The Threateners Page 10

  He called down the street: “Hey, Art, bring those kids over here.”

  Another uniformed man led them up to us. They were dressed in grubby jeans and T-shirts. The smaller girl had been crying, but the older one seemed to be very much in control of herself.

  “You know these kids, mister?” their guardian asked me.

  I said, “Hi, Andy. We talked on the phone.”

  She was skinny and had short blond hair and a pert face with wise blue eyes made wiser by a pair of large horn-rim glasses that made her look like a small edition of her mother. The younger one was slightly plump, with a pretty baby face and long brown hair down her back.

  The older one said, “You’re Mr. Helm. I saw you when Popsy brought you to the house that time.”

  I hunkered down on the sidewalk in front of her. From my own long-ago papa experience, I remembered that kids, like dogs, are best approached at their own level.

  I said, “Andy, I’ve got some bad news for you. Your daddy’s been hurt.”

  Her big eyes watched me gravely through the glasses. ‘ ‘He’s not our real daddy, but we like him, ’ ’ she said, sounding like the chairman of a committee of two that had given the matter serious consideration. Then she asked calmly, “Is he dead?”

  I nodded. “Yes, Andy, I’m afraid—”

  At which point we were interrupted by a shrill female in a police uniform who accused me of being a sadistic brute, breaking the news of their bereavement to these helpless kids in such a crude and cruel manner. Considering that the helpless kids in question had fled one country ahead of its government’s execution squads, had had their mother kidnapped in another country, and had just made good their escape from a home that had been torched, I hadn’t felt they needed to be shielded from bad news, but perhaps I’d been wrong. Then Dennis Morton turned up and laid claim to them, saying he’d take them to the rest home where their mother was staying. The kids were marched away between him and the policewoman, who was making cooing, sympathetic noises at them. I saw Andrea Steiner look back, and I thought she winked at me, but I couldn’t be sure.

  "Useful assistance in doing what?" I repeated, when Mac didn’t speak. I looked at him hard. I said, “So Ruth Steiner is going down to South America to retrieve some information about pernicious substances that’s on computer disks her husband sent to various friends, a whole book of information; and you want me to go along and hold her hand.’’

  “Yes, the lady has indicated that she will not cooperate with the organization that employs Dennis Morton, but she will with us. Rather than try to persuade her to change her mind, the powers that be have instructed us to protect her in her travels and give her any assistance she requires.”

  I studied him for a moment. I didn’t need to ask why, when he’d always managed to keep us clear of antidrug operations in the past, saying that he had no intention of risking good soldiers in a lost war, he’d allowed us to be roped into this shaky mission. There were two answers and I knew both of them. First and less important: Dennis Morton’s superior had tried to give Mac hands-off orders, and he doesn’t take kindly to being leaned on, so he’d wangled instructions from higher authority that let us take over the whole operation, and to hell with Morton and Co. But that was personal and of minor significance. More important was the feet that something needed to be done in South America, and as Ruth Steiner’s bodyguard I’d be in a good position to do it.

  I didn’t need to ask, but to get things perfectly clear, I asked anyway: “We don’t usually mess with the drug-interdiction business, sir. What’s changed our policy, the threat of the nation being inundated by a flood of nickel marijuana and dollar cocaine?”

  Mac said, “You’re being willfully stupid, Eric. You know perfectly well that prohibited substances, or whatever the current jargon calls them, are not the real problem here.”

  I said, “Okay, I just wanted to get the priorities straight. What does my official brief include, if anything, beyond keeping the lady alive? I mean, are we interested in her damned diskettes?”

  “Not particularly. Now that her husband is dead, they, and the book they represent, belong to the lady, as far as we’re concerned. Of course, since we’re required to protect her, we cannot allow her to be robbed by anybody, if you understand what I mean, Eric. We have jurisdiction. No one else has any right whatever to Mrs. Steiner’s literary inheritance. You are entitled to use any means at your disposal to defend it." He stared at me hard for a moment to make sure I got the message: If any other government agency tries to horn in, blast them. Then he went on in softer tones: “If you should gain the lady’s confidence to the extent that she’ll entrust the disks to you, which doesn’t seem likely at the moment, and she gives her permission, you can pass them along to us; but under no circumstances are you to antagonize her by trying to take her property against her will. I repeat, we are not particularly interested in obtaining Marcus Steiner’s literary revelations.”

  I spent the afternoon in the basement with our armorer, having the theory and practice of Thuggee explained to me, since it seemed likely I hadn’t seen the last of Vasquez’s stranglers. The following morning I caught a flight west to Santa Fe—well, to Albuquerque; you have to drive the last sixty miles—so I could fly east to Miami two days later with Ruth Steiner.

  It would have been simpler for me, already on the East Coast, to meet her in Miami, but although I didn’t really expect action to be taken against her so soon, I didn’t like the idea of letting her cross the country without me. Besides, we needed a little time together to develop a working relationship before we joined the tour group that was supposed to give us a bit of camouflage through South America.

  As I now sipped my Scotch in the cocktail lounge of the MIA Hotel and nibbled at the Brie, which was satisfactorily ripe, I reflected that you had to hand it to the Thugs. Who would suspect you of being lethally armed just because you carried a slightly oversized silk handkerchief in one pocket and some change in another that could be knotted into one comer for weight—four or five quarters would do the job nicely, I’d determined. But airport security in Albuquerque hadn’t given my most visible weapon a second look when I emptied my pockets at the magnetic gate; it had been just a fancy bandanna to them. They hadn’t spotted the invisible ones, either; but then, they never do. Of course, arrangements had also been made for our local people to slip me a firearm in any country where I felt the need for one.

  Ruth Steiner spoke after a little while. “I’m sorry if I seemed stuffy about your drinks.”

  I hadn’t expected an apology. “Forget it. ”

  She shook her head. “No, you’d better know that my first husband, the father of my girls, was an alcoholic. ” She drew a long breath. ‘ ‘He was in the wrong car when he was blown up. Nobody’d bother to booby-trap our old wreck, Richard’s position wasn’t that important—he wasn’t that important, which was one of his problems—but he got so drunk at an official cocktail party that he staggered out and got into the wrong car by mistake, the one beside ours. It belonged to a visiting politico who’d earned a certain amount of hostility. The parking attendant had left the key in the lock—there was supposed to be perfect security on the premises, ha-ha!—and when Richard tried to start the car . . . Boom!" She shook her head. "They weren’t very nice years, those last ones with Richard. Watching someone you once loved very much become somebody no one could love . . . Ever since, it gives me the creeps to see anybody drink, particularly someone I may have to rely on. Mark . . .” She stopped and cleared her throat. “Mark was very sweet about it after we were married. He liked an occasional whiskey, and particularly wine with dinner, but he knew how it made me feel, so he abstained.” She smiled faintly. “Of course I knew he kept a cooler of beer in his truck and had one occasionally, but never when I was around. Not because he was afraid of me or what I’d say; simply because he didn’t want to distress me. A very sweet guy.”

  Watching her, I remembered the first time I’d seen her, in
the kitchen of their home, a slim, neat—well, except for the intentionally untidy hair—and rather plain girl in an inexpensive print dress, spreading peanut butter for two kids who didn’t look much younger than she did. Today she was traveling in a striped blue knit shirt, a little faded-denim skirt, nylons, and low blue shoes. A blue cardigan, insurance against airline air-conditioning, hung over the back of her chair. She wore no eye makeup, and her eyes were big and blue behind the oversized glasses.

  I sipped my Scotch deliberately. “I’m not a sweet guy,” I said.

  “I certainly hope not,” she said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Actually, I am not worrying about your alcoholic intake for my sake, and certainly not for yours, Mr. Helm. I just want to be certain you are not diminishing your effectiveness.” She leaned forward, her elbows on the table. “You see, Mr. Heim, I want you in top condition; in good enough condition to kill Gregorio Vasquez for me. I have suffered quite enough at the hands of that man!”

  The hatred in her voice, and in her small face, was quite impressive. That old man was certainly accumulating a lot of enemies.

  I wasn’t one of them. I mean, as far as I was concerned, Senor Vasquez was dead. He wasn’t my enemy any more than he was my friend. He was simply a man who had ceased to exist at a certain moment, but who persisted in continuing to breathe. I merely had to see that he stopped.

  Chapter 10

  Rio de Janeiro was a big disappointment to me. I guess I’d heard too many wonderful things about this marvelous city on its fabulous beach washed by the gentle waters of the South Atlantic. There was no way it could live up to its advance billing, and as far as I was concerned, it didn’t.

  Oh, the scenery was moderately spectacular with the two famous peaks—Sugar Loaf and Corcovado (Hunchback) Mountain—rising from the great rocky ridge that splits the city in two, so that half of it has to be connected to the other half by a series of tunnels. (Corcovado’s the one topped by the much-photographed statue of Christ the Redeemer.) However, I live seven thousand feet up in the foothills of the Rockies and I’ve seen a mountain, thanks. The legendary beach was impressive, to be sure, but I once spent some time in Waikiki, where you step out of your hotel right onto the gleaming sands instead of having to first fight your way across six lanes of traffic. (There’s also a pretty fair stretch of sand, undisturbed by the noise and fumes of city traffic, at Vara-dero, Cuba; and don’t ask me what I was doing in Varadero, Cuba.)

  But my chief disillusionment in Rio concerned the people. Even in the fairly expensive hostelry to which we were taken, while they didn’t look poverty-stricken, they didn’t look especially smart or glamorous, either. Waiting, with the rest of the group, for our tour manager to take care of the red tape at the hotel desk, I watched a well-developed Brazilian girl in shorts and high heels heading for the elevators; moderately interesting, but hardly worth the trip, since my hometown is full of sexy Latin ladies in shorts and high heels. Still looking where the girl had vanished, I saw a sturdier figure appear, one I recognized.

  “Oh, Jesus!” I said to Ruth. “Don’t stare, but try to get a good look at the dame just coming from the elevators so you’ll know her if you see her again.”

  We were waiting in an alcove off the lobby that was furnished with three overstaffed sofas in a loose C-formation and several big easy chairs, into which most members of our tour had settled; but I’d done enough sitting for a while and Ruth had felt the same way. We were giving our tired rumps a break by standing up, for a change, in the alcove opening, just out of the lobby traffic. The woman passed within ten feet of us.

  It was the closest look I’d had of her—back in Santa Fe I’d been handicapped by having to pretend I wasn’t aware of being under surveillance as she and her friends trailed me around. Like us, she was a bit rumpled this morning, in a beige linen pantsuit I’d seen before, that looked as if she’d spent the night in it, perhaps on a plane like us, perhaps even on our plane. I hadn’t spotted her, but King Kong could lose himself on board one of those giant jets, particularly with a first-class ticket—I was still trying to recover from the strains and aches resulting from having to fold my six feet four, for most of a day and night, into the midget space provided in tourist class.

  I noted that the woman had had her brown hair restyled from the stringy, straggling hippie mop I’d last seen. Short and smooth and glossy, it flattered her snub-nosed face and gave her a rather pleasant grown-up-tomboy look. She looked as if she used to play a mean game of golf or tennis before she took up homicide. As far as I could see, she showed no evidence of being on cocaine or anything else, but it’s not my field of expertise and I don’t really know what signs to look for. She walked by without glancing our way and went out the hotel’s front door into the bright Brazilian sunshine.

  “Yes, I’ll know her,” Ruth said. “Who is she?”

  “One of the Compañeros de la Hoja, I think. Compañeras?”

  Ruth looked surprised. “That freckled, bouncing phys-ed major? She looks too wholesome to . . . You do mean those people who were watching Mark and me?”

  “And me, and Madeleine Rustin. They seem to have plenty of manpower. And womanpower. Although they lost one person of each gender in Santa Fe. Well, so did we. They’re still a dog ahead of us, however.” I cleared my throat. “Anyway, in case you’re interested, that was Spooky Three who just went out.”

  Ruth frowned. “Spooky?”

  “I call them all Spookies. That one’s been following me around for the past several weeks, off and on. Chronologically, she’s the third one I spotted of the four taking turns watching me back in Santa Fe. Spooky Three.”

  Ruth glanced at me. “Should they have found us down here so soon?”

  I shrugged. “There was never any chance of their losing us for long, no matter how sneaky we tried to be, considering that you have to visit most of the obvious South American cities to look up Mark’s friends and determine which of them received little three-and-a-half-by-three-and-a-half-inch presents in the mail. Maybe we could have slipped away briefly, but we have to figure that this continent belongs to Gregorio Vasquez. There’s no practical way of getting from country to country except by plane. No matter what offbeat route we chose, his people would have spotted us at the first airport we hit, and passed the word. It was decided in Washington that we’d do better to play it straight and just follow along with this tour group, since it was hitting all the places youd indicated plus a few more. We’re supposed to act as. if we’re quite sure that the two of us can handle any problems that arise, although, as a matter of fact, we do have some backup if we need it. Maybe, thinking us cocky and careless and overconfident, Vasquez’s people will get a little overconfident and careless themselves." I glanced over my shoulder. “What do you think of our fellow travelers?”

  Ruth looked at our companions, slumped wearily and sleepily on the hotel furniture. There were seven couples. Ruth and I made eight; sixteen warm bodies. We’d all boarded the plane independently, so this was our first group get-together. Our tour manager, a Mrs. Tobler, whom we were supposed to call Annie, had made contact with each of us at the Varig counter in Miami, using our Weston Tours carry-on bags for identification. She’d helped us get our seat assignments and turned us loose with our boarding passes to make the flight on our own. Then she’d rounded us up at the Rio airport, directed us through immigration and customs, shoveled us and our luggage onto a waiting bus, and herded us into the hotel. She’d instructed us to introduce ourselves to each other while she picked up our room keys, and we had, but I doubted that many names had stuck in many minds; although I figured that Ruth’s name and mine were probably imprinted boldly on one mind. The question was: which one?

  Ruth moved her shoulders slightly. “It’s a little early to form any opinions, isn’t it? They look as tired as I feel. I seem to have been sitting in airplanes for a week; and how many hours did we lose, coming east? Two time zones from Albuquerque to Miami and tw
o more from Miami to Rio? I never realized that South America was that far east of North America." She glanced at her watch. "That means it’s barely six o’clock in the morning back home. Ugh! As soon as that woman produces a key, I’m going to disappear into my room, take a hot bath, and sleep the rest of the day and let the world catch up with me.”

  I said, “In that fistful of tour literature we were handed, there’s a passenger list we’d both better memorize. There’s also a schedule indicating that we have a get-together cocktail party and dinner tonight. It’ll give us a chance to match the names to the faces. I understand that some of the people on the list canceled out after it was printed, and I believe two couples joined up too late to be listed—three if you include us. I’m particularly interested in the four people besides us who aren’t on the list, but try not to let them know it. After we’ve had a chance to get everybody sorted out, we’ll compare notes. Okay?”

  “What are we looking for?”

  I said, ‘ ‘Even though we joined the tour at almost the last possible moment, it seems likely that one of those other unlisted characters joined even later, doesn’t it? A Compañero who was assigned to keep an eye on us, once our travel plans were known, until his gang is ready to move in on us. ”

  Ruth shivered slightly. “It makes me feel, well, hunted, to think of all those eyes watching me.”

  I said, “That’s because you are hunted; we both are. If you have any arrangements to make here, be careful what phone you use. And if you have to leave the hotel for any reason, I’d better go with you. I’d hate to have you disappear on your first morning in Rio."

  She said, “No phone calls or excursions are needed, Mr. Helm. The contact procedures have already been established. I don’t have to call anybody and tell them to meet me on the beach just to the right of the third wave, wearing a hibiscus in my navel.”

  I laughed. "And you’re not telling me what the established procedures are, right?”