The Great Game (A Captain Gringo Western Book 10)

by Lou Cameron

  He shrugged and said, “Well, folks, the sun’s going down and we’d better start thinking about fording that stream before dark.”

  Sister Dominica dimpled and said, “Poor José said there was a ford a kilometer to the east. After we lost our team and wagon he led us this far on foot and we were going to cross after dark, but—”

  “We know what happened after that,” the American cut in, adding, “I’d have guessed west, where it should be getting less soggy, but I suppose that’s why you need guides in this delta country. So east it is. Do you, uh, ladies have anything over among the trees?”

  Both of them shook their heads and Mother Juana Maria said, “That fool of a Negro let the horses run away with everything. We don’t even have our bedrolls or a change of ... never mind.”

  Captain Gringo looked at the mounts they’d just inherited and observed, “Well, there’s a serape and ground cloth tied behind each saddle. If we don’t make your mission by morning—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Mother Juana Maria cut in. “In the first place we Sisters of Mercy don’t camp out with strange men, and in the second, those bedrolls are probably filthy and infested with lice!”

  He knew she was probably right. He looked at the low sun and said, “Okay, let’s be on our way. Gaston, help Mother Juana Maria mount the bay with the blaze. I’m putting Sister Dominica aboard this pinto mare.”

  The older nun insisted she was quite capable of mounting her own horse, which they noticed she intended to ride sidesaddle no matter how the saddle had been designed. Sister Dominica extended her hand to Captain Gringo with a Mona Lisa smile. He shook his head and laced his fingers together, saying, “You put your foot in my hands and I’ll boost you up.”

  She nodded in understanding as he bent at the waist to offer her a leg-up. She raised her knee high as she grabbed the horn and cantle, keeping the reins in her left hand, of course. He noticed she had one trim ankle, despite the high button shoes. Did South American nuns wear expensive fashionable kid leather shoes? As he boosted her aboard, Sister Dominica forked her free leg over the saddle, like a man, and mounted astride, with her hitherto long skirts up around her thighs, exposing her bare knees. Mother Juana Maria gasped and said, “That is no way for any proper girl to sit a horse, Sister Dominica!”

  But the younger nun laughed and said, “It’s even more undignified to fall off, no? I was taught to ride this way, proper or not, and in any case it is almost dark.”

  Mother Juana Maria started to say something, but shrugged and told Gaston, “Lead on, my good man.”

  Gaston raised an eyebrow and asked, “Madame does not know how to guide her own mount?”

  “I have never seen the need to learn. That’s what servants are for.” Gaston shrugged, forked himself aboard another horse with the older nun’s reins in hand, and called out, “I shall take the lead, Dick.”

  Captain Gringo looked up at Dominica, who shook her head and said, “I can manage my own reins, thank you. I fear I was a bit of a tomboy before I joined the order.”

  He mounted his own chosen gelding with a thoughtful frown as Gaston headed east with the red sunset to his rear, along with Mother Juana Maria. Captain Gringo was anxious to talk to Gaston alone. Aside from any slips the Catholic Frenchman might have noticed, Sister Dominica had just made a lulu!

  She’d told him two stories, now, about her childhood.

  First she’d said she’d been left on the convent doorstep as an infant. Now she said she’d been a tomboy who rode like a llanero before joining up. Either story could be true, but he couldn’t see how both of them could!

  He waved the younger nun forward, saying he’d guard the rear, and he did, in fact, looking back every once in a while. But he wasn’t as worried about the empty sea of grass behind them in the sunset as he was about the mysterious women they’d picked up.

  Captain Gringo wasn’t as cynical as Gaston. Nobody could be. But he’d learned the hard way not to trust people blindly, and the more he thought about the nuns they’d just met, the less he trusted them.

  It was true that any woman could slip into a nun’s habit and it did make a swell cover in a savage but devout neck of the woods. Those outlaws had been a lot nastier than your run-of-the-mill Catholic bandit. Had he missed something back there? What if the band hadn’t just stumbled over two innocent nuns and a servant? What if they’d been looking for them, and known they weren’t really nuns? Rebel bands didn’t just ride around out in the middle of the llano hoping to meet attractive victims. That flag they’d carried could indicate they were part of some faction in the pending war. The Brits were mixed up in it and, yeah, the Brits did issue Webley snub-noses and Sister Dominica’s shoes looked a lot more Bond Street than village shoemaker! He wondered if she packed a Webley.

  But how was he going to find out?

  How did a guy go about feeling up a nun?

  ~*~

  In the capital city of Caracas, far to the north-west, a recently purchased house of Spanish Colonial architecture had been gutted and converted, inside, to a degenerate’s dream of a Persian whorehouse. The owner was indulging his limitless lust, and almost unlimited wealth and power, in what had been the master bedroom when Earth People lived there.

  Now the walls were covered with mirrors and oriental hangings rare enough to grace a museum, if museums had gone in for dirty Persian carpetry.

  The windowless room reeked of incense, hashish, and the smell of human sex as Sir Basil Hakim stood near the foot of the big pillow piled bed, grinning goatishly at his own images all around. Sir Basil belonged to the same London club as the Prince of Wales. But His Highness, Prince Edward, would probably find the scene a bit much, even for a notorious rogue who slept with Lilly Langtrey when she was in town. The Jersey Lilly seldom took it in the rectum, and when she did, she was still a female.

  Sir Basil stood, legs braced, with his virile member inserted in the derrière of a fourteen-year-old black boy as the youth, in turn, was committing cunnilingus for the third member of the orgy, a white Castilian girl of twelve. She was blushing prettily as the sodomized Negro youth moved his head between her open slender thighs. She couldn’t look at the goat-like old man dominating the scene above them. Sir Basil enjoyed the young whore’s shame. He could see her little nipples were swelling with sexual arousal as he abused the boy with his perverse old shaft. Sir Basil was proud of his somewhat jaded sex organ, for it was larger than most people expected a man as short as him to have. But, lately, it seemed to take more and more unusual stimulation to get a full erection. Hence the young black stud to practice on as he made ready to enjoy the pretty little girl. The black boy wasn’t enjoying this at all, Sir Basil knew. The old degenerate had made certain the youth preferred normal sex before he’d rented him for the evening. That was the nice thing about having so much money. You could buy or rent almost anything or anybody. The black youth hated what the dirty old man was doing to his tortured rear and was going crazy with desire for the cunt he was eating as the old man reamed him. He reached down between his own dark thighs to masturbate, but Sir Basil snapped, “No! I’m going to come in you and then I want you to put it in her mouth, hard and ready!”

  The Negro couldn’t answer with his mouth full, but the girl gasped, “Oh, no, por favor, sénor! I do not wish for to suck a Negro!”

  Sir Basil sneered and said, “You’ll suck a dog, if I tell you to, child. Don’t worry. You’ll enjoy it. While you’re sucking Pedro, here, I’ll be screwing your nice wet little box, eh?”

  The girl started to cry. Sir Basil laughed. That was the nice thing about having orgies with children. They were never blasé about unusual positions. He knew his two young victims were confused, frightened, and filled with conflicting desire and shame. It made him feel much bigger, even though he was shorter than the black boy and almost as small as the young girl, when everyone was standing up.

  He grabbed Pedro’s slim brown buttocks and thrust home deeper as the boy whimpered wi
th a mouthful of what he really wanted. A telephone rang on the nearby marble topped table. Sir Basil frowned and reached out for it, trying not to break the rhythm.

  Sir Basil prided himself on his self-control, too, and business came before pleasure, when one’s business was Death.

  The voice at the other end snapped like a whip in Sir Basil’s ear as it said, “All right, you little bastard, just what do you think you’re up to, now?”

  “They’re named Pedro and Celestina, I believe. Is this Greystoke?”

  “You know damned well it is, you sneaky Turkish whoremaster!”

  Sir Basil chuckled and said, “Temper, temper. I’m a British subject of Turkish heritage in the first place, and I deal in arms, not whores, in the second. What’s made you so surly, dear boy?”

  The British Intelligence man at the other end of the long distance line said, “You, you oriental cocksucker! I suppose you’re going to tell me you know nothing about Captain Gringo being in Venezuela, right?”

  Sir Basil blinked and blanched, withdrawing from the sodomized black as his uneasy erection dropped to half-mast. He said, “As Allah is my witness I hadn’t heard! What’s Dick Walker doing in this country, Greystoke?”

  “That’s what I called to find out, you two-faced little child molester.”

  Sir Basil glanced over at the bed, where the black Pedro had mounted Celestina to relieve their mutual tension. The boy had overstepped himself and would have to be punished, but it was rather interesting to watch his brown rump bouncing like that between the girl’s cream white thighs. Sir Basil asked, “Have you been spying on me again, Greystoke? My private life is none of your business. I’m a Peer of the Realm and I lunch with His Highness, as you found out the last time you tried to put me out of business.”

  His caller growled, “Yes, I suppose His Highness likes to be sucked off like your other friends in High Places. Let’s get back to Captain Gringo. I happen to know he’s worked for you in the past.”

  “As he has for you, dear boy. Soldiers of fortune tend to work for the highest bidder. But I assure you I had no idea he was in Venezuela.”

  “I think you’re full of it, but since you won’t tell me the truth when the truth is in your favor, what the devil is your game in Caracas?”

  “Haven’t your spies told you? I said his name is Pedro and she’s called Celestina and at the moment they’re screwing like minks on my time, so if you don’t mind ...”

  “Hang up on me and I’ll send a company of Royal Marines after you, you treacherous Turk! I just asked you a question. I’m waiting for an answer!”

  Sir Basil hesitated as he stared down at the children rutting on the bed. For a girl who seemed to look down on Negroes, Celestina had gotten quite friendly indeed with her fellow love toy. He’d teach her how it felt to be dominated by a grown man in a moment. Greystoke was one of those disgusting civil servants who took his duties seriously. You couldn’t buy him and he wasn’t as respectful of his social betters as he should have been. The prince had warned him, the last time he’d tried to get Greystoke fired, that there were some blokes working out of Whitehall that even the crown had to be careful of. Greystoke had enough on half the peers of the empire to bring down the government in scandal. Hence, it seemed more prudent to have him working for the government than against it. When Sir Basil had suggested assassination, His Highness had seemed shocked. That was the trouble with the British. They were only half-hearted degenerates with an unfortunate streak of decency when it came to more serious fun and games. Sir Basil sighed and said, “Very well, to save your agents a lot of work I may as well tell you I’m here on my usual business. I sell things that go bump in the night.”

  “I know you’re a stockholder in Krupp as well as Vickers Armstrong and a dozen other arms combines, Hakim. But your tale won’t wash if you’re suggesting you came to peddle guns in Venezuela. We’re not about to have the usual banana revolution; we’re getting ready to have a war between the Empire and the stubborn Yanks. The Yanks buy all their weapons from people like Colt and Remington. The Royal Navy and Marines bring their own, too. And before you feed me a lot of twaddle about arming Venezuela, I’ve just confirmed that Washington is shipping more weapons, free, than all the forces of Venezuela would ever be able to use.”

  Sir Basil shrugged and said, “True. I don’t think President Cleveland is bluffing, this time. You and he have a lot in common, Greystoke. You idealistic chaps tend to be stiff necked about honor and all that rot.”

  “Never mind who’s bluffing whom. Get to where you come in. If you can’t sell arms to Britain, the States, or the legal government of Venezuela, who’s left?”

  “The illegal government, dear boy?”

  Greystoke hesitated, then snapped, “You’re mad. General Crespo’s been firm in the saddle for some time in Venezuela. That’s why the perishing Yanks are backing him. They have this thing about stable dictatorships.”

  “Quite. Makes it easier for Wall Street when a country doesn’t have a revolution every few months. It’s true the Crespo junta has been running things rather well down here for the past few years and it’s true no rebel faction would have much chance of unseating Crespo, under normal circumstances. But we live in uncertain times, dear boy. This pending British invasion has everyone here in Caracas in a bit of a flap. The friends of one Cipriano Castro seem to feel a stronger hand may be needed at the helm if Venezuela is to survive this alarming confrontation between major powers, eh what?”

  Greystoke asked, “Are you talking about the only crook in town that can hold a candle to you, Hakim? The Yanks would never back Cipriano Castro and his bunch. Hell, we wouldn’t want the oily bastard running Venezuela, either!

  He’s an unscrupulous greedy political adventurer nobody in his right mind would want to do business with. I can’t see Washington or Whitehall dealing with him!”

  Sir Basil nodded and said, “You’re right. Fortunately, I demand cash in advance for my wares, so he can’t stick me.”

  “Good Lord! You don’t mean you’re running guns to the Castro faction?”

  “Well, somebody has to. They have no friends in the U.S. or U.K.”

  “Listen, Basil, no shit, you’ve got to stop! Things are starting to fall in place, now. It’s obvious that the rebels are hiring soldiers of fortune like Captain Gringo to go with the goodies you’ve been selling them! The minute we and the Yanks get into it, Castro’s bunch will pull their own power play. God knows where it will lead if this thing turns into a three-sided war!”

  Sir Basil shrugged again and said, “I’m an honest merchant who doesn’t worry about my wares, once I sell them. I don’t see why Whitehall’s worried. I should think a spot of civil war here in Caracas would make things simpler, down there in the delta, eh what? Castro’s gang wants to run things here where it’s more civilized. They couldn’t very well stop the Royal Navy, once the Yanks pull out, as they will if a band of unwashed bandits takes over the country.” He sniffed and added, “One may say I’m acting as British patriot, in my own way.”

  Greystoke snorted at the other end of the line and said, “Listen, you oily son-of-a-bitch, I’m not asking you to stop playing with fire for your own good. I’m ordering you, in the name of The Queen! This ruddy row with the Yanks is complicated enough, without you throwing eggs at the fan!”

  Hakim laughed and said, “I know. Whitehall’s rather counting on Morgan money and DuPont explosives when and if they have to teach the new young Kaiser a lesson, eh what? If you want my opinion, it’s you chaps who’ve been casting eggs in odd places. If I were running Whitehall, I’d back off and let the ruddy Yanks and their little brown brothers keep the flaming delta of the flaming Orinoco.”

  “Nobody’s asking you, you faggy Turk!”

  “I know. That’s why I’ll tend my store and let you tend yours, and, between us girls, I wouldn’t be so free with my accusations about who may be a fag and who might be the fagee. I’ve heard some very odd stories about that c
lass of yours at Eton, eh what?”

  Before Greystoke could reply with more than a strangled’ gasp, Sir Basil hung up and said, “Move over, children. Father is coming to show you how it’s done. I think you’d better suck me, Pedro. I found that business call rather distracting.”

  ~*~

  Out on the llano, the moon was rising as Captain Gringo reined in and called out: “Gaston?”

  There was no answer. He and Sister Dominica seemed to be alone on the moonlit swampy prairie. The girl chimed in to shout, “Mother Superior?” and he said, “Not so loud. We seem to have gotten separated in the dark but they can’t have strayed far, and we don’t want to meet anyone else.”

  “Oh, do you think there may be more banditos on this side of the river?”

  “Don’t know. Let’s not find out if we don’t have to. How far is this nursing mission of yours supposed to be?”

  “I’m not sure. Mother Juana Maria said two leagues from where you rescued us. Jose knew the way, but since he is dead...”

  Captain Gringo nodded grimly, as he looked up at the stars to get his bearings. A league was about twenty statute miles—so two made forty and forty miles was a long ride when you weren’t sure where the hell you were trying to go. The dead-flat soggy llano was dotted with other islands of trees all around, but presented no particular problem as long as they didn’t hit another floodwater stream. He said, “Well, we could do it two ways. By now Gaston must be missing us. So if we stopped and built a fire, he’d be able to find us muy pronto if he circled back the way he and Mother Juana Maria drifted.”