Ai! Pedrito! When Intelligence Goes Wrong Page 6

  Chapter 10

  BOLO DECIDED IT WAS TIME for a quick change and slight alteration of his appearance. He tossed aside his taxi-driver's cap and pulled on a leather aviator's jacket, becoming a different person entirely. Bolo walked up to the front entrance of the Cantina de Espejos in broad daylight. He was expected here, in this alter ego.

  Standing under the painted Bienvenidos welcome sign, he looked up and down the morning street with exaggerated caution, like a juvenile delinquent about to launch into an elaborate prank. Then he squared his shoulders and walked through the front door. His dark hair hung loose and flowing.

  Inside, the side walls of the main room were covered with mirrors that jutted out in Vs, multiplying every image, no doubt to increase drunken confusion. At night, when the disco lights flashed, the scene became dazzling and dizzying; the manager's thinking, apparently, was that many patrons, unable to find their way outside, would simply stay behind and order another drink.

  The cantina had few customers this early in the morning— few conscious ones, anyway—and no bartender. One groggy man at a tilted table snapped fully awake for a moment and threw his long knife to impale a black scorpion on the back wall. Then he slumped back across the table, snoring again.

  At the rear of the cantina, a curving metal staircase wound up to a second-floor balcony, where a single door marked the room Smith had stumbled into. At the moment, Bolo heard no sound from upstairs, so he assumed the redheaded lieutenant had gone to sleep, as he had expected. Still, he had no time to lose.

  Bolo headed toward a curving, knife-scarred bar next to a raised stage; fishnets and chicken wire offered meager protection for the musical act. Under a single white spotlight, the band members fumbled through their morning rehearsal with trumpets, horns, drums and guitars. They wore shabby rhinestone-studded clothes that might have looked fine if the bar's interior lighting remained dim enough and the customers remained drunk enough. The musicians were out of tune and out of enthusiasm.

  A fiery-eyed, dark-haired beauty paced around the stage like a crouching lioness. She was barelegged, her black tight pants cut off high on the thigh above black boots. A broad black belt with a huge silver buckle held a bolero jacket together just barely enough to cover her breasts. She rapped a baton wickedly against the palm of her hand with a painful slapping sound as she glared at the band members.

  They played a few more bars, hitting a bad discord. Her temper snapped, and she stamped her foot in rage. "No, no, no! One more wrong note out of you and I'll have your stinking heads!" she fumed. "Or some other body part."

  The musicians flinched in shock. "Por favor, Yaquita!" the trumpet player said. "We are trying our best—but we learned to play disco, not this kind of music!"

  "'Disco! You ungrateful dogs—I cannot sing disco!" Yaquita shrieked. "Have you no sense of tradition?"

  Bolo stood patiently in the shadows just inside the bar, waiting for Yaquita's typical outburst to fade. He had expected nothing else from her, and it was good for his plan that her temper was already stoked for the day.

  "I want a sad love song, you swine!" Yaquita snapped at the band. "A passionate ballad of a beautiful young woman with a great future, betrayed by the redheaded man to whom she gave her heart. All she wanted in her whole life was to get married, and now she is brokenhearted." Her face grew stormy. "We'll now practice my first number. Don't you dare hit any wrong notes. One, two, three, four!"

  Yaquita turned around and closed her eyes. Bolo winced in coiled anticipation as the band began the intro, which was so dolorous it became a parody of the too-too sad, too-too tragic Spanish love ballads he had heard many times during his long task of infiltrating the South American operation of Colonel Enrique and Colonel Ivan.

  On stage, Yaquita began to assume the pathos of the song, her gestures utterly extravagant. Her ebony hair whipped about like lashes.

  /'// cut my throat for love of you,

  I’ll stab my heart if your love's not true.

  I'll strangle —

  Coming into the lighted area near the stage, Bolo tried to snag her attention. Yaquita broke off and glared down at him. "What the hell do you want, Bolo?"

  His face remained bland, unemotional. "An agent has arrived." He pointed at the balcony room. "Sent by the two colonels."

  Yaquita nodded to Bolo, then turned to snap at the band. "That's all for me this morning. But you keep practicing so that you aren't such a miserable disappointment to my singing voice!"

  Moving like a cat, Yaquita stalked offstage. She trotted up the curving steps and entered the single upstairs room without knocking. Business was business.

  Still in the khaki safari outfit he had taken from the tan suitcase, Smith lay back on the bed, once again marveling at Nelson's victory at Trafalgar, the greatest naval battle in history. It was a peaceful moment, resting and reading, just the sort of vacation he liked.

  He looked up as the door opened, startled. A beautiful woman slipped inside and closed the door, her back to him so that he could see only her shapely waist and bottom, her long black hair. He raised a finger, embarrassed, just about to excuse himself, when she turned.

  The moment she saw Smith, her dark eyes flared with shock. She went rigid for a moment, then exploded in fury. "Ai! Pedrito!" she spat, full of venomous rage. She extended her fingers with long red nails like claws to gouge his eyes out.

  Though he didn't understand her sudden anger, Smith recognized danger when he saw it. His eyes flew wide, and he held up his hands. "But I'm not Pedrito," he said hastily. That was the same name the portly man at the airport lounge had called him. "You've made a mistake."

  As Smith scrambled off the bed, rolling in the opposite direction and thumping on the floor, Yaquita grew more furious. "Dog! Oh, how you lie!" She grabbed a small souvenir plate from the nearest knickknack shelf. "You always He, Pedrito! Snake!"

  "Uh, please don't—" Smith said.

  She hurled the plate at him with the skill of a circus knife thrower. He ducked as the object shattered against the brass bedstead. Stinging shrapnel struck his cheek. She grabbed a jug from the shelf and threw it as well.

  "Ape! You said you were going to marry me, just like in a storybook!" She threw another ornamental plate. "And all you do is run around with other women!" She threw a cluster of castanets that flew at him like chattery teeth. "Armadillo! Llama dung! Wart-hog spittle!"

  Smith hunched low, slinking away from the bed, his arms up to defend himself. This vacation was getting worse and worse. "Wait, wait—can't we talk about this? Can I buy you a drink or something?"

  "Drink? Goat—all you ever do is drink!" Yaquita said. Her lips curled away from fine white teeth. A brightly painted porcelain bell shattered on the wall beside Smith. He could see no place to run.

  Yaquita grabbed a china doll off the shelf. "Pig! Aardvark! You borrow money you don't pay back! Cockroach!" Smith ducked as she hurled the doll; broken ceramic arms and legs and little black shoes showered around him.

  "Hamster!" Yaquita said. "Sewer rat! You gamble everything away!"

  She yanked down a cluster of gourds and they rattled as they sailed through the air. Smith couldn't squeeze a single word into the conversation. He didn't drink, didn't gamble ... she certainly had him confused with someone else.

  "Jackass! Wildebeest! I wouldn't take care of you if you were the last man on the earth!" She grabbed up a big vase. "Or even on the moon!"

  Smith backed up to the wall, just under the shelf that held the beaten brass pitcher. Yaquita hurled the vase.

  "Monster! Jellyfish! Verminous worm!"

  The vase shattered against the brass pitcher, knocking it sideways. Smith just had time to look up and see the brass object falling, then it struck him hard on the head. The befuddled lieutenant slid down the debris-spattered wall. His head lolled sideways.

  Yaquita truculently advanced two steps to glare down at him, hands on her rounded hips. She marched into the bathroom, grabbed the wicked-looking st
raight razor and came back, holding it out as she contemplated his crotch, weighing her options. Finally, she snorted at Smith's prone form. "Humph!"

  Satisfied that he would be unconscious for some time, Yaquita grabbed a trench coat from the closet, her closet. How dare he sneak into her room, sleep on her bed! She would have plenty of time to deal with him later.

  "Somebody in authority is going to hear about this!" And she decided to go straight to the top.

  Chapter 11

  BOLO WAS NOWHERE IN SIGHT when Yaquita burst downstairs into the cantina. She paused only a moment to preen in front of the numerous mirrors on the wall while the practicing musicians hid from her, then she raced into the alley. Her eyes blazed, her coppery skin flushed with simmering anger. Even the feral chickens squawked and scuttled out of her way, ducking to safety under rusty gutters.

  By one of the outbuildings with the corrugated metal roofs, Yaquita tore away a stained tarpaulin to reveal a beat-up black Volkswagen beetle. She tossed the tarp into the gutter, adding more stains, then leaped into the car. Even before she managed to swing the door shut, she twisted the key as if wringing the neck of one of the chickens.

  Yaquita sped away at a suicidal pace. Leaving Santa Isabel behind, the VW scrambled up a steep Andes mountain road, careening over potholes, grinding gears and belching blue-white exhaust. She did not look over the crumbling edge to where a graveyard of crashed vehicles lay far below, glinting in the sun. The black VW hurtled toward a shallow stream in a gorge. Gritting her teeth and clenching the steering wheel, Yaquita plunged the puttering car into the water. She managed to roll up her window an instant before a fury of spray and mud made a rooster tail on either side of her car, but she drove straight across. No mountain and no river was going to slow her down, not today. If Pedrito was back, and if Colonel Enrique and Colonel Ivan expected her to cooperate with their schemes, she would give them a piece of her mind ... or preferably a piece of her fists. She could always make it back in time to castrate Pedrho, if she still felt like it.

  Finally reaching a grassy plateau, Yaquita saw several military vehicles hidden under nets and pyramidal tents painted in camouflage colors. Brightly dressed Indian farmers tended their sheep and cows, completely oblivious to the military presence.

  The mud-covered Volkswagen streaked up and braked in a cloud of dust thirty feet from the central headquarters tent. Guerrilla soldiers took one look at Yaquita's eyes, then rushed from her path. She marched toward the open tent flap with murder in her eyes.

  Inside the main structure two cluttered cots sat against the near canvas wall, stacked with odds and ends of military equipment. Across from the entrance flap a field desk supported a crude radio setup.

  The Russian and Cuban colonels reclined on frayed camp chairs, their backs foolishly turned toward the tent opening. Ivan puffed on a huge, fragrant Cuban cigar. Casually, he tilted the bottle of vodka in his hand to pour into a pair of glasses on a tray between them.

  "What a day," Colonel Ivan said, exhaling a long curl of thick cigar smoke. "What a glorious day!"

  Enrique slouched in his chair, decidedly drunk. "Tell me what you said before, Ivan," the Cuban said, his eyes fixed on the vodka bottle, as if he wanted another drink but was too tired to pick it up. "You know, about the revolution ... and the rabbits."

  "You want to hear it again?" Ivan asked. "But I've told you, so many times before."

  "Again," Enrique demanded. "And don't forget the rabbits."

  "Ah, you tell it," Ivan said. "You've heard it so often, you know how it goes."

  "No, I want to hear it from you, Ivan," Enrique begged.

  Ivan took a puff from his cigar, and after a long, satisfied sigh, he said, "Men like you and me, Enrique, we are not like other men."

  "That's how it goes," Enrique said. "Don't forget the rabbits..

  Ivan grinned patiently. "Of course I won't forget. Comrade.. Ivan said. "You see, other men are lonely creatures, men who toil from day to day, seeking lowly creature comforts, ground beneath the thumbs of tyrants and capitalist oppressors. But we aren't like that, are we?"

  "No," Enrique said. "We aren't like that..."

  "Because?" Ivan prodded.

  "Because we have each other!" Enrique shouted triumphantly.

  "That's right, we have each other. We are comrades, yes?"

  "Yes," Enrique said.

  "That means I take care of you, and you take care of me. And while other men toil for worldly gain, struggling just to keep their heads above the ever-rising deluge of greed and degradation that their taskmasters heap upon them, you and I do not do that, eh. Comrade. We do not do that. Instead of toiling for money, we toil for what?"

  "For the revolution!" Enrique shouted triumphantly. "That's right, for the revolution. We toil for revolution." They lifted their glasses for a toast. Ivan tossed the vodka into his mouth, sloshing it around his cheeks.

  "Don't forget the part about the rabbits!" Enrique said and gulped his own vodka.

  Yaquita appeared in the tent door, smoldering and speechless. "You droppings of a syphilitic vulture!" she shouted with venom. "How dare you do this to me?"

  The colonels sprayed out their vodka, then both fell out of their camp chairs.

  Yaquita advanced two steps into the tent, pausing beside the cots loaded with surplus equipment. "You did not say Pedrito was the agent I was supposed to meet!" She seized upon the nearest throwing-size object, a leather case that contained a pair of field glasses.

  The colonels wheeled away from their fallen chairs; Ivan dropped the bottle of vodka. The field-glass case swooshed between them and struck the billowing tent wall even as they ducked. Next Yaquita threw a military compass. "You hoodwinked me!

  The Russian ducked the compass and turned to the Cuban. "Why does she always throw things, Comrade?"

  A metal first-aid box hit Enrique in the chest just below his billowing beard and knocked him back down. ''Ouch! I've tried to get her to put down her feelings in a letter, express herself in prose. I think it would be safer for all of us—but she won't listen!"

  "You betrayed me," Yaquita said, "both of you! You know how I despise Pedrito!"

  A canteen hit Ivan in the head and knocked him down as well.

  "You tried to con me!" She swung a glittering ammunition belt around her head like a heavy sling, then she let it fly.

  Enrique's reedy Cuban aide scuttled up behind her with a drawn pistol. He ducked beneath the swinging bandolier and jammed the pistol into her back.

  Yaquita dodged sideways like a cobra on a hot rock just as she threw the belt. She grabbed the reedy man's wrist and hurled him across the tent at the colonels, just another object to throw. He struck the center pole, which buckled under his weight. The entire headquarters tent collapsed, dumping folds of canvas on all the occupants.

  Outside, as bored guerrillas stood around, lumpy forms moved about under the collapsed canvas, searching for a way out.

  "Yaquita! Be sensible!" Colonel Enrique said, muffled under the tent.

  "Da! The pay is good," Colonel Ivan said.

  "Yaquita," Enrique said, "you do not realize how important this is."

  "Your mission will deliver all of South America into our hands!" Ivan said. "And when South America rises up—the whole world will follow! We must be successful. You are not cleared for all the details, of course, but believe me—Pedrito Miraflores is the only man who can accomplish this."

  Yaquita lifted the corner of the tent and emerged unruffled, like a princess. She paced back and forth, her face stormy but contemplative. The guerrillas took one look at her and immediately found other important duties.

  "Yaquita," Enrique wailed from under the canvas, "think of the cause! Remember ... remember the part about the rabbits!"

  She stopped in her tracks as a hurricane of emotions passed across her face. Finally she tossed her flowing black hair over her shoulder, set her jaw, then raised her fist in a stern revolutionary salute. "All right, then. Long live
the revolution!" She muttered under her breath, "Even if it means I have to kiss and make up with Pedrito for now! But I warn you: when the revolution comes, he will be first against the wall!"

  As the two colonels clawed free of the collapsed tent, Yaquita strode back to the battered black beetle, still dissatisfied, but resigned to do what was necessary.

  The Volkswagen tore back through the rocky stream, where splashed water washed off the first coating of mud. She streaked back down the steep mountain road, whipping around hairpin curves and dodging packed buses. Yaquita managed to keep the majority of wheels on the road at any one time.

  She drove so well that her tire tracks lined up with her previous marks on the dirt road, but all the time she was preoccupied with extravagant visions of everything she would do to Pedrito when all this was over.

  She had quite a vivid imagination.

  Chapter 12

  THOUGH AN HOUR HAD PASSED, the Cantina de Espejos was still without customers, and the band still hadn't managed to get in tune.

  The haphazard musicians saw Yaquita reenter and began to play with terrified enthusiasm. They didn't sound any better after all their practicing, but Yaquita ignored them as she marched past the mirrors and up the curving stairs. She strode through the balcony door into the bedroom.

  Smith lay where he had fallen unconscious on the floor, in exactly the same position. Yaquita closed the door, locked it and stared with lip-curled disdain at him.

  "Pedrito!" She spat in his direction, but decided not to throw anything else, for now. She glared for another moment, filled with repugnance which turned to resignation. She was a passionate woman, but she wondered how she could ever have been passionate with Pedrito. Still, those had been some fun times....

  She shucked off her trench coat, then tossed it into the closet alcove on top of her hundred pairs of shoes.

  "I do my duty for the revolution," she sighed, "even if it is with him."