The Threateners

by Donald Hamilton

  I said, “I’ll pass your request along. It will probably be honored. Remember that my chief isn’t very happy with the way Morton’s chief tried to push him around. He’s not going to go out of his way to volunteer assistance in that direction."

  She looked at me and sighed. “Well, I hope I’m not being foolish, but there they are. All yours. Now you can take me for a walk along the beach so I can say I’ve at least walked along the beautiful beach in Rio, and then you can bring me back to the hotel and feed me.”

  Chapter 13

  They tried for us as we sauntered along the wide, paved sidewalk between the boulevard and the beach. We had plenty of company there; apparently the evening ocean-front stroll was kind of a Rio ritual. There were three of them, suddenly appearing from behind a group of casual pedestrians. They were small and dark and shabby, and fairly young, one angling to block me off, away from Ruth, the other two heading to relieve her of her purse, even though she was holding it firmly with both hands, in front of her, in the approved South American female-pedestrian manner. (If you carry a backpack down there, you’re advised not to wear it on your back, but to turn it around and hang it on your chest; otherwise they’ll have the straps sliced off and the bag away before you know they’re behind you.)

  The combat computer spat out the answer almost instantly: grab the would-be blocker by the arm and use his momentum to sling him out into the roaring traffic to my right where the cars would mash him flat, step across far enough to kick the one just beyond her in the balls since he was more or less feeing me, and at the same time, or as near as could be managed, whip the loaded end of the Thuggee scarf—I’d knotted some coins into a comer of it so it would be ready for action—around the neck of the nearer one facing away from me, cinching down on the silk with enough force to crack the vertebrae. I’d been practicing a bit on bedposts and other suitable targets, according to our armorer’s instructions, and I was curious to see how well it would work. Then all I had to do, at my leisure, was kick the brains out of the one moaning and hugging himself on the ground and call for the disposers to haul away the garbage.

  Except that while backup was available to a certain extent, it probably didn’t have clout enough here to deal with several defunct youngsters who, whatever their character ratings might have been, had still qualified as Brazilian citizens. We were in a foreign land where, although they had the reputation of not being averse to a little occasional intramural homicide, they’d undoubtedly get upset if an agent of the lousy gringo CIA—all U.S. undercover agencies are considered to be CIA down there—infringed on their monopoly and indulged in killing games on their private playing field. Besides, I was supposed to be a fairly incompetent character.

  No knives or guns were on display, so I had a little leeway in dealing with the situation. I tried clumsily to sidestep the punk coming at me, stumbled, and managed, kind of accidentally, to blunder right into him instead.

  “Ooops, sorry, kid!” I said.

  I reached out to steady him in a helpful fashion. As I pulled him to me I brought up my knee hard and he screamed, but the sound was muffled against my chest. I went down, kind of accidentally, taking him with me. I had him by his rather long hair now, over both ears, and I managed to bounce the back of his head off the pavement as we hit. His nearest associate—no knife there, either, I noted—was distracted by the scuffle, turning to look. I reached up helplessly, like a man having trouble getting to his feet.

  “Gimme a hand, amigo. I’m not as young as I used to—”

  When someone holds out a hand, the instinct is always to take it. He started to, and yanked back too late; I had his wrist. Off balance, he was easy to slam to the sidewalk. The same effort that had pulled him down helped to pull me up, and as I rose I managed to kick him hard in the side, kind of accidentally, driving the breath out of him. He tried to get up but couldn’t, and wound up on all fours, gasping. I stepped around him, braced to tackle the third, with or without knife, but with his two friends on the ground, that one let go of the purse he’d been trying to pull away from Ruth and took off with commendable speed. The one I’d kicked succeeded in rising; he fled, but more slowly, holding his side. The third one didn’t know whether to nurse his head or his testicles, but he did manage to get up and scuttle away in a fragile and bowlegged fashion.

  “Gee, this must be one of my clumsy days,” I said. “I sure hope I didn’t hurt those poor kids, bumping into them like that.”

  That was clowning, and Ruth, pulling herself together, gave me a pained look. I drew a long breath, standing there. It was a lovely, clear evening. Any time of day is lovely in any weather when you’ve survived another battle, whoever the enemy of the moment might have been, even one as young and ineffectual as today’s. Here, I noted that beyond the shallows near the beach the ocean was very blue and that the offshore islands still held the sunshine that, blocked by the mountains to the west of us, no longer reached us on the shore. The beach wasn’t crowded, but there were still a considerable number of bathers—at least they were wearing bathing suits. A few were actually trying the water; more were just lying around on the sand in sunbathing positions, even though there was no longer any sun. I was disappointed not to be able to spot any of the truly naughty bikinis, or monokinis, I’d been led to expect in glamorous Rio.

  Quite a few people were still strolling along the promenade we were using. If any of them had noticed our little scuffle, they’d figured, just as they would have in any other city in the world, that it was our problem, thank God, not theirs. I spotted a couple of uniformed characters with submachine guns in the distance, also unconcerned. I’d seen them before, or their twins, as we waited for the traffic light to let us cross the boulevard. They were the modem Latin equivalent of the old beat cop, I suppose; but I had no impulse to rush over to them and report, breathlessly, the dastardly crime that had almost been perpetrated under their noses.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  Ruth had finished tucking in her shirt. She brushed at her denim skirt and straightened up, saying, “I will be as soon as you stop showing off and take me back to the hotel and get me something to eat. I think that’s enough exercise for one evening, don’t you?” She glanced down. “Incidentally, you seem to be losing a handkerchief.”

  I reached back and found that my Thuggee scarf, masquerading as a silk bandanna, was hanging out of my right hip pocket. I shrugged, pulled it free, folded it neatly, and tucked it back the way it had been, with one comer available for me to grab in case of need. I patted the left back pocket as a matter of routine; then I felt it again and began to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “After all that, the little bastard got my wallet.”

  Ruth said, “But that’s terrible. . . . Why are you laughing?”

  “Well, you have to hand it to the kid. Obviously, when we collided, he grabbed the opportunity to reach around me and feel my pockets. He pulled out enough of the hanky to find out it was no use to him but the wallet was.” I looked around on the ground. “He got it and it isn’t here; which means that with his head cracked open, practically, and his balls screaming, he still hung onto it. A gutsy little punk.”

  Ruth started to speak, but stopped. Then she took my arm and we started walking back toward our hotel, a pale tower in the solid wall of tall buildings on the west side of the boulevard.

  She spoke at last: “I suppose I’ll get used to it eventually.”

  “Get used to what?”

  “You. I don’t know any other man who’d laugh at having his pocket picked, or admire the one who did it.”

  I said, "Hell, all he got was a four-ninety-five plastic job—a K Mart bargain special; I bought a couple of them so I have a spare—and ten bucks I just changed into local currency at the hotel. And what’s wrong with admiring a young man who’s good at his work?” I glanced at my companion. “In case you’re worrying, he didn’t get the disks, or my passport, or my films, or my serious money, or my tr
aveler’s checks, or my credit cards. I don’t have total faith in that little safe in the closet, so I’m carrying those here.” I slapped a bulge under my left armpit. “A kind of shoulder-holster rig. Unfortunately it’s under my shirt, so I have to practically undress to get at it. Wherefore I keep a little working capital in a cheap decoy wallet out where it’s handy, and figure to lose it occasionally. I got into the habit after being cleaned out once, traveling in Mexico. Okay?”

  Back at the hotel we passed up the formal downstairs dining room where we’d eaten the night before and took the elevator to the more casual restaurant on the roof.

  “After all that excitement I’d better make a small detour," Ruth said as we emerged, indicating the two doors across the hall marked with stick figures, one skirted and the other trousered.

  “I’ll be right here,” I said. “Incidentally, it’s probably better if we don’t talk about our little adventure.”

  She glanced at me. “Of course, if you think so, Matt.”

  Waiting, it occurred to me that if this went on, I was going to be uniquely qualified to do a scientific report on Latin American plumbing facilities, or at least the doors thereof. On the other hand, I’d better start exercising some water discipline, since in spite of picketing all these rest rooms, I seemed to have few opportunities to enter one and relieve myself without leaving the lady unguarded.

  “Hey, we’ve got to stop meeting like this!”

  It was Belinda Ackerman, in very short white shorts. Color-wise, the pale limbs she displayed would have been more attractive, at least to my taste, if they’d been a little browner, and to hell with cancer from the sky, but shape-wise, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the nicely rounded calves, and the ankles were surprisingly slim and pretty considering the plumpness elsewhere. She saw me looking and didn’t mind: a girl would have to be fairly dumb to wear shorts that short if she objected to having her legs admired.

  “Did you hear about Grace?” she asked.

  “No, what about Grace?”

  I still didn’t have our whole tour group quite straight in my head, but I remembered that Grace Priestly was the grayhaired older woman I’d seen with Belinda and photographed, during one of my rest-room vigils. Husband: Herman. Bald. Glasses. Texas oil. Not on the official list. Belinda was eager to pass along the news.

  “She and Herman went to look at that jewelry store around the comer, Stem’s I guess it’s called, and then took a walk around those funny little streets back there. I guess she was a little careless with her purse and all of a sudden it was empty. They’d slashed it open at the bottom so everything fell out. Of course, she’d left the important things in her room safe, the way we were told to, but she lost some money and a nice compact, she said, and they mined a perfectly good leather bag, Mark Cross or something.”

  I said, “So Annie wasn’t just whistling Dixie.”

  “You’d think with all the uniforms and machine guns around, folks would be safe on the street.”

  I couldn’t help noticing that her purple silk shirt, loosely knotted in front, didn’t conceal much more of her plump white breasts than the little pants did of her plump white legs. She bounced away through the appropriate door, and pretty soon Ruth came out to join me, looking neat and ladylike by comparison.

  The rooftop restaurant had white garden-type furniture surrounding a small swimming pool—more a paddling and wading pool, I judged from the fact that a slim, dark young girl in a flowered one-piece bathing suit, with soaked black hair streaming down her back, wasn’t even wet to the waist when she stood up in the middle. Of course, I could have gauged the water depth from her boyfriend, splashing playfully beside her, but she made a more interesting measuring stick.

  "Pretty," Ruth said, the first time she’d spoken since we’d sat down.

  “Only pretty now, but she’ll be a knockout senhorinha in a couple of years,” I said.

  Ruth said, “As a matter of fact, senhorinha is correct for the Portuguese in Portugal, but here in Brazil they give it a few twists of their own and their word is senhorita, very close to the Spanish.”

  I said, “I’ll be happy when we get to Argentina and a language I’m familiar with, even though I don’t claim to speak it much. Shall we order?” The waiter was hovering around us suggestively.

  “That enormous fruit plate they’re eating next door looks good,” Ruth said.

  “I’m a meat-and-potatoes man myself, but after the feed we had at lunch, I guess I’ll go for the melons, too, or whatever they are. How about a drink, or are you back on the abstention kick?” She wasn’t. Having settled all that to the waiter’s satisfaction, I waited for him to leave and said deliberately: “Let’s talk a little business. Five disks, you said earlier. Including the one you’re carrying, right?”

  She hesitated; then she said, “Wrong. I’m not carrying it any longer.”

  I looked at her for a moment, noting the small gleam of triumph in her eyes. She, too, like the kid pickpocket, had put one over on the cocky professional. I drew a long breath.

  “You’ve had three chances to unload it since you left your room,” I said. “You could have slipped it to the waiter just now while I was looking at the menu. You could have got rid of it in the rest room. Maybe somebody was waiting for you in there; or maybe Belinda Ackerman, who went in after you . . ."

  “I wouldn’t trust that roly-poly, blond, man-eater with a used Kleenex!”

  I laughed and stopped laughing, watching her. “And then there’s the possibility that the abortive robbery on the beach was a put-up job to let you make the transfer, in which case you are a damn fool, Mrs. Steiner. Pulling a stunt like that with a bodyguard in attendance could easily get somebody killed. At the very least it shows you don’t mind making your escort look like an idiot.”

  She licked her lips. “I know and I’m sorry : I didn’t realize. . . . I guess I’ve just seen too many movies with actors being excruciatingly clever, just like that, and nobody getting hurt." Ruth grimaced. "Well, you don’t have to worry about it happening again. Even if we thought we could get away, plausibly, with another phony mugging attempt, I have a feeling that volunteers are going to be very scarce after what happened to two of those boys, even if you made it look veiy clumsy and accidental. But in the confusion I did manage to slip my little package to the one who ran away unharmed.”

  I said, “So there are four pickups left to go. Presumably that means four cities, unless you’ve arranged to double up somewhere. Which four?”

  She hesitated, drew a long breath, and said, “I suppose, after the dumb trick I just pulled, I owe you. . . . All right. In chronological order: Buenos Aires, Argentina. Well, I already mentioned that. Santiago, Chile. Lima, Peru. Quito, Ecuador.”

  I said, “I can see why this tour was selected for you. It takes you exactly where you want to go. ”

  “And a few places I don’t, like Iguassu Falls. Ugh.”

  “Why ugh?”

  “It’s a hole in the jungle full of biting insects, and I’ve already seen it once. Richard took me when we were stationed here. I guess it’s spectacular, all that water falling off all those cliffs, but once is enough.”

  I said, "My folks took me to Niagara as a kid, and just like you I figure, you’ve seen one waterfall, you’ve seen ’em all. And then, if I remember the schedule correctly, after Lima and before Quito, two cities where you have contacts waiting, there’s Cuzco, Peru, from which we make a day trip by rail to the ruins at Machu Picchu and back." I shook my head ruefully. “If you don’t have business there, I’ll be happy to pass up that excursion. Judging by the pictures I’ve seen, those damn Incas, or whoever they were, built their stone city on top of a mountain peak with thousand-foot cliffs all around; and you know how I am about high places.”

  She laughed. “Well, I’m not much for archaeology, myself. We can probably find something interesting to do in Cuzco while the rest of them are riding little trains around the Andes and chasing dead Incas aro
und the rocks.” It would have been all right if she hadn’t blushed.

  I mean, she hadn’t really said anything outrageous. There were undoubtedly, in Cuzco, interesting native markets and interesting souvenir stores galore, not to mention interesting Indians with interesting beasts of burden—Peru was the land of the llama, I recalled—and interesting museums and old churches. A fascinating place, according to the tour literature supplied us, Cuzco, Peru, eleven thousand feet in the air. There was absolutely no need for a girl to blush merely because she’d suggested that the city might have possibilities for a man and woman who’d deserted their tour group to spend a day together.

  But her face did turn quite pink, betraying the thought that had come to her. I realized that the same thought hadn’t been far from my mind. At least I’d become sensitized, let’s say, to the point where I was looking hard for provocative bikinis, and very much aware of shapely legs and plump white breasts, and unnaturally intrigued by—if you want to call that unnatural—a juvenile senhorita in a snug, wet, one-piece swimsuit. What I mean to say is that traveling with a member of the opposite sex who’s neither senile nor deformed, you can ignore the biological realities only so long before the pressure starts to build.

  The waiter came to the rescue, placing our drinks before us. Ruth reached for hers as if it were the last life preserver on a sinking ocean liner and, for a recent nondrinker, did a good, fast job of inhaling about half of it.

  “Did you hear about the Priestlys?” she asked without looking at me. “Belinda told me in the rest room that Grace had had her purse slashed. I didn’t tell her about our little experience. . . ."

  We discussed our tour companions extensively during dinner; they made a nice, safe subject. The melons, some of which I didn’t recognize, were excellent, and the pineapple was a different fruit, sweet and tender, from the tart, stringy stuff served in all states of the U.S. except Hawaii. Then we were in the elevator and getting out at the ninth floor. I made a point of checking the rooms meticulously, both rooms, before I let Ruth come in. Then I beckoned her forward, into her room, and closed and locked the door behind her. We stood facing each other. She drew a long breath, looking up at me. Her lips were full and moist, and I wondered why it had taken me so long to realize that she was a very pretty girl.