Mambo

by Campbell Armstrong

  Ruhr opened the door. The night air was scented in a way that was unknown to Steffie Brough, whose world had always been circumscribed by Norfolk and the Fenlands. She smelled ancient moss and lichen and something else, something bittersweet she couldn’t identify but which made her think of carcasses. She took the plugs out of her ears and was assailed at once by noises completely alien to her, bird sounds she’d heard only in zoos, a great clacking and squawking that echoed on and on.

  Ruhr turned from the doorway. “Do you know where you are?”

  She shook her head.

  “This is Honduras.”

  She tried to remember atlases, maps, but her sense of geography wasn’t strong. The Panama Canal, the Gulf of Mexico came to mind, but she couldn’t quite place Honduras. Wasn’t it close to Nicaragua? She wasn’t sure, and this lack of certainty caused her despair. Wherever Honduras was, it was a very long way from anything familiar. And how could she even think of escape? If she got a chance to run from Ruhr, where would she go? She pictured jungles and headhunters, snakes and tarantulas.

  She was aware of her crumpled skirt and soiled blouse and some oil stains on her maroon blazer. She needed a bath badly, but she’d come to think that defiance was more important than fresh clothes; not outward defiance, but another form of resistance – in the mind, the heart. Outwardly, she would try to comply with Ruhr if she possibly could. But inside, where it mattered, she’d stay hard and cold and distant. It was an antidote against falling completely apart. She had to be bloody strong, that was all. No weepy moods. No moaning. Given just half a chance, she’d get through this somehow.

  Still, she hated the way his hand lay against her lower back as he led her towards the door and the rope ladder that dropped to the ground. An insufferable intimacy; she remembered how he’d undone her bra back at the farmhouse – oh God, the farmhouse was such a long time ago – and blood rose to her head. She couldn’t stand his skin against hers, but she’d have to. If she wanted to survive she’d have to do everything he told her.

  Just so long as she was untouchable on the inside.

  She swung in mid-air, holding the ladder as it shifted with her weight. Ruhr was just above her. She looked up, seeing under the cuffs of his jeans. Around one ankle he had strapped a sheathed knife. She had an image of the dead policeman at the old farmhouse, his body half-covered with leaves and the strange empty way he stared up at the sky. She remembered how his eyes were filled with rainwater and how slicks, overflowing his lashes, ran down his face. It was pointless to remember that sort of thing. She had to survive, and survival meant thinking ahead, not back.

  There were men on the ground below. In the distance, yellow and blue lights burned and a faint aroma of paraffin and scorched meat drifted through the dark. Steffie was light-headed. She gripped the rope, fought the sensation away. Then she was down, and the ground felt good beneath her feet. Ruhr came after, and then the other men from the craft, and suddenly there was confusion, men greeting one another, languages she didn’t understand, handshakes. For one tense moment, when she realised nobody was paying her any attention, she considered the possibility of flight.

  Dense trees, tents pitched here and there among the lamps, shadowy figures moving back and forth, guitar music, a voice singing a Spanish song in the distance – there was nowhere to run. If she did escape, which was unlikely, she’d certainly get lost and die out there. She looked at Ruhr, who was involved in a conversation with the two men who’d met the plane. The voices were low, but Steffie could tell they were angry. Her parents argued in exactly the same muted way when they didn’t want her to overhear.

  Ruhr broke away from the two men – one of whom wore a Panama hat – and stepped toward her.

  “Come with me.”

  She followed him across the concrete strip. An olive-coloured tent, pitched two hundred yards from the runway, stood within a thicket of trees. Ruhr opened the flap and Steffie stepped inside the tent. He struck a match, lit a lamp. An odd bluish glow threw misshapen shadows on the canvas walls.

  “Sit down.”

  A sagging camp bed was located in a corner. She sat, knees together, hands clasped in her lap. Ruhr stepped in front of the smoky lamp, eclipsing it with his shadow.

  “They want me to kill you.”

  Her throat was very dry. “Why?”

  “You have seen too much and now you are to be discarded. Permanently. It’s simple.”

  Steffie was quiet for a long time. She had an image of herself dead – a pale white corpse in a mahogany box, white lace ruffles, a gown, an array of soft candles illuminating her delicate features. But it wouldn’t be like that, would it? She’d be shot and dumped in the jungle, where she’d rot. And there was nothing poetic or romantic about that kind of death.

  “I don’t want to die,” she said in a composed way; she was determined to hide her terror.

  Ruhr had no problem with the concept of killing the child. What he resented was the idea of being ordered to do it. Nobody controlled him. Nobody told him what to do and when to do it. Fuentes would soon discover that Ruhr was very much his own man. He didn’t trust Fuentes or the quiet Englishman called Bosanquet; they had something furtive about them, as if they knew something Ruhr did not. But he knew how to protect himself from them, how to guarantee his own future. Besides, he had not yet finished with this girl; he’d barely begun. And if he was going to kill her he wasn’t going to do it the way any cheap assassin would. A shot in the back of the skull, impersonal and fast, wasn’t his style. No. He’d been observing her the whole trip, and the more he studied her the more impatient he became.

  He would have her. In his own inimitable way, he would have her.

  He watched how lamplight shone on her legs. She had smooth skin, unblemished, perfect as only young skin can be. He reached out with his deformed hand and slid it under her skirt, the palm flat against her inner thigh. It was as flawless as any flesh could be.

  The contrast enthralled him. The idea of his imperfect hand touching this child’s perfect thigh filled him with wonder. The ugly and the beautiful welded together, the alignment of opposites, thrilled him. Gunther Ruhr, superior to most people despite being unattractive and crippled, a fugitive despised for his history of destruction, could do anything he liked with this lovely child. Anything. He had the power.

  He kissed her on the mouth. She drew her face away. Ruhr smiled. She didn’t understand the nature of the game, that was all. She was not permitted to resist. He slid his hand further up, stopping just before he reached the top of her legs where she radiated a mysterious warmth. There was a loveliness here he hadn’t encountered before: an innocence. He’d known whores all his life. He’d known the child whores of Saigon and Mexico City and Manila, hardened ten- and eleven-year-old girls with sad eyes and tiny breasts who performed with mechanical exactitude. But what he’d never known was real innocence. Until now. She was fresh and new, unused.

  He kissed her again. This time, with lips tight, she didn’t turn away from him. She didn’t yield to the kiss, she merely tolerated it.

  “I will not kill you,” he whispered. “I will not let anyone harm you.”

  He put his good hand below her chin and turned her face up, forcing her to look directly into his eyes. He could smell the fear on her. He gazed at her slender neck and he remembered her school scarf in the back of the Range Rover. He wondered whether Pagan had read the sign. He was surely at a loss by this time; even if he’d discovered the abduction of the child – and it didn’t take a genius to get that far – he had no way of knowing where she’d been taken. Frantic Pagan. Ruhr revelled in the idea of the policeman’s anxiety. The abduction of the girl was tantamount to driving a nail into the Englishman’s heart.

  He caught her shoulders, pushed her down on the narrow bed. She lay mute, looking past him at the lamp, which flickered monstrously and cast enormous distended shadows inside the tent. With a finger of the deformed hand he touched her mouth, forced her lips apart, ca
used a frozen smile to appear. He inserted the finger between her teeth, along the surface of the tongue, the gums. He drew the finger back and forth, in and out. He could feel the child’s body go rigid.

  And still she wouldn’t look at him. She had closed her eyes. He took her hand and led it toward his groin. She made a noise, shook her head from side to side in protest, then bit the finger still inserted in her mouth. Ruhr, pained, drew away from her. There were teeth marks in his flesh.

  He slapped her across the cheek with the deformed hand. She turned her face to the wall silently, hearing the slap echo in her head.

  “You must do what I want,” he said. His voice was quiet, hushed, kind. If you didn’t know it was Gunther Ruhr speaking, you might think it the persuasive voice of a therapist. It was one of the many voices Ruhr assumed.

  “I don’t want to touch you,” she whispered.

  “What choice do you have, little girl?”

  She tried to free herself but it was useless to struggle against Ruhr’s strength. She shut her eyes, seeking a secret room in the mind, sanctuary. If she concentrated hard she could reach it, unlock the door, go inside. Safe from Ruhr. Safe from harm. She thought: Somebody must be searching for me. Somebody has to be looking for me. Be realistic, Steffie. How could anybody ever find you?

  She felt Ruhr’s ugly hand cross the flat of her stomach, like a crab moving on her skin.

  “My sweet girl,” he kept saying. His breathing was different now, harder, louder. “I will not hurt you. I promise you. You will come to no harm.”

  He stroked her breasts, unconscious of the girl’s discomfort, unaware of the tautness in her body. To Ruhr, the girl’s pale flesh was a soft, white, marvellous world for him to explore and finally exploit. He was a discoverer, a pioneer, creating a new map of engrossing territory. And, like any colonialist, he would inevitably corrupt the terrain he had conquered.

  A sound came from the doorway of the tent. The flap was pushed aside. A shadow fell across Steffie’s face. She saw the man from the plane, the skinny one called Trevaskis. The pressure from Ruhr’s body lifted as he turned his face around quickly, angrily.

  Trevaskis, whose gaunt features appeared ghostly in the odd flickering light, pretended he saw nothing. “They want you at the airstrip. Something about opening a box.”

  Ruhr got up from the camp bed. “Have you no goddam manners?” he asked. He pronounced “goddam” as “gottdam”.

  Trevaskis glanced down at Stephanie Brough, then looked at Ruhr. “Don’t blame me. I’m only the messenger. They told me to fetch you. Here I am. Fetching. They need you because they have to open the box. Whatever that means.”

  Ruhr laid the palm of his hand upon the girl’s face. “Don’t move,” he said. “Don’t even think of moving. Is that understood?”

  Ruhr stepped impatiently toward the doorway and out of the tent into darkness. He could see in the lights around the airstrip the C-130’s ramp being lowered. He stood very still and watched the great shadow of the missile emerge from the underbelly of the transport plane. It had a hardness of line, a cleanliness of form. Incomplete as yet, it required his knowledge, his touch, to make it perfect. The mood with the girl was ruined for the moment anyway. Later it could be recreated.

  Trevaskis came out of the tent, closing the flap at his back. He followed Ruhr a little way in the direction of the airstrip. Then he walked in another direction, entering a dark place where the trees grew close together. Ruhr kept going towards the plane. Trevaskis doubled back toward the tent. He undid the flap. The girl was sitting on the bed, her skirt smoothed down over her knees and her blouse buttoned up. She turned her face towards him. She was white and scared – but how the hell was she supposed to look, Trevaskis wondered, after the sicko had been at her?

  Trevaskis said, “Get the hell out of here. Now.”

  “Where can I go?” she asked.

  “Look, you got two choices. You stay here, you die. No two ways about it. Don’t kid yourself. You go out there, you at least got a chance.”

  “What kind of chance?”

  Trevaskis said, “Five per cent better than slim.”

  Steffie, who didn’t need time to think, got up from the bed. Trevaskis held the tent open for her. She ducked her head under his arm; the night was vast and hostile.

  “Kid,” Trevaskis said, and he pointed. “Go that way. You don’t run into any tents over there. Keep going in the direction I’m pointing. I think there’s a highway over there. Five miles, something like that. I’m not sure. But it’s your best shot.”

  Five miles through an unfamiliar environment. For a moment the lamp that flickered against the walls of the tent seemed positively cheerful. For God’s sake, how could she even think of staying? She turned away from Trevaskis and, saying nothing, not knowing whether to thank him, headed through the trees. She must have strayed from the narrow path because immediately the foliage was dense all around her, and suffocating, like the greenery of some nightmare.

  Strange forms reached out to her, tendrils brushed her arms, something small and furry flew directly at her forehead. And the night clicked all around her. Strange insect sounds came out of the underbush and the places where ancient roots gathered around her ankles. It was too much; too terrifying.

  Frightened, she stopped. She looked back. Trevaskis was standing beside the tent, his shape outlined by the flame of kerosene. Ruhr, half-crouching, conjured out of the night, appeared behind him. Steffie saw Ruhr’s arm rise in the air, then fall swiftly, an indistinct brush-stroke. Trevaskis cried out, doubled over, slid to his knees. And then she couldn’t see him any more.

  She turned and tried to claw her way through the foliage. She froze when the beam of the flashlight struck her. She could hear Ruhr breathing as he came toward her.

  “He thought I was stupid enough to leave you without supervision,” Ruhr said. “Do you also think me stupid, little girl?”

  He caught her by the hair and yanked her head back. The blade of his knife, wet with Trevaskis’ blood, was thrust against the side of her neck.

  Gunther Ruhr smiled. “I am disappointed.”

  Steffie Brough couldn’t speak.

  Tommy Fuentes watched the missile, mounted on the bed of the truck, come down the ramp under the guidance of the aeroplane’s crew members, men anxious to be gone from this Honduran paradise. The cylinder rolled slowly a couple of feet on the concrete, then stopped. A small Toyota truck drew up very carefully alongside the missile. The tail-gate was lowered, and the wooden crate that had been delivered by Levy and Possony was carried out by three soldiers. They set the box down about six feet from the missile.

  Fuentes trained a flashlight on the crate and two soldiers held lanterns.

  “Where is Ruhr?” Fuentes asked.

  Bosanquet said, “It appears that our German friend has all the worst traits of his race. Arrogance and a complete indifference to any timetable but one of his own choosing.”

  Fuentes impatiently tapped the handle of his sword and turned his face to look in the direction of Ruhr’s tent. Perhaps when he’d had his fun with the unfortunate girl and then disposed of her, the German genius would condescend to come down to the airstrip and do what he’d been paid for.

  After all, the ship that would carry the missile to Cuba was due to arrive within twenty-four hours.

  London

  A deceptive autumnal sun hung over London, a hazy disc that chilled the city more than it warmed it. At eight a.m. Sir Freddie Kinnaird stepped from his limousine in Golden Square and entered the building that housed Frank Pagan’s operation. In the lobby he passed a uniformed policeman, who saluted him briskly, then he rode in the old-fashioned lift to the top floor.

  He entered Pagan’s office without knocking. He considered it his prerogative as Home Secretary to go wherever he liked within his jurisdiction. He often contrived to conceal this presumptuous attitude with a certain upper-class charm. His style in Savile Row suits had made him, according to a frivo
lous magazine, the ninth best-dressed bachelor in Britain last year. If Sir Freddie Kinnaird had been a book, he would have been on the best-seller lists.

  Today he wore a charcoal-grey overcoat with a discreet velvet collar. Pagan, who lay on the sofa, turned his face drowsily towards the man. “Sir Freddie,” he managed to say. “What a surprise.”

  “No need to get up, Frank. Just passing. Thought I’d drop in and see how things stand.”

  Pagan’s shirt was undone. A bandage, applied some hours ago by Foxworth, was visible around his chest. He raised himself into a sitting position and looked at Freddie Kinnaird, whose face had been reddened by the cold morning air. How things stand, Freddie Kinnaird had said. Well, one of the things that wasn’t standing was Pagan himself, who had lain crookedly in sleep and now massaged the sides of his aching legs, his knotted muscles.

  “What news, Frank?” Sir Freddie said, glancing at the silk-screen on the wall, then surveying the chaos of the office, the litter that had missed the basket, the coffee cups, the stained saucers, the crumpled, fast-food wrappers.

  Pagan got to his feet, poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot that had been on a hot-plate for God knows how long. “The investigation chugs along,” he said.

  “How does it chug, and where?” Kinnaird asked.

  “With all due respect, Sir Freddie, the details are being kept confidential in light of what happened in Shepherd’s Bush.” Pagan sipped the coffee, which was the most vile fluid that had ever passed his lips. Stewed did not describe it. He fought a certain turmoil in his stomach. “Any information you want must come to you directly from Martin Burr. That’s the Commissioner’s rule. Access is strictly limited. We don’t want any more leaks, obviously.”

  “Admirable security,” Sir Freddie remarked brightly. “Naturally, Martin keeps me informed on a daily basis. I simply thought I might drop in and see if there were any recent developments that may not have reached the Commissioner’s desk yet. The overnight stuff. The low-down, as they say. This whole business has caused me quite considerable anxiety, as I’m sure you’ll understand.”