by Jack Higgins
'And Sam?'
'What about Sam?'
'He is with this - this woman who was here the other night? The American?'
'Oh, she seems to have become something of a permanent fixture up at Landro,' I said.
The stem of the wineglass snapped in her hand. 'God damn him to hell,' she said bitterly.
'I know how you feel,' I said. 'I love him too.'
She frowned instantly. 'What do you mean?'
I stamped on the floor for the waiter. 'Oh, come on now,' I said. 'Maria of the Angels, you remember her? The one who was so good at dropping out of sight? Mean to say you and Hannah had never clapped eyes on her before?'
The waiter appeared with another bottle. She said carefully, 'And even if this were so, why should I tell you?'
'To get your own back on him. Much simpler from your point of view than sticking a knife in his back. Now that can be messy. That would get you at least ten years.'
She laughed out loud, spilling her wine on the table. 'You know, I like you, Englishman. I like you a lot.'
She leaned across the table, her mouth opening as she kissed me, tongue probing. After a reasonably lengthy interval, she eased away. Her smile had faded slightly and there was a look of surprise on her face. She seemed to come to some decision and patted my cheek.
'I'll make a bargain with you. You give me what I want and I'll tell you what you want. A deal?'
'All right,' I said automatically.
'Good. My place is just along the waterfront from here.' She walked out and I followed, wondering what in the hell I'd let myself in for now.
*
The room was surprisingly clean with a balcony overlooking the river, the image of the Virgin and Child on the wall above a flickering candle. Lola herself was a surprise to say the least. She left me on the balcony with a drink and disappeared for a good fifteen minutes. When she returned, she was wearing a housecoat in plain blue silk. Every trace of make-up had been scrubbed from her face and she had tied back her hair.
I got up and put down my glass. She stood looking at me for a while then took off the housecoat and threw it on the bed. Few women are seen at their best in the nude. She had a body to thank God for.
She stood there, hands on hips, and said calmly, 'I am beautiful, Senhor Mallory?'
'Few men would dispute that.'
'But I am a whore,' she said flatly. 'Beautiful perhaps, but still a whore. Available to any man who can raise the price.'
I thought of Joanna Martin who had never actually taken cash on the barrel which was the only difference between them.
'And I am tired of it all,' she said. 'Just for once I would like a man who can be honest with me as I am honest with him. Who will not simply use me. You understand?'
'I think so,' I said.
She blew out the light.
*
It was late when I awakened. Just after two a.m. according to the luminous dial of my watch. I was alone in the bed, but when I turned my head I saw the glow of her cigarette out there on the terrace.
I started to get dressed. She called softly, 'You are leaving?'
'I'll have to,' I said. 'I've things to do or had you forgotten?'
There was silence for a while and then, as I pulled on my boots, she said, 'There is a street opposite the last pier at the other end of the waterfront from here. The house on the corner has a lion carved over the door. You want the apartment at the top of the second flight of stairs.'
I pulled on my jacket. 'And what will I find there?'
'I wouldn't dream of spoiling the surprise.'
I moved to the door, uncertain of what to say. She said, 'Will you be back?'
'I don't think it very likely.'
'Honest to the last,' she said rather bitterly, then laughed, sounding for the first time since we had left The Little Boat like the old Lola. 'And in the end, Senhor Mallory, I'm not at all certain that was what I really wanted. Don't you find that rather amusing?'
Which I didn't and did what I suspected was the best thing in the circumstances and got out of there fast.
*
I found the house with the lion above the door easily enough. It was one of those baroque monstrosities left over from the last century, probably built for some wealthy merchant and now in a state of what one might delicately term multiple occupation. The front door opened at once giving access to a large gloomy hall illuminated by a single oil lamp. There was a party going on in one of the downstairs back rooms, I heard a burst of noise and music as someone opened and closed a door.
I started up the stairs in the silence which followed. The first landing was illuminated like the hall below by a single oil lamp, but the next flight of stairs disappeared into darkness.
I went up cautiously, feeling my way along the wall, aware of the patter of tiny feet as the rats and lizards scattered out of the way. When I reached the landing, I struck a match and held it above my head. There was no name on the door opposite and the lamp on the wall was cold.
The match started to burn my fingers so I dropped it and tried the door handle with infinite caution. It was locked so I did the obvious thing and knocked gently.
After a while, a lamp was turned up, light seeping under the door, there was movement, a man's voice and then a woman. Someone shuffled towards the door, I knocked again.
'Who is it?' the woman demanded.
'Lola sent me,' I answered in Portuguese.
The door started to open, I moved back into the shadows. She said, 'Look, I've got someone with me at the moment. Can't you come back a little later?'
I didn't reply. The door opened even wider and Maria of the Angels peered out. 'Heh, where are you man?'
I took her by the throat, stifling all sound, and ran her back into the room, shutting the door quietly behind. The man in the bed, who cried out in alarm, was a mountain of flesh if ever I've seen one. A great quivering jelly more likely to die of fright than anything else.
I produced the .45 and waved it at him. 'Keep your mouth shut and you won't get hurt.'
Then I turned to Maria. 'I'd have thought you could have done better than that.'
She was calmer now, a trifle arrogant even. She pulled the old wrapper she was wearing closer around her and folded her arms. 'What do you want?'
'Answers, that's all. Tell me what I want to know and I won't bring the police into this.'
'The police?' She laughed at that one. Then shrugged. 'All right, Senhor Mallory, ask away.'
'It was a set-up our meeting that night, arranged by Hannah - am I right?'
'I'd just come up-river,' she said. 'I was new in town. Nobody knew me except Lola. We're second cousins.'
'What did he pay you?'
'He told me to take whatever money was in your wallet and get rid of anything else.'
The instant she said it, I knew that she had not done as she was told. She wasn't the sort. I said, 'You've still got them, haven't you? My wallet and the passport.'
She sighed in a kind of impatience, turned to a sideboard, opened the drawer and took out my wallet. The passport was inside together with a few other bits and pieces and a photo of my mother and father. I was caught by that for a moment then stowed it away and put the wallet in my breast pocket.
'Your parents, senhor?' I nodded. 'They look nice people. You will not go to the police?'
I shook my head and put the .45 back in my pocket. 'That's one hell of a knee you have there.'
'It's a hard world, senhor.'
'You can say that again.'
I let myself out and went down the stairs. It was very quiet on the waterfront and I walked along the pier and sat on a rail at the end smoking a cigarette, feeling absurdly calm in the circumstances.
It was as if I had always known and had not wanted to face it and perhaps that was so. But now it was out in the open. Now came the reckoning.
I got up and walked back along the pier, footsteps booming hollowly on the wooden flooring, echoing into the night.
ELEVEN
Showdown
I had a contract run to make at nine o'clock, a mail pick-up which meant it could not be avoided. It was a tedious run. Sixty miles down-river, another fifty to a trading post at the headwaters of a small tributary to the west.
I cut it down to sixty-five miles by taking the shortest route between two points and flying across country over virgin jungle. A crazy thing to do and asking for trouble, but it meant I could do the round trip in a couple of hours. A brief pause to re-fuel in Manaus and I could be on my way to Landro by noon. Perhaps because of that, the elements decided to take a hand and I flew into Manaus, thunder echoing on the horizon like distant drums.
The rain started as I landed, an instant downpour that closed my world down to a very small compass indeed. I taxied to the hangar and the mechanics ran out in rubber ponchos and helped me get her inside.
The mail was waiting for me, they re-fuelled her quickly enough, but afterwards I could do nothing except stand at the edge of the hangar smoking cigarette after cigarette, staring out at the worst downpour since the rainy season.
After my meeting with Maria of the Angels I had felt surprisingly calm in spite of her story. For most of the morning I'd had things well under control, but now, out of very frustration, I wanted to get to Landro so badly that I could taste it. Wanted to see Hannah's face when I produced my wallet and passport, confronted him with the evidence of his treachery. From the start of things I had never really cared for him. Now it was a question of hate more than anything else and it was nothing to do with Joanna Martin.
Looking back on it all I think that what stuck in my throat most was the feeling that he had used me quite deliberately to further his own ends all along the line. There was a kind of contempt in that which did not sit easy.
According to the radio the situation at Landro was no better, so more for something to do than anything else, I borrowed the Crossley tender, drove into town and had a meal at a fish restaurant on the waterfront.
At the bar afterwards and halfway through my second large brandy, I became aware of a stranger staring out at me from the mirror opposite.
Small for his size as my grandmother used to say, long arms, large hands, but a hard, tough, competent-looking young man or was that only what I wanted to believe? The leather flying jacket gaped satisfactorily revealing the .45 automatic in the chest holster, the mark of the true adventurer, but the weary young face had to be seen to be believed.
Was this all I had to show for two long years? Was this what I'd left home for? I looked down through the rain at a stern-wheeler making ready to leave for the coast. It came to me then that I could leave now. Leave it all. Book passage using Hannah's famous credit system. Once in Belem I would be all right. I had a passport again. I could always work my passage to Europe from there. Something would turn up.
I rejected the thought as instantly as I had considered it. There was something here that had to be worked through to the end and I was a part of it. To go now would be to leave the story unfinished like a novel with the end pages missing and the memory of him would haunt me for the rest of my life. I had to lay Hannah's ghost personally, there could be no other way.
The rain still fell in a heavy grey curtain as I drove back to the airstrip and so continued for the rest of the afternoon. Most serious of all, by four o'clock the surface had turned into a thick, glutinous mud that would get worse before it got better. Much more of this and it would be like trying to take off in a ploughed field.
Another half-hour and it was obvious that if I did not go then I would not get away at all, had probably left it too late already. I told the mechanics it was now or never and got ready to leave.
I started the engine while still inside the hangar and gave it plenty of time to warm up, an essential factor under the circumstances. When I taxied out into the open, the force of the rain had to be felt to be believed. At the very best it was going to be an uncomfortable run.
The strip was five hundred yards long. Usually two hundred was ample for the Bristol's take-off but not today. My tail skidded from side to side, the thick mud sucked at the wheels, showering up in great fountains.
At two hundred yards, I hadn't even managed to raise the tail, at two-fifty I was convinced I was wasting my time, had better quit while still ahead and take her back to the hangar. And then, at three hundred and for no logical reason that I could see, the tail came up. I brought the stick back gently and we lifted into the grey curtain.
*
It took me two hours but I made it. Two hours of hell, for the rain and the dense mist it produced from the warm earth covered the jungle and river alike in a grey blanket, producing some of the worst flying conditions I have ever known.
To stay with the river with anything like certainty, I had to fly at fifty feet for most of the way, a memorable experience for at that altitude, if that is what it can be termed, there was no room for even the slightest error in judgement and the radio had packed in, the rain, as it turned out, which didn't help in the final stages, for conditions at Landro were no better than they had been at Manaus.
But by then I'd had it. I was soaked to the skin, bitterly cold and suffering badly from cramp in both legs. As I came abreast of the airstrip, Mannie ran out from the hangar. Everything looked as clear as it was ever going to be so I simply banked in over the trees and dropped her down.
It was a messy business, all hands and feet. The Bristol bounced once, then the tail slewed round and we skidded forward on what seemed like the crest of a muddy brown wave.
When I switched off, the silence was beautiful. I sat there plastered with mud from head to toe, the engine still sounding inside my head.
Mannie arrived a few seconds later. He climbed up on the lower port wing and peered over the edge of the cockpit, a look of awe on his face. 'You must be mad,' he said. 'Why did you do it?'
'A kind of wild justice, Mannie, isn't that what Bacon called it?' He stared at me, puzzled as I stood and flung a leg over the edge of the cockpit. 'Revenge, Mannie. Revenge.'
But by then I was no longer in control, which was understandable enough. I started to laugh weakly, slid to the ground and fell headlong into the mud.
*
I sat at the table in the hangar wrapped in a couple of blankets, a glass of whisky in my hands and watched him make coffee over the spirit stove.
'Where's Hannah?'
'At the hotel as far as I know. There was a message over the radio from Figueiredo to say he wouldn't be back till the morning because of the weather.'
'Where is he?'
'Fifteen miles up-river, that's all. Trouble at one of the villages.'
I finished the whisky and he handed me a mug of coffee. 'What is it, Neil?' he said gravely. 'What's happened?'
I answered him with a question. 'Tell me something? Hannah's bonus at the end of the contract? How much?'
'Five thousand dollars.' There was a quick wariness in his eyes as he said it and I wondered why.
I shook my head. 'Twenty, Mannie.'
There was a short silence. He said, 'That isn't possible.'
'All things are in this best of all possible worlds, isn't that what they say? Even miracles, it seems.'
I took out my wallet and passport and threw them on the table. 'I found her, Mannie - the girl who robbed me that night at The Little Boat - robbed me because Hannah needed me broke and in trouble. There was never any Portuguese pilot. If I hadn't turned up when I did he would have been finished.'
The breath went out from him like wind through the branches of a tree on a quiet evening. He slumped into the opposite chair, staring down at the wallet and passport.
After a while he said, 'What are you going to do?'
'I don't know. Finish this coffee then go and show him those. Should produce an interesting reaction.'
'All right,' Mannie said. 'So he was wrong. He shouldn't have treated you that way. But, Neil, this was his last chance. He was a desperate man face
d with the final end of things. No excuse, perhaps, but it at least makes what he did understandable.'
'Understandable?' I stood up, allowing the blankets to slip to the ground, almost choking on my anger. 'Mannie, I've got news for you. I'll see that bastard in hell for what he's done to me.'
I picked up the wallet and passport, turned and plunged out into the rain.
*
I hadn't the slightest idea what I was going to do when I saw him. In a way, I was living from minute to minute. I'd had virtually no sleep for two nights now, remember, and things seemed very much to be happening in slow motion.
As I came abreast of the house I saw the Huna girl, Christina, standing on the porch watching me. I thought for a moment that Joanna or the good Sister might appear, not that it would have mattered.
I kept on going, putting one foot doggedly in front of the other. I must have presented an extraordinary sight, my face and clothing streaked with mud, painted for war like a Huna, soaked to the skin. People stopped talking on the verandas of the houses as I passed and several ragged children ran out into the rain and followed behind me, jabbering excitedly.
As I approached the hotel I heard singing and recognised the tune immediately, a song I'd heard often sung by some of the old R.F.C. hands round the mess piano on those R.A.F. Auxiliary weekend courses.
I was damned if I could remember the title, another proof of how tired I was. My name sounded clear through the rain as I reached the bottom of the hotel steps. I turned and found Mannie hurrying up the street.
'Wait for me, Neil,' he called, but I ignored him, went up the steps to the veranda, nodded to Avila and a couple of men who were lounging there and went inside.
*
Joanna Martin and Sister Maria Teresa sat at a table by the window drinking coffee. Figueiredo's wife stood behind the bar. Hannah sat on a stool at the far end, head back, singing for all he was worth.
So stand by your glasses steady,
This world is a world of lies:
A cup to the dead already
Hurrah for the next man who dies.
