Death in High Places (A Renegade Western Book 7)

by Lou Cameron

  Maldonado left his office and walked across a patio to another wing, checking the time. He knew it was too early, but the colonel had ordered him to keep him posted, and one did what a colonel ordered, even when the colonel was, well, somebody’s brother-in-law.

  He found two sentries posted at the colonel’s door. They had their orders, too. So they simply presented arms as Maldonado breezed by them.

  He found the office deserted at this hour, of course, but he’d been told to come to the older man’s private chambers. He did so, knocking discreetly on the heavy oaken door.

  A bleary voice called out, “¡Entrar!” so Maldonado did. He found the colonel in bed with an effeminate fat boy, about sixteen. The colonel too was fat although much older than his current love toy. Maldonado kept a straight face as he said soberly, “You told me you wished to remain informed about Ricardo Walker, sir.”

  The colonel displayed no embarrassment as he went on fondling the naked youth at his side, but he seemed confused as he repeated, “Ricardo who?”

  “Captain Gringo, sir. He seems to be definitely up to something, and our agents in Costa Rica have lost contact with him.”

  The colonel nodded brightly. “Oh, yes. I remember the trouble we had with that one. A most distressing young man.”

  He did something to his plump partner, under the sheet, and as Maldonado stood at attention, trying not to notice, the youth slid coyly out of sight beneath the bed covers. Maldonado’s lips felt frozen as he stared straight ahead and said, “I don’t have any evidence connecting Captain Gringo to that other matter I spoke to you about, sir. But frankly, I’m worried. It’s the sort of thing he specializes in.”

  The colonel gasped quietly as the bulge that had to be the invisible boy moved into position above his covered lap. As the bulge started moving up and down, Maldonado said stiffly, “Perhaps I should come back later, sir.”

  But the colonel yawned and said, “No, business before pleasure. Or perhaps at the same time, eh? Refresh my memory. What is this other matter you seem so concerned about?”

  “The, ah, nationalization of those foreign properties, sir.”

  “Ooh, Jesus, watch those teeth! I assure you I’ve been told those expropriations were in the best interest of our country, Diego.”

  “No doubt, sir. But the former owners may feel a certain sense of injury.”

  “Bah, what former owners? No damned stranger owns anything in this country. It’s all ours. It says so in our constitution. Have you forgotten?”

  Maldonado felt his neck redden as the youth under the sheet began to suck noisily and the colonel grinned up at him, breathing heavily. The intelligence officer nodded and said, “It occurred to me that certain interests may have hired Captain Gringo for revenge. Some of the foreign consulates protested rather strongly when the, ah, government … rather informally announced its new nationalization policy.”

  The colonel closed his eyes, lay back with a sigh, and murmured, “Fuck them. What can they do? Oh, yes, that’s lovely, nino!”

  Maldonado saluted stiffly, turned on his heel, and walked out, slamming the door behind him. There was nobody in the corridor, so nobody saw when El Arafio, the man of steel, suddenly swore and smashed his fist into the stucco wall.

  It hurt like hell and did more damage to the officer’s fist than it did the wall. He walked on, sucking his split knuckle as he brought his nerves under control with a deliberate effort of will.

  By the time he passed the sentries again, Maldonado was himself once more. He knew he had to maintain control. Somebody had to maintain control around here. Otherwise, the flabby fools and perverts in nominal charge of the government were going to pull the whole country down with them when they fell. So, like it or not, he couldn’t let them fall.

  Chapter Five

  The female British agent was introduced to Captain Gringo at Greystoke’s Limón headquarters, as far from the British Consulate as the size of the seaport allowed. Gaston sat smoking in an alcove as far away as the size of Greystoke’s drawing room allowed. The little Frenchman hadn’t wanted to sneak into Colombia alone with his big friend. Taking a woman along struck Gaston as suicidal.

  Captain Gringo would have felt better about the idea if the girl had been a little friendlier, or perhaps less insecure. Her face was okay, if you liked a negatively pretty cameo effect. Her eyes were as wary as those of a lost kitten in a strange kitchen. Her hair was dark brown and the eyes were amber, but nobody was going to mistake her for a Latin. Nobody had ever looked so stiff-upper-lipped English since Queen Victoria had begun to loosen up in her old age. He was sure she sat a horse well. She looked ready to take a fence at a moment’s notice. She was taller than the average woman and too slender to seem healthy. Her face was very pale, save for rosy highlights on her cheekbones that he sincerely hoped were poorly applied rouge. The last person he’d seen with that coloring had been a terminal TB case. He didn’t think it would be polite to point out that they were headed into high country where a sound pair of lungs was absolutely vital. He didn’t ask why she was wearing a heavy-bodiced, black velvet dress in the tropics, either. He was waiting for Greystoke to tell him where he’d found her.

  When Greystoke introduced the willowy brunette as Miss Linda Smathers, Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “No, we can’t call her that.”

  The girl blinked and said, “I beg your pardon?”

  Greystoke agreed, saying, “Quite. I do speak Spanish, but one does tend to think in English, away from the ruddy dons. He’s right, Miss Smathers. Linda translates as ‘pretty-girl’ in this part of the world. Bit silly, what?”

  She said, “It happens to be my name, sir. But very well. What about my using Lana?”

  Captain Gringo laughed and said, “That’s worse. It means ‘wool’ in Spanish. I guess we could call you Luisa.”

  “I don’t like that name. It sounds like a German cleaning woman.”

  Greystoke sighed and said, “Dash it all, we have to put something on your passport, my dear. Would you settle for Victoria?”

  To her credit, she laughed. Captain Gringo said, “Let’s make it Liza. It doesn’t have any double meaning in Spanish and it’s close enough so that nobody will notice if one of us slips up.”

  She grimaced, but nodded and said, “Liza will have to do. I had no idea the language was going to present such a problem.”

  “Don’t you speak any Spanish?” Captain Gringo asked, shooting a look past her at Greystoke.

  She shook her head as the British spy master said, “She’ll be traveling on a Canadian passport, as your wife, so—”

  “I beg your pardon!” Linda – or Liza – cut in, turning to stare at Greystoke as if he’d just stepped on the train of her dress.

  Greystoke smiled and said, “Oh, in name only, we assure you, Miss Smathers. Appearances count for everything in this game, eh what?”

  Liza turned back to regard the tall American critically. Then she shook her head and said, “I’d hardly consider an escort who doesn’t wear a tie. Introducing this gentleman as my husband is, well, grotesque!”

  Captain Gringo smiled down at her and said, “You wouldn’t be my first choice to take home to mother, either, no offense. Maybe we could say you were with Gaston, over there. He’s got a tie someplace.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “Thank you, m’selle,” snorted Gaston from behind his sardonic smoke screen.

  Greystoke said, “Dash it, chaps, one of you is going to have to marry her, in a purely passport way, of course.”

  Gaston said, “Don’t look at me! She is too young, too tall, and too skinny. I would find the masquerade as embarrassing as she.”

  Captain Gringo said, “Hey, we may be putting the cart before the horse, Greystoke. None of us wants to get married, on paper or otherwise. But before we thrash that out, I’m missing something. You told us you wanted us to deliver one of your agents COD Bogotá.”

  “Yes. Miss Smathers, here.”
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  “I’ve got that part figured, but you’ve left the good stuff out. What’s her job in Bogotá?”

  Greystoke shook his head and said, “There’s no need for you to know, old chap. You just get her there and I’m sure she—”

  “Stop! Cease and desist, you clown! This girl doesn’t speak Spanish. You want me to deliver an obvious Englishwoman as my Canadian wife and then desert her like a cad on top of a mountain?”

  “She, ah, has people to contact, once you get her safely up there.”

  “Swell. They’re going to be watching us, Greystoke! Sure, she can maybe pass for Canadian among Spanish-speaking people. We can probably make them take us for an old married couple. Nobody expects billing and cooing after the thrill wears off. But, damn it, we’re going to stand out in any Latin crowd. We’re both taller than average Anglo-Saxon types and – well, damn it, we’ll make a handsome couple.”

  Liza blinked in surprise and said, “Why, thank you, I think.”

  Greystoke still seemed puzzled. He said, “I agree you should have no trouble passing as a journalist and his wife, traveling with another reporter for the same paper. So why should anyone suspect you’re not what you seem?”

  “Damn it, they won’t, if we go through the motions together. But people gossip, anywhere. We’re going to be meeting strangers aboard ship and in any number of hotels and railroad stations. Liza, here, is pretty enough to attract a little discreet Latin flirtation. In all modesty, I get the eye once in a while when I’m wearing a clean shirt.”

  “Yes, but surely any mature person can handle that.”

  “I’m not finished, damn it. Sure, nobody is going to take a gold-toothed grin or a rose between the teeth too seriously, as long as we’re together. But let either one of us appear alone in a strange town, and buzz buzz buzz.”

  Gaston had been listening. He chimed in with, “There is at least one police informer in each hotel and railway station, hein? Dick is right to be concerned. Not only are you saddling us with this young lady, but, in all fairness, you are – how you say? – sticking her with us? Sacré, how are any of us to attend to our real business if we must worry most constantly about the honeymoon of these children, hein?”

  Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Nice try, Greystoke, but it won’t work. Maybe she could make it alone as a missionary?”

  “In a Catholic country, you idiot? Be quiet, I’m thinking.”

  Greystoke paced back and forth a few times before he snapped his fingers. “I have it. We’ll simply have to kill her.”

  Liza Smathers said, “I want to go home.”

  Captain Gringo too assumed Greystoke was joking. But the British agent explained, “You three will travel together as far as the capital, getting through customs undetected and all that rot, eh? After you arrive in Bogotá, Liza, here, will send for a certain British doctor. He’ll make out a death certificate. Mountain sickness or something. Your poor bride will of course be buried on the grounds of the British consulate, should anyone be sticky about a grave marker. You two gentlemen will thus be free to go on about your own mission and Miss Smathers shan’t be troubled by any police inquiries, since, after all, the poor girl’s dead! How do you like it, so far?”

  “It stinks,” growled Captain Gringo.

  Liza Smathers sniffed and said, “Hardly my choice of words, but I quite agree. Have any of you gentlemen considered how on earth I’m to get back down from the Andes, once I’m supposed to be dead and buried up there?”

  Captain Gringo nodded and said, “I did. That’s why I say it stinks.”

  Greystoke took out his pocket watch, shrugged, and said, “Well, you kiddies work out the details. I’ll pop into my inner sanctum and fetch your documentation.”

  “Damn it,” Captain Gringo insisted, “we’re not going along with this until we thrash out the sloppy details!”

  Greystoke smiled, and while his lips were those of a simply ripping cricket player, his eyes were cold as the keel of a Viking ship. “You’re wrong. You’re going to do just as I say and we all know it, eh what?”

  Then he left the room. Gaston got to his feet, swearing in French, as the girl suddenly sank in a chair, covering her face with her hands. The two soldiers of fortune exchanged glances. Captain Gringo went over to her, placed a gentle hand on her shaking shoulder, and said, “Hey, don’t take it personally. We’re not sore at you! We just don’t like the way your boss is blackmailing us.”

  She looked up, eyes filled with fear and something worse, and asked him bleakly, “You say he’s pressuring you too?”

  “Of course. But what do you mean, too? Are you saying you’re being blackmailed into this by British Intelligence?”

  She nodded and attempted a wan smile as she replied, “Of course. Did you really take me for a girl who volunteers for suicide missions for fun and profit? I don’t know what he’ll do to you if you refuse to take me along. But I know what he’ll do tome. They have my real passport. So I’ll go straight to a ruddy Costa Rican jail, and I must say that sounds even grimmer.’’

  Gaston frowned and asked, “What is the charge? How much trouble could one get into, without knowing how to speak Spanish?”

  But Captain Gringo shot him a warning look and said, “Later. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about it on the way to Bogotá.”

  Greystoke returned with three folders and began to hand them out as he said, “You’ll find I left you several options, kiddies. Passports with and without marriage partners. Steamship and hotel reservations, all that rot.”

  Captain Gringo said, “We’re not going direct. I was planning a few diversions in case we’re spotted leaving Limón. Just give me some expense money and let us worry about traveling arrangements.”

  Greystoke nodded in agreement and handed some extra travelers’ checks over.

  Captain Gringo told the girl, “Wait here. We’ll pick you up this evening. Have your things packed and figure on traveling light at first. We’ll be picking up new wardrobes and luggage along the way.”

  He and Gaston left. Greystoke smiled down at the female agent and said, “Well, I see your tears worked, my dear.”

  She shrugged. “Of course. Have they ever failed us?”

  He laughed and said, “I say, you’re frightfully wicked, my girl.”

  “We’re in a wicked business, and, by the way, I’m not your girl. I’m an agent of Her Majesty and I outrank you, you simpering twit. See that you never forget it!”

  Chapter Six

  Captain Gringo shopped for traveling outfits that afternoon and attracted no little attention as he clomped around the plaza in Texas boots, sporting a thatch of blindingly blond hair in a town where even light brown hair was unusual.

  Meanwhile, the more chameleon-like Gaston tried for invisibility as he made discreet and complicated travel arrangements. The hardest part was seeing that one of their steamer trunks would be loaded on the wrong vessel. Despite the casual dress and sleepy movements along the waterfront, the Vanderbilts of New York had a near monopoly on Central American rail and steamboat transportation and even their Hispanic competitors had to be more efficient than they looked. So vessels tended to leave on time and baggage was seldom mislaid or – God forbid! – loaded aboard the wrong ship. A passenger’s luggage might wind up soaked through with bilge water, infested with four-inch cockroaches, or smelling like bananas, but to assure its eventual delivery, each and every piece had a waterproof tag wired to its handle before it left the baggage shed on the docks.

  Gaston knew this, so he’d come prepared. While the busy steam line clerk was wiring the last of the trunks and bags Gaston had carted into the shed, the Frenchman casually leaned against one particular trunk and replaced its tag with one he’d prepared ahead of time. He waited, making small talk after paying the clerk and adding a cigar to the tip. They were thus smoking and chatting when more luggage arrived and the clerk excused himself with a sad smile. Gaston nodded and strolled out, not looking back.

  H
e cocked his head and grinned to himself as he heard a distant bell chime the hour. Siesta was over. Others would be coming to assist the skeleton crew that kept the port more or less open twenty-four hours a day, in modern “international” fashion.

  He didn’t see or hear it, but Gaston would not have been surprised, forty-five minutes later, when a stevedore started to load the trunk on a cart, did a double take, and muttered, “Hey, this one’s not supposed to go aboard the night boat to Nicaragua. It’s tagged for Panama.”

  A harassed foreman with a clipboard turned with a frown, looked at his watch, and sighed. “Shit. What’s it doing down at this end? You’d better drop everything and run it down the dock to La Esperanza. She’s leaving on the next tide and I could have sworn we had everything aboard her.”

  “What about this other stuff headed for Nicaragua, Chief?”

  “We’ve got all afternoon to load the night boat. What are you waiting for, a blessing from the Pope? We’ll catch hell if that trunk doesn’t arrive in Panama with its owner.”

  “You want me to check with the ship’s purser, Chief? Sometimes the passengers expect a trunk like this in their stateroom.”

  The foreman laughed and said, “I used to try for a tip, too. Forget it. Those damned crewmen never split with us dock workers. Wheel it down and shove it in the baggage hold. If the fucking passenger wants it topside he can ask, and I hope those stingy sailors get a hernia.”

  Meanwhile, Captain Gringo had finished his own errands and joined Gaston under the awning of a sidewalk cantina. He sat down as Gaston held up two fingers to the waitress. He grinned as he reached into a big shopping bag and drew out a frilly polka-dotted parasol. He winked it open and shut as he told Gaston, “Liza hasn’t got time to redo her hair. But wait till you see the feathered hat I picked up for her. I got a bargain. They must have had it sitting on that plaster head for years. I thought a red dress might be overdoing it. So I bought her one that goes with this parasol. What do you think?”