by Adam Hall
She was sipping some water as I watched her.
The woman was talking to her now but I couldn't hear the words intelligibly. The accent was Polish. I moved the field glasses and studied her again, wiping the condensation off the lenses and steadying them with my elbows on my knees. I am a bad judge of people's age but she looked thirty-five. Sun-tan, auburn hair hanging loose, very pale blue eyes that hardly ever moved: when she wanted to look at something she turned her head, in the way of a cat Possibly she had been taken on as a chaperon for Pat Burdick but these men were terrorists and if they wanted to search the girl they would do that and if they wanted to rape her they would do that: I didn't think the woman was a chaperon. More probably she was the current partner of one of the men but in half an hour's constant surveillance I hadn't seen who he was: she hadn't touched any of them, or sat particularly close. Ten minutes ago Zade had said something to her in Polish and she had cut in quickly, turning away, and there'd been a short silence among the group.
I moved the field glasses again to watch Ramirez.
Above my head the fan droned rhythmically: the blades were out of balance and the electric motor was vibrating with each revolution. It produced a warm draught, but the sweat went on running down my face and steaming the lenses.
I wondered again what they were asking of the Defence Secretary.
He would know by now, They would have presented their terms.
The fact was that Burdick could have called in security or investigatory or counter-espionage agencies and he hadn't done that and I could see only one obvious reason: he'd been ordered not to. If this were the standard hostage-and-demands situation then the United States Secretary of Defence was at present under the orders of the five men down there in the courtyard, so long as his daughter was alive.
There was of course a difference in the standard pattern but it didn't affect the situation as such: in this case the hostage hadn't been kidnapped. Pat Burdick was studying insects along the Amazon with a few companions and probably writing home and probably sending photographs as evidence. Only two people had known the truth and one was Finberg and he was dead. The other was James Burdick.
This difference in the standard pattern was crucial. If the group had seized their hostage and concealed her whereabouts there would be nothing Burdick could do for them: the FBI and the counter-terrorist department of the CIA would have been mobilized and the group's demands would have been made public and Burdick would not have been allowed to meet them.
The demands wouldn't be for money. They would be for something only Burdick and a few men in similar positions could supply: military information, arms, technological data, access to ultra-secret documents or blueprints or designs. Pressure to supply them, in whole or in part, could be applied to the Defence Secretary only if he alone knew that his daughter's life was in jeopardy and that these demands were being made.
According to the Bureau intelligence, passed to the executive by his director in the field, Burdick alone knew.
London doesn't pass out disinformation to the people in the field. It doesn't tell you much but when it tells you something then you can believe it.
The glasses were misted up again and I lowered them and wiped them with the corner of my handkerchief. I could feel a swelling on my scalp above the ear: the blood on my fingers had been my own, drawn out by a female mosquito. There hadn't been time to ask for malaria shots but the incubation period would see me 'through the mission if the chances of survival were good enough, I didn't think they were.
This was the end-phase and there was the target: the Kobra rendezvous. When I reported to Ferris in a few minutes from now he was going to throw me the final directive and I knew what it was.
I steadied the field glasses again. The right shoulder was still inclined to ache if I kept it still too long: it had taken most of the impact when I'd hit the ground in the alley in New York. One of the group — Sassine — was moving about restlessly and I wanted to keep them all in sight in case anyone thought of coming up here to my room. They shouldn't do, because security was total: they'd never seen me before and I'd made no specific surveillance of them except from my room and behind adequate cover. But I had believed security to be total when the wall had blown out in Phnom Penh.
Note in passing: James Burdick could say nothing to anyone because his daughter's life was in hazard. The converse must also be true: his daughter had been warned that if she tried to leave the group or seek the help of the police she would bring about her father's killing.
I watched them for another fifteen minutes and then signalled Ferris.
Code-intro. No bugs.
I made my report and he started putting questions: did it look as if any exchange were to be made here in Brazil; did it look as if they were waiting for other members of the Kobra cell; did it look as if they felt on top of the situation they had created; so forth, No, no and yes.
He was silent for half a minute.
'They've still got the road up,' he said at last.
'Have they?'
Directive. He'd been in signals with London, 'This is really quite big. Quite substantial,'
Egerton's word for it I began worrying.
The phase had only just opened and there wasn't much I could do: to get as close to the target as this I'd had to present a frank image and rely on cover and this was very limiting. There hadn't been time to get any leverage, any kind of counter-force that we could apply against the group as a whole: Satynovich Zade was clearly the top kick and I'd obviously go for him as soon as I could arrange something workable but it'd have to be a hundred per cent effective because a stalemate wouldn't be good enough — they still had the girl in their hands.
I thought I could get at Zade and keep him alive and use him to argue with but it might take hours or even days because a lot would depend on luck.
They told me,' I said, 'that it was substantial. What are you trying to do, for Christ's sake-put the fear of — '
'There's nothing to worry about,' he said.
I shut up.
It had just sounded so bloody silly to remind me the mission was 'substantial' because Egerton used that kind of word where people like Parkis or Sargent would say 'hot-war level' or 'Minister's priority' or whatever term they picked on to express something that was going to make a lot of waves, win or lose.
But Ferris doesn't ever say anything bloody silly and he'd just told me he'd been in signals with London through the consulate in Manaus and London had instructed him to remind me that we weren't on just another field exercise and that meant they wanted me to do something difficult, and what Egerton really wanted me to understand was that it was going to be worth it.
Not in terms of any reward, of course: apart from a living wage and a bit extra for roses for Moira we don't ask any reward for doing something we couldn't live without doing even though we know it's going to kill us in the end. Egerton meant in terms of making the necessary effort.
Bloody London for you: they think that when you've finally got the target in your sights and you're set up to go in and get the objective you're either too dead-beat or too ready to chicken out if the going gets rough.
Gut-think: not precisely true.
Egerton was a worried man, that was all. The red light was on the board and he was sitting up there in Signals with his legs hooked over that crate of stuff they hadn't unpacked yet and his shoes covered in clay from down there in the street and he was developing purpose-tremor: with the executive on the target and 'substantial' considerations in the balance he didn't want anything to go wrong. So he'd sent his little ferret a shot in the arm.
'I'm not worrying,' I told Ferris.
'Of course you're not.'
Ramirez had moved and I watched his head vanish and reappear beyond a gap in the leaves. I wasn't using the field glasses because I had the phone in one hand and wouldn't be able to control their movement: any terrorist in the international class is constantly sensitive to surveillance and will catch the
glint of a lens if care isn't used, 'Just give me a directive,' I said.
I didn't want to stay on the phone too long because that group down there could split up at any minute and I'd need to keep track of them as long as I could.
'Yes,' I heard Ferris saying. 'We want you to get the objective for us as soon as you can do it safely.'
'The girl,' I said.
He didn't answer right away. I could hear something like static from his end: he was probably in the wireless room at the consulate, and not at the Hotel Amazonas. Conceivably he was getting stuff direct from Control while he had me on the line. I didn't know, and I wasn't going to ask because if he wanted me to know then he'd tell me.
'No,' he said in a moment, 'not the girl. We want the whole group.'
In a couple of seconds I said:
'You want the whole of the Kobra cell.'
There are always a lot of repeats when a major directive is being put on the line, especially when it's being done on the phone. It's not a time for mistakes.
'The whole cell,' Ferris said, 'yes.'
Another mosquito was whining faintly near my head, but I didn't think, for the moment, about swatting it 'Alive?' I asked Ferris.
He answered straight away because he'd expected the question and had already got a directive on it.
'That's immaterial. But if you can get the girl out, everyone would appreciate it,'
Chapter Thirteen: SHADIA
'The damned creature was twenty feet long, can you imagine?'
Van de Jong broke some bread.
'Who came out of it?' I asked him.
He'd come to join me for dinner at my table and it suited my book: he was a compulsive talker so I didn't have to listen, and he provided good cover. The solitary image is always suspect They both came out of it, of course! He does it for the tourists, when there are any. Listen to me — the anaconda does not crush its victim. It merely throttles it. So all this fellow does is to keep the coils away from his throat. In any case, man is not its habitual prey, so it is just confused when a man comes to wrestle with it, you see.' He gave a laugh, showing a gold tooth. 'But it is fun to watch. You should see it I will take you tomorrow.'
The Kobra cell was across the room: the five men and the woman they called Shadia. The Burdick girl was sitting in the corner with someone on each side of her. They were eating, but seemed more to be waiting.
The Indian boy came to our table again.
'Voce precisa alguma coisa?'
'Nada. Tudo esta bem.'
We were eating paiche with farinha and de Jong was on his third rum punch: he had so far made three jokes about the ulcer I was using as an excuse for not drinking.
The Burdick girl looked pale in the light of the oil lamps. She didn't talk very often but sometimes I could make out a few of the words. The woman was asking her about life in an American college and the answers were token and desultory:
'It's okay, I guess,' and 'you can get into a whole lot of subjects,' mat kind of thing. The Kobra policy was consistent: it was public knowledge mat Pat Burdick was on an expedition in Brazil with selected companions, and she could even be seen there if anyone were interested. The conversation I had so far overheard was about the Amazon, insects, and American college life: all subjects appropriate to the cover. The party wasn't keeping to its quarters upstairs, but was eating openly in public, and I assumed that if anyone went over to the table in the corner and said excuse me but aren't you Pat Burdick she would say yes, I am.
I didn't intend to do that.
'It is different with those damned piranhas, my friend. Have you seen them at work?'
I said I hadn't.
It had taken me a long time to analyse the data inherent in the directive Ferris had given me. London doesn't tell you more than you need to know for your health but it can't stop you forming your own conclusions.
They are not so big,' said de Jong, 'but when they are in a feeding frenzy they can pick a hundred-pound animal down to the bones, can you imagine?' He speared his fish steak with his fork. 'Of course, I suppose we avenge ourselves!' His laughter was attracting some attention among the group of animal trappers near the bar, and someone laughed in response. He seemed to like this, and raised his glass of rum.
The big ceiling fans stirred the air above our heads, and sent the fly-papers twisting. The nights were cooler here: the thermometer by the desk was down to 97° and they'd thrown open the double doors to let the air in through the mosquito screens.
Conclusion 1: Since Ferris had instructed me to knock out the Kobra cell, termination being optional, it was obvious that any physical threat to the Secretary of Defence could be dealt with. Pat Burdick must have been told mat if she tried to escape or call the police her father would be killed and in most hostage situations the captor means what he says. But if I could knock out Kobra it would amount to outside intervention even though the girl hadn't asked for it, and the Bureau must be covering the Defence Secretary in some way.
Conclusion 2: This meant that I could in fact get a message to the girl, to the effect that if she could escape, her father would be safe. But there was a risk and London hadn't told me to do that. Ignore.
Conclusion 3: The Defence Secretary was in constant touch with London and would know that London had someone penetrating the Kobra operation and had obviously asked for his daughter's life to be spared if that were possible. But I believed that even if the Defence Secretary were not involved, the Bureau might have set up the Kobra mission in any case.
Corollary to Conclusion 3: Regardless of the Burdick involvement, London wanted Kobra and they wanted Kobra with that brand of calculated desperation that would keep a human computer like Egerton at the signals console in Whitehall till he dropped dead of fatigue, the brand of desperation that had knocked out one agent after another in Milan and Geneva and Cambodia and New York in order to leave one man alive in the end-phase to do the job.
'That is why my mail order business is successful, you see.' De Jong slit open a papaya with his knife. 'I give them the real thing, and they know it. The jewellery is crude but it is genuine. Look at this!'
He began throwing small objects on to the woven cloth.
I heard the telephone at the desk begin ringing.
'Dyed bones and teeth, fish scales, caiman scales, seed pods, stones. Aren't they attractive? Wouldn't you be tempted to buy this kind of thing if you saw examples in your own mail box?'
Said I would.
I had looked across at the woman several times during the past half an hour and she had twice found my eyes on her. She was young and sexually aware and would expect the distant attention of any man in the room and I was duly giving her mine. The second time she didn't look away and I'd finally turned my head to hear what de Jong was saying.
'I suppose you know what this is? It's a blowgun dart. And I suppose you know what they put on the tip when they mean to kill. Every schoolboy knows.' He pushed the pointed sliver of bone across the cloth towards me.
The telephone had stopped ringing.
'Curare,' said de Jong. 'Of course when I sell these things through the mail there is nothing on their tips — I need live clients, not dead ones!' He laughed loudly and got an echo from the group of steadily-drinking trappers near the bar.
One of the boys was on his way across to the table in the corner.
'You know something? The CIA is in trouble right now for stocking these gadgets, can you imagine? But they use sodium cyanide. You know what they call the gun? A "nondiscernible microbionoculator". Where is progress, my friend?' He raised his glass of rum.
Zade and Kuznetski were leaving the corner table and taking Pat Burdick with mem to the lobby, the boy leading the way. It looked pre-arranged. The three others remained at the table with Shadia. I would have given a lot to follow them out after thirty seconds' interval but that would be fatal.
There was a brief exchange of voices in the lobby and then I beard footsteps on the stairs, hurrying. They w
ere taking the call in one of their rooms. My watch read 21:17 but that didn't mean the call hadn't been arranged to be made precisely on the hour: in a remote village on the Amazon a delay of seventeen minutes would be routine.
In Pat Burdick's frightened eyes there had been the light of hope as she had passed our table. She might not know the terms of the deal but in any case they wouldn't mean anything to her because she was young and she didn't want to die and she wouldn't care if these people were asking an entire squadron of nuclear bombers in exchange for her life. But even if she had enough pride to tell her father he must expend her if that was the only way, she wouldn't be allowed to say it. Zade would have rehearsed her and he'd be there beside her.
Daddy, you must do whatever they tell you.
Van der Jong pushed another artifact across the table.
'Now look at this. Isn't it charming?'
Nobody else had left the dining-room.
Ventura, Ramirez and Sassine were looking casually around them, their glances passing across our table and moving on. Shadia sat watching me, perfectly still.
'I get them from the garimpeiros, when they come down from the goldfields across the Xingu River. I don't know where they get them, but I would say it was from the prostitutes up there. Don't you think this one is charming?'
I looked down at it, away from Shadia's light blue gaze.
It looked like some kind of nutshell, with apertures carved I into it, after the fashion of Chinese trinkets. It appeared to be I filed with coarse, springy hair.
Daddy, they won't hurt me until midnight. Then they say they're going to start hurting me. Can't you do something?
'Of course I don't sell these to my regular clients.'
He gave a confidential laugh, showing his gold tooth.
Shadia watched me.
I looked down again.
The shell was painted gaudily on the outside, in bright childish colours.
'There was quite a demand in Copenhagen, until they got bored with them. Now I sell through the adult bookstores, in Canada.'
Will you still love me. Daddy, please do what they tell you… Please.