The Threateners (23 page)

“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.

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.

Occasionally the path would wander into the tangled woods for a bit, cutting across a point or promontory. Once Belinda shied abruptly, like a startled mare, as a rodent the size of a Pomeranian lumbered across the wet path ahead. She gave a sharp, nervous, little laugh.

“My God, if that’s what the local rats look like, I don’t want to see the cats! Keep moving, Buster!”

On the next inland excursion we stopped in the shelter of a big tree at the side of the pavement. The rain was coming down more densely now. I could feel water trickling down my neck, but it wasn’t one of my major worries. I’d been wet before and survived it. I noted that we’d stopped where a side path toward the river left the main trail. It was blocked by a wooden fence and a gate to which was nailed a faded sign: INTERDITADO POR MOTIVO DE SEGURANCA. There was a funny little squiggle under the c. Although my Portuguese is nonexistent, my rudimentary Spanish, a very similar language, let me figure out that the path was forbidden for motives of safety.

These motives did not seem to impress my guards. After a quick look up and down the main path, at the moment empty in the rain, Morton went forward and untwisted the rusty baling wire that had been used to reinforce the decrepit gate latch. He opened the gate, waved us through, secured the latch once more, and followed us into the trees just as a small child in jeans, sex indeterminate, came running down the main path, splashing happily through the puddles; we could hear the mother, still out of sight, shouting at him/her in Portuguese or Spanish, I couldn’t tell which.

Reaching the end of the path, I found the situation just as bad as I’d expected. I mean, down there they don’t have our obsession with safety, and they don’t close off paths and nail up warning signs for just any minor peril. This was a booby trap dangerous enough to catch even their reluctant attention. The trail emerged abruptly from the trees onto what had once been a small, paved, fenced area on a shelf of rock overhanging the rapids. It had obviously been a special little observation point with a magnificent view of the falls, now close enough that the ground was wet with drifting mist as well as rain.

The only trouble was that the river below the promontory had undercut the rock. Most of the paved area, with its railing, had fallen into the torrent—I couldn’t help wondering if they’d lost any tourists in the collapse. The pavement ended raggedly over nothing, as did the broken safety fence on either side. Ugly cracks in the remaining asphalt indicated that more large chunks of the cliff underneath were settling, getting ready to fall. It wasn’t really, I reflected grimly, a very good place for a gent afflicted with acrophobia.

“Hold it!” Morton snapped. “Back up!”

Glad to do so, I moved back obediently, with Belinda. Morton waved us to the side of the path where we were shielded by jungle brush and trees. We could hear the helicopter coming; then it appeared, clattering loudly. It made a circle near the falls and headed back downstream.

“All right, Belinda. He’s mine now!”

“You’re welcome to him,” the girl said.

She was pretty wet by now, her fluffy blond hair damply matted, her thin purple blouse dark across the shoulders. She regarded me for a moment and seemed about to say something, perhaps good-bye; then she shrugged and moved aside without speaking. Morton gestured with his gun. He'd held it in his pocket during our walk, but it was in the open now. The pleasure of getting to deal with me seemed to have dispelled the uncertainty I’d sensed earlier. He didn’t even seem to notice the penetrating rain that had made him as wet as the rest of us. Well, one of us was going to get even wetter; the question was which one.