Diamonds Are for Dying

by Paul Kenyon

  They walked to the bedroom, Silvio's feverish chest and belly pressed against the whole length of her back, the taut burning phallus imprisoned between her thighs, his palms flattening her breasts and his cheek laid alongside hers. Penelope reached between her thighs and found the swollen knob protruding there, almost as if it were a part of her own body. Her breath catching, she rubbed its tip against her own turgid coxcomb. Silvio's knees buckled momentarily, and they stumbled on toward the rumpled bed they had left only a short time before.

  They lay side by side for a moment like exhausted wrestlers, their bodies already glistening with sweat. Silvio's rigid stem, a single sparkling droplet trying to ooze out of its blunt tip, swayed with its own weight. Penelope writhed on the sheets, the edges of her senses growing blurry.

  "Do it," she moaned. "Do it!"

  He turned on his side, his hand thrusting between her sopping thighs. His mouth fastened on hers again, and the thrusting shaft was resting hotly on her hip and belly. Impatiently she seized it and tried to move it between her legs, turning her body toward his. But Silvio resisted, and somehow she controlled the violent approaching flood within her. The moment passed, and she was raised to a new, higher pitch that she was barely able to contain. Somewhere in the part of her brain that could still think, she was wordlessly grateful to Silvio for not giving in.

  His lips walked down her body to her breasts, making a tight fleshy O around a nipple and moving in and out while his tongue lapped the whole surface of the bursting cone. Penelope could hear the animal sounds she was making as if they were coming from far away. Her hand scrabbled blindly between his legs and found the heavy dangling pouch there. She hefted it in her palm, her fingers tracing its shape up to where it met his body. She pressed there, in the cleft of his buttocks, and he shook all over, his mouth losing its grip on her swollen pap. His body bent almost double, and there was a strange sensation which she realized was his tongue in her navel. She squeezed the sac in her hand and something writhed within it; the surface seemed to crawl and grow tighter. Silvio groaned again, and his mouth attached itself to her lower belly.

  She grabbed a handful of hair with her other hand and tugged. "No," she moaned, "I want you! It! Inside me! Now!"

  His body uncoiled itself like a huge spring and covered her. The crinkly hair on his chest scratched her breasts. She grasped the pulsating handle between his legs and thrust it deep within her. Silvio at once began making long, violent heaving motions, Penelope rocking with him. "Ah! Ah! Ah!" he gasped between clenched teeth. Penelope heard herself breathing with him, the two primitive cries blending into one. The flood gathered inside her again, but she held it off, held it off…

  And then it was no longer possible to resist it. She dissolved in a scalding deluge, more violent than she had been prepared for. Her whole body spasmed, and she was clawing at Silvio's back while he pushed himself into her as far as he could go. And then there was a long drawn-out exhalation from him, and she could feel the hot soupy stuff of his ecstasy spilling out onto her thighs as he withdrew.

  He knelt between her legs for a moment, recovering his breath, the purple slowly draining out of his face. The stiff livid pipe still protruded straight out, glistening with their mingled secretions. Silvio smiled at her, almost shyly.

  She lifted one weak, drained hand and rested it on his leg. Her whole body felt flushed, depleted, warm. Somewhere inside her there was a final tiny throb, and she gave a contented sigh.

  "It was worth waiting for," she said.

  Afterwards, while they shared another drink, another cigarette, Silvio looked at the luminous dial of his watch and said, "We really should go." Outside, the sounds of Carnival were reaching a crescendo. The street bands were doing their best to drown one another out, filling the night with cross rhythms. There was drunken laughter and the sound of broken glass. There Were whistles and drums and the wheeze of the cuica.

  "Let's not go," Penelope said. "Let's have our own Carnival."

  They were leaning out the window, admiring a passing samba parade, Penelope covering her breasts with a sheet. Silvio said wistfully, "I saved my best costume for tonight — a prince with a gold crown. It will be such a waste."

  Penelope pulled him back toward the bed. "It won't be a waste," she promised him.

  It wasn't. Silvio's lovemaking was attentive, knowing, Penelope lavished all her tenderness, all her skills on him. Each time was better than the last. Silvio was more inventive than she had supposed he could be. She lost herself in that warm and cozy universe filled entirely with her senses, the awareness of Silvio's hands, lips, his sturdy tool of love, the hard masculine planes of his body. In her mouth, the taste of Silvio mingled with the taste of Scotch, and there was a pleasant buzz, a dissolving of the senses.

  It was almost dawn when he left her. "Ash Wednesday," he said. "I'll give up anything but you. Try to nap, Penelope. I'll pick you up for dinner."

  Outside, Rio was a shambles. Silvio stepped carefully over an unconscious Pierrot, kicked a bottle into the gutter. A bum urinated against the side of a building. A costumed couple made love in a doorway, oblivious to the die-hards stumbling by in exhaustion. There was the distant sound of a samba band, still going, its rhythm a little ragged.

  Silvio did not notice the two men who stepped out of the shadows across from the entrance to the Leme Palace and began following him. They blended inconspicuously with the straggling remnants of the Carnival crowd, two burly white men in blue satin knee breeches, vests and powdered wigs: footmen's costumes from the time of Louis XVI.

  Silvio inhaled the clean sea air blowing in from the Atlantic and paused to enjoy the predawn sky. It was cloudy, but the moon showed a big round edge every once in a while. There was the faintest of peach-colored glows where the sky met the ocean. Transportation would be hard to find. Silvio turned down a side street.

  The two footmen padded silently along after him at a distance of half a block. If anyone had been interested in them, their behavior might have seemed odd. They were not talking to one another, as friends coming home from a ball might have done, and they seemed not at all tired or tipsy, as most of the other people in the streets were.

  Silvio, lost happily in thought, did not notice them, nor was he aware that they had suddenly speeded up to close the gap just as he was crossing the dark mouth of an alley.

  The first thing he knew, he had bumped into a man's solid, heavy body. He looked up, smiling. "Perdão, Senhor…" he began.

  The other man hit him from behind. Dazed, he felt himself being dragged into the alley by the two of them.

  They propped him against a brick wall. He tried to raise his arms to defend himself, but found that the blow had done something to his head.

  A ruffled sleeve moved in the darkness. There was a grunt of effort from one of the footmen, and a hard fist drove into his midriff. He would have fallen, but there was another pair of hands holding him up. The next blow caught him on the cheek. The man in front of him removed his satin vest and white wig and put them carefully on the ground before resuming. They took turns holding him up and hitting him until it was apparent that he had been unconscious for some time. Then they let him fall to the ground and began kicking him.

  Chapter 10

  Down below, the vivid green of the jungle was broken by the meandering course of a river. The twin-engined Bandeirante turned and began following the river north.

  "The Rio das Mortes," Heidrig said beside her. "We're almost there now."

  Penelope looked out the circular port. The plane was losing altitude, its flaps and wheels down. Through the whirling propeller, she could see a geometric arrangement of toylike buildings, their roofs brilliant with orange tiles, enclosed by a vast parallelogram of a stone wall dotted with watchtowers. A dirt runway, hacked into the jungle, was coming up to meet them.

  "My airstrip is too short for a jet," Heidrig said, "but I do nicely with the Bandeirante and my Cessnas. The nearest airfield of any size is a hundred
miles away, and if I used that, I would have to come the rest of the way on the river, by boat."

  Penelope nodded. Wharton had already researched the area. The river was the way he and the others would be traveling.

  "There's a town about forty miles up the river," Heidrig went on. "It is called Queimadura. The district Coronel of Police has his headquarters there. He's a friend of mine. Otherwise there is nothing. Jungle, animals, Indians. You will appreciate my security arrangements."

  Penelope listened with half an ear. She was thinking about Silvio. He hadn't shown up for their dinner date. When she'd called his apartment, there had been no answer. It was just as well. She had a job to do. Silvio was just a complication.

  The plane skidded to a stop. The passengers — Heidrig's retainers — began to unstrap themselves. She recognized an Indian-looking busboy who had served her champagne at Heidrig's ball in Rio. At the rear of the cabin, Sumo and Inga were untying the two Borzois from the lavatory door.

  A jeep met them at the end of the airstrip. Heidrig helped Penelope into it. Evidently the others were going to walk. The engine roared and they took off with a lurch that sent Penelope's hand flying to her straw sunhat. They bumped along a rutted path for about a thousand feet, then came to a massive gate in the stone wall. A man in a green uniform, carrying an automatic weapon with skeleton stock, came out of a guard house. He saluted smartly when he saw Heidrig, and opened the gate. There was another sentry just inside.

  "There are reports of a band of terrorists operating in the district," Heidrig said. "National Liberation Movement, or some such swine. They kidnapped your American ambassador a few years ago, you may recall. One can't be too careful. A place like this is a natural target for those leftist swine. And then there are the Indians. We've had to shoot a few of them to teach them to stay away from the fazenda."

  The jeep was rolling up a handsome driveway toward the main building. It was a big old stone house with a curved tile roof. A second-floor balcony with an iron railing ran all the way around the building, fronted by tall shuttered windows.

  A man in a butler's uniform was helping her from the jeep. Penelope gathered the wraparound denim travel skirt around her and stepped to the ground. The jeep roared off for the luggage.

  "Shall I show madame to her room?" the butler said with a faint German accent.

  "In a moment, Hermann," Heidrig said. "First, will you ask Julio to light mosquito coils in the garden. We'll have lunch there." The butler hurried off. Heidrig turned to Penelope. "I know you're anxious to freshen up and change, my dear, but let me show you some of the immediate grounds while we're waiting for Hermann to come back."

  The formal garden took Penelope's breath away. It was a neat, trimmed vision of shaped shrubbery, clipped grass, ornamental trees, banks of carefully tended tropical flowers. It was shaped approximately like a kidney bean, with pebble-bordered fish pools along the edges. A wrought iron table with chairs and benches were arranged under a striped awning.

  "Marvelous, isn't it?" Heidrig said. "I had one in France during our Occupation, tended by a French gardener who had been working on it all his life. The old fellow was half-Jewish, but I refused to let him be taken away. If anything, I think Julio has even more talent. These people have their uses, eh, Baroness?"

  Penelope smiled blandly. Heidrig chuckled and said, "You think I am too tolerant? Come, Hermann must be back by now." He took her arm and led her back the way they had come.

  As they rounded the corner of the house, Heidrig tightened his grip and said, "There's someone I want you to meet. Horst! Oh, Horst!"

  A young man in some sort of uniform was walking along the brick path that led to a cluster of nearby buildings. He was leading two sleek black Dobermans who trotted in perfect cadence at his heels, not pulling at all on the chains Horst was holding. At the sound of Heidrig's voice, he turned and began to hurry over, the dogs loping stiffly beside him. When he noticed Penelope, his pace slowed. He slouched and dragged his feet as he came near. Exactly, Penelope thought, like a small boy who is being asked to say hello to a grown-up relative he doesn't like.

  "Horst, this is the Baroness Penelope St. John-Orsini," Heidrig said. "She will be our guest for a few days."

  The boy scowled at her. Penelope saw an undersized youth with rounded shoulders and wide hips, colorless hair and a rosebud mouth. He was wearing a green uniform with a Sam Browne belt held in place by a shoulder tab.

  "Horst, where are your manners?" Heidrig said sharply.

  "I am very pleased to meet you, Baroness," the boy said. The accent was German, with a soft Latin murmur showing through. Undisguised hostility showed in his eyes.

  "Very good," Heidrig said. "Horst, you will join us for dinner."

  "As you say, Herr Heidrig." The boy stood stiffly. One of the Dobermans whined and he slapped it with the leather loop of the dog chain.

  At that moment, the jeep roared up the driveway and came to a stop some yards away. Inga and Sumo were riding in it, their luggage piled around them, and the two Borzois sitting in back.

  It happened so fast that it took everyone by surprise except Penelope, who had seen it before. The Borzoi is an ornamental dog today, used in vodka ads and for posing with film stars and fashion models. But the Baroness knew it had two thousand years of killer bred into it. It was trained to hunt the wolf of the steppes, a fearsome creature weighing up to one hundred and fifty pounds.

  Borzois don't like any dog that reminds them of a wolf.

  Before anyone could stop them, Igor and Stasya bounded over the side of the jeep, making a peculiar sound that seemed too high-pitched for such big dogs. They dragged Tom Sumo with them. During the ride he had wound their chains once around his wrists for security, and now he was quick-witted enough to hold on for all he was worth. The dogs took no notice whatsoever of his one hundred and forty pounds; they dragged him through the dust like horses pulling a sledge. Inga screamed at them, but no human command could penetrate their single-minded savagery now.

  Penelope launched herself forward like a football player and hit Igor in a tackle. She held on to the furry neck, feeling herself dragged along by its charge. But the extra weight had slowed the wolfhounds just enough.

  Sumo pulled with all his strength on Stasya's chain, digging his body into the ground. Inga by this time had leaped from the jeep and threw herself on top of Stasya. The three of them managed to hold the dogs in position, only six or seven feet from Horst and the Dobermans.

  The Dobermans were straining on their leashes, baring their teeth and growling deep in their chests. Horst gave a sharp command, pulling on their chains, and they stood quivering, growling in an undertone.

  "Get them away from here," Heidrig shouted, and Horst moved down the path, throwing a venomous glare at Penelope. Just before he rounded the corner of a building, one of his dogs tossed its head and barked a final challenge at the Borzois. He kicked it, and then the three of them were out of sight.

  "You naughty, naughty dogs!" Penelope scolded in her flightiest voice.

  Heidrig said, "It is a good thing that Horst had his Dobermans under control. They might have hurt your dogs."

  "Oh, they're so hard to manage sometimes, but I haven't the heart to discipline them!" Penelope said, as breathlessly as she could manage. The Borzois cooperated by whining like overgrown puppies, their tails wagging and their tongues lolling. Sumo was on his feet now, grinning brainlessly, his suit a mess. Inga was playing the concerned servant, brushing Penelope off with a handkerchief.

  Heidrig was studying Penelope speculatively. His eyes roved over her body: the sleek muscles of her calves, the capable hands. "You move very quickly, my dear. I would not have thought you so… gymnastic."

  The bastard doesn't miss a trick, she thought. Aloud, she said, "Oh, it must be all the tennis. And swimming and riding." She fluttered her eyelids, then looked down in imitation dismay at her skirt. "Oh, I've ruined my clothes! I must look dreadful! I must have a bath and change!"
>
  Afterward, brushing her hair in her room, she pondered the mystery of Horst. He had hated her on sight. It had nothing to do with the incident involving the dogs; he'd shown his dislike of her before that. It was the kind of dislike she'd occasionally sensed from a jealous woman who was afraid that her man was attracted to Penelope. Horst saw her as some kind of threat. He resented her presence here in Heidrig's household. Was he homosexual? Probably. At least latent.

  Could he be Heidrig's lover? After all. the Nazi SS had been full of homosexual officers. It was part of the superman mystique. Penelope chewed on the theory a while, then discarded it for the time being. Horst definitely had some sort of emotional hold over Heidrig, but it seemed to be outside the area of sex. It was more like — Penelope strove to formulate the idea — like a sort of custodianship.

  Horst was important. It was up to her to find out why.

  * * *

  They cut the motor as soon as they saw the lights of the town, about a mile downstream. The ancient diesel choked and coughed itself to death, and the launch started to drift in toward the riverbank.

  "Queimadura," Paul said, hooking a thumb toward the lights. "It means Sunburn. Which shows you what the early settlers thought of the place."

  "They should have named it Mosquito Bite," Skytop said, slapping at his neck. "Help me work this tub in toward that sandy spit over there."

  The two of them pushed with long poles at the muddy bottom of the river. They were both dressed in rumpled cotton shirts and trousers. Both were barefoot. If anyone were watching, they could have passed for natives of the region — Paul as a Preto, or black peasant, and Skytop as an Amazon Indian.

  The others — Wharton, Eric, Fiona, Yvette — were huddled with the three jeeps and weapons and explosives that loomed bulkily under the tarpaulins. It wouldn't have done for any of the native farmers or rubber workers along the riverbank to have spotted them — or the cargo.