The Terrible Ones (15 page)

It was now almost three hours since he had heard the muffled thumping noise in the house of The Terrible Ones and forced open a door to find Paula hopping mad and on the point of freeing herself. Together they had released the rest of the women, all of whom were simmering with anger and almost totally without fear, and then they had held a conference with Luz as its star performer. When she had told her story Nick took over and spelled out his plans for the disposal of Alonzo’s lifeless comrades.

Now he stood at an open doorway on the upper floor of Tsing-fu’s Chinese restaurant, listening. There was no change in the heavy breathing, and a sweet, smoky smell hung in the air. An opium sleep, thought Nick. Maybe the dreamer would dream on and live through this nighttime visit.

Nick stepped across the threshold, and three things happened almost simultaneously. An alarm bell rang, the room was suddenly flooded with brilliant light, and a half-dressed Chinese started up from a low camp-bed with a cry of surprise. Nick’s hand moved like lightning and came up with Wilhelmina.

“Get your hands above your head and show me where that thing turns off or I’ll blow your brains out,” he rapped in quick Chinese. “Move!”

The man swore and rose slowly. The alarm kept up a steady whine.

“Faster. And just show me—I’ll do it.”

The man plodded to a wall beside a file cabinet and bent down.

“No tricks,” Nick growled. “Just show me, I said.”

The fellow shuffled back and pointed to a switch on the wall.

“Step aside!”

He stepped aside and watched sideways as Nick approached, watched very carefully as Nick trained the silenced Luger on him and toed the wall. The switch clicked upward.

The alarm whined to a stop and the brilliant light cut out abruptly.

There was a sudden snarling movement in the inky darkness and Nick pivoted swiftly and fired point-blank at the movement twice in rapid succession. Once would have done it. The man dropped instantaneously with a thud that made the floor tremble.

Nick flicked the light on him and grimaced at the sight. Two close-up bites from Wilhelmina’s hungry mouth were enough to nearly blow a man apart.

He knew he ought to leave, but he also knew he must see what was in that cabinet. According to the beam of his flash light it was the only thing in the room worth guarding with an alarm.

Interesting about the alarm, he thought as he tinkered with his lockpick. Loud enough to wake a heavy sleeper, but not loud enough to attract attention from outside. Instinct rather than anything else had made him want to kill the sound at once.

He rifled through the file drawers rapidly. Restaurant mail, mostly. Some letters in Chinese, which he pocketed. An official looking letter in Spanish. Menus. Ledgers. Bills.

And a narrow cardboard tube containing a map.

He searched the rest of the room rapidly and found nothing else. Then he padded quietly downstairs, took another fast look around the restaurant and kitchen, and went out into the alley whistling softly.

Paula got down from the driver’s seat.

“You took your time,” she murmured. “Everything all right?”

“Fine. Here, dump these on the seat, and then go watch at the end of the alley.”

“Right.” She moved off obediently.

Nick got to work. He dragged the bodies one by one through the back door and propped them in the restaurant, neatly at a table as though they had fallen asleep after a heavy dinner. His artistic arrangement of Hector was not quite finished when he heard a sharp, almost frantic, whistle from the alley and the sound of a car rounding a corner nearby. He dropped Hector and ran.

Paula was back in the driver’s seat with the jeep motor running.

“Hurry, hurry,” she whispered. He closed the back door quickly and leapt in beside her. She gunned the motor and roared into the cross street.

“What the hell?” said Nick, as she made a swerving turn and then another.

“That car,” she breathed. “I don’t think he saw me but I saw him—bandaged head and all, leaning forward talking to his driver. Tsing-fu is back in town.”

The Terrible Ones

Nick sat at the head of the great dining table and looked appreciatively at his companions. Isabella, Teresa, Alva, Luz, Paula, Lucia, Inez, Juanita . . . Ah, women, women. How he loved them! His smile widened as he gazed at them. He had bathed, shaved, slept, exercised, eaten, and now he was feasting his eyes on eight lovely ladies. Heaven, that’s what it was. He sighed with pleasure. One or two were a little mature for him, and Luz and Alva were still looking pale and strained, but without exception they had made themselves look their best for him.

“Senor Carter, you are, what you say, drooling,” Lucia said severely. She was a strikingly handsome woman of middle years who acted as the housemother Sergeant Major of The Terrible Ones. “And may I ask what you were doing in your room this morning with Juanita that made her giggle so much? She was only supposed to be taking you a cup of coffee.”

“Why, Lucia honey,” Nick said reproachfully. “That’s all she did. And all
I
was doing was my Yoga exercises.”

Juanita giggled again. She was a little dark girl with a quick laugh and a low boiling point. “You should have seen him, Lucia. Have you ever seen a man standing on his head and sucking in his stomach?”

“At the same time? Certainly I have not,” Lucia said firmly.

“May I ask, Senor Carter, what it is that you have on the table before you?”

Nick nodded. “I’ll get to it in a while. It shouldn’t cause you any immediate concern, but I think you’ll be interested. First I think we ought to fill you in a little more completely on what happened in Haiti. Paula?”

She told the story rapidly and succinctly, in a manner that Hawk himself would have admired. None of the women interrupted. Expressions flitted across their faces and at certain points in the recital they gave little moans of horror, but they listened as intently as any crew of AXEmen at a briefing. Nick’s admiration for them grew steadily. These women deserved to have the treasure; of all people they would use it wisely.

There was a brief silence when Paula finished. Eyes stared down at the tabletop and hands were clenched with anger.

Nick cut in quickly before reaction set in. “Luz, let’s have your story once again so we can put the pieces together. What’s most important is the clue, whatever you know about Alonzo, whatever he knew about you.”

Luz nodded slowly. “All he ever knew about me were small, personal things, and that I belonged to a group of patriots called The Terrible Ones. Somehow he must have heard a rumor that we were after the treasure, because he kept talking about it in sly little ways.” She looked beseechingly at Paula. “Truly, I told him nothing else. Not then. But I did not think he was such a bad man, only someone like us in a way, and there seemed no harm in sometimes meeting him in town. He was a man, to talk to—”

“Yes, I know,” said Paula gently. “I know just how it is.”

“And when you met him the day Paula left for Haiti,” Nick prompted, “what did he say?”

“He was excited,” said Luz. “He’d found out something and he kept hinting that it had to do with the treasure. Well, I had to know what it was—I told you last night how I tried to get it out of him. But he wasn’t giving anything away for nothing. So—I offered him a trade.” She looked steadily at Nick. “I never did think much of Paula’s idea of getting help from the Americans. So I told him about you. Said that our leader was meeting the American leader, told him the time and place. And he was furious. Said he’d just discovered his first clue and he wasn’t going to share it with anyone, not even his Cuban comrades, and he was damned if he was going to have any Americans horning in. Then he didn’t even want to give
me
the clue. But I . . . worked on him. Made all sorts of promises about how eagerly I’d look for his return and what we would do together. Said I’d go on working for my group and trying to collect other clues which he and I would share. Together we would seek the treasure, find it, and live happily ever afterwards. He seemed to believe me.” Her tone was dry. “I can imagine now how much use he would have had for me afterwards, if we really had worked together and found it. But I am positive that he told neither his fellow Cubans nor the Chinese where he was going or what he was trying to do.”

Nick nodded. “I think it’s pretty clear and he’d decided to go into business for himself. What about his clue?”

She wrinkled her nose and looked thoughtful. “I’ve thought and thought about it and I still can’t make head or tail out of it. But it does seem to fit, doesn’t it, with the other clues? ‘Trujillo es mi Pastor.’ El Benefactor Trujillo always used to love that line—that whole psalm, in fact ‘Trujillo es mi Pastor’! Do you know the rest of it? Everybody does, because he didn’t change it much: Trujillo is my Shepherd, I shall not want. And so on. The ego of the man! Oh, yes, he loved that psalm.”

“It makes a dandy clue,” said Nick. “Whatever it means.” He remembered reading about this little piece of blasphemy, how one of Trujillo’s sycophantic supporters had rewritten the psalm into a paean of praise for his dictator boss. Now its opening line had turned up as a clue. “Green pastures,” Nick said slowly, recalling the words. “Still waters. Paths of righteousness? That could hardly apply. But how about the valley of the shadow of death, and the house of the Lord? It does seem to fit with at least one of the other clues, La Trinitaria—The Trinity.”

“But that is shocking!” Lucia burst out indignantly. “Sacrilege!”

“That would scarcely have worried the Great Man,” the thin girl called Inez said bitterly. “I’m almost beginning to see why he thought it was all so funny. But I can’t see what the ‘Castle of the Blacks’ has to do with any of this.”

“Neither can I,” Nick admitted. “But maybe some research will cast some light on it. Anybody want to volunteer?”

“I will,” said Teresa the quiet one. “I have worked in libraries.”

“Good. Next—can any of you think of anyone who might know where, if anywhere, La Trinitaria used to hold their meetings?”

There was a general shaking of heads.

“We can ask among the others,” Paula said. “There’s still ninety-one of us you haven’t met. Maybe one of them can come up with something. We can also, all of us, go carefully through whatever papers our husbands may have left. I know we all have, but we weren’t looking for anything in particular.”

“Reminiscing,” Teresa said softly. “Looking at pictures and reading through old letters. And Manuel used to have a diary, I remember, but he burned it just before they came for him.”

“There must be other diaries,” a tall, willowy girl said intensely. Nick gazed at her approvingly. This was Isabella, of the flashing green eyes and mane of red-gold hair. “Not all of them had a chance to burn such things as diaries and documents. Somewhere there must be at least a scrap of paper with, say, coded notes on it.”

“Yes, but the police went through everything at the time,” Juanita objected. She had long since stopped her giggling. “They even tore apart our books.”

“I know, but something may have been overlooked. It wouldn’t be an obvious document—even Manuel’s diary was probably in code.”

“It’s worth a try,” said Paula. “Isabella, you take charge of that angle. Get onto every Resistance widow in the city and have them go through every single thing their husbands left. That wasn’t taken from them, that is. Pick half a dozen of them to help you spread the word and guide the search. It shouldn’t be hard; most of them have been screaming for something to do.” She looked at Nick and gave him a faint smile. “We’re talking about the Associate Terrible Ones, the not so very active members who still have homes and something left of their families. They’re quite good at gathering information— and spreading rumors, if you want them to.”

“I do,” said Nick. “I want them to keep their eyes peeled for any sign of Cuban or Chinese activity and report back to you at once. And I want them, in the subtlest way possible, to fill the city with rumors about separate camps of Cubans and Chinese skulking in the hills. And then, if they can possibly manage it without calling attention to themselves, I’d like some of them to plant the idea that the Cubans intend to sell out the Chinese, and others that the Chinese are using the Cubans as scapegoats. It won’t be easy, but it can be done. But it must be done in such a way that they don’t get hordes of Chinese and Cubans down on their own necks. You might try—”

“I might try putting Lucia in charge,” said Paula. “I can guarantee she’ll get results.”

Lucia smiled grimly. “And no repercussions either. It is easier than you think, Senor, to get women to spread the wildest rumors and then emerge all lily-white with innocence themselves.”

Nick grinned. “I’ll bet you’re the one who can do it, too. That leaves my share in this. While you’re about your business I’ll be looking—looking for a place not far from Santo Domingo that fits all the clues, so far as we can interpret them to date. There may be other clues, and we’ll also have to look for them. Are there any other ex-Trujillo-ites around, people like Padilla, that we can go to work on?”

“Quite a few, very likely,” Paula said wryly, “but they tend to be shy about their past. Known Trujillo supporters dived for cover when he died, and most of the others are very secretive about their politics. Nobody wants to admit having had anything to do with him. It’s only occasionally, when there’s a right-wing coup or maybe a party where too much liquor’s flowing, that one of them slips up and shows himself. We’ve had great difficulty in tracking any of them down.”

“Well, let’s go ahead with what we have,” said Nick. “And if we find we’re stymied we can dream up another piece of gossip for the rumor circuit—a reward for information or a share in the loot, or something of the sort. But in the meantime we’ve got enough to work on. One last thing, and we’ll get started.” He slid a roll of paper from the cardboard tube and spread it flat upon the table. It was a map of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the one he had found in the upstairs room of the Chinese Dragon.