The Annihilators

by Donald Hamilton

  I said, “For a big, brave Americano lady you sure pick up the police-state mentality fast. What’s his name, anyway?”

  “Ramiro. Ramiro Sanchez.”

  “What can he do to you?”

  She shrugged helplessly. “Well, he can report that I allowed to come along on our tour a representative of the press who was heard making loud derogatory remarks about certain government policies. He can recommend that, since we seem to use no discretion in our choice of participants, no more institute-sponsored expeditions be allowed; and perhaps our permit to dig here should be reviewed. Please, Sam. I don’t want to talk about it. Just call me a coward and forget it… Oh, there they are.” She was looking toward the archway leading to the main road, where three men had just appeared. “I’m going to take a quick run over to the dig to see what’s being done, so I’ll know where to bring everybody in the morning. The college-boy type is our resident supervisor, Marty Ellender, a Texas boy with a degree from Tulane. The other two…”

  But the trio was upon us. I was introduced to Ellender, a lean, sandy young man in jeans and cowboy boots and a big hat; and the crew foreman, a chunky, middle-aged man with a dark Spanish-Indian face, named Porfirio Gonzaga. There was a little pause.

  “Oh, and this is Cortez,” Frances said.

  I hadn’t really had time to look at the third man before. He was short and sturdy, as most of them are down there, and very brown, and very old. He was dressed like Gonzaga, in a straw hat and white cotton pajamas, not particularly clean; but there the resemblance ended. There was nothing Spanish about this face. It was right off one of the old bas-reliefs we’d been seeing in the museums.

  They had some weird ideas of beauty back in those days—well, weird to us. They thought a flat, sloping forehead was charming and strapped boards on their babies’ heads to achieve it; and they considered the loveliest eyes to be the ones that were slightly crossed. A bead mounted on the nose, which the infant tried to look at, helped to make the eyes turn inward permanently.

  But it’s possible that this standard of beauty had originally been formed in accordance with existing hereditary factors and that artificial means had later been used merely to return to an appearance that had once come naturally. It seemed hardly likely that in the twentieth century, or even in the very late nineteenth when this Cortez would have been born, local kids were still being boarded and beaded; yet this old man had all the ancient features including the bold curved predatory nose. He did not offer his hand and I made no attempt to take it. I gave him a slight bow instead, which he acknowledged in kind.

  “Señor Cortez,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Yo soy Cortez solamente, Señor Felton.”

  He was only Cortez. The name of the conqueror, worn proudly by the elderly descendant of the conquered—except that this man’s ancestors had lost their elaborate civilization, for reasons unknown, long before the whitewinged ships appeared along these low jungle coasts. Our eyes met and held for a long moment; then Cortez smiled faintly, as if he had seen something that pleased and satisfied him, and I had to admit that I was relieved. I wouldn’t have wanted to think I displeased this old man, although I didn’t know why.

  “We will meet again, Señor Felton. Be careful.”

  “It has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Cortez.”

  Frances said to me, “If I’m not back in time, tell everybody the dining room opens at seven-thirty… All right, Marty, let’s go.”

  I watched them leave; and for once I wasn’t appreciating the nice controlled movement of the lady’s taut derriere under her well-fitting skirt. I did note that she’d dispensed with her suit jacket and changed to sturdy low-heeled shoes; but I was really watching the old man and wondering exactly what he had seen, and approved of, when he looked at me. There was a whisper of sound behind me, and I turned to see the wheelchair roll up.

  “Dios, isn’t that viejo a beautiful specimen!” Ricardo said, watching the group go out of sight. “I tell you, we could use a few hundred like that old one, about a third the age, of course. Or a few thousand. Once they were the best guerilla fighters on the continent, maybe in the world; and to hell with your Plains Indians, amigo. Those were just light cavalry, good only for hit-and-run raids; but down in Yucatan people like that old man defended their jungles stubbornly and held the invaders at bay for decades after the rest of Central America had been conquered. Hell, they rose again in 1847 and just missed booting the Spanish off the whole peninsula; they fought again in 1860; and they were still giving Porfirio Diaz fits in 1910.”

  “Says proudly a man named Jimenez,” I said dryly. “Whose side are you on, anyway, Buster? Personally, I’d have picked the Spanish side. They got to ride horseback.”

  “But think of having to wear those cast-iron hats and vests in this climate!” He grinned at me. “Have you got my key? You wanted a conference, you said.”

  Reaching his cabin, I let him unlock the door and open it, since doing this seemed to be a matter of pride with him. I picked up his suitcase and followed the wheelchair into the pseudoethnic structure, which was very picturesque. You could look up into the depths of, or maybe I should say the heights of, the peaked thatched roof—the thatch was either plastic or sprayed with something—and there was mosquito netting hung like a fragile tent over the bed, a romantic tropical antibug device I’d never encountered before, having always put my faith in window screens and smelly chemicals.

  “You’d better take it down for me, if you don’t mind,” Ricardo said. “I can’t fight my way through all that cheesecloth when I go to bed. I’ve got some spray and roll-on stuff to use if they get bad; and I’m taking my malaria pills… Thanks. You know where the bottle is. Can I prevail upon you to do the honors, señor?” When I’d fixed us up with drinks and settled in a chair, he rolled himself up to comfortable talking distance and said, “Something serious, Sam?”

  I tossed an envelope into his lap. “It depends upon what you consider serious, amigo. There’s what my agency knows about your friend and associate, Lupe of the Mountain. If you were already aware of his larcenous and treacherous propensities, forgive me for wasting your time.”

  He regarded me for a moment, frowning; then he opened the envelope and began to read the lengthy dossier Miranda had prepared for me. I’d read it myself, earlier. An impressive gent, Lupe Montano. A ruthless gent who’d sacrifice his mother, friends, or girlfriend without turning a hair if his interests required it. Well, who was I to talk? The only real difference between us, I reflected sourly, was that Lupe’s interests almost invariably turned out to be financial, whereas I’m not all that concerned about money. Ricardo folded the dossier carefully and returned it to the envelope and looked at me.

  “So?”

  “That’s the man you want running your precious country?”

  He shrugged, a little defiantly. “Is there a choice?”

  I said, “You could go back where you came from and leave Rael where he is. On the record, there’s not a hell of a lot of difference between him and your bandido friend. Not enough to kill for. Or die for.” After a moment, when he didn’t speak, I went on: “Anyway, I thought you ought to know the kind of company you were getting yourself into.”

  “Why?” he demanded. “Why did you go to this trouble, Sam?”

  “A small matter of conscience,” I said.

  “I see.” His eyes were cold. “Act helpful toward one Jimenez so you can feel free to act vengeful toward the others.”

  It was a fairly shrewd observation. I reminded myself that there were a few brains in the family, even though they were not always employed to best advantage.

  “Something like that,” I said. “Also there was a lady who had a thing about liberty and human rights and sentimental stuff like that. I didn’t get to put flowers on her grave, so I thought I’d make. a slightly different kind of gesture—in memoriam, so to speak.”

  He was watching me carefully. “By sending me back to the U.S.?”


  “Are you going?”

  He shook his head. “No. What’s there for me? Should I spend the rest of my life sitting in this miserable chair watching your stupid TV? This is my home. Here I stay. One way or another.” He studied me thoughtfully. “But I fail to understand your gesture, amigo. How can showing me this record of Montano’s villainy, if you want to call it that, serve as a suitable memorial to your lost lady?”

  I said, “Well, that rather depends upon what you do about it, doesn’t it?”

  He frowned. “What can I do? I said I’m not going back.”

  “I never expected you to.”

  “And if I stay here and refuse to behave as the figurehead Lupe wants, I will undoubtedly wind up back in La Fortaleza where Echeverria will finish the job he left uncompleted. I don’t have many choices, my friend.”

  “There’s one you haven’t mentioned.”

  “What’s that?”

  I spoke carefully: “You don’t have to be a figurehead just because Lupe says so.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. The idea had occurred to me. I think I would like to play a somewhat more important role here than was originally intended for me, but Lupe would never share the power…”

  I spoke as carefully as before: “Men like Lupe don’t live forever, amigo. They’ve even been known to die rather suddenly.”

  He stared at me, shocked. “I owe my life to Lupe Montano!”

  “Sure,” I said. “And you’ll owe your death to him the minute he doesn’t need you any more. Or the minute it begins to look as if you’re getting too popular and powerful in the revolutionary movement. Have you got a gun?”

  He licked his lips. “I will have. It is being arranged.”

  “Not by Lupe, I’ll bet. He’ll want to keep you as helpless as possible.”

  “How can you know Lupe’s motives? You have never met him.”

  I gestured toward the fat envelope still lying on his lap. “He’s in there, isn’t he? And in my business I’ve known a hundred Montanos; and one characteristic all these outlaw Napoleons have in common is that they cherish their status tenderly, whether they’re heading a cell of spies, a gang of bank robbers, or a whole damn revolutionary army. Sure, Montano wants the name Jimenez on his side because with his record he can’t win without it; but he’ll be real careful to see that it doesn’t backfire on him. He’ll keep you as isolated and helpless and dependent as he can, amigo. Have you got anybody you can trust, really trust? These people who are arranging for you to get a gun—are they really yours and not Lupe’s?”

  “They are mine,” Ricardo said firmly. “They are soldiers who fought with my father, outlawed by Rael. They joined Lupe of the Mountain because there was no other place for them. But they will fight for me.”

  “Sure.” I regarded him for a moment, rather grimly. “Final question, Señor Jimenez. Can you manage a revolution all by yourself if you have to?”

  He said, “I am my father’s son. He trained me well, I think.”

  I said, “Well, there’s your answer. If it comes to that, and if you think the people will follow you.”

  “They will follow a Jimenez,” he said. “But—”

  “But what? Do I have to spell it out?” When he didn’t speak, I said, “Sooner or later there will be a confrontation, Ricardo. Maybe you can swallow what he did in the past as a bandit; but don’t kid yourself he’s going to change. Sooner or later he’ll do something you won’t want attributed to your name or your revolution. My advice is: Be just as sweet and docile as you can until it happens, but be ready for it. When you’re forced to challenge him, put it to him hard, and be sure you have plenty of firepower in the bushes when you do it, and your own gun in your hand. If he backs down, fine. Make him eat shit but good and he’ll be your boy instead of you being his. But if he just gets mad and arrogant—I am El Jefe and I do as I please!—and tries to slap you down like a kid, which is probably what will happen, just cut him down on the spot, bang. No more Montano. If you’re not up to that, you’ve got no business in the revolution business.”

  There was a lengthy silence. Ricardo’s eyes had a shocked look; he licked his lips uncertainly. “I do not know if I am capable of killing…” He stopped. I didn’t speak. I saw a hard expression come to his face that reminded me of a certain military gent beside whom I’d fought many years ago. He nodded slowly. “I see. Yes. I will not plot against him, but if he defiles the revolution… Yes, it is good advice. I will be ready. After all, Lupe Montano is not really the man this country needs.”

  I felt like a latter-day Machiavelli; and I hoped he could pull it off when the time came.

  “Now you’re talking,” I said a bit sourly. “Pretty soon you’ll convince yourself that you were sent from heaven to save your suffering people, and you’ll have it made.”

  He didn’t smile. His young face was grim. “Not from, heaven, amigo.” He touched the too-smoothly-repaired burn scar on his cheek. “From hell!”

  12

  One thing you learn in the business is how to sleep anywhere, on any reasonably horizontal surface, at any time, but somehow it didn’t work that night; and instinct warned me it wasn’t a safe place for me to dope myself with sedatives, although I keep some around for nights like that. So I lay in the dark looking up into the black recesses of the thatched roof of my pseudorustic cabin—like Ricardo I’d decided to dispense with the fancy mosquito-tent, and so far there had been no insects to bother me. Lying there, I was strongly aware of the long miles of tangled jungle just outside the newly landscaped hotel grounds and, strangely, of the brooding presence of the ancient pyramids and temples and caverns nearby, even though I hadn’t seen them yet. Somehow the face of the old man called Cortez was mixed up with these feelings; although I couldn’t have said how if anybody had asked.

  But that was vague emotional-mystical nonsense. Since I had to lie awake, I told myself firmly, I might as well get a few things straight in my head, in particular the fact that the major question I’d come here to ask had been answered; He was a great fighter, but he was a terrible president, Sam. Ricardo had said it, letting me know that I could declare open season on Hector Jimenez at any time with no worry about depriving the poor people of Costa Verde of an irreplaceable liberator, or offending the small gentle wraith that still pursued me…

  The sound of approaching footsteps drove the drifting thoughts from my mind. They were wrong footsteps, stumbling and uncertain; and I reached for the gun lying alongside my leg—under the pillow is too standard a hiding place. I eased back the sheet that covered me. There was a light rap on the door, and a whisper:

  “Sam! Sam, please! Oh, God, let me in, I…”

  When I reached the door, and got it unlocked and opened, she was leaning against the jamb with her forehead pressed hard against the painted wood, panting as if she’d run a hard race, and perhaps she had. She flinched when I put my arm around her shoulder, but allowed herself to be led inside. I locked the door behind us and reached for the light switch.

  “No, not the light!” she gasped. “Please, I must look so…!”

  “Don’t be girlish, Frances.”

  I pressed the switch. She covered her face, frightening me for a moment into expecting something truly dreadful; but when I reached out to take her hands away she let them fall and let me look. It was only a bruise, but a pretty good one, reddening her left cheek from the corner of the eye to the corner of her mouth. She stood there in a slack way I’d never seen, allowing me to take it all in: the rumpled silk shirt coming out at the waist, the dusty and awry poplin skirt, and the laddered nylon stockings bloody at the knees. She’d also hurt her right hand. But what really concerned me was the shattered look in her eyes.

  I said, “I hope you got the number of the truck.”

  “Haha,” she said. Her voice was suddenly steadier, reassuring me. “When you’re quite through being funny, you might break out some Band-Aids. If you haven’t got any, there are some down in my—�
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  “I’ve got them. What happened?”

  She licked her lips. “It was… it was really utterly ridiculous. I got lost. Down there at the dig. The new excavations have changed things. I took an old shortcut back here alone after my tour of inspection, and it was all changed and I got lost. And… and there were things… I mean, you’d think after all these years as an archaeologist I wouldn’t be susceptible to… to emanations from ancient tombs, would you? But, well, goddamn it, I could just feel the presence of the Lords of the Night…”

  “The what?”

  “Ah Puch, the God of Death, and the others… You’ll think I’m crazy, but it was something cold and black coming out of… Strange that their hell is a place of cold, not of heat like ours, isn’t it? Damn it, Sam, I panicked like a little girl, lost among all those broken temples, and I started running in the dark and took a bad fall and hit my face and almost knocked myself out…” She drew a long breath and looked down at herself ruefully. “God, I really made a mess of myself, didn’t I? My poor stockings! Well, I’ve got plenty of pantyhose along; but I hope I didn’t ruin my only skirt, or I’ll have to spend the rest of the trip either in jeans or a jersey dinner dress. Incidentally, Ah Puch is the Mayan name; the Melmecs called him Ixchal… What are you doing?”

  I reached out to hold the back of her head with one hand; and moved her jaw around gently with the other. “Okay?”

  “It hurts a little but…”

  “Nothing grating, nothing loose? All teeth present or accounted for?”

  She nodded. “Fix my hand first, so I don’t get any more blood on my clothes; it’s all over the bottom of my skirt already. God, how ridiculous can you get? I’ve never done anything like this before in my life! Fleeing from ghosts at my age!”

  She had a real jag on now, and she was still talking as I guided her into the bathroom and washed off her hand and sloshed a bit of peroxide over the shallow lacerations on the heel of it, obviously caused by stone or gravel as she tried to break her fall. A medium-sized Band-Aid finished the job.