The Ambushers (19 page)

Well, the Nazis had always believed in the psychological value of special cutlery, generally some kind of a sneaky dirk that wasn’t much good for real fighting but was a hell of a fine weapon for stabbing a man in the back. Symbolically, you might say, the honest machete was a step upward, although one might be hard put to find a use for it in atomic warfare.

They took me to the wall tent set up at the base of the cliff. Now, at night, the pretense of this being a scientific expedition had been abandoned, and an armed sentry stood in front. He gave the straight-armed Nazi salute. The sergeant with the machine pistol replied in kind.

“Viva Quintana!” said the sentry.

“Viva Quintana!” said my escort, and I was shoved into the tent.

Inside, there was a square table and some folding wooden chairs. A camp cot was shoved back against the canvas wall. A two-burner gasoline lantern hung above the table, casting a harsh white light over everything.

Von Sachs sat at the table with some papers before him, facing the door sternly, like General Grant awaiting the latest word from Vicksburg. At close range he looked older than I’d expected, but brown and lean and hard. He was in khakis, with an armband. A Sam Browne belt with a .45 Colt automatic and a fancier version of the regimental machete hung from the back of his chair. A germ of an idea came to me as I looked from the saberlike weapon to the scarred face of von Sachs, and I shoved it back into the corner of my mind, hoping it would grow into a real brainwave.

Over to one side, I was aware, was Catherine Smith, but it wasn’t my business to notice her until I was given a cue. In my terrible predicament I’d hardly be giving attention to stray blondes. I kept my eyes on the men.

They went through the viva-Quintana drill, and the little sergeant slapped my gun and notebook on the table and made his report in Spanish. Von Sachs picked up the notebook and glanced at my notes and drawings. He picked up my gun and checked the loads. He aimed it at me, dismissed the sergeant, and waited until the tent flaps had settled back into place before he spoke.

“Is this the man, Fräulein Schmidt?”

It was my cue and I looked. She was lounging on a camp chair drinking Mexican beer out of the bottle. You couldn’t help being conscious, if you were a man, of the strong, bare, sunburned legs and the carelessly half-open blouse. She took another swig and frowned at me.

“Well, he’s tall enough,” she said to von Sachs. “I told you, that’s all I know, that it was done by a very tall man who first represented himself as an interviewer of some kind and then said he was a U.S. government agent. He took the Head woman to the garage where I found her, forced the information from her, and left her tied. She lived just long enough to tell me this, and how to find you and warn you, before she died.”

It was the story we’d more or less agreed upon while we were driving. Von Sachs was watching her closely as she talked. He seemed particularly interested in the broken threads left by the missing button of her blouse— well, that general area.

“I could think of worse places to die, Fräulein,” he murmured. Then his glance sharpened suspiciously. “Gerda Landwehr only came here once. She was blindfolded at the mouth of the canyon. How could she tell you where to come?”

“She must have peeked,” Catherine said without hesitation. “She described the caves. She told me what road and how far. If you don’t believe she knew, ask him,” she said with a gesture in my direction. “After all, he found his way here, too.”

Von Sachs didn’t turn at once. He seemed to be still brooding over that missing button. I suppose I might have been able to jump him while his attention was diverted, turn the gun on him, and do the job right there. Maybe we could then have shot our way clear with his gun and mine, and hers if she still had it, and got away in the dark. Maybe. The project had suicidal overtones, and I don’t like switching plans. Besides, it didn’t take care of the missile. Besides, I wasn’t at all sure he was as absent-minded as he looked. He could have been trying to trick me into a move.

“It is too bad,” he said slowly. “She was a handsome woman even after so many years—Gerda. As a girl, she was beautiful. She was the, er, fiancée of one of my junior officers, but rank has its privileges, ha! And you killed her!” he said, swinging abruptly to face me over the short-barreled revolver.

“I interrogated her,” I lied. “She was soft, like all you Nazis. Soft and yellow inside. Like butter, von Sachs.”

“Here I am Kurt Quintana,” he snapped. “You will address me so.”

“You are Kurt Quintana calling a lady Fräulein?” I sneered. “You might at least keep the act consistent. Señorita is the local word.”

He frowned. “You are trying to make me angry. Why?”

“It’s an old trick in these parts, von Sachs. When the Apaches caught you, you tried to make them kill you fast. It didn’t hurt so much that way. Well, you’ve got me. Let’s stop the yakking and get it over with.” I grinned at him maliciously, as if remembering something. “You look a lot more dignified than the last time I saw you.”

“Where was that?” he demanded suspiciously. “I do not recall—”

“You didn’t see me,” I said. “You were trying to get under a jeep. The first half went in fine, but the rump end kind of got left outside. It was a real tempting target. I’ve always regretted passing it up.”

“That was you? With the rifle, in Costa Verde?”

“That was me. And let me tell you, I caught hell for letting you go. For punishment, they gave me the job of catching you again.” I shrugged. “Well, it just shows you, never pass up a good shot. If I’d got you in the tail, you might have got blood poisoning and died, and we wouldn’t be having this pleasant conference.”

“You are an American intelligence agent?”

“I’m an American agent. If I had any intelligence of any kind I wouldn’t be here, caught by a bunch of toy soldiers.”

“You are alone?”

“I’m working alone. I don’t say there aren’t others assigned to the job of finding you, but I guess I beat them to you. I wanted to check what that woman told me before I called out the reserves. Information obtained by those methods, as you probably know, isn’t always reliable.” I grimaced. “Well, come on, you ersatz Fuehrer! Whistle up your firing squad. Break out that final lousy cigarette. Let’s put the goddamn show on the road, huh?”

“You think I am going to kill you?”

“You’re either going to kill me or tease me to death. What’s the difference?”

“What is your name?”

“None of your damn business,” I said. “Well, call me Evans. Henry Evans.”

He looked at me for a second or two in silence. Then he lifted my snub-nosed weapon and took careful aim. The hammer started to rise, actuated by the double-action mechanism, as he put pressure on the trigger. When it got to a certain point it would fall. There was a little sound to the right as Catherine pried the top off another beer bottle.

“God, I’m dry,” she said. “This country just bakes it out of you. If you’re going to shoot, dearie, shoot. Don’t make me wait all day for the noise.”

He didn’t look at her, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been testing her, to see if perhaps there was something between us that might make her plead for my life. But he was watching me. The angle of the light made the scar a deep cleft in his cheek. He’d come a long way from those innocent boyish games at Heidelberg. He’d commanded armies; he’d been hunted for crimes against humanity. Now he was in command again, after a fashion. He was on his way back up, unless something stopped him.

I cleared my throat and said, “Don’t keep the lady waiting, von Sachs.”

He eased the pressure on the trigger and laughed. “You are frightened, Mr. Evans.”

“Guns always scare me. But I’ll get over it. There’s very little a bullet won’t cure, I always say.”

“No,” he said slowly, “you are frightened inside. You talk big, but it is you who are soft and yellow inside, Mr. Evans. You are afraid if I do not kill you at once, you will break down and show it.”

I said, “Christ! An amateur psychologist I’ve got to run into, yet! Tell me one thing, von Sachs. Just what the hell were you doing with a bunch of Commies down in Costa Verde?”

“That is a foolish question,” he said. “You have seen the result of my trip outside, you have sketched it in your little notebook. I was shopping for a weapon I’d been told was for sale.”

I said, “Hell, El Fuerte wouldn’t have sold it while he was alive. That was his ace in the hole.”

“The ace was about to be trumped,” von Sachs said. “His Russian backers had got wind of the fact that he had it, through informants in Cuba. They were displeased. They threatened him with dire consequences if he should use it. They wanted it back. All the time, of course, he was denying that he had ever seen such a thing. Meanwhile he was trying to find a buyer with cash. The Russians would have paid him nothing, and General Santos had gone to considerable expense and trouble. He thought it only fair that the transaction should show a profit.”

“I see,” I said. “And now you’ve got it here, how the hell are you planning to use it? I mean, you’re not crazy enough to think you can blackmail either the United States or Mexico with just one overgrown whiz-bang?”

“Blackmail?” He frowned at the word. “I do not blackmail, Mr. Evans. When the time comes, not too far distant, I will fire the missile. And the city of El Paso, Texas, will disappear from the map of America. I think it will be El Paso. The bearded technicians tell me it is the easiest target within range, and your Texans are hotheaded and politically influential. They will insist on immediate retaliation—and against whom will they want to retaliate, Mr. Evans?”

I drew a long breath. “It’s a tricky idea. Not original, but tricky. It might work in the movies.”

“It will work here! No one up there above the border will know from which direction the missile came. All they will know is that an American city has been destroyed. Will you tell me that not one of your intercontinental weapons will be fired under such provocation? That no signal will go out to the captains of the atomic submarines with their Polaris missiles? And if one, just one, weapon is fired, will it not be answered?” He laid the gun gently on the table. “And when the radioactive dust settles, will there not be opportunities for a man at the head of a military force, with secret allies in your principal southwestern cities, Mr. Evans? Such a man could carve an empire out of the rubble!”

There was a little silence. As I’d said, the idea wasn’t exactly original. Other people had thought of the possibility before, but none had gone shopping for the means to carry it out. At least I hoped they hadn’t.

I said lightly, “Well, it sounds kind of like burning down the barn to roast the cow to get some bones to throw to the pup that hasn’t been whelped yet. Do you know what I think? I think you’re cracked, von Sachs. I think you just want to set the world on fire and watch the pretty mushroom clouds grow and grow. I think—”

“That’s enough!” He had picked up the gun again.

“I think you’d just like getting the two largest countries that crushed Adolf Hitler to destroy each other. The rest is just crap for the suckers outside. Empire, hell!”

“Silence!” The hammer started to rise again.

“Go on,” I said bravely. “Pull the damn trigger, you crazy Nazi butcher! Go on, shoot!”

The hammer subsided slowly. He sighed. “You are too eager to die, Mr. Evans. I do not think I will oblige you tonight. Tomorrow, perhaps... Guards!”

Well, if I hadn’t egged him on, if I hadn’t made him think I yearned for a quick death, he’d have had me shot right away. It was very ingenious of me, and I was sweating very convincingly as they took me out of there.

The jail, brig, detention cell, or what have you, was a pigeonhole twenty feet up the face of the canyon wall, reached by a rickety ladder. The sergeant made me climb up, covered by his ugly little weapon; then he sent a man up to tie me securely. The knot-man was good, and I’m no Houdini. I tried to get some slack the way it says in the manual, but if I’d thought the man could read at all, let alone read English, I’d have said he’d been at the same book. When he left me it was fairly obvious that I wasn’t going to be climbing down any ladders without help. Then they took the ladder away, and that was that.

Down below, the fire was blazing cheerfully and the boys around it were passing the tequila, mescal, pulque, tiswin, or whatever kind of cactus juice it was they had in the jug. Pretty soon one of them broke out a guitar and began to sing, just like in a movie. I wiggled forward to where I could look at the happy group below. Off to one side sat a lone, anti-social character with his back to a rock and a rifle across his knees, watching my cave. The light was still burning in the tent, I noticed, and the sentry still stood in front.

The guard with the rifle waved me back. When I didn’t move at once he aimed his weapon my way. I took the hint and squirmed back into the darkness of the cave and tried the other end. Ten feet back from the entrance I hit solid rock. Well, I hadn’t been about to explore any tunnels or crevices tied hand and foot. It was up to Catherine now.

Her next move was obvious, and soon I could hear her working on it. Her laughter and von Sachs’ began to come from the tent more loudly and drunkenly as the night progressed. Presently they started singing the Horst Wessel off key. After that there was more laughter, and some horseplay that shook the tent canvas, and a male voice demanding and a female voice protesting, not very convincingly, and some more activity, and silence.

I lay in my pigeonhole above and wondered why I didn’t like myself very much. I mean, it wasn’t as if the woman were anything to me; and she’d merely done just what I would have told her to do if she’d asked for instructions.

The guitarist was long silent, and the fire was dying. When it no longer cast a glow on the ceiling of the cave, she came. I heard her down there, speaking to the guard in a slurred voice and giggling in an inebriated way at his answer; then there was a solid, whacking sound like an axe going into soft pine.

I heard the ladder being moved back into place. Something metallic was tossed into the cave. A moment later she followed it, sat for a moment panting, and crawled over to cut me free with the machete she’d sent ahead, presumably taken from the guard below.