Wild Country tq-3

by Dean Ing

  Felix Sorel was nothing if not a pro. He could have had her call relayed through La Mariposa, but then two of his own people would have heard him talking in clear uncoded speech with an amateur. Risky business, that. He could have told the woman to call him at Nuevo Laredo, but too many American undercover spooks maintained watch in that known border conduit. Instead, he had given her a number in Monclova; the number of a well-protected place where one could disport with male prostitutes without any hassle from the Mexican police.

  Sorel enjoyed his sport on Tuesday evening, having nothing better to do. On Wednesday he was listening to a youth with a twelve-string guitar and a lovely clear castrate voice when the phone buzzed. A young woman calling herself Quiet Mary needed to speak to someone named Caballo, the horse. Sorel took the call.

  Thanks to the "kid" in the alley near Marianne's phone booth, an excellent typed transcript was made from the monitor on the cardboard box. The syndicate made no immediate move against Sorel or his latina. But a pasty-faced little man with nervous mannerisms soon got concrete galoshes and a resting place on the bottom of the Missouri River for guiding Sorel to what could be considered as a rival syndicate. They already knew Marianne from her license plates. Voiceprints told them she was talking with Sorel himself.

  The transcript read as follows:

  : A su servicio…

  P: Buenos tardes, senor. Soy Quiet Mary, y quiero hablar con el caballo.

  :Uno momenta, por favor.

  S : This is the horse, Quiet Mary. You have been quiet a day too long.

  P: I did as you said, but nobody showed up yesterday. It went okay today, only… well, do you want me to give you a set of letters and numbers I got in return?

  S: No. There is no hurry. Memorize it and destroy the paper. But you said "only." Only what?

  P: Uh… this funny nervous little man told me you might be interested in a, um, farming venture in Oregon territory.

  S: I cannot imagine what he has in mind.

  P: Well… I gave him a bag of corn chips; got it?

  S: Continue.

  P: He told me that a group of scientists have developed a strain of corn that could be grown in poor land. And that it does not look like corn at all. Still following me?

  S: Yes. I wonder who else may be following you.

  P: I've taken care of that.

  S: Are these… scientists the same people who took your corn chips?

  P: I don't think so. I'm sure of it, unless my man was lying.

  S: What do the scientists want from me?

  P: They think Oregon is a fine place for crops. Horse. They think you may want to expand as a grower. A very big grower. (LONG PAUSE.) Are you there. Horse?

  S: This is completely… I do not want to hear more details over the phone, Mary. Did your man tell you how one might contact these geniuses of farm management?

  P: Yes, he said I can—

  S: Don't tell me! Set up a meeting for me, and inform me through your usual channel.

  P: You mean Sa—

  S: Yes! I mean that is satisfactory, Mary. You have not been trained for some parts of this work, but you must learn quickly. Can you follow instructions and use good judgment?

  P. I found your damned com chips and delivered them, didn't I?

  S: (LAUGHTER). That you did. Now, before you do anything else, draw out enough cash to operate. You can do that on your own?

  P: Yes. Did you know my father was—

  S: I know your father, Mary. Please attend to business. Do you have a car there?

  P: My roadster.

  S: Dios mio! Why not carry a banner? Garage your car, go to some store with many exits, dress plainly, change everything about yourself that you can, as soon as you can. You must disappear. Change your appearance often. You may think you are alone, but the chance is very great that others are studying you. You must lose yourself. When you change clothes, change everything and leave the ones you wore. I am sure you can imagine ways to move around without using credit cards. And you must. Are you getting all this?

  P: Yes. Are you sure?

  S: I am sure I do not want to lose you, Mary. When you. are certain you are not followed, go to another town, smaller but large enough for bus, rail, and air terminals. Change appearance again and go to another large city, making sure you are not followed. Only then, Mary, only then are you to contact these scientists. Make an appointment, change appearances yet again, and tell me the arrangements by our usual channel. Can you do all that?

  P: I think so. Can you hear my knees knocking?

  S: Your knees do not knock; but they beckon, Mary.

  P: Now I feel better. Uh… Horse?

  S: A sus or denes.

  P: This is the big time, isn't it?

  S: Very. You must be paranoid. If I thought it would not endanger you, I would suggest you carry a weapon.

  P: You know about me and weapons, don't you?

  S: I do, Mary. I also know this phone may not be as secure as you think. Now, do everything I told you, as fast as you possibly can, and pretend that you are pursued. Do not underestimate others; let them underestimate you. And do not hesitate to act in self-defense.

  P: I'll do it.

  S: Do it now. This instant, Mary.

  (TRANSMISSION ENDS.)

  Chapter Seventeen

  Marianne was fleeing up North Broadway before the syndicate had time to react. Within twenty minutes, she reached the sprawling shuttleport outside Kansas Ringcity; in another five minutes she parked her Ocelot in an expensive sealed compartment deep inside the fifth underground level of the shuttleport parking complex. A shuttle-setter herself, Marianne knew that such parking compartments were available for storing an automobile while you spent a month on New Israel/Aleph, if you could afford the tab.

  A tracer bug will not transmit through five layers of ferroconcrete, so the syndicate only knew that she had gone to ground north of the Ringcity beltline. Marianne was smart and lucky. Smart to hurry aboard the first monorail to St. Joseph; lucky to find a suburban mall immediately in old Saint Joe.

  By the time Marianne had outfitted herself in cotton work clothes, the syndicate had called off their womanhunt. They knew Marianne Placidas lived near SanTone, and they knew what their own man had told her because they had him under narcosis. Very soon after the interrogation began, they knew that they were not going to muscle out the rival outfit.

  For one thing, the rival's address was on Sharon Square in the satellite colony of New Israel/Beth. Had it been New Israel/Aleph, they might have entertained a hope that some Earth-based drug baron was taking it easy in the low-gravity spa on that carefully groomed tourist haven. They could get an ID check and, when he shuttled back Earthside. deal with him in customary ways.

  But Beth was New Israel's second satellite colony, the one devoted to research. No one could visit without a special visa, except for Israelis with expertise in weapons, physics, agronomy, or some other skill vital to the survival of a spacefaring people.

  The syndicate knew its limitations. It enjoyed traditions as old and honored as the island of Corsica, and no doubt it could find — or force — some accommodation with any government on Earth, at some level. But New Israel? Every year those hardnosed sabras seemed to care less about the world they had left; a world they felt had exiled them to space colonies. Oh, they still had friendly arrangements; for example, with Turkey, the site of their original spaceport. And of course, Turkey was a prime region for producing poppy heads. Who would know that better than Corsican middlemen?

  Now, perhaps, the middlemen were to be thrust outside. The syndicate resolved to peel every eye, prick every ear. It would not be wise to insert a tendril into New Israel's business, for that tendril could be reeled in like a string on a bobbin. No bunch without its own seat on the World Council could afford to be pulled in by New Israel's Ha Mossad agents. Anybody without a standing force of military spacecraft was plain upazzo, crazy, to take on those guys.

  But why ha
d the Mossad converted a good syndicate soldier merely to contact Felix Sorel? Maybe because Sorel's own operations were so cagey, so condensed, so carefully interwoven with the politics of Mexico and Cuba. New Israel did not want trouble; it coveted only success — on terms that few men on Earth could appreciate. When you feel that you have been expelled, literally, from your mother planet, you are not likely to harbor tender thoughts about the people still living there.

  The syndicate learned from their wigged-out soldier that New Israel had offered him a reasonable bribe: a sex-rejuvenation operation. Syndicate bosses smiled at this for two reasons. One was admiration: not many mobs could offer bribes like that. The other was savage satisfaction: the soldier would not live to enjoy it. The Placidas woman might be harder to catch.

  After drawing a great lump of cash in St. Joseph, Marianne slept the night on a slow local to Des Moines, fretful at every stop. The Corsican soldier slept without further cares on the bottom of the muddy Missouri, undisturbed by the fish that nibbled at his eyes.

  Chapter Eighteen

  On Thursday. Marianne fretted through the contact from her Des Moines uplink to a terminal on Sharon Square. New Israel/Beth. The man's accent was clearly American, and his holo image reminded her charmingly of a witty professor or a successful salesman. He and two others just happened to be slated for shuttledown to Kingsley, the southernmost shuttleport under Canada's control, near Klamath Falls in Oregon Territory.

  Could the lady and her friend Felix meet them in the little tourist haven of Ashland? The lady thought it might be arranged; border authorities rarely bothered tourists crossing into soil that had been American only ten years before and seemed likely to revert to statehood again, once the resentment over wartime quarantines had faded.

  The man on the holo was nearly bald, with a strong nose and expressive brows. He assured Marianne he would recognize her by sight in Ashland's famed Lithia Hotel. He would be accompanied by an agronomist, Aron Maazel. and an attorney, Zoltan Azeri. His own name, he said, was Roger St. Denis; a trained negotiator.

  Negotiators are good at half lies. He was trained all right, but his name had not always been St. Denis. Until the overthrow of the Young administration he had been Boren Mills, chief exec of International Entertainment and Electronics. As Mills, he had fled his collapsing corporate empire four years earlier, on the eve of the rebellion. Now, as St. Denis, he was returning Earthside with New Israeli credentials.

  Marianne accepted her Ashland rendezvous and overflew the ruins of Omaha en route to Lincoln, Nebraska. After a change of clothing and a bleach job that infuriated her by tinting her dark hair a floozy red. she caught a bus to the university campus, where she disappeared into the main library. Though changing purses twice, she kept the contents. In the hubbub of young Cornhuskers flailing among their first library assignments of the fall season, Marianne managed to encode a message into her voder.

  She refused two invitations to fraternity brawls while waiting for a phone booth in the bowels of the library, and the booth she claimed had no video. No problem; she did not intend to transmit her image anyway.

  Marianne punched a SanTone number, unwilling to commit her voiceprint to the system. The voice that responded was obviously that of another voder. San Antonio Rose would return pronto; did the caller want to leave a message?

  She thought fast and put the call on hold while she punched a brief message into her own voder. Her little machine then said into the speaker, in its professional baritone: "Cielita Linda is out, and she is in. She wishes to send a message and will call every hour on the hour until San Antonio Rose is ready to record." Then she punched off and sought a less crowded place. She was damned if she'd transmit until she knew an honest-to-God human was on the other end.

  Like an army, a university advances on its stomach. While thousands of youths filled their bellies, Marianne had her choice of phone booths, and at seven P.M. she reached her contact in SanTone Ringcity. She transmitted the long string of numbers by voder tone, waited through the longest twenty minutes of her life, and finally got a coded response before she abandoned the campus in search of a hostel.

  That response, when decoded, was a big relief. The Horse agreed to her Oregon rendezvous. He would be strolling on the monorail platform in Ashland before noon on Saturday. He expected Cielita Linda to do the same.

  Because the hoverbus to Ashland would not leave Lincoln until early morning, she relaxed in her spartan room, watching an enhanced holovision remake of Duel in the Sun. One good thing about holo enhancement: it let a director choose from the entire array of entertainers who had ever been committed to film or tape. The cast of Duel now included Leslie Howard, young Henry Fonda, Evelyn Keyes, Gloria Swanson, and William S. Hart — plus the ungimmicked Jennifer Jones, whose willful, half-mad, half-caste Pearl Chavez could not have been improved by any video gimmick. Marianne also enjoyed Fonda as lewd Lewt McCanless: she'd always had a weakness for men of action who were also men of ideas. Why the hell else, she asked herself, would she look forward to third-class travel halfway across Reconstruction America?

  Chapter Nineteen

  Feeling slightly raffish in his new finery, the young man found the Al Fresco Cafe in the western outskirts of SanTone Ringcity in time for a late lunch on Saturday. Al Fresco, with its outdoor canopied tables and a view of the new high rises, managed to combine TexMex and Creole trappings without being pricey or pretentious. He admired the available women as he ate a single crepe; noted that one or two of them made the admiration mutual; ordered a Dos Equis and waited for something better.

  Something very much better arrived within the hour. He needed a double take, but with his second glance came an instant erection. Her fine straight hair was gathered loosely over her bare right shoulder in a cascade of reddish gold with auburn highlights, her flowered Mexican peasant blouse tucked into a wide belt decorated with flashy conchos. She carried a big cheap shoulder bag. Her skirt, a pleated black lace affair, showed off exquisitely modeled calves, her ankles accentuated by colorful needle heels. He had never seen anything in his life that looked more like instant nookie — and at a modest price.

  She sat near the entrance, gripping her bag as though fearing it would wander off. He shouldered his first impulse aside — it would have been a blunt frontal approach — and waited, sampling her with his gaze. He wasn't the only one.

  The waiter seemed to regard her as special new talent and leaned over her chair in a frank assay of her cleavage, his grin insolent and knowing. When she had to wave the waiter on his way, the watcher broke into a smile, which she discovered by some kind of personal radar. She looked away quickly, a blush mounting from her bare shoulders, and he found his erection throbbing at this lapse from her commercial appearance.

  Presently, while studying a new arrival, he saw that the honey-blonde was staring at him with new interest. When the waiter appeared with her drink, a bulky gentleman wearing expensive rings, who had never let his eyes stray from her since she arrived, tried to pay. She seemed to consider the offer but refused it with a winning smile. The young man across the patio relaxed; this time, his impulse had been to weave himself a penholder using a few of the man's ring fingers.

  Now the blonde's appraisal of the young man involved something between a glare and a leer. He let her look, gripping his beer to show the cords in his forearms, the open collar of his yellow shirt revealing sinew at his throat when he smiled. Then he came to an internal decision and stood up slowly, running a hand through his freshly barbered black thatch, shoving his chair back with a careful thrust of a sharkskin boot that matched the color of his hair. In those new western boots he stood tall and knew it.

  Neither of them had any doubt about his intentions from the very first. "Waiting for anyone special?" He wondered if she suspected why he was holding his Stetson over the bulge at his crotch.

  She must have known, for she studied the hat before meeting his gaze. "I could be. Are you anyone special?"

 
"I'm Sam Coulter from Monahans, ma'am, and that's special enough for most folks."

  "I'll just bet it is," she said, and took his hat. Her smile was wide and innocent, but the hand that brushed his fly was deliciously guilty. "Sit, Sam Coulter from Monahans — if you can, in those tight britches."

  He sat down as if poleaxed. "My Gawd, you're really something," he said, laughing.

  She nodded, studying his face. "Those big brown eyes of yours affected my judgment," she murmured. "Buy me a drink?"

  His turn to nod. He gestured to the waiter, pointed to her drink, made a two-finger V. "What do I call you?"

  She drained her glass, licked her lips carefully before answering. "Margarita. Like it?"

  "A blond Margarita; why not?" Suddenly, with an intensity he could not mask, he was leaning forward, gripping his elbows with opposite hands: "Let me tell you something for your own good, Margarita. You're lookin' at a man who's been hungry a lo-o-ong time. If you're not careful, I just might make a crepe out of you right here in front of all these people. Consider yourself warned."

  She found his knee with hers. As the waiter set down their drinks, she spoke as if they were alone. "What flavor?"

  "Hm?"

  "I mean, will I be your main course, covered with cream cheese and spice, or more like a light dessert crepe?"

  The waiter, wearing a freshly-goosed expression, wheeled away only after a pointed stare from both of them. Then the young man nodded at her, picked up his drink, sipped, nodded again. His aspect was friendly but determined. "You're gonna pay for that, Margarita. Wait and see."

  She grinned, a bright, salacious challenge, and said, "It's you who's supposed to pay, cowboy. Didn't they teach you that in Monahans?"

  Helplessly amused, he let the drink dilute his excitement. The drinks did not last them long. "We sure don't have anything like you in Monahans," he said finally. "No professionals, anyhow."