The Terrible Ones (10 page)

“Still, I think I’ll take a look around outside,” said Nick. “Turn the light off for a moment, will you?”

Jacques nodded and clicked the kitchen switch. Nick eased open the door and stepped outside. He glided stealthily around the house and stared into the shadows. There was no hiding place for any man within at least a hundred yards, the boundary of the nearest neighbor’s garden, except for the barn and the horses’ stalls. He investigated, and found nobody. Drums still pounded far away and faint sounds drifted down the village street, sounds of people chattering and laughing. But there wasn’t a sign of a horse or a listening man.

Nick went back into the house and took the refreshments Jacques offered him. Paula joined him a few minutes later and reported that Evita was resting comfortably.

“She has eaten a little and she is drowsy,” she told Nick. “But she wants to talk to us before she sleeps. And she thanks you.” It seemed to Nick that Paula’s tone was a whole lot friendlier now, and he was glad of it.

“She has you to thank, not me,” he said, sipping Jacques’ cognac appreciatively. “You Terrible Ones are a bunch of gutsy girls, judging by what I’ve seen. Think she can talk to us now?”

Paula nodded. “It must be now, because I think that we must leave soon. Marie will let us have five minutes, no more.” She gave him a ghost of a smile that twitched the corners of her lips and showed the trace of a dimple in one cheek. “Even though you are, she says, worth a whole squad of Marines.”

“Aw, shucks!” Nick said kiddingly, and shuffled his feet. “Okay, let’s go listen fast so Evita can rest.” He rose and followed Paula into the little room Marie had made into a bedroom for Evita. Jacques made a quick check of the door and window locks and went in after them.

It was almost midnight. All was quiet in the village.

The night was cool and Tom Kee was getting stiff. But the sounds coming through his earphones kept him glued to his post. From the side wall of a house more than two hundred yards away but almost directly opposite from the LeClerqs he could hear every word that was being said. His horse was tethered to a tree in a little parklike grove nearby and he himself was plastered in the shadows of the darkened house. The little telescope-like transistorized device in his hands was aimed directly at a window in the place that he was watching. It was one of the tricks of his trade, and he used it well. He chuckled grimly and adjusted a small dial. The voices were coming to him loud and clear. The girl’s voice was cracked and whispering but every word was audible.

“. . . . It made no sense to me,” she whispered, “but that is what he said. His clue was—The Castle of the Blacks. He told me when we . . . when we . . .” she turned her head away from them and closed her eyes. “He told me when we were in bed together, only minutes before the men broke in and fell upon us. He tried to get away through a window but they shot him in the back. Then they must have hit me, I suppose, because . . . because the next thing I knew I was in some sort of house, and I had my clothes on. There was a smell of food—a lot of food, as if there were a restaurant below. And then this man . . .” She sighed heavily. Marie gave her a sip of rum-laced tea and glared at the others reprovingly.

“Only the essentials, Evita,” Nick said quickly. “Did you know him? Did he give anything away? Did you tell him anything?”

Evita pushed the cup away and nodded. “I knew him. Paula, he was the one we joked about, and called him Fu Manchu. The owner of the Chinese Dragon in Santo Domingo. The one we always thought was following the same leads we were, looking for the treasure.”

“Tsing-fu Shu,” said Paula softly. “I thought it might be he, there in the dark.”

“And . . . and there was a creature.” Evita shuddered and sucked in her breath. “But that was later. He kept at me and kept at me and tried to find out if there was anything else I knew. I told him I knew nothing. Then he talked to another man I could not see . . . and they decided that the Castle of the Blacks must be the Citadelle. And then he stuck a needle into me and—and I woke up in that cell. With that monster guarding the door.”

“This Padilla,” said Nick. “You said he told you something else. What was it?”

“That was when we first met,” Evita whispered. “Before we went to his apartment. I made him tell me something before . . . I agreed to go. And he said it was under all our noses, if we only knew where to look. He didn’t know where, or he would have been there himself. But he knew it was within a morning’s drive of Santo Domingo. And Trujillo had laughed when he told him. He said—he said with a joke it would be on La Trinitaria. And he repeated this several times, Padilla said. There was something very funny to him about La Trinitaria.”

“La Trinitaria!” Paula’s face had suddenly gone white and pinched. “That is the name of the resistance group that all our men belonged to! What kind of joke can that be, when all the men are dead?”

“Paula, I think he did not even understand himself, Padilla. But I believe it was not just a joke. I think it may mean something for us. I do not know what.” Evita heaved a tired sigh and licked her lips. “Enough, now!” Marie said sharply. “She must rest.” “One more thing,” Evita breathed. “This Chinaman, Tsing-fu . . . . He kept saying something about Alonzo, that he had seen Alonzo. He said Alonzo had given him information. About us. I think he did not know much, but he kept saying something about Alonzo. And there was something about the way he talked that made me think he was working some way with the Fidelistas and that he had come to doubt them.” Nick shot a glance at Paula. “My Cuban?” he murmured. Her face was even whiter now. “Yes. We thought he was a friend of ours. Of one of us, especially. We must get back at once. Marie? You will look after Evita?”

“But yes, of course, of course! Now finish your talking somewhere else.”

She chased them briskly out of the room and settled them in the kitchen with a pot of coffee.

“The boat is always there,” said Jacques, when Marie had left them. “In an abandoned boatshed in Toury. Paula knows. Henri Duclos will take you there and back. The arrangement is that he is there at two o’clock each morning, so he will be there quite soon. You have a little time to rest, though, if you wish.”

Nick shook his head. “The sooner we leave here the better for everyone. We can walk there in an hour, wouldn’t you say?” Jacques nodded. “Then we can leave the horses here,” said Nick, glancing at his watch. “It will be quieter that way. All right with you, Paula?”

“Yes.” She rose abruptly from the table. “I think we are ahead now, and we must stay ahead.”

“Jacques.” Nick’s voice was quiet but compelling. “Take care. I still think we were followed. And if they don’t get me and Paula they may come after you. Don’t let them reach you.”

Jacques clapped him on the shoulder. “I won’t, my friend,” he said quietly.

Tom Kee was in a quandary. It was vital that he get word to Tsing-fu Shu, but it was equally vital that these people be stopped. All of them. Not only the two who were heading for the boatshed at Toury, but also those remaining. They knew far too much. He was still wondering what to do when his earphones picked up the last goodbyes and the sound of the back door opening. The door closed quietly and a bolt slid into place. Then he heard nothing. But he vaguely saw two indistinct figures dart across the open space between the houses opposite and disappear into the shadows.

Should he No, he decided. By the time he got his message to Tsing-fu it would be too late. He must act, himself, and quickly. From within the house came the small sounds of people preparing for bed. He grinned to himself in the darkness as he removed his earphones. There were two or three aces up his sleeve that would send his stock soaring in Peking if he played them right. First, he knew the way to Toury without having to be led. Second, the man and the woman were walking, and that gave him time. And finally, he had certain equipment in his saddlebag that he had always known would be useful to him some day.

He stole quietly to his saddlebag and took out what he needed, checked it in the darkness with his expert fingers, then waited in silence for a full ten minutes before making his next move. Then he mounted his horse and guided it toward the house of the LeClerqs at a slow and almost noiseless walk. There was a faint light glowing through a heavily curtained window, and it made an excellent target.

Tom Kee raised his right arm and aimed a device that looked much like a flare pistol. It acted like one, too, but its flame was contained in a miniature rocket and its head was deadly. He squeezed the trigger and rammed a second projectile into the barrel. The first landed on the thick thatch of the roof and dug in like a bullet before shattering and spewing out tongues of white-hot flame. The second soared straight toward the window. He watched it blast its way in while he slammed a third one after it, and then another at the thatched eaves over the front door. The blazing thermite compound streamed and spread into rivers of fire, clawing voraciously into the heart of the thing it was attacking. A series of small explosions ripped through the silence as the flame bit into Jacques LeClerqs’ useless store of ammunition, the little armory that was supposed to have kept them safe from all attack. It only added, now, to the holocaust.

Tom Kee lowered his grenade-thrower and gathered the reins of his startled horse. He felt a warm glow of triumph and satisfaction. His little toys were blindingly effective. Within seconds that house of mud and wood and thatch was an inferno, a blaze of unbearable heat and searing flame. It was like napalm on sun-dried timber, like a giant flame-thrower on a gasoline dump. A sheet of fire draped the walls from one end to the other.

No one came screaming out of the house. After the very first moment, no one screamed at all. The flames ate hungrily into the thatch and woodwork and clawed in savagely, looking for more.

Tom Kee nudged his prancing horse into a trot and then into a gallop. The sky was red behind him.

He could still make Toury well ahead of the others and lie in wait for them. There could not be many abandoned boatsheds in that tiny fishing village.

And So We Say Farewell

The ancient Ford took the curve like a racer at Le Mans.

“How much further?” Nick shouted above the sound of his own speed.

“About thirty seconds worth, at the rate you’re going,” Paula yelled back. “I don’t understand you at all. First you want to walk because it’s quieter and then you steal a car from some wretched dirt farmer with five banana trees and a mortgage on his shack. Slow up, will you? You’ll go right past the village! There’s Toury, down the slope to the right.”

Nick slowed and looked at the tiny cluster of houses huddled together near the waterline. He drove on for several hundred yards and swerved sharply into the rough driveway of a small coffee plantation. He glanced at his watch in the dashboard light before tugging loose the wires he’d crossed several minutes before when he’d helped himself to the parked car. Twelve forty-five. Not bad. Twenty minutes to take a quick and silent walk, hijack an antique buggy, and park two minutes’ walk away from a boatdock in Toury.

“We weren’t followed when we left,” he said. “But I
know
we were followed earlier. Doesn’t make sense. Why weren’t we followed again when we left LeClerqs? Because somebody already knew where we were going?”

“That’s impossible,” Paula said coolly. “Who could know? And don’t tell me Marie and Jacques.”

“I won’t. Show me to the boatshed and we’ll wait and see who comes. Unless of course we’ve been beaten to the punch.”

He slid out of the car, closed the door lightly, and waited for Paula to join him. She was not the sort of woman who liked to have doors held open for her.

She led him down the hillside past the back doors of the sleeping village to a sagging boardwalk at the water’s edge. From the center of it a dilapidated dock jutted out into the sea, and to either side of the dock’s landward end there were several sheds in various stages of disrepair. Each of the sheds had two doors, one leading into its rear from the boardwalk and another, almost the width of the shed itself, opening into the sea. Some of the sheds were open and empty. One or two of them were too ramshackle for use.

Paula led him behind the sheds and past the outjutting dock to the far end of the boardwalk. Boards creaked beneath their feet. Wilhelmina waited in Nick’s hand, ready to meet company. The shed at the farthest end of the walk leaned crazily sideways into the softly lapping water. They made their way toward it. Both its doors were closed. Paula stopped at the rear door and raised a key to the lock.

Nick placed a hand lightly on her arm. “Wait.” He took a quick look at the shed beside it. It was open to the night and in reasonably good condition. And it stood between their shed and whoever else might come along the boardwalk.

“In here,” he whispered. “Into the corner, away from the door. Ah!” His groping hands found what they sought. “Get under this tarpaulin and stay there until Duclos gets here.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort!” she hissed angrily. “We can wait in Henri’s shed—”

“You will keep your mouth shut for once and do as you’re told,” Nick grated, and his voice carried icy authority. “Get under there and keep quiet.” He shook the tarpaulin out in case of lurking rats, and thrust her under it. A muffled voice said “Damn you to hell!” and then the canvas subsided.

Nick peered out of the shed and padded along the boardwalk to the locked one where their boat should be waiting. He moved around it carefully, feeling rather than seeing the loose boards and the gaping holes of decay. The lock was a laugh, he thought. Anyone who wanted to could force his way in there inside of three minutes. He found a slanting gap almost a foot high and several inches wide. With the caution that had kept him alive through a good many years of hunting and being hunted he jabbed the nose of his pencil flash in through the gap, crouched down low, and flicked on the switch. He saw the tiny beam cut into the thick blackness inside. But there was no reaction from within. He was about to take a look inside when he heard the soft clipclop of a horse’s hooves on the road above the village. The sound stopped almost at once. It could be a villager. But he doubted it.