by Lou Cameron
“Maldonado thinks he may be a secret liberal.”
“Bah! Maldonado has delusions of intellect. That is the trouble with a man who never chews coca and seems content with one woman. He sees the world in primary colors. General Reyes is not for the liberals. He is not for the conservatives in power. He is for himself and, perhaps, Colombia. A certain unthinking patriotism seems to go with other simple vices. Reyes will do what he thinks is best for the country. He will also no doubt think that what is good for General Reyes is good for the country. But enough of that. What else has been going on over in the intelligence section? I heard something about rebel activity in the western ranges a few days ago.”
The major nodded. “Si, the usual self-appointed peon liberator managed to bite off more than he could chew this time. I must say our boys did a good job on the band. Among the heads they brought in was the brainless one of the local hero. I say brainless in the literal sense. He took a machine-gun round in the temple.”
“Bueno. It seems it was a good idea to issue machine guns to our unwashed troops after all. Were the rebels actually stupid enough to charge a machine gun?”
“No, my colonel, our men acted with surprising skill. They were pinned down in an ambush for a time, but then the machine-gun section somehow managed to flank the rebels and blow them to hash. The sergeant in charge is a half-Indian illiterate, but apparently a natural tactician. He’s been put in for a medal. Maldonado suggested the medals should go to the machine-gun crew and a promotion to the sergeant, but headquarters told him not to get carried away.”
“True, mestizos tend to get over ambitious after a few promotions. What happened to the people they were guarding on the trail?”
“A few simple peones were killed in the ambush. Fortunately, some foreign travelers coming up from the coast got off without a scratch.”
“Hmm, more foreigners? We have enough strangers complicating our lives up here in the highlands.”
“On that point you and Maldonado are in agreement, my colonel. He intends to investigate them thoroughly. He has already sent cables to verify the credentials of a Canadian journalist reported to have been unusually cool under fire. At first El Arano became most excited, until he established that none of the foreigners were involved in the business with the machine gun. It seems the Canadian, answers the description of a known troublemaker called Captain Gringo. But all North Americans look alike, and if Canada vouches for him we are merely to keep him under observation.”
The colonel frowned and said, “El Arano seems to take it upon himself to observe a lot of people without clearing it with me. Can he identify this mysterious Captain Gringo on sight?”
“I don’t think so. They have crossed swords before, but never met face-to-face. Maldonado has also ordered observation of a troupe of actors. I told him the woman in charge is a personal friend of Senator Vargas, but he said to watch them anyway.”
“Senator Vargas isn’t going to like that. Frankly, I am beginning to feel that El Arano is overworked. Perhaps it is time to send him on leave for a month or so. Do you think you could be more diplomatic if I put you in charge for a trial period, Pedrito?”
“Oh, my colonel!” gasped the delighted major. And then, since they were naked in bed together and one good turn deserves another, he reached for his superior’s crotch.
The colonel laughed and said, “Not so fast. I told you I had a nice surprise for you today.”
He rang the pull cord by the bed and a door across the room opened. A heavyset Indian woman, fully dressed, led a naked Inca girl of about twelve into the room. The girl’s eyes were red-rimmed from crying, but she’d learned to stop fighting the inevitable and approached with her eyes downcast and limping slightly. Her last beating hadn’t left any marks, but her hip was still a little stiff.
The colonel said, “I knew you liked it both ways, Pedrito. So I bought you a present. Isn’t she lovely? They tell me she’s a virgin, which means she hasn’t had too much experience. She’ll be fat and have a mustache in a few years, but what is youth for, if not to enjoy, eh?”
The major eyed the young nude with a grin as he felt a tingle in his abused and confused groin. The colonel asked, “Do you speak Spanish, Chica?”
The girl murmured, “Si, a little. Please don’t hurt me.”
The colonel nodded at the procuress and said, “Leave us. You obviously have her trained.”
The husky Indian woman left and the girl stood there crying. The colonel beckoned her over to the bed and pulled her onto it between them. He grinned at the major and said, “Go ahead, Pedrito, she’s all yours.”
The major rolled the girl on her back and when she tried to cover her budding breasts with her hands he slapped them away and said, “Lie still, you pretty little beast. I take it you wish for to watch, my colonel?”
“But of course. What is the joy of giving presents, save for watching them unwrapped?”
The major grinned and rolled atop the girl, spreading her thin thighs with his hairy leg and cuffing her when she tried to twist out from under him.
She closed her eyes and prayed, “Madre de Cielo, por favor!”
Chapter Seventeen
Considering that it was pretending to be somewhere in Tibet, Bogotá was a larger and more civilized city than Captain Gringo had expected. The architecture was the wedding-cake baroque that Spanish-speaking people preferred when they could afford it; and the highland establishment was very rich. They paid no taxes and owned everything v that wasn’t nailed down. If they wanted something that was nailed down, they took that too. The streets were paved and some were tree-lined, although, as always, the residential sections tended to look a bit bleak as one passed through. Hispanics who lived well built their houses around the private paradises of an inner pateo with few windows facing the outside world. To find a quaint Hispanic village, one had to go where poor people lived.
Captain Gringo and the other travelers from outside Colombian society checked into a hotel near the civic center that was trying to look like it belonged in Paris. Most first-class Victorian hotels did. As Gaston “took care of the luggage,” Captain Gringo escorted Liza to the private home near the British Consulate that Greystoke had told her to report to. They let him in off the street, but made him wait on a pateo bench while Liza vanished somewhere in the depths. He lit a smoke and settled back to wait a while. But she reappeared before he’d smoked his cigar a quarter of the way down. She was smiling radiantly and as he rose she took his arm and said, “Now, let’s go back to the hotel and lock the door. I’m going to make you pay for those remarks about my frigidity, you big silly.”
“Swell, but what about your mission, doll?”
“It’s all done and I’m all yours and it’s only fair to warn you that I’m hot as hell. Let’s get out of here and out of this ridiculous vertical position, you big growly-wowly!”
“Wait a minute. That’s it? We drag you all over the map for weeks to get you here and it’s zim, zam, thank you, ma’am?”
“Pooh, if you were keeping track of the time, you know I haven’t been here long enough to do that. I told you I just had to make a delivery. I’ve delivered it and now I want to be thoroughly ravaged.”
“You’re on. I don’t intend to contact my people until Gaston has had time to talk to a few sneaks he knows in town from the last time he was here. But I must say these mood swings of yours are confusing as hell.”
As they walked back out to their hired coach, she hugged his arm and giggled girlishly. Then she said, “You’re right. I have been a bitch, poor darling. But you’ll never know what I was carrying, and now that it’s all over and I know I can’t get caught, I feel ten years younger and I’m gushing for you!”
So he helped her into the coach and told the driver not to spare the horses.
*
Back at the hotel, the Divine Rowena reclined on a chaise, nude, holding a telephone to a close-cropped gray head. The blond wig was on its stand across the room a
nd it felt great to be out of the whalebone corset, too. The thin dry air caressed the Divine Rowena’s skin as the phone rang a few more times at the other end. Then a male voice said, “Von Linderhoff.”
The Divine Rowena answered in the same language, saying, “Well, I’ve arrived at last. When do I get to meet this Vargas idiot?”
The German at the other end warned, “No names. This is supposed to be a private line in a private house, but one never knows, nicht wahr?”
“Sorry, Herr Oberst, it was a tiring trip and I’m still shaken. At any rate, here I am at the hotel, awaiting further instructions.”
“Very well. Just go on with the charade until you’re all invited to a gathering at the embassy. You’ll be introduced to your admirer from afar over refreshments. He will no doubt make advances and extend the usual invitations to see his etchings or whatever. You will know what to do when you get the chance.”
The Divine Rowena yawned and said, “Naturlich, but are you sure he won’t notice I don’t look exactly like the publicity photographs of the, uh, real thing?”
Von Linderhoff warned, “Choose your words a little more delicately. The bizarre nature of the plan precludes anyone even guessing all the answers, but they have a very good man in charge of security here. Don’t worry about the photographs. They are nearly twenty years out-of-date and you were chosen because of your astounding resemblance to the late actress. The, ah, person you are to meet is not very bright. You, of course, must go on playing stupid to cover any slight mistakes.”
The Divine Rowena, or rather the German agent pretending to be her, grimaced and said, “That won’t be difficult. Resemblances are one thing, but I told you I’d never acted on the stage, in Shakespeare or anything else. Was zum Teufel! It’s embarrassing to forget one’s lines and have them titter at you like that!”
Von Linderhoff chuckled and said, “I’ve read some of your reviews since you, ah, came out of retirement. By the way, we may have made a mistake in hiring that manager. It seems he knew the real thing, years ago. Fortunately, they were never intimate and only met a few times socially. But we were upset to learn he’d actually seen her perform in the flesh.”
The Divine Rowena shrugged and said, “He’s very interested in my flesh. Don’t worry, I have him wrapped around my little finger. The others are has-beens or never-wases I picked up in the American backwoods. They detest me, of course, but none of them suspect I’m anything but a superannuated bitch. What’s really bothering me is the sexual angle when you introduce me to my, ah, objective. You know, of course, that it’s impossible for me to go very far with him?”
Von Linderhoff laughed and said, “I’d be willing to pay to watch that performance! But of course you won’t be expected to take your corset off until you are alone with him, and in that case—”
“Watch it. You’re the one who’s talking too much now, Herr Oberst!”
“I agree. We’d better hang up and sit tight until you get your invitation. When were you planning to put on your first performance?”
“I’m trying to delay it by being temperamental about the acoustics and I’ve managed to lose some props, despite Jason’s watchful eye. Try to get us invited before I have to go through another farce, eh?”
Linderhoff agreed and they both hung up. As the Divine Rowena put the phone back on its cradle. Hengist, the more aggressive of the two wolfhounds, stopped licking himself by the bed and came over to sniff demandingly at the “star’s” crotch.
The Divine Rowena sighed, “Ugly bastard!”
The German agent had really learned to hate the real Divine Rowena, whose well-known bestiality made this necessary. But, what the hell, it only took a minute to service the mutts, and they provided cover.
Jason was so enamored of the star he’d met in his salad days that he’d no doubt go sloppy seconds to a dog at that. But the dangerously experienced little Frenchman had obviously been put off by the act with the dogs and his big blond friend hadn’t shown the least sign of interest in an older woman who seemed to prefer canine lovers.
That was too bad, thought the German agent, wistfully. That big handsome Yank looked exiting. But duty to the fatherland came before pleasure, and so the Divine Rowena sat there, naked and frustrated, jerking off two dumb dogs.
Chapter Eighteen
It was half past three and the siesta was over when Captain Gringo limped up to the big oaken door of the address they’d given him on a quiet side street. Liza hadn’t really crippled him after he got her back to the hotel and they locked all the doors and windows. But she’d certainly tried. It was almost frightening to consider that she’d offered a repeat performance that night. Their luxurious suite at the hotel was provided with lots of gilt-framed mirrors in the bedroom and he’d never had her in broad daylight before. As he’d suspected, he looked silly as hell in some of his positions, multiplied by opposing mirrors. Liza’s boyish bony body looked teasingly perverse in some positions, too. She did have tits, if you looked close when she was standing up. But he hadn’t really liked it when she decided to experiment in Greek. First of all, he’d never found anything wrong with the original equipment women came with. It seemed sort of wasteful to come anywhere else. But the clincher had been the view he’d caught in the mirror from an odd angle as he shoved it into her from the rear. She looked like a fourteen-year-old youth with a very dirty older man as she moved her smooth but tiny buttocks against his hairy belly like that. Fortunately she’d been willing to turn over and do it right and with her heels hooked over his collarbone she’d looked feminine indeed as he came inside her.
The trouble was, she’d insisted on doing it eight or nine times for her and at least six for him and there was a point, even with the best of partners, where it ceased to be pleasure and became showing off.
He decided a certain gentleness was lacking, as he knocked on the big door with the big brass knocker. As he waited for someone to open the damned thing he found himself remembering the softer, more tender women he’d had in his time. Bedroom athletes were what a guy dreamed of when he hadn’t been getting any lately. For the long haul, nothing beat a cuddly bundle of fluff who Spurred in your arms between times. That little Theresa Marvin looked soft and cuddly. He knew she couldn’t be built in real life as she’d been in his dream. Nobody had two belly buttons and four tits, after all. But he’d noticed as they’d smoked together how she curled her legs under her, and how round her little rump was under the duster she wore.
The door swung open and he put carnal thoughts aside as he gave the password and the morose-looking man who’d opened up led him in and across a pateo. The garden was overgrown with weeds. They were either slobs or, more likely, didn’t want a native gardener poking around inside the big oaken door.
The butler, guard, or both, ushered him into a shadowy room where a pink pudgy man sat in a bathrobe in the semidarkness near a beehive fireplace. The usher went away. The man indicated a nearby chair and said, “So you’re the notorious Captain Gringo, eh? Funny, you don’t look like an ogre.”
“I’ve been too busy staying alive to work on my appearance. I don’t suppose you guys intend to do anything about my status as a wanted renegade if I pull this whatever off?”
“We’d like to. We can’t. The Secretary of State isn’t speaking to the Secretary of War these days. But it could be worse. The U.S. Army can’t get at you south of Laredo and we see no reason to do their dirty work for them, as long as you behave as a concerned citizen.”
“Okay, I cooperate with you and you don’t turn me in to any of these pisspot dictatorships down here. What’s the score here in Bogotá?”
The American field agent leaned forward to fix them some scotch and sodas from the decanter and syphon on the coffee table between them as he said, “We don’t want you to do anything until you’re contacted by a liberal rebel called La Paloma.”
Captain Gringo frowned and said, “Forgive me for correcting your Spanish, but don’t you mean El Palomo?”
>
“No, I speak Spanish as well as anyone. La Paloma is not a man. She’s a female leader of the guerrilla band you’ll be working with. You might say she’s a feminine Jesse James with the same grudge against the powers-that-be that the James boys had against the Missouri Central. Her family owned a fair-sized finca until they decided they needed a right-of-way for the railroad – nationally owned, of course. La Paloma’s gripe is that they didn’t just take a strip across her daddy’s farm to lay the tracks. They took it all. They’ve been doing a lot of that lately.”
“So I’ve heard. How come the girl’s old man isn’t leading the gang, if it was his land they seized?”
“Oh, they shot him. They’ve been doing that a lot, too. Anyway, La Paloma and her peon followers are mad as hell. But when they’re not trying to fight a revolution, most of them are simple ranchers and farmers. So that’s where you come in. We know what you did in Mexico and some other places with a few guns and peasants.”
He handed the younger man his drink and added, “Don’t do that anymore, by the way. Washington considers the Diaz government an improvement over the late Juarez.”
“So I’ve heard. Old Juarez sure screwed up when he tried land reform and a fair shake for the little guy, didn’t he?”
The pink man frowned and growled, “You’re not a Marxist, are you?”
“No. I’ve noticed that dictators who say they’re socialists shit on the little guys, too. I guess you could classify me as a Jeffersonian. The least government is the best government. And they sure have more government around here than I approve of. But I’m sort of confused about what you want from me. I didn’t think I was coming up here to lead another ragtag band of losers. They told me they wanted an expropriated American mine put out of business.”