Wild Country tq-3

by Dean Ing

  "Miss Placidas; Senor Sorel," Maazel said, "meet our third member, Zoltan Azeri." The swarthy man made a tiny clockwork bow to them and then stood to one-side.

  "You may as well ask our third member to join us," Sorel said as if enjoying a joke on himself. He smiled at Azeri.

  "I believe you have been challenged, Zoltan." Mills chuckled.

  Thickly accented, in scorn: "Challenged?"

  "Not a well-chosen word, Saint Denis," Maazel said with his own wheezy laugh. "Zoltan, please ask the gentleman you followed to join us."

  Azeri's head swiveled to gaze at Slaughter, then back. "The tall one in the denim jacket; you will vouch for his reaction?"

  Sorel raised his free hand and beckoned, nodding as he did so. "Mr. Azeri is wise, Professor," he said as he saw Slaughter picking his way around the piano bar. He felt something of a fool himself. What if the little Israeli had confronted Slaughter without hesitation? Harley Slaughter was no trained seal with wholly predictable moves, but a trailwise gunsel who had jumped bail from a capital offense. He just might have wasted little Azeri on the spot. Or he might have said something so offensive that Azeri would — But those scenarios could be ignored now, for Slaughter approached wearing a rictus almost like a smile.

  The booth had room for them all, but: "May I suggest something, senor?" Maazel tapped his attaché case. "I have things to show you, and now that we are all here I wonder if you would care to take a stroll."

  Slaughter: "Just you two?"

  Maazel: "But of course. With my bulk I shall not stray far," he said, patting his belly.

  Sorel considered it. The fat man might not want to broadcast details any more than Sorel did, and he wasn't suggesting a hotel room where Sorel could be ambushed. And Felix Sorel did not fear a man like Maazel in public, so: "Excellent. Enjoy yourselves," Sore) said to them all, sliding from the booth.

  Maazel needed the help of little Azeri to exit his cramped seat, but moments later the athlete strode out into autumn sunshine with Maazel and that attaché case.

  They ambled downhill, speaking guardedly as they passed shoppers. Maazel trudged with the splay-footed gait of a man with poor balance, taking his time, explaining in general terms how agriculture was monitored from satellites.

  Certain produce, said Maazel, was of such compelling interest to many governments that orbiting spy-eyes could identify many crops and trip automatic alarms. "A matter of broad-spectrum photography, local temperatures, rainfall — and of tradition," Maazel said with a fruity chuckle. "The French keep what they believe to be a close tally on one crop, for example. It is grown widely in Kampuchea, and in Turkey." He paused as a well-dressed couple passed, then continued softly, "Also, a bit of it is grown in Oregon Territory. Oh, yes, the American authorities learned long ago that this crop could be grown near a town called Grants Pass and even within the city limits of Seattle.

  "But what if a much more common and perfectly harmless crop could be imitated by the, ah, Turkish flower?" Now they walked through the grassy verge of a park where strollers admired a showy little waterfall. Maazel indicated a stone bench near the water, nodded, and steered Sorel to the bench.

  A constant splash of water was among the best barriers against a listening device and implied that the fat man did not take his security for granted. Sorel replied, "I suppose authorities would be alerted by the crew that slashes the poppy pods."

  Maazel's broad face, now gleaming with sweat, registered delight as he lowered himself to the bench. "Correct! Exactly so," he said as if Sorel were a student in some innocent seminar. He fished a set of livesnaps from a vest pocket, studied the labels on their backs, and offered one to Sorel.

  In a way, the livesnaps were a test. The little liquid crystal movie cards were still a high-tech curiosity, the images programmed into memory chips so that each flexible card could provide a moving holographic image in full color. Sorel passed his technology test by pressing the dot in the lower-right-hand corner, deforming a tiny crystal to provide piezoelectric energy for a brief moving sequence of images. The blank flexible card instantly became a moving, three-dimensional snapshot.

  Sorel watched the livesnap without understanding. He saw a slender plant with long sparse leaves and an elongated pod, waving in a slight breeze. Clinging to the pod, he saw, was a tiny winged insect that moved from a spot on the pod to an unspotted area. After fifteen seconds, the card went blank. "This is a poppy?" he asked doubtfully.

  "Yes, but study this enlargement," Maazel urged, offering a second card. "The Papaver somniferum, opium poppy, has been mutated to the appearance of an edible plant called salsify. It was a European plant originally but now grows wild in Oregon Territory. It became a food crop here during the last war when food was in short supply. We recognized that the pod-slashing crew would raise suspicion, because salsify is harvested like other shallow-root crops. That is why we applied genetic engineering to this fruit wasp," he said with pride.

  The enlargement sent a shiver down Sorel's spine. The tiny wasp busily chewed a hole through the pod surface, inserted a body extension, then moved to another site perhaps a millimeter away and resumed chewing before the livesnap went blank. Sorel pressed the dot again, watched the sequence again. "It seems to be depositing eggs," he said.

  "Sterile eggs," Maazel said with a wink. "But the pod soon begins to ooze raw opium through each hole. The female wasp continues to visit pods until she dies — long after she has exhausted her egg supply."

  Now Sorel saw the connection. "Your wasp does the job of a field worker," he said.

  Nodding, Maazel took the livesnaps and replaced them in his pocket. "And standard machinery separates the pods while it harvests the plant, in a single pass. A crew of three can harvest a square kilometer of Papaver in a weekend, with no one else the wiser. How does it look to you?"

  It looked damned efficient. It looked like the end of the French connection, that long trail of illegal processing from Turkey through Marseilles to Mexico and then, thanks to Sorel, into Reconstruction America. It also looked like the end of Sorel's usefulness as a middleman. To give himself time for furious thought, Sorel asked, "Where does one obtain the seeds and the wasps?"

  "The seeds are free." Maazel smiled. "The wasps, all guaranteed sterile females, will be shipped to the user as eggs — roughly a million in each batch, guaranteed to hatch and grow into adults with eighty-five percent viability. The wasp soon dies, and in any case it will not migrate from the field of choice. In a region with hidden valleys like this, it will be years before some entomologist discovers a specimen. More years before he learns its, ah, very special use."

  Sorel made appropriate grunts, unable to figure why the Israelis had approached him, of all people. When all else failed, he was willing to ask directions. He said, "And what would you say is my very special use in all this?"

  "We know your outlook on Americans, and your means of taking revenge on them," said the fat man without implying any value judgment.

  "But why would you care about that?"

  "We do not. We care very much that our ally, Turkey, is becoming difficult as she becomes less dependent on us — and more dependent on her major illegal crop."

  "That seems a very risky thing to tell me."

  "Not so risky," Maazel wheezed, his eyes slitting above puffy cheeks as he grinned. "The Turks know it, and we know it, and so on. We simply choose this way to, um, manipulate the price of their product."

  Sorel sought the missing piece in the puzzle. "But if the seeds are free, surely it is because the grower can harvest the seeds himself for the next crop."

  "Correct again."

  "Then you will not merely manipulate the price of the Turkish product; you will utterly destroy their market when its price is undercut by processing here."

  "Your first error," Maazel said, erecting a finger like a Vienna sausage. "We are the only source of the wasps, Senor Sorel. It is not difficult to predict a precise yield from the number of wasp eggs we ship. We do
not intend to destroy the Turkish market. We merely allow a measured amount of competition by someone dedicated to producing all he can for American addicts — someone like yourself."

  "You would also be controlling my end of the business," Sorel reminded him.

  "Of course; but on a scale far greater than you have ever known before." He saw Sorel nod agreement and added, "Is it not elegant?"

  It was more than elegant; it was regal. While marveling at this scheme, Sorel realized with a shock that these Israelis had made a really incredible mistake. They assumed that Sorel cared more for revenge against Americans than he cared for the lifestyle he led. These orbiting Ellfive nabobs expected him to become a farmer in a region where a price hung over his head, instead of a — very well, he would admit it: a player leading a double life in the world's most exciting game.

  Maazel's smile said that he expected Felix Sore! to leap at this chance, regardless of its effect on his lifegames. And no matter how long he pondered the Israeli offer, Sorel knew that he absolutely would not, could not, accept it.

  Which left Sorel holding a satellite-sized tiger by the tail. If he refused the offer, he might not see Mexico again. Even if he did. he would be a prime target for every hit team New Israel controlled. That meant Sorel could never move in shuttle-set circles again; it was one thing to be on an American shitlist. and quite another to find yourself on a Mossad hit list. Americans made you a celebrity. Israelis made you dead.

  If only some shrewd Turk had whacked Maazel and his cronies on their way to this damned meeting! The Israelis would have pulled back, analyzed the problem, delayed their plan — perhaps indefinitely. And Sorel would not have been placed with one foot in the frying pan and the other in the fire.

  Suddenly, with the clarity of a digital readout. Felix Sorel saw what he must do to remove the heat. "I assume you can advise me on the land I must purchase in Oregon Territory," he said, and with his handshake Sorel offered a lovely golden smile.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Marianne sat on the edge of the bed, now and then glancing from her companions to the panorama outside the window of their suite. "This is truly a beautiful place," she mused. "Felix, do you suppose we could come back sometime?"

  She might as well have been talking to herself. "It was that little sonofabitch Azeri," said Slaughter, standing with legs apart, arms out and parallel to the carpet, raging as Sorel ran a pocket debugger over every inch of his clothing. Sorel had already found one tracer bug, no larger than a grain of wheat, stuck to the elbow of Slaughter's jacket, "I can't figure when he did it," Slaughter went on.

  "I know exactly when — Marianne, close the curtains, please," said Sorel.

  "I wanted to look at the mountains. Weren't you listening?"

  "Just do it, please." He waited until she had drawn the heavy drapes, then paused in his work, facing her, using the elaborate courtesy of one whose patience is beginning to fray. "A bare windowpane is like the head of a drum, Marianne. A tiny laser beam could be bounced off the corner of that window in such a way that someone far away could hear, from the vibrations of the window, every word we say. We are paying well for three adjoining rooms in a one-floor luxury inn, so that we are assured privacy here in the middle." He resumed passing the debugger over Slaughter's clothing and eventually found the second tiny audio device.

  "Azeri needs offing," Slaughter growled.

  "A wonder he didn't pick your pocket," Sorel said, taking his turn while Slaughter held the debugger. When Marianne had been pronounced clean in turn, the three of them sat on the big bed for Sorel's briefing. Slaughter put in a few curt questions and a suggestion here and there. Marianne grew silent, lips pale, and responded only with nods and headshakes. When the men agreed on the signal Sorel would give, she knew that this was no optional plan, but a firm decision.

  "I don't think my falling down will divert any of them," she said. "Maybe the old man; I don't know."

  "We must chance it. Most men will turn aside to help a woman in distress," Sorel replied. "Draw and shoot the nearest one, and do not hesitate."

  "Most likely we'll be on broken ground," Slaughter put in. "Problem is, they've probably checked the area already. They could have somebody staked out there, and I don't want none of that OK Corral shit if I can help it."

  "Very unlikely," Sorel snapped. His hard look suggested that they would chance it anyway. "But if they are not all three with us from the start, the stakeout becomes a possibility; and in that case we cancel the plan. Questions?"

  Slaughter was impassive. Marianne swallowed hard and shook her head, then moved toward the telephone handset near the bed. "I'd better make our travel arrangements," she said.

  Slaughter moved faster than she thought possible; his grip on her wrist bit like pliers, but her glance was a plea to Sorel.

  "We have your car," he said, and nodded to Slaughter, who made no apology as he released her arm. "After such work as this, you never rely on public transportation. Marianne." She bit her lip and rubbed her wrist gently, more angry than anything else. One day, she thought, this hardcase brush-popper. Slaughter, would pay for treating her so brutally.

  It was midafternoon when Maazel called, a half hour later before their two-car convoy eased out of the parking area. Mills leading in a rented Ford. Maazel using the Ford's dashboard mapfiche, directed him while Azeri sat in the backseat.

  Marianne, driving the Chevy as they ascended the blacktop mountain road, tried to quell her nerves in silence. "Azeri is their prime hitter, all right," said Slaughter over his shoulder. "I kinda thought it could be Saint Denis." No answer from Sorel in the backseat, but Marianne realized for the first time that seating arrangements had their own meanings. She wondered whether Felix Sorel was deadlier than the man beside her. In any case, she would soon find out. She fought an urge to pull over, to argue against violence, to — But she knew it was far too late. It had been too late when she'd rented the Chevy. Perhaps she was fated to gamble with men like Sorel, instead of playing out her life with the likes of Lieutenant Alec Wardrop. At the moment, she wished she could be riding with that fool Wardrop as he sought a four-footed killer in Wild Country. Better than a showdown in these mountains with two-legged carriers of death…

  The blacktop was old and broken. For long stretches, there was no gravel shoulder to speak of. One wheel off the edge could mean an endless plunge, down and down, headlong through scrub oak and madrone, and once Marianne saw a rusted hulk, prewar limo by the look of it, lying on its side in a ravine far below. She was careful to avoid that crumbled shoulder verge. Then, twenty klicks into the mountains, the Ford nosed off the blacktop to a rough unsurfaced road and stopped for moments while its occupants argued over the mapfiche. "They dunno where the fuck they are," Slaughter said with satisfaction.

  “Or would like us to think so," Sorel said from behind him.

  "We're leaving Dead Indian Road," Marianne put in, pleased that she had remembered the road signs.

  "And headed for dead Israeli gulch," Slaughter said. It was Marianne's first inkling that the man had any sense of humor. Was it possible that some men actually looked forward to the killing of near strangers?

  Then the Ford lurched forward, its wheels very near the lip of a roadbed cut by a bulldozer many years before. To one side was a steep uphill slope covered by dry grasses; to the other, a slope that was almost a precipice. The breeze was cool. Far away, Marianne could see glints of sunlight from solar panels on the outskirts of Ashland; she judged they might be a full kilometer higher than the valley by now. The diesel's subdued clatter, the grit of stone beneath her wheels, were reminders that she was really here; and "here" was the last place she wanted to be. She willed herself to remember what Sorel had told her: kill these men today, or be marked for death herself. That would make it easier to use the automatic that lay against her thigh. Would she hesitate? She told herself that these Israelis, alive, meant death to her, and when

  Sorel gave the signal she should save her
life by killing as quickly as possible. And, if possible, without pausing to think about it.

  Five minutes later the road swung in a downward curve, the Ford passing from sight for a moment. Sore I cursed in Spanish and urged her onward. But no ambush had been intended, and a half kilometer farther the road simply stopped at a ruined farmhouse with a barn. Sorel and Azeri were the first men to exit their cars, glancing at one another in mutual respect.

  Maazel brandished a plastic map in one hand, still carrying that attaché case in the other, and announced that this property had been worked for salsify during the war. "Or so the agent claimed," he said. "A few soil samples will tell us more." The fat man wheezed louder than ever now, in the thin mountain air. Following Sorel. he trudged to inspect the wood-framed little house with its broken windows and tumbledown porch.

  Slaughter pulled a thin cheroot from his shirt pocket, found his lighter, puffed for a moment, then ambled toward the bam, which seemed sturdier than the house. Marianne realized that any fourth Israeli staked out here would probably choose one of the structures for cover — or would he? In any case her companions seemed to be checking the possibility as they made their casual inspections.

  When little Azeri followed Slaughter into the barn, the dapper Mills chose to stay with the woman. "I take it that poking around in musty corners isn't your cup of tea," he said amiably. When she fed him the best smile she had, he smiled back. "Nor mine, Miss Placidas. I'm a negotiator, not a dirt farmer. And you?"

  As elitists they had much in common. She warmed to the Mills charm in spite of herself, saying she was a friend and courier, her nerve endings all tuned for any sign that things were going wrong.

  Boren Mills displayed nothing but boredom. When the others finished tramping around in the wilds, it would be his turn; and in earlier days, Mills had proved one of the sharpest businessmen in Streamlined America. This would not be the first time he had cut a deal with dangerous men. Since his escape to New Israel, he had often dealt with sensitive business issues, always backed by Israeli clout and his own intuition for the precise limits of an acceptable deal. His weapons were all in his head. Like many an intellectual before him, Mills assumed that he needed no lethal hardware. It was Mills's pride that he was a man of ideas, and not a man of action. Surely, he thought, if he packed no deadly physical threat, his opponents would oppose him on his own terms. With the Placidas woman he admired the view, picking their way around clumps of weed as they neared the farmhouse, where Marianne could hear Sorel and Maazel. Presently, Slaughter and Azeri left the barn to amble toward the others.