The Threateners Read online

  “I . . . I’m a grieving widow,” she said. “I really am, you know. I shouldn’t even think of. . .”

  “Mark wouldn’t want you to grieve too long,” I said.

  She licked her lips childishly. “I don’t know what. . .I thought I hated you. You hit me so hard with the butt of that big gun.”

  I reached out to touch the side of her head gently. “But it’s all right now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said, and suddenly she was in my arms, “it’s all right now.” But she held back for a moment. “You’re supposed to take my glasses off before you kiss me, darling.”

  So I took the glasses off her, and moments later, some other things off her, and we determined in the most convincing way possible that everything really was all right now.

  Chapter 14

  The scream brought me out of a sound sleep. Instinctively I grabbed the little knife I’d tucked under the pillow as I joined her in the bed. Kicking myself free of the bedclothes, I hit the carpet with a thump, rolled to get well clear, and on my stomach, spent a moment getting my diminutive weapon open two-handed, since it hadn’t been designed for fast-draw work.

  Actually it was a Swiss army knife about the size of the boy-scout knife I’d carried as a kid, but better equipped. This little red-handled implement had flat screwdrivers in two sizes, one also serving as a can opener while the other pried caps off bottles; in addition it had a Phillips screwdriver, a punch, a toothpick, and a pair of tweezers. It even had two blades, an inch-and-a-half job for fine whittling and a two-and-a-quarter-incher for heavy carving. Two and a quarter inches of steel isn’t much, but it beats no steel at all, and the little slicer had the tremendous advantage that, with all its innocent-looking tools, it hadn’t upset the airport inspectors a bit, either in Albuquerque or Miami. Well, they’d passed the Thuggee scarf also. Any sensible assassin who doesn’t insist on packing a four-pound .44 Magnum with an eight-inch barrel through the gates won’t find airport inspections much of a hindrance to his trade.

  I’d taken my time with the knife because there had been another whimpering cry from the bed and I’d realized what was going on and felt a little ridiculous crawling around on the rug with a miniature stabber in my hand. But I finished opening the knife. You don’t want to get into the habit of stopping halfway for any reason; the next time, that sharp little blade, open, might make the difference between life and death. Then I snapped it shut, rose, and dropped the knife on the chair toward which I’d tossed my clothes a few hours earlier, hitting with some, missing with others in my breathless haste, that contrasted strongly with the fine relaxation I now felt in spite of my sudden awakening. There was also, of course, a small sense of guilt, not involving the girl in the bed, but another woman with whom I’d shared a similar breathless moment not too long ago. I told myself that Madeleine would have laughed heartily at the thought that she’d expect me to be faithful beyond death. . . .

  Ruth was thrashing around desperately in an effort to escape an invisible danger. “Oh, take them away, take them away!” she moaned.

  I went around to that side of the bed and managed to knock something off the bedside table as I fumbled for the light switch. It turned out to be a fat paperback called Trumpet in the Dust by a best-selling novelist I’d heard of, named Johnson D’Arcy; the cover showed a terrified young lady fleeing a dark manor house that had light in one window. I guess I was still half-asleep; instinctively I picked up the book and replaced it tidily on the table before attending to the lady in distress, taking her gently by the shoulders.

  “Easy now, take it easy,” I said. Her eyes came open suddenly. “Dogs?” I asked.

  She licked her lips and nodded. “They were just about to catch me again. Their teeth were all bloody. That poor man had tried to shoot them but it was dark and they were coming so fast and he missed and his friends were shooting from the edge of the field but they were too far away. . . ."

  She shuddered. I sat down on the edge of the bed and held her. “Tell me.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it!” After a little she drew a long, shuddering breath. “Well, all right. I suppose it’s better to talk it out. Locked up in that room, I heard a sound in the middle of the night, and there he was, picking the padlock that held the bars shut, it was kind of a swinging grill.

  He got me out through the window. We sneaked away, trying not to make any noise; then we ran. I never knew his name. I never really saw his face; it was night and he was in camouflage and all smeared with black. He said some friends were waiting for us with a car on the other side of the field. He hadn’t expected dogs; he thought we had it made until we heard them barking. Then somebody turned them loose and we could hear them behind us, coming up fast. They weren’t barking any longer, just rushing after us silently. When they got close, he told me to keep running and took out his gun and turned to deal with them, but it was too dark, like I said, and he missed, and his friends were shooting from the edge of the field, but they were too far away. The dogs charged him and knocked him down. Two of them. Well, I already said that, or didn’t I?”

  She was holding me tightly, her voice muffled against my chest. Neither of us had any clothes on. Of course, if I’d been a true gentleman comforting a troubled lady, I wouldn’t have been aware of her nakedness, only of her distress.

  She went on: “I just stood there. I suppose I could have tried to find a club or something to beat them off; at least I could have taken the opportunity to run like he’d told me while they were still busy with . . . with him, but it was a big open field in which they were bound to catch me. So I just. . . just waited for them to come and kill me, too. And they came up to me and sniffed at me all around, later I found bloody smears on my jeans, ugh! I stood perfectly still. Then I heard the whistle—it was supposed to be supersonic, I think, but I have very good hearing—and the dogs started whining, and the whistle blew again, and they turned and trotted away.”

  “Dobermans?”

  She shook her head. “Dobermans are the sleek, lean, dark ones, aren’t they? I don’t know much about dogs, but these were heavier. Big, stocky, yellow-brown brutes.” She cleared her throat. “I must have fainted. The next thing I knew I was in an ambulance. They caught some of the men who’d held me prisoner, but they never found the dogs or the old man who’d handled them.”

  I glanced at her sharply. “How did you know he was an old man? Did he let you see his face?”

  She shook her head and hesitated, thinking back. “Well, he was there with the dogs when they carried me into that house where they kept me. He looked old, a little bent and slow. Still fairly tall, but he looked as if he’d been taller, you know how they start kind of shrinking. Of course he was all in black and wearing a ski mask like all the others, so I never saw his face. He seemed to be quite fond of his dogs; you could tell by the way he touched them. He wore a big green stone on his left hand. He had spotty hands; that was another giveaway. He didn’t say anything, of course, nobody said a word to me the whole time I was there, but I assumed he was showing me the dogs so I’d realize there was no point in trying to escape.”

  The information she’d given me made me forget, for a moment, that I was holding an attractive girl with no clothes on to whom I’d just made love. It seemed incredible that wealthy and influential and aging Gregorio Vasquez, originally of Colombia—wherever his current residence might be—would travel clear to New England to risk his neck supervising a minor abduction. On the other hand, it was equally incredible that a gang of kidnappers would burden itself with a shaky senior citizen unless he had a lot of authority. . . . Well, if the two-dog man was actually El Viejo, it was a hopeful sign. It meant that he didn’t just hide in an inaccessible aerie handing out orders; he could occasionally be found taking part in the action, just like Mac, who sometimes gets antsy sitting in that office chair and joins us peons hoeing the fields.

  Ruth said, “I’m sorry I woke you.”

  "Are you all right now?"
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  She hesitated, and her arms tightened around me. She laughed again, softly. “Well, there’s only one sure way to find out, isn’t there. . . ?”

  In the morning, with shafts of sunlight lancing through the gaps between the heavy draperies at the windows, I left her asleep among the rumpled bedclothes, looking small and soft and young. The other bed in her room remained undisturbed, as did the two in my room. You might say we enjoyed a superfluity of beds. I suppose I could have mussed one of mine in the interest of respectability, but it seemed a waste of time and effort. Hotel employees aren’t easy to fool about what guest sleeps where, and I saw no reason to try. We’d already resigned ourselves to the fact that our fellow tour members had had us living in sin even before we were.

  I called down for breakfast for two and sat down to scribble a hasty report before shaving. I was dressed and tying my shoes when room service knocked on the door. The meal came on a rolling drop-leaf cart that the waiter unfolded to make a neat little formal table with a white tablecloth; he then uncovered and unwrapped and arranged things very carefully, including a vase with a single white flower, don’t ask me the name. It was nice to see a man who took his profession seriously. There’s another kind of room-service waiter, who shoves a loaded tray at you and runs. The man paused at the door and looked back.

  “Can I bring the senhor anything else? Some ice, perhaps?”

  Although I have, as I’ve already indicated, been known to take a drink upon occasion, I don’t need ice at 7:30 in the morning even in countries where I trust the water, soft or hard. However, “ice” was the word that had been chosen, perhaps because somebody figured that down here south of the equator, but pretty far north of Antarctica, ice wouldn’t figure in normal conversations often enough to cause confusion. I could see some objections to the choice, but I hadn’t been asked. The bureaucratic geniuses who set up these operations never ask.

  “Ice, what’s that in Portuguese?” I asked. We were supposed to go through some linguistic nonsense to confirm identification.

  “Gelo, senhor. It is very close to the Spanish hielo.”

  “I’ve been expecting you,” I said. “As a matter of fact, the stuff you’re to pick up is in the ice bucket in the bathroom.

  It seemed like a suitable place for it, under the circumstances. What do I call you?”

  “Armando will do.”

  He was a slim, moderately tall, middle-aged gent in black pants, a white long-sleeved shirt, and a black bow tie. The formal tie, the thick, smooth black hair, a small black mustache, and a dark poker face gave him the look of a rather snooty headwaiter condescending to do a little work below his station.

  I said, “Sure, Armando. Are you local or will I be seeing more of you on this tour?”

  “I have your schedule; you will see me again. We will continue to make certain that your hotel rooms are clean of electronic surveillance and explosive surprises, as well as possible. It will have to be a hasty check each time, since the hotel desk seldom knows very far in advance which members of a tour will be assigned to which rooms. I suggest, therefore, that after being given your keys, you delay a few minutes in each new hotel before using them. You almost caught our security specialist yesterday.”

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “I’ll take us to the bar for a drink next time. ”

  “Of course, the limited time available is not altogether a handicap. It reduces the enemy’s opportunities as well,” Armando said. After a moment he went on: “Elsewhere, under normal circumstances, we will continue to assume that you are capable of protecting yourself and the lady without assistance, as you did last night; however, if we see anything very elaborate being prepared for you, we will let you know. Incidentally, the three young hoodlums you encountered are known to operate around these hotels; it seems unlikely that their attempt to rob you was anything but a coincidence.”

  I saw no reason to tell him that Ruth had indicated otherwise. I said, “You’ll find a computer diskette with the films. Mrs. Steiner tells me it’s a copy of one she was given yesterday. She says she’s scrambled it in some computerized way so we can’t read it without her password. She’s just giving it to us for safekeeping—one copy for me, one for Washington—in case her original goes astray. Even if Washington should manage to read it, she hopes that it, and the ones to come, will not be released for action until she’s ready to take advantage of the publicity that will result. Well, it’s all in my covering report, if anybody can read my hasty scribbles. ” “I will transmit your suggestions orally as well.”

  “I’ll want a gun at Iguassu Falls.”

  "Any particular kind of gun? We don’t have a great selection. They are quite strict about guns here.”

  “Any old clunker will do,” I said.

  “Ammunition?”

  “One cylinder or magazine will be enough.”

  "Very well." He stepped into the bathroom and came out holding a white plastic bucket by the swinging gold handle-well, it looked like gold. He opened the hall door and looked back, speaking rather loudly: “Just one moment, senhor. I will return with the ice you requested. . . ."

  When I entered Ruth’s room, the bed we’d shared was empty, and the window draperies had been pulled aside to let the daylight in. I could hear her in the bathroom. I tried to tell her that food awaited her, but with water running she didn’t hear me through the closed door, so I crossed the room and knocked.

  “Breakfast, ma’am,” I called.

  She opened the door, holding a comb and wearing a short beach coat, striped blue and white, with a belt that she hadn’t got around to fastening around her. As I’d already discovered, her body, while constructed on economical lines, wasn’t really skinny anywhere. She covered herself without any haste or embarrassment, reminding me that although she sometimes looked like a kid, she’d buried two husbands, so she was used to having a man around in the morning. We faced each other for a moment, assessing our new relationship, but we were both experienced enough to know that it wasn’t something to be talked about.

  “Breakfast is getting cold,” I said.

  “Yes, darling, I’ll be with you in a minute,” she said.

  Chapter 15

  Sugarloaf was a bitch. Getting to the top of the tall, rounded peak, I discovered, didn’t involve just one cable car, but two, with an uneasy transfer stop on an intermediate knob of rock. Both cars were crammed with sightseers. Trying to stay protectively between Ruth and the other passengers wasn’t easy, but my bodyguard duties helped to distract me from the fact that we were hanging by a fragile thread—well, wire cable—over a bottomless abyss. Well, almost bottomless. In my next incarnation I suppose I’ll compensate by becoming an intrepid airman or mountain climber, or maybe even a steeplejack. It’ll be a welcome change.

  The view of Rio from the top of Sugarloaf was spectacular, but I’d already seen one spectacular view of Rio from the top of Corcovado. I didn’t need another, thanks. The only view that really interested me, aside from the sight of ground that was reasonably horizontal, was that of Spooky Three lurking near the lower terminal when we finally made it back down there. She was wearing the beige pantsuit I’d seen more than once already; but although it was neatly pressed today and made her look quite respectable in her healthy tomboy way, it was hardly an invisibility costume. The tall boy with whom she’d lunched the day before in the restaurant with the smoky swords, Spooky Five, was acting as backup and, in jeans and T-shirt and windbreaker, was only a little harder to spot.

  Next day we were expertly packaged, labeled, and shipped by air to Iguassu Falls, flying over a mat of dense green jungle through which silvery rivers gleamed. It was raining

  a little when we set down on the Iguassu airstrip, a change from the bright Rio sunshine. We were met by a bus with a driver and a smiling girl guide, not quite pretty but close enough, an improvement over dour little Arturo. They took us to the Itaipu Hydroelectric Plant on the Parana River and drove us across the dam, which was new,
high, and impressive, with a lot of water roaring down the spillway and throwing up clouds of mist. We spent about thirty seconds in Paraguay across the river, turning the bus around, then we returned to Brazil and, in the administration building, were shown a film of the dam’s construction.

  The rest rooms, that came in handy after the bouncing bus ride and the dull half-hour sit, were marked MASCULINO and FEMININO. Photographing the toilet traffic as usual while waiting for Ruth to emerge, I had a little chat with Belinda Ackerman, in white jeans that were under considerable tension and a purple silk shirt that, by way of contrast, didn’t provide much restraint. She thought it was wonderful the way I seemed to find photogenic subjects everywhere.

  Then onward to the Brazilian national park at Iguassu Falls and a picturesque old pink hotel with white trimmings. I didn’t think much of our accommodations as far as security was concerned—I get nervous in ground-floor rooms with big windows and lush vegetation outside providing convenient cover for any approaching malefactor—but they were carefully done in old-fashioned style. There were tall, black, lathe-turned bedposts and old engravings on the walls. At least they looked enough like old engravings to pass muster if you didn’t look too hard. The bathrooms were frankly modem, however, neatly tiled and offering all toilet conveniences including bidets.

  I spent some time in my room organizing the rudimentary location notes I’d made to go with the day’s take of pictures. Finally, I removed the half-used roll still in the camera, added it to the collection, put everything into the ice bucket provided with the room, and loaded up with fresh film. Shortly afterward I heard a light code knock on the hall door. I opened to admit Armando. Good timing.