Soma Blues
Page 19
The final element in the impending explosion of the spark came when the two men suddenly entered the auditorium, the tall, ruddy Englishman with tawny hair and a leonine face and the tall black warrior from Brazil.
And to make it all the more enigmatic, the Englishman was singing. It was a song that none in that audience knew. The only man present who seemed to know it was Hob Draconian, the sacrifice, and it galvanized him into belated action.
Hob’s mind had cleared sufficiently for him to recognize that the bearded Englishman was Nigel, and the tall, thin black man accompanying him was Etienne. But why was Nigel singing, and, more important, what was the song?
He could just make out the words above the increasing hubbub of the assembly—even the two battling women parted a moment to listen—something about an Englishman’s home being his castle …
A song whose melody was hauntingly familiar, bringing up, as it did, images of khaki-clad heroism against loinclothed and turbaned hordes of fanatics in an underground place lit only by flaring torches ...
Of course! It was Cary Grant’s song, “An Englishman’s Home is His Castle,” that he had sung in the movie Gunga Din, in the part where, trapped in the underground chambers of the Kali cult’s headquarters, he had distracted the hordes of Kali worshipers long enough for Gunga Din to escape and warn the colonel and have him bring the regiment. …
But why was Nigel acting so crazy? And Etienne, too! It didn’t occur to Hob that they might also have been sampling the soma.
“Nigel!” Hob called.
“Hang on, old boy!” Nigel called back. “Help is on its way.”
“The colonel? The regiment?”
“Lieutenant Navarro and his trusty Guardia Civil. They’ll have to do.”
Now Arranque sprang to his feet from his seat among the Europeans. “Kill that man!” he cried, pointing to Hob.
“But he is the sacrifice,” Selim said, also standing up from his seat among the Hindus. “No one must touch him except the high priestess.”
“I’m the high priestess!” cried Devi, snatching the knife from Annabelle’s hand.
“The hell you say, bitch!” Annabelle screamed, snatching back the knife.
“My daughter is supposed to be the high priestess!” Selim thundered.
“No, my people put up the money, and that job is for my girlfriend!” Arranque thundered back.
There was a frozen moment, a bit of stop action that Hob, though he was coming down from his high, was nevertheless able to appreciate.
In that big auditorium room, with the overhead lights flickering like witches’ fires; with Annabelle and Devi at each other’s throats; with Nigel and Etienne, frozen snarls on their faces, facing the multitude; with Hob ripping off his mask and returning to a mood of self-preservation; with Arranque and Slim glaring at each other like caged jaguars in a jungle setting with a huge yellow moon rising and tribal drums beating in the background; with the guests, both Indian-traditional and international-modern, reaching for the guns concealed in their inner jacket pockets—at that moment, with the whole shooting works poised to go off like a keg of gunpowder falling into a volcano, it required only one thing to set it all off.
Silverio Vargas, perhaps inadvertently, supplied that one thing. Rising from his chair, with Vana beside him, he shouted, “Etienne! Come to me! I will get you out of this!”
The fact that he spoke in Portuguese made no difference at all. Everyone, at that superheated moment, knew very well what he meant.
It was every man for himself time, and the devil or Kali or whatever infernal diety that was presiding take the hindermost.
And suddenly the air was full of bullets.
They were bullets of all calibers, from deadly little .22s zinging around like steel-winged hummingbirds, to the middle calibers—stern, businesslike .32s and .38s, winging on their errands of destruction with precision and even a certain dignity—while the big fellows, the stately 9mms and the big-shouldered .357s, as well as the almost legendary .44s and the .45s, crashed around that room like castanets of death played by Red Murder and his Gunpowder Band. These bullets, large and small, ricocheted off wall and floor, took out lighting fixtures and vases full of imported flowers, and smashed into the flesh of many a cowering man-thing with attendant gushes of blood. And they were no respecter of race or creed, these bullets, as they blundered around the auditorium on their impersonal mission of death. Bullets smashed into chairs behind which many of the combatants, like the Mexican bandits in the climatic scene of Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, crouched down to groan and curse and reload and fire again.
And just as this scene was reaching its unimaginable climax, there came a sound louder than all the rest, catching the attention of all those frenzied fighters and causing them to look around to see where it was coming from. This at a moment when bodies were falling like flies after the mother of all fulminations, and curses—some guttural, some sibilant—could be heard in half the languages of the world.
The sound came from behind the locked double doors of that ill-omened auditorium room.
Somebody was trying to break in.
There was a fascinated silence while all watched as the doors bulged under repeated heavy blows. Hob, for his part, in the first stages of his come-down, thought it was very like the final scene in Lord Dunsany’s “The Idol’s Eye,” when the great barbaric stone statue from whom the thieves have plucked its jewel of an eye is returning, insensate animation bent on destruction.
Literary allusions were lost on the others, however. They watched, panting, some of them bleeding, as the doors shook and finally burst open.
And in marched Lieutenant Ramon Navarro with a half dozen of his trusty Guardias, just as Nigel had predicted.
There was a sudden, tomblike silence. Then Navarro said, in a loud voice that was hard as iron, “As representative of the Spanish government and its self-defense forces, and the highest ranking Guardia Civil officer on this island, Colonel Sanchez having gone off to Madrid for urgent consultations, I hereby declare that the Spanish government takes no official position at this time on the doings of foreign nationals on property owned by said nationals. However, we are extending to any Spanish nationals or Ibiza residents the right to leave this property immediately while the owners settle their own affairs.”
There was a scramble as five or six Spanish waiters, who had been caught in the crossfire, moved over to the Guardia’s side. Nigel moved there, too, and, after a moment, so did Hob, who had sobered up enough to opt for survival. Etienne wavered for a moment, then crossed the room to the Guardias, calling out, “Father, please join us!”
“No!” Vargas grated. “I will see this thing out!”
Peter came over and joined the Guardia ranks. “Devi?” he called out.
“I’m staying,” Devi said in a voice of iron. “I’m the real priestess.”
Annabelle looked defiant for a moment, then crossed over and joined the group around Navarro. “Well, if you’re the priestess, I guess I’m not.”
“Baby!” Arranque called. “Where are you going?”
“Sorry, Ernesto,” Annabelle said. “I thought this was my big shot, but it turns out to be just one more fiasco. Just my luck, huh?”
“I will make you high priestess!” Arranque raved.
“Thanks, but no thanks. I can’t afford to get killed here. I got a kid in private school in Switzerland.”
The group backed out of the assembly hall under the watchful submachine guns of the Guardia. They went through the hotel lobby, which was now silent and deserted, and out through the big glass doors. As they came to the outside drive and reached the Guardia’s Land Rover, Nigel stopped, frowned, turned, and began to walk back in. Hob grabbed him by the sleeve and restrained him.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I have to go back in there,” Nigel said. “I left something.”
“What did you leave?”
“My mother’s birthday pr
esent. A very nice silver service. It’s in the main cloakroom.”
Just then the crash of gunfire sounded up again.
Nigel listened for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, it was valuable—but not, I suppose, irreplacable.”
13
There was an aimless moment after the relatively good guys were out of the hotel. Hob asked Navarro, “What now?”
Navarro shrugged. “I have exceeded my authority. But not, I think, the proprieties of the situation.”
“You mean we’re free to go?” Hob asked.
“To the devil, if you wish,” Navarro said. “This is what comes of letting foreigners own property in the motherland.”
“In that case,” Nigel said, “what about we all get a drink?”
“Not for me,” Navarro said. “I have much paperwork to fill out. But perhaps lunch tomorrow?”
“We’ll go to Sa Punta,” Nigel said, naming the best restaurant in Santa Eulalia. “I’m paying.”
“I should hope so,” Navarro said and stalked off to a waiting police vehicle.
“Well, old boy, what do you say to that drink?” Nigel asked.
“El Caballo Negro ought to be open,” Hob said. “Do you think a Bloody Mary will take the taste of soma out of my mouth?”
“Eventually,” Nigel said.
They got into one of the taxis that, like black-and-white vultures, gathered for any event that promised to offer fares, alive or dead, and rode in companionable silence to Santa Eulalia and the cheerful sounds of El Caballo Negro.
“Well, old boy,” Nigel said, two drinks later, “it has not worked out too badly, I think.”
“For you,” Hob said. “You must have made a nice profit from Arranque.”
Nigel made a dismissive gesture. “That is beside the point. I refer to the work I brought in to the Agency.”
“What work would that be?” Hob asked.
“My dear fellow! Hasn’t Jean-Claude filled you in?”
“Just a lot of cryptic nonsense,” Hob said.
“We, the Agency that is, are sole agents for the sale of a rather large shipment of San Isidro’s art treasures.”
“Was that what Santos wanted to set up?”
“Of course. The Arranque thing was just a little something on the side, as it were.”
Hob stared at him, filled with a wild surmise in which, faintly, he could just glimpse the wavy outlines of money. Just then Sandy, the proprieter, came over, a slip of paper in his hand.
“This telegram came for you yesterday, Hob. Or maybe it was the day before.”
Hob took it and read: shipment now unloaded at cherbourg. no problems so far. awaiting your instructions. It was from Jean-Claude.
“I think there are some details you need to fill in,” Hob said.
“Of course. But don’t you think we had better make our travel arrangements? We don’t want to leave a ten-to-twenty-million-pound cargo rotting in a warehouse in Cherbourg for too long.”
“Twenty million pounds?”
“Perhaps that’s an exaggeration. But the stuff should fetch a pretty price in Paris and Brussels. And ten percent of it is ours. But I still have to get my mother a birthday present.”
Jean-Claude’s telegram took the taste of soma completely out of Hob’s mouth, replacing it with the sweet tang of anticipated money.
14
Hob didn’t mention the San Isidran shipment when he lunched with Fauchon a month later in Paris. He told him all the rest, however.
“And that’s how it ended?” Fauchon asked, as he and Hob sat at a small outside table in Paris, at Deux Magots.
“Well, not exactly,” Hob said. “Dramatically speaking, you could say Navarro’s rescue of us was the climax. But there was quite a bit of falling action after that.”
“I’m surprised at your friend Navarro,” Fauchon said. “Surely he was taking a lot on himself.”
“Au contraire,” Hob said. “He was merely following the orders of his superior, Colonel Sanchez. Sanchez was, and still is, the ranking Guardia Civil officer on the island. Sanchez had also been well and thoroughly bribed by the various criminal parties in this. To arrest the soma people at the hotel would have brought out his own well-paid part in the affair. The officials in Madrid, even though their part of the bribe had been passed on, would’ve had no recourse but to hang him out to dry.”
“ ‘Hang him out to dry,’ ” Fauchon mused. “Is that an American expression?”
“Yes, it is,” Hob said. “I just made it up at this moment.”
“And Colonel Sanchez was in Madrid at this time?”
“No,” Hob said. “He was at the Guardia Civil barracks. But when he heard what was going on, he told Ramon to say that he was off the island and to contain the situation the best way he knew how.”
Fauchon shook his head. “It wouldn’t have happened that way in France.”
“Of course it would,” Hob said. “The French police have the same tendencies as the Spanish. Either to overlook something entirely or to jump in and take too much action, thus creating a worse mess.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Fauchon said. “It’s not like that in America?”
“I suspect it’s like that everywhere,” Hob said.
“So how was the matter finally resolved?”
“In the usual way. Half a dozen or so people were killed in the shoot-out at the hotel. Another dozen or so wounded. The rest patched up their differences. This was made easier now by the fact that Annabelle had withdrawn her claim as high priestess.”
“And Arranque? And Silverio Vargas?”
“You’ll be happy to know they both survived.”
“And Etienne?”
“Alive and well. He suffered a superficial wound that allows him to carry his arm in a black silk sling. It looks very well on him.”
“What was Etienne doing in the hotel in the first place? I’m not quite clear on that.”
“Arranque’s men had captured him from Vargas’s finca and taken him to the hotel to ensure Vargas’s compliance. Etienne overpowered his guard—did I mention that he was a black belt in karate?—and managed to free Nigel, too.”
“I see,” Fauchon said. “Did father and son manage to patch it up?”
“I believe so,” Hob said. “I wasn’t privy to that scene.”
“And what about Annabelle? Did she make up with Arranque or return to Etienne?”
“Neither. She went to Hollywood. We still haven’t heard if she was able to sell her story yet. She has an agent, however.”
“And what about Stanley Bower’s murderer?” Fauchon asked.
“That was Arranque,” Hob said. “Not that you’ll ever be able to pin it on him. That’s how it goes in real life, Inspector.”
“His brother will be disappointed, I suppose.”
“I wrote Timothy with the information, as he requested. I haven’t heard from him.”
“Presumably he’s satisfied,” Fauchon said.
“Presumably.”
“And the soma you found in the cellar?”
“The Guardia didn’t want to know about it. As far as I know, it’s on the streets of big cities in America and Europe. And selling briskly, I hear. But you’d know more about that than I do.”
“Indeed I do,” Fauchon said. “Your statement is correct, as far as it goes. Soma is indeed being sold. But the previously established criminal organizations—the Yakuza, Mafia, Triad, and so forth—have objected in no uncertain terms to this traffic, since it cuts them out. In America there’s open warfare between the two organizations, the Cali Cartel and the Kali Kartel. One or the other of them is going to have to find another name. It’s very like Chicago of the old days. Dealers are dying like flies. Frankly, it saves us a lot of work.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Hob said. “This has not been my sort of affair at all. I’m happy to be out of it.”
“Well you might be,” Fauchon said.
“Anything else in mind?”
Fauchon nodded. “I think that takes care of everything. Except Nigel, of course. Did he ever get his mother’s birthday present back?”
“We picked up something else for her in the Rastro in Barcelona,” Hob said. “An even nicer silver service. From what Nigel told me, she was well satisfied.”
“Well, that is fine,” Fauchon said. “What are your plans now?”
“I’m going back to Ibiza,” Hob said. “It’s just coming on autumn, the best time of year there. The tourists are going home. One has time to think.”
“Autumn is the best time everywhere,” Fauchon said. “Pity it can’t be extended year around.”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © © 1997 by Robert Sheckley
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-3479-4
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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