The Adventurers

by Harold Robbins

  “They are already dead, excelencia.”

  “I said I wanted them alive!” el Presidente shouted angrily.

  “They were already dead when we discovered them, excelencia. They were in the black car in which they had made their escape. They had been shot, and their throats were also slit.”

  “Where was the car found?”

  “La Calle del Paredos, Presidente.”

  I knew the road. It led from the mountains to the docks.

  “Where on the road?”

  “Near the bay.”

  “And the man with the beard?”

  “There was no sign of him. We searched the whole area, even the docks. He had vanished.”

  El Presidente was silent for a moment, then nodded. “Thank you, Capitán.”

  He turned to me. “Now it is time for you to rest. I have had a guest room prepared for you. You will live here with us until your father has completely recovered.”

  I slept fitfully, and I was troubled by dreams. And in one of them I was back in the yard of my grandfather’s house. The sun was white hot and I could feel it burning into my brain as I kept hearing an oddly familiar voice. “There is one bullet left in the gun. You will kill him!”

  I rolled over and sat up erect in the bed, my eyes wide and staring. It was late afternoon, and suddenly I knew where I had heard that voice. La Cora’s manager, Señor Guardas, the man with the beard, was Coronel Guiterrez.

  I jumped out of bed and began to dress quickly. I didn’t know how, but this time I would find him. This time he would not get away. Because I would kill him.

  23

  Fat Cat fell in behind me as I came out of the room. I walked down the hall and stuck my head into my father’s room. “How is he?”

  “He is still asleep,” the doctor said.

  I turned and continued down the corridor toward the staircase. Amparo was coming up as I started down. Her hand stopped me. For once she wasn’t playing the princess. “Is your papá all right?”

  “Yes. He is sleeping.”

  “You were asleep, too,” Amparo said. “I wanted you to have lunch with me.”

  “Later,” I replied, starting down the steps again. “I have work to do.”

  I went out the front door and signaled for the car.

  “Where are we going?” Fat Cat asked.

  “To the docks.”

  I didn’t wait for him to open the door. I jumped in and he climbed quickly into the front seat. He twisted around as the car began to move. “What for?”

  “To find the man with the beard, the one who got away.”

  “How can you do that? The policía and el militar have searched the whole city. They could not find a trace of him.”

  I shrugged and directed the car to the pier where I had been yesterday. I walked down the dock to the catwalk. The same two boys were there, fishing around the piling.

  “Campesinos!”

  They looked up, their faces sullen. They exchanged looks, then concentrated again on their fishing.

  “Campesinos!” I called again. “Yesterday you begged for a few centavos. Today I bring you one hundred pesos!”

  This time they didn’t look away, but stared up at me with disbelief in their eyes.

  “Come up, I will not harm you.”

  They hesitated a moment, then laying down their fishing poles, came up onto the catwalk. The older boy took off his hat. “What is it you wish from us, excelencia?”

  “To find a man.” I gave them a brief description of La Cora’s manager, Vandyke and all. “Sometime last night he was in this neighborhood. I wish to discover where he is now.”

  They looked at each other. “Such a man would be hard to find, excelencia.”

  “Harder to find than one hundred pesos?” I asked.

  “La policía has already been looking for such a man,” the bigger one said. “They did not find him.”

  “They did not offer one hundred pesos for information,” I answered, and started back to the car.

  “We do not wish trouble with the authorities, excelencia.”

  I turned. “There will be no trouble.”

  The two looked at each other. “We will see what we can discover.”

  “Bueno. I shall be back in two hours. If you bring me information you will be richer by one hundred pesos.”

  I walked back to the car. Fat Cat looked at me with a curious respect in his eyes. “Do you think they will find out anything?”

  “If they are as hungry as you say they are, they will. Now take me home. I must get money.”

  I went straight to my father’s den. I knew where he kept the small iron box—in the bottom drawer of his desk. The key was in a drawer on the opposite side. I opened the box and took out one hundred pesos. Then, because I was suddenly hungry, I went down to the kitchen and asked the cook to give me something to eat.

  At four thirty in the afternoon I got out of the car with Fat Cat and walked out on the dock.

  “I told you they would find nothing,” Fat Cat said smugly. “See, they are not even here.”

  “They will come.”

  We went back to the car and waited. It was almost twenty minutes before they did. Then they appeared in the mouth of the alley across the street, where they whistled, gestured, and disappeared. I crossed the street, Fat Cat right behind me, and walked back in the alley where we could not be seen from the street.

  “Have you the money?” the older asked.

  I took the hundred pesos from my pocket. “Do you have the information?”

  “How do we know you will give us the money?”

  “How do I know you will tell the truth after you receive the money?”

  They looked at each other and shrugged.

  “We are forced to trust one another.”

  The older one nodded. “At three this morning such a man as you describe boarded a ship at Pier Seven. The one flying the flag of Panama.”

  “If you have lied to me you’ll pay for it!”

  “We have not lied, excelencia.”

  I gave them the money, then turned and ran out the alley. At Pier Seven I got out of the car and located the ship, then started up the gangplank. But the sailor on duty at the top of the gangplank stopped me.

  “We sail in an hour,” he said abruptly. “No visitors.”

  “Come on,” I said to Fat Cat, and started back down the gangplank.

  I didn’t even wait for the car to stop. I ran down the path and past the guards to the office of the president. El Presidente looked up from his desk in surprise. There were several men gathered around him, but I didn’t give them a chance to speak.

  “I know where Coronel Guiterrez is!”

  “What has Guiterrez to do with this interruption?”

  “He is also Señor Guardas,” I said. “The man with the beard, the one who escaped.”

  El Presidente did not hesitate. He picked up the telephone on his desk. “Tell Capitán Borja to have a squad ready at the entrance to the office building immediately!”

  He turned back to me. “Where?”

  “On a Panamanian ship at Pier Seven. We must hurry; they sail in less than an hour.”

  El Presidente started toward the door.

  “But we dare not delay the sailing of a ship, excelencia,” one of the others protested. “It would be a violation of our international agreements!”

  El Presidente turned to him angrily. “To hell with international agreements!” Then he smiled. “Besides, who would dare protest a visit from the head of state? It will be an honor.” He put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me out the door in front of him.

  The ship’s captain was obviously upset. “I beg your excellency’s indulgence. If we lose this tide we sail a half-day behind schedule.”

  But el Presidente was very suave. “Surely your government would be even more upset if you refused me an inspection of your ship, which I so greatly admire? I have heard much about the wonderful fleet of your great country.�
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  “But, your excellency—”

  El Presidente’s voice turned suddenly harsh. “Capitán, I must insist. Either I inspect your ship or I impound it on charges that you have violated our hospitality by giving refuge to an asesino, an enemy of our country!”

  “But we carry no passengers, your excellency. Only the crew, who have been with the ship since we sailed from our home port more than four weeks ago.”

  “Have the crew stand for inspection then!”

  The captain hesitated.

  “Now!” el Presidente ordered.

  The captain turned to his first mate. “Pipe all hands on the bow deck.”

  A moment later the crew began to assemble. There were thirty-two of them and they formed a ragged double line down the center of the deck.

  “Attention!”

  The lines straightened up. The men stared straight ahead.

  “Is this all the crew?” el Presidente demanded.

  The ship’s captain nodded. “Sí, excelencia.”

  El Presidente turned to Capitán Borja. “Take a detail of two and search the ship. Make certain no one has hidden out below decks.”

  The captain saluted and marched off with two of his men. The remaining soldiers stood at the ready as el Presidente turned to me. “Now we will look into their faces, eh? The bearded one should not be difficult to recognize.”

  But it wasn’t that easy. None of the men wore a beard. As we started down the line a second time in silence Capitán Borja reappeared. He reported that there were no other men aboard.

  “Do you spot him?” El Presidente’s voice was worried.

  I shook my head. But my two informants couldn’t have made up a story like that. They weren’t smart enough.

  The ship’s captain came forward. There was a faint note of triumph in his voice. “I trust your highness is not satisfied?”

  El Presidente did not answer. He looked at me, and I exclaimed, “No! He is here, he has to be! He obviously has shaved off his beard.”

  “Then how will you know him?”

  I gestured and el Presidente bent toward me so I could whisper into his ear. He smiled and nodded. He turned back to the first man in the line. “Como se llama usted?”

  The sailor remained at attention. “Diego Cárdenas, excelencia.”

  El Presidente continued to the next man. “Se llama usted?”

  “Jesu María Luna, excelencia.”

  Soon we were a third of the way down the line. El Presidente paused in front of a slim man dressed in the dirty clothing of an oiler. His face was covered with grease; even his hair was dirty.

  “Se llama usted?”

  The man glanced at me, hesitated, then spoke in a harsh voice. “Juan Rosario.”

  El Presidente had already gone on to the next man, but I turned. “Juan Rosario what?”

  “Rosario y Guard—” His voice broke suddenly, and he lunged at me, his hands at my throat. “Bastardo negro! Twice I should have killed you! This time I shall!”

  I clawed at his hands, trying to free them from my neck. I could feel a burning in my lungs and my eyes began to pop. Then Fat Cat moved in behind him, and the grip on my throat was suddenly broken.

  I stood there fighting for breath as I glared down at the man on the deck. He shook his head, rolled over, and glared back. His eyes were the same. Cold and cruel and implacable. He might change the color of his hair, shave his beard, even deepen his voice, but he could never alter those eyes. The one glance he had directed at me had given him away.

  I loosened my jacket and reached for the knife I had concealed in my belt. I flat-edged the blade and went for his throat as I would for the neck of a chicken, but a pair of hands caught me before I could reach him. I looked up into the face of el Presidente. His voice was calm, almost gentle. “There is no need for you to kill him,” he said. “You are no longer in the jungle.”

  Three months later I stood at the rail of another ship as we pulled away from the pier. I looked down and saw Amparo jumping up and down and waving. I waved back. “Adiós, Amparo. Good-bye!”

  She waved and shouted something back but there was so much noise I couldn’t catch it. Slowly the ship moved out into the channel. Now the crowd on the dock had blurred into a single colorful mass. Behind them I could see the city and behind that the mountains, rich and green in the afternoon sun.

  I felt my father’s arm on my shoulder, and he pressed me to his side. I looked up at him. His face was still thin and he was not yet used to the vacant sleeve on his left side, but his eyes were soft and clear and filled with a look I had never seen before.

  “Look well, my son,” he said, his good arm holding me tightly against his side. “We are going to another world.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Fat Cat, and then my father spoke again and I looked back toward land.

  “An old world that will be new to both of us,” he continued. “So look well, my son, and remember the city and the mountains and the plains of your native land. For when you return you will no longer be a boy. You will be a man!”

  BOOK 2

  POWER and MONEY

  1

  Efficiently the doctor withdrew the hypodermic needle. He turned to the youth standing at the foot of the bed. “It will make him sleep, Dax, help him conserve his strength for the crisis that may come tonight.”

  The boy did not answer immediately. Instead he walked around to the other side of the bed and with a touch as tender as a woman’s wiped away the moisture from his father’s forehead. “But he will die anyway,” he said quietly, without looking up.

  The doctor hesitated. “One never knows. Your father has fooled us before. It is all in the hands of God.” He felt the impact of the boy’s dark-brown eyes. They looked deep and seemed to see into him.

  “We have a saying in the jungles,” Dax said. “For a man to place his fate in the hands of God he must be a tree. Only the trees believe in God.”

  The boy’s voice was soft and the doctor still couldn’t get used to the soft, slurring, almost accent-free French. He still remembered the struggle the boy had with the language when he had first met him seven years ago. “And you do not?”

  “No, I have seen too many terrible things to have much faith.”

  Dax walked around the bed to the doctor’s side and looked down at his father again. Jaime Xenos’ eyes were closed; he seemed to be resting. But there was a gray pallor beneath his warm dark skin and his breath was heavy and labored.

  “I was going to summon a priest to administer the last rites,” the doctor said. “Do you prefer that I do not?”

  Dax shrugged. He looked at the doctor. “It is not what I prefer that is important. What is important is that my father believes.”

  The doctor snapped his bag shut. “I will come back this evening after dinner.”

  Dax, with a last look at the bed, followed the doctor out into the hall.

  ***

  When the front door of the consulate closed behind the doctor, Dax turned and went into his father’s office. Fat Cat and Marcel Campion, his father’s young French secretary and translator, came forward questioningly. Dax shook his head silently and crossed to the desk. He took a thin brown cigarrillo from the box and lit it.

  “You’d better send a cable to el Presidente,” he said to Marcel. His voice was flat, controlled. “Father dying. Please advise.”

  The secretary nodded and quickly left the room. A moment later the click of a typewriter came faintly through the closed door. Fat Cat cursed angrily. “By the blood of the Virgin! So this is where it ends. In this cold accursed land.”

  Dax did not answer. Instead he went over to the window and looked out. Dusk was falling and it had begun to rain. The rain softened the dirty gray-black buildings down the street toward Montmartre. Somehow it seemed always to be raining in Paris.

  Just as it had been that night they first came here from Corteguay seven years ago. They had looked like a group of country bumpkins,
their collars pulled up against their faces as ineffective shields against the sleeting February rain, their luggage piled high on the sidewalk behind them where the cabby had dropped it.

  “The damn gate is locked!” Fat Cat had called back to them. “There’s nobody in the house.”

  “Try the bell again. There has to be someone there.”

  Fat Cat reached up and pulled the bell handle. The clang filled the narrow street and echoed from house to house. But still there was no answer.

  “I can open the gate.”

  “Open it then! What are you waiting for?”

  Fat Cat’s movements were almost too fast for the eye to follow. The automatic was smoking in his hand and the reverberations were like thunder in the night.

  “Fool!” Dax’s father had said angrily. “Now the police will come and the whole world will know we couldn’t get into our own consulate! How they’ll all laugh at us.” He looked at the gate. “And for nothing. It’s still closed.”

  “No it’s not,” Fat Cat replied, touching it with his foot.

  It had swung open creakingly on its rusty hinges. Xenos looked at him for a moment, then started through, but Fat Cat’s arm blocked his path.

  “I don’t like it. There is a stink to it. Better I go first.”

  “Nonsense, what could be wrong?”

  “There is much that is wrong already,” Fat Cat pointed out. “Ramírez should be here, yet the house is deserted. It could be a trap. Ramírez may have sold us out.”

  “Nonsense! Ramírez would never do that. El Presidente gave him the post at my own recommendation.”

  Still, he stood to one side and let Fat Cat lead the way up the path to the house. The grass and weeds had overgrown everything and they felt them tugging damply at their ankles. Unconsciously, Dax’s voice fell to a whisper. “Do you think the front door is locked, too?”

  “We’ll see.” Fat Cat waved them to the side of the building, then, flattening himself, he reached out carefully and turned the knob.

  The door had swung open silently. They peered into the darkness inside but could distinguish nothing. Fat Cat gestured to them, and the automatic appeared suddenly again in his hand. His lips moved in a soft whisper. “I go with God!”