal, like the rest of these crazy men." She glared at Durell. "He will surely kill you as he says, just the way he blew up your poor boat."

  O'Hara shrugged and climbed laboriously to his feet.

  They went on.

  3

  They reached the way-stop with the improbable name of Dixie a few minutes before noon. It was difficult to identify it even at close hand through the drizzling, slackening rain. Too many decades of abandonment to the jungle had almost obliterated it. There had been a small station, a warehouse with a corrugated tin roof, and a few Indian houses and a small stone church. Trees that were now thirty and forty years old grew in what had been the narrow streets, and vines covered everything with a leafy camouflage until the houses were mere mounds, and the collapsed station only a vague outline beside the right-of-way. Monkeys chittered in the dangling vines that grew from a single canted telegraph pole that somehow had remained standing. Only the stone church, covered with foliage even to its small belfry, retained some outline of its original shape.