The Hungry Blade

by Lawrence Dudley

  Hawkins holstered his gun, then turned, holding on with one hand, and let go. He slipped down like a child on a playground slide, the old tin creaking and breaking, dropping the final two or three feet onto the ground, landing on his feet, ducking under the half-fallen tin on the other side. Several pieces of sheet metal fell behind him. He turned, pushing it, angrily kicking it out of the way. It took a second or two to catch his breath.

  Bloody hell, he got away! Goddamnit all! Fuck! Fuck! He kicked the broken Chacmool hard, shattering it more. In a rage, he snatched a piece off the floor and almost threw it at Huitzilopochtli’s open, heart-hungry mouth. A corner of his mind said, That is awesome, and he froze, gazing at it in wonder, and dropped the shard behind him instead. No, it saved Riley, he thought. If only for that reason, maybe it was truly sacred—it saved her life.

  His foot touched something. He picked it up. It was an obsidian knife, a new one, the wood in the handle fresh and clean, ringed with gorgeous exotic feathers, a perfect copy of the priest’s sacrificial knife in Eckhardt’s collection. He collected the sheath laying on the floor, pocketed it and ran into the street.

  “Riley! Riley!” But she was nowhere to be seen. He’d heard her screaming as she ran way. But where would she go? Of course, I know, he thought. In the distance Hawkins heard a siren. He began running.

  -74-

  It was not quite dawn when Hawkins reached the Casa Azul, parking the truck across the way. The street, the house were dark. No, Riley would not have gone to bed, he thought. Who could, who wouldn’t be intolerably wound up after that? Instead of knocking he simply stood in front of the door and in a normal voice said, “Riley. He’s gone.” Then he took his lighter, flicked it on and held it under his face. There was a sound, a light turned on inside, then the old door ground open. It was the maid, Juanita, holding a lantern. Her pinched face looked nervous and distressed too.

  “Señor Hawkins. Señorita Echevarria most upset.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Riley emerged from the darkness behind the maid, her face tense and drawn. Holding Eckhardt at bay for several hours, the nervous tension, had drained her beyond measure, perhaps beyond repair.

  “That man—” She stopped for a long moment, still breathing hard, gulping for air, trying to collect herself. “That man was going to slice me open like … like, a lamb, a clam, a melon, I don’t know—”

  “I know. That’s what he does.”

  “Where were you?”

  “At the field, coming back. Riley, what you did, on the wall, that was brilliant, you held him off, you did it—” She looked out, past Hawkins to a distant point, ignoring Hawkins’s praise.

  “Where’s Emilio?”

  Hawkins gulped. “Riley—”

  “He had his cigar case! I made it for Emilio’s birthday!” Tears started running, her words running freely, too, “My Emilio, what has happened to my Emilio? Is he dead? He is dead, isn’t he? Did he butcher him with that knife?”

  My Emilio. That instantly struck Hawkins. My Emilio, she said. Oh no, oh dear god, Hawkins thought, they were lovers, at least at one time. Why didn’t I see that? How awful, how sickeningly awful. Another god-awful mess. None of these people could really understand the danger of all this—the worst sort of neophytes, overeager, overconfident, and green as the spring grass. I shouldn’t have involved them. But … what then? What would’ve happened? No, there was no choice … Sickening, so sickening, nothing to do now but admit the truth.

  “Yes, he’s dead.”

  “Where is he?”

  “At the rendezvous—”

  “You left him!”

  “I had to.”

  “How could you leave him! You bastard!”

  “It was too dangerous to stay, and if I hadn’t—Riley, my god, listen, your heart would be in that Chacmool—”

  The commotion had woken up the rest of the household. Frida came limping in behind Riley, grasping her by the shoulders from behind, hugging her, a severe expression on her face.

  “If Emilio is dead—why—what—” Riley was now starting to sob. “What happened? The paintings? Was that why—” Hawkins racked his mind for something to say—What to say? What can I say? Speechless for a moment. “Oh no, the paintings, what did that man do to the paintings! Did he take them?”

  Hawkins shook his head no, still fumbling for something to say, words of comfort, words of sympathy—they helplessly tumbled out, “Riley, I’m so sorry.”

  “The real ones. Where are they?”

  He hesitated. “There was no other way, I have to find out what’s going on—”

  “You bastard! You gave them to Corrialles! After everything! You bastard!”

  “Riley, I understand how upset you are—”

  “No! You do not know! You can leave, go back to New York, to whoever the hell you work for! Don’t dare tell me you know!”

  Frida started pulling her away, her expression tight and hard.

  “Señor Hawkins. You must leave.”

  The maid quietly, slowly shut the door, nodding at Hawkins. From inside he heard a muffled shout.

  “And you say you are a revolutionary! Bastard!”

  -75-

  It was a bad, fitful sleep. With every sound from the Paseo below Hawkins would startle awake, expecting trucks of troops, militias, rioting crowds, shooting, shouting. But when he rose to see, expecting the worst, it was always deceptively normal, a calm before the storm. A bad dream. For the moment.

  After several hours he simply gave up, sitting in his underwear next to the window, only occasionally and briefly nodding off, watching the people and the traffic. A horrible feeling that, overwhelmed by guilt, what have I done, what have I done, running over and over again and again in his mind, watching the people, wondering what he’d done to them. I have to focus on finding Eckhardt, he knew. And Falkenberg. But how?

  A knock at the door. It was only seven thirty, eight o’clock. The bellhop held out a note. No perfume this time but he instantly recognized the handwriting. Lilly. Damn, he thought.

  Be careful here, he thought. I can’t let on what happened last night, that I tried to switch the paintings … Lilly doesn’t know that, Lilly mustn’t know that—I can’t put her in that position. That is mine alone.

  It was a thoroughly rotten feeling, having to deceive her, or at least holding out on her.

  There was deviousness and deception every day in espionage. That was its nature. It could become a dangerous habit, and perhaps it had. But that duplicity was always aimed outward at the enemy. Lilly, W, and all those around them were not the enemy, even if the people behind Lilly and W wanted to do something terrible to Mexico, and also something deeply foolish. Who was the enemy here? Perhaps, at this moment, we ourselves are our own enemy, Hawkins thought.

  A few minutes later he was down at the Reforma, nervously, uneasily waiting in a booth. His so-well-rehearsed professional demeanor, the coldness inside to control the outside, wasn’t working very well at the moment.

  When she turned in the aisle Lilly slowed, looking in his booth, an open-faced expression, eyes drifting the way they do when people are thinking hard over something. She sat in a booth across from him, paused a second, still thinking, then dialed. He waited, vaguely curious, on edge, reminding himself again—don’t let on about the fakes, two trucks, the ambush, the burning paintings, the gunfight—but, but mostly he felt drained and tired. That realization made him even edgier. He waited for her to go first.

  “Roy. Flash an hour and a quarter ago. Bizarre. No one knows what to make of this one, either.”

  His spirits began to rise, rousing him, from her tone he sensed change, or things in play.

  “Have they reconsidered?”

  “Ah, well—not exactly. No. It’s just … Roy—those paintings are fakes.”

  “Excuse me? What’d yo
u say?”

  “The paintings you sent are fakes. When they got to Parke-Bernet, they were calling them out before half of them were unwrapped.”

  “That can’t be. We saw them in Bermuda—the ship.”

  His mind began a mad, panicked scramble, a moment of terrifying doubt and indecision—Did I screw up again, somehow? What the—did I somehow switch the real ones? Did I send the fakes by mistake? But … but—I picked up the paintings and went from Corrialles’s base straight to the grove. Emilio went straight from Riley’s to the rendezvous. No! Emilio had the fakes. They were burned before I got there. He was dead. If they were switched, it would’ve had to have happened beforehand—but … but—we didn’t have the fakes then. The real ones were at the base. All along. Under guard. And the copies never left Riley’s studio. Until Emilio picked them up. We didn’t have them in hand to switch them first. No, no. Not me …

  Then again, be careful—

  “Yes. We all saw them in Bermuda,” Lilly said. “But Parke-Bernet did not. The real experts. W says they weren’t looted, they are fakes, but the top experts there say they are very good ones, done by real pros, most people, even the gallery owners here in Mexico City, would never spot them. There were various things Parke-Bernet saw right away. Labels on some of the paintings were from the wrong galleries in Paris. The fakers probably got them mixed up. That’s what started the alarm bells ringing. There was more when they started looking. The wood was treated. When they cut into the wood, below the surface? All new and white. Not old enough.”

  “My god. I—I—didn’t … Ah—”

  “Eh bien, Roy, no one is blaming you.”

  “I wanted to fly someone out from London, the National Gallery! You remember!”

  “I know. I do remember. You were right. W knows. He feels responsible. We kept it too close, that’s the problem. But there wasn’t time. It’s simply one of those things. Maybe General Houghton was right, too, maybe we should’ve seized them.”

  “No, there wasn’t any choice on that, either.” Hawkins instantly knew that. “We had to follow them to find out what was going on, what the Nazis were doing, to catch those two. Leave a pair of Nazi agents like that running around loose? Even if this scheme failed, what else could they do? No. Out of the question.”

  “Yes. I suppose that was just one of those things too.”

  A realization abruptly hit him, a little epiphany.

  “That means no coup, then.”

  “No. The insurers are refusing to pay.”

  “Right. No money, no coup. That’s—brilliant.”

  Hawkins’s stomach settled a bit, but not his mind, the news had a dizzying quality as he tried to pick and think his way through.

  “Why send fakes? At all?”

  “That’s the question,” Lilly said.

  “They can’t have believed they could get all the way to a Fifty-Seventh Street sale with fakes.”

  “It is hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  “They made such a huge effort, the flight school, the command center, the sets of forged treaties—”

  “But those things were fake, too, in a way, weren’t they?”

  “That’s true, they only wanted to trick the Yanks.” Then it struck him—“Wait! Maybe … fakes for a fake operation? Lilly! Maybe they didn’t think they needed real ones. General Corrialles caught Eckhardt and Falkenberg off guard. Maybe they weren’t ready for whatever reason. After the massacre he had control of the paintings and they didn’t. Then we stepped in with our offer to back a coup and he took over selling the paintings, assuming they were real.”

  “Righto, why would they tell the general the paintings were fakes?”

  “They wouldn’t, couldn’t. I bet Eckhardt and Falkenberg were always planning to drop the plot on the FBI first, never had any intention to actually ship the paintings—why was there any need to? They’d tell Corrialles the paintings were on the way, he’d launch his coup thinking the money was coming. They needed to trigger an American intervention before Corrialles caught on he was being duped. The whole thing was an exercise in deception.”

  “Oh gawd, of course,” she said. “It’s all over, then.”

  “Pretty much. No paintings, no money, no coup. Anything else?”

  “Yes, they intercepted another set of telexes.” She checked her notepad. “The first said ‘confirm again employment termination,’ the next, ‘imperative previous business must be concluded without delay,’ the third had what they thought was an odd phrase, ‘this diversion of our assets cannot be allowed to succeed.’ ”

  “Diversion. That means they found out Eckhardt was pinching the paintings. That explains the initial order to kill him. It’s not only Eckhardt, that’s a warning to all their other agents out there: don’t get any ideas.”

  “Ah, of course. What are you going to do now? Look for Eckhardt and Falkenberg?”

  He thought that over a moment.

  “Maybe not. That could take a long time. We’ll probably need another intercept before we can pick up their trail. We’ll see what W says. I need your car, I have to talk to General Corrialles first, tell him what happened. He’s expecting a big check. He isn’t going to be happy.”

  -76-

  The officer of the day hung up the phone and waved Hawkins through the gate. He drove to the base commander’s house, another classic Spanish colonial–style building, red-tile roof, a low arched colonnade on wide Doric columns fronting a circular driveway. A valet had Hawkins wait on the veranda, offering a glass of lemonade. He’d barely taken a sip when Corrialles rode up on horseback. He’d been playing polo with the other officers. He handed off his mount and stick, accepted a towel and briskly skipped up the steps, wiping his face and hair, unbuckling his helmet, smiling at Hawkins.

  “Hawkins, have you heard from New York?”

  “Yes, I have,” Hawkins said. He braced himself as Lilly had, to let the other man down gently. Only the news for Corrialles surely would be worse, Hawkins thought, because Corrialles was not the kind of man given to welcoming any thoughts that confirmed doubts about his actions. “I’m afraid I have troubling news.”

  There was very little reaction once Hawkins explained, certainly not concern, only a simple uh-huh or two. “The experts have been carefully examining the paintings.” Uh-huh. Unconcerned. Hawkins began to sense something peculiar, his mental guard dog quietly rising again to watch the door as a stranger approached. “Something has gone wrong.” Still no reaction. The general snapped his fingers and ordered a drink. Hawkins restarted, waiting for attention, or a reaction. “The experts have been going over the paintings. The sales have been called off. The paintings are fakes.”

  “Yes?” Corrialles seemed to be distracted, waiting for his drink.

  “Yes. They’re all copies.” Corrialles finally began paying attention. “Very good copies, done by professionals, but still copies. Parke-Bernet will not accept them, of course. And the insurance companies will not pay, of course.”

  “I see.” The drink arrived. A long sip. A bland response. “That is very disappointing.”

  “Yes. It’s quite embarrassing. General—”

  “Yes, yes.” Corrialles almost seemed to be waving it off. “I understand.” Hawkins pressed on, hurriedly and instinctively trying to stay ahead of a dismissal, probing the way you’d feel your path in a dark room.

  “Eckhardt and Falkenberg, did they—is there—was there—do you think—there was a sort of strange scheme going on? I know they—well, for the lack of a better phrase, originally said they wanted to assist your political ambitions, even though—I am thinking of that treaty they forged—”

  “Hawkins, after the … incident at the airfield, you said you still wanted to do business. Do you still want to do business?”

  Hawkins’s mental guard dog was now hackles-up, barking loudly at the door. Somethin
g weirdly wrong, something inexplicable, was rattling with a ghostly clamor on the other side.

  “I guess so. I’m a little confused, though.”

  “Don’t be. Wait a few days. I think we can still do business. In fact, I’m sure.”

  “Oh. Very well. Fine, actually. These would be some things from your collection?”

  “No. A large collection, like before, forty pieces, major works.”

  “I see—ancient ones? Like the warrior in your gallery?”

  “No. Modern works only.”

  “Oh, very well—rather, very good! They’ll be excited in New York. Time is an issue. They’ll want new pieces for the fall season. That should bring in a great sum, enough—”

  “I know. And, yes, time does matter.”

  “But I am a little surprised. Aren’t you concerned about Eckhardt and Falkenberg? You did try to shoot them after they tried to dupe you and entangle you in a war with the Americans.”

  “Yes. And I would do so again.”

  “You’re not worried about that, then.”

  “No.”

  “Were fake paintings part of that?”

  “I don’t think so. But opportunities may present themselves again. Do not worry.” He got up and offered his hand. “I have a scheduled meeting with my officers. Very sorry. As I say, let us wait and see.”

  As an agent of the SIS Hawkins always kept an eye out for things large and small: one did not always know what might prove to be significant. Over there—what’s that column of trucks? Overhead—what plane is that? Are those people behaving oddly? One never knew what could be important, if properly put together. But Hawkins quickly drove out, noticing and assessing nothing, oblivious to the army camp, the number of men, the equipment, disposition, training regimen, nothing. Instead his eye turned inward, his mental guard dog trying to visualize the specter on the other side of the door.

  His rumination popped like a soap bubble at the outside gate, leaving not a trace of mental residue behind. A car had paused at the guardhouse.