The Diamond Bubble

by Fish, Robert L. ;

  Wilson noted the changed expression. “You look and sound like you know him.”

  “I know him. At least I know a Senhor Ivan Bernardes who could easily have a connection with Nestor,” Da Silva said tightly. “It’s a common name, and it could be another Ivan Bernardes, but it makes too much sense for it to be this one. I—”

  He was forced to pause. The ferry, charging madly ahead, suddenly seemed to realize that journey’s end had been reached and decided to brake, almost capsizing in the process. The cars, trucks, passengers, and crew all took the sickening jolt in stride; it was a normal part of the trip. Only the ancient ferry itself seemed offended by the rude shock of water against its broad bow and showed its disapproval by frothing even more madly than usual as it swayed to a slithering stop, paused, and then continued cautiously and sullenly into the Niterói slip. It rubbed itself angrily against the creaking timbers and then finally subsided as if in realization that resistance was useless against the chains being flung ashore and hastily warped into the ratcheted stanchions there.

  The pau de arara in front sprang into noisy and vibrant life and then edged forward, its passengers swaying gently. Da Silva switched on the ignition, started his motor, and released the clutch. The mob of passengers aboard flooded forward, pushing madly to jump to the dock before the platform had been fully warped into place. They were met head on by an equal number of opportunists intent upon seated comfort. Horns blew raucously, crewmen screamed imprecations; nobody paid the slightest attention. The ferry captain leaned from his small deckhouse above and spat genially into the bay; confusion seemed to be the only thing that pleased him.

  Wilson stared about him curiously. “Quite an adventure crossing on this thing,” he observed.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Da Silva said, and grinned once again. “Every now and then they tip over. Or catch fire. Or hit some bit of floating debris—like another ferry, or maybe a Navy destroyer—and sink. Or get completely lost in the fog and end up halfway out in the Atlantic Ocean, or—” His grin widened. “—or worse yet, have the misfortune of arriving at Niterói.”

  “You make it sound delightful,” Wilson observed.

  “Adventuresome, anyway,” Da Silva conceded, and concentrated on his driving. Cars from the waiting queue on the Niterói ramp were attempting to drive onto the ferry before those aboard were well off. Pedestrians ran about with a lofty disregard for the potential danger of their four-wheeled opponents that was quite impressive. Da Silva inched steadily along in the wake of the bouncing truck ahead; its cargo of frozen-faced passengers continued to consider him gravely. They scraped past the last threatening fender of an oncoming truck, rolled up the ramp, came at last to the ferry entrance, and emerged into the confusion of Niterói at this hour. An open alley beckoned and Da Silva swung into it, narrowly avoiding a battery of tilted and open garbage cans set like drunken sentries along its passage. He increased his speed. Knowledge of the terrain was useful here; two more obscure corners and he was accelerating in the direction of the bay front of Icaraí, the traffic congestion of the city well behind him.

  Wilson leaned back more comfortably. “Now—you were saying?”

  “You mean about this tal Bernardes.” Da Silva paused as if in thought, unconsciously reaching one hand up to scratch at his pock-marked cheek. “Do you remember I told you about Nestor being in a jam with Customs some time ago? And getting out of it? Well, it seems he was tied in with some stewards aboard a ship who were bringing dope out—in their pockets, yet!—and turning it over to him for distribution. Only one day it occurred to somebody to give the stewards a fast frisk, and that blew the gaff.” He grinned at Wilson. “How’s my American slang?”

  “A bit dramatic,” Wilson said dryly. “And?”

  Da Silva shrugged. “And he got out of it. At the time it happened I thought they had enough evidence to put him away for a long, long time, but he came out of it smelling like a—what do you Americans call it?”

  “We say, smelling like a rose,” Wilson said. “What do you say?”

  Da Silva shook his head. “What we say is a bit more vulgar and a lot more impressive. But anyway—that’s how he smelled. And at the time this Senhor Ivan Bernardes was the Customs official charged with the prosecuion of his case.”

  Wilson nodded thoughtfully. “And you think there was some sort of a deal cooked up between them …”

  “I didn’t think anything when it happened,” Da Silva said quietly. He stared at his reflection in the windshield as if asking that phantom to give the true answer. “Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.” He swung the wheel expertly, narrowly missing three homeward-bound bathers; Wilson blanched, but neither Da Silva nor the near-victims seemed at all perturbed. The swarthy detective attempted to explain. “My aunt—Nestor’s mother—was alive at the time, and to be honest, I was just as happy not to see her hurt.” He broke into his infectious grin. “I’m sure this confession must shock you. I’m confident you Americans never let family feeling interfere in a police matter.”

  “Never,” Wilson said stoutly. “Or anyway, only if we’re personally involved.”

  They smiled knowingly at each other and then Da Silva returned his attention to the sweeping road that curved along the bay. In the distance across the darkening water Rio was beginning to glitter with early lights; a sloping band of distant tiny lights marked the ascent to the Pão de Açúcar. The beach road ended. Da Silva turned into a shaded side street, patiently followed it to where it finally angled sharply into the highway to Espirito-Santos, waited less patiently for a truck to roar past, and then cut in to follow.

  The sun had finally reached the safe haven of the rolling hills beyond and the long shadows lay like wedges of gray haze over the rough cobbled road. Houses were spread farther apart here, no longer the walled estates with their red roofs of azulejo, but now the squat yellow adobe boxes that heralded the interior, each jealously holding the heat of the day and only grudgingly giving up a small portion of it in the relentless face of evening. Lawns gave way to open fields of stubble, fences to rows of staggered trees carelessly left standing as rather indefinite boundary lines. Then, without warning in the growing dimness, the cobblestones suddenly were gone, and they dropped heavily onto a dirt road that tried to squirm away under their attack. They were on the main highway to Bahia.

  A swirling brown cloud ahead marked the approach of a truck beating its way in their direction, hurrying to reach Niterói before the darkness made evident its nonexistent headlights. Da Silva swung to one side precariously, swayed dangerously past, and seemed to regain the center of the road again by sheer instinct. A blast of acrid dust swept in to choke them; it seemed to bring with it a heat they had thought lost with the sun. Wilson swallowed convulsively and turned his head away, concentrating his attention beyond the road. Through the stand of scrawny timber that separated them from the cliff’s edge overlooking the ocean, occasional vistas of the placid waters below could be seen. The bobbing lights of a fishing schooner flashed briefly in the deepening darkness and then disappeared as they turned inland, maneuvering a sharply banked curve with whining tires.

  Da Silva drove swiftly but carefully, holding the steering wheel loosely, letting the overpowered car judge for itself the depths of the ruts that snatched hungrily at their tires or the ridges that crossed the road invisibly beneath the bouncing beam of their headlights. Darkness was complete now and the road had become a twisting, desperate creature beneath them, wildly attempting to escape the relentless beam of twin lights that held it prisoner. Trees and tall grass bent ever closer, edging voraciously into their path, eager and ready to snatch the highway back to the tropical forest from which it had been cut. The jungle cringed away momentarily before the onslaught of the rushing wheels and then immediately returned to its dedicated task, creeping back toward the hard dirt of the roadway.

  Wilson twisted, leaned over the back seat, and dug out his overnight case, wthdrawing a bottle from
it. He uncorked it with a flourish, brought it to his lips, and swallowed convulsively. He shuddered a moment at the sharp taste of the cognac and then prepared to recork the bottle.

  “None for you,” he advised his companion. “You’re driving.”

  “Which shows how little you know about Brazil,” Da Silva said derisively, and reached across for the bottle. “Sober, on a road like this, is simply courting disaster.” He took the bottle, brought it to his lips without reducing his attention to the winding road, and when finished handed it back to Wilson. He took a deep breath and settled himself firmly in his seat, prepared for the difficult hours of driving ahead.

  Wilson recorked the bottle and placed it on the floor of the car between his feet for easy access. He straightened back up with a sigh and glanced across at Da Silva.

  “Well,” he said, “enough of this love-making. We’ve got hours to discuss this thing, so let’s start with you. What ideas do you have?”

  Da Silva frowned. The faint light from the instrument panel threw dark shadows across his rugged face; he looked almost malevolent, staring through the windshield at the twisting road ahead.

  “The first thing that comes to mind, of course,” he said slowly, thoughtfully, “is smuggling. Using these tourists either consciously or unconsciously as dupes. So far we can place certain people in the gang, and they include a dock porter, Cousin Nestor with his photographs of tourists and his contacts with them—not to mention his glib tongue—plus a Customs inspector who probably isn’t as honest as he could be. Or should be. And a yacht in the picture, and connections with ships …” He paused, frowning. “And speaking of that, why only boats? Why not airplanes?”

  “Or automobiles? Or mules?” Wilson agreed. “Or rafts? Keep going. You’re doing fine.”

  “I am?” Da Silva shook his head. “I’m not, and we both know it. It has all the elements of a smuggling racket except for one thing: what in hell could they be smuggling? Diamonds? Bought at top market price here in Rio and then sold for less than half their value?” He shook his head again, harder this time. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It doesn’t,” Wilson said. “For one thing, I can’t see Mrs. Hastings, or our wealthy hog raiser, engaged in smuggling. They don’t need it, and I doubt that they want it. You’re right, it isn’t smuggling.”

  Da Silva glanced across at him. “Which leaves us what?”

  “That was my next question,” Wilson said.

  “Then I’ll answer it,” Da Silva said decisively. “It leaves us completely in the dark. And it leaves us a lot to find out.” He thrust his watch under the pale gleam of the swaying instrument panel. “Which, with luck, we’ll accomplish tomorrow, when we meet with Senhor Ivan Bernardes.”

  Wilson stared at him in surprise. “We’re seeing Bernardes tomorrow?”

  “Certainly. We should be through going over Nestor’s yacht by ten in the morning; we can be in Salvador by one in the afternoon at the latest. And the S.S. Bolivar isn’t scheduled to dock there until three …”

  Wilson looked at him suspiciously. “You were a busy little bee today, weren’t you?”

  Da Silva grinned. “I was, indeed.”

  “And you’ve got some definite ideas about this thing, don’t you?” He paused as a thought struck him. “Which reminds me of something I’ve been wanting to ask you: just why are we going up to Salvador by way of Camamú, anyway? What’s this sudden, intense interest in Nestor’s boat?”

  “Oh, that?” Da Silva’s grin remained, although a bit thoughtful. “Do you remember how much it bothered us that Nestor, with only seconds to live, tried so hard to tell us about Anna-Maria? Well, actually he wasn’t.”

  Wilson stared at him incredulously. “He wasn’t?”

  “No,” Da Silva said quietly. “He was trying to tell us about the boat. Or at least I think he was. I saw a picture of it today, and you see—it’s called the Anna-Maria.…”

  XI.

  A faint glow ahead in the soft darkness of the tropical night marked one of the few pôstos de gasolina-cum restaurantes that graced their rather graceless route; even as they approached it from a distance the blare of the ever-present radio could be heard. Da Silva marked the racket with satisfaction and pulled into the wide rutted areaway with a heartfelt sigh of relief. It was two in the morning and his arms felt as if little men had been trying to excavate his shoulder sockets with serrated pry bars. The constant twisting of the wheel as they bounced along the rutted road had brought him to a realization that he wasn’t as young as he used to be—assuming he ever had been.

  He switched off the ignition and dragged himself from the car, stretched violently to relieve the painful cramp in his shoulders, and then walked about the car, kicking viciously at the tires in time-honored Brazilian style. This ritual religiously attended to, he leaned in at the open window and tried to shake Wilson awake. A muffled snore was his only response; he refused to accept it as a final answer.

  “Come on!” he said, and tugged harder. “I thought all of you Embassy security officers were supposed to spring to your feet, completely alert at the slightest touch.”

  Wilson snuggled deeper into the seat cushion. Da Silva sighed, leaned over, and dragged the inert body to an upright position. “Up!” he said decisively. “You’re the chauffeur from here on.”

  Wilson yawned convulsively and opened red-rimmed eyes to stare at his companion resentfully. “Drive? Me? I forgot to bring my driver’s license with me.”

  “I’ll protect you,” Da Silva said, and opened the car door. Wilson yawned again, shrugged hopelessly, and swung his feet from the car to the driveway. He shook his head to clear his brains of cobwebs and then followed Da Silva in the direction of the lighted entrance to the bar.

  Huge mosquitoes hummed hungrily in the night; the open bulbs that hung over the open bar front were live clusters of moths and cicadas fighting for proximity to the glare. The two men brushed past and walked in. The attendant was sound asleep with his head pillowed on his arms on the dirty marble counter and his ear an inch from the screaming loud-speaker. Da Silva leaned over and switched the raucous instrument off. The attendant muttered unintelligibly to himself for several moments and then slowly came awake at the unaccustomed silence.

  “Coffee,” Da Silva said. “In a cup—a large cup—half cognac.” He looked about the place. “And gasoline.”

  The attendant staggered sleepily to his feet and moved behind the bar. He yawned and jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of a pile of tins against one wall. “How many?”

  “Six,” Da Silva said, and walked over to pick up a pair of the five-gallon cans. He took them outside, emptied them into the tank, and returned for two more. Wilson stared at him dazedly, still fighting sleep; the attendant was pouring cognac into two cups. Da Silva dropped the empties and disappeared into the night with a second pair. When he returned he paused to take a sip of his drink, picked up the last two, and went out once again. When he finally came back he leaned on the tall bar next to Wilson and downed his coffee in one gulp, tapping the empty cup with a fingernail to indicate his desire for a refill.

  They drank their second cups of the heavily laced coffee a bit more slowly, relishing the comparative coolness of the night and the blessed fact that for the moment, at least, they were not bouncing up and down on the road, fighting crevices and sleep. The attendant surveyed them without interest, waiting for them to finish and pay. Da Silva straightened up, placed money on the bar, and then leaned forward.

  “How far is Camamú?”

  The attendant shrugged. “Two hundred kilometers.” He thought about it a moment. “Or maybe more—maybe three hundred.” A happier possibility occurred to him and he voiced it, always ready to furnish a customer with better news. “Or maybe less. Maybe only one hundred.”

  “Thanks,” Da Silva said dryly, and pocketed his change.

  “You’re the second one to ask tonight,” the attendant said. “And I told him the sa
me thing.” He seemed to feel that the repetition somehow excused his lack of exactitude.

  Da Silva looked up, his eyes suddenly sharp. “What? Who was he?”

  The attendant shrugged. “I don’t know. He just wanted to know how far it was to Camamú. A few hours ago. A little man …” His eyes went to the door and the old taxi standing outside. “… but with a better car.”

  “We can’t all be rich,” Da Silva said philosophically. “Was he alone?”

  “All alone.” The attendant looked at him. “Why? Do you know him?”

  “He’s my aunt,” Da Silva said, and led the way out to the car. Wilson crawled into the driver’s side while Da Silva climbed in opposite him with a frown on his face. Wilson stared at him.

  “Look,” he said. “Camamú is in the public domain—the fact that somebody else is going there doesn’t make it illegal. Two parties going to the same town at the same time isn’t exactly a convention.”

  “In Camamú it could be,” Da Silva said, and relaxed into a grin. “Well, we’ll find out soon enough.” He settled back, squeezed himself into a semblance of comfort, and closed his eyes.

  “There’s just one thing,” Wilson said. “I haven’t the faintest idea which roads we take.”

  Da Silva opened one eye. “I wish all problems were that easily resolved. Here in Brazil we like to keep things simple. We hate to confuse motorists with those multiple choices. So for this reason we only build one road from anyplace to anyplace else.”

  “If that,” Wilson said sourly, and turned on the ignition. Behind them, as he shifted into gear and edged toward the highway, the radio began to howl screechingly; the attendant, alone again, was obviously preparing to return to his sleep.

  The tiny fishing village of Camamú, when at long last they finally managed to reach it, proved to be only one hundred and sixty kilometers from their stop at the bar, but they were one hundred and sixty kilometers that Wilson swore he would never forget. The first few hours had been spent in fervently praying for sunrise and sufficient illumination to enable him to find, let alone hold, the convoluted road. With the first rays of the sun, however, he realized his error; a horde of traffic had apparently been hidden throughout the night in the dense foliage that edged their trail, merely waiting for enough light by which to attack them. Trucks bounced at them from the center of the high-crowned road, swerving only at the last moment; buses, starting from God knows where, and marked with outlandish destinations, bore down on them with a contempt that Wilson was forced to admit their bedraggled appearance probably deserved. They moved now in a constant cloud of dust whipped up by the passing trucks; it ground into the crevices of their skin and caked upon their lips. Da Silva had long since foregone sleep as an impossibility and stared somberly through the streaked windshield as if mustering all of his sang-froid to meet a dire fate.