Montezuma's Revenge

by Harry Harrison

  He waved to Billy who reached up with a wire cutter and clipped an invisible strand then took something from behind the fixture and handed it down to Sones, who nodded approvingly.

  “Swiss, the Steinhager 31, the same kind we use.” The metal button, no bigger than a dime, rested innocently on his palm. “Retail cost three hundred and eighty-seven dollars. We can turn this in, it will look good on the budget. Hawkin, this is Stocker, he is from Treasury.”

  “Pleased tuh meet you,” Stocker said, making no effort to rise, to extend his hand or to put his gun away. He was big, solid, suspicious, noncommittal; his pale-blue eyes had no more expression or warmth than those of a lizard.

  “Pleased to meet you too.” Tony lowered his half-raised hand. Sones pointed to the suitcase Stocker was using for a chair.

  “Treasury always sends their own men on these kind of money transactions, people experienced in handling large sums and taking

  care of them. Stocker is a specialist. There is a million dollars in

  bills in that bag.”

  “And A’hm keeping an eye on it.”

  Stocker smiled, for the first time, wintry as it was, and took a grenade from his pocket and bounced it happily on his palm. So that was why his pockets bulged so! What could possibly be in all the others? Tony took a reflex step backward, not really wanting to know.

  “Now here is the drill,” Sones said, once more in command. “Schultz and I are down the hall, in fourteen, we’ve signed in. No one—and I repeat, no one—knows that Stocker is here, nor will they find out about it. Lizveta Zlotnikova is in the room next to ours, fifteen. We are leaving our heavy equipment here and Stocker will stay here with the money.”

  “Well, that’s fine by me,” Tony said. “But there is only the single bed.”

  “Ah don’t sleep.”

  “So that takes care of that. Put a do not disturb sign on the door when we go and leave it there. Even when you go out. If you want to get back into this room, and that goes for all of us, knock twice, wait, once more. When the door opens say, ‘Horsefly.’”

  “If yo don’t, yo’re liable to be dead.”

  “Right. Any questions?”

  “Just one. What happened after I left Cocoyoc? There seemed to be a lot of police around.”

  “Lieutenant Gonzales was very annoyed. And that means he is annoyed at us too and keeping an eye on our operation. This is a handicap.”

  “Well, you talk like it was my fault! Look, I didn’t kill Davidson, so you can’t blame this on me. That CIA man Higginson is the one caused all the trouble by dropping the body like that.”

  “A report will go in on him to his superiors, not that it will do any good. They never listen to what we say. But until the murderer is discovered you are Gonzales’s only suspect. And you have made him angry.”

  There was very little that could be answered to that and Tony locked the door behind them with a feeling of intense gloom. In order to dissipate it he called room service and ordered a bottle

  of Madero brandy and some ice. Stocker followed his every motion with his cold, transparent eyes.

  “Have a drink?” Tony asked, pouring the amber painkiller over the ice.

  “Ah don’t drink on duty.” He had actually moved to the armchair, but the suitcase was tucked under his legs and he held the gun ready on his lap.

  “Well, I’m not on duty, not yet, so if you don’t mind …”

  “Go raht ahead. Ah enjoy a little old panther sweat mahself from time to time.”

  Tony retired early, knowing not what the morrow would bring, and sought solace in his panther sweat to help him get to sleep. The brandy worked wonders and he drifted off easily, but woke up a number of times during the night. Whenever he did he could see the dark outline of the Treasury man in the chair, the glint of steel in his hand, a shine of light from his eyes—or was he just imagining that. Sunlight and the ringing of the phone woke him early. He groped for the receiver and a voice growled in his ear.

  “The car will be outside in thirty-five minutes. Be there.”

  The line went dead before he could answer and he rose, yawning and scratching, to the sight of Stocker still in the chair, watching him as intently as he had the previous evening.

  “You really don’t sleep, do you?”

  “Ah make up for it ’tween jobs.”

  Tony showered and shaved quickly and then, with some reluctance, dressed again in the same clothes that were now beginning to show marked signs of wear, as well as exhibiting a few food and drink stains down the front. But they were good enough for at least one more day, and skulking around with a crooked Italian art dealer and an ex-Nazi could not be called a major social occasion in any case. Stocker was standing by the door, gun ready, as always, in his hand.

  “Ah’U just lock this behind you.”

  “See you later. Try to get some sleep.”

  The only answer was a wintry, disdainful smile. Tony exited

  and the lock ground behind him. He needed coffee badly but he

  had to first tell Sones what was happening. What room had he said he would be in? Fourteen? Thirteen? He should have made a note, but note-making was one thing that was strictly forbidden in this work. Fourteen, it must have been fourteen. He tapped lightly, then louder when there was no response. There was a certain sadistic pleasure in waking up Sones. The safety chain rattled and clattered and the door opened. Sleepy-faced, long blond hair covering one eye, Lizveta Zlotnikova looked out at him, blinking in the light of the hall, then smiling warmly.

  “Tony! I was worried about you, it is good you woke me up, come in.”

  Protest died as she opened the door wide and pulled him inside, closing it behind his back. She was dressed in a thin silk gown which covered, obviously, nothing beneath, so that when she took a deep breath and sighed, the top of the gown rose up toward him, parting under the pressure, jiggling tremendously. He tore his eyes away, smiled, coughed, groped for the door handle behind him.

  “Have to go, see the painting maybe, tell you first …”

  “How considerate, how I worry about those paintings. I worry about you too, you are not hard like the others, a man of art I think.” She moved closer, her voice huskier. “We are the same kind of people.”

  “Must report to Sones. Car waiting …”

  “I will be waiting too. Waiting here for your safe return. Come to me and tell me what has happened. Go safely.” Her hands went behind his head and her lips engulfed his in a warm and exceedingly rich kiss. It lasted a long time and eventually, short of air, he pushed away, though it was hard to push her wit! pushing silk and full-rounded flesh. Once out of the room he found he was sweating, though the hallway was cool. Now which was Sones’s room, fifteen perhaps, the one next to Lizveta Zlotnikova’s. She had a nice name, with a certain richness to it. She had a certain richness herself which had not been obvious at first. The door in front of him opened suddenly, startling him,

  and Sones peered out.

  “Why are you just standing there in the hall? What do you want?”

  “To report. They are sending a car for me, someone phoned me, sounded like Robl, that’s all he said. It will be here, I hadn’t realized, look at the time, it’s here now.”

  “Then get down there—and better not fumble this one, Hawkin. There is a lot riding on it. You better do a lot better than you have done up to now.”

  Hurried on by this enthusiastic praise, Tony went to the lobby and was leaning toward the dining room and a quick cup of coffee, which he was yearning after more and more, when he saw Heinrich at the front door, jerking an impatient thumb. He sighed for thoughts of coffees lost, and changed direction.

  “You are late.”

  “I thought some coffee …”

  “There is no time.”

  The dark bulk of the Packard hulked outside the entrance, Robl and D’Isernia both in large black hats peering at him from the back seat.

  “You are late,” Robl said when he
joined them.

  “It couldn’t be helped. Are we going to see the painting now?”

  “Later. We go to Mass first.”

  “Today is April thirtieth,” D’Isernia said, and both men nodded gravely. They were wearing almost identical dark suits and as soon as the car had left the city they took out black armbands and pinned them to their sleeves. What could it possibly mean? Tony cudgeled his brain for holidays he might have forgotten, could think of none, Mexican or American. Easter was over. Mass? On a Saturday?

  “You wouldn’t mind telling me what this is all about?”

  “You will understand later,” D’Isernia said sternly, pinning a black rosette to his pocket.

  “Can you at least tell me where we are going?”

  “To the Hacienda Pantitlan. It is in ruins, burned during the revolution, but the chapel is intact. It suits our needs.”

  They turned off the paved road onto a dirt track between the fields of high sugar cane. There was another car ahead of them, Heinrich slowed so the dust would settle before they reached it, and at least one other vehicle was visible through the cloud behind them. Very quickly the vine-covered walls and crumbling

  brick chimneys of the hacienda came into view ahead. Hein turned off into the grassy field and parked the Packard next to the other cars there, fifteen at least, and still more arriving. The occupants, all middle-aged or older, were proceeding slowly toward the chapel, mostly men, a very few women, all dressed in mourning, black clothes and sable armbands.

  “We will wait until the others are inside,” D’Isernia said, looking at Tony’s lime-green shirt and shaking his head. “You cannot go in dressed like that. Stay back with Heinrich and you may observe from the rear. There is a small room there where you go after the services. We will join you there. Do you understand?”

  Tony nodded gravely as though all this made any sense, and attempted to assume as morose an air as the others while t waited. The last car arrived, the last party of funereal septuagenarians tottered into the chapel, then they followed. It was dark inside the church, dimly illuminated by candles on the altar, and the atmosphere was more redolent of goats and hay than ecclesiastical incense. The rustle and whispering stopped as a man in dark suit and dog collar rose and began to speak in quavering German. Heinrich pulled Tony’s sleeve and they moved off to one side where they could watch but not be observed themselves,

  “Would you mind telling me what is going on?”

  “It is a commemoratory Mass as you can see.” He snorted with some feeling and spat noisily on the first floor. “The Spaniards have held this kind of a service before in Madrid, with plenty of Germans and Italians, of course. First time in this country. Dead, twenty-seven years ago today.”

  “Who?”

  “Nummer Eins. Number one. Hitler, Adolf, born Schickl-gruber.”

  “You have got to be kidding!” The massed voices rose in prayer before them.

  “I wish I were. Old memories die hard, good or bad. I had no inkling of this before today. I left a message for Jacob Goldstein and I pray he gets it on time. There should be people here he is interested in.”

  “Hochhande?”

  “Who knows. But nothing is to be lost by finding out just who the momsehrim are who attend an obscenity like this.”

  It did not last long, as though the attendees having made their appearances were eager to disperse back to the seclusion from whence they had come. There was a lot of German spoken, a quick litany or two in Latin, one brief and slightly hysterical paean in Italian, a mumbled Spanish speech about glories past, unscalable heights, victories, defeats, and then it was all over. Tony and Heinrich withdrew to the room to wait, sniffing at the air much thicker now with goat, crunching the caprine pellets underfoot. They left the door partly open and Heinrich, displaced German, Israeli chemist, stared with burning eyes at every attendee that went by, locking their faces in his memory. D’Isernia and Robl were last, closing the doors behind the tail of the processional.

  “Heinrich, get the car when all the others are gone,” D’Isernia ordered. “Back it by the front door and keep the motor running. You come with us, Hawkin.”

  Clatter of their footsteps down the nave, muffled echoes back from the cobwebby rafters above. Dust motes glinted thickly in the ray of morning sunlight that sliced in through a glassless window high on the wall and Tony resisted the urge to sneeze as his nose was assaulted. As though to a dark wedding they paced to the empty altar and around it to the door inset in the wall. Was the door open and had it just closed? It was hard to tell in the half light now that the candles had been snuffed. Robl went first and pushed hard on the heavy wood until the door reluctantly moved, then squealed open.

  “In,” he ordered, taking a flashlight from his pocket and lighting the way.

  Tony went in with the others behind him, feeling a sudden trepidation. Stolen paintings, million-dollar ransom, hardened criminals; if anything were to go wrong now he had the feeling that

  his life would be very much in jeopardy. The dusty floor

  was thick with male footprints mixed with narrow tire tracks.

  “Over there,” Robl said, his flash illuminating the far wall and a cloth-draped bulk that stood against it.

  The painting? Tony went to it slowly and took up the of the cloth. With none too steady hands he raised the layers of thick burlap to disclose the “Battle of Anghiari.” Stained and dusty, much dirtier than the reproductions in the books, but undoubtedly the painting in question.

  “I am afraid the best care was not taken,” D’Isernia said. “But nothing drastic, simply surface dirt and discoloration, looks like carbon as well, from smoke of some kind. Who knows where it has been? But the restorers can take care of that easily eno correct?”

  “Yes, I’m sure they can. But you must understand—not that I’m doubting your word—although it looks like the right painting to me, I can’t be sure without laboratory examination. I just can’t go back and say pay the million bucks, the thing looks okay to me.”

  “That is well understood, Signore Hawkin, there is no need to apologize. I have here a palette knife, some glassine envelopes, a knife with the blade of a razor. May I suggest you take samples of the paint and canvas from an inconspicuous place, perhaps slivers of the wood as well, take them yourself so you will know there is no attempt at deceit. Have them analyzed, and then we will talk business.”

  “Talk, talk, too much talk already.” Robl grated the words angrily, stepping forward with the knife in his hand, the blade springing into place; Tony shied back. “This running about must be finished, kaputt. Here is a sample to take back to your Russky that will tell her if the painting is real or not!”

  Tony cried out and would have jumped forward if D’ls had not stopped him.

  Robl jammed the blade into the corner of the priceless pai* then with a swift motion accompanied by the rip of canvas, cut a ragged triangle out of one corner. With more heart-stopping ripping sounds he tore it free at the edges and dropped the fragment into Tony’s hand.

  “Here. Examine that.”

  —

  D’Isernia nodded at Tony’s shocked stare.

  “I understand your feelings, Signore Hawkin, and do commiserate. Friend Robl is a bit impetuous and, perhaps, slig coarse as well. But he is right. Skilled craftsmen can repair this little act of destruction so that the vandalism will never be seen. And it does give us something solid to base our negotiations on. Submit this to all examinations, and if you are satisfied and have the money the exchange will take place. Inform Mr. Sones that I will telephone you at four this afternoon to discuss the matter. Here, let us wrap this piece of canvas and protect it from further damage.”

  He took his handkerchief from his breast pocket, shook it out and draped it across his palm. Tony put the piece of the painting on it gently, then folded the handkerchief around it. D’Isernia nodded approvingly.

  “So. Preliminaries finished, we can go. But before you do, perhaps you would t
ake some pleasure in meeting our principal, the man who owns this painting. When you meet him you will perhaps understand why, at least for Robl and myself, this morning’s ceremony had certain overtones of humor.”

  The circle of light from the flash moved across the floor to an alcove, following the narrow tracks to the wheels that had made it. The wheel chair that stood there, the dark figure seated in it, gray blanket draped over legs and feet, old, clawlike hands clasped together on the blanket. Slowly upward the light moved, over the baggy brown jacket and yellowed shirt, the badly knotted black tie in the too-loose collar about the scrawny neck.

  An old man’s face. A wrinkled, dewlapped face that despite its age seemed familiar, the face of someone younger.

  The lock of hair now thin and white that hung over the forehead. The toothbrush mustache, white as well—had they both once been dark?—on that thin upper lip.

  “Is it … ?” Tony asked, choking out the words. The head nodded.

  “I am.”

  Thirteen

  “How do you do?” Tony managed to say after a considerable time had passed during which he considered saying Pleased to ? you, but he wasn’t, really. The man in the wheel chair nodded happily, and proceeded to take Tony’s greeting literally, answering him in English with a thick German accent.

  “I do quite well, really, all things considered, my age, I’ll be eighty-three years old soon, just think of that. My appetite is not good, too much wind in Mexican food, and I have trouble walking, as you see. The old trouble coming back, paresis they call this stage, the folly of youth. But you did not come here to talk about me. The painting, the best in my collection, you like it. Jar

  “Excellent, the finest of its kind, Da Vinci never did another like it.”

  “The horse filled with the battle lust, you see. The heroic killing and dying. But it is obvious why. Research has proved that Da Vinci is a corruption of da Von Giesel, that is of the family of Von Giesel, a Gothic family from Germany, so the man is proven of good Aryan stock.”

  “I hadn’t heard that—”

  “You doubt what I am saying? You think I He!” The old man’s hand pounded the arm of the chair; spittle dribbled unnoticed down his chin. “What do you, a mongrel Amerikaner dog, know about great art?”