The Diamond Bubble

by Fish, Robert L. ;

  Bernardes looked up. His initial smile of welcome faded. His eyes sharpened. “Archimedes! What are you doing here? Where’s Nestor?”

  Archimedes sighed, temporizing. “Nestor … couldn’t come…”

  “Couldn’t come? Why not?” A more important consideration suddenly came to the bulky man. He leaned forward, dropping his voice almost to a whisper. “The diamonds. Do you have them?”

  Archimedes nodded evenly. “I’ve got them …” His hand went to his side and then froze. A waiter had appeared at the table. Bernardes looked up, changing the expression on his face instantly.

  “Two beers. We’ve already eaten.”

  Archimedes was almost tempted to say that he, at least, had not eaten, but he knew this was not the time to register idle complaints. Although, he thought, the rich aroma of feijoada certainly was tempting. The waiter nodded and disappeared; Bernardes leaned over the table once again.

  “Hand them to me under the table.”

  The smaller man delved obediently into his pocket, retrieved the packet, and slid them across. The large hand took them from him, fingered the pouch a moment, and then transferred them to a pocket. With the most important part of the transaction completed, Bernardes leaned back more comfortably.

  “Now, you were saying about Nestor—why did he send you instead of coming himself? He always informed me when you were taking his place before.”

  Archimedes mentally shrugged. It had to be told sometime, and it might as well be now. He looked across the table solemnly.

  “Senhor Nestor is dead.”

  “What!” Bernardes stared at the other with eyes widened in shock. He forced his voice lower, leaning over the table. “What did you say? Nestor dead? How? When?”

  “Two nights ago. It was early in the evening, and he was at his bar—”

  “You’re lying!” Bernardes’ jaw tightened ominously. “I had a cable from him, sent late that night!”

  “I sent it. I—”

  The waiter appeared from the bar, placed two flagons of beer before them, stacked two cardboard coasters on one corner of the table for a tally, and went away. Archimedes stared at the beer almost hypnotically, watching the tiny bubbles trail softly to the surface. He reached out and picked up the damp, cold glass, brought it to his lips, and drank deeply. To his surprise it was good, very good. He put the glass back on the table and wiped his lips; a slight exhilaration swept him, born of the unaccustomed alcohol on his empty stomach, and compounded by the knowledge that, for good or bad, he would soon be free of the entire dreadful nightmare.

  “Well?” Bernardes’ voice was harsh.

  Archimedes held up a small hand for patience and finished his beer. He placed the empty glass back on the table and burped politely.

  “Yes—Senhor Nestor … Paulo shot him …”

  He reached over without permission, drawing the full glass of beer from before his companion. Bernardes’ hairy hand slammed down on his. He almost hissed.

  “Get on with it!”

  “Oh. All right.” His eyes came up, calm and almost indifferent. “Paulo shot Senhor Nestor. I killed Paulo. Later that night, of course. And then, just this morning down at Camamú, just after we picked up the diamonds, Da Silva killed Jorge the fisherman …”

  “Da Silva? José Da Silva? Of Interpol? He was in Camamú?” The series of blows were coming almost too rapidly for Bernardes. He stared at the other with growing horror in his eyes.

  “That’s right,” Archimedes said quietly, recalling. “I didn’t tell you about him, did I? You see, he was in Nestor’s bar talking with Nestor when Paulo shot him—shot Nestor, that is. And then, when I came off the launch with Jorge this morning in Camamú, there he was with someone else, running at us across the sand. His car had hit a rivulet on the beach and got stuck in the sand there.”

  He disengaged his hand gently from Bernardes’ lax grip and drew the other’s glass of beer toward him. Bernardes closed his eyes a moment, attempting to grasp the enormity of the story he was being told. Archimedes drank half of the glass and set it down.

  “I shot at him, but I missed him. And then he shot Jorge, or maybe it was the other one with him …”

  Bernardes opened eyes that were finally beginning to realize the completeness of the disaster. “Da Silva followed you to Camamú …”

  “I don’t think so.” Archimedes shook his head thoughtfully. “I don’t see how he could have. I don’t think he knew anything about me. Before Camamú, at least,” he added in all honesty.

  “And from Camamú you led him here. You fool!”

  Archimedes shook his head again. “No. I told you his car was stuck in the sand.”

  Bernardes was not listening. His thick fingers curled themselves into a fist on the table. His voice was deadly. “From Camamú you led him here …! To me! You fool!”

  The full and immediate danger was now obvious; while he had been listening to this idiot the police were closing in on him. The tiny booth suddenly seemed even smaller, hovering over him, locking him in. He twisted swiftly, edging open one corner of the curtain, peering carefully into the street. Two figures were lounging across the narrow street, ostensibly studying the contents of a shabby tobacconist’s window. Bernardes dropped the curtain in haste, almost as if the rough-textured material had suddenly burned him. He slid from the booth and bent over the smaller man, his voice tight.

  “Come on! We leave, but we split up …” He paused a fraction of a second; the rendezvous had not been originally chosen without a certain amount of careful consideration. “We split up. I go out through the kitchen and you go out the front …”

  Archimedes looked up at him with eyes that understood, that were even faintly amused at the pitiful subterfuge. “You leave,” he said gently. “I’ll stay.” He looked about and then smiled. “As a matter of fact, I’m hungry. I think I’ll have lunch.”

  Bernardes’ jaw tightened. “You’ll leave with me! You’ll—” He paused and then sneered. “Then stay! And I hope they shoot you!”

  He swung from the table in the direction of the double doors leading to the rear of the establishment. Archimedes looked after him a moment and then shrugged. He lifted the beer, finished it, and then snapped his fingers loudly for a waiter.

  On a corner diagonally across from the restaurant Da Silva and Wilson conferred with a small group of plain-clothes detectives. One of them tilted his head slightly toward the restaurant in lieu of pointing.

  “They’re both in there. Bernardes has a dark jacket …”

  “Good.” Da Silva nodded and turned to Wilson. “I know Bernardes and you should remember the little man, at least by sight. You take one of the men and go in the front. I’ll go in through the back, in case they try to split up.”

  “Right.”

  Wilson glanced at one of the men questioningly and received a nod of agreement. The two started across the street as Da Silva began walking swiftly along the sidewalk leading to the alley that flanked the building in the back. Wilson waited until Da Silva had insured coverage of the rear and then swung open the door.

  For a moment the dimness obstructed his vision; he stared about. Even in the gloom he could note that no booth was occupied by more than one. A loud snap of fingers caught his attention; he looked closer. A faint smile crossed his lips. This was their little friend without a doubt. He walked forward, followed by the plain-clothes detective.

  “Beer,” Archimedes said without looking up. “And a menu, please.”

  “Where’s Bernardes?”

  The small head came up slowly; for several quiet moments it studied them. There was almost no emotion on the face. “Police?”

  “Yes. Where is Bernardes?”

  Archimedes shrugged. “He left.” A great sigh shook the small figure. “I suppose you want me to go with you. And I wanted to eat …”

  “I sympathize with you,” Wilson said, and found to his surprise that he meant it. He turned to the man beside him. “Hold him. I’
m going through to the back …”

  He moved to the swinging kitchen doors and pushed swiftly through just as Da Silva entered the rear door. For a split second they stared at each other before Wilson shook his head. A chef in a filthy apron rushed up waving a knife wildly.

  “Police,” Da Silva said brusquely. The knife stabbed the air violently. “I said—” Da Silva began harshly and then realized the knife was meant to convey direction rather than threat. A small door set beside the ancient wood-burning range at the far side of the kitchen was the target. He moved swiftly across the kitchen and swung open the door. Steps disappeared into the darkness below; without hesitation he pounded down them, followed by Wilson. Across the packed earth of the narrow basement a sharp wedge of light shafted diagonally upward; an outside staircase led to another street they had not covered. Da Silva took the far steps two at a time, cursing, and was barely rewarded as he came to the cobblestone street level to see a neatly jacketed back disappear around a corner down the street. With clenched jaws he ran down the block in pursuit; it may or may not have been Bernardes. For all he knew Bernardes might be miles away by this time, sauntering evenly past police and calmly planning his flight from Salvador to Rio or Amsterdam, or God knew where, but bolstered by the strengthening thought of the diamonds undoubtedly in his possession.

  Bernardes at the moment was, as a matter of fact, sauntering—but certainly not through desire, and certainly not calmly. His emergence from the hidden street had brought him unexpectedly face to face with a radio-patrola car parked along the curb with its personnel listening intently to a football game between Salvador and Santos. Their close attention to the loud-speaker brought his heart to his throat; without a doubt his description was being broadcast, as well as his crimes, as well as his probable location. But the sudden scream of “Goooo-aaaa-llll!” from the center of the group hunched so tensely within the car gave him momentary respite and he forced himself to stroll in a relaxed manner past the parked car to the nearest corner and around it, after which he took to his heels.

  Da Silva, coming to the street, was overjoyed to see the police car. He approached it, his shield in his hand.

  “A man,” he said quickly. “Well-dressed. He came around this corner seconds ago—dressed in a dark suit with a jacket—no hat—heavy—”

  The sergeant of the radio-patrola stared at him grimly. “Pelé!” he said with heartfelt disgust. “Did you hear that? Two goals in two minutes! It isn’t fair.” He turned to one of the others within the car for confirmation. “Santos was offered one million dollars—American dollars, mind you—for him. Why didn’t they sell? Are they that rich? It isn’t fair to the other clubs.”

  Wilson came up, panting. “Did they see him?”

  “Without a football uniform on? Are you kidding?” Da Silva was bitter. He looked up the street; a fork in the road above offered possibilities. “Come on! You take the left and I’ll take the other.”

  “Right.”

  They trotted ahead and split up at the corner. Behind them the members of the radio car bent back over the loud-speaker; Santos was beating Salvador by three to nothing, which was obviously more serious than whatever that man on the curb had been talking about, whatever that was.…

  Senhor Ivan Bernardes had covered several twisting blocks beyond the radio car before he had recovered enough from his panic to glance behind. The road was empty, or at least the few people standing about did not seem to represent pursuit. He sighed with temporary relief and began to plan. One thing was certain; it was only a matter of time before he would be spotted, and to go into hiding in the lower city was to place himself in a trap that would, with enough men and time, assuredly be sprung. The only thing to do was to get to the upper city as quickly as possible, and the fastest way to do that was to get to one of the elevators before the police had a chance to consider that possibility and block them.

  He increased the rate of his pace, turning into the first alley that presented itself, an alley that had the double advantage of bearing in the general direction of the nearest elevator and also being sufficiently nondescript to warrant the hope of being overlooked. Beyond the far exit of the alley he could see the towering silhouette of the southernmost of the twin lifts that fed the traffic between the upper and lower city. He forced himself not to break into a run. In the heat of the afternoon a running man would only attract attention, and Bernardes had no desire to further jeopardize his chances for freedom.

  The winding alley ended at the paved ramp leading upward to the entrance to the huge elevator built to connect the two distinct levels of the city. He paused and studied the monstrous structure. Rising starkly from the lower city some eight hundred sheer feet to connect with the upper city, the large square tower lifted itself from the red roofs of the cluster at its base to climb majestically toward the heavens, with a distant platform almost invisible in the heights that led tenuously across to the firm roads and streets of the cliff top that represented the more modern aspect of Salvador. In its side, visible as thin slots in the mounting tapering walls, narrow slivers of glass marked the few windows set casement-like in the thick brick. Between the wall that fronted the cliff and the rock face of the cliff itself, shacks built of hammered-flat gasoline tins and scrap lumber climbed one over the other, connected by beaten paths in the clay interstices of the stepped rock, rising ever higher and higher.

  Bernardes stepped from the alley’s mouth, dropping his eyes from the heights he had been contemplating, and walked toward the inclined ramp that faced him. At that hour the ramp held but few potential passengers for the mammoth elevators, and they were all straggling slowly in the direction of the entrance to the square tower. Bernardes strode among them, head lowered protectively, trying to fit himself in with them, to look like them; but their slow pace was not to be tolerated under the circumstances. The welcome sanctuary of the tall bronze gates swung open at the top of the ramp could not be denied; he clenched his sweaty hands and approached them faster. Just let the elevator car be waiting at the lower level, he prayed fervently, and let there be no police waiting within the lower halls with drawn guns …

  Two blocks back, Da Silva pounded from a street, panting, and turned to stare about him. Where on earth could the man have disappeared to? And what on earth was surprising about his having disappeared? The idiocy of the solitary chase was most evident to him. The proper and intelligent thing to do was to return to the restaurant and the police stationed there and have a description broadcast; to have men stationed at the roadways leading up the face of the cliff and at the entrances of the two elevators leading to the top … His head came up: the elevators, of course! The nearest was only a few hundred yards away—it was undoubtedly the spot for which Bernardes would head! Return to the restaurant could wait, at least until this probability had been investigated. He took a deep, shuddering breath and started off again, heading for the praça and the giant elevator tower beyond.

  In the gloom of the large entrance hall of the mammoth elevator Bernardes paused, his eye accustoming itself to the dimness, running rapidly over the people queued up patiently before the closed doors of the one car that ran between the bottom and the top. At least no police! His eye fled to the indicator above the locked gate; the cab was fixed at the upper level and he knew from experience that they ran only once each thirty minutes. But had it just ascended, or was it at the end of its waiting period above and about to descend? And how long could he afford to wait here before the police would begin to close in on him?

  He edged back from the dim lobby to the bronze gates leading outside and peered through at the sunny ramp. For the moment, at least, there was no covert threat. No commotion indicated itself, and the sloping concrete walks were deserted. He sighed in relief and was about to turn when his eye caught a trotting figure that had appeared from the far side of the small paved square and was approaching the ramp. Bernardes froze. The black curly hair and flamboyant mustache suddenly became recognizable—Da Silva!
He drew back into the shadows instantly, his heart pounding. The tower, instead of becoming a sanctuary, had become a trap!

  His eyes scanned the area wildly, seeing only the dull waiting faces lined up patiently at the closed door of the cab, staring back at him without expression. He swung about; only smooth tile walls met his frantic gaze. No place to hide—no place to disappear! And then a small door set beside the main car door caught his eye. It was the maintenance access to the machinery of the elevator set within. In one motion he had ripped it open to slide within; he fell back against the closed panel with his heart beating madly.

  In the faint light cast from the narrow casement windows of the tower set high above in the sheer walls, the interlaced skeleton frame of tangled girders and trusses mounted endlessly to disappear finally in the black heights above. He looked down. Beneath the grillwork platform on which he stood huge coil springs and cable drums were fastened to the concrete base below, all silent now. In the stillness he could hear his own breath whistling in and out of his constricted throat; he was sure it must be audible in the corridor without. Without thought he forced himself to the far side of the narrow platform and waited in the shadows there, his hands clenching and unclenching themselves spasmodically, his entire body rigid with anticipated discovery.

  In the lobby outside Da Silva paused, catching his breath, letting his sight adjust to the dimness. His eyes surveyed the queue quickly, dismissed it, and found the indicator. Good! At least Bernardes had not escaped by this route—there would have been no time for him to have caught the car before its last ascent, and by the time it descended again for its next trip both this elevator and the one at the northern end of the lower city would be adequately covered. The thing to do now was to locate a telephone within sight of the entrance and make the necessary calls. He nodded to himself in satisfaction and turned to leave. The small innocuous door set beside the large sliding gates to the elevator caught his attention and he suddenly paused, his eyes narrowing. Was it possible? He reached out and twisted the knob.