Two to Tango (Nick Madrid)

by Peter Guttridge

  "Let him go on ahead," Bridget whispered.

  So we waited a few minutes until, apparently satisfied, Perry let the binoculars drop to his chest, and, looking quickly around him, set off along the trail.

  We followed some fifty yards behind.

  "Has Otis travelled with everyone else during the tour?" Bridget said as the trail grew narrower.

  "Why?"

  "I saw him in Bogota," Bridget said.

  "I know," I said puzzled.

  "I mean before the press conference."

  "You couldn't have," I said. "He was on tour"

  She shrugged.

  "He must have flown in early"

  I pondered for a moment. I do sometimes.

  "Bridget, when exactly did you and Otis, er ..."

  "Shag?"

  "If you will"

  "After the Lima concert."

  "You were together all night?"

  "Be a bit frustrating, wouldn't it? He's a rock musician. Get an hour out of'em if you're lucky." She grimaced."I wasn't lucky. But why the prurient interest in my sex life?"

  "Nothing," I mumbled, my brain working fast.

  We turned the next bend and saw Perry twenty yards ahead fiddling with his shoe. We heard him curse.

  "Godamn these fucking mountains."

  Bridget and I skulked like naughty schoolchildren.

  "Otis is in good, Nick, don't you think, considering his lifestyle over the years," Bridget murmured whilst we were waiting for Perry to go on ahead.

  "He's been working out, that's for sure"

  "But no double chin, no bags under the eyes. At fifty that's remarkable don't you think?"

  Perry moved on and so did we. The trail had narrowed so much we could only walk in single file. We had the side of the mountain to our left and to our right a precipitous drop down the slope.

  "You mean he's had a face job?" I said, trying not to slither as the trail sloped drastically. "Well, I know from personal experience Conchita has had a chest job-lay your head upon my breast but bring a pillow."

  "You intrigue me," she said, just as I pulled to an abrupt halt. We had reached the beginning of a horseshoe bend. I could see Perry some forty yards ahead of me by the track, fifteen yards across a yawning gap that fell away to the river so far below.

  He was approaching the Inca bridge. Here the trail was so narrow it was cut into the side of a sheer precipice. And just ahead of him the Incas had been obliged to build a vast buttress of dressed stone to provide a ledge for the path. A sheer wall of rock above, the Urubamba River so far below.

  Perry, balancing with his left forearm against the sheer rock face, was making his careful way along the ledge towards the Inca bridge.

  The bridge was little more than a gap in the buttress with two wooden logs laid across it. During Inca times, the Incas would simply withdraw the logs to make this part of the trail impassable.

  The logs were across the gap now. Perry approached them hesitantly. He stopped when he reached them. Bridget slithered down behind me.

  "Let's wait a minute," I said. "I can't figure out what Perry's up to."

  Perry appeared to be waiting for something. Or someone. As he waited he looked nervously down at the precipitous drop to his right. Only once. He quickly drew back.

  I could almost see him take a deep breath then shuffle out onto the logs, testing them for weight step by step. They held and he virtually ran the remaining five yards to the other side of the bridge.

  "We're not supposed to go beyond the bridge," I murmured to Bridget. "Where's he going?"

  As I said this I looked off to the right where the track continued. Six men in single file appeared on the bend. Perry had his attention focused on his feet as he moved slowly along the path.With every step he seemed to get more fearful.

  However, my attention was focused on the figure at the head of the queue of men.

  I was aware of Bridget at my side.

  "Ferdinand Porras," she said.

  My first impulse was to call a warning across the gorge to Perry. But even I'm not that much of a fool. Walking down the track had been reasonably easy. Running back up at this altitude would be impossible.

  A moment later I was glad I hadn't. Perry and Porras obviously knew each other. It had taken me a moment to recognize Porras since he was in fatigues rather than his trademark Hawaiian shirt, but there was no mistaking the moustache and the swept back hair.

  "I was meeting you round the bend," Porras said. "Not here in full view of anyone who comes by."

  Two men moved past Perry and headed along the trail towards us. Bridget and I looked at each other and shrank into the undergrowth.

  "Now tell me-what the fuck is going on here?" Porras said, his voice drifting across the chasm. "You're supposed to be our inside man but you don't warn us about all this security. Jeez, anyone would think we were trying to snatch the President."

  "The President's wife."

  "What?"

  "I just found out the President's wife is coming here tonight, man, that's why all the security-it's not for Otis."

  "Well, that's just fucking great," Porras said.

  His men were round the horseshoe curve and within about twenty yards of us.

  "This ain't my fault," Perry said, "I did my part." He held out his hand. "Where's my fucking money? I want what's coming to me."

  Porras looked at him for a moment. Put on a mock-Spanish accent.

  "Sure thing, gringo."Then he shouted something in Spanish to the two men who were coming up the trail towards Bridget and me.They halted and turned back the way they had come.

  Get out of there, I wanted to call. I was about to call. But Porras moved very quickly. He reached out, gripped Perry's left shoulder, turned him, and pushed.

  I saw Perry's look of astonishment as he teetered for a moment then plunged headlong past the buttress down towards the river below. Porras raised his hand and gave a little farewell salute.

  "Swim? The fall will probably kill you," I murmured.

  Bridget, however, was more vocal. She stood up. I tried to pull her back down.

  "You bastard!" she screamed, which puzzled me, since I didn't think she even liked Perry. "What have you done with my fucking Louis Vuitton suitcases?"

  Ali. It took Porras a moment to locate the source of the shout. But then he looked across and peered through the undergrowth. When he saw us he grinned and called: "My journalist friends, how delightful to see you again"

  I saw the two men nearest us raise their machine guns.

  "Oh shit," I said.

  "Oh shit," Bridget said.

  "Oh shit," a bush beside us said, rising up with a machine gun held firmly in its, er, hands. A bush with a strong Cockney accent. Harry, our rescuer from the Amazon.

  All around us other bushes rose up and were transformed into camouflaged men. Then all hell broke loose. Harry shot the two men who were nearest us on the trail. One of the bushes hustled Bridget and me back up the trail as the guerrillas and Harry's men exchanged deafening fire across the chasm.

  I glanced back to see bullets splashing the rock face and the guerrillas falling like ninepins-they were totally exposed. But I couldn't see Porras.Was he already dead or had he slipped away again?

  "He slipped away," Harry said to Ralph an hour later in the bar of the hotel in Aguas Calientes. Harry was still in his combat fatigues. He smelled faintly of cordite. "In the time it took me to pop the first two guerrillas Porras was up the trail and round the bend. I got a shot off but I don't know if I hit him.

  "My men and some of the security forces are out looking for him but he knows this place better than we do. There's a thousand places to hole up."

  "So he was after Otis-and Perry was feeding him information," Ralph said.

  "Seems like it," Harry said. "I think he'd always planned that the kidnap happen here. He would have whisked Otis back down into the a helicopter you can be there in a half hour. What threw him was all the extra security that's her
e because of the President's wife."

  "Is he still around here someplace?" Ralph said. "Is he still a threat to the tour?"

  "I think he's gone," Harry said. "Whatever his method was going to be his plan was dead the minute you put on the extra security.We killed or rounded up most of his men so he hasn't got the means to carry it out, even if he was foolhardy enough to try."

  "But you'll carry on looking?" Ralph said.

  "I'm locked on," Harry said. "I don't stop until I've got him-alive or dead."

  "Jeez, this is like bloody Butch Cassidy," I said. I was having trouble coming to terms with what Harry had told us on the way back down here. "So the presidents of four countries, pissed off with the guerrillas for all the kidnappings and disruptions, are paying you and guys like you-"

  "Elite units, yes."

  "-to track down and kill a dozen of the leading drug barons and guerrilla leaders. In effect they've put bounties on these people's heads and you're modern-day bounty-hunters."

  "Spot on."

  "And you've been after Porras all the time?"

  "He's our latest, yes. Slippery customer.We trailed him in the Amazon, lost him for a while but knew he'd end up here-we had wind of his plans."

  "From who?"

  He raised an eyebrow

  "Sources. But it looks like we saved your lives again."

  I was remembering their cold-blooded killing of young Danilo.

  "We had some trouble with the girl from the Amazon camp," I said.

  "Oh?" Harry said, his smile still in place.

  "She came looking for revenge on us because of what you did to her lover."

  "Pretty little piece," he said. Shook his head. "There's fucking gratitude for you. We let her go. Strictly according to Hoyle we should have done her, too."

  "But that's murder!" I said.

  "Them's the rules," he said. "We get paid by the body."

  "Jesus."

  He looked at me levelly then got quickly to his feet.

  "Pleased you're able to enjoy the rest of your life, Mr. Madrid." He nodded at Bridget. "Miss Frost."

  He walked off, his shoes clacking on the tiled floor. I watched him through the window walk down the path towards the railway line. As he dropped from sight I was almost certain I saw a flash of color shift in the undergrowth. Someone in a red dress moving to follow.

  I was looking morosely out of the window at the brown river below when I heard footsteps. I thought it was Bridget returning.

  "You aren't too bright, you have no idea how to look after yourself in a tussle, but I gotta admit, Madrid, you have a goddamned astounding knack of being in the wrong place at the right time."

  Ralph, big and solemn as ever, was looking at me. Richard stood beside him.

  "Yeah, well, don't be thinking your troubles are over just because Harry and his Merry Men have wiped out most of Porras's guerrillas," I said.

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning that either Mr. Otis Barnes, the Late Great, is as nutty as a fruitcake, has been sending himself death threats, and may have beaten Horace to death-"

  "Say what?" Ralph said sharply, sitting forward in his chair. Richard walked to the window and looked out.

  So I told them about my conversation with Otis about "Sinner Man" and about killing his parents. I told them about seeing him with Horace. Ralph listened intently. When I'd finished he steepled his hands in front of his face.

  "You said `either.'That means there's an `or:"

  I sighed.

  "Let me get back to you on the `or."'

  Ralph dropped his hands.

  "Okay, I've seen how Otis hates himself, I've seen my share of mental fuck-ups so, yeah, I can believe he's doing this for himself. That's how cone the messages got into his room, his jacket pocket. But the question I have to ask is-what's he planning for Machu Picchu and is he a danger to anyone else when he's on stage?"

  "Who knows?" I said. "But I don't think he's got an Uzi stashed in his guitar case if that's what you mean. What's your reason for the question?"

  "The reason for the question," Richard said, turning from the window, "is that a phenomenal amount of time and money has been invested in tonight's concert and if there's any way at all it can go on, then it should."

  "Even at the risk of people's lives?"

  Richard thought for a moment.

  "It should be possible, with all the security around, to stop Otis doing anything dangerous."

  "Except maybe killing himself on prime-tine TV."

  "The show has to go on," Richard said grimly. "We don't know what Otis's mental state is."

  I could see that from Richard's point of view all that mattered was the show. If it went up in flames he'd be one of those who got burned the most.

  "We've got to speak to Conchita," Ralph said. "Find out about his mental state."

  "What about Horace's death?" I said indignantly. "We can't just ignore it."

  "You know, I don't figure that," Ralph said. "When I told Otis he seemed genuinely upset, even knowing the guy had been ripping him off."

  "Yeah, well," I said. "I don't figure that either."

  "Look Nick, Otis isn't going anywhere," Richard said. "He's hardly going to jump off the stage and do a runner is he? The cops are coming up tomorrow from Cusco to take statements from us anyway They assume it was local villains."

  I looked at him sharply.

  "You're not suggesting we let Otis walk?"

  "No, no-though I have to say in PR terms ..."

  "Stow that talk, mister," Ralph spoke quietly and firmly. "If Otis killed Horace he'll take the fall, I promise that."

  Richard put his hands up in a calming gesture.

  "Sure Ralph, I'm not saying otherwise. But what I am saying is that can wait until tomorrow."

  "Which still leaves us with the problem of tonight," I said. "How do we ensure that Otis doesn't go honkers on stage or that if he does he can be hustled off right quickly?"

  Richard looked out of the window for a moment then gave me a speculative look. "I have a plan."

  Half the Peruvian army was on maneuvers around the entrance to Machu Picchu when I reached there at six. Four helicopters were buzzing between the mountain peaks. The sun was already sinking low in the sky behind Huayc Picchu. The audience for the concert had been delivered in a convoy of buses up the zig zag road from Agua Calientes.

  There were maybe 2,000 people settled on the terraces and as many again spread across the mountainside below the Gateway to the Sun. That was the notch in the mountain to the east of Machu Picchu, at the end of the Inca trail, through which you could see the sun rise each morning.

  Raoul was overseeing security at the gate again.

  "Everybody else here?" I said.

  "Pretty much."

  I headed along the walkway down past the audience, showed my pass, and went backstage.

  The first ninety minutes of the concert passed in a blur. The support bands performed from various locations on the site, the light cannons fired off images at random across the performers, the audience, the mountain peaks around. The President's wife came and went. But I was too nervous to concentrate on any of it.

  Not nervous about what Otis might do, although that concerned me. Nervous about what I was about to do.

  Eventually it was time for Otis and his band to go on. I was standing at the side of the stage when he went by. He winked at me. He looked in good shape, bulking out his T-shirt as if he'd just finished a workout.

  As Sukie and Venus walked by wearing very little they grinned, took my hands, and walked me on stage.

  This was Richard's master plan. Otis wouldn't agree to have security guards onstage-thinking they were intended to protect him rather than be a protection from him. But Richard had persuaded him that for the sake of color in my article I should go on as one of the backing singers.

  "Miming obviously," Richard insisted to me.

  Well that was the plan. But when I got on stage behind the glare of th
e lights and I could hear the people on the terraces, glimpse wedges of them picked out at random by the light cannons, the two backing singers whooping and hollering, and the band tuning up and Otis doing a little dance-I must admit I lost it. I leaned into my microphone, raised both my arms above my head.

  "Hello Peru!" I declaimed, in best rock star style.

  I could hear bugger all of course-I didn"t have foldback, the speakers through which performers can monitor how they're doing. But I heard a swelling of applause and whistling from the audience beyond.

  Otis seemed like his usual performing self, relaxed, dancing around, in great voice. I relaxed a little, too.

  In fact once we got into the music I had a gas. I knew these songs and whilst a couple of times I doowopped when I should have doowahed I thought I did pretty well.

  I was off some fifteen yards to the right of Otis. I could see little bits of business the two women were doing and I did my best to copy them. I dipped and shimmied and, you know, I think the audience responded to me.

  I'd sung myself hoarse by the time Otis went into the slow closing section of his act. I could smell joss sticks on the still mountain air, thousands of them. I was pretty sweaty by then and breathless from singing. My lungs ached a bit from dragging the air in.

  When Otis went into a plangent version of "Sinner Man" on solo guitar we backing singers had little to do but sway and click the odd finger. (I'd said no to a tambourine. Even I have my standards.)

  Sukie and Venus had been looking my way, grinning and making comments to each other about my performance so I presumed I'd done pretty well. I wondered idly if I might be in with a chance with them. My breathlessness came on immediately.

  I watched closely when Otis came to the lines: "And when you finally face yourself/Which of you comes out alive?" Did I imagine it or did he sing it with even more poignancy that usual? His eyes were closed, his head was tilted back-he was singing to the stars.

  I wondered if he guessed that tomorrow he would have to answer for killing Horace.

  The two lines were repeated twice more in the song. I could see Ralph off at the far side of the stage watching intently. I nodded to him as I swayed, then he turned away to talk to one of the guards.