by Lou Cameron
She came again and since he’d gotten past passion into showing off he called a smoke break. Niqui said she wasn’t allowed to smoke. He didn’t want to start her on any more bad habits, so he nodded and smoked a solo cigar while she snuggled against him. The fire was almost out. He kicked a stick into the pit and she said, “Oh, let it get dark. I’d die if anyone saw us like this.”
“We’ll be bitten to death by mosquitoes or jaguars if we don’t keep some sort of smudge going, Honey. Are you tired enough to sleep? I’ll spread a blanket for you.”
But as he started to move she ran a hand over his flesh and crooned, “Don’t move. This is perfect. Do you suppose it will always be like this between us, Dick?”
“I guess it will, as long as it lasts.”
“Oh, won’t we be together forever, darling?”
He let some smoke out before he said, “Nothing is forever, Niqui. Let’s stick with tonight, for now.”
“Do you wish for to consummate some more?”
“Hey, let me finish this smoke and get my second wind, huh? It’s early and we’ve got all night, doll.”
She began to fondle his limp flesh as she sighed and said, “I’m so glad. Finish your cigar while I get this one ready to go crazy inside me again!”
He frowned and asked, “Aren’t you getting a little, well, sore? You are, or were a virgin, right?”
She didn’t answer. He smiled crookedly and insisted, “Niqui?”
She sighed and said, “I don’t think candles count, do you?”
“Depends on where you burn them, I guess. Are you saying you’ve been, well, practicing with a candle when the lights were low?”
She giggled and said, ‘I told you a girl has feelings. It’s all very well to be the bride of Jesus, but when Jesus never seems to want to sleep with you … I have never done this with a man before, though. My worst sin, up to meeting you, was with a rather large and wicked cucumber.”
He laughed and said, “I’m sorry if I disappointed you,” even as he felt a warning tingle in his groin that told him he’d be ready for more in a moment. She felt his growing erection, too, and squeezed to assure him, “I think I like the real thing much better. It’s not quite what I expected, but it feels nicer. Are other men as small as you, Dick?”
He started to protest he’d never been accused of being underdeveloped before. But then he reconsidered his options and said, “Well, I may not be hung as well as some hombres, but that’s not my fault, is it?”
She began to stroke him as she soothed, “Oh, no, you have a sweet little thing. It’s bigger than a candle and I suppose one the size of a cucumber would be asking too much, eh?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve seen men with things as large.”
“Is that possible, Dick? I have often wondered what it would be like to make love to a man with a huge erection like that.”
“You’ve been giving the matter some thought, eh?”
“Well, I never thought I’d really get to do it, but perhaps, alone in the night at the convent, one does get carried away. We are seldom allowed to see male patients naked, but one time I did see this man in the ward, and it was most unsettling. He wasn’t as big as a cucumber. Maybe only a little bigger than you, but that night, when I was alone in bed ...”
“I get the picture. Everybody’s been alone in bed. Funny, I never thought about a scene like that in a convent, but it makes sense, when you consider how young some folks are when they join up. That reminds me. You said you were left as a foundling. Then you said you’d learned to ride astride, like a tomboy. Am I missing other secrets, Niqui?”
She laughed and said, “If I have any secrets from you, it’s only because you’re shy about exploring my body, you terrible man. I was a foundling. I was a tomboy, too. They used to let us play at the convent orphanage, of course, and I liked to play with the boys. We had a pony for to ride and—”
“Never mind, I’ve got a better grasp on things, now. I’d tell you what I thought you might be, but you’d laugh like hell.”
Niqui fell silent a moment. Then she stammered, “How did you know about Mother Juana Maria and me, Dick?”
He started to say he had no idea what she was talking about. But then he did. So he said, “Oh, I noticed she indulged you in things like nicer shoes and that French perfume. She gets to be the boy a lot, right?”
Niqui grimaced and said, “Well, she has feelings, too. She said it is not sinful for the brides of Jesus to consummate one another, as long as they are discreet about it. But I don’t think I like it with another woman the way I like it with you, Dick. What’s the matter? Why are you laughing?”
He said, “You wouldn’t understand. You still want to try some Greek loving?”
“You mean, in the back way? Oh, yes, I tried that with a candle one night, when Mother Superior was eating me from the front. Your thing is as big as a candle and … oh, my, it seems to be getting even bigger.”
~*~
Despite the fun and games out on the llano and in Sir Basil’s nearby quarters in Caracas, the rather satanic looking man they called Sortilego was too worried to screw. So he sat playing chess with himself by the telephone in his study, waiting for it to ring and not too sure he wanted it to.
El Sortilego wasn’t called The Fortune Teller because he could see into the future with tarot cards or a crystal ball. El Sortilego’s clients paid him to make the future turn out the way they wanted it to. Up until a short while ago, the future had been coming along just fine, but now everything seemed to be getting fucked-up and El Sortilego’s customers could get nasty as hell when predictions they’d paid for didn’t come true.
There was a knock on the door. El Sortilego moved a knight on his chess board and said, “Entrada” in a voice as friendly as a spitting cobra. A burly man whose linen suit bulged under the left armpit came in and sank wearily down across from the prophet for hire. El Sortilego moved another pawn and asked, “Well?”
The other said, “Hakim’s in town, all right. But he’s locked up with some kids he’s screwing, and none of his people are on the street. Our man in customs checked out that so-called farm machinery he landed last Friday, legally.”
“And?”
“It’s farm machinery. I don’t know what the hell anyone in Venezuela is going to do with a wheat combine, but that’s what he shipped in from New Orleans, disassembled in a mess of crates. The Turk must be crazy.”
El Sortilego moved his knight again and said, “Ah, I have the black bishop in a knight’s cross. Basil Hakim is only mad when it comes to sex. The farm machinery is obviously junk he never intends to claim from the docks.”
“Our man in customs said it was pretty rusty. But why send scrap metal all the way from New Orleans, for God’s sake?”
“He didn’t send it for God’s sake. He sent it for the sake of the American customs officials in New Orleans. He needed an export license and the Yanqui government is interested in any shipments to Venezuela these days, thanks to the current crisis.”
“Sure, boss, but the stuff he sent was just rusty junk.”
“You’re not paying attention. He took out an export license and had the crates loaded aboard ship. Then he used the same license to load another ship at another time. U.S. Customs can be rather casual about such matters, once you have some papers to wave at them. They don’t take much interest in shipments leaving New Orleans, since no duty is owed on them.”
The street agent started to ask another dumb question, saw how it could have worked, and nodded to say, instead, “Then the arms he sent from the States hasn’t arrived yet, right?”
“Wrong. Hakim will have landed his arms at another and less well policed port by now. He anticipated that British Intelligence would try to put a crimp in his operations, too. Even a man who drinks with the Prince of Wales would raise a few eyebrows if he shipped British-made arms to a country the Royal Navy was about to invade. That’s why he sent American-made arms from the factory he has an in
terest in, there.”
El Sortilege moved the knight and took the bishop as the gun thug growled, “If you ask me, that damned Turk is causing everybody a lot of trouble.” El Sortilego nodded and replied, “That’s the business he’s in. Who buys arms when there’s no trouble?”
The phone rang. El Sortilego picked up and said, “Presentar un informer. He didn’t ask who it was. Nobody had the number unless they were working for him. The informant at the other end reported on the current situation in distant Tucupita and El Sortilego hung up without thanking him. He sighed and said, “Not a sign of Captain Gringo anywhere in the delta towns.”
“The delta is a big place, boss. Besides, nobody knows for sure the big Yanqui really shot those chumps on the roof.”
El Sortilego shrugged and said, “We know Captain Gringo was spotted going down the river. We know those men were waiting for him in ambush. We know they were machine gunned. We know Captain Gringo is a machinegun expert. We know Basil Hakim deals in machine guns and that Captain Gringo has worked for him in the past.”
“Sure, but Sir Basil’s here in Caracas, boss.”
“Idiot! The Turk runs guns. He doesn’t shoot them! He’s sent his Captain Gringo to meet the people landing the guns and show them how to set them up. Hakim knows everyone is watching him, here in Caracas. That is why he’s laughing so much as he molests those children across town.”
The gun thug shrugged and said, “I don’t see why we couldn’t knock the little Turk off. It ought to simplify things a little, no?”
El Sortilego grimaced and said, “It would simplify things to knock off the Pope, too. And it wouldn’t be as dangerous.
There are one or two countries the Jesuits might have trouble reaching you. Basil Hakim has agents everywhere. Besides, the big boys have a gentleman’s agreement about assassination.”
“Is Sir Basil that big a boy, boss?”
“What would you call a man who drinks with the Prince of Wales and yachts with Der Kaiser? I don’t think that story about him and the Czarina is really true, but he has been a house guest at St. Petersburg often enough to make one think twice about murdering him. We already have all the secret agents and hired assassins we need in Venezuela right now, so let’s not worry about knocking off Sir Basil. Get out on the streets and find Captain Gringo. He has no friends at all in high places, and I want his head on a pole within forty-eight hours.”
“That’s cutting it sort of short, considering we don’t know where the bastard is, boss.”
“Find out where he is, then. He has to be somewhere in Venezuela and the balloon’s about to go up. I want him dead before the war starts, damn it. So find him. Find him if you have to look for him in a convent!”
~*~
The medical mission wasn’t a convent. It was a ramshackle cluster of tin roofed houses set on stilts along another stream running over the llano toward the even soggier delta country to the east. Captain Gringo and Sister Dominica rode in the afternoon after they’d been such good friends alone on the hammock. She was wearing her habit again, of course, and putting it back on had apparently reminded her she was a nun because he noticed she’d stopped talking about running off with him. He was relieved albeit a little insulted as he considered her possible reasons. She’d made some rather disparaging remarks about the size of his tool the last time he’d used it on her. He knew he was hung as well or weller than most growing boys, but that was the trouble with letting a girl break him with cucumbers and fantasy. When she said something about maybe giving religion another chance, he assumed, sadly, that she meant to hold out for somebody hung like a stallion. She was likely to be sort of disappointed with the future, but a lot of guys in times to come were sure going to be happily surprised.
They found Gaston waiting for them on the veranda of the main building. The little nun went inside to report to her Mother Superior while Gaston filled Captain Gringo in with a silly story about getting lost in the dark with the other nun. Captain Gringo said, “Cut the bullshit. Was Mother Juana Maria packing a gun or not?”
Gaston chuckled and said, “Ah, you got to search yours?”
‘That’s for damned sure. Are you saying Mother Juana Maria puts out, too?”
“Mais oui! Why do you think we got lost? She was trés formidable. But she was not carrying anything more dangerous than her astonishing body under that modest habit.”
Captain Gringo frowned, gazed over toward the tepid brown river to the north, and said, “Okay. So they’re not nuns. What the hell do you suppose they are, Gaston?”
The Frenchman shrugged and replied, “It is hard to say. Juana tells me this is a medical mission of the Sisters of The Society of Jesus. And that we are welcome to stay here as long as we like. She must like me. On the other hand, there seem to be no sick people that would call for all this medication, and there are no female Jesuits, as far as I know.”
“You mean The Society of Jesus might not know about this place at all?”
“Not unless they have been recruiting female Jesuits since I last took any interest in such matters, and not unless the Jesuits have started setting up hospitals where nobody seems to need any. The Jesuits are not a medical order in the first place and, as you can see, we are out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a fair imitation of your Florida Everglades. I can see an occasional hunter or fisherman dropping by with a splinter in his toe, but enough patients to justify a medical mission, here?”
Captain Gringo nodded and said* “Yeah, I thought I was being conned, too. I’ll buy one horny nun, but two are a little much and Niqui keeps changing her story. Where’d you leave your horse, Gaston?”
The Frenchman said, “The corrals are over beyond that big corrugated iron building. But what of it? You must have noticed how soft the ground was, getting here. The far side of the river is worse. That is not wheat you see waving across the water at us, my old and rare. It is saw-grass and water-reed, and if you climb higher you can see it extends all the way to the horizon north of here.”
“Okay, if we can’t ride out, how the hell do we get out?”
“I have been pondering this as I waited for you, my overactive child. There are some native dugouts under this building. We could see if one would float long enough to take us down stream somewhere, hein?”
“Shit, that’d put us back in the delta, Gaston.”
“Oui. I don’t see why that would be more uncomfortable than wading through all those soggy reeds across the way. We could always stay here and play house with our new friends, I suppose.”
“That sounds more dangerous than running through the delta. We don’t know who we might meet in the delta, but these fake nuns are starting to make me nervous. While you were snooping around under the housing, I don’t suppose you saw anything that might give us a line on what the fuck they’re up to?”
“Mais non, fucking is all I managed to get out of Mother Juana Maria. They have a telephone or telegraph line running east, on the ground in a droll attempt to conceal it. It seems obvious this is some sort of a headquarters, for someone very sneaky. More than that, I cannot tell you.”
Sister Dominica came back out, eyes downcast, and murmured, “Mother Juana Maria wishes for to speak with you, Dick.”
Captain Gringo shot Gaston a thoughtful look, got no suggestions, and decided to see what the older whatever wanted. He’d seen a couple of men and women dressed as peon servants as they moved about the compound at a discreet distance. But aside from the two maybe nuns, nobody else on the premises looked all that religious.
He went inside to find Mother Juana Maria seated severely behind a flat topped desk. There was a telephone nearby on the wall. So that answered what the wire Gaston had noticed was all about. It also meant that by now the lady in charge had had time to make some calls. How long would it take a steam launch to get here from the other end of that mystery wire, assuming she’d called anyone about them and assuming she had any reason? After all, neither he nor Gaston had told the wo
men that they were flying under false colors, too.
Mother Juana Maria indicated a seat across from her and as he perched on the bentwood chair, she smiled and said, “Your friend, dear Gaston, said he didn’t know how long the two of you might be staying here, Señor Walker.”
He said, “Well, we told you we were on our way to the north coast when we ran into you, uh, Mother.”
“You may call me Juana, since we’re all such good friends, Dick. You two dear boys can’t get much further north from here, but there will be a river boat going upstream in a day or so and, meanwhile, we do owe you our very lives. I’m sure we’ll be able to make you comfortable.”
He kept his face blank as he realized she’d made that call, all right. No real nun would be about to invite strange laymen to shack up with them. Fakes up to something else would be glad to see the last of them, if they intended to let them ride out alive and possibly report this weird out-of-the-way “mission” in even casual conversation.
He shrugged and said, “We’ll think about it. We wouldn’t want to be a bother. Do you have, uh, guest quarters or something?”
Mother Juana Maria smiled sort of sneaky and said, “Of course. You didn’t think you could sleep in the nuns’ quarters, did you?”
“Of course not. By the way, I haven’t seen any other sisters since we got here.”
“The others haven’t arrived yet. Sister Dominica and I were on our way to establish this mission when we met those terrible men and you saved us.”
Again he nodded and again he wondered if she could really think he was that dumb. Those nun costumes had made them both overconfident. He supposed they hadn’t been doing this sort of thing long, whoever in hell they really were.
