I felt pretty good about it, like a Boy Scout who'd managed his good deed for the day—but as a matter of fact, it wasn't really a bad idea to have her digging up dirt on A. Euler, since I had no use for her here.
eighteen
Inside the building, I found a low, dark, rambling dining room with rustic furniture. There were several tables of sportsmen and sportswomen telling each other big-fish stories in happy, alcoholic voices—mostly U.S. voices. I got a small table by the wall. I was busy studying the menu when the black man in the corner got up and walked out, leaving the sandy-haired gent with the bush jacket sitting alone at the round table back there.
They hadn't looked my way at all, either of them. Nevertheless, the flashing red light came on in the middle of the instrument panel and the warning buzzer sounded. I realized belatedly that I knew the remaining man from somewhere. At least I'd seen a photograph and read through a file, a fairly thick file. The trouble was, all those Great-White-Hunter types look pretty much alike, right down to the squinty, pale blue eyes and the neat little sandy moustache and the prominent front teeth and the affinity for whiskey in impossible quantities. Then I had the name: Huntington. Colonel Peter Walworth Huntington, soldier of fortune, reputedly a very good man to have around if you had a small war to manage, assuming it was a profitable little conflict that would justify his not inconsiderable salary.
Soldiers don't often come within our sphere of interest. We let them shoot each other undisturbed as a rule—but there are exceptions to that rule. I'd studied up on this particular military specimen some years back while preparing for an assignment in a Latin American country farther south. There had been a revolution of sorts going on at the time, of which we disapproved, and we'd heard that Huntington had been hired to assist the insurgent forces in an advisory capacity. As it turned out, I'd managed, with local assistance, to discourage the military coup by disposing of the aspiring strong man before Huntington had a chance to report for duty, so we'd never met; but I remembered reading that the colonel wasn't a very nice man. Well, his business isn't one that attracts very nice people. Neither, I suppose, is mine.
His presence in Baja at this particular time didn't strike me as a tremendous coincidence. After all, Clarissa had suggested, in describing the well-heeled Sanctuary Corporation, that it might invite a few tough mercenaries to its Baja party. However, the colonel's presence in Mulege on the night of my arrival here was stretching coincidence more than I really liked. I ordered dinner and forced myself to relax and wait the situation out, knowing that I'd made the kind of mistake one often doesn't survive in this business. Worrying about a future problem, I'd neglected to concentrate on the present job. I'd been thinking about the situation back home in the U.S.—I'd even dispatched an agent to deal with it—when I should have been concentrating strictly on Baja California Sur.
I hadn't allowed for any serious opposition down here except what might be provided by Ernemann himself. Even after almost walking into a trap at Laguna de la Muerte, I hadn't sat down and really thought things through. Now I was neatly cornered in Mulege. Why Huntington should bother remained to be seen, but I should have anticipated the possibility and been ready for it. After all, you can't poke around a revolution without, sooner or later, meeting a few revolutionaries.
Well, whatever the free-lance military genius in the bush jacket had in mind would undoubtedly become clear with time. Meanwhile, starvation wouldn't improve my position, so I did a thorough job on the fish-of-the-day, washing it down with beer. They do very well with fish down here, and they're not half bad with beer, either. I passed up the dessert-of-the-day, however. It was flan, a national dish that sends a true Mexican into convulsions of ecstasy, but I'd sworn as a kid that when I grew up and could eat anything I wanted, it wouldn't be slimy caramel custard....
The black man had returned while I was eating. In these days of wild and uninhibited Afro hair styles, his neatly shaved head had, somehow, a sinister look. It was a narrow head with a strong, striking, bony face, middle-aged or beyond, on a lanky runner's body. He'd been in the dossier too, I remembered now; apparently he'd been with Huntington a long time. I couldn't recall his name.
I sipped black coffee and watched a third man come in, a small, skinny specimen with a French beret. This one sat down beside Huntington and spoke in his ear and passed him something under the table. They made an odd international trio at the round corner table, quiet and alert among the noisy, boozy, U.S. anglers. I didn't know the little Frenchman, if that was what he was, but I had a hunch that anyone with a ratty, small-eyed, big-nosed face like that wouldn't ever become a bosom pal of mine.
They all ignored me carefully, confirming my feeling that their plans for the evening concerned me closely. I felt a little like a bear up a tree watching the hunters making preparations to shoot him down into the pack of yelping hounds below. Then Huntington stood up deliberately, a lean six-footer, and condescended to look my way at last. He strolled up to my table.
"Don't do anything hasty, old chap," he said. "We have the girl, don't you know?"
He laid a plastic-wrapped package of money on the table in front of me. He put Norma's tricky little leg-sheath, complete with knife, beside it. Scratch one good deed. It occurred to me that I seemed to be losing ladies right and left. Ramón had taken one; now these jokers had another. It was easier thinking of it that way than remembering a hotel room in Mexico City.
I asked, "Do you have her alive or do you have her dead?" My voice, I was glad to hear, sounded nice and expressionless.
Huntington looked distressed. "My dear fellow, no killing is intended. At least no killing of American agents. We want no trouble with your country. All we intend is to hold you until you can no longer interfere with important events that are about to transpire here in Baja. After that you'll be quite free to go." He stopped. I didn't say anything. He went on: "François had to run your girl off the road in her little car; but he says there is no serious or permanent damage, at least not to the girl—at the worst, he says, a slight concussion and a broken collarbone. He is a very skillful driver; I am sure he picked his spot carefully. He always does."
"Good for François," I said. "Sit down and take a load off your drama, Colonel Huntington."
He smiled thinly. "I was wondering if you knew me. We almost met once, didn't we, Mr. Helm?" He glanced down. "I said that no killing is intended. People have been killed unintentionally when they brandished firearms in an indiscriminate manner. I mention this, you understand, just in case that should be a revolver you're holding under the table. I should also point out that your governmental bodyguard outside is sleeping soundly; my man Simi is very good with sentries and guards. There are more of my men outside. If you start shooting, you will never get out of here alive."
"If it comes to shooting," I said, "neither will you, Colonel."
"In that case, with no one to control them, my grieving men will undoubtedly kill the girl."
I said, "Now that we've growled at each other adequately, all we have to do is pee on the nearest telephone pole and the amenities will be taken care of. Suppose we dispense with the menace and get to the point."
He hesitated, and pulled out the chair facing me, and seated himself. "I merely wished to make the situation perfectly clear, old chap."
"Well, you didn't succeed," I said. "You forgot the main thing. What's your beef?"
He frowned. "What do you mean?"
"What am I doing that you object to, Colonel?" I asked. "Why does my presence in Baja disturb you so much that you have to disable my escort, capture my assistant, and threaten me with kidnaping and death? What am I doing that's got you all worked up?"
"Do you need to ask?"
"I wouldn't ask if I didn't need to."
He made a sharp little gesture. "Let's not play games, Helm. Do you think I have forgotten General Jorge Santos? You remember Santos, I'm certain—the would-be dictator who called himself El Fuerte, down in Costa Verde—well, let'
s call it Costa Verde, since that was the code you people used for it, I believe. Operation Costa Verde. I was in line for some very profitable employment down there, until you shot Santos out from under me; a very fine shot, I understand, over five hundred meters. I offer my congratulations, a few years late. But once is enough, my dear fellow. I don't intend to lose any more generals, or jobs, on your account. When I heard you were coming and why—"
"Hold everything!" I said. "Let me get this straight. Are you rounding me up, and my lady helper, because you think we've got designs on the life of your precious and irreplaceable General Díaz?"
"What else?" he asked, surprised. "That's what our informants tell us, and it checks with everything we know about you, old chap. You're an expert at homicide. Well, we're all experts at homicide here, but your particular specialty, and that of your attractive little colleague, is disposing of them singly instead of in bulk, so to speak. What other target could you, or the United States government, have down here in Baja except that potential disturber of the precarious peace of the Americas, General Hernando Díaz? Obviously, you have been sent to do to Díaz precisely what you did to Santos some years back, for much the same reasons. Just as then, you have the backing of the government in power, which has assigned a man to protect you until you can get your work done. Our information is that your Mexican government associates have even supplied you with a very similar long-range rifle for the job."
"Well, I don't consider a light sporting .270 very similar to a heavy, target-type .300 Magnum, but I suppose that's a matter of opinion." I looked at him bleakly. At some time in the past, a bullet had cut a groove at the angle of his jaw; a couple of inches to the side and it would have taken off half his head and I'd never have met him. Well, there would have been another one sitting there, probably, just as coldly professional. The woods are full of them. "Who's in charge here?" I asked at last.
"Why, I am, old chap."
I shook my head irritably. "Cut it out. You know what I mean. We're both hired hands. I take orders from a guy in Washington. You're presumably working for the so-called Sanctuary Corporation. Well, who's calling the shots for them locally? Who gives you your instructions?"
He hesitated. "I see no reason to—"
"There's every reason," I said. "You boys are making a very bad mistake. I want to talk with the man at the top, and I don't mean any turncoat, two-bit figurehead generals or, begging your pardon, any hireling colonels either. This high-powered international outfit of yours is bound to have at least one real representative here with authority to act for it. Can you take me to him?"
His sun-bleached blue eyes studied me for a long moment. "I've read the dossier," he said, slowly. "You have a reputation for trickery—"
"No tricks," I said. "Let's put all the cards on the table, Colonel. You can kill me, sure, or your men can; but you can't take me alive if I don't want to be taken alive. And if I force you to shoot it out with me in this room, there'll be a real bloodbath, with innocent Yankee fishermen dying all over the place. Publicity galore, just what your revolution doesn't need right now. Is that a fair statement of the situation? Please notice, I'm not even trading on the fact that the first one to die will be you. I'm taking for granted that we're all brave as lions around here, and death doesn't scare us a bit. But we're not here to die, either of us, are we? We've both got jobs to do. I'd like a chance to demonstrate that those jobs are not as incompatible as you seem to think, but I want to do my talking to somebody with real clout. Okay?"
After I'd finished making my speech, it occurred to me that it was just a variation of the gaudy gambit I'd used on Andrew Euler, back at the border—the bloody-massacre ploy, you might call it. Well, why change a winning game? I like living, and the only way you keep living in this business is to make damned sure nobody ever gets the notion you're scared of dying; that brings them down on you like vultures zeroing in on a sick steer. The man across the table was regarding me suspiciously.
"Are you trying to tell me that you're not here after Díaz?"
"No," I said. "I'm not trying to tell you anything, Colonel Huntington. It would be a waste of time, wouldn't it? Even if I convinced you, I'd still have to go through the whole routine with somebody else, wouldn't I? All I'll say to you is that you're making a mistake, and it could turn out to be a very serious mistake for you, if you don't let me talk with the man on top."
He said, "If you're trying to be clever—"
I said, "Goddamn it, how did you ever manage to win any wars if you can't make up your cotton-picking mind? Put your hand under the table.... Come on, come on, reach down there! Have you got it? One Smith and Wesson loaded with five. Next, one Colt loaded with six. That's eleven people who don't die tonight. Now the knife. Okay, Colonel. Your move..."
nineteen
There were four of us in the big Mercedes. The little man with the beret, whom Huntington had called François, had the wheel. Beside him was the black man referred to as Simi—presumably a nickname since that was an African word for knife, if I remembered my safari novels correctly. The colonel and I shared the luxurious rear seat.
"Very well, François, let's pay a visit to Monsieur Bleu," Huntington said. As the car started up smoothly, he laughed. "These bloody amateur revolutionaries and their bloody secret corporations! Monsieuir Bleu. Señor Rojo. Herr Braun. Mr. Green. I fancy it makes them feel clever and conspiratorial, but if they don't want to be recognized by the lower orders they should wear masks. Even we illiterate, plebeian mercenaries occasionally glance at the photographs of the wealthy and beautiful in the illustrated public press."
"The whole spectrum, eh?" I said.
"Like a bloody rainbow, old chap. But you'll meet only the blue Monsieur tonight. How's your command of the French language?"
"Lousy."
Huntington sighed. "Then I'll have to translate, I fear. Monsieur does not condescend to comprehend the lousy French. You know how Frenchmen are about their language, With a Spaniard or Mexican, if you know three words of Spanish and make a determined effort to use them, those lovely people will do everything in their power to teach you the rest of the dictionary, but the bloody French.... Yes, I mean you, François. You've been correcting my pronunciation ever since we met, you Gallic monkey. Is this as fast as this Hun machine will operate?" The driver, apparently unperturbed, said something over his shoulder in French. "Never mind them," said Huntington. "They know where to come. Let us proceed to our destination with some celerity, s'il vous plaît" The limousine surged ahead, and the lights in the rearview mirror, visible from my position, diminished in size and, eventually, vanished. Two of them were lights that should have been familiar to me, since they were the headlights of my own carryall; except that I'd never made a study of it from outside with the lights on. It was serving as an ambulance, at Huntington's suggestion. He'd thought Norma would have a more comfortable ride on a purloined hotel mattress in the rear of the big truck-stationwagon than trying to sit up in a sedan.
It was a point in his favor, as was the fact that, unlike some other men I'd met under similar circumstances, he'd seen no need to push me around after he had me disarmed. He had not, however, let me talk with Norma. I'd only caught a glimpse of her sagging between two men, small and pale and disheveled, as we were escorted to the cars. Keeping us separate made sense, of course. That way we couldn't compare notes and agree on the story we were going to tell.
"Militarily speaking, this operation should be a piece of cake," Huntington said abruptly after we'd driven for a while in silence. "In case you were wondering about the feasibility of our revolutionary project, old chap. It may seem like a fairly ambitious undertaking; but the fact is that the Mexicans are being kept very busy over in the Sierra Madre, on the mainland. They are not making their internal difficulties public, but when I drove through there to assess the situation recently, I found military checkpoints everywhere. I even spotted one of their crack Commando units in the area—copied from your Green Berets, I
believe—some chaps I was hoping not to have to deal with here. It appears that my hope will be fulfilled—"
He stopped as the car lurched violently, braking hard. The headlights showed a battered van with California plates on the road ahead—there are more Californians on the Baja roads than there are Bajans—and it had moved over deliberately to block us as we tried to pass. The colonel reached down and brought up a submachine gun that had been reposing between his feet. He glanced at me.
"What do you think, old chap? An ambush, perhaps?"
"Maybe," I said. "Or just some Yankee drunks being funny, ha-ha. I'm not expecting a rescue, if that's what you mean."
"Would you say so if you were?"
I said, "You didn't take my weapons, amigo. I gave them to you, remember?"
"That wouldn't prevent some of your official Mexican friends from coming to your assistance, although that hardly looks like the sort of vehicle they'd use. Let's see what they have in mind," He reached out and tapped François on the head, speaking softly: "I thought you were supposed to be a driver, little man. What do you need to pass that heap of rusty metal, a military tank?"
The narrow shoulders of the man behind the wheel rose and fell in an expressive shrug. The Mercedes moved up once more, flashing its headlights for permission to pass, in the European manner. The swaying truck ahead, its windows blocked with luggage and camping gear, moved once more into the center of the road. I felt fairly helpless. If Ramón had been alerted and was trying to interfere, he could very well get me killed, and if it was just some crazy American kids on a camping trip, or some other kind of a trip, well, it would be a hell of a stupid way to get smashed up....
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