The Annihilators

by Donald Hamilton

  A chartered bus took us away through the mad Mexican traffic. Please understand, I like people who drive as if they mean it; but after the timid road behavior of the American drivers with whom I’d been associating the past couple of days, the determined aggressiveness of the Mexicans, while theoretically admirable by my own driving standards, took a little getting used to, even on a bus.

  But it’s a fine city, if you don’t mind viewing it through eyes smarting from the acrid air; and our hotel was located on the Reforma, the handsome main boulevard. More wheelchair-juggling got us inside the lobby, where rooms and luggage were dealt out with admirable efficiency under Frances Dillman’s stern supervision. I escorted Ricardo Jimenez as far as the fourth floor and worked the elevator doors for him although he protested that he was an old elevator hand by now and could manage by himself—it was just those lousy steps and stairs that people kept putting in his way that he found insurmountable. I didn’t risk offending his pride by insisting on taking him to his door and helping him inside. He made it clear that he’d rather do that on his own.

  “See you tomorrow, Dick,” I said.

  “Thanks much, fella,” he said. “De nada, as we say in our fluent Spanish.”

  He grinned. “At least you know a couple of words, which is more than I can say.”

  Standing over him, looking down at his fake blond hair, I reflected grimly that he’d never make it. He wasn’t much of an actor; and concealing your knowledge of the language to which you were born is one of the hardest cover jobs you can tackle. However, there is one harder: actually mangling that language clumsily without betraying how well you actually know it. He’d made the best choice available to him.

  I said, “If you know cerveza and baño, you’ve got it made. The intake and outgo are all taken care of. Be good.”

  “Hell, not much else I can do, is there?”

  But he grinned again as he said it; he wasn’t complaining. Well, I’d never kidded myself that cowardice ran in that family. I took my camera bag from young Jimenez’s lap, where he’d been nursing it for me, nodded good-night to him, stepped back into the elevator, rode up one more floor, and headed for my own room. It was marked by my suitcase, which had already been brought up and set outside the door.

  “Mr. Felton. Sam.”

  It was the scientific tour-guide lady herself, in the open doorway of the adjoining room. She had dispensed with her suit jacket, but she still looked tall and smart in her moderately high-heeled shoes and her severely tailored blouse and skirt, which had survived the long journey from Chicago reasonably unmussed and unwrinkled. Any travel damage to her hairdo had been neatly repaired; and her firm mouth had been lightly touched with fresh lipstick, which made her less forbidding and more feminine.

  “May I reward your labors with a drink, Sam?” she asked. “I happen to have a little Scotch, a luxury that’s practically unknown in this part of the world. It’ll cost you well over thirty dollars a bottle if you try to buy it.”

  I laughed. “I hate to consume such a priceless commodity when my tastes are not terribly refined.” Then I saw the carefully lipsticked mouth tighten a bit at the hint of rejection. There was no need to hurt her feelings, and I hadn’t really looked forward to having a lonely drink in the bar or, as an alternative, discussing the finer aspects of Central American archaeology, which I hadn’t yet had time to read up on, with other members of the tour who happened to have gravitated there. I said quickly, “Sure, I’d love a drink. Just let me shove this ten-ton photographic outfit, and my suitcase, into my room, and make a quick inspection of the facilities. I’ll be right back.”

  When I returned, the door to her room was ajar and her voice said, “Come in and tell me how you like this… Oh, close it, unless you’re afraid of being compromised. I’d rather not have any of the others wandering in casually. I’ve had enough of playing the jolly housemother for the day. Being a managing woman is kind of a strain.” She turned, holding out a glass. “Taste that and see if it’s to your liking.”

  “Satisfactory,” I reported. After a moment, I said, “You’re very good at it.”

  She didn’t answer at once. She moved to the windows and looked out. It was dark now and the lights of the city were spread out below, with endless streams of cars moving both ways along the Reforma. Frances Dillman turned abruptly and pulled the cord that closed the drapes. She went back to pick up the drink she’d made for herself, and gestured to me to sit down in one of the big chairs in the corner. She took the other.

  “Good at it?” she murmured. “Being a managing woman, you mean? Well, I’ve had lots of practice, Sam. My husband is, well, kind of a vague genius type. You know, the kind who forgets where he put his glasses when they’re right on his nose. Somebody’s got to keep things organized around the place. But thanks for the compliment. And thank you for watching over Dick Anderson for me. When you start working with your cameras, I’ll see if I can’t recruit some of the less decrepit male members of the group to help him around so you can get on with your job.”

  “I’ll let you know,” I said! “In the meantime, it’s not really much trouble, and he’s a pleasant enough guy.”

  “Yes, it’s too bad, isn’t it, a nice young man like that.”

  I grinned at her, so superior and condescending about her half-dozen years’—maybe—advantage over Ricardo Jimenez.

  “Yes, grandma,” I said.

  It startled her. It was the first really personal thing that had been said between us. We’d conversed politely as scientist and photojournalist, as efficient tour director and helpful client; but we’d said absolutely nothing as person to person or man to woman, as Samuel Felton to Frances Ransome Dillman or vice versa.

  Now she glanced at me with sudden awareness in her eyes, as if realizing abruptly that she, a married woman with a reputation to cherish, a career to protect, and the responsibilities of this tour to consider, was actually entertaining in her hotel room a lone male who was not her husband. She was also, her eyes said, becoming very much aware of the fact that she was not really old enough to refer to Dick Anderson as a nice young man; and that I, while no chicken, wasn’t exactly in the final, safe stages of senility, either.

  In fact, her eyes said, there was absolutely no excuse for the two of us to be having a cozy drink in her room like this, alone and with the door closed, even if the Victorian niceties were not always scrupulously observed, not even by perfectly decent and respectable people of the opposite gender, these relaxed modern days. Her eyes said that she couldn’t understand how she, of all people, could possibly have got herself into such an awkward predicament and she hoped to God I wouldn’t embarrass both of us by misconstruing the situation.

  That was what her fine gray eyes told me now, or tried to tell me; but her fine gray eyes were, of course, goddamn liars. Suddenly we were both fully conscious of the fact that she’d set it up like this quite deliberately and that we both knew it; the difference between us being that only she knew why. I found it very puzzling and rather shocking. She didn’t look like a sex-starved woman. In fact, when I’d first seen her I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she and her fellow-genius husband lived and loved only on a purely intellectual level scorning all passions of the flesh—of course, that had been before I’d learned about the handicapped child that presumably had not resulted from immaculate conception.

  On the other hand, if she hoped to influence my photographic activities by these tawdry bedroom tactics, well, it seemed like a hell of a thing for a proud and well-educated lady to be doing merely to promote a favorable picture story about her and her husband’s scientific endeavors in Costa Verde. I’d already developed considerable respect for her. I couldn’t believe this of her.

  The silence ran on tautly for several seconds. Abruptly she gave a kind of a shudder and rose and walked quickly back to the window and parted the draperies and looked out for a second or two. She let them fall together again and took a deep swallow from the gla
ss she still held. I had risen and moved to stand behind her, but I didn’t touch her.

  “I’m ashamed.” Her voice was an almost inaudible whisper. “I’m so ashamed, Sam.”

  I didn’t help her out by saying anything. After another sip from her glass, she turned to face me.

  “‘Come in for a drink, Sam. Close the door unless you’re afraid of being compromised, Sam.’ My God, how cheap can you get?” Her voice was ragged with self-contempt. When I still didn’t speak, she went on: “Would you be a real gentleman? Would you just withdraw very quietly and leave the lady, who’s no real lady, to her humiliation? And in the morning please try not to look at her and make her blush at remembering the shabby tramp she was, or tried to be!”

  I said, “That’s all very touching, sweetheart.”

  She stiffened and stared up at me, her face pale. She started to speak angrily and stopped herself, licking her lips.

  I said, “You do it very well. But I don’t know whom you’re trying to kid, me or yourself, Dillman.”

  She drew a sharp breath and let it out. A pale smile stirred her carefully made-up mouth. “I can’t be doing it too well, or you wouldn’t be seeing right through it, Felton.” She sighed in a resigned way. “No, you’re perfectly right. I don’t really want you to go.”

  I studied her, perplexed. “Why me?” I asked. “I mean, I know I’ve got the face of Adonis and the body of Hercules and the brain of Einstein and the balls of a rampant bull. There’s no doubt whatever that I’m totally irresistible on every level from the intellectual to the horizontal, but you still look to me like a lady who’d put up a good fight against infidelity, even under the most tempting circumstances. So why me, and on our first night out of Chicago, yet?”

  Her smile grew; and now there was a little malice in it. “Who else was there, my dear? One of those elderly gentlemen with their battle-axe wives? That legless boy who may very well be missing something more than his legs? Anyway… anyway, I wouldn’t want him, even if he were intact. He’s too young. He wouldn’t know how to do it. He wouldn’t be… careful of me. He’d get all passionate and excited and, God help us, he might even fall in love with me, enchanting older woman that I am. I might have a hard time getting rid of him afterward.”

  “Whereas I look like I shed easily?” I said dryly.

  “You’re adult and I suspect you’re fairly experienced, Sam. I don’t think you feel obliged to make a grand passion out of every one-night stand.” She drew a long breath. “I’m glad you think I look… looked like an ever-faithful wife, a very reserved and respectable and sexless sort of person. I’ve worked very hard to preserve that image. And if I hadn’t done it tonight, my dear, well, I was afraid we were going to be friends in another day or two. And it’s very hard to seduce a man who’s become a good friend. I mean, he gets so terribly shocked when he discovers what the lady really wants from him. I have plenty of friends; I don’t need you for another. I need you for…” She stopped, and gave a tiny shrug. “I need you,” she whispered.

  I didn’t believe a word of it, of course. This handsome woman might well be more passionate than she allowed herself to appear; but that she’d be totally at the mercy of her passions was not credible. And while I like to think I’m as charming as the next guy in my rough-hewn way, I always remember that a lot of good, and more not-so-good, men have died from overestimating the attraction they exerted upon the opposite sex. No, I didn’t buy it for a moment. But the lady was committed now. She’d offered herself to me without reservation. There was no gentle way of refusing her. However I put it, I would be saying crudely: Sorry, babe, tonight’s my night to be virtuous, and anyway you’re really not all that desirable.

  I said, “Sure. Need. Well, you’re the managing lady. Tell me how you’d like this managed, lady.” When she hesitated, I asked baldly, “Do you want to be kissed, for a start?”

  She shook her head-minutely. “No. I think we can dispense with the phony kisses.” Her voice was very calm. “But you may undress me if you wish. Just be… be careful, please. Aside from a rather dressy dress, these are the only civilized clothes I brought along.”

  “Careful Felton is my middle name.”

  I set my glass aside. I took hers from her hand and put it beside mine. I stepped forward deliberately and started to unbutton her silk shirt, aware that she was wearing some kind of a faint but pleasant fragrance. Being a cynical bastard, I had a vision of her dabbing it on with grim resignation, preparing herself for the disgusting seduction scene she was being compelled to stage. Compelled how?

  “Sam.” When I looked at her, having unfastened three small pearly buttons to reveal a rather pretty white slip with lace on it, she said, “Please. You’re looking so… so goddamned cynical. You’re making me feel cheap and dirty. Can’t you see I wouldn’t be doing this if I could help myself?”

  I wanted to ask why she couldn’t help herself; but I knew that all I’d get would be the same phony nympho routine. I straightened up to face her. She was rather disheveled-looking now, with her blouse gaping to reveal her underwear; and I felt very sorry for both of us, trapped in this lousy sex production.

  I said, “You’re the one who specified this crummy coldblooded approach, Frances.”

  Then I reached out and tipped her chin up a little—she was tall enough that it didn’t take much—and bent forward to kiss her. Her lips were cool and unresponsive at first, hardly the lips of a compulsive sex-freak, but after a little they remembered how this was done, and after a little longer they began to enjoy it. Her body relaxed gradually and allowed itself to be brought into contact with mine; soon she was helping to draw us together fiercely, her fingers digging into my back. When we parted at last we were both breathing hard and no questions or reservations remained.

  I said, “That takes care of that ladylike lipstick. Now you’d better get your own damn clothes off if you want to be able to wear them again.”

  I turned away, fumbling with the buttons of my shirt. When I turned back, stripped, she was standing there with her garments neatly arranged on a nearby chair. She awaited me nude with a certain regal and at the same time rather touching pride that was quite justified. She was even more striking, naked, than she had been dressed.

  It had been a long time since I’d seen a truly white lady. They’re all so healthy and brown these days, with cute little bikini-marks, and it’s very nice, no doubt; but this one gleamed like pale marble or, since it was a warm glow, finely polished ivory. I’d kind of expected a lean, strong, rawboned body, but she looked almost fragile, all white like that; a long, slim lovely shape with everything perfectly formed, just slightly attenuated to make a tall woman out of a limited amount of material.

  She waited, unmoving, as I approached, and we kissed again, rather formally this time, a little self-conscious in our nudity, although we were both adults who’d been here before. We separated briefly so I could turn out the table lamp. In the sudden semidarkness, broken by shafts of light from the city outside, we proceeded to the bed and entered it with careful dignity; but that dignity did not endure beyond the first tentative contacts between our unclothed bodies. It’s not really a very dignified act.

  7

  In the morning I woke up early in my own room next door, having slipped out of the lady’s warm bed, regretfully, in the middle of the night after the hotel was asleep. I found that I was feeling very hungry and not particularly guilty about taking advantage of the situation—whatever the situation might be—to help a troubled woman break her sacred marriage vows. It did occur to me that my period of mourning hadn’t lasted very long; but Elly would have told me not to be silly. She wouldn’t have expected or wanted me to honor her memory with everlasting continence.

  The small fourth-floor dining room or coffee shop—according to the placard posted in the elevator, there was a big formal restaurant on the roof, but it functioned only in the evening—had glass walls facing a sheltered patio open to the sky, with a good-sized swim
ming pool; but at our present altitude of seven thousand feet, in the middle of winter, the green wind-ruffled water held no attraction for me or, apparently, for anybody else. A couple of doves were foraging, undisturbed, in the tiled pool area. I was a little surprised to see them in the center of a city of fourteen million people. Unlike its big cousin, the pigeon, the dove is usually a country bird at heart.

  The place had just opened, and there wasn’t much breakfast business being transacted yet; but one couple from the tour was established at a table by the wall. I’d noticed them before, not only because they were the youngest members of the group except for Ricardo Jimenez—somewhere in their thirties—but because they were dressed to be noticed. The girl was wearing big yellow boots, a wide, flounced, flowered peasant skirt, and a man’s striped shirt with the tails out, bound around the middle by a handsome silver concha belt. Her dark brown hair was frizzed all over her head, dandelion fashion. I wondered if it was still called an Afro if the wearer wasn’t African. If you looked hard you could see that, in spite of the wild getup, she was really rather an attractive young woman, in a sturdy, healthy way.

  The man; lean and dark and a few years older, was imitating a Navajo chief or his own idea of a bearded Navajo chief—to the best of my knowledge the only one in captivity. He wore jeans and a blue velvet tunic of some kind; and he was hung all over with silver, some of it wrapped around massive gobs of turquoise. It was presumably the genuine stuff, no Japanese imitations need apply, since he could afford it. His name was James Wallace Putnam, of the Chicago Putnams; and he could probably even afford to let his wife (the relationship was legal and her name was Gloria) get her hairs bent one by one, by the best hair-benders in the business, if she so desired.

  I couldn’t help wondering, as one does, what they were trying to prove by their unconventional getups. Well, it was her hair and his jewelry, and if they simply thought they looked great that way, it was a fairly innocent self-deception compared to some.