by Lou Cameron
Maldonado nodded grimly, and said, “I know General Reyes outranks me. I know he’ll have my ass if he finds out about it. But if he’s innocent, he won’t find out. If he’s getting ready to make a power play, he won’t outrank a loyal private in this man’s army!”
The aide nodded and said he’d take care of the matter. He left his chief staring pensively at the meaningless map.
In truth, Maldonado had a lot to worry about. He had no proof at all linking the ambitious General Reyes to the Liberal Party, outlawed and in hiding, of course. But Reyes had openly stated on several occasions that he was heartily sick of the nepotistic near-anarchy pretending to run the country these days. Reyes was a conservative from an old family of the established oligarchy. Hence, free to express opinions, and above suspicion to anybody but a man who thought like El Arafio.
But Maldonado knew Reyes was well traveled, sophisticated, and in favor of patching things up with the outraged U.S. and going’ ahead with a Colombian-owned Panama Canal. The young general would be acceptable to many liberals and conservatives alike, between his views and connections. Rafael Reyes had to be smart enough to know this. There was little doubt the Americans would smile on any plans Reyes might have, and Captain Gringo, despite the price on his head, was an American. Ergo, Reyes would have to be watched like a hawk and, if Captain Gringo showed up anywhere near him, El Arano would have to see that they both died. Or … did he?
Maldonado poured himself another drink and sat down in his web to do some very serious thinking.
Chapter Nine
The voyage south from San Salvador took less than a week. It seemed like a million years. Traveling under their new identities as a Canadian journalist and his wife, Captain Gringo and Liza were forced to share the same cabin. There was an upper and lower berth with an adjoining bath. The lights of course switched off and the tall American had told the English girl – many, many times – that he could act like a gentleman if he had to. It got tiresome as hell to have her warn him, every time they found themselves alone in their quarters, that he’d better not get ideas.
He had no intention of getting ideas; at any rate, no intention of acting on them. It was a little rough on the glands to spend night after night cooped up in a small space filled with the sounds and smells of a reasonably nubile member of the opposite sex.
The Vanderbilts apparently didn’t worry about a passenger in the lower bunk rolling out in heavy weather. But the top bunk was provided with brass bars that could be slid in place like the side of a child’s crib. Liza, had volunteered to sleep up there, which seemed reasonable. Her arch comment that nobody could leap, down at her from the low ceiling had been totally uncalled for, in his opinion. But he hadn’t said he was particular about who he leaped down on. He didn’t know if she was fishing for compliments or insults, and either way it was a bore.
They did run into ground swells from some distant storm, the last night off the Colombian shore; and since strolling the deck was a bit athletic if not risky, and the main salon was stuffy with cigar smoke, Liza turned in early. Captain Gringo saw her to their cabin, then went back to join Gaston in the salon. He had his own cigars to smoke and it was bad enough trying to sleep these nights, when a guy was tired!
He rejoined Gaston at a corner table. Both their backs were to the angled bulkheads and they could see the entire, salon. The view was somewhat depressing. Most of the other passengers were male and some of them looked green around the gills as the steamer wallowed and the swinging overhead lamps cast shifting shadows through the blue smoke haze. The few females in sight, as far as one could make out in the tricky light, weren’t worth the strain of staring.
Gaston was drinking crème de menthe and dark rum mixed with lemon pulp and crushed ice. He said it was good for seasickness and suggested some for Captain Gringo. The tall American grimaced and said, “I was feeling fine, until now. That shit looks like octopus puke. I’ll stick to gin and tonic.”
Gaston curled his lip and said, “Gin is for Dutchmen and other barbarians. We are going up into the fever-free Sábana de Bogotá, hein?”
Captain Gringo told a waiter to bring him a gin and tonic and then turned back to Gaston. “I’ve been looking at the map. Bogotá is one of those places you can’t get to from here. We face about a week of roller-coaster land travel. There are three main ranges of the Andes running across the damned country, with spur ranges to complicate matters. That’s why I bought us fall and summer clothes in San Salvador. Where it ain’t high, it’s a sea-level swamp, and we’re close to the equator.”
Gaston shrugged. “It was your idea to come. I thought the railroad would make better time than that between the coast and interior.”
“It would, if it was one connected line. The route’s a thrown-together tangle of worms. Wherever it gets too rugged for easy railroad building, they fall back on the original Inca roads, and the Incas must have liked scenery. They never took the short way if there was a long way round. I understand our railroad tickets include coach or saddle mule most of the way between railheads. But we get to walk a few stretches and I don’t walk worth a damn with jungle fever. So you drink your shit and I’ll drink mine.”
Gaston smiled thinly and opined, “I have never found that tonic water does a thing for anyone. It is one of your Anglo-Saxon superstitions. Like bitter marmalade or sulfur and molasses. When will you gloomy Protestants learn that if le Bon Dieu had intended us to eat or drink things that tasted bitter, He would have made them sweet?”
Captain Gringo chuckled as the waiter put his drink in front of him. He said, “Everyone to his own taste, Frenchy. You go ahead and eat your snails and rotten cheese. I’ll stick to quinine, in the tropics.”
He took a sip before he added, with a slight frown, “I’ve noticed Liza has a sweet tooth, for an Englishwoman. I haven’t been able to get her on quinine water, either. I know you’re tough enough to leg it up a mountain with a temperature. But she doesn’t look very strong.”
Gaston snorted and said, “Merde, she’s killed two people that I know of, and – take it from an old soldier – she’s had training! Don’t let the hollow cheeks and fluttering eyelashes fool you, Dick. Liza is one very tough lady indeed.”
The American took another bitter sip and replied, “Yeah, it’s sort of weird. You don’t buy that blushing maiden shit, do you?”
“I did at first. But even before I saw her bayonet a man with a parasol, I had reservations about British Intelligence recruiting a silly virgin. She tells a very imaginative story about being forced into this mission after she was caught in an act of petty thievery.”
“I’ve heard it. You don’t believe it either?”
“Mais non. Greystoke would hardly use anyone who couldn’t get away with an easy crime. She is obviously more experienced, and less trusting, than she lets on.”
“That’s what I thought when I suggested you search her luggage.”
“Oui, but as you know, I drew the blank. Since you yourself bought all the new luggage in San Salvador, and since there is not much of it, it took me but a moment to go through her things as you walked hereabout the deck the other night. She isn’t even carrying a gun.”
‘The gun’s in her purse. It’s a .32 Harrington Richardson whore pistol. Sawed off barrel, five shots.”
Gaston thought, nodded, and said, “Of course, you were alone at the table with her purse when I danced with her the other evening. What else did you find, aside from the inevitable pistol?”
“The usual mirror, comb, change purse, a box of tampons and some makeup things. If she’s carrying any dispatches, she must have them pinned or taped under her dress.”
Gaston shrugged and said, “Well, we know she hasn’t anything bulkier than an envelope on her, then. So she would seem to be, a simple messenger girl, despite her lack of openness with us. Perhaps she has an oral message. It has occurred to me she may be an assassin.”
“Oh, come on.”
“One must consider
every angle, non? A woman has certain advantages on such a mission. Many a political figure has dismissed his bodyguard for the evening, in the company of a beautiful woman, and …”
“Wrong two ways. The Brits don’t go in for assassination much, and she’s not bad, but she’s not the yum yum tree they’d send to seduce a Latin. Greystoke would send a big buxom blond on a mission like that.”
Gaston nodded absently, and said, “We shall probably never know just why he forced us to bring her along, unless she messes up. I am rather relieved about you finding items of feminine hygiene in her purse. It eliminates one of my wilder flights of fancy. At least we can now assume she is really a woman, non?”
Captain Gringo shot him an incredulous look and said, “Run that by me again?”
Gaston said, “I, too, expected to find such items among her things. I knew we had not done much shopping in San Salvador, but there was a drug store in our hotel. Even allowing for fortunate timing, this trip has chewed up the greater part of a month and she can’t be over thirty, so any prudent woman would have provided for the messy emergencies their gender burdens the poor dears with, hein?”
“Jesus H. Christ, are you saying you suspected Liza of being some sort of transvestite?”
“There is only one sort of transvestite. You were not there when I saw her formidable bayonet work. She is tall for a woman, and as strong as many a man. Her hips are as narrow as a young boy’s and if she has any tetons, her bodice does little to show them off, hein?”
Captain Gringo laughed and said, “You’ve got some imagination. I’ve been sharing the same cabin with her for almost a week now.”
“Ah? Allow me to present my congratulations. No one would take you for honeymooners, but, of course, you are supposed to have been sleeping together a good three years, so …”
“Back up. I never said I laid her, you idiot. She’s jumpy as a flea on a frying pan whenever we’re alone.”
“Really? Then how do you know so much about her anatomy?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, you couldn’t share the same cabin night after night with a guy and not know it.”
“Not even an effeminate one, if he was shy?”
Captain Gringo started to protest. Then he half closed his eyes and ran the last night or so through his memory. He’d been feeling horny as hell in his lower bunk, with the rustle of her nightgown and the smell of her perfume haunting the darkness at close quarters. Their small shared bathroom was only two paces from the head of his bunk and it had been impossible to ignore the sounds and scents of another person using the commode or shower stall. Liza seemed compulsive about cleanliness and every time he went in there the air still steamed with perfumed soap, shampooed hair, and the mouth-watering tang of freshly scrubbed flesh.
He said, “Well, I’d be. surprised as hell, even if she wasn’t carrying pussy stuffers and … speaking of pussy ….”
Gaston glanced across the room at the statuesque blond who’d just entered the salon with two big Russian wolfhounds straining on red leather leashes and almost as spectacular as their mistress. They were blond too, but neither wore a tight red satin dress or a big picture hat with ostrich plumes.
Gaston nodded as the imposing woman took a seat across the way and parked her dogs under the table. He said, ‘That’s the Divine Rowena. She’s on her way to Bogotá with her acting company. She wouldn’t let me buy her a drink and the damned dogs snapped at me when I tried.”
“I can see why she doesn’t feel the need of an escort. You say she’s an actress?”
“Oui, a famous one, according to the purser. The others are less visible, since she seems to prefer to shine alone in the footlights. The purser says they are on their way up to Bogotá to perform a Spanish language version of As You Like It.”
“That big broad is a Shakespearean actress? She looks more like a Flora Dora girl.”
“Oui, perhaps that is why she is restricted to the less civilized parts of the world. They would laugh at her in Paris, or even Leadville, Colorado, when one thinks about it.”
The waiter moved over to the big blond’s table. She ordered three steins of cerveza, loud enough to be heard across the salon, and Gaston said, “Watch. This is something you have to see.”
A fat man in white linen and a dramatic planter’s hat came in. He doffed it grandly to the blond, but took a seat at another table.
Captain Gringo asked: “Falstaff?”
“Manager. She doesn’t mix with her inferiors.”
The waiter returned from the bar with three steins of suds. He’d done this before apparently, for though he grimaced, he didn’t argue. He put one stein in front of the woman and bent to place the other two on the floor. The big blond’s hounds were trained to await some signal and neither moved until she’d given them permission to creep forward in unison and start slurping their own cerveces. Gaston chuckled. “A dog’s life, eh? She perfumes them too.”
“A real animal lover, eh?”
“I would assume so. They are both male.”
Captain Gringo shot Gaston a disgusted look and said, “You have a filthy mind, you dirty old goat. First you wonder if Liza is a queer and now you suggest that poor lady is practicing bestiality!”
“Merde alors, it was not my suggestion. She had those very large beasts with her when she came on board. I think I may have told you of the time I worked as a hotel detective, non? It is well-known among hotel people that nine out of ten women living alone with a male dog amuse themselves that way, and that blond has two, so—”
“Oh, shit, I had a dog when I was a kid. I never even thought about screwing it.”
“Of course not. Boys have less imagination than girls. The female of the canine species is not inclined to make advances, since she only comes in heat occasionally and is inclined to be waspish about advances even from her own kind. Male canines, on the other hand, are always trying to mount one’s knee or shove the nose up one’s crotch, hein?”
“Okay, so you slap them with a rolled up newspaper and they stop. She obviously has them well trained.”
“True. They seem devoted to her, as well they should be. I have experimented with a bitch in heat a few times, and even to a dog, a woman must be better.”
“Your confession doesn’t surprise me. But that blond’s not that bad. She could do a lot better than a brace of wolfhounds if she wanted a roll in the feathers, for God’s sake. As a matter of fact, if I wasn’t supposed to be a married man, right now—”
“Forget it, Dick. When I was investigating such matters at the hotel I discovered that women who live with large male dogs are shy about men. You see, we had these peep holes, in order to investigate odd noises without embarrassing the guests, and you would be amazed to see the trés attractive women who go in for that particular release. Consider the advantages for a woman alone in these moralistic times. She can’t get in a family way with her pets. They can’t besmirch her reputation by boasting to the other men in the bar, and, even if she’s not hard up, it seems only common courtesy to accommodate her loyal companions with a bit of harmless perversion, non? Why go through all the mess and bother of a frantic bachelor beast when it only takes a few moments to satisfy his needs?”
“Yuck! Okay, I know some people get carried away with treating a pet like another person, but, Jesus, two of them?”
“It is the numbers that add up for me, knowing what I do about such matters. Animals make lusty but unskilled lovers and, as you know, a woman is just warming up when many a man has satisfied himself. I would say two well-hung males of any species would be about right, hein?”
Captain Gringo said, “Let’s change the subject,” as he became aware that the blond had noticed their interest in her pets and … was she actually blushing?
He felt an uncomfortable tingle in his groin as an obscene picture came unbidden to his mind. It was easy to undress her pink curves in that too tight dress and he looked away with a smile. For some reason, it seemed even dirtier if he
pictured her on all fours, naked, but wearing that big silly hat while a huge blond shaggy beast went at her hot and heavy, wagging its tail.
Gaston asked if he wanted another drink. He shook his head and said, “No thanks. We’ll be getting into Buenaventura before noon and God knows when we’ll get another shot at sleeping between sheets.”
He left Gaston to admire the blond as he headed for his own cabin. The deck swayed under him wildly, but he wasn’t feeling the one drink he’d had. He was only mildly tired and the discussion of a lush-looking lady’s sex life had given him a mild erection. Maybe picturing blond quiff would keep his mind off the brunette right above him until he got to sleep.
Chapter Ten
He didn’t knock on the door of the cabin he shared with Liza. He had his own key and if she was asleep he didn’t want to awaken her. If she was awake, it was far easier to let himself in, anyway, than for her to climb down out of her crow’s nest.
He stepped inside and whispered, “It’s me,” as he closed and relocked the door. The cabin was pitch black. He knew the ceiling bulb would flash right in her face if he switched it on, so he didn’t. It was easy to find one’s way around in the tiny cabin by feel. At least, it was when the ship wasn’t rolling. He tripped over a valise that had slid out from somewhere and muttered a soft curse as he shoved it aside with his boot. Liza didn’t seem to notice. He groped his way to the bunks and sat down to haul off his boots, trying to be quiet about it. Above him, Liza was quiet as a mouse. He’d noticed she didn’t snore, thank God, but she was a light sleeper, tossing and turning at the slightest noise, and the creaking of bed springs and the rustle of starched linen had a bad effect on a man forced to sleep with his fist.
He hung his gun and the contents of his pockets in the little net hammock against the bulkhead over his mattress. Everything else went to the foot of the bunk as he stripped. Liza had raised hell, the morning she rose early to discover him obviously naked under his sheet, but he’d told her she could sleep in anything she aimed to and that he’d damn well do the same. He wasn’t about to bind his crotch in bailing wire for a dame who had three feet of air and a solid wooden shelf between them.
