The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax

by Dorothy Gilman

  "Meet the—what?" said Farrell.

  "Because that's why I'm here," she told him, nodding. "I don't know about your Betty Thwaite, but I do know about assassins. It's why / joined the safari." She glanced pointedly at Cyrus and then back at Farrell. "I was sent," she added, "by a mutual friend of ours named Carstairs?"

  "Good heavens," said Farrell, and now they both turned and looked at Cyrus, who regarded them benignly but lifted one eyebrow, waiting.

  Farrell said, "Do you tell him, or shall I?"

  "Tell me what? That you didn't," said Cyrus, "live next door to Emily in New Brunswick, New Jersey, or build a soapbox car for her son? Already guessed that, young man. How did you two meet?"

  Farrell grinned. "Would you believe tied back to back in Mexico, after being doped and carried off by the—"

  "Farrell!" she gasped. "You're overdoing this."

  "Nonsense," said Farrell. "My dear Reed, if you're so obtuse that you believe this charming but terribly resourceful lady does nothing but raise geraniums, then you're not at all the man for her, and it strikes me from the way you look at her—"

  "Farrell!" sputtered Mrs. Pollifax.

  Cyrus said in his mild voice, "Certain—uh—arts have become apparent to me. A persuasive bending of truth, shall we say, and then there was the karate—"

  "Karate!" It was Farrell's turn to be surprised. "Duchess, you astonish me, you're becoming a pro?"

  "Pro what?" asked Cyrus quietly.

  "She had this little hobby," Farrell said blithely. "As CIA courier. Sandwiched in between—if I remember correctly—her garden club and hospital activities. That's how I met her, except that three years ago I resigned from the CIA and wrote finis to that chapter. But if you don't mind assimilating this little bombshell later, Cyrus, I want very much to learn about this safari. Enlighten me, please, Duchess. And fast."

  She told him all that she knew. "But Carstairs was certain enough of his informant to send me here. I was simply to take pictures of everyone on safari, nothing more, so that every member of the safari could be traced—"

  She stopped as Cyrus let out an indiscreet roar of laughter. "Sorry," he said, subsiding into chuckles. "Not really amusing except—those snapshots!"

  Mrs. Pollifax gave him a reproachful glance before she added, "Carstairs seemed very sure that Aristotle would be on the safari to meet someone and discuss his next project, and if Amy Lovecraft's been heavily involved in her Rhodesian group all this time I can't see her wandering around the world shooting people. I'm only assuming, of course, but putting our two stories together—"

  Farrell said abruptly, "I'm going to break radio silence and call Dundu. I'm stricken by the same assumptions, Duchess, because your story fits into mine like the one missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle." He nodded. "It certainly explains why Betty Thwaite headed for a safari of all things, and if she'd already concluded her business with Aristotle, it also explains why she could go off on a tangent and take on an abduction. She eavesdropped on your interview with Dundu and realized that one of her traveling companions was a woman who actually knew and could identify me. She couldn't resist. The abduction must have been done on impulse, and of course it was terribly unprofessional of her, but she thought she could handle both. Yes, very ambitious woman, Betty Thwaite. But I don't like using the radio, damn it."

  "Why?" asked Cyrus.

  "Because that's how we discovered and pinpointed your party," he said. "We'd left Chunga camp for Kafwala and stopped on the road to radio our whereabouts to headquarters, and that's when we overheard Simon calling Green-Bird in Lusaka. The code name Green-Bird was not unfamiliar to us," he went on, "so while we continued to Kafwala to look for Mrs. Lovecraft, Jonesi set out alone to track you down. Very good at that sort of thing, Jonesi. He wore a homing device in his cap so that we could find him again."

  "As a fool, Jonesi was certainly convincing," commented Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Oh God yes, he can go anywhere with that act, it's saved his life innumerable times. But Duchess, let's get back to basics: which of those people on safari do you suspect is Aristotle?"

  "I've no idea," she said truthfully. "I'd say none of them, except that my first film was stolen from my room at Kafwala camp, which implies that my picture-taking bothered someone a great deal. It had to have been Aristotle who stole the film because Cyrus told me that Amy Lovecraft and Dr. Henry stayed down at the campfire while I was gone. Amy could tell you who Aristotle is, of course."

  "I wouldn't bet on that," he said dryly. "So we can assume that Aristotle's still with the safari, and the assassination's already been scheduled?" He shivered. "I'm not sure that Zambia could survive as a country without President Kaunda. He's a damn strong leader and a beloved president. Any leader's a genius who can hold together a country of at least seventy different tribes speaking sixteen major languages and make it all work." He stared into the fire, frowning, and then he looked up and said sharply, "All right, this is Thursday night. Where's the safari now?"

  "Camp Moshe," said Cyrus promptly. "Tomorrow they make their way back to Chunga camp, remain there over Friday night, and then end the safari in Lusaka on Saturday."

  Farrell nodded. "Then I've definitely got to get a message to Dundu so the police can put everyone on safari under surveillance until they leave Zambia. Give me their names. It may save time to radio them now.** He drew pencil and paper out of his pocket.

  "There's Cyrus' daughter, Lisa Reed," began Mrs. Pollifax.

  "And Dr. Tom Henry," added Cyrus.

  Farrell looked up. "Not the chap from the mission hospital over near the Angolan border?" When Mrs. Pollifax nodded he said, "Small world. Go on."

  "John Steeves, travel writer, and a very charming man. Willem Kleiber—Dutch I think he said, very prim and hygienic and in heavy construction work, whatever that means. And then there's—well, Mclntosh."

  Farrell stopped writing. "Yes?"

  "According to Amy Lovecraft, that's only half his name. She peeked at his passport. Of course anything she said is suspect now, but I can't see any ulterior motive in her saying that unless it was true."

  Farrell put down his pencil. "What sort of person is he?"

  "Secretive," said Mrs. Pollifax.

  Cyrus cleared his throat and said cautiously, "Reserved, in my estimation. Businessman. American."

  "But always traveling," added Mrs. Pollifax.

  "All right, who else?" asked Farrell.

  "Chanda," said Cyrus. "Dr. Henry's prot6ge who, I might add, tracked down Emily's abductors for me, and then went back to camp on foot to guide any search parties. Age twelve."

  "Yes, and where are those search parties?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  "No idea, Duchess. I'm sorry, but it's a damn big park." He gave her a rueful smile. "When you were taken west they undoubtedly went east, and now that you've headed south they're probably combing the north. That's usually the way, isn't it? Okay, we've Lisa Reed, Dr. Tom Henry, John Steeves, Willem Kleiber, the mysterious McIntosh, and young Chanda. Anyone else?"

  "Amy Lovecraft, Emily and myself," said Cyrus. "Nine in all."

  "Right." Farrell pocketed the memo and rose to his feet. "I'm going to radio Dundu now. Sit tight and I'll send a man over to guard you while I'm gone because this campfire has to be extinguished in a few minutes."

  Mrs. Pollifax looked at him in astonishment. "Guard us? Sit tight? But surely you want me down at the camp-fire with Amy and the others. Sikota will be expecting to see me there. He'll count heads."

  Farrell shook his head. "Too dangerous for you, Duchess."

  "Dangerous!" she gasped, standing up. "Farrell, this is an assassination we're trying to stop! Of course I'm going down there."

  Farrell sighed. "Look, Duchess," he said patiently, "you're tired, you need a rest. There are only seven of us men, and three are out scouting for Sikota, and anything could happen down there in the next hour."

  "Absolutely right," agreed Cyrus. "Sit, Emily."

  "I refuse,"
she told him, and grasping Farrell by the arm she turned him toward the campfire. "Look at them —four mannequins in a store window," she pointed out hotly. "No movement at all, no one talking, eating, smiling or lifting their hands. Sikota isn't a lion, he's a man with a brain that reasons. Those people abducted me and I'm missing, and then he'll wonder why nobody moves, but if Cyrus and I—"

  "Ha," snorted Cyrus.

  "If Cyrus and I sit with them we can talk and—and pass things around, as if we're eating, which heaven only knows I wish we could do, having eaten nothing all day."

  Farrell turned to Cyrus. "Well, Cyrus? Damn it, I've got to send this radio message."

  "Both of you absolutely right," said Cyrus judiciously. "Dangerous place to be down there. Crossfire and all that if he slips past your men." He considered this, sighed and climbed to his feet. "Have to admit Emily's right, too," he added, "and if all this helps—don't happen to have a pistol, do you?"

  "Take it with my blessing," said Farrell, unbuckling a holster at his belt and handing over a gun. "Take this, too," he said, reaching into his pocket, and gave him a chocolate bar.

  "Food?" gasped Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Food," said Cyrus. "You go along and send your message, Farrell, we'll wander along down."

  "Yes, but plain or almond?" asked Mrs. Pollifax happily.

  Their move to the campfire had its ludicrous aspects; Mrs. Pollifax could see this at once. She sat down on one side of Amy Lovecraft, and Cyrus on the other side, while Amy made loud gurgling protests deep in her throat, and across the fire Simon glared at them both with bloodshot, outraged eyes. From five hundred yards away the campfire had looked brilliant but now that Mrs. Pollifax sat beside it the fire seemed astonishingly small, and the darkness around it like a black curtain. She felt exposed and horribly vulnerable.

  "I believe we're here to supply motion," Cyrus reminded her. "What's the matter—second thoughts, my dear?"

  "You won't," she said in a small voice, "say 'I told you so'?"

  "Emily," he said with a sigh, "this is no moment to become rational. I've walked twenty miles in the bush today, helped you turn the tables on these villainous creatures, I've been captured by guerillas and am now sitting here a target ripe for any passing gunman, and do you really think—can you have the effrontery to think— I would say 'I told you so'?"

  "You really are a darling, Cyrus," she said, smiling.

  "Thank you. Eat your chocolate."

  The moments passed slowly, each one seeming interminable. She and Cyrus passed twigs and pebbles back and forth and made flippant, imaginative conversation with a silent Amy, and then in turn with Simon, Reuben, and Mainza. In fact, as Mrs. Pollifax pointed out, they behaved like idiots, to which Cyrus replied that pantomime had always attracted him and that he enjoyed talking with people who couldn't answer back.

  It was twenty minutes later that Mrs. Pollifax became aware of Amy suddenly stiffening beside her. She turned and looked at Mrs. Lovecraft and found her staring off to the left, her eyes opened very wide and filled with alarm. Mrs. Pollifax followed her glance and she too saw something move: a shadow paler than the darkness of the trees. She said in a hushed voice, "Cyrus—over there," and fell silent, suddenly afraid, because if this was Sikota then he had slipped past Farrell and Jonesi and the others without being seen. She saw the shadow pause and then start toward them from a new angle ... the lion approaching the tethered goats, she thought, her throat suddenly dry, and at that moment he seemed exactly like a wild beast stopping to sniff the air for danger. She guessed that he was uneasy and felt a fleeting sense of pity for him, as if he really were a beast being drawn into a trap, and then her pity dissipated as she recalled that this was not a lion but Sikota, for whom everyone talked, which meant he was a man skilled in torture. He was entering now on the farthest reach of the firelight, which began to give his pale shadow some substance. Leaning forward to peer through the dusk, she saw the outlines of a short, grotesquely fat man stuffed into a pale business suit and carrying a long rifle under his arm. She realized in astonishment that he must have arrived by car—he had to have come by car in a suit like that, and Jonesi and Farrell had expected him on foot. Then as he took several new steps toward the fire she lifted her eyes to his face and saw that his skin was a dingy white, with a thin mouth almost drowned in pouches of fat.

  He had stopped, his hand caressing the trigger of the rifle, still half in shadow but his pale suit gleaming in the dusky light. He knows something is wrong, she thought, feeling her heart beat faster. There was a terrifying intelligence about his stillness, as if he was sending out tentacles to weigh and test the atmosphere. And then, as he hesitated, he did the one thing that nobody had anticipated: he called out sharply in a clear, imperative voice, "Simon?" and then, angrily, "Simon?"

  And Simon, bound and gagged, could neither turn nor reply.

  There was an uncomfortable, suspenseful moment of silence during which a hyena howled in the distance, and then abruptly Jonesi stepped out of the bush off to the right and shouted, "Drop the rifle!" From the opposite side of the clearing Farrell called, "Drop it, Sikota, you're surrounded!"

  The man slowly turned toward Jonesi, and then he slowly turned toward Farrell. When he moved his action was sudden, all in one piece, and incredibly fast and graceful for a man of so much flesh. He lifted his rifle to his cheek, peered through the telescopic lens, pointed it at the campfire and pulled the trigger.

  "Down!" shouted Cyrus.

  Mrs. Pollifax agreed completely with this suggestion and rolled off to one side. Two other shots followed the first, but when she lifted her head she saw that it was not Sikota who had fired them. He lay crumpled on the ground, looking like a very large soft pile of laundry.

  "Are you all right, Duchess?" shouted Farrell, and she heard the sound of running feet.

  Mrs. Pollifax looked at Cyrus and he looked at her. He said unsteadily, "Well."

  "Yes," she said, called to Farrell, "He missed," and stood up, brushing the dust from her clothes.

  But Cyrus was shaking his head. "He didn't miss," he told her, pointing.

  For a moment she didn't understand, and then she followed the direction of his pointing finger and gasped, "Oh no! Farrell? Jonesi?"

  It was Jonesi who reached them first, and it was Jonesi who stepped carefully over Simon's feet and knelt beside Amy Lovecraft. Amy looked as if she'd grown tired of sitting upright and had laid down to sleep, but when Jonesi lifted her head there was a bullet hole in the precise center of her forehead; her eyes were sightless.

  "Damn," exploded Farrell, coming up behind them, and he began swearing softly and relentlessly under his breath.

  "Incredible shooting," said Cyrus, looking a little sick.

  "He had a telescopic lens. He got past us somehow, you know. Damn it—both of them dead!"

  "He thought she would talk, Mulika."

  Cyrus snorted at this. "Couldn't have known our Amy, then."

  "Perhaps he didn't," suggested Mrs. Pollifax, and turned away with tears in her eyes. "Sikota's a white man, Farrell, I saw him."

  "Let's have a look," he said brusquely, and they followed him back to the crumpled body of Sikota. One of the men had turned him over and was staring down into his face.

  "You know him, Patu?"

  Patu nodded. "I know him, Mulika. He is the Portuguese who runs the curio shop on Cairo Road

  . Who would have thought he was a spy? He came in a truck, Mulika. Joshua is in the truck now, he says it has a false floor with space to hide people in it."

  "So that's what he planned . . . Not exactly Betty Thwaite's type," Farrell said, staring down at the man, "but politics makes strange bedfellows." He straightened, his face grim. "But we've no time for postmortems. I've talked to Dundu by radio, and as soon as I give him the all-clear he's sending a helicopter for you both." He turned to Mrs. Pollifax and said angrily, "Dundu told me over the radio that President Kaunda's opening a new school in Lusaka on Sunday afternoon, th
e day after your safari ends. It's his only public appearance until August, and it's been heavily publicized."

  "Oh-oh," said Cyrus.

  "Yes. And if your Aristotle really exists," he said, his face hardening, "then I can't imagine his returning to Zambia at a later date when he's already here now. Sunday would have to be the day."

  "Sunday?" said Mrs. Pollifax in horror. "So soon?"

  "It gives us forty-eight hours." He turned to look at Amy's body and sighed. "Cover her with one of the sleeping bags, Patu. In her own way—I scarcely care to admit it—she was a warrior. At least she wasn't a paid mercenary like Sikota and the rest of this unholy group."

  "Lieutenant Bwanausi has the list now?" asked Cyrus.

  Farrell nodded. "He has the list and he's probably circling now over Kafwala camp waiting to hear from me.

  Chanda's been of enormous help to them, but unfortunately they didn't make contact with Chanda until this morning, and his information was outdated by then because you'd headed off in this direction. Incidentally, Duchess," he added, and a faint smile softened the grim-ness of his face, "Dundu reports they asked a ransom for you of fifty thousand kwacha."

  "Now that's positively insulting," said Cyrus. "About thirty thousand in American dollars, isn't it?"

  "Never mind, I'm alive," said Mrs. Pollifax, wrenching her gaze away from Amy's shrouded figure. Her eyes moved from the dying fire to the sky overhead, and then to the burial ground hidden by darkness, and back to the man at their feet. She said bleakly, "The helicopter will come, then, and whisk us away from all this, but what happens next, Farrell?"

  He nodded. "You go back to Lusaka and wait," he told her. "Spend tomorrow and Saturday recovering. Do a little sightseeing and try to forget tonight, because it's been a shock for you both. But I promise you this," he said in a hard voice. "There'll be no assassination, Duchess, and KK will safely open his school on Sunday afternoon. I'll promise you another thing, too," he added. 'I'll meet you and Cyrus for lunch at your hotel on Sunday and I'll deliver to you the name and identity of Aristotle."