The Light-Kill Affair (2 page)

"That's a big net for butterflies," the bartender said.

"I don't want to hurt them."

The bartender grinned slyly. "It's beeg enough to catch girls, Professor."

"I don't want to hurt them, either," Solo said.

The, bartender laughed. "You're all right, old fellow. But I don't think you'll find a guide to take you into the jungle. Only recently two men went from this town into the jungle and have not returned. The guides don't even like to go in there now with game hunters. I know they won't want to go with nothing more to protect them than a butterfly net."

"I'm sure that's all the protection we'll need."

"One goes into the jungle, he finds trouble," the bartender said, shaking his head.

Solo shook his grey head and gave him a bland smile. "Perhaps this is true for those who seek trouble, sir. But trouble is the last thing I am looking for."

The bartender's words followed him into the dusty street. "Just pray that trouble isn't the first thing you find, senor, no matter what you are looking for."

Solo walked down the dirt road and stopped before the man sitting in front of the adobe house. The man's name was Carrero and he lived in the house with ball a dozen small children and a slovenly half- breed wife underfoot. He shook his head. "I no go in jungle. Something very bad happen."

"I am sure this is just superstition," Solo said.

"Death comes quiet. Silent. Quicker than the strike of a snake. The jungle is burned dry by the touch of this death."

"Butterflies," Solo persisted with that bland smile.

He kept smiling and placing money in a small green stack before the widening eyes of Carrero and family until the anguished man could no longer resist what looked to him like a fortune.

Senora Carrero wept and the children ran out in the potted road, clinging to Carrero's tattered pant legs.

Solo gave the children candy and placed ten dollars in Senora Carrero's trembling hand. "Buy yourself a hat, Senora, and I vow to bring your husband back safely—and with a huge butterfly to wear on your bonnet."

But before they were ten miles into the swamplands, Solo found the shuffling gait of the lepidopterist too slow, and the large net, which caught on every obstruction, a burden and he discarded both.

Carrero regarded him with sick eyes, seeing they were not on the trail of insects after all.

That night the drizzling mists in the rain forests washed out the last traces of dye from Solo's dark brown hair. When he wakened the next morning from his sleeping hammock, he tossed aside the rimless glasses.

Carrero stared at him in sick horror.

Solo winced, knowing the man was seeing a bearded young man in place of a kindly gray elder.

Carrero looked about as if seeking an escape.

"Don't run," Solo warned him.

"You are no butterfly hunter. You are here to seek trouble. Bad trouble. I owe you nothing. I do not have to stay."

Solo gazed at him levelly. "If you stay with me, I'll make every effort to protect you. I vowed to your wife I'd return you safely, even if I begin to wonder what it is she prizes about you. If you run, I promise you, you'll never make it back—except in pieces."

Carrero stared at him a moment defiantly, and then lost all defiance. "Senor, I am a simple man. I want no trouble. Please. A simple man."

"Then, let's leave it that way. You take me where I want to go and I'll bring you back."

Carrero rolled his black eyes, and crossed himself three times.

On the third morning Solo stared at the small round object Carrero had puzzedly watched him study often since they entered the jungle.

"We've reached the place I was looking for," Solo said. "Relax."

"How do you know the place if you have never been here?" Carrero asked, shaking his head.

"By this gadget. It was set be fore I left New York. Not even disturbances that throw off a compass will alter it. The horizontal and the vertical red lines are exactly one on the other. Do you see that?"

Carrero nodded, but he hardly dared look at the small object—undoubtedly witchcraft. He glanced about, seeing nothing except the grassy knoll, like an island in the sea of jungle pressing in upon them.

But Solo had forgotten the frightened guide. He opened his kit and set up a long-view scanner exactly like the one Sayres had used in this place except that it was set as to range and distance to the markings given in Sayres' report.

Solo tuned in the gear. The small viewer showed him nothing but a rectangular area of marshy under growth. Every test proved that the settings were right.

Solo swore.

Carrero ventured forward timidly. "What is wrong, Senor?"

"Everything," Solo spoke mostly to himself. "There's no building down there. Nothing."

"Building, Senor? Naturally not. Not here in this jungle."

"Well, there's supposed to be! There's got to be!" Solo spoke vehemently and the guide retreated a step.

He reset the dials, glanced at Carrero. "You want to go with me?"

The guide nodded, eyes wide. "I wish only not to be left alone in this place, even for a minute."

"Then stay close behind me."

"Senor need not worry about this, either. As his shadow is there, so will I be."

They plodded through under growth until the red lines of the dial matched again. Solo spent an hour chopping away the high swamp growth.

He felt the emptiness of defeat. According to Sayres' final report, a glass-walled lab had stood only days ago in this place, a cleared area with space for landing a helicopter.

He shook his head. There was no trace of building and it seemed incredible that vines and trees could grow so lush in such a short time.

"No!" He spoke aloud. "There's got to be an answer." He stared at Carrero without really seeing him. "We've got to find it, that's all."

Solo prowled the underbrush a moment. Then he said, "Carrero, you're a jungle man. You could find out where you were by the growth, feed yourself, if you were lost, eh?"

"You think us hopelessly lost, Senor?" Carrero's face twisted.

"No. But I think if these plants are younger, newer, it should show. Do you understand?"

"Young plants, no matter how tall, are more tender than the older. Young plants seldom have the berries that sustain life."

"Now you're thinking, Carrero. That's what I want. You find where these young plants meet older growth. We should be surrounded by it. Mark it all out, and we'll narrow down the area that much."

In less than an hour, Carrero had hacked out a rectangle that could have been the base for a glass-walled laboratory. Inside this area, Solo hacked with machete until he found what he had been sure must remain, the foundation for those walls.

He shouted in his pleasure. Carrero came running. Solo was smiling through his three days beard, sweat and mud.

"Here it is! Here it stood. Look, traces of garbage, food tins, broken glass, inside this foundation footing. We've found our butterflies, Carrero!"

"
Si! Si!
" Carrero looked around timidly. "We can now go home, no?"

Solo nodded, hardly hearing what the guide said.

He returned to the long-range scanner on the knoll. It was as if he had found the key piece of a jig saw puzzle. Everything else fell into place.

He found bits of electronic gear to show where Sayres' scanner had been destroyed. He found bones and teeth that must once have been Diego Viero and after a long search he found shoes with the x-marked identification tags.

He gazed at the tags before he dropped them into his pocket. His face was bleak. Not only had Diego and Sayres been slain, but their bodies and their equipment had been destroyed.

"All right, Carrero," Solo said at last. "Let's go home."

FOUR

THE NIGHT BEFORE they reached the village where Carrero lived, Napoleon Solo stepped back into his stooped, gray-haired person as the naturalist. Carrero watched in disbelief as he dyed his hair, donned rimless glasses.

Carrero spoke hesitantly. "You are a man for whom I have learned great respect, Mr. Solo. You are a very smart man, but more, you are a brave one. I am glad, now that I reach safety, that I accompanied you on this strange trip, even if I went reluctantly."

Solo nodded absently. "Thanks, Carrero. You're a brave man, too."

"No. I am a man who thinks of his wife—fat as she is—and his children. I worry if I do not return alive to them."

"It won't be long now."

"I know. This troubles me. You return now to your disguise. This means that though trouble has ended for Carrero, it is not over for you."

"I'm afraid it hasn't really begun yet," Solo said in that bland tone, peering over his glasses.

At ten the next morning, Solo tottered into the shipping office at the San Miguel docks.

A young man stared at him across the desk. "May I help you, sir?"

"Yes. You can." Solo's voice was testy. "Indeed, you'd better. I have been expecting a shipment of scientific equipment. I can't even preserve my priceless specimens without it. It should have been delivered to me days ago."

"I'm sorry, sir," the young man said in a voice that couldn't have cared less. "If your materials had arrived, they would have been delivered to your hotel."

Solo pounded on the desk. "They arrived on the same boat with me, young man! Don't take that tone to me! Ill report you to the head of this company."

The young man shrugged. "You do that, sir."

Solo practically danced in impatience. "See, sir, I was an instructor of the man who owns this company. A word from me and you'll be reprimanded for your incompetence. Now I shall go back and inspect the shipping in your warehouse. I have no doubt I'll find my materials rotting back there!"

Solo strode toward the rear of the huge warehouse. The young clerk ran around the desk. He shouted, "You can't go back there, sir!"

But Solo was already through the doors into the dark cavernous storage rooms. The young clerk stopped at the door. Perhaps the old fellow's goods had been misplaced by some of the native handlers. Maybe he did know the company president. And besides it was too hot to run in this weather

Solo wasted no time in pretending to look for a non-existent shipment of scientific materials. He knew what he was looking for and he searched, swiftly, diligently, and successfully.

He straightened from the feigned stoop of the naturalist and gazed at the huge crates. He walked in triumph among them. He was incredulous at the variety of articles being transferred, lab euipment, materials, and crate after crate of plants, all seemingly alike, and all of different stages of growth.

Pleased, he ran his hand across the address label. All were addressed the same: Via Air Freight from Mexico City to Helena, Montana, and reshipment by freight to Big Belt, Montana.

He heard the whisper of sound behind him. It was like the skittering of mice, and yet he went tense, instantly alert to danger.

The three men were young. They were Latin, dressed sharply. They walked shoulder to shoulder in their dark shirts and ice-cream suits and sleek new panama straw hats.

Solo was not fooled. The dark outline of shoulder holsters showed at their armpits.

They approached him steadily, their smiles fixed and unwavering. There was evil in their smiling, older than any of them.

Solo felt the hackles rising along the nape of his neck and he grinned blandly at them, retreating.

"Stand still, old fellow," one of them invited.

"What's the matter, young gentlemen?" Solo asked in the quavering voice of a teacher.

"We're going to take you apart, Uncle, and find out what's the matter," one of them said.

"There's some mistake, Solo said, retreating.

They came toward him steadily.

"We'll know after we take you apart, Uncle," one of the attackers said.

"If we are wrong, we'll apologize––"

"Yeah. To each separate part of you," the third said, laughing as if drunk.

Suddenly Solo grabbed a case and jerked it between himself and the three men. The crate landed with a crash.

Solo didn't wait to see what happened. Bent over in the manner of an old man, he raced toward the rear exit of the warehouse. He saw the sunlight out there, the open docks, the waiting ships at anchor. They looked incredibly far.

He thrust his hand into his jacket pocket, drew out a friction bomb. It was no larger than a capsule.

Still running, he turned and threw the capsule with all his strength toward the packing cases.

The explosion and fire were brief but intense. Concussion drove the men back. Solo ran.

He ran out on the docks without looking back. In the brilliant sunlight, he paused. The piers stretched endlessly in the silence and the heat. Lethargic quiet lay across the waterfront and the town.

He turned toward town and the main street. He had not run more than a dozen steps when one of the attackers appeared from a wall door.

He was no longer immaculate. His ice cream suit was smudged, black and torn. His hat was gone, but he was driven now by rage.

He had drawn his gun and when he saw Napoleon Solo he fired.

Tuh. Tuh.

Solo threw himself behind a small stack of cotton. The silenced gun chattered again. Bullets splintered the dock.

Solo hung close to the cotton bale. His sweated fingers closed on his last friction bomb.

He pressed there, counting, his arm poised to throw. He heard the pound of steps as the gunman ran toward him.

Now!
he thought.

He tossed the friction bomb upward, arching it over the cotton bale. The explosion was sharp, the screams of the young hoodlum wild, and at that precise instant, Solo heard the
tuh, tuh
of a second silenced gun behind him.

He didn't bother looking over his shoulder. He burrowed there in between the cotton and the wall of the building.

"Ho, Pedro!" The call came from farther down the wharf.

Nearer, the first gunman still yelled in agony.

The second had slowed now, made wary by what he saw happening to his partner.