“We won’t. Thanks, Annie.”
We heard her walk away. When her footsteps were no longer audible, Ackerman released Ruth and backed away from her. Relieved of the strain of staring cross-eyed at the threatening gun barrel, Ruth blinked a couple of times and drew a shaky breath. Dennis Morton, still holding the silenced pistol to my head, sighed deeply.
“Mr. Ackerman,” he said after a moment. “If I may suggest. . .”
“Yes, Dennis?”
“I’ll do whatever you say, of course, sir, but . . . well, we’ve already spent a lot of time in this room and we don’t really need Mrs. Steiner’s information, do we?”
“Explain.”
“We know where the disks are now. Once we have them all, Washington can take it from there. Those boys are real pros and I’m sure they’ve long since figured out how to deal with the kind of encryption provided by an off-the-shelf computer program available to civilians. Even back during the coldest cold-war days, the Russians with all their facilities couldn’t keep their secret communications secret from us very long; do you think a housewife with a battery-powered portable is going to?” He cleared his throat. “As I said, it’s only a suggestion, sir.”
It sounded reasonable, but I sensed a hidden uncertainty. Mr. Dennis Morton didn’t have quite as much faith in the Washington computer geniuses as he pretended. He was simply, like Belinda but in a slightly different way, losing his nerve. He was beginning to realize that his fanatic superior had put them all into a very unhealthy situation in a foreign land, and he wanted to persuade Ackerman, diplomatically, to get them the hell out of there before the Brazilian police, or somebody, broke in the door and found them abusing a couple of helpless victims, with illegal weapons in their hands.
Ackerman was not a man sensitive to hidden uncertainties; he was nodding thoughtfully. “You make a good point,” he said. “And we have, as you say, spent too much time here. Very well, but I think we had better keep Mrs. Steiner in reserve, so to speak, just in case she’s cleverer than you think—or our cryptographers are stupider, which is not inconceivable. If so, well, we have access to interrogators who have better techniques than we have, and they’ll be able to obtain the information from her, I’m sure.”
Ruth licked her lips. “I don’t understand. How are you going to keep me in reserve, as you call it? Lock me up somewhere?”
“Oh, no, dear lady,” Ackerman said. “You and I are going to put on a great performance for the other members of the troupe as, although deserted and humiliated by our respective partners, we stubbornly accompany them through Argentina and Chile and all the other beautiful South American countries we’ve paid to see. I presume you’ve alerted your husband’s female friends in Santiago, Lima, and Quito to expect you with this group, so we’d better not confuse them by traveling independently. In the meantime, for the benefit of our companions, we’ll play the betrayed husband and the deserted mistress, seeking consolation with each other.”
Ruth stared at him. “Just exactly how are you planning for me to console you? If you think for one little moment—”
He laughed shortly. “You flatter yourself, Mrs. Steiner. Your body attracts me not at all; I’m merely interested in the contents of your brain. And particularly your late husband’s brain. We’ll merely associate in a friendly fashion as we travel, you and I, drawn together by shared adversity. We’ll explain to Annie what has happened and give her a note from the missing lovebirds addressed to her, telling how they were compelled to run off together by a passion greater than . . . Well, you can fill in the cliches for yourself, I’m sure. Signed, with apologies, Belinda and Matthew. It will be a scandal in a teapot, it will make us—the two pitiful rejects—objects of great curiosity, and the whole tour group will be so pleasantly titillated by this romantic escapade that nobody will ask any awkward questions about Mr. Helm’s disappearance, or Belinda’s. Or Dennis’s, for that matter; but since I’ve been careful to keep him out of sight, they aren’t likely to miss him. As for Annie, I’m sure a lady of her experience is hardened to having strange things, including mate swapping, happen on her tours. All she really cares about is having all warm bodies accounted for.”
Ruth frowned. “And just what’s going to make me cooperate with this wild scenario?" She laughed sharply. "Oh, I see! Instead of keeping me imprisoned, you’re going to take Matt off somewhere and hold him so you can use him as a hostage while I help you get the rest of the computer disks. I suppose you’ll threaten to do dreadful things to him if I get stubborn, maybe even kill him.”
Ackerman said, “It’s pleasant to deal with an intelligent woman.”
“You’re forgetting one thing,” Ruth said. “You’re forgetting that this intelligent woman has already told you to go right ahead and set fire to Mr. Helm if you like. Or do anything else you care to. He doesn’t mean all that much to her."
I said, “Gee, thanks loads, sweetheart!”
She ignored my interruption and went on: “I’m a reasonably humanitarian person, Mr. Ackerman, and I won’t let somebody suffer if I can help it; but one has to draw the line somewhere. What I’m trying to say is that this man is really just a bodyguard type to me. I’ll admit I slept with him once, just once; he’s reasonably presentable, and when you’ve been married, you do get lonely for. . . But that doesn’t mean I’ll jump through hoops for you just because you threaten him. I owe him nothing; actually less than nothing, since the fact that you’re here, and in control of the situation, proves that he’s failed at his job of protecting me just as you did.” She laughed shortly. “I don’t seem to have much luck with my government protectors, do I? Well, he took his chances and lost and we’re sorry about that, but I’ve got two daughters to look after and my own life to live and I’m not going to worry too much about a government gunman who doesn’t seem to be very proficient at his work.” She looked at me directly. “Sorry, Matt, but that’s the way it is.”
She was really quite good. She was putting on the best performance possible under the circumstances. There’s nothing more tiresome than the old TV hand-wringing routine in which the heroine, when the pressure comes on, immediately starts to moan and weep with desperate concern for her threatened hero and instantly agrees to all demands no matter how outlandish. I mean, we all know the script and the outcome, but we do like to see the girl display a little backbone before the final curtain.
Ackerman also knew his lines; he said, “Very well. Since you say the man can be of no use to us . . . Dennis, you know what to do. Take him to the place we selected. Belinda had better back you up. Mr. Helm is supposed to be tough, although I’ve seen no evidence of it.”
Morton spoke bravely: “I don’t need a backup, sir. I can handle him.”
Ackerman was impatient with this posturing. He snapped, “You will take Belinda anyway; it’s time for her to disappear and she might as well be giving you a hand. But she’d better first write her farewell note, hers and Helm’s. . . . Belinda, there should be some hotel stationery in the top drawer of that bureau. Here’s a pen if you don’t find one there.”
Then they did some pistol juggling. The silenced .22 went back to Ackerman while Morton reclaimed his own .38. Belinda, freed from guard duty, sat down at the desk and started writing. It didn’t take her long. She showed the result to Ackerman, who gave her a sharp, offended look and started to speak, but checked himself.
“Very well, I suppose that will have to do.” He looked my way. “Now, Mr. Helm, you will sign your name below Belinda’s. Underneath you will write ‘Las Cataratas Hotel’ and the date, please.”
He found a slick cardboard folder, actually the one containing the hotel’s room-service menu, put it on my knees for something to write on, placed the letter on top of it, and handed me the pen. I took a moment to read what I was signing:
Dear Annie:
It’s awful and it’s wonderful and sometimes I think I
can’t bear it. We’re going away together, so just cross us
/> off your passenger list, no refunds expected. I hope our
leaving like this won’t make any trouble for you. Tell that
tired old man I was married to that I’m sorry to have to
hurt him; but Matt and I knew the moment we met that it
just had to be.
Belinda Nunn
It was quite an impressive piece of creative writing to have been dashed off in minutes, on demand. I scribbled my name below Belinda’s and added place and date as instructed. Ackerman retrieved the letter and passed it to Belinda, who folded it, put it in a hotel envelope with airmail trimmings, sealed it, and, given back the pen, scribbled a name, presumably Annie’s, on the front.
Ackerman looked at me for a moment and said to Belinda, “Button his shirt.” When this had been done, he said to Morton, “You can take him away now.”
“Yes, sir. Come on, you!”
Ackerman spoke again: “If you can put him over the cliff without any shooting, so much the better, but take no chances with him. Use your gun if you have to. Down there, nobody'll hear the report and by the time the body goes through the rocks of those rapids and washes ashore downriver, if it does, it’s unlikely that anybody’ll notice a little bullet hole. . . . All right, on your way. After it’s done, stay out of sight again and keep in touch with me as arranged.”
“Yes, sir. All right, you!”
We were almost at the door, Belinda going ahead to open it, when Ruth spoke behind us: “What . . . what are you going to do to him?”
That was all right. It was a dumb-dumb question, the answer had just been given, but it was stupid-time now as we put the final touches on the gripping drama we'd just played.
Ackerman said, “Really, Mrs. Steiner! He means nothing to you, you just said, so why should you be concerned. . . ?”
“Oh, my God, you’re going to kill him!” Heedless of Ackerman’s long-barreled .22—well, long if you count the silencer as barrel—she jumped out of her chair, ran to me, and threw her arms around my neck. “Oh, my darling, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I thought if I put on a cold-blooded act, maybe . . . Oh, my dear, I didn’t really mean. . . !” She whirled on Ackerman. “All right, all right, you win! I’ll act out this ridiculous charade with you. Just promise me he’ll be safe and I’ll get the remaining disks for you.”
It was still a little obvious, a little corny, but much better than if she’d yielded without any preliminary struggles. Men like Roger Ackerman, whatever his real name might be, like to admire their own cleverness and ruthlessness. He’d want to believe that he’d really broken her will with his threats; now he hurried to capitalize on his victory.
"You’ll get them and tell me how to read them? ”
She hesitated and let her shoulders sag in a defeated way. “If you promise not to hurt him anymore.”
“Tell me now!”
That brought a show of resistance: “Oh, no! We’ll do it in Quito, the last stop before the whole tour flies back to Miami. You bring Matt to me there, alive and well; and when we’re ready to board the plane, with all the others around so you don’t dare touch us, I’ll give you the password. ”
Ackerman frowned suspiciously. “How do I know, once you have your man safe, you won’t just laugh at me and get on the plane together and fly away?”
"You have my word, for whatever that means, ’ ’ Ruth said. “And what can you lose? By that time you’ll already have all the disks. As your man says, even if I should go back on my promise. which I have no intention of doing, your experts can undoubtedly decode them for you eventually. But considering the way you got the material, do you really want to have to ask another government department to help you read it if you don’t have to, Mr. Ackerman? Somebody might get curious, particularly since one disk is already with Matt’s people in Washington, who may very well—you’d know more about this than I do—use the same government decoding experts as you do. If you take the gamble of trusting me, and win, you’ll be able to print out Mark’s book at your leisure without taking anybody else into your confidence."
Ackerman hesitated, shrugged, and spoke to Morton: “You heard the lady. All right, she has a deal. Take Helm to the hideout we discussed as an alternative solution and hold him there until I let you know where to bring him. . . ."
The orders were accompanied by a wink, unseen by Ruth, that effectively canceled them. Well, there had never been a chance that after recklessly reclaiming “his” mission by force from the government agency to which it had been assigned—our agency—Ackerman would leave the government agent involved, me, alive to complain to Washington.
Chapter 19
It was a pleasure to get out of that room at last, even with a gun in my back and a river in my future. For the moment there was nobody in the corridor outside. I wondered if Armando was keeping an eye on my door, or Ruth’s. He might well be, but the instructions Id left with him concerned keeping her safe, not me. There'd be no officer-needs-assistance signals; I was strictly on my own. Well, it had happened before. Belinda, ahead of me, stopped so abruptly I almost ran into her. She turned to speak to Morton.
“I’d better be the one to take him through the lobby and down the walk, until we’re past the biggest mobs of tourists,” she said. “I can snuggle up to him so nobody sees my gun; if you walk that close to him, they’ll think you’re both queer.”
Morton didn’t like it. “Mr. Ackerman said I was to . . . The arrogant bastard is mine, damn it!”
“My God, you’re welcome to him; I wouldn’t dream of depriving you. I just want to get us all down there without attracting attention; then you can have him back with pink ribbons. Now be sensible and just follow a couple of steps behind us and pretend you don’t know us.”
She linked arms with me and drew me close, with her other hand inside the shoulderstrap bag that she pushed against me as we walked side by side. I was aware of her perfume. Perversely, far from attracting me, a heavily scented lady always makes me wonder if she’s trying to cover up the fact that she hasn’t had a bath lately. Still, I reminded myself, the girl had—well, eventually—balked at performing Ackerman’s painful brand of interrogation; a point in her favor.
I was aware that Morton was following at a discreet distance, from which he’d have a clear shot if I tried anything. We made our way through the lobby, which was moderately crowded. There were people clustered around the hotel desk, checking in or out; this late in the afternoon, probably in. Outside the front door we were greeted by a gray mist of rain. There were quite a few tourists out here as well. Some foresighted characters displayed colorful raincoats or umbrellas. The others were either strolling along ignoring the thin drizzle courageously or hurrying through it uncomfortably, the latter hunched over and, in the case of the women, shielding their hairdos with inadequate purses, newspapers, or guidebooks.
The picturesque old hotel, with jungle behind it, was set at the head of lush green lawns that sloped gently down toward the road by which we’d arrived; beyond that, the paved walk we were now following led across more lawns to the Parana River, invisible at first at the bottom of its chasm— but here, in the open air, the rumble of the falls upstream was a constant reminder of its presence. I realized what Ackerman had meant when he told Morton not to worry about a shot or two: down by the water the noise would undoubtedly cover the sound of a pitched battle.
A pair of young men came strolling up the path together; they were briefly intrigued by the well-developed blond girl tap-tapping through the drizzle beside me on her high heels, but they obviously thought a ripe young lady like that was wasting her time snuggling up to a well-worn character like me.
“Keep moving!” Morton snapped from behind me when I paused. “Well, all right, take a look at your last scenic wonder, Wonder Boy. ”
I’ve known better times for sight-seeing, but you’re supposed to grab eagerly at any reprieve you can get, no matter how short. It was really an impressive spectacle: several miles of high, jagged cliffs with
all the water in the world pouring off them and shattering into clouds of roiling white mist.
As we stood there another loud noise was added to the continuing roar. I saw a neatly carved and varnished wooden park sign ahead reading HELICOPTERO, with an arrow directing customers to the sight-seeing flights, before the whirlybird itself came into sight over the river. It seemed like an ugly intrusion: one should be allowed to listen to the hypnotic thunder of the falls undisturbed by the clatter of internal combustion engines. Well, I understand that the ancient peace of the Grand Canyon is also broken by the racket of airborne rubberneck traffic.
Morton, still behind me, spoke again: “Damn, I hoped the rain had grounded it! Well, we’ll just have to time it right so nobody reports any falling bodies, won’t we?”
It was time for me to act naively shocked and distressed, as if I’d just realized I was to be killed, after all. I spoke plaintively: “But Mr. Ackerman promised Ruth. . . !”
Behind us, Morton laughed scornfully. “What the Steiner bitch doesn’t know won’t hurt her. By the time she learns you’re dead, if she lives that long, she’ll have served Mr. Ackerman’s purpose. Hell, all we really need are the disks; as I told Mr. Ackerman, deciphering them should be a piece of cake with the right equipment. And where the hell would we keep you safe around here, a clever-ass like you? Oh, I don’t underestimate you, Helm, even if you did look better making brave noises in your own front yard than moaning and groaning down here in Brazil. But did you really believe that crap about an alternate hideout? The only hideout we’ve got for you is right down there in all that nice, churning water. . . . All right, if you’ve seen enough, move it!”
We turned onto the cliff path. It was wide and paved, and followed the edge, more or less, sometimes allowing us to look straight down into the rushing river below, as well as across the broken water to the falls themselves. The wooden railings didn’t look remarkably sturdy or well maintained; but then, where precipices are concerned, any protective barrier short of solid, reinforced concrete looks inadequate to me. We passed another neat park sign directing tourists of various nationalities to the LANCHONETE-ECHAPORA-SNACKBAR. Off to our right, the helicopter came and went noisily, but its racket seemed to diminish as the sound of the falls grew louder with our approach.
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