The Annihilators (9 page)

“Sam, your imagination is running away with you. And I’m disturbed by what you’re saying about yourself. You sound as if… as if you aren’t really a magazine photographer…”

I said, “Cut it out, Frances. You’ve been told who I am, what I am, by the people who aimed you my way and told you to get me into your bed earliest. Maybe the picture they gave you of me isn’t flattering, it may not even be true in some respects, but as you say, we’d better not spend too much time talking like this, so let it stand. The question is, What do we do now? Well, the people who are running you—”

She drew a sharp breath of annoyance. “My dear man, nobody’s
running
me! What a disgusting idea, as if I were a horse or a greyhound being galloped around a track! How could you think anybody could possibly coerce me into doing what… what I did last night?”

“You’re a very conscientious, very dedicated person, Frances; and you take this dig of yours very seriously,” I said. “The fate of the whole world is at stake, you implied. If your right to keep on digging were threatened, you might just possibly decide even to let yourself be soiled by intimate contact with an awful character like me, if it would allow you to continue your scientific researches and, eventually, learn enough to save the human race from destruction. That’s one scenario. I can think of others.”

She shook her head. “You’re a very stubborn man. And a very wrong one.”

I said, “Yes, you have to say that. Keep on saying it. But in the meantime let’s throw your friends—enemies—a couple of bones. First of all, they probably want to know if I’m armed. Well, you know I don’t have a gun in my clothes; you watched me getting undressed and dressed last night. And I’ll tell you I don’t have one in my luggage either; but of course that won’t do. So next time we’ll use my room, and you’ll put a sleeping pill in my drink, and search the place while I’m pounding my ear, afterward. That should impress them with your loyalty and obedience. Okay?”

She licked her lips. “Sam, I don’t understand. Suppose… suppose I were the helpless female victim you think, being blackmailed into doing dreadful things by some sinister villains—which of course I’m not. Why would you want to help me?”

I grinned. “Well, you can take your pick of motives. Either I’m a sucker for your lovely face, not to mention your lovely body…” I stopped. “May I ask an intimate question regarding your lovely body, Dr. Dillman?”

She laughed abruptly. “Why no tan, you mean? My dear man, I spend endless hours in the glaring sun in the course of my work; lying on a beach getting broiled is no treat at all. Besides, medically speaking, it’s supposed to be bad for you. And your other possible motive for helping me, Mr. Felton?”

“Maybe I, too, have sinister plans for making use of you, for my own wicked purposes. Your choice,
querida.”
The fact was that I simply didn’t know why I was doing it. I did like her, but affection is not supposed to figure in our calculations, as I had recently demonstrated, in my grim and well-disciplined way, in Chicago. I just had a hunch, the kind you get, that this was the way to play it. When she didn’t speak, I went on: “Next, your friends will want to know what fall-back story I have rigged for when my photojournalistic cover is blown. They may have their own ideas about why I’m heading for Costa Verde, but they’ll be interested in knowing what I put out for public consumption. We’ll have to work this carefully; but the basic idea is that, having fallen for you like a susceptible schoolboy, I couldn’t bear to keep on making love to you under false pretenses. I confessed guiltily that I really wasn’t Samuel Felton, boy photographer, although I’d worked with cameras in the past and there was a perfectly legitimate magazine connection set up to print the story, so that you and your institute will get your publicity. I told you I was a government agent on a mission, using your tour to slip into Costa Verde inconspicuously; but there was really nothing to worry about. If I were exposed, well, relations between the U.S. and Rael’s government are very close, and a word from Washington would clear things up immediately. You didn’t have to worry about my causing trouble for you or your charges.”

“And your real mission in Costa Verde?”

“I’m hunting a man named Bultman,” I said. I spelled it for her.

“Bultman.” She tasted the name and didn’t like it. She looked at me across the table. “I never heard of him.”

I said, “No reason you should, unless you have somebody you want dead and plenty of money,
plenty
of money, to pay for the job. This one is good, but he ran into a little bad luck recently, so now he has an artificial foot. He’s killed five people certainly, two more perhaps.”

“A master assassin with a false foot.” Her voice was dry. “I suppose he calls himself Dr. Goldfoot or Professor Silvertoe or something. It sounds like a movie I’ve seen, a couple of movies I’ve seen. And what are you supposed to do with this criminal genius when you catch him?”

“Well,” I said carefully, “certain people in Washington would be very happy to learn that Bultman was dead.”

She nodded slowly. She licked her lips and said, “As a respectable professional woman, I find all this very confusing, not to say shocking and frightening, darling. It’s scary what an innocent girl can get mixed up in simply by going to bed with a man, isn’t it? Sam.”

“Yes?”

Her eyes were steady on my face. “It’s odd, but even after what you’ve told me, I don’t feel a bit soiled by what you call our intimate contact. I’ll let you know when it’s safe for us to… to meet again.” She had finished her breakfast and was gathering up her purse and the attache case she carried for the tour records. She stood up. I rose to face her. She said crisply, “The bus leaves for the museum at eight-thirty, Mr. Felton. In front of the hotel. Please don’t make us wait for you.”

I watched her march away, the tailored poplin skirt snapping at her long fine legs. I remembered that I’d once thought those legs a bit too thin. It seemed a long time ago.

I’m not a museum freak, but I have spent some time in those impressive institutions, sometimes dragged there by intellectual female acquaintances yearning for knowledge, sometimes meeting people or following people or trying to shake off people who were following me.

The
Museo Anthropologia
was quite a splendid example of the breed. For one thing, the Mexicans have a fine freewheeling sense of architecture; and for another the exhibits were breathtaking even to a guy who didn’t know an Aztec from a Toltec. There was, for instance, an enormous stone Aztec calendar wheel, magnificently carved. There was also—as far as I was concerned, the star of the show—a great, brooding, wicked Olmec head, tons of it, too big to be exhibited inside, so it glowered at you blackly from a grassy knoll in the patio, huge, neckless, bodiless, frightening, reminding you that the fearsome ideas of the human race are not all of recent origin.

I hadn’t known where contact would be made, but when a slim, well-dressed young Mexican gentleman paused near our group to adjust the buckle of his well-polished shoe—I guess laces are obsolete in certain circles—and made a certain signal, I cut out of formation with a word of apology to my wheelchair patient, who grinned and said he could make it fine by himself while I answered nature’s urgent summons.

I ducked into the nearby male-type
sanitario
, a fancy word they’ve just invented down there to match our dainty restroom-doubletalk. We can’t bear to mention the nasty word toilet, and I was discovering that they’ve got too delicate to refer to
baño
any longer, even though it really means bath and not crapper. I took my time at the urinal, and after a while he came in and stood beside me. I won’t bother you with the recognition nonsense, it was as ridiculous as ever.

“You are very clean, señor,” the contact said. “If you are being watched, it is being done from within your own group.”

“Gracias.”

“Bultman has been observed in Santa Rosalia, again in the company of Enrique Echeverria,
El Rojo
, The Red One, the head of the infamous
Servicio Seguridad Nacional
, commonly known as SSN. It is thought that Bultman has also made contact with
El Presidente
Rael.”

“Check.”

“I am asked to inform you that there is other activity in the area. Kronbeck, Marschak, and Rutterfeld have all been reported in Costa Verde recently. No contact observed with Bultman.”

I frowned at the news and, after a moment, shook my head. “There won’t be. Bultman runs his own shows; he’ll be setting up his own team for the job, whatever it is Rael wants of him, presumably Hector Jimenez. He picks them smart and disciplined; he wouldn’t touch a muscular meat-head like Marschak, or a vicious little snake like Kronbeck; and Rutterfeld wouldn’t touch him. Rutterfeld wants his underlings brainwashed and brainless so he can do all the thinking and grab all the credit, not to mention the money.” I grimaced. “Obviously somebody’s got another project going down there that doesn’t necessarily impinge on Bultman’s operation. I wonder. Rutterfeld likes the scientific stuff. Somebody could be interested in the rise and fall of civilizations…”

I stopped as a stout Latin gentleman I didn’t know came in to use the facilities. Stalling, I spent my time washing my hands thoroughly while my contact made quite a project of combing his thick black hair. When we had the place to ourselves once more, I said:

“Somebody could be interested in the rise and fall of civilizations, wanting to know, perhaps, if there was some special technique or gadget that made them fall that might be adapted to modern conditions. Which could make it awkward for the people who’re trying to dig up just those answers around Copalque.”

My companion said, “Rutterfeld has been established in Santa Rosalia for several months under a quite respectable cover. He had actually been seen there by somebody attached to the embassy, but the information was not considered important enough for general dissemination, so we didn’t learn about it until your request came through. You know how those people are, if it doesn’t involve an immediate declaration of World War III, it is of no importance. Rutterfeld is still in place. Kronbeck and Marschak, after being spotted in Santa Rosalia some weeks ago, seem either to have departed or gone underground.”

“The Unholy Three,” I said grimly. “I wonder who Rutterfeld’s principal is. He’s been known to work for Moscow on contract, when they didn’t want to betray interest by using their own people.”

My contact gave me one of those inimitable shrugs that can never be mastered by anyone whose ancestors, like mine, come from more northern climes.

“I cannot help you, señor. Everything that is known, and that is very little as yet, is written here, along with the other information you requested from Washington.” He glanced around, but we still had the
Caballeros
to ourselves, so he took a thick envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and passed it over. “You know the number to telephone if you require further assistance here. Because of unsettled conditions, there is no safe number in Santa Rosalia. Arrangements are being made, and contact will be made as soon as possible after you arrive. Use Lewis Carroll for identification. One word. Any messages or instructions?”

“None at the moment,” I said. “Many thanks.”

“
De nada.
It has been a pleasure to meet you, señor.
Vaya con dios.
”

Outside, I found Frances Dillman lecturing on a significant exhibit in the Maya Room that, she said, showed definite Melmec influence. She gave me a reproving schoolteacher glance when she saw me rejoin the class; obviously I should have held up my hand and asked permission to go peepee. Afterward, we broke up. I saw Frances go off with the gaudy Putnams, looking very civilized in that hippie company. They took Dick Anderson with them, freeing me from wheelchair duty. I went back to the hotel to do my homework.

There was plenty of it. I glanced through various background reports on Costa Verde’s history, economics, and politics, past and present. Then I settled down to learn about the people with whom I was traveling. The first dossier that appeared was that of Dick Anderson, but it was quite thick, and I wanted to give it special study, so I laid it aside. The report on Frances Dillman was unsurprising: An only child from a wealthy family, she’d gone to good schools and done well in all of them, finally getting her Ph.D. in archaelogy and joining the faculty of the University of Chicago, where she’d already worked as a graduate assistant while getting her degree. Her husband’s history was very similar: another academic success story.

I read about Howard Gardenschwartz (I visualized him: plump, dark, baldish, remote), professor of history at Northwestern University, and his wife Edith (small, grayhaired, friendly). There were two gray-haired schoolteachers traveling together, Patricia (“call me Pat”) Tolson and Margaret (“call me Peggy”) McElder. None of these seemed to have had any connection with Costa Verde before taking this tour, nor did the Wilders, Marshall (redfaced, loud-mouthed) and Betty (thin, shrill). He was in insurance. Paul Hammond Olcott (heavy, blond) was a little more interesting, since he did some big game hunting on the side and I like to keep track of people around me who know firearms. Furthermore he had a rather handsome wife, Elspeth (statuesque, blond). He was an advertising man; but there was no hint of any Costa Verde connection there, either.

The stooped gray ex-contractor, Austin Henderson, with the formidable blue-haired wife Emily, was as I’d thought a former military man; in fact he’d been a general with quite a distinguished World War II record. But the big surprise was that the brooding dark gent with all the Navajo silver had been a combat officer in Vietnam where he’d earned practically every decoration they had to give, plus, in the end, a court-martial for shooting up a village that, somebody thought, shouldn’t have been shot up. He’d been acquitted, but he’d left the service shortly thereafter. His conspicuous hippie getup was clearly some kind of a protest, but it was a little hard for me to figure out what kind. His sturdy frizzy-haired young wife was a girl he’d met in Hawaii, where she’d been working as a secretary. There were indications that the Chicago Putnams hadn’t been too eager to welcome into the family a nobody-girl out of some government office. Maybe she was another form of protest, this time against Putnam’s stuffy railroad-money ancestors.