by Lou Cameron
“Ah, trés sneaky! Regardez, I shall tear up my droll new passport non?”
“No. Hang on to it. It’s a lovely forgery and guys like us never can have too many fake I.D. papers.”
“Eh bien, after the heat dies down, as you say, one never knows what one may feel like showing some annoying public official. I had forgotten we meant to get out of here with our old fake passports in any case. It is a good thing you have me along to do your thinking, Dick. At times you can be forgetful.”
And so the two soldiers of fortune spent the next two days winding through the delta channels to the steaming port of Curiapo, where indeed they saw several ocean going ships at anchor in the channel and Gaston looked up another old legion deserter to see that the borrowed launch was returned to the Dutchman’s woman.
The hotel was shabbier and the chambermaids were ugly, so they only stayed long enough to board a shelter deck passenger cargo coaster bound for Rio under the Liberian flag with a mixed Latin American crew. The purser hardly glanced at their papers, once he’d seen the color of their money, and they booked adjoining cabins on the port side to avoid the afternoon sun on the way south. The coaster steamed out of the Boca Grande on the late afternoon ebb tide so there was little time to meet other passengers before it was too late to do anything about it. But that night at dinner Captain Gringo spotted a very beautiful albeit frosty blond sitting at the captain’s table. She looked like one of those snooty dames who wore her white gloves and veil to bed. It was impossible to catch her eye from across the salon. The middle-aged Argentine skipper was drooling as he stared at her from closer range, but Captain Gringo didn’t think he was going to make it with the willowy ash blond. She was too poised and well-hatted to be a virgin, but if she was travelling alone, she figured to be sleeping alone, damn it.
Gaston spotted her, too, and nudged his younger comrade to slyly say, “Regardez, there is a woman worthy of your talents, my adorable child. She likes you, too. I, Gaston, keep abreast of such details, and, speaking of breasts, oh, to be young again!”
Captain Gringo kicked him under the table and said, “Knock it off, you dirty old man. I’m a judge of various kinds of flesh, too, and that one’s out of my league.”
“Do you want me to see if I can find out who she is and where she’s going, Dick?”
“Don’t bother. We’ll be getting off too soon. That’s a two week campaign if I ever saw one, even if I had the kind of money it would take. Finish your fucking food. You’re giving me a hard-on.”
Gaston reluctantly dropped his eyes to the much less interesting dessert in front of him as Captain Gringo forced himself to look somewhere less painful, too. Gaston said, “I noticed a couple of others, strolling the deck as we came from our cabin.”
“I noticed them, too. They weren’t bad, but I picked up some books to read back in port. Behave yourself aboard this tub, Gaston. By now the wires are sizzling and we don’t want to attract attention by playing musical beds for the ship’s gossips.”
“Merde alors, it is all very well for you to stay in your cabin and read. I, Gaston, am a man of action. But you are probably right. I shall content myself with renewing my old love affair with my fist, tonight. I am not ashamed to admit this voyage is making me trés nervous. Would you have boarded if you’d known they meant to put into that disgusting British port of call in the morning, my old and reckless?” Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “They didn’t list Georgetown, British Guiana, as a regular stop when I bought our tickets, but there’s nothing we can do about it, now. We’ll only be there long enough to drop off some cargo and if we stay aboard we don’t have to go through British customs, so what the hell.”
~*~
Captain Gringo was still keyed up by the last few frantic days, so he read until late and ignored the sunlight through the porthole to turn over and sleep some more. When he woke again he sat up, startled, wondering what felt wrong. Then, as he wiped a hand across his sleep-puffed eyes he realized what it was. The ship wasn’t moving under him anymore. They were anchored some damn place.
He washed and shaved before getting dressed in the new suit he’d picked up in Curiapo to look less suspicious. When he stepped out on deck he saw the some damn place was a river estuary with a little neat white town along the eastern shore. The Union Jack was flying in the breeze above a small fort guarding the approaches to the town. The British flag on shore didn’t bother him nearly as much as the one on the stern of a British battle cruiser anchored amid some rams and transports a few cable lengths away. One of the rams looked familiar. It had machine gun dents all over its superstructure.
He went back to his cabin and decided to skip breakfast. But as he was lighting a cigar, a steward knocked on the door and announced, “All passengers to the main salon with then-papers, señor. We are to be inspected by the authorities here for some reason.”
Captain Gringo considered his options. There was no place aboard to hide that the crew wouldn’t know about. Jumping overboard seemed sort of dumb in broad daylight. He hid the forged papers the Americans had just given him under his mattress and decided his old fake I.D., so dirty and worn, would be difficult to read. He was dead if he attracted any attention at all, so he buttoned his jacket and decided to get there before anyone came looking for him.
He met Gaston on deck. The Frenchman smiled wryly at him and asked, “Know any other short cuts to French Guiana, Dick?” and Captain Gringo said, “Shut up and try to look nonchalant.”
“Merde alors always look nonchalant, even when I am wetting my pants, I don’t think we’re going to make it, Dick. Perhaps if we shot them and commandeered their launch?”
“Shut up and let’s play it by ear,” said Captain Gringo as he entered the salon to discover other passengers and crew members sitting about with their papers handy. He noticed the cool blond, in a different hat, sitting alone in a corner smoking a cigarette from a long ivory holder. She didn’t return his gaze and it seemed a dumb time to join her. So he led Gaston to another table and they sat down, wearing puzzled smiles, as a trio of white uniformed men in pith helmets moved from table to table with the skipper. The Brits were polite and fast, so, all too soon, they came to Captain Gringo’s table and the one with a moustache that looked like it belonged on a toothbrush said, “Just a formality, Sir. But would you be good enough to identify yourselves?”
Captain Gringo handed his and Gaston’s grungy papers to him and the official glanced over them, handed them back, and said, “My word, you chaps certainly have been moving about. Would you be good enough to come ashore with us, both of you?”
“What for?” protested Captain Gringo. “Aren’t our papers in order?”
“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with your I.D.’s, if those are your I.D.s, but we’d better have a word with our superiors on shore, anyway. You will come quietly, won’t you, gentlemen?”
Gaston tensed at Captain Gringo’s side. But the tall American shot him a warning look and rose, smiling grimly. A lot of things could happen in a harbor launch and how accurate were all those ships guns all around in any case, right?
As Gaston rose, too, the willowy blond left her seat across the salon and joined them, taking a small black folder with a gilt crest from her hand bag. She asked the one with the moustache, “What seems to be the problem, here?” and he touched the brim of his helmet to her and said, “Official Matters, Miss. None of your concern, I assure you.”
The blond flipped open her I.D., held it up to him, and said, coldly, “I’ll decide that, my good man. I assume you recognize this. Pamela DeVere-Hunt, here. Brevet Colonel, British Intelligence.”
“Oh, I say, Mum, I had no idea.”
“Quite. Now suppose you tell me why you’re bothering these fellow passengers of mine? Haven’t you Colonials stirred up enough of a flap with friendly powers in the past few days?”
Moustache flushed and said, “Just doing one’s duty, Mum. Cooperating with the American authorities, as a matter of fact. These
gentlemen answer to the descriptions they just cabled us regarding a certain Captain Gringo and a smaller non-descript comrade in arms. Chaps wanted for murder in the States, I believe.”
Pamela DeVere-Hunt looked even snootier as she said, coldly, “You really are behind the times. Dick Walker, alias Captain Gringo, is dead.”
“The Yanks caught him, Mum? They never told us that!”
“Of course they didn’t. They don’t know. The notorious soldier of fortune was ambushed the other night in Tucupita with two of our agents watching.”
“Oh, I say, then who might this gentleman be?”
“I’ve no idea, but since Captain Gringo is at the moment rotting on the bottom of a drainage canal he must be someone else, don’t you imagine?”
Moustache nodded and turned back to tell Captain Gringo, “Sorry to have troubled you, Sir. Just doing my job and all that rot. Must say you certainly resemble that other chap. But all’s well that ends well, eh?”
Captain Gringo realized he’d stopped breathing when he tried to answer. He nodded, mutely, and Moustache looked around to add, “Well, that’s that. Nobody else on board we want. Sorry, all.”
Then he saluted the willowy blond in the veiled hat, turned on his heels, and marched out with the others in tow. Captain Gringo smiled at the blond British agent and said, “That was decent of you, miss. The least I could offer you would be a drink, right?”
The blond shrugged and moved back toward her table without saying yes or no. Gaston nudged his taller and younger comrade and murmured, “I told you she liked you. I think I’ll take a stroll on deck. The girls I mentioned are just leaving.”
Captain Gringo saw the salon was starting to clear, but he caught the eye of a waiter and pointed at the blond’s table as he moved over to join her. He sat down and asked, “Gin and tonic?” and she said, “Of course. By the way, are you Captain Gringo, by any chance?”
“I thought you said your guys killed him, ma’am.”
“Call me Pam. He wasn’t shot by British agents. Castro rebels, we imagine. Pity, I’d heard so much about Captain Gringo and now it seems I’ll never get to meet him.”
“Yeah, life’s like that my name is Dick, by the way.”
“Really? You do seem bent on offering a passable substitute for the late Captain Gringo. Where are you and that funny little friend of yours going, Dick?”
“Oh, here and there. Where are you bound for, Pam?”
“Rio, on another case, now that this silly flap over Venezuela is over. But we seem to be aboard a slow boat that makes every port of call. Are those shoulders real, or is that jacket padded?”
He smiled and said, “Little of both, maybe. I’d let you feel my muscles but it’s a little public here.”
She met his eyes levelly and replied, “I know. Don’t you suppose it would be more comfortable if we had those drinks in my stateroom?”
“I’d like that,” he said, “but can we assume you’re not on the Queen’s business, at the moment?”
She laughed for the first time and said, “I hardly think the Queen would approve of what I have in mind. But not to worry. I’m completely on my own at the moment. My assignment in Rio has nothing to do with anything you or the late Captain Gringo would be interested in. Meanwhile, why don’t we go to my place and get out of this ridiculous vertical position, whoever you may be?”
You’ve reached the last page.
But the adventure doesn’t end here …
Join us for more first-class, action-packed books.
Regular updates feature on our website and blog
The Adventures continue…
Issuing new and classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!
More on Lou Cameron