The Threateners (16 page)

She licked her lips uncertainly. "And if I do trust you with it and let you send it to Washington, what will they do with it?”

“I can only guess,” I said, “but I presume they’ll put it into their computer and try to read it. When they find it’s gobbledygook—coded as you say—they’ll try to decode it. If they can’t, they’ll pass it to some mad government genius with a bigger computer who can.”

Ruth smiled faintly. “You seem quite sure of that.”

“Honey, they’ve got code busters in Washington who could decipher the secret of the Sphinx in sixty seconds flat, if the Sphinx had a secret and they wanted to be bothered with archaeology. And Mark was a good journalist, and a hell of a marksman, but I never heard that he was a computer whiz.”

“No, he wasn’t, but I am.” Ruth laughed shortly. “Oh, I’m no genius hacker, but I do like to play with the things, and it doesn’t take a genius to use the encryption feature that you find in a lot of programs. And I understand that if you lock up a document that way, it’s really pretty secure against anyone who hasn’t got the password.” She hesitated. “Just a minute. I want to get something from my room."

She went out, leaving the diskette in front of me. It took her a couple of minutes. When she returned, the first thing she did was pick up the square of plastic from the table and slip it back into the shirt pocket from which it had come. Then she laid down, side by side, two more diskettes that seemed to be identical with the first, down to the careful hand-printing on the label.

“We wouldn’t want to get them mixed up,” she said. She tapped her pocket. “There’s nothing on this one.”

“Cute,” I said.

She licked her lips. “It was . . . maybe we should call it a test disk. I wanted to see what you’d say.”

I said, “So I said the right thing, goody.” I looked at the disks on the table. “You’re giving me these?”

“I want to be sure to keep Mark’s book safe as I get it. One copy for you and one for Washington.”

I looked at the disks a moment longer. I looked at her. “Strings?”

“What?”

“Are there any strings attached?”

She said, “There can’t very well be, can there? I mean, either I take the risk of being the only custodian of the material, or I trust you and your people to help me. And once you have the disks, they’re out of my control. But I would appreciate it if you don’t let Morton and his associates have any of them until I’m ready for the story to break.”

I said, “I’ll pass your request along. It will probably be honored. Remember that my chief isn’t very happy with the way Morton’s chief tried to push him around. He’s not going to go out of his way to volunteer assistance in that direction."

She looked at me and sighed. “Well, I hope I’m not being foolish, but there they are. All yours. Now you can take me for a walk along the beach so I can say I’ve at least walked along the beautiful beach in Rio, and then you can bring me back to the hotel and feed me.”

They tried for us as we sauntered along the wide, paved sidewalk between the boulevard and the beach. We had plenty of company there; apparently the evening ocean-front stroll was kind of a Rio ritual. There were three of them, suddenly appearing from behind a group of casual pedestrians. They were small and dark and shabby, and fairly young, one angling to block me off, away from Ruth, the other two heading to relieve her of her purse, even though she was holding it firmly with both hands, in front of her, in the approved South American female-pedestrian manner. (If you carry a backpack down there, you’re advised not to wear it on your back, but to turn it around and hang it on your chest; otherwise they’ll have the straps sliced off and the bag away before you know they’re behind you.)

The combat computer spat out the answer almost instantly: grab the would-be blocker by the arm and use his momentum to sling him out into the roaring traffic to my right where the cars would mash him flat, step across far enough to kick the one just beyond her in the balls since he was more or less feeing me, and at the same time, or as near as could be managed, whip the loaded end of the Thuggee scarf—I’d knotted some coins into a comer of it so it would be ready for action—around the neck of the nearer one facing away from me, cinching down on the silk with enough force to crack the vertebrae. I’d been practicing a bit on bedposts and other suitable targets, according to our armorer’s instructions, and I was curious to see how well it would work. Then all I had to do, at my leisure, was kick the brains out of the one moaning and hugging himself on the ground and call for the disposers to haul away the garbage.

Except that while backup was available to a certain extent, it probably didn’t have clout enough here to deal with several defunct youngsters who, whatever their character ratings might have been, had still qualified as Brazilian citizens. We were in a foreign land where, although they had the reputation of not being averse to a little occasional intramural homicide, they’d undoubtedly get upset if an agent of the lousy gringo CIA—all U.S. undercover agencies are considered to be CIA down there—infringed on their monopoly and indulged in killing games on their private playing field. Besides, I was supposed to be a fairly incompetent character.

No knives or guns were on display, so I had a little leeway in dealing with the situation. I tried clumsily to sidestep the punk coming at me, stumbled, and managed, kind of accidentally, to blunder right into him instead.

“Ooops, sorry, kid!” I said.

I reached out to steady him in a helpful fashion. As I pulled him to me I brought up my knee hard and he screamed, but the sound was muffled against my chest. I went down, kind of accidentally, taking him with me. I had him by his rather long hair now, over both ears, and I managed to bounce the back of his head off the pavement as we hit. His nearest associate—no knife there, either, I noted—was distracted by the scuffle, turning to look. I reached up helplessly, like a man having trouble getting to his feet.

“Gimme a hand, amigo. I’m not as young as I used to—”

When someone holds out a hand, the instinct is always to take it. He started to, and yanked back too late; I had his wrist. Off balance, he was easy to slam to the sidewalk. The same effort that had pulled him down helped to pull me up, and as I rose I managed to kick him hard in the side, kind of accidentally, driving the breath out of him. He tried to get up but couldn’t, and wound up on all fours, gasping. I stepped around him, braced to tackle the third, with or without knife, but with his two friends on the ground, that one let go of the purse he’d been trying to pull away from Ruth and took off with commendable speed. The one I’d kicked succeeded in rising; he fled, but more slowly, holding his side. The third one didn’t know whether to nurse his head or his testicles, but he did manage to get up and scuttle away in a fragile and bowlegged fashion.

“Gee, this must be one of my clumsy days,” I said. “I sure hope I didn’t hurt those poor kids, bumping into them like that.”

That was clowning, and Ruth, pulling herself together, gave me a pained look. I drew a long breath, standing there. It was a lovely, clear evening. Any time of day is lovely in any weather when you’ve survived another battle, whoever the enemy of the moment might have been, even one as young and ineffectual as today’s. Here, I noted that beyond the shallows near the beach the ocean was very blue and that the offshore islands still held the sunshine that, blocked by the mountains to the west of us, no longer reached us on the shore. The beach wasn’t crowded, but there were still a considerable number of bathers—at least they were wearing bathing suits. A few were actually trying the water; more were just lying around on the sand in sunbathing positions, even though there was no longer any sun. I was disappointed not to be able to spot any of the truly naughty bikinis, or monokinis, I’d been led to expect in glamorous Rio.

Quite a few people were still strolling along the promenade we were using. If any of them had noticed our little scuffle, they’d figured, just as they would have in any other city in the world, that it was our problem, thank God, not theirs. I spotted a couple of uniformed characters with submachine guns in the distance, also unconcerned. I’d seen them before, or their twins, as we waited for the traffic light to let us cross the boulevard. They were the modem Latin equivalent of the old beat cop, I suppose; but I had no impulse to rush over to them and report, breathlessly, the dastardly crime that had almost been perpetrated under their noses.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Ruth had finished tucking in her shirt. She brushed at her denim skirt and straightened up, saying, “I will be as soon as you stop showing off and take me back to the hotel and get me something to eat. I think that’s enough exercise for one evening, don’t you?” She glanced down. “Incidentally, you seem to be losing a handkerchief.”

I reached back and found that my Thuggee scarf, masquerading as a silk bandanna, was hanging out of my right hip pocket. I shrugged, pulled it free, folded it neatly, and tucked it back the way it had been, with one comer available for me to grab in case of need. I patted the left back pocket as a matter of routine; then I felt it again and began to laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“After all that, the little bastard got my wallet.”

Ruth said, “But that’s terrible. . . . Why are you laughing?”

“Well, you have to hand it to the kid. Obviously, when we collided, he grabbed the opportunity to reach around me and feel my pockets. He pulled out enough of the hanky to find out it was no use to him but the wallet was.” I looked around on the ground. “He got it and it isn’t here; which means that with his head cracked open, practically, and his balls screaming, he still hung onto it. A gutsy little punk.”

Ruth started to speak, but stopped. Then she took my arm and we started walking back toward our hotel, a pale tower in the solid wall of tall buildings on the west side of the boulevard.

She spoke at last: “I suppose I’ll get used to it eventually.”

“Get used to what?”

“You. I don’t know any other man who’d laugh at having his pocket picked, or admire the one who did it.”

I said, "Hell, all he got was a four-ninety-five plastic job—a K Mart bargain special; I bought a couple of them so I have a spare—and ten bucks I just changed into local currency at the hotel. And what’s wrong with admiring a young man who’s good at his work?” I glanced at my companion. “In case you’re worrying, he didn’t get the disks, or my passport, or my films, or my serious money, or my traveler’s checks, or my credit cards. I don’t have total faith in that little safe in the closet, so I’m carrying those here.” I slapped a bulge under my left armpit. “A kind of shoulder-holster rig. Unfortunately it’s under my shirt, so I have to practically undress to get at it. Wherefore I keep a little working capital in a cheap decoy wallet out where it’s handy, and figure to lose it occasionally. I got into the habit after being cleaned out once, traveling in Mexico. Okay?”

Back at the hotel we passed up the formal downstairs dining room where we’d eaten the night before and took the elevator to the more casual restaurant on the roof.

“After all that excitement I’d better make a small detour," Ruth said as we emerged, indicating the two doors across the hall marked with stick figures, one skirted and the other trousered.

“I’ll be right here,” I said. “Incidentally, it’s probably better if we don’t talk about our little adventure.”

She glanced at me. “Of course, if you think so, Matt.”

Waiting, it occurred to me that if this went on, I was going to be uniquely qualified to do a scientific report on Latin American plumbing facilities, or at least the doors thereof. On the other hand, I’d better start exercising some water discipline, since in spite of picketing all these rest rooms, I seemed to have few opportunities to enter one and relieve myself without leaving the lady unguarded.

“Hey, we’ve got to stop meeting like this!”

It was Belinda Ackerman, in very short white shorts. Color-wise, the pale limbs she displayed would have been more attractive, at least to my taste, if they’d been a little browner, and to hell with cancer from the sky, but shape-wise, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the nicely rounded calves, and the ankles were surprisingly slim and pretty considering the plumpness elsewhere. She saw me looking and didn’t mind: a girl would have to be fairly dumb to wear shorts that short if she objected to having her legs admired.

“Did you hear about Grace?” she asked.

“No, what about Grace?”

I still didn’t have our whole tour group quite straight in my head, but I remembered that Grace Priestly was the grayhaired older woman I’d seen with Belinda and photographed, during one of my rest-room vigils. Husband: Herman. Bald. Glasses. Texas oil. Not on the official list. Belinda was eager to pass along the news.

“She and Herman went to look at that jewelry store around the comer, Stem’s I guess it’s called, and then took a walk around those funny little streets back there. I guess she was a little careless with her purse and all of a sudden it was empty. They’d slashed it open at the bottom so everything fell out. Of course, she’d left the important things in her room safe, the way we were told to, but she lost some money and a nice compact, she said, and they mined a perfectly good leather bag, Mark Cross or something.”

I said, “So Annie wasn’t just whistling Dixie.”

“You’d think with all the uniforms and machine guns around, folks would be safe on the street.”

I couldn’t help noticing that her purple silk shirt, loosely knotted in front, didn’t conceal much more of her plump white breasts than the little pants did of her plump white legs. She bounced away through the appropriate door, and pretty soon Ruth came out to join me, looking neat and ladylike by comparison.

The rooftop restaurant had white garden-type furniture surrounding a small swimming pool—more a paddling and wading pool, I judged from the fact that a slim, dark young girl in a flowered one-piece bathing suit, with soaked black hair streaming down her back, wasn’t even wet to the waist when she stood up in the middle. Of course, I could have gauged the water depth from her boyfriend, splashing playfully beside her, but she made a more interesting measuring stick.