"That was you? With the rifle, in Costa Verde?"
"That was me. And let me tell you, I caught hell for letting you go. For punishment, they gave me the job of catching you again." I shrugged. "Well, it just shows you, never pass up a good shot. If I'd got you in the tail, you might have got blood poisoning and died, and we wouldn't be having this pleasant conference."
"You are an American intelligence agent?"
"Fm an American agent. If I had any intelligence of any kind I wouldn't be here, caught by a bunch of toy soldiers."
"You are alone?"
"I'm working alone. I don't say there aren't others as-signed to the job of finding you, but I guess I beat them to you. I wanted to check what that woman told me before I called out the reserves. Information obtained by those methods, as you probably know, isn't always reliable." I grimaced. "Well, come on, you ersatz Fuehrer! Whistle up your firing squad. Break out that final lousy cigarette. Let's put the goddamn show on the road, huh?"
"You think I am going to kill you?"
"You're either going to kill me or tease me to death. What's the difference?"
"What is your name?"
"None of your damn business," I said. "Well, call me Evans. Henry Evans."
He looked at me for a second or two in silence. Then he lifted my snub-nosed weapon and took careful aim. The hammer started to rise, actuated by the double-action mechanism, as he put pressure on the trigger. When it got to a certain point it would fall. There was a little sound to the right as Catherine pried the top off another beer bottle.
"God, I'm dry," she said. "This country just bakes it out of you. If you're going to shoot, dear, shoot. Don't make me wait all day for the noise."
He didn't look at her, but that didn't mean he hadn't been testing her, to see if perhaps there was something between us that might make her plead for my life. But he was watching me. The angle of the light made the scar a deep cleft in his cheek. He'd come a long way from those innocent boyish games at Heidelberg. He'd commanded armies; he'd been hunted for crimes against humanity. Now he was in command again, after a fashion. He was on his way back up, unless something stopped him. I cleared my throat and said, "Don't keep the lady waiting, von Sachs."
He eased the pressure on the trigger and laughed. "You are frightened, Mr. Evans."
"Guns always scare me. But I'll get over it. There's very little a bullet won't cure, I always say."
"No," he said slowly, "you are frightened inside. You talk big, but it is you who are soft and yellow inside, Mr. Evans. You are afraid if I do not kill you at once, you will break down and show it."
I said, "Christ! An amateur psychologist I've got to run into, yet! Tell me one thing, von Sachs. Just what the hell were you doing with a bunch of Commies down in Costa Verde?"
"That is a foolish question," he said. "You have seen the result of my trip outside, you have sketched it in your little notebook. I was shopping for a weapon I'd been told was for sale."
I said, "Hell, El Fuerte wouldn't have sold it while he was alive. That was his ace in the hole."
"The ace was about to be trumped," von Sachs said. "His Russian backers had got wind of the fact that he had it, through informants in Cuba. They were displeased. They threatened him with dire consequences if he should use it. They wanted it back. All the time, of course, he was denying that he had ever seen such a thing. Meanwhile he was trying to find a buyer with cash. The Russians would have paid him nothing, and General Santos had gone to considerable expense and trouble. He thought it only fair that the transaction should show a profit."
"I see," I said. "And now you've got it here, how the hell are you planning to use it? I mean, you're not crazy enough to think you can blackmail either the United States or Mexico with just one overgrown whiz-bang?"
"Blackmail?" He frowned at the word. "I do not blackmail, Mr. Evans. When the time comes, not too far distant, I will fire the missile. And the city of El Paso, Texas, will disappear from the map of America. I think it will be El Paso. The bearded technicians tell me it is the easiest target within range, and your Texans are hot-headed and politically influential. They will insist on immediate retaliation-and against whom will they want to retaliate, Mr. Evans?'
I drew a long breath. "It's a tricky idea. Not original, but tricky. It might work in the movies."
"It will work here! No one up there above the border will know from which direction the missile came. All they will know is that an American city has been destroyed. Will you tell me that not one of your intercontinental weapons will be fired under such provocation? That no signal will go out to the captains of the atomic submarines with their Polaris missiles? And if one, just one, weapon is fired, will it not be answered?" He laid the gun gently on the table. "And when the radioactive dust settles, will there not be opportunities for a man at the head of a military force, with secret allies in your principal southwestern cities, Mr. Evans? Such a man could carve an empire out of the rubble!"
There was a little silence. As I'd said, the idea wasn't exactly original. Other people had thought of the possibility before, but none had gone shopping for the means to carry it out. At least I hoped they hadn't.
I said lightly, "Well, it sounds kind of like burning down the barn to roast the cow to get some bones to throw to the pup that hasn't been whelped yet. Do you know what I think? I think you're cracked, von Sachs. I think you just want to set the world on fire and watch the pretty mushroom clouds grow and grow. I think-"
"That's enough!" He had picked up the gun again.
"I think you'd just like getting the two largest countries that crushed Adolf Hitler to destroy each other. The rest is just crap for the suckers outside. Empire, hell!"
"Silence!" The hammer started to rise again.
"Go on," I said bravely. "Pull the damn trigger, you crazy Nazi butcher! Go on, shoot!"
The hammer subsided slowly. He sighed. "You are too eager to die, Mr. Evans. I do not think I will oblige you tonight. Tomorrow, perhaps… Guards!"
Well, if I hadn't egged him on, if I hadn't made him think I yearned for a quick death, he'd have had me shot right away. It was very ingenious of me, and I was sweating very convincingly as they took me out of there.
XXII
THE JAIL, brig, detention cell, or what have you, was a pigeonhole twenty feet up the face of the canyon wall, reached by a rickety ladder. The sergeant made me climb up, covered by his ugly little weapon; then he sent a man up to tie me securely. The knot-man was good, and I'm no Houdini. I tried to get some slack the way it says in the manual, but if I'd thought the man could read at all, let alone read English, I'd have said he'd been at the same book. When he left me it was fairly obvious that I wasn't going to be climbing down any ladders without help. Then they took the ladder away, and that was that.
Down below, the fire was blazing cheerfully and the boys around it were passing the tequila, mescal, pulque, tiswin, or whatever kind of cactus juice it was they had in the jug. Pretty soon one of them broke out a guitar and began to sing, just like in a movie. I wiggled forward to where I could look at the happy group below. Off to one side sat a lone, anti-social character with his back to a rock and a rifle across his knees, watching my cave. The light was still burning in the tent, I noticed, and the sentry still stood in front.
The guard with the rifle waved me back. When I didn't move at once he aimed his weapon my way. I took the hint and squirmed back into the darkness of the cave and tried the other end. Ten feet back from the entrance I hit solid rock. Well, I hadn't been about to explore any tunnels or crevices tied hand and foot. It was up to Catherine now.
Her next move was obvious, and soon I could hear her working on it. Her laughter and von Sachs' began to come from the tent more loudly and drunkenly as the night progressed. Presently they started singing the Horst Wessel off key. After that there was more laughter, and some horseplay that shook the tent canvas, and a male voice demanding and a female voice protesting, not very convincingly, and
some more activity, and silence.
I lay in my pigeonhole above and wondered why I didn't like myself very much. I mean, it wasn't as if the woman were anything to me; and she'd merely done just what I would have told her to do if she'd asked for instructions.
The guitarist was long silent, and the fire was dying. When it no longer cast a glow on the ceiling of the cave, she came. I heard her down there, speaking to the guard in a slurred voice and giggling in an inebriated way at his answer; then there was a solid, whacking sound like an axe going into soft pine.
I heard the ladder being moved back into place. Something metallic was tossed into the cave. A moment later she followed it, sat for a moment panting, and crawled over to cut me free with the machete she'd sent ahead, presumably taken from the guard below.
"So!" she breathed, helping me sit up. "Now we must get down, before someone notices the ladder."
"Give me a chance to get some circulation back. What about the sentry by the tent?"
"Asleep. I was friendly. I gave him a beer. With something in it I happened to have along. Like von Sachs. They will sleep until morning, both of them. Your guard would not take a beer, a dutiful man. So he is dead. When they find him, we are betrayed. Now come. I will go first and hold you if you slip. Never mind the big knife."
"I want it," I said. "I have an idea about it."
"All right. Give me your belt."
She hung the machete about her neck and shoved it around to dangle down her back; then she moved onto the ladder and leaned back so that I could make my way clumsily into the space in front of her, with her arms around me. It felt ridiculous, and embarrassing in more ways than one, being held there by a woman, but my hands and feet still weren't much use to me. I would have fallen half a dozen times without her support.
At the bottom, I fumbled my belt back on with tingling fingers, and helped her move the ladder back where it had been. We passed the guard sitting against his rock with his rifle across his knees and his hat over his eyes, motionless, dead. I reminded myself not to underestimate my sexy ally; she wasn't anybody you wanted to turn your back on. We stopped in a sheltered place among the rocks.
She bent over to do something to her feet. "These damn sandals!" she whispered. "I might as well be barefoot."
She straightened up, and we faced each other briefly in silence. The sky gave enough light that I could see her fairly well. With her blonde hair loose and untidy about her face instead of piled elegantly on her head, without the flashy lipstick and iridescent eye make-up, she was a different person. I was surprised to realize that she was really rather a plain girl.
"Your little friend," Catherine murmured. "She is on top of the cliff with the rifle?"
"Yes."
"Can she really shoot?"
"Don't worry about Sheila," I said. "She'll do her part."
"I'm sure she will. For your sake. Because she loves you. it is very touching."
"Yeah, touching," I said. If women knew how they sounded, sniping at each other, we might have to put up with less static of this kind. "I'll make a deal with you,"
I said. "The job has developed ramifications. I'll fix von Sachs-Sheila and I-if you'll fix the bird."
"Bird? Oh, the missile." She glanced upstream at the blackness of the cottonwoods. Then she looked at me and smiled. "So that is it. I was wondering if you would really come, when I saw how easily you could shoot him from above. That is why you came?'
"That's it," I said.
"It is nothing to me," she said. "It has nothing to do with my job."
I said, "I've got to sabotage that gadget somehow. Of course Washington would love me to deliver it intact, but they'd rather have it busted than take a chance of losing it again. You take care of it for me and I'll guarantee von Sachs. You get stubborn and I'll go for the missile and you can die heroically doing your goddamn job alone."
She hesitated; then she moved her shoulders in a resigned way. "All right, but how do you expect me to do it? It is such a big thing-"
"The truck," I said. It had taken me a long time to come up with the obvious solution. "I wouldn't know how to gimmick the bird itself, but the control truck is easy. All you have to do is shoot a hole in the gas tank and light a match. I doubt if they have enough electronic talent in this hole to rig up anything that'll fire the missile once that console is a mess of melted wire and plastic." I frowned. "What about the Volkswagen? Who's got the key?"
"It's still in the lock."
"Good. Whichever of us is closest makes for it afterward and picks up the other. Sheila'll be covering us from above, with the rifle. Anything else?"
She hesitated. "Yes. One thing. We are partners here, Henry Evans. But afterward, one day, you will pay for Max. I do not pretend to forgive you."
She turned and went silently back to the tent and slipped inside. I glanced towards the north rim of the canyon. It made me uneasy to know that Sheila's life, as well as mine, was at the mercy of a woman I had no reason to trust, a woman who'd just made a point of reminding me that she owed me something. But there was nothing to be done about it now.
I looked at the machete in my hand and felt the edge. It was a bastard weapon really, too long for a knife, too short for a sword. Well, it would do for what I had in mind. I glanced at my watch. The luminous dial read three thirty-five. I sat down to wait.
At four-thirty it was light enough to start the action. I got up and walked openly towards the tent. A man was building up the fire for breakfast. I saw him stop his work, stare at me, glance up at the cave where I was supposed to be, and reach for a rifle leaning against a nearby tree. I stalked up to the front of the tent, kicked the drugged sentry out of the way, and slashed away the canvas door with a stroke of the machete. I then proceeded to say one of the silliest things I ever said.
"Come on out, Quintana!" I yelled in the quiet dawn. "Come on out and fight like a man!"
XXIII
IT HAD SEEMED reasonable as a theory. Now that I was putting it into practice, it sounded so ridiculous I couldn't believe it would work. I was taking a long chance on a dueling scar a man had picked up in his 'hotheaded youth, and on that lifelong preoccupation with 'honor and edged weapons that went with a certain Teutonic mentality, I hoped.
"Come out of there!" I shouted. "Cobarde! Schweinhund! Come on out and fight, you slaughterhouse general. What are you stalling for? I suppose you figure if you hide under the bed long enough somebody'll shoot me and save your yellow hide."
It wasn't exactly brilliant invective, particularly since I 'had to deliver it more or less in Spanish for the sake of the gathering audience. But they were gathering, that was the important thing. They were peering curiously out of the caves and sliding down the ladders and forming a circle around me and the tent. There were several rifles aimed at me as I stood waving my stolen machete dramatically, and the tough little sergeant had come up behind me with his fancy burp-gun, but nobody'd killed me yet.
I called, "Okay, you can relax now, Quintana, and stop shaking. Your boys have me covered. Nobody's going to hurt you. But before you give the word to shoot, let me tell you-,'
I told him, in my clumsy Spanish, how his mother was a drunken whore who got impregnated one night by a garbage-eating mongrel dog while lying unconscious in a Berlin gutter. I elaborated on this concept for a while. Then I described his bastard childhood in detail, and went on to tell how he got the scar on his face from a broken beer bottle wielded by a jealous homosexual companion, since everybody knew the Nazis were all fairies; it was a matter of record.
I got a little more fluent as I went along, and out of the corner of my eye I'd catch an occasional faint grin of appreciation. Mexico is a land where the art of vituperation is still respected for its own sake. I was doing okay for a mere gringo. It would be a pity to shoot me while I was affording the camp a certain amount of low-quality entertainment.
One who apparently was not amused, however, was the little sergeant with the machine pistol. I felt hi
s weapon touch me in the back, and I heard the faint click as he released the safety catch.
"That's right, amigo," I said over my shoulder. "That is brave and correct. Shoot me in the back. Save your cowardly chief-"
A stir made me look towards the tent again. Von Sachs stood there, buckling on the belt with the machete and the.45 automatic. There was a certain amount of saluting among the men, to which he responded with an impatient outward thrust of his hand. He looked hard and tough in the growing light. If he felt any effects from the beer, and the mickey Catherine had slipped him, he didn't show it.
"What transpires here?" he demanded in Spanish. "Why is this man loose? Why am I awakened by his crazy bellowing? Disarm him!"
I stepped forward before anybody could grab me. "That's right!" I sneered. "That's the way, Quintana! Take the machete away from the terrible man before he cuts somebody! In a camp of men with firearms he must not be allowed to keep his little knife, it is too dangerous!" I threw back my head and spat in his direction. "You've got one of your own, right there on your belt. Why don't you take mine away from me? Are you afraid?"
Behind me, the sergeant spoke softly, "Jefe, con permiso-" He was asking for permission to shoot. There was a disapproving murmur from the other men.
Von Sachs noted it. There were other things on his mind, of course, like the question of how I came to be standing there free and armed. He wasn't dumb. He glanced quickly towards the tent doorway where Catherine had just appeared, pushing her hair out of her eyes, with 'her crumpled blouse hanging loose outside her shorts, like an open jacket. Von Sachs spoke quickly, and two men took her by the arms.
"Hold the treacherous slut while I dispose of her accomplice!" He swung back to face me. "So you still wish to die quickly, Mr. Evans. But if I were stupid enough to fight you, I would disappoint you. I would cut you to pieces very slowly."
I grinned scornfully. "You scare me! You and that scar. If it wasn't a beer bottle, it's where you dove through a plate glass window because you were frightened by an American bomb five blocks away."
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