Captain Gringo shopped for traveling outfits that afternoon and attracted no little attention as he clomped around the plaza in Texas boots, sporting a thatch of blindingly blond hair in a town where even light brown hair was unusual.
Meanwhile, the more chameleon-like Gaston tried for invisibility as he made discreet and complicated travel arrangements. The hardest part was seeing that one of their steamer trunks would be loaded on the wrong vessel. Despite the casual dress and sleepy movements along the waterfront, the Vanderbilts of New York had a near monopoly on Central American rail and steamboat transportation and even their Hispanic competitors had to be more efficient than they looked. So vessels tended to leave on time and baggage was seldom mislaid or – God forbid! – loaded aboard the wrong ship. A passenger’s luggage might wind up soaked through with bilge water, infested with four-inch cockroaches, or smelling like bananas, but to assure its eventual delivery, each and every piece had a waterproof tag wired to its handle before it left the baggage shed on the docks.
Gaston knew this, so he’d come prepared. While the busy steam line clerk was wiring the last of the trunks and bags Gaston had carted into the shed, the Frenchman casually leaned against one particular trunk and replaced its tag with one he’d prepared ahead of time. He waited, making small talk after paying the clerk and adding a cigar to the tip. They were thus smoking and chatting when more luggage arrived and the clerk excused himself with a sad smile. Gaston nodded and strolled out, not looking back.
He cocked his head and grinned to himself as he heard a distant bell chime the hour. Siesta was over. Others would be coming to assist the skeleton crew that kept the port more or less open twenty-four hours a day, in modern “international” fashion.
He didn’t see or hear it, but Gaston would not have been surprised, forty-five minutes later, when a stevedore started to load the trunk on a cart, did a double take, and muttered, “Hey, this one’s not supposed to go aboard the night boat to Nicaragua. It’s tagged for Panama.”
A harassed foreman with a clipboard turned with a frown, looked at his watch, and sighed. “Shit. What’s it doing down at this end? You’d better drop everything and run it down the dock to La Esperanza. She’s leaving on the next tide and I could have sworn we had everything aboard her.”
“What about this other stuff headed for Nicaragua, Chief?”
“We’ve got all afternoon to load the night boat. What are you waiting for, a blessing from the Pope? We’ll catch hell if that trunk doesn’t arrive in Panama with its owner.”
“You want me to check with the ship’s purser, Chief? Sometimes the passengers expect a trunk like this in their stateroom.”
The foreman laughed and said, “I used to try for a tip, too. Forget it. Those damned crewmen never split with us dock workers. Wheel it down and shove it in the baggage hold. If the fucking passenger wants it topside he can ask, and I hope those stingy sailors get a hernia.”
Meanwhile, Captain Gringo had finished his own errands and joined Gaston under the awning of a sidewalk cantina. He sat down as Gaston held up two fingers to the waitress. He grinned as he reached into a big shopping bag and drew out a frilly polka-dotted parasol. He winked it open and shut as he told Gaston, “Liza hasn’t got time to redo her hair. But wait till you see the feathered hat I picked up for her. I got a bargain. They must have had it sitting on that plaster head for years. I thought a red dress might be overdoing it. So I bought her one that goes with this parasol. What do you think?”
Gaston grimaced and said, “Merde. Nothing could go with that parasol! But won’t she seem trés odd, sporting any kind of parasol after sunset? The night boat leaves on the nine o’clock tide, Dick.”
Captain Gringo said, “I know. We want people to notice the funny hat and we want them to wonder why the hell she thinks she needs a sunshade under gaslight. The dame is kind of classy looking as well as an obvious gringa. We can’t make them remember her as a native, but if we tart her up enough they might remember her as a flashy hooker.”
Gaston waited until the cantina girl had placed two steins of cerveza on the tin table between them before he opined, “I must say you look like a degenerate Texan. Did you notice the look that chica just gave us? I think she takes me for an elderly pervert picking up a blond. I have our tickets, and of course that machine-gun ammo is on its way to that hotel we stayed at, the last time we were in Panama.”
“Good. I hope you booked us separate cabins?”
“But of course. You said you and the girl would not travel as man and wife until we left a false trail north. And I am certainly not about to share a cabin with any man in high heels and a peroxide rinse!” He sipped his beer and added, “I may get lucky aboard the night boat, hein? One could hardly expect a lonely female traveler to respond with enthusiasm to the advances of a friendly older man who sleeps with swishy cowboys.”
Captain Gringo chuckled, but said, “I want you to behave yourself until we get to San Salvador. It won’t kill you to sleep alone a few nights. But it could get us all killed if anyone gets interested enough in you to give an accurate description.”
Gaston sighed and said, “You make such fatiguing plans. I suppose I could try celibacy, if only as a novelty, but is this just? It’s all very well for you to insist on my self-abuse, but
“For God’s sake, can’t you last a couple of nights without jerking off?”
“Certainly. That is why I shall feel abused. Meanwhile, you have the English girl to play with, hein?”
“Don’t be stupid. In the first place, I just told you we’ll have separate cabins. In the second … Does that dame strike you kind of odd, Gaston?”
The Frenchman shrugged and replied, “I have seldom bothered with one so tall. I have only had a few Englishwomen in any case. I find them trés confusing as lovers. Every English girl I have ever made the pass at has turned out to be either frigid or a total slut.”
He took another sip of suds and added, “I would categorize Miss Smathers as the cooler of the two varieties, alas for you. As I said, she is too tall for me.”
“Damn it, I’m not worried about whether she puts out or not. There’s something else about her. I’ve got a hunch Greystoke is trying to convince us we’re playing tic-tac-toe when the game is really poker. There’s more to that broad than meets the eye.”
Gaston laughed. “I beg to refute that, mon vieux. If you ask me, there is less to Liza than meets the eye. Aside from being cadaverously thin, she is flat chested, and I would never call her a broad, even in jest. Merde alors, I am certain I have a broader derrière, and I have never been considered overweight.”
Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Yeah, we’re going to have a mess on our hands if her lungs can’t take the thin air where we’re going. But I’m not talking about her health or libido. Like I said, I can take her or leave her as a woman. It’s her story that rubs me the wrong way.”
“You don’t think Greystoke is capable of blackmailing a young lady into acting as a British agent? How curious. He’s never hesitated to blackmail anyone else I know of.”
The big Yank nodded. “Sure, British Intelligence plays rough. But up to now, they’ve always played smart! They’ve tried to sell us the idea we’re delivering a courier agent. We get Liza safely up to Bogotá and her job is done. Does that make sense to you?”
Gaston considered before he answered. “Hmm. Greystoke knows we intend to go our own way, once we deliver her. He was trés casual about how the poor child was to get back from the high country. But that is not our problem. Try it this way: Liza is to deliver something or tell something to other agents in Bogotá. After that, her job is finished and Greystoke lets her off whatever hook he has her on. She can wait until things settle down and perhaps make it down to the coast again with some other gallant type; or, should worse come to worse, it won’t really matter to them if she makes it or not, once her whatever has been completed.”
Captain Gringo shook his head. “Sloppy. I’ve no doubt that Greystoke would let all three of us get killed, if there was any advantage to it for Great Britain. But we know the guy’s not a mindless sadist and we know he works neat.”
“Very well. He has a plan assuring the girl’s safety. He hasn’t told us about it because we could be captured and talk. After all, we have not told them all our plans, hein? He learned we were going the same direction as one of his own agents. We have a certain reputation for survival. So he enlisted our aid in getting her there.”
“Yeah, but why are they sending her?”
“One must send somebody, non?”
“Bullshit. British Intelligence has plenty of Latin Americans, male and female, on its payroll. Shit, they’ve got Indians working for the Queen. Why send a reluctant English girl, a reasonably pretty one who doesn’t speak Spanish, for God’s sake, just to make a dumb delivery or carry an oral message? Hell, Gaston, he knows he could trust either of us if it was a simple courier job. He could have slipped us an envelope or a coded message, since we were on our way anyway. Why ask us to drag along a hundred pounds of helpless female?”
Gaston glanced up at the afternoon sun before he sighed and said, “We shall know soon enough, I fear. Unless, of course, you really want some advice from an old pro.”
“I’m listening, Gaston.”
“I doubt it. But very well. I still think we should take the money and run. Wait. I know your views on business ethics, but hear me out. The mission the U.S. State Department wishes to send us on makes a little sense, but not much, when one thinks about it. British Intelligence is obviously using us as some trés complex diversion. You remember how they tried to get us to be their red herring against those German agents. Greystoke likes to send a set of pawns into the enemy while his real mission is pulled off, discreetly, by another team. Think about it, Dick. You and I are not paid up members of either British Intelligence or the U.S. Secret Service. The girl too is apparently being forced into this mission against her common sense as well as will. None of us owes anyone anything. I don’t know what trouble Liza has gotten herself into, but you and I are wanted outlaws.”
Gaston drained his stein, slammed it down, and added with a laugh, “Sacré, I would not be surprised if they were all expecting us to vanish into thin air with their money! Setting up a false mission, bound to fail, is a standard Machiavellian move for any spy monger. What do you say? We might be doing everyone an expected favor if we simply hop the night boat and just keep going, hein?”
Captain Gringo frowned, finished his own beer, and said, “You may be right. But if we cut out, we’ll have to take the girl along. She’d never make it on her own, and she looks desperate enough to try.”