I might or might not heed his warning, but at least I’d learned one thing from his speech: after all the hours of flying, we were still in Brazil, or he wanted us to think we were. Well, it was a big country, occupying the whole upper right-hand comer of the South American continent, if I remembered the atlas correctly. Palomino made his way past the forward seats and came aft, carrying a large roll of silver tape. He made us bring our wrists together, with some difficulty because of the way our arms were secured, and taped them that way. Then, tossing the roll of tape to Patricia Weatherford, who’d stepped aside, he produced a moderately large, single-bladed pocket knife and cut the tape that held us to the seats; but when we started to rise, a commanding gesture restrained us.
“One more thing,” he said. “You must understand that I am having you preserved because El Viejo himself may wish the pleasure of deciding your fete. However, I have left instructions with the captain of security that if either of you should disturb the functioning of our installation here in any way, he is to have you shot without waiting for further orders. Remember that you have little value for us. The woman who was accompanying you earlier, señor, the one I was supposed to bring, is said to have information that would have justified our tolerating some annoyance to keep her alive; I doubt that you or this lady have any.” He paused briefly, perhaps to give me a chance to proclaim that my head was stuffed with priceless knowledge. When I didn’t—he wouldn’t have believed me, anyway—he went on: “The captain, Hernando O’Connor Rojas, is a man who knows violence. He is proud of his position here as guardian of one of El Viejo’s important facilities. He is not happy at being asked to function as a carcelero, a jailer, and he will welcome an excuse to dispose of you permanently. I suggest that you refrain from giving him one.” He turned away to address Patricia Weatherford: “Now, señorita, let us find arms for you and your friends. . . .”
Five minutes later we were on the ground watching the plane taxi to the end of the runway. I noted that my guesses had been correct: it was propeller-driven, with a motor in each wing. Ricardo jumped it into the air with everything
roaring, and cleared the trees with something to spare, leaving us done in the trackless jungle.
Well, not quite trackless, there was a village of sorts, and not quite alone, since Palomino had turned us over to a stocky gent with a heavy automatic pistol on his belt, whom I disregarded for the moment. I might not have another chance to look around outdoors. First things first.
Standing there with my hands taped in front of me, I made a quick survey of my surroundings. The jungle greenery all around us looked tangled and impenetrable, giving weight to Palomino’s warning. The airstrip was paved, pretty fancy for a boondocks runway. It was very short, explaining Ricardo’s slam-bang tactics. There was some bulky material piled along the far side that I couldn’t identify without a closer look. Under the trees at the end, which had been scorched by fire, was some wreckage draped with camouflage netting. I guessed it to be what was left of the plane of a less competent pilot who hadn’t quite got his flying machine stopped, or airborne, in time. The strip was at the rear of the village, which was small enough that I could see right through it to a sizable river in front that flowed eastward, judging by the sun. The current wasn’t fierce, but it was strong enough to break the surface of the brown water with occasional boils and swirls. The green, green jungle overhanging the far bank looked just as inhospitable as that on this side. Snake and jaguar and orchid country.
The village itself consisted of a couple of dozen primitive-looking huts of varying sizes loosely grouped around an open area that didn’t perform any obvious function. Although you’d think the arrival of a plane would be considered an event in an isolated jungle community like this, I’d seen no curious little brown aborigines rubbernecking at the noisy bird from the sky.
The pistol-packing gent beside me, the captain of security, with the unlikely name of Hernando O’Connor, was wearing rumpled khakis and a uniform cap without insignia. Although the holster prevented me from seeing it clearly, the weapon on his belt looked very much like the old .45 Colt auto, Model 1911. A small dark man stood beside him, also in khakis and cap; this one carried an AK-47 assault rifle or reasonable facsimile thereof, aimed in our general direction. Almost as many imitations of the Kalashnikov-designed blaster have been manufactured as of the Browning-designed hand cannon; I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that both of these weapons had been made right here in Brazil. Just in case I should manage to get my hands on one, I reviewed in my mind the controls of the AK-47. The old .45 was no problem. I could strip and reassemble that blindfolded. In fact, in order to pass our firearms qualification at the Ranch, we have to do just that.
It was a hot day. In that humid climate, just standing in the sun at the side of the runway—the asphalt looked ready to melt and run away—made the perspiration start all over my body, reminding me nostalgically of arid New Mexico, where you have to make a major effort to work up a sweat. Belinda was tidying herself as well as she could with her wrists taped, but there wasn’t a great deal she could do about her bedraggled appearance, that was emphasized by the feet that she was missing one high-heel shoe.
My own slacks and shirt had also deteriorated significantly, but I satisfied my undemanding sartorial standards by peeling off the strips of tape that still clung to me here and there, the ones I could reach. I pulled some off Belinda’s back, and she did the same for me. Then she gave a little sound of recognition and pleasure, and tugged something else free, and dropped it on the ground: her missing white pump. Apparently Palomino—very considerate for a professional strangler—had tucked it into my pants pocket for safekeeping. She maneuvered it upright with a grubby bare foot and stepped into it.
Patricia Weatherford, standing near us, spoke impatiently to the captain of security: “Can’t we get into the shade?”
He shook his head minutely. “A moment, please, senhorita.”
Then he checked the sky carefully and determined that it was empty except for a large, soaring bird of some kind, probably the local brand of buzzard. He fished a whistle out of his shirt pocket and blew it three times. Men came running out of the shacks. They were mostly dark-faced and black-haired, but instead of displaying the scanty loincloths or total nudity that might have been expected in those jungle surroundings, they were wearing assorted pants and shirts; most needed shaves and a couple had mustaches. Hardly the beardless children of nature native to the area, if I remembered my National Geographic correctly.
O’Connor waved toward the runway, and with three armed men in khakis directing them, they spread out to attack the stuff I’d noticed piled on the other side of the paved strip, and started hauling it across to our side. It turned out to be an instant cornfield. Well, maize, milo, you name it; farming is out of my line. After the heavy strips of painted canvas were all in place, the men scurried around planting bushes and weeds, and even a few saplings, on and around the camouflaged runway: an Indian village wouldn’t be expected to cultivate its communal garden too meticulously.
Eight unarmed workers, I thought, and five armed Com-paneros including Captain O’Connor. And Patricia Weatherford and the three unseen associates who’d been mentioned, also with weapons—the girl was standing nearby with the plastic grocery bag she’d been given by Palomino, heavy with four revolvers and a couple of boxes of ammunition. She held it away from her, warily, as if it held live rattlesnakes that might bite her poisonously through the plastic. There’s nothing I love, in a tight spot, more than a gun-hating, gun-fearing opponent. It was a big potential advantage for our side, particularly if her associates shared the same prejudice. On the other hand, the odds were at least seventeen to two and might be worse; there could be more men still in the huts. . . .
O’Connor had stepped forward to inspect the phony grain-field; now he returned. “So. Now you can go, senhorita. March, you!”
I was aware of Belinda walking close enough to brush against me occ
asionally; apparently the girl required physical contact in times of stress. The gent with the AK-47 followed behind us; O’Connor and Patricia Weatherford walked ahead. The tennis girl had a neat, muscular rump that moved nicely inside the tailored chino shorts. That was, of course, strictly irrelevant, but I noted also that the huts were mostly phony: modem prefabs covered with enough poles and sticks and grass to give them a primitive look that might deceive an aerial observer who didn’t fly too close. A few, however, looked as if they might be genuine, part of a real native village that had once occupied this spot, but I didn’t get near enough to be certain of that. I could hear a generator thumping somewhere. The odors that reached me were not the ones of excrement and cooking and garbage that one would expect to encounter in a primitive jungle community. I could smell diesel exhaust; there was also a chemical fragrance that was vaguely familiar.
Belinda wrinkled her nose. “Coke!”
I said, “Who needs drug-sniffing dogs with you along? I didn’t know the stuff smelled like that, kind of sweetish.”
"Actually the leaves are pretty odorless; what we’re smelling is the solvents they use in processing the stuff. I can give you the chemical names, but they wouldn’t mean anything to you.”
I said, “Don’t be superior, sweetie. I happen to have managed a minor scientific degree at one time. Although it’s kind of rusty, I might just possibly cope with those painfully complicated chemical terms if I really put my mind to it. Complicated terms like methyl alcohol . . .”
A gun barrel nudged me in the back. “No talk!”
Fine. The opposition included one timid specimen of the guns-are-ghastly persuasion and one character who, on the other hand, took firearms so lightly that he used them for poking and prying. With enough such opponents I might even be able to handle nine of them, leaving only eight for Belinda to deal with.
Then we were at the hut that, apparently, was to be our home away from home. Patricia Weatherford knocked on the door and a man opened cautiously. She gave him the plastic grocery bag.
“Around this place they pass out firearms like lollipops,” she told him. “You’d better load one, if you know how. It seems that we’re drafted for jailer duty.”
"But that wasn’t in the bargain!"
Patricia Weatherford said grimly, “There’s been a stupid foul-up; Palomino kidnapped the wrong female and blames us. Now let us in, Charles. We can discuss the bargain later. And do load that gun! This man is supposed to be dangerous.”
Charles was the blond boy I’d seen her having lunch with once. He wanted to ask questions, but restrained himself and backed into the room to let us enter. O’Connor, pistol drawn, escorted Belinda and me inside and waited, covering us, while Charles passed weapons to the other two in the room and opened a box of ammunition and put it on the table. It was a useful demonstration of competence and otherwise. Charles, and a tall, thin, black girl with dramatic features and a big Afro, at least knew what buttons to push in order to open the weapons for loading, but a roly-poly little middle-aged gent, with thinning dark hair plastered to his scalp in a fore-and-aft direction, had to be shown. Miss Weatherford waved away the piece that was offered her, with a grimace of distaste.
“Very well, senhoritas, senhores,” O’Connor said. “As you say in your country, they are all yours. Take good care of them. Do not permit them to cause me any difficulties if you wish to preserve them alive."
He went out, closing the door behind him. Patricia Weatherford was looking at the revolver that remained on the table. After a moment she shrugged and picked it up, released the cylinder the way she’d seen it done, and stuffed cartridges awkwardly into the six chambers. I could read the printing on the box: .38 Special, 158 grain Lead RN, meaning round nose. Standard police ammo.
“All right,” she said, closing the weapon and tucking it into the waistband of her shorts. “I suppose I’m obliged to join you in this primitive firearms ritual. Now let’s put them in the other room and make sure they’re secure. Jerry, bring that roll of tape, please.”
“Miss Weatherford,” I said.
She turned to look at me coldly. ‘ ‘Oh, you know my name, too. You seem to know everybody’s names.”
“Not everybody, but we try,” I said. “Do you mind telling me what this is all about? Who are you people? I gathered from what Palomino said that you’re not part of his—well, Gregorio Vasquez’s—semireligious gang of stranglers.”
The girl showed me a small smile. “No, we do not worship at the shrine of the leaf; we’re not Compañeros de la Hoja, thank you very much.”
“Then who the hell are you?” I asked. “And what did you all have against Mark Steiner that made you hound him and his family across two continents?”
Patricia Weatherford looked startled. “Oh, you’re wrong, we had nothing to do with whatever happened to him in Peru! None of us had ever even heard of him until he escaped to the U.S., and published his book, and Mr. Vasquez made a certain pronouncement. . . . My dear man, we had nothing against poor Mr. Steiner. He was simply worth a million dollars to us.”
Chapter 22
The shack was divided into three parts. We’d already made the acquaintance of the all-purpose front room, a kind of dormitory boasting four rickety cots, a battered table with four beat-up chairs, and back in one comer, some rudimentary kitchen facilities. A partition cut off the rear of the building to make—we learned when we were herded back there—a small bedroom, or maybe cell would be a better word, containing two more cots and not much else. It was a dark little hole because boards had been nailed across the single window to take the place of bars. Another partition, with a door, cut off one side of that space. The door was open, giving us a tantalizing glimpse of some white plumbing. It had been a long plane ride.
“If that’s a bathroom, you’d better let me at it, unless you want me to pee-pee all over your floor,” Belinda said.
The handsome ebony female who’d elected to guard her asked, “Why should we care if you piss your pants, white girl?”
“Well, you’d have to live with the stink, black girl,” Belinda answered.
Patricia Weatherford said, “Fight your racial battles on your own time, Lenore. Take her in there. Be careful, Palomino said she had a gun when he grabbed her, so it’s likely she knows how to use one.”
“Blondie’s not going to get to use my gun, don’t worry your pointy little head about that!” Lenore said. She nudged Belinda with the barrel of the weapon in question. “You heard the lady, go unload it before you lose it.”
They disappeared into the bathroom. Another gun-barrel poker, I reflected; the world was still full of them, in spite of the fact that I’ve had to deal with several and those aren’t poking any longer. Presently Belinda emerged from the john with her blouse hanging outside her pants; she’d apparently managed to zip and unzip, but tucking in had been beyond her, bound as she was. She was clowning relief; for an inexperienced operative she was holding up well. She could be forgiven for overdoing the funny business a bit trying to show how unscared she was. She was prodded over to one of the cots in the little room while I was allowed to take my turn at the facilities under the supervision of Charles, who at least knew enough to keep a discreet distance between me and the end of his gun barrel.
At first I’d assumed that the hut had been built as housing for the workers in this happiness factory, but on second thought I decided that it had probably been intended as quarters for the management, since in this part of the world it was unlikely that mere laborers were afforded such fancy plumbing. What I entered was an honest-to-Pete little prefab bathroom with running water—I wasn’t given time to determine if the hot-water faucet actually ran hot—a molded shower with a mildewed curtain, and a flushing john. I did note that the window was too small for escape purposes. The place wasn’t surgically clean, but it wasn’t outrageously filthy, either.
Emerging, I was ordered to sit on the cot beside Belinda, whose legs were already taped together. P
atricia Weatherford strapped my ankles with the silvery stuff while Charles kept me covered in a reasonably intelligent fashion, although I was fairly sure that he’d never before pointed a gun at another human being. I noted that Lenore was waving her piece around in a careless manner that would have got her thrown off any respectable shooting range. On the other hand, the plump little man whom I called Baldy in my mind, since his name had not been revealed to us, was concentrating hard on not shooting anybody, or himself, with the terrifying implement that had been wished off on him. Amateur night in the jungle. After rechecking our bonds, Patricia Weatherford signaled to her troops and they withdrew to the other room, closing the door behind them.
Belinda drew a long breath. “All right, now tell me what in the world is going on here!” she said. “What’s all this about a million dollars?”
I’d had time to think it over and to realize, rather abashed, that we’d all managed to disregard one of the most significant factors in Mark Steiner’s recent history.
I said, “Baby, you have a short memory. You forget—we all seem to have forgotten—that some time ago the late Ayatollah Khomeini offered five million dollars for the author of The Satanic Verses. I gather that his successor hasn’t withdrawn the offer, quite the contrary. Then Gregorio Vasquez, the copycat, offered one million for the author of The Evil Empire. I don’t think anybody’s cashed in on Salman Rushdie yet, but it seems as if El Viejo may just possibly have paid off for Mark Steiner, although why this Spooky gang didn’t simply take their million and run remains to be determined.”
Belinda licked her lips. “But that’s crazy! I mean, the Weatherford has lots of money of her own, and I get the impression her friends aren’t exactly starving, judging by the one that got killed in Santa Fe. So why would they need—”
The Threateners Page 21