White Cargo

by Stuart Woods

  “It’s not all that bad,” Meg interrupted. “I mean, we don’t have to get Jinx out of here today. We can just wait until the conference ends, fly out of here in their helicopter, and report everything when we get back. We can give Hedger and his people the whole layout here, and they can take particular care about Jinx’s safety when they come in.”

  “I wish it were as easy as that,” Cat said. “It might have been once, but not anymore.”

  Meg turned to face him. “Cat, what are you telling me? What did you do tonight?”

  “I killed Denny. I followed him to the discotheque men’s room, then shot him and hid his body in a pantry. They might not find him immediately, but we’ve got another five days to go on Prince’s program, and they’re bound to find him before then. He’s bound to be missed.”

  “But even if they do find him, they have no way of knowing it was you.” She paused. “Do they?”

  “Not unless somebody noticed that we both went to the men’s room. I don’t think anyone did—they were all distracted at the moment—but I can’t be absolutely sure. Even if they can’t connect me with the killing, when they find the body, things are going to get a lot tougher around here. Security has been pretty lax, but it’ll get real tight. Even if we last the five days, Prince could leave first with Jinx, and we’d be right back where we started.”

  “So what’s your plan?” Meg asked. She leaned forward. “You do have a plan, don’t you?”

  “No,” Cat replied, “but I have an idea. I wish it were a better one. Tomorrow morning, early, I want you to go and find Prince—he’ll probably be on the tennis courts—and make a tennis date with him the following morning at eight—no, at seven, if he’ll sit still for it.” He got up and started to change clothes. “Make sure it’s mixed doubles with Jinx. And don’t tell him about the burglary. Let me do it.”

  “Okay, I can handle that. What’s the rest of your idea? Mixed doubles is not going to get us out of here.”

  “I’ll tell you when I’ve figured it out.”

  “Swell.”

  • • •

  At seven the next morning Cat jogged easily up the path past the main house, then turned for the airstrip. He hoped nobody would be there this early in the morning. All the way, he tried to remember exactly a conversation he’d had with his flying instructor a few months back. The man had been cautioning him never to hand-spin a propeller unless he was prepared for the engine to fire, whether the switch was on or not. “You could have a hot magneto,” the man had said. “In fact,” he had continued, “that’s the way airplanes get stolen—the thief just bypasses the ignition system and hot-wires the engine directly to a mag.” Cat wasn’t sure he could hot-wire an airplane, but there was one sitting down there in a jungle clearing that might fly them out of this place, if he could hot-wire it.

  The path turned and he came into the clearing. His heart sank. The pilot who had flown them in from Leticia was working on the helicopter, apparently changing the oil. Cat waved to him and kept running. He began to run around the clearing, then, at the point where the workers were still felling trees, he began to run directly toward where the helicopter and the Maule airplane were parked, counting his steps. He drew up next to the helicopter, multiplying in his head. The clearing was longer than he had thought, about two hundred yards.

  “Morning, Hank,” he said to the pilot, panting.

  “Hi, how you doing?”

  “I’m wearing myself out, I think,” Cat laughed. “I’m not in as good shape as I thought.”

  “Never could see it, running,” the pilot said, continuing to work.

  “You’re a smart guy,” Cat replied. “It’s never too late not to start.” He took a deep breath. “You fly the Maule, too?”

  The pilot nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Mind if I have a look at her?”

  The pilot looked suspicious. “What for?”

  “I fly a Cessna 182 RG. I’ve never flown a Maule, but I saw one demonstrated once. Pretty impressive. I’ve got some farmland back home that wouldn’t work for a proper strip, but I might be able to get a Maule into it and out.”

  The pilot stood up and wiped his hands on a rag. “You don’t need much room for a Maule,” he said. “Come on.” He beckoned Cat toward the airplane.

  Together, they pulled back the camouflage netting to allow access to the cockpit. The man opened the door and waved Cat into the pilot’s seat. “It’d be a nice airplane by any standard,” he said, “even if it didn’t do short-takeoff and landing stuff. It’s got the same Lycoming two hundred and thirty-five horsepower engine as your 182 RG, but the airplane weighs about five hundred pounds less than yours.”

  “Variable pitch propeller,” Cat said, fingering a knob. He pointed at a handle next to his seat that looked like an emergency brake lever on an old car. “What’s this?”

  “Manually operated flaps,” the pilot said. “They work faster than electric ones. Try it.”

  Cat pulled on the handle and immediately, the flaps snapped down.

  “That’s twenty degrees,” the pilot said. “There are two more notches—forty and fifty degrees.”

  Cat pulled the handle again, and the flaps dropped more. “How about a demonstration?” he asked.

  The pilot laughed and shook his head. “No sireee, not until they clear at least another fifty feet of strip.” He pointed to the other end of the clearing. “Those trees are sixty, seventy feet high. I got the thing in here by the seat of my pants—scared the living shit out of me—but I’m not flying it out until I’ve got some room for error.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Cat said. “Those trees look pretty daunting.” They did, too. “Talk me through the procedure. I’d like to have an idea how it works.”

  “Well,” the pilot said, “you push the button on the flap control and hold it in so it doesn’t grab a notch; you put in twenty degrees of flaps, and you sit there with the brakes on and rev the thing up to full power. Then, when you think the engine is going to leave without you, you let go the brakes. Ever flown a tail dragger?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not like the tricycle gear on your plane. Almost as soon as you’re rolling you give ’er some forward stick to get the tail up. You watch your airspeed, and at forty knots you slam in all fifty degrees of flaps, then yank back on the yoke. She’ll spring right off the ground and pick up airspeed real fast, go up to fifty, sixty knots all at once. You’ll think you’re on a ride at Disneyland. Then, at about a hundred feet, when you’ve cleared any obstacle, you start easing off the flaps until you’re flying it just like a normal airplane.”

  “Sounds pretty straightforward,” Cat said.

  “Don’t you believe it, buddy,” the pilot snorted. “The manufacturers say you ought to have seventy-five or a hundred hours in the airplane before you try any radically short-field takeoffs. I’ve got about a hundred and ten right now, and it still scares the shit out of me.”

  Cat reached forward and flipped on the master switch. There was a whine as the gyros behind the instrument panel started to spin.

  “Hey, don’t do that!” the pilot said.

  “Sorry,” Cat said. He flipped off the switches, but not before he had glanced at the fuel gauges. “What’s her range?” he asked.

  “’Bout four hundred and fifty miles,” the pilot said. “Come on, we’d better get her covered up again. The Anaconda doesn’t want to get spotted from the air.”

  Cat got down from the airplane and helped the pilot get the netting over it again. “Well thanks for the tour,” he said. “I’d better get myself some breakfast. You’d better, too,” he said to the pilot. “You down here every day this early?”

  “Well if I’ve got something to do on the aircraft, I like to get it done before the heat gets up.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Cat said. “I can feel it coming on now.” He gave a little wave and started jogging up the trail toward the main house. The takeoff sounded pretty hairy, but he was enc
ouraged by one thing. In the map pocket at his feet had been a clipboard with a log sheet attached. And stuck under the clip had been the ignition key. He would not have to hot-wire the airplane.

  But that was a moot point. The fuel gauges had read less than a quarter full. He would have to think of something else.

  33

  CAT STOOD IN VARGAS’S OFFICE. THERE WAS NO CHAIR IN which to sit, so he stood like a recruit before his commander.

  “Our cottage has been burgled,” he said.

  Vargas stood up. “What?”

  Cat was relieved that Vargas looked astonished, and he seized the advantage. “I thought I would give you the opportunity to explain before I brought the matter to the attention of Mr. Prince.”

  “Who?”

  “The Anaconda.”

  Vargas was squirming now, and Cat was rather enjoying it. “Mr. Ellis, it will not be necessary for you to speak with the Anaconda about this. Please tell me what was taken from your cottage.”

  “Only a rather expensive Sony portable radio and a pistol, a Smith & Wesson .357 magnum. I am not terribly concerned about the radio, but I would like to have the pistol returned.”

  “Mr. Ellis,” Vargas said fervently, “I will conduct an investigation immediately. You may be sure your property will be returned to you.”

  Cat was about to thank him when an Indian in a servant’s uniform rushed into the room and began babbling in Spanish, gesticulating wildly. Vargas was even more upset by this news than he had been by Cat’s report.

  “Mr. Ellis, if you will excuse me, I will begin my investigation.”

  “What’s wrong?” Cat asked, nodding at the servant.

  “There has been a murder,” Vargas said.

  Cat felt a stab of panic and hoped his expression passed for surprise. “Oh? Who?”

  “One of the staff.”

  “Do you think this might be in some way connected with the burglary of our cottage?”

  “I have not had time to form an opinion about that,” Vargas said. “Please excuse me now. I have much to do.”

  Cat left him issuing orders to the servant. As he left the room he glanced into the adjacent communications center. All that equipment, he thought, and no way to use it. He didn’t suppose the Anaconda would allow him to make a telephone call.

  He went back to the cottage to shower and change. Meg was dressing.

  “So, are we going to take our chances in the jungle?” she asked.

  “I hope we won’t have to. With a few breaks we may be able to fly out of here.”

  “I would prefer that to walking, if it is at all possible to arrange it.”

  “I reported the burglary to Vargas. He was shocked. I think that if Prince had wanted the place searched and robbed, he would have told Vargas to arrange it, and Vargas seemed genuinely surprised. I don’t think he’s that good an actor.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Meg came back. “I seem to remember that he persuaded you that he was a cop back in Bogotá.”

  “I don’t think he was acting. I think he is a cop, a bent one. I wish he weren’t.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because they’ve already found Denny’s body, and I’d just as soon not have an experienced policeman in charge of the investigation.”

  “I see your point,” Meg said. “Still, if we’re getting out of here tomorrow morning, he doesn’t have much time to play policeman.”

  “Maybe not, but then he’s not constrained by police practice, is he? He’s promised that the radio and the pistol will be returned. I wouldn’t be surprised if he simply started beating up the staff until somebody confesses. This place is a sort of medieval barony, after all. What does it matter to Vargas and Prince if a few serfs get roughed up?”

  Meg sighed. “You’re depressing me.”

  Cat shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I have to add my speculation to the problems we already have. What we have to do is to get through today and tonight as normally as possible.”

  “Then what? You still haven’t told me your plan.”

  “Well, the pilot who brought us here likes to work on his helicopter early in the morning. I had another idea, about the little Maule airplane, but there’s not enough fuel in it, and I’d much rather old Hank flew us out of here in the chopper. How does that sound?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Did you arrange our tennis date?”

  “Not yet; I thought it was too early.”

  “If we can get Prince and Jinx out to the courts early tomorrow morning, maybe we can force him down to the helicopter.”

  “Prince, too?”

  “You, Jinx, Dell, and me. I’d thought of leaving Prince with a bullet in his head.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “I did it to Denny last night. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble pulling the trigger on Prince.” He shot her a sardonic grin. “It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.”

  • • •

  Cat arrived at his scheduled meeting in time to watch Prince approach the podium.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” the Anaconda said. “I believe you have all been well instructed in the pricing structure of our product, and you have seen how, with our system of direct supply, both your profits and mine will be enhanced, since we have no middleman with whom to share. This morning we are going to talk about what to do with those profits. After you have reinvested in more product and in widening your distribution, you will still be left with considerable cash reserves. Today we have with us Mr. Wiener and Mr. Simpson, who are representatives, respectively, of Swiss and Cayman Island banking firms. They will be talking to you about various deposit and investment arrangements in Europe and South America, and when they are finished you will have an opportunity to open accounts with them, if you have not yourselves already made such arrangements. Mr. Wiener?” He waved a short, bald man in a three-piece suit onto the platform.

  As Wiener approached the podium, Cat felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to find Vargas standing behind him.

  “Will you come with me, please?” Vargas said.

  Cat got up and followed the man outside, through the courtyard of the house, then back into the foyer and upstairs. Vargas opened a door and waited for Cat to precede him. Cat walked into a large, handsomely furnished sitting room and was surprised to find Prince waiting for him, sitting on one of a pair of facing sofas. Apparently, he had known a shorter route to the suite. Several yards behind Prince, sitting at an easel, painting in watercolors, was Jinx. Her attention was focused outside the window.

  “Please sit down, Bob,” the Anaconda said. His manner was courteous, but cool.

  Cat sat down on the sofa facing Prince, and Vargas sat next to him. They were placed so that Cat could not look at both of them at the same time.

  “What do you think of our conference so far?” Prince asked.

  “I’m very impressed,” Cat said. “You seem to have left nothing to chance.”

  Prince smiled slightly. “It is my way to leave nothing to chance,” he said. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Vargas?”

  “That is most certainly correct,” Vargas replied.

  “Now,” Prince said, “could you please tell me how you spent last evening?”

  “I had dinner in the dining room, then I went to the discotheque.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes, Miss Garcia was tired and wanted to retire early.”

  “And what did you do at the discotheque?”

  “I watched the . . . performance.”

  “Please tell me exactly what you did from the time you entered the discotheque until the time you returned to your cottage.”

  Cat took a deep breath. “Well, when I arrived, the show had already started. I stood and watched.”

  “Did you see Denny?”

  “Who?”

  “Denny, my, ah . . . associate.”

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Cat replied.

 
; “Of course not,” Prince said, almost to himself.

  “Did you do anything else while you were at the discotheque?”

  Cat shrugged. It seemed best to stick as close to the truth as possible. “I went to the men’s room.”

  “For how long?”

  “A couple of minutes, I guess. As long as it took.”

  “Was anyone else in the men’s room?”

  “No . . . wait, a man came in as I was leaving.”

  “Describe him, please.”

  “Well, I didn’t pay him much attention. I just brushed past him on the way out.”

  “Whatever you can remember.”

  “Youngish, shorter than I, sandy hair, moderately long. I’m afraid that’s the best I can do.”

  “Did you speak to him, or he to you?”

  “No.”

  “What did you do when you left the men’s room?”

  “I went back and watched the performance.”

  “At what point in the show was this?”

  “Well, there were two men and a woman at first, then, shortly after I came back, it changed to two women and one man.”

  “Did you speak to anyone else while you were there?”

  “No.”

  “Did you stand next to anyone you knew?”

  “It was pretty dark, and there were flashing lights. Anyway, my attention was on the performance.”

  Prince smiled. “Yes, I can understand that. What did you do when the performance was over?”

  “I didn’t stay that long. The show made me want to return to my cottage.” He managed a little smile. “I left shortly after the second group started.”

  “Do you possess a 9-millimeter automatic pistol?” Prince asked.

  “I had a .357 magnum until last night.”

  Prince frowned. “Of course, the burglary at your cottage last night. What was taken?”

  “Only the pistol and a portable radio.”

  “Were there other valuables present?”

  “I suppose so. I thought perhaps the thief might have been interrupted when Miss Garcia returned to the cottage.”

  Prince turned to Vargas. “What steps have you taken?”

  “The staff are being questioned,” Vargas said, lamely.