The Retaliators

by Donald Hamilton

  In Ensenada, we went shopping. Respectably equipped with luggage at last, we checked into the Bahia Hotel, which I remembered from a previous visit in the line of business. It looked a little older and tireder than when I'd last seen it, but then, who doesn't?

  "So we're Mr. and Mrs. Helm again," said Clarissa quietly as the door closed behind the bellboy. "Oscar isn't going to have much trouble finding grounds for divorce, is he?"

  There was hostility in her voice; she didn't like me very much at the moment. As a matter of fact, she'd hardly spoken to me since we'd left Caborca, and she'd made it clear that her silence was intentional. Maybe she guessed that Ramón and I had talked about her in her absence, and that the talk hadn't been wholly favorable.

  "Does Oscar want a divorce?" I asked. "Why?"

  "Well, I'm not exactly poor, you know," she said. "There was a time when Oscar was in a bind and needed money, so he married the girl. He doesn't need it any longer, and matrimony's a bit of a drag. So now he'd like a divorce if he can get it on his own terms—profitable terms. Of course, I have a lot of dirty ammunition I can fire back at him.... That's really none of your business, is it, Mr. Helm? If we're going to have dinner, I'd better change; I look slightly grubby after two days in this outfit." She stopped, watching me, and said: "Matt?"

  "What?"

  "Last night, when you... when you put me to bed, did you want..." She stopped, leaving the sentence trailing.

  "Want what?" I asked, deliberately obtuse.

  "Me?"

  I regarded her for a moment. A couple of hectic days had, as she'd suggested, kind of blurred the fashionable, crisp, immaculate, rich-lady-in-a-Lincoln image. Now she was just a big, well-built girl in comfortably sloppy corduroy with a smudged hat crammed carelessly onto her touseled brown hair. I liked her better that way, but I reminded myself that my likes and dislikes were not really very relevant to the situation.

  I said severely, "Mrs. O'Hearn, I am an honorable man and I never lust after other men's wives, at least not when I'm dead on my feet."

  She asked, "Are you dead on your feet now?"

  There was a funny little silence. Through the windows I could see cars driving by on a boulevard that hadn't existed the last time I'd stayed here. Then there had been nothing on the oceanside but vacant real estate and docks and water. Progress had overtaken and surrounded the Bahia Hotel.

  I said, "You don't look like a compulsive nympho, Mrs. O." Carefully, so as not to startle her, I stepped forward and kissed her. Her lips were cold and unresponsive. It wasn't much of a kiss. I said, "You don't act like a compulsive nympho."

  "Damn you!" she whispered. "Of course I'm not a nympho, I... I'm just one step removed from...." She stopped. After a moment she said sharply, "Oh, this is ridiculous! My brother has been shot to death. We're both fugitives from justice, if you want to call it justice. All kinds of scary international things are going on—and here we stand talking about my lousy sex life."

  "Is it?" I asked.

  "What?"

  "Your sex life? Is it lousy?"

  "What sex life?" she asked grimly. "Why talk about something that doesn't exist? Oh, Oscar did his stuff on our wedding night like a dutiful bridegroom—well, more like a mad moose, but never mind that. What I was about to say a moment ago was that, far from being a nymphomaniac, I'm just one step removed from total virginity. That was the one step. But I guess my loving husband didn't like the sample, because he's never come back for seconds. Right now he's probably getting drunk in some fancy fishing camp with a bosomy Mexican tart on his lap."

  "That's the dirty ammunition you'll fire back at him if he tries to divorce you on his terms?"

  "Yes, of course," she said. "I know all about his so-called fishing trips accompanied by his gorgeous tame fly-boy—there's another beautiful character for you, simply lovely—and that uniformed pimp who calls himself a Mexican general." She drew a deep, ragged breath. "But you can see how... how it might shake a girl's faith in her sexual attractiveness, particularly when she's always been kind of awkward and oversized. And then, when you casually tossed a blanket over the large body beautiful and calmly climbed into the next bed and went to sleep...." She stood up, did some quick, feminine things to her hair, and buttoned up her jacket. "You can just put up with me the way I am. All I ask is nourishment...."

  twelve

  It was a long, low, rustic room with a bar at the near end and a dance floor and orchestra stand in the middle. Fortunately, we were early enough that no music was being produced. I wanted to talk, and you can't expect to carry on any significant conversations with a Mexican band playing. I couldn't help remembering that the last time I'd eaten here I'd also had an attractive female companion involved in some peculiar international intrigue....

  Clarissa reached across the table and patted my hand. "It must be terrible," she said. "What was she like?"

  "What?" I asked. "Who?"

  She laughed. "You were thinking about another woman, weren't you? Another woman who had dinner with you right here in this room—and since I reminded you of her, the circumstances were probably somewhat similar. And I was thinking it must be terrible for a man to be forever pursued by demanding females insisting on sharing his bed. You have my deepest sympathy, Mr. Helm."

  "My goodness," I said. "It's practically a virgin, it says, but it gets just as jealous as a real woman."

  She stopped smiling abruptly. "That wasn't very nice," she murmured. "Why are you trying to make me angry?"

  I said, "It's standard operating procedure. Ply them with liquor and needle them and see if they can stick to their cover stories."

  "Is it standard operating procedure to tell them about it?" she asked curiously.

  I shrugged. "If I get you drunk enough and sore enough you'll give yourself away whether you've been warned or not. If you've got something to give away."

  "Well, I haven't," she said. "What do you suspect me of? What was Ramón telling you about me this morning? I wondered why.... He was friendly enough when we first met."

  "He's always friendly to pretty ladies until he has reason to behave otherwise. But then he studied all the information he had about you and came to the conclusion that you're probably a very sinister and dangerous individual...." I paused, watching her across the table. "Mrs. O, do you know what your husband is really doing down here in Baja under the cover of his alcoholic, amorous, and piscatorial exploits?"

  There was a little silence. It had been kind of a bluff, and when she drained her glass abruptly I knew I had won. I signaled the waiter for another round of Margaritas.

  "Oh, I see," she said slowly. "Your Mexican friend thinks I'm working with Oscar on.... You mean the Sanctuary Corporation, don't you?"

  I said, "To be perfectly frank, my trusted Mexican colleague was quite cagy about just what the hell he did mean. Well, I don't suppose I'd volunteer a lot of secret headquarters information if he came up to operate with me in the U.S. Tell me about the Sanctuary Corporation. What is it, one of the subsidiaries of O'Hearn, Inc.?"

  "Oh, no!" Clarissa sounded shocked. "No, it's much bigger than... You could say that Oscar is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Sanctuary Corporation." She paused, and went on, rather daringly for her: "What I mean is, when they say pee, he scrambles for the nearest rest room."

  "Go on," I said. "You're getting more fascinating by the minute."

  "It's kind of weird, really," she said. "It's a bunch of international-type people that... Well, I guess they got the idea from something that was supposed to be tried in the Bahamas. One of the islands was supposed to be persuaded to secede peacefully and, as an independent nation, become a blissful refuge for harassed millionaires, or something. At least that was the way the rumors ran."

  "I heard something about that," I said.

  "Oscar was very interested and so were several other people he knew, but when he investigated on their behalf he found it wasn't a very satisfactory proposition for some reason. Or maybe he and his fr
iends just decided they could do better on their own, closer to home—well, his home—where he already had good contacts, civilian and military, particularly military. By this time, quite a group had got together on the thing, some of them international operators big enough to use O'Hearn, Inc. for petty cash. They'd kind of taken over, and strangely enough Oscar didn't mind; in fact, he was proud to be associated with such important men. And the whole approach had changed; they were no longer thinking in terms of peaceful democratic persuasion. There's a strong revolutionary tradition south of the border. They figured that one more little military coup down there wouldn't upset the international applecart to the point where any large country, like the U.S., would feel obliged to intervene.... What are you laughing at?"

  "Sorry," I said. "I was just remembering that I said something playful to Ramón about starting a new country where men were men and women, women. I wondered why he didn't think it was a bit funny.... What have they got in mind, Baja?"

  "Southern Baja California, yes. They are going to call it the Republic of Cortez. They feel that, as long as it's kept a strictly internal matter, nobody but the Mexicans will care much who governs the dismal tail end of a barren peninsula sticking a thousand miles down into the Pacific. Actually, of course, it's a very pleasant and picturesque area, but most people don't know that."

  "The Sanctuary Corporation," I said thoughtfully.

  "They think the world is going to hell," she said, "and they want a place to hide that's all their own, where they can make their own kind of rules for their own kind of people. Of course that comes later. Initially, it'll be a native uprising led, of course, by that great democratic leader of his people, General Hernando Díaz."

  "It doesn't sound very practical to me," I said. "Even if they do have a tame general in their pocket and he has a few troops who'll obey him, they can't really believe they can take over part of Mexico and hold it indefinitely by military force."

  "Not just military force, Matt," she said. "For one thing, Mexico has some internal problems—Baja isn't the only trouble spot. The army is quite busy up in the Sierra Madres, over on the mainland. For another, these are powerful people, rich people. It's going to be a native uprising, to be sure, but there'll be plenty of help from high-priced mercenaries—the kind of roving specialists at war who pop up at all such parties if good salaries are being paid. There'll be all the munitions anybody could want; the ships are already at sea...."

  "You're still talking military force," I said. "I've seen one or two of these shoestring revolutions, and I know a few people in Mexico. I don't think General Díaz, his malcontents and his mercenaries will get any farther than those boys did at the Bay of Pigs, and they had the backing of a fairly powerful corporation, if you recall."

  "You're not allowing for all the factors," Clarissa said patiently. "Militarily speaking, you may be right, but you're forgetting Oscar's powerful financial friends. When the politicians in Mexico City try to pull themselves together to crush this traitor general and his upstart Republic of Cortez, they'll find nothing will work. Supplies won't be delivered, communications won't communicate, trucks won't roll, trains won't move, ships won't sail.... Don't think it can't happen. Among them, these men and the international conglomerates they control can pretty well strangle a small country's industries if they work together, and they're together on this."

  "Mexico isn't so damn small," I said. "But I see it's a plausible enough notion that a bunch of fat industrialists impressed with their own power might think they could get away with it, and I guess they could do considerable damage before they were stopped. But there's one weak link. If they really want to make this look like a homegrown revolution, they've got to have that Mexican general. If somebody takes out Hernando Díaz, they're done, unless they're willing to reveal themselves as latter-day pirates taking over a piece of foreign real estate by naked force; and that's a precedent I doubt the U.S. would stand for so close to home, no matter how gun-shy we may be after Vietnam." I paused. Clarissa didn't speak. I said, "Is that why you hired this man Ernemann and sent him down here?"

  It didn't jolt her a bit. "You and your shock tactics! Matt, you're cute," she said, laughing. "Why in the world would I care whether that country down there is called Baja California Sur or El Republico de Cortez? If you're thinking I'd go that far just to spite my husband..."

  "Something like that," I said. "I keep getting the impression it's not a very happy marriage; I don't know why."

  "Well, it isn't," she admitted frankly. "I was a stupid little girl—well, big girl—and I was flattered by the attentions of the powerful and successful man who obviously, I thought, wasn't a bit influenced by my money, unlike all the others who gritted their teeth and put on their unconvincing Romeo acts.... But being a disillusioned bride is one thing, and hiring a professional gunman is something else, Matt. Does your friend Solana-Ruiz think this killer is working for me?"

  "Ramón didn't say so, but I wouldn't be surprised if the thought had crossed his mind." I hesitated, and probed in another direction. "It could be that you're public-spirited enough to disapprove of this project very strongly, particularly since your husband is undoubtedly using some of your money—"

  Clarissa shook her head quickly, smiling. "I'm afraid you've got the wrong girl, Mr. Helm. Oh, I disapprove, and actually I wouldn't mind a bit if General Hernando Díaz fell down dead, if only I got to see Oscar's face when he heard about it. He's put a lot of work into this thing, and I think he hopes to be a very big wheel down there after they ease out the native revolutionaries and put themselves into power. But even if I knew where to rent a trained killer, which I don't, I wouldn't go that far just to get a few laughs at my husband's expense... She shook her head again, ruefully. "As for saving the poor, downtrodden peasants, well, I'm sorry but I'm just not the concerned type, Matt. Frankly, I'm getting a little tired of forever worrying about who oppresses whom; I'm certainly not going to murder people, or hire them murdered, to stop it"

  After a good many years in the business, you get a feeling for when people are telling the truth and when they're lying. It isn't infallible, of course, but my instinct told me the girl was not lying, at least not very much.

  My curiosity had a question to ask. "Just how did you manage to learn so much about this operation, Mrs. O?"

  "I'm stupid and harmless," she said calmly. "It's just like having a big dumb heifer around the house, Oscar says, and I guess he believes it. At least he doesn't take many precautions to keep me from finding things out."

  There was no bitterness in her placid voice, but I didn't take that too seriously. She might be telling the truth at the moment, but I reminded myself that she wasn't the most consistent personality I'd ever met. She'd acted terrified of driving a car across a pretty safe boulevard, but had then very neatly distracted a dangerously nervous armed man at exactly the right instant. She'd started out talking as if she were terrified of her husband; now she was discussing him with casual contempt. I had a feeling I was watching a very inhibited lady breaking free of a lot of old restraints and getting a new act together, but I couldn't quite figure out what the act was supposed to be.

  I said, "Now tell me about the gorgeous flyboy."

  That got more of a reaction than any of the rough stuff I'd hit her with. Suddenly pale again, she toyed with the empty glass from her latest Margarita and didn't speak for several seconds.

  "It's... a rather painful subject, Matt. I'd rather not talk about Phil, if it's all the same to you."

  "It isn't," I said. "Phil what?"

  She looked up angrily. "You're really a very rude and demanding...." Then she sighed. "Oh, all right. Philip Krakowski. Can you imagine me falling for a man named Krakowski? Well, I suppose Polish girls do it all the time, and I'm just being nasty and prejudiced. Actually, he's a very good pilot and a very beautiful hunk of man. Ask Phil, he'll tell you all about it... No, I'm being unfair; I can't help it. He's not really vain about his skill or his looks. He's
just very, very confident. I gather he has reason to be. Both in the air and... and in bed."

  I didn't say anything. The waiter brought another round of Margaritas. Clarissa picked up hers, stared at it in a hostile way, and attacked it as if destroying a dangerous enemy.

  "It was... it was a very simple and sordid little plan," she said without looking at me. "I told you, Oscar wanted a divorce on his own terms. Not very difficult to arrange, really, if you have a shy and inexperienced wife and a handsome and experienced pilot who doesn't mind, for a substantial bonus, doing a little extra work quite unrelated to aviation. He was... very sweet, very considerate, very handsome, and very sympathetic about my hard lot as Oscar's wife. It almost worked. Only, before the critical bedroom scene, before any bedroom scene at all could take place, they got overconfident and careless and made the mistake of discussing me rather crudely in front of an open window."

  "Tough," I said. "Or, maybe, lucky."

  She drew a long, ragged breath. "Damn it, Matt, I loved the creep!" she whispered. Then, in normal tones, she said, "Now you know all about Phil Krakowski. Now let's find something more pleasant to talk about, like vultures and hyenas and cute little crawling maggots...."

  Actually, over dinner, we discussed the possibility of tomorrow, getting a look at the great gray whales at Scammon's Lagoon down the coast.

  thirteen

  We could still hear the pounding drums and blaring horns as we stopped at the door of our room, in the wing of the hotel away from the dining room. The musicians had arrived, and pianissimo is unheard of in Mexico. I opened the door and Clarissa moved past me. There was some faint daylight left outside the windows, but the drawn curtains reduced the room illumination to a striped, shadowy twilight. I followed her inside and pulled the door shut behind me; then she was in my arms.