by Peter Leslie
Illya had no means of knowing how wide the reservoir might be in the drowned valley behind the barrage, but the actual dam was one of the highest he had ever seen. From the curved lip spanning the gorge high up against the blue wedge of sky, the great curtain of concrete plunged downwards in three stages like a frozen wave. At each level, multiple arches housing the sluices linked blockhouses from which the giant-bore pipes dropped to the hydroelectric generating station below. And around the power station an ancillary web of transformer housings, masts, insulators and pylons had been neatly spun. Towering between the age-old rock faces of that desolate valley, the dam was a testament to the ingenuity of man, a beautiful piece of engineering.
The agent drove slowly up to the wire gates blocking the road to the power station. On either side as far as he could see, ten-foot wire fencing behind a deep ditch guarded the boundaries of the property. A man came out of a small concrete building just inside the gates. He was dressed in the same khaki and black uniform worn by the guards Illya had seen in the convoy. And he was carrying a machine pistol.
"What do you want?" he called over the top of the gates. His voice was not friendly.
"This is the San Felipe dam, isn't it?" Illya called, putting his head out of the car window. "The Moraes-Wassermann project?"
The guard continued staring at him, saying nothing.
"I am a construction engineer… in Brazil on a short visit to survey progress in hydroelectric works, bridging, and so on. They tell me the barrage here, is particularly interesting and I wondered -"
"This is private property," the man said. "On your way.
"Most dams are on private property, but that does not mean that a courteously worded request -"
"I said beat it," the guard snapped, his sullen face scowling. "We don't like snoopers around here. Like I said, it's private, see. Now get out."
"But how can I get to see the artificial lake…"
"You can't. You can either go back to San Felipe or go on to Aguacalinda or Goiás - if you like driving over bare rock. And you won't see the lake from either road, because it's not overlooked by any goddamn road. It's too high up and the rocks are too steep around it… There's a third choice: you stay here one minute more, I'll call out the site police and have you towed off our property. And they're not gentle."
"Well, really… I'm not on your property anyway. I'm outside the gates."
"You're on private property the moment you leave that fork. Now are you getting the hell out of here, Or…"
Hoping that he had displayed the correct amount of outraged resentment to pass for a visitor consumed merely with idle curiosity, Illya turned the Volkswagen and drove on towards Aguacalinda. Although the surface was very bad, the road appeared - judging from the multiplicity of tire marks in the dust - to carry fairly heavy traffic.
Such few houses that he saw, however - mainly peasant huts or the dwellings of subsistence farmers who scratched a living from the stony soil - were strung out along the hillside far from the road without even a track wide enough for a vehicle leading to them. So the traffic must either be heading all the way south to Goiás and the next state (which seemed unlikely) or to some other place further up the valley. Yet the maps he had, admittedly imprecise, showed no sign of any large habitation before Aguacalinda... which was some distance on the other side of the pass and was in any case smaller than San Felipe itself.
If the maps were in any way correct, the valley which had been drowned by the reservoir curved around and ran almost parallel with the one he was in right up to the watershed. Between the trees to his right every now and then he could see the high wire fence enclosing the property - which seemed to confirm the geographers in their mapping.
When he was two or three miles from the gates and, the guard house, he stopped the car under a grove of trees and climbed the steep side of the valley on the opposite side of the road from the fence.
The trees were dense and for the first half hour it was tough going. Then he came out onto a stretch of rocky ground where it was easier to pick his way. And finally he stopped where the rough slope met the vertical cliffs lining the gorge.
But the guard had been right. Even from here he could see nothing of the artificial lake beyond the far side of the defile. Behind the opposite rock face the barren ground rose again and cut off his view before it dropped to the next valley. At his feet, the road and the dried up river bed snaked through the trees.
He scrambled back down the mountainside and crossed the road to examine the wire fence.
As he had expected, there were alarm wires threaded along its length - although these were surprisingly not electric, but the simple mechanical kind which actuated buzzers or bells. Every few yards there were notices saying: DANGER! THIS IS PRIVATE PROPERTY. KEEP OFF! WARNING IS GIVEN TO TRESPASSERS THAT THE GROUND BEYOND THIS FENCE IS PATROLLED BY ARMED GUARDS AND BY DOGS.
He returned to the car and drove on. After another mile and a half, the fence curved away up the steepening hillside to pass around a sizable property bordering the road. There was a long, low, two-storied house with wooden balconies, a group of outbuildings, and palm trees behind a high hedge of some shrub. An estancia, would it be? A hacienda?... No, that was Spanish, surely. But anyway it was a demesne very different in style from the poor cabins scattered along the other side of the valley.
It was when he had gone about ten minutes' drive past the place, and the road was beginning to zigzag up wards, obviously on its way to the saddle across the watershed, that he realized the evidence of heavy traffic was no longer visible. The dusty spaces between the pot holes were bare of tire marks.
He turned and drove back towards the property, pulling the VW off the road a quarter of a mile short of it and running the car behind a thicket to hide it from the road.
Once again he forced his way up the hillside to the rock face and scanned the valley below through field glasses.
The estancia was clearly visible beyond a stretch of woods. Behind the dense hedges, there seemed to be quite a number of people busied about various tasks, among them a number of women in the distinctive green tweed uniforms of the D.A.M.E.S. They must be sweltering in those clothes at this temperature! Illya thought.
There were several station wagons and a few private cars parked between the house and the barns. As he watched, some large American convertible carrying three men and three girls prowled around the edge of the building and cruised down towards the gate. One of the girls got out to open the gate and then the car sped away northwards towards Getuliana in a cloud of dust. Judging from their movements, all six of the occupants appeared to be somewhat drunk.
Illya's binoculars had remained trained on the gateway, though. The powerful Zeiss lenses clearly showed up the beaten earth of the entrance - and the myriad marks of heavy wheels passing over it. The mystery of where all the traffic on the road had gone was solved: obviously all of it turned in here!
But where did the heavy trucks go when they had made the turn? There were none visible there now - and although the estancia was large enough, there was certainly no accommodation for convoys as big as the one he had seen leaving the airstrip earlier. There had still been trucks loading material from the transport planes when he had left to follow the first convoy, however; even if he had lost the first one, there should be a second coming along some time soon. Then he could find out.
He would have to find a different viewpoint, nevertheless. Various belts of trees intercepted his vision where he was now. He began working his way back down to wards the car.
When he was about halfway there, he emerged from a screen of bushes to find a poorly dressed Indian standing with his back to him on a piece of level ground, staring flint-faced across the valley at the estancia.
"Nice place?" Kuryakin said, lacking a suitable opening.
The Indian swung slowly around and stared at him impassively.
"I mean, it's a bit of a surprise, finding a big place like that out here," Illy
a went on. "All the others are so small, you know."
"Nice place, sure, if you have money," the Indian said bitterly.
"It belongs to rich people, then? From the city?
"Surprise, too, to all the people live here. All the people have houses and farms that are take away and put under lake," said the man - who appeared to make a practice of answering always the question before the one that had just been asked.
The agent looked suitably encouraging and said nothing.
"I had a farm - small place, but I like - over there," the Indian continued, waving an arm towards the opposite side of the valley. "Now it is take away and I am given small, poor house here with stony ground and some money. But money cannot give me back thirty years work on that farm - and my father before. Now I am not even allowed to walk past and look into water!"
"But I thought the ladies down there dressed in green had helped to iron out – or – to - to make easy all the problems with those who had to move for the dam."
"Ladies!" the man burst out. "Ladies? Our women are not allowed to behave like that in private - and certainly not in public. It is disgrace… drunken and singing and shouts and unseemly acts."
"Really? You surprise me. But this is an American -"
"Why should these foreign women be permitted to mock our customs in this way? It is disgrace."
"Understood. This is not the first time I have heard such complaints. Do all the women connected with the dam behave like that?"
But the Indian suddenly bit his lower lip, an expression of guarded watchfulness closing up his face. "I say too much," he muttered. "It is not permitted. It is forbidden to speak of these matters."
"By whom?"
"The gods will be angry and spoil our crops."
"Who says so? Who says you mustn't speak?"
"The caboclo. It is instruction."
"Caboclo?"
"The old one, the mouthpiece of the spirits. Pai Hernando told me so. Through the caboclo he speaks with the spirits."
"What name did you say?" Illya almost shouted.
"Pai Hernando. The father-of-saint at the Candomblé down there."
"That place is a Candomblé headquarters?"
"Not whole place. There is a Candomblé tenda behind."
"And the name of the - father-of-saint? – his name is Hernando and he speaks with the spirits through a guide, a caboclo?"
"Pai Hernando, yes."
Illya was whistling to himself as he ran down the remainder of the slope to the Volkswagen. He had felt all along that he was on the right scent. Now, surely, this must be the "Hernando's Hideaway" which had so puzzled them in Napoleon Solo's telegram.
---
He put his key in the Volkswagen's lock and twisted.
The key refused to turn.
Puzzled, he tried again. Again he could make no impression. He stood back and stared at the vehicle... and realized suddenly that it wasn't his own. It was the same color, the same model, the same year. But the registration number was one integer different - and inside, tossed carelessly onto the back seat, was the cockaded hat of a member of the D.A.M.E.S.
It must be the car hired by the girl, Coralie Simone - indeed, now that he had oriented himself, he could see the top of his own gleaming through the thicket a little way to the north.
And if this was Coralie Simone's car - and if the boy at the car rental company had told the truth - then this was the actual one Solo had been driving in this very area a few days ago. And Solo himself, alive or dead, must be somewhere on the other side of the wire fence beyond the place he had called Hernando's Hideaway...
Chapter 8
A Break-In - And A Surprise!
ILLYA CAME upon the girl quite unexpectedly. He had decided to leave the car where it was and approach the estancia on foot, reasoning that the people in charge were less likely to notice a strange vehicle if it was further on up the valley, beyond their gates. He had been forced to cross the road to the side where the wire fence ran, because the river bed was immediately along side the entrance road and there was no cover on the opposite side. And he had plunged deeper into the bushes between road and fence, first to avoid being seen by two tough-looking men and two overpainted girls in a red Jaguar which had roared past in the direction of the pass, and secondly when he had heard the second convoy arriving.
It was while he was watching the twelve two-tonners turn in at the gate of the estancia that he heard the girl's gasp of pain.
The sound seemed to come from only a few feet away, just on the far side of a clump of oleanders lining the ditch. Cautiously, he parted the branches with their scarlet flowers and peered through.
The fence was immediately beyond the ditch - and just behind it was the girl, her arm bent up behind her back by one of the uniformed men who obviously patrolled the whole perimeter around the dam. She was dressed in D.A.M.E.S. uniform now. Against the pallor of her cheeks, her hair shone richly in the sun.
"Come on, sweetheart," the guard was saying in English. "You know as well as I do that you're not allowed on this side of the fence. Now how'd you get over, and what are you doin', huh?"
"You're hurting my arm," the girl said. "Oh… I - I walked around from the gates. Down by the power house."
"Don't give me that," the man rasped. "The gates are five miles from here and your shoes are still polished - there's not even a scratch on 'em!"
"I can't help that... Will you let go of my arm -"
"You come across from the estancia that's what, ain't it? Now you know you birds got no business this side of the wire… that's why Macdonald would never let you through at the gates. Either you go through the mountain or you stay outside at the estancia, right?... Now I'm gonna take you right back to the guardroom and we'll see what…"
And suddenly he was on the ground. Illya could not see exactly how it was done - an ankle was placed to one side, a trim hip was thrust out and something expert took place with the arm that had been held up be hind the girl's back - but the result was that the guard, momentarily inattentive as his thoughts ran ahead, found himself flying through the air over Coralie Simone' shoulder.
He landed flat on his back among the grasses. There were lumps of limestone bidden by the tussocks an the force of the impact would have knocked out many men. But this one was tough. He was on his feet almost at once, lips snarled back from discolored teeth, approaching the girl like a wrestler, with outstretched hands.
His mistake was to go on thinking, after the initial surprise, that he could handle the thing himself. Had he blown the whistle that hung around his neck on a chain, that would have been that: a patrol of men would have been down on them within minutes and the girl would have been taken prisoner. But with the arrogance of the true bully, the guard was confident that he could overpower a mere woman.
From behind his screen of oleanders, Kuryakin watched the man and the girl circling each other over the rough ground. He wasn't sure what to do. There was an overhanging branch from a big tree some way down the fence; he could probably swing himself across without disturbing the alarm wire there. Yet there was a risk that the guard might see or hear him on the way to it. And they had to avoid at all costs any attempt to summon help.
In the event, the decision was taken from the Russian's hands. Having had three attempts at grappling with his adversary frustrated by well timed judo grips, the guard began to lose his temper. He leaped at the girl with flailing fists.
Coralie Simone sprang agilely away towards the fence - but as she went, one heel caught in a projection of rock concealed among the grasses and she stumbled backwards. With a growl of triumph, the guard was on her, pinning her arms to her sides in a bear hug and forcing her to the ground. The girl brought one sharp knee up into his stomach as she tried desperately to free her arms. She twisted her head and sank her teeth into the rough material of his sleeve, attempting to bite through the cloth to the muscles of the biceps beneath. She jerked her forehead back and forth trying to butt him i
n the face.
The man chuckled and spun her around as easily as if her body had been a bale of cotton. As she lay face downwards in the tall grass, he kneeled on the backs of her thighs and seized the collar of her jacket in both hands. The green stuff ripped up the back seam as be yanked with all his strength and the garment came away from her in two pieces.
As he grunted in triumph and in amusement, his eyes looked through the wire strands of the fence and met the glittering stare of Kuryakin concealed among the leaves on the other side.
Before the round O of his mouth could utter the cry of astonishment it was framing, the agent's forefinger had tightened on the trigger of the miniature automatic in his hand. The weapon - it looked no more dangerous than a gadget cigarette lighter - emitted a staccato chock and the guard keeled over backwards. As he crashed down among the grasses, the girl got shakily to her feet.
"You!" she said, seeing Kuryakin. "What are you doing here?... I suppose I ought to thank you, though I could have bandied him perfectly well myself. Even so…" She looked dubiously down at the fallen guard.