Assignment - Amazon Queen

by Edward S. Aarons

  Durell stood up.

  "Now, Mucujai. Sally, you stay here."

  “No, Sam. I must go with you."

  Her voice was adamant. He did not argue. He climbed the broken garden wall and dropped into tall weeds on the other side. Mucujai shouted in a shrill voice, and from all around them in the dark night the Indians arose and began to run toward the big house. Durell still carried his can of gasoline. Sally kept hers, too. Belmont came over the wall like a long, skinny cat.

  "Which way, Sam?"

  "The laboratory shed."

  They ran to the right behind the screen of Indians. The darkness was filled with shots and screams. Sally panted under the cumbersome weight of her fuel can, but she did not abandon it. Broken masonry hampered them, and an abominable tangle of vines clutched at them and tripped them, then another wall. A machine gun stitched a bloody message into the fabric of the night. At the second wall, Durell paused. What remained of a high terrace loomed dimly before them. The stars were fading; the night was at its darkest now. Something slithered away in panic through the spiky undergrowth. An animal or a lizard, he thought. The clear area before them was exposed to windows in the right wing of the hacienda. Beyond the house he glimpsed the shed roof of the laboratory, but the night shadows made everything blurred and indistinct.

  "Belmont?"

  "Yes."

  “I'll take your gasoline. Sally, this time you wait here with Belmont. I mean it. Both of you cover me."

  She nodded agreement and he picked up her can of fuel, balancing it against his own, and left his rifle with Sally. There was a vague path that circled the house across the open area of the terrace. He was halfway across when the automatic rifle opened up on him from an upper window. He could see the muzzle flashes as the rifleman sought him out. Twigs snapped near him. He ran faster with his awkward burden of sloshing gasoline. Behind him, Belmont started firing in short, savage bursts at the gunman's window. Durell flung himself to the ground at the comer of the laboratory. The vague shape of a door showed in the plank wall. He left his two gasoline cans and tried the handle. It was locked. There were no windows. Behind him, Durell heard Belmont's gun again. He backed up a bit and hit the door with his shoulder. The planks proved to be flimsy and rotten. The lock burst apart. He went back for the fuel cans and stepped through the broken doorway.

  Someone moved in behind him, blocking his escape.

  "Sam?"

  It was Willie Wells and Inocenza. Light from a sudden burst of flames in the generator building outlined the couple against the night.

  Durell said, "Let's get to work."

  "Don't we look for any data we could take home with us?" Wells asked.

  "No."

  "I don't get it."

  "We bum everything. Here and now."

  "Sam, we're supposed to get the formula."

  "It wouldn't be here. Do you want anybody to get it, Willie?"

  "Not the Russians or the Chinese, that's for sure."

  "Then start in with the gasoline."

  There was a smell of chemicals, a glint of glass and stainless steel laboratory equipment, the shape of a compressor, a row of small steel tanks stacked up like a pile of hundred-pound aerial bombs. Benches, tables littered with equipment, a row of filing cabinets along the house wall, For a moment, he was tempted to search. A double door was set in the interior house wall. He tested the latch carefully. It was not locked. He did not open it yet. The sharp smell of splashing gasoline filled the black air. Inocenza stayed very close to Wells, helping him. Suddenly then was firing from just outside the laboratory, on the terrace they had crossed. Men yelled. Someone paused in the broken outer door of the lab and Wells raised his gun, only to be halted by a gesture from Durell. The man looked in did not see them in the interior gloom, and moved on. Inocenza let out a small sigh.

  "We are trapped in here?"

  "Willie, use your matches. We'll go on into the house The stone wall will keep the flames from us."

  Wells said, "Into the lion's den?"

  "Agosto is no lion."

  He opened the double-leafed door and drew Tnocenzi through. She fell against him, her body pliant and yielding but she quickly pulled away and looked back at Wells. Willie's match was a small bomb flare in the darkness. The gasoline burst into flames with a tremendous whoosh! and then a flat, explosive sound, as Willie jumped back into the main house. They were in a wide, square room filled with rubbish and cobwebs; it might once have been a salon or a library. In the great burst of red light, Durell saw that the room was empty. The heat struck them like giant slap in the face. They retreated across the dusty room, the roar of the flames covering their quick steps The opposite doors led into a narrow hall, where a few fallen timbers lay at odd angles from the collapsed ceiling They climbed quickly through and over the obstructions This wing of the house had never been reconstructed Durell heard feet running overhead, a spatter of shots. A door at the end of the corridor was flung open and two figures tumbled through. Again Durell checked Willie's automatic move with his gun. It was Belmont and Sally, disheveled and panting. A long scratch bled on Belmont's cheek. Sally looked unharmed.

  "Figured you'd be nearby." Belmont drew a deep breath and Sally leaned against the wall to rest. Belmont's eyes gleamed red in the glow of the fire behind them. "Mucujai's going to get his ass shot off. Tried a frontal attack over there." He flipped a hand to the right. "Got beaten back."

  "Let's find Agosto," Durell said.

  "Cajun, he's for me. Remember that."

  A small stairway led them up to the next level. This wing had once been used to house domestic servants. Durell paused at the top of the narrow steps. A door here leaned askew on broken hinges. The light from the lab fire was cut off up here. Durell squeezed through the broken doorway and the others followed. No one was in sight. The hall ran the length of the wing. About thirty feet onward was an intersecting corridor leading to the central section of the hacienda. The floor creaked dangerously underfoot. There was an odor of decay, of many years of emptiness, mingled with dust and mold that splotched the walls like cancerous growths. There were shouts and more running feet from below now, as Agosto's men fought the laboratory fire. An Indian ducked from the intersecting corridor, saw them, opened his mouth to yell a warning. Durell hit him and the man fell toward Belmont, who hit him again. They went on into the main upper corridor.

  Apparently most of Agosto's men were below now. There was a series of empty rooms along one side of the hallway, but the windows had been abandoned as firing posts. Durell moved swiftly ahead through the dimness. Smoke curled after them, close on their heels. He felt a growing sense of unease. Something was wrong. If he missed Agosto, if the man escaped somehow, unpredictably, he might team up with the Russians or Mr. Soo. Anything could happen, then. Agosto might make a sortie for the airstrip and the planes there. It was one reason Durell had removed the ignition keys from the Cessna and the Bell chopper.

  He passed the radio room, stopped, went back.

  In the dim red light, he saw that someone had effectively smashed the transmitting equipment. Agosto, probably.

  It didn't matter now, with the generator knocked out and no power available. He turned back. Belmont was gone.

  "Where is he?"

  Sally said, "He ran on ahead."

  "He wants Agosto real bad," Wells added. His face gleamed with sweat. "Sam, I think Agosto outsmarted us."

  "We'll try the theater," Durell decided.

  Another flight of stairs took them down into gloom and dust. The smoke was thicker here. The theater doors were to the right. Durell felt a tight apprehension. He heard the distant shouts of Agosto's men fighting the fire, but there were no more gunshots. Mucujai had been beaten off. He smelled dust, heat, the slow decomposition of decades. He stepped through the wide doors.

  It was too late.

  Belmont was on the stage. He looked like a giant insect caught up in a tight bag of spider webs. The single oil lamp that served as a fo
otlight shone up at his white face, his glaring eyes. He had been caught in a spring-snare hidden on the stage, tripped by his unwary footstep. Covered by a piece of loose canvas, with innocent-looking lines leading back, had been a net that had lifted him high in the bag when weights for hoisting scenery had been tripped. The weights still swung like slow pendulums. The trap had been a device contrived by Agosto for unwelcome intruders. Belmont hung in the bag, an arm and leg projecting, the rest of him trapped like a bug in a cocoon, and Durell wasn't sure if he was alive or dead.

  "Belmont?" he called softly.

  Too late, he knew that he had been drawn into Agosto's trap, too.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The little theater seemed empty, except for Belmont's enmeshed figure on the stage. Durell knew it was not. There was no way to keep Wells and Sally and Inocenza from moving in behind him. Inocenza made a small moaning sound when she saw Belmont's helpless figure. Sally drew close to Durell. He put a hand out to ward her away from him, to give him room to move. Wells moved to the opposite wall beside the door. For a moment, then, no one moved. The oil lamp cast strange shadows on the former delicacy of the private little theater. A few glints of gold still shone on the painted curlicues of the boxes above. All the seats were empty. The silence in here rang with danger.

  "Belmont?" Durell called softly. "Agosto?"

  Someone laughed. It was a harsh, incongruous sound, followed by a stumble, a curse, another belch of laughter. Durell could not miss the identity of that voice.

  "O'Hara!"

  The fat old man came on stage warily, peering here and there. He clutched his inevitable bottle in a wavering paw. He stumbled again, glared at Belmont, who hadn't moved in his truss of nets, and squinted out from under his shaggy brows, through the light of the flickering oil lantern. Footsteps padded in the main hall beyond the theater entrance.

  "That you, Samuel?"

  "Yes."

  "He's got you."

  "I know."

  O'Hara grinned wickedly and poked at the net that held Belmont. "Got your man here, too!"

  "Is Belmont dead?"

  "Maybe."

  "Where is Agosto?" "Coming."

  Inocenza began to swear to herself in Tupamara dialect. Behind them, Durell heard more footsteps and saw other guards move in through the side doors of the theater and felt a gun probe at his back. They were enclosed in as effective a net as was Belmont, on the stage. The gun muzzle in his back became urgent. He moved forward down the aisle to where the bidders had conducted the auction last night.

  "Capitdo!" Inocenza called. "Have you betrayed us?"

  "No, child. He just caught me." O'Hara sweated suddenly. "Durell was right. He's goin' to kill us all." "Come down here, O'Hara," Durell said.

  The old man came down the side steps of the stage, holding his dirty white pants up around his belly. At the same moment, Agosto appeared on the stage like a player on cue.

  He wore a neat, clean bush jacket with a bolstered pistol at his belt. The leather was shiny and polished. His brown pleasant face and black eyes smiled. He might have been the long-dead Don Federico, coming to welcome his elegant rubber-baron guests. It was difficult to believe that behind his gentle, engaging smile, there existed a brain as cold as the outer fringes of hell.

  "Gentlemen!"

  His armed guards formed a circle around Durell's party, covering them with enough guns, Durell thought, to contain a military company. None of the Indians, presumably, belonged to Mucujai's rebellious party. A thin curl of smoke entered the theater by way of the back stage. Agosto glanced at the gray tendril, but only smiled again.

  "Gentlemen, you see how foolish you have been. You have only done my work for me. Obviously, as I promised, I meant to put this place to the torch, myself. Durell, have you your letter of credit?"

  "Yes."

  "You were searched. It was not found. Why did you not bid for the formula last night?"

  "I'm not buying," Durell said.

  "You thought you could steal it by force?"

  "I thought I could destroy it."

  "Ah, yes. But you have failed, eh?"

  "Not yet."

  "The Indians you managed to disaffect are defeated. These here are loyal to me alone. As is so often the case among people in your profession, you see that the Russians, the Chinese, all the others, they have stayed clear of your abortive attempt to destroy me."

  "It's not over yet," Durell said.

  "You still try to bluff me? I will have your letter of credit now. Please. Do not resist. Your life is not important to me."

  "The amount is not yet filled out," Durell said.

  "I will not be greedy. Let us make it a round hundred million," Agosto smiled.

  "And the formula?"

  "I have it here."

  More smoke surged in from behind the stage. One of the Indians coughed nervously. The sound of crackling flames touched them. Durell looked at Belmont's figure, hanging in the net onstage, snarled in the lines. The stage weights that had hoisted the trap had stopped their gentle swinging. Belmont's eyes still glared lifelessly at them from amid the shrouds; thick blood oozed from a head wound and covered the left side of his face; but Durell thought there had been a slight change in the man's position. One arm projecting from the bagged web was a bit lower now. Agosto never bothered to look at his captive, who hung there like a giant netted fish taken from the Amazon.

  Agosto reached in one of the pockets of his bush jacket and held aloft a shining, stainless steel capsule. Then he carefully unscrewed the two halves of the four-inch container and took from it a small roll of paper.

  "The Zero Formula, Senhor Durell. The complete description of the device and how it functions. The Zero Formula, for which you and the others, who are foolish not to be here at this moment, traveled so far to buy."

  Agosto was not smiling now. "It is yours. Yours, for your nation exclusively, as long as you insure my life."

  "I'm not buying," Durell said again.

  Sally drew in a long, sighing breath. Wells moved closer to Inocenza. It was doubtful, Durell thought, if the guards who surrounded them with their palisade of weapons knew what was going on. He looked at Belmont again, in the net above the stage, but nothing had changed.

  More smoke hazed the air in the theater. Some of the Indians stirred restlessly. The pop and crackle of the fire was distinct now as the flames roared closer.

  O'Hara whispered hoarsely, "For God's sake, Durell, you can't hold out against him. He's got all the aces."

  "Not quite."

  Agosto spoke from the height of the stage. "You play for time, Senhor Durell? But time has run out for both of us, for you and for me. I offer you the exclusive rights to the formula. It is what you came for. It is what your orders expressly bid you to obtain. It is yours, senhor, if you have your letter of credit, as you say."

  Agosto called one of the Indians forward and spoke in a rapid spate of Tupamara dialect. He then switched back to English, and there was a venom in his voice. "My man will strip you, Durell, and he will not do it gently. I want your letter of credit now, signed, sealed and delivered."

  "How can I trust you?" Durell asked.

  "Do you have a choice? I have canceled the auction, since your competitors stay in their bungalows and do not appear. It is your good fortune, senhor. When you produce the credits, I hand you the formula and dismiss the Indians. You must leave at once, however. A plane will be provided to fly you to Paramaguito. From there, other transportation will be made available."

  "And you will stay here with the others?"

  "I will stay, but I shall be alone."

  "Then you are condemning my competitors to death. You ask me to be a party to a massacre."

  "It was you who forced the issue, who made them aware of the inevitable end to this little game of mine. You caused them to know that I had to kill everyone here, except for you and me." Agosto's voice was virulent now. "You showed them that for my own safety, to prevent publica
tion of the second copy if I were killed, they would have to die." The haze m the little theater was growing stronger, acrid and thick. "Come. I have been more than courteous to you."

  Durell saw Sally's eyes on him. They held a plea in their golden depths he could not define. He shrugged and slipped off his wide belt, unsnapped the buckle, and tugged. The outer seams of the stitched leather had already been opened and searched. But inside, there was another slot that had been overlooked, which came open when the buckle was detached. He thrust a finger inside and took out the folded letter of credit that Kevin Kendall had given to him in Geneva.

  "Here it is."

  "Now. Very good. You will fill out the sum of one hundred million dollars, which I am sure has been deposited in this account, eh? And you will sign it."

  Agosto's flat-faced Indian guard produced a ball-point pen. Something made a sudden cracking sound in the domed ceiling overhead. A long tongue of angry flame licked down from above. The Indians murmured. Durell did not look up. He filled in the formal letter of credit and signed it.

  Agosto looked pleased. "You are a sensible and practical man, Senhor Durell."

  "But you are not," Durell said.

  The ceiling began to fall in.

  2

  The Indians shouted and drew back in alarm from the shower of falling, burning timbers. At the same moment, there was a swift squirming in the net suspended above the stage behind Agosto. Belmont was very much alive. With his loose hand that projected from the web, he reached in and pulled a flashing knife from a strap attached to his calf. The net came apart in long, looping strands, releasing him. He came down on Agosto's back like a long, skinny spider pouncing from the center of its web.

  A flaming timber fell among the Indians, who yelled and screamed as the heavy timber smashed one man's head and pinned two others under its massive weight. Durell pushed Sally down between the seats and jumped for the stage. The guards were too terrified by the collapsing ceiling to stop him. He heard a single shot from Agosto's gun. It was a confused struggle under the tangled pieces of netting that had been Belmont's prison. Willie Wells jumped to the stage beside him, a gun in his hand taken from one of the guards. Durell coughed in the thick gush of smoke that filled the theater. A sudden wall of heat encompassed him, and he held his breath while he grabbed for Agosto's hand through ropes of the net. Agosto held his gun at Belmont's head. Durell chopped at the neck of Agosto's neck with all his strength. He heard the vertebrae snap. Stainless steel flickered in Agosto's fingers. He grabbed for the small cylinder, caught it, wrenched it free. Then he jumped clear himself, pulled at Agosto's arm, turning the gun away from Belmont's face. But there was no resistance, suddenly. The man's fingers were limp.