by Lou Cameron
“That’s okay. I know a German accent when I hear one, Fritz. I used to be an officer and gentleman myself. Do you want to make a deal?”
“What kind of deal, Mein Herr? As you see, resistance is useless. But all will go well with you, if you obey.”
“Bullshit. We can still make you fight for the prize, and even if you win, it’s going to cost you.”
“Be reasonable, Captain Gringo. You can’t even hit my schooner from there with that machine gun. But I assure you our new Krupp deck guns can hit anyone on this island!”
Captain Gringo lit a smoke as he let Jager stare into his machine-gun muzzle awhile before he said, “I’m willing to be reasonable if you are. You see the wrecked Spatiish sub we’ve all been looking for. It’s no use to us. But you can have it if you agree to my terms.”
Jager turned on one heel to stare soberly at the now-more-wrecked-than-ever wreck for a time before he turned back and demanded, “What are your terms, Captain Gringo?”
“If you know who I am, you know I can make life rough on any salvage crew you try to send ashore. But, like I said, the wreck’s all yours, provided you agree to the following. One: your people land here and nowhere else on the island. Two: you salvage, examine, eat, or whatever that wreck and nothing else. Then you get the hell out of here.”
“What is your number three?”
“There isn’t any number three. I’m offering you the wreck free and clear and you’re agreeing not to bother anyone or anything else on the island. I may be doing us both a favor. The natives are sort of restless and I have a terrible temper when I’m double-crossed, too.”
Jager smiled thinly and said, “So I have been told. Hakim’s people have of course already examined the wreck, nicht wahr?”
“Not really. The German agent you put aboard fucked up our salvage gear. You don’t have to worry about picking him up before you leave, either. Horgany’s body is over here behind these boxes with us. You can bury him or stuff him or whatever without even entering the treeline before you go. How do you like it so far?”
Jager chuckled and said, “You seem to have thought of everything. How did you find out about our man on board?”
“That was Horgany who fired the flare for you just now. Need I say more? If you want to bicker about details we can give you a pretty good fight. If you’re smart, you’ll see it’s just not worth it. So let’s hear your terms.”
Jager saluted stiffly and said, “I agree to yours. But no tricks, ja? I agree not to fight if you give me no cause to fight you. I do not mean I am afraid to fight you if you are planning treachery, Captain Gringo!”
“What can I tell you? We both went to military school and we both know the rules. Go back to your landing party now, and give us ten minutes to clear out.”
“Don’t you trust me, Captain Gringo?”
“About as well as you trust me, Square Head!”
Jager laughed and turned away to rejoin his men. Captain Gringo waited until he was out of range and told Gaston, “Okay, let’s get out of here poco tiempo.”
Gaston grinned slyly and said, “For once we agree on something. But just how are we to cross those Boches double without getting our adorable derrieres shot off now?”
Captain Gringo said, “We can’t. Not without big guns of our own. We’ll find the others, move everyone over to what’s left of the Montez plantation, and build a bonfire for Venezis after dark. He’ll spot it from sea and put into that wharf to pick us up, I hope.”
“What if those Boches spot it as well?”
“They won’t, if they’re here trying to figure out what went wrong aboard that sub they sold Spain. If they plan a double cross, we should know it before nightfall. Some are sure to get off at least a few shots before the Black Caribs whack their heads off in the jungle.”
As they walked through the same jungle, Gaston thought a bit and said, “Eh bien. Even a Boche should be able to see the disadvantages of treachery after you’ve made it so easy for them to get what they want. Why did you make it so easy for them, Dick? It’s not like you to give up without a fight.”
“Shit, trying to stop them now wouldn’t be a fight. It’d be plain suicide.”
“True, but I have seen you standing up to greater odds, you noisy child. I imagine Hakim was expecting a little more for his money, too.”
“Fuck Hakim. He didn’t offer us enough to get us all killed for him, you know. Come to think of it, nobody has that kind of money!”
“I agree. But unless Hakim does, he’s not going to pay us at all.”
“What do you want, egg in your cerveza? You’re the one who’s always bellyaching about taking chances. I should think you’d be happy for a change, to get out of the mess without further risk to your ass.”
Gaston frowned and said, “I would, if we were not giving in to a Prussian species of motherfucker, Dick. But there is something about a Boche that brings out the Frenchman in me. I still owe them for the time they fired on a French truce flag in seventy. So if you have any second thoughts, I am with you. God owes me at least one more German in my sights before I call it quits!”
*
But Captain Gringo didn’t double-cross the Germans, and, as Jager kept his end of their armistice as well, things started to go right for a change. The soldiers of fortune found the other survivors in the jungle and led them to the Montez plantation, where they found a few liberated workers had returned to their few unburned shacks and didn’t seem to want anything to do with the obviously crazy gringos.
That night they built a bonfire on the beach and around ten o’clock the Peirene came in cautiously to pick them up. Venezis asked where to, next, and seemed delighted when Captain Gringo told him to make for Limón muy pronto, just in case the Germans had second thoughts about the deal.
Apparently they didn’t. For by dawn they were well under way southeast, with not another sail in sight.
By this time Captain Gringo was feeling a little bushed. So he went below to turn in, alone. They now had a lot more room to spare than they’d started the voyage with. So he was flaked out in one of the spare staterooms, naked and trying to sleep, when he heard a discreet tap on the door and, thinking it was Antigone, got up to let her in without bothering to pull his pants on.
Eva Horgany, or whatever her name was, gasped in dismay as she saw his nude flesh and welcoming semi-erection. But she slid in fast and locked the door behind her, saying, “Dick, we have to talk. You got us off that island alive, but you may have gotten us all killed anyway!”
“We who are about to die salute you. If you don’t intend to take off that dress I’d better find a towel or something. I wasn’t pointing a weapon at you personally, Eva. I thought you were someone else.”
She batted her Oriental eyes knowingly and said, “I know about you and that German slut, Herta. I hope you found her amusing as she spied on you.”
He moved over to the bunk and sat down, draping a pillow across his lap as he frowned up at Eva and asked, “She’s a spy too? Who sent her to spy on me, Der Kaiser or Hakim?”
Eva sat beside him and said, “Neither. That fake Hungarian was the German spy and I’m Hakim’s ears and eyes on board this vessel. Herta and her husband are working for Linke-Stettin. They never really fired him at their Kiel yards. It was all a ruse.”
He frowned and said, “Keller was planted by the firm that built that submarine for Spain? Hell, if anyone had the blueprints it should have been them. But, yeah, I noticed how reluctant he was to dive. Okay, so Keller stole his own helmet glass so he wouldn’t have to. Is he really bisexual as well?”
“Of course. They both are. That’s what makes them such a great team. What did Herta get out of you? I know I didn’t tell her anything when she made a lesbian pass at me one night.”
He chuckled and said, “She didn’t get any information out of me, at least. I didn’t have any to give her. You sure must listen at keyholes a lot, Eva. Who else was that big blonde getting, ah, information o
ut of?”
Eva grimaced and said, “Anyone she could get alone for a few minutes, I imagine. I only know for a fact she seduced Fitzke and, of course, your friend Gaston.”
He laughed and said, “Always knew Gaston was a sneak. Yeah, that was why she cooled off so sudden, once she saw she wasn’t getting anything but slap and tickle out of anyone. I’ve got to hand it to her, though. She told a pretty good story about her husband and her not getting along, and … hold it … she must have been the one who spread stories about that poor Swiss being a sissy too, right?”
Eva shook her head and said, “No, Socrates just liked to boast. That’s why Keller shoved him overboard. He enjoyed a change of pace as well as any other sodomist, but he didn’t like his lovers boasting of it. Killing Socrates also clouded the sabotaged helmet, no?”
He grimaced and said, “You sure paint a pretty picture of that pair. What do you think Hakim will do to them, once you tell him all this?”
She said, “That’s what we have to talk about. I don’t think I want to face Sir Basil now that we’ve failed him. I have a little money. But I don’t know my way around in Costa Rica as well as you do. What would it take to convince you that you should let me hide out with you until Hakim gets tired of looking for us and goes somewhere else to cause trouble?”
He frowned thoughtfully and said, “I don’t see how I can do that, Eva. You see …”
But she didn’t let him explain further. He’d noticed she could move fast when she thought she had to. But it was still a surprise, albeit not an unhappy one, when she wrapped her arms around him and with no further ado proceeded to French kiss him and jerk him off at the same time.
He came up for air, protesting, “Hey, don’t waste me in mid-air, for God’s sake. I’ve got a better place in mind to come, if we’re going to be such good friends!”
She laughed lewdly and shoved him flat on his back to hook a petite thigh across him and impale herself on his raging erection He hadn’t thought she was wearing much underwear under that thin pongee dress. She moved her internal muscles with astounding skill on his shaft as she smiled down at him and asked, “Are we really to be good friends, darling?”
He said, “Oh, yeah!” as he started to undress her while she slid up and down, gripping tightly, and added, “Let’s see what else you have to offer.”
She said, “Everything I have is yours, beloved. Do you like my pussy? It is yours.” And when he peeled her dress off over her head she held her perky little breasts up for inspection and said they were all his, too. So he rolled her over on her back and kissed them both as he pounded her and climaxed in her almost at once. She felt it and sighed. “You will save my life, won’t you, darling?”
He said, “Can’t talk right now. Too busy,” as he kept on moving in her delightful interior.
She sobbed, “Oh, yes, bus me, bus me, bus me!” He didn’t ask her what “bus” might mean in Hungarian. There were some things a guy could figure out all by himself. It sure was a funny word for “fucking.” He wondered how a Hungarian caught a regular crosstown bus.
Eva didn’t see fit to tell him the Hungarian for “coming.” She just let him know by trying to bite him off at the roots with her amazing little snatch as they both went crazy for a while. Gaston had been right about her being a wild-thighed as well as wild-eyed little thing. Some of the positions they wound up in were obviously impossible. But she was pretty as well as double-jointed, so what the hell.
After having bused him crosstown, uptown, downtown, and straight up and down, Eva stayed plastered against him, begging for her life, as he lit a claro to figure out what day it was at least. She kept saying the Merchant of Death would surely kill them all for failing, until he patted her bare bottom fondly and said, “We didn’t fail. I’ve been fibbing a lot. I’d already figured out why Keller didn’t want anyone to know what was wrong with the underwater gunbucket his firm built. I knew even better when we tried to fire her deck gun and peeled the deck off. He tried to con me with disparaging remarks about Spanish seamanship. But I read my history books, and despite Francis Drake, some Spaniards know one end of a boat from the other. Hakim wanted to know how Linke-Stettin underbid him oh those submarine contracts. Okay, we found out.”
“Yes, but you let the Germans recover her and now they’ll know, too. Oh, Dick, I’m so frightened. You’ve never seen Sir Basil in a real rage!”
He didn’t ask her if she’d ever seen the old bastard with his clothes off. He didn’t want to know, and, hell, it probably would have killed a man Hakim’s age. So what the hell.
He said, “I’ll handle Hakim. You can hide out with Gaston while I try to get our money out of the old shit, if you promise not to do this to Gaston. He doesn’t deserve it.”
She purred like a kitten and rubbed her open crotch against his hip, saying, “I told you, I’m all yours for as long as you want me, provided we get to live that long., Hakim’s German rivals were not supposed to find out what was wrong with their design, dammit!”
He said, “Let me worry about that. We’ve got some problems closer to hand to worry about.”
“Oh, would you like to bus me some more?”
“I’d like to. I’d better not. This is kind of delicate, Eva. But you see, Herta isn’t the only other lady aboard I have to keep calmed down at least until we make port.”
“My God, you’ve been busing that Greek girl, too?”
“What can I tell you? If we’re going to be pals we have to level with each other, right?”
She laughed and said, “I’ll help you keep your secrets if you’ll be nice to me once more before I leave, playing the innocent.”
So he did, and she did, and if it took a little longer than usual with Antigone that night, Antigone didn’t seem to mind.
*
He was just as glad he’d left Eva with Gaston, on the far side of town, when he reported to Sir Basil Hakim back in San José a few days later.
As Eva had feared, the Merchant of Death listened calmly enough until Captain Gringo got to the part about letting the Germans have the damned fool submarine. Then he said flatly, “I’m going to have you killed, you stupid son of a bitch!”
Captain Gringo said, “No, you’re not. You’re going to pay us the bonus and, oh, yeah, I think we rate the Kellers’ share too. Now that you know they were working for your rivals. I’d like the Swiss and Jamaican’s share to go to their families, of course.”
“You certainly are optimistic, for a man who’s about to die, Walker. I’ll naturally do the right thing as far as the men who died in my service are concerned. It’s good business to keep one’s word. As for the Kellers, they’re dead. They just don’t know it yet. You can save yourself a lot of pain by telling me where Gaston and the Hungarian girl are, before your execution.”
“Hadn’t you better grow some before you threaten an armed adult so freely, Shorty?”
Then he noticed the gun barrels pointing out from the drapery all around and said with a crooked smile, “Come to think of it, you do seem a little taller now. But you still don’t want to have me shot.”
“I don’t, dear boy? You have perhaps one full minute to tell me why. I never sent you out to lead that perishing Jager right to my submarine, God damn your eyes!”
“I’m going to need more than a minute to explain if you don’t knock off all this spooky shit. In the first place, it was not your submarine. It was never your submarine. Your rivals in Kiel, Linke-Stettin, built it, and you never laid eyes on it. I did. I know how they underbid you. You won’t, unless you stop waving guns at people and act like a grown man, for God’s sake.”
“I’m listening. Keep talking.”
Captain Gringo explained how Linke-Stettin had underbid him by simply building an impossibly fragile vessel that would have sunk the first time Spain tried to use it against anyone, if a storm hadn’t sunk it even sooner. The old man’s eyes grew thoughtful and almost amused as he heard how trying to fire the deck gunshot rivets cl
ean ashore.
But when Captain Gringo paused for breath, Hakim wasn’t smiling as he said, “All right. I know Linke-Stettin is run by shit heels. I knew that before I sent all of you to salvage their latest efforts. I’ll concede you found out how they underbid Woodbine Arms, Limited. But I fail to see what good the information is to me. I already knew they hold almost anything together with haywire and spit long enough to sell it. But I sell weapons meant to be used in the field, not for show. If you’d only brought back a few more details, my engineers might have been able to design something as cheap as Linke-Stettin that wouldn’t melt in the rain. But all you did was ruin the wreck further and run away, letting the Germans have it without a fight! God damn it, man. I paid you good money to fight as much as you had to!”
Captain Gringo said, “I wish you’d shut up and listen.”
“You tell me to shut up? You dare, with my men covering you?”
“Have to. You said I only had a minute, and I’d have been finished by now if you’d shut up and listen.”
“Keep talking. This had better be good.”
“I think it is. In the first place, there’s just no way you’ll ever underbid Linke-Stettin. If they bid any lower they couldn’t even afford the haywire and spit. That’s what they didn’t want you or anyone else to find out. That’s why they infiltrated your company with their own agents after firing Keller, they said, just for being a little fruity. By the way, you’d better not waste money having them killed. Let Linke-Stettin take care of them for you. You think you’re mad?”
“I don’t think. I am. You let Keller sabotage the mission, you clown!”
Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Couldn’t be helped. Even if I hadn’t been busy screwing his wife, how was I supposed to watch him every minute? He managed to keep anyone from examining the lousy underwater riveting, but it didn’t matter, when Gaston and me popped all the rivets out of the top plates without really trying. So if Keller and Herta are dumb enough to go anywhere near Germany for their just deserts, I figure they’ll sure as hell get them. They really fucked up. Linke-Stettin should be going out of business any minute, unless they want to give a lot of people their money back. By the way, was that submarine insured?”