Two to Tango (Nick Madrid)

by Peter Guttridge

  The Square ofWar was only half the size of the original Inca square. When the Spanish arrived there was a stone covered in sheets of gold where offerings were made at the start of war.

  Tupac Amaru, the last Inca emperor, was executed here-as, 300 years later, was Tupac Amaru II, the eighteenth century Indian leader who had led an uprising against the Spanish rulers.

  The bearded Spanish conqueror Pizarro entered the city on 8 November 1533. He did no harm until the Emperor Manco escaped from imprisonment and returned with thousands of Indians for a six-month siege of the city.

  On 6 May 1536 Manco launched his main attack, using slingshots to rain red-hot stones on the city.The city burned but the Spaniards survived the attack then set about pulling down the rest of the Inca buildings.

  I looked around me at the impassive faces. Quite a few of the Indians were wearing brightly colored ponchos and blankets, the women wearing different sorts of round hats, papooses with babies in them on their backs.

  According to my guide book there was a market down near the railway station. I made my way through twisting streets into a wide rectangle with stalls set out in three lines. I was standing in front of a stall that sold nothing but coca leaves when Bridget walked up to me.

  "The elusive one," I said. I gestured round. "Isn't this great?"

  "Terrific," she said. "Let's get a drink."

  "I just want to haggle for some leaves," I said.

  "Haggle? God, Nick, you're so mean.You're really bloody anal-retentive."

  I clenched my buttocks as another salt-water induced spasm hit me.

  "Anal-retentive sounds good to me just now," I said gloomily. "Anyway, they expect you to haggle-they get upset when you don't."

  It took about ten minutes but I got the stallholder down to a sensible price.

  "Well, I think I showed her," I said as we walked across the market to a bar on the corner.

  "You certainly did," Bridget said, pointing at a sign in a shop window offering coca leaves at about half the price I'd paid.

  We went up a steep flight of stairs to a first floor bar. It had a narrow wooden balcony-enough space for four tables open to the air and overlooking the square.

  We squeezed either side of a table and sat down, ordering pisco sours. Bridget lit a cigarette and blew smoke over the next table.

  I looked across at the stage. Otis was on stage with his band tuning up for the sound check.The cathedral rose behind it, the Andes behind that.

  "Makes you want to be a condor, doesn't it?" I said. "Flying over these shingled roofs looking down on the square and the mountains all around it."

  "You been at your coca leaf?" Bridget said. "I was reading about condors. I had it in my mind they were like eagles, these great predators soaring high among the mountaintops to the accompaniment of that poncy pipe music-I've seen the documentary, too."

  "And your point is ..." I said.

  "My point is condors are vultures. They aren't like eagles at all.They don't hunt prey, they eat carrion-live off other people's leftovers. So much for noble fucking grandeur."

  "You seem even more cynical than usual," I said. "Is this trip not working out as you expected?"

  "It's had its moments," she said, watching Otis move around the stage. "How're things with you?"

  "I told Otis about his manager. And he's had another death threat"

  "You don't seem too concerned-nor him for that matter."

  "I am but what can I do? Ralph's the man.And Otis doesn't seem too worried even though someone put this one in his jacket pocket. Backstage, that is.Which means either whoever is threatening Otis is incredibly devious or she or he's got contacts with the tour or-"

  "He or she is on the tour."

  "But who?" I said. "None of the obvious suspects seem to pan out."

  "Except Horace."

  "You really think it could be him? Otis said he was going to sort that situation out tonight. If that means an early bath for Horace then that should put an end to the nonsense"

  "You think it is nonsense, then?" she said as the first chords of "Sinner Man" caroomed around the square.

  "I can't really imagine Horace wanting to kill the goose that lays the golden egg."

  "Unless exposed-in which case he might have to," Bridget said.

  I heard what she said but I didn't respond. Our balcony was virtually on the corner of the square. Diagonally opposite was another larger, enclosed balcony, part of a restaurant. Sitting some twenty yards away from us on that balcony, in a bright Hawaiian shirt, was the guerrilla leader wanted by four South American countries. Our old friend Ferdinand Porras.

  "Wait here," I said to the astonished Bridget as I brushed past her and headed for the stairs. I was down the stairs and halfway across the street before I gave any thought about what I intended to do. Confront the guy, that was clear. But then what? I could hardly carry out a citizen's arrest. Especially as he was likely to be armed.

  I needed a policeman. And whilst in Britain you can never find one when you need one, here in SouthAnierica you couldn't walk ten yards without tripping over one, usually decked out in jackboots and spurs with a sabre dangling at his belt. I kid you not-whoever has the contract to make jackboots for South American security forces is on to a job for life.

  So here was one preventing people going into the square, redirecting traffic to do a big detour around it. But if Porras was sitting here so openly he must be squared away with the local police.

  I hovered in the street, unsure what to do. The policemanmiddle height, portly, wearing mirror shades, and, yes, highly polished jackboots-had an arrogant bearing. If he were to move I just knew he would strut, although maybe that came with the jackboots.

  Maybe I should get Ralph. I looked beyond the policeman and could see him on the edge of the stage. But even supposing I could get into the square, by the time I reached Ralph and explained, Porras would have gone. I was dithering about what to do when Bridget came out of the bar.

  "What the hell are you up to?" she demanded, stomping up to me. "How dare you leave me with the bill?"

  "Bridget, this is hardly the time to discuss etiquette," I said fiercely. "I've just seen Ferdinand Porras." I gestured behind me. "Up in this restaurant. I was going to-"

  Suddenly a waiter from the bar we'd left hurtled out into the street and rushed across to us brandishing a bill.

  "You didn't pay the bill?" I said to Bridget, exasperated

  The waiter grabbed my arm and started to speak in rapid Spanish. He was clearly on Bridget's side in this.The policeman watched us from behind his mirror shades.

  I stuffed a handful of notes into the waiter's hand, of God knows what denomination. "Get to Ralph!" I yelled at Bridget and set off into the restaurant.

  "Who do you think you're ordering around?" I heard her snarl as I disappeared inside.

  I took the stairs to the restaurant two at a time. At least that was my intention but then I'd forgotten the altitude. I stopped on about step six and took a couple of minutes to get my breath. Puffing and wheezing I made my slow way up the rest of stairs.

  Nobody paid me any attention as I strode through to the balcony. When I got there a waiter was clearing a table of the remnants of three meals. Porras was gone.

  I leant out of the open window and looked around.There was no sign of the guerrilla leader. However, I saw Bridget just below me break free of the waiter, do a body-swerve, and dash past the policeman, then start legging it into the center of the square.

  I had assumed she would sweet-talk her way past the policeman, given that he had a pistol strapped to his thigh. I knew from experience Bridget could move fast, and the policeman was hindered by his spurs. But just in case he decided to draw his gun and shoot her-and she'd be really pissed off at me if that happened-I called down what I thought was the word for murder in Spanish.

  The policeman stopped in his tracks and looked up at the window. I yelled again. He looked back towards Bridget, who by now was in the ce
nter of the square and I hoped out of accurate range, then back up at the window. I called again and he hurried towards the restaurant entrance.

  I looked round to find half a dozen puzzled waiters standing behind me. I smiled cheerily and walked past them, scanning the restaurant for the exit Porras must have used.

  It was adjacent to the steps I had entered by. I went through a door and down another flight of steps. This one brought me out into one of the arcades that lined the square. Each side of it was filled with street traders, their goods laid out on multicolored blankets. I looked to the right and saw Porras with three other men turn onto the next side of the square.

  They were heading towards the cathedral. I turned down the arcade but was stopped abruptly by a gang of American tourists who were photographing a woman in traditional costume-round hat, colorful blanket wrapped round her, papoose at her back, baby's head sticking out of it over her shoulder, llama beside her with two wicker panniers strapped across it.

  Local Indians live a fairly self-sufficient life, thanks to their llamas. They drink their milk, make clothes from their wool, fires from their droppings-hey, it takes all sorts, buddy. But a few had realized there was easier money to be made by turning themselves into tourist attractions.

  At all the popular tourist sites they posed against the most spectacular views to give them that extra color. Quite rightly they wanted paying for it, as you discovered once you'd taken your picture.

  I brushed past the tourists and charged down the arcade. Thirty yards down I was stopped by a train of pack llamas. I was beginning to feel I was trapped in some ethnic computer game. The llamas made their unhurried way along, each one loosely tethered to the one in front.

  Call me boorish but one dromedary is pretty much like another as far as I'm concerned. Since I'd had a bad encounter with a camel once in somebody's back garden in Edinburghdon't ask, you really don't want to know-I wasn't about to mess with these.

  As I waited for the llamas to pass, I witnessed a disgusting phenomenon which of course I relish telling you.The lead llama suddenly lifted its tail and urinated, while continuing on its slow way. As it did so the lama behind dipped its head and-yechdrank the urine. Then it too lifted its tail.

  Considering they were all in line it seemed reasonable to assume that each day the llama owner gave water only to one llama, the one at the front. In the course of the day the water would progress slowly down the line. The llama at the back looked really pissed off.

  When they had passed I jostled my way along the next arcade. I'd lost sight of Porras now. I reached the cathedral and climbed half a dozen steps. I craned my neck for a sight of him. He was nowhere to be seen.

  I went in to the cathedral by the side entrance.

  The cathedral was vast-we're talking Notre Dame here. Much of the interior was lost in gloom since the only light was through the stained glass windows and from thin tallow candles.

  It looked to my non-Christian eyes as if it had been divided into cathedralettes. I could see half a dozen pulpits around the place, each with its own set of pews or rows of chairs before it. There were a few hundred people wandering the aisles, gazing up at big gloomy paintings of scenes from Jesus's life.

  They had been painted by Indians under the tutelage of Jesuits. Instructed to paint Roman soldiers and centurions and never having seen any, the artists painted the Romans as Spanish soldiers. Local food stuffs also made an appearance. A painting of the Last Supper featured maize, fried bananas, and-the centerpiece-roast guinea pig.

  There was a heady smell of incense in the air. I passed an image known as the Lord of the Earthquake-twenty-six kilos of solid gold studded with precious stones. Then there was an enormous solid silver altar donated by the first archbishop, who came with Pisarro. Generous of him, though I wondered where he got the money from. Not.

  I couldn't see Porras anywhere.A couple of tour parties converged in the aisle I was walking down so I turned off and started to make my way to the main exit into the square, thinking that was the best way to get to Bridget and Ralph backstage.

  I was just thinking how solid the walls must be if Otis could perform his soundcheck outside and I could hear nothing inside when I saw Otis, Ralph, and Bridget standing in a huddle by the vast double doors leading onto the square. Ralph must have pulled Otis in there as soon as Bridget reached them.

  I was walking along the back wall of the cathedral. Some twenty yards beyond Otis, Ralph, and Bridget I saw a big tour party following a woman wearing ethnic chic and holding an umbrella aloft.

  In the gloom as I walked towards Otis and the others I caught a flash of scarlet among the dowdily dressed tourists. There was an attractive South American woman in a sleeveless red dress cut quite low at the front. She looked vaguely familiar. So did the dress.

  I was musing on the fact that bare-armed women weren't usually allowed in Catholic churches in Europe when I realized I knew both dress and girl. It was Bridget's red dress, abandoned on the Amazon. And the girl who had been one half of our night guard was in it.

  Startled, I watched her progress though the tourists. She had a cold look on her face. She was gaunt, her eyes luminous and large. Otis, Ralph, and Bridget were busy talking-or rather Bridget was talking at them.

  I started to run.

  I had about a hundred yards to cover, the woman in the red dress about fifteen. Another group of tourists debouched into the aisle in front of me. And stopped. The girl's handbag was slung round her neck. She was holding it to her belly with both hands. She walked decisively forward, her eyes fixed on the unsuspecting trio. So this was it.

  But what exactly? What was she going to do? Shoot Otis? Was there a bomb in her handbag?

  I didn't think Porras went in for suicide bombing. I recalled the girl's lover and looked round anxiously to see if he was approaching from another direction.

  The cathedral was noisy, guides voices raised to describe its wonders. Echoing, refractive, a susurrus of sound. Someone started to play the organ, very loudly.

  I called to Otis. People nearby turned and stared. My endangered trio remained oblivious. The tour party formed a solid wedge in front of me. I swerved to my right and jumped up onto a pew, ran along, feeling it wobble beneath me. I called their names again.

  Everybody in the cathedral aside from the three people whose attention I was trying to attract seemed to be aware of my antics. Including the girl. She caught sight of me and blinked but didn't halt her progress. Rather the contrary. As I clattered along the pews she gave me a fierce look and reached into her handbag.

  I was feeling pretty damned Douglas Fairbanks as I leapt from pew to pew, hearing each one topple over just as I moved on to the next. Once I was past the tourists I jumped back into the aisle. Theoretically.

  My yoga-honed body was supposed to glide through the air then hit the ground running. But I caught my foot on the back of the last pew and went sprawling on the cold, very hard marble.

  I scrabbled to my feet as people surged round me. Not to help me, you understand. They cast disapproving glances down at me but passed by. I looked wildly over to Otis. He was still talking to Ralph. I couldn't see Bridget. Nor the girl.

  Jostled by the tour group I looked anxiously for a glimpse of the long black hair, the wounded eyes, the red dress. Then suddenly she was standing beside me. Frozen, I watched her fumble in her bag then bring out a gun. She pointed it at me.

  "You killed my lover," she said huskily.

  "Wha-"

  "My red dress looks good on you," I heard a familiar voice say. The next thing I knew, Bridget had swung her handbag down and knocked the gun to the floor. I kicked it under the pew. Bridget clamped the girl's arms to her sides from behind. She's better at the rough stuff than me, as she's demonstrated on a number of occasions.

  Then Ralph was beside us, speaking into the microphone jutting from his jaw

  "I was following Porras," I said quickly. "She's with him."

  Four more security men bur
st through a small door inset into the larger door. Each hastily genuflected and made the sign of the cross before hurrying over.

  Ralph hustled everybody out. Bridget and I hung back.

  "I think she was going to shoot me" I was embarrassed to say words I'd only ever heard in movies. "Er-I think you saved my life."

  "It's okay," she said abstractedly, looking after Otis. "I can't believe that guy."

  "Who?"

  "Otis-acts as if we never met." She shook her head and moved off. People were staring at me. Self-consciously I walked over and righted the pews I'd tipped. I quickly picked up the woman's gun, stuffed it into my knapsack, then followed the others out of the door.

  Ralph and Bridget were standing with the girl in a portacabin behind the stage. Otis had been whisked back to the hotel. An unnecessary precaution since it turned out the girl wasn't after him. As she'd briefly indicated she was after me and Bridget.

  "But why?"

  "Your friends murdered my lover Danilo."

  "No friends of mine," I said. "But wasn't he killed in a gun battle?"

  "He was executed."

  "How do you know?"

  "I saw. I was hiding. He made me hide.Your friends disarmed him, made him kneel, then they shot him." She looked at the floor. "And I did nothing. I was a coward. But no longer."

  I remembered Harry talking about the usual rules of engagement. I was also thinking of pat sayings like he who lives by the gun shall die by the gun.

  "How old are you?" I asked.

  "Eighteen," she said sullenly. "And Danilo was the same."

  "I'm sorry about your friend, sister," Bridget said. "But you did kidnap us. Those guys were rescuing us. Danilo was armed-he would have shot us if we'd tried to escape."

  "Danilo didn't even know how to shoot," she said. "He'd only been with us a couple of weeks."

  "But he'd chosen that life-"

  "You think we have options?" the guerrilla girl said, her eyes flashing. "We have no options at all. Danilo came from a village just outside Bogota, my country's capitol. His family worked in the coal mines.You know about our coal mines?" She bared her teeth in a cold grin.