CHAPTER 17

“Did you find Dr. Mendoza?” Father José asked.

“I found him,” Caine said.

“How is he?”

“How should I know? I’m not his damned keeper,” Caine snapped. The priest looked at Caine with his sad eyes, then he looked at the river. Violet and gray clouds covered the sky over the river with a thick woolly blanket. The large lancha trembled with the throb of the engine. A light wind stirred ripples on the surface, where the deep current ran. Soon it would rain.

“You murdered him, didn’t you?” Father José said, and looked back at Caine. It was not a question. Caine didn’t say anything.

“My God, did you think that sort of thing can be kept quiet? The word has spread like wildfire through the jungle,” Father José said.

“Has the news reached Iquitos yet?”

“Not yet,” the priest admitted. He struck a match and lit his pipe. The smoke wreathed his face like a halo.

“Why did you wait till now, before bringing it up?” Caine asked. After all, they had been together on the river since Flor de Punga two days ago. The priest shrugged wearily, resting his chin on his chest His thick black beard covered the grayish cassock over his chest like a bib.

“I thought you were too weak. Besides, who am I to judge you? Judgment belongs to God. Besides, I didn’t want to know.”

“No,” Caine said quietly. “You don’t want to know.”

“How could you do such a thing?” Father José said suddenly, his face reddening, as though he were embarrassed.

“How could I not do it?” Caine retorted. “Dr. Mendoza’s real name was Josef Mengele. Does that mean anything to you? Yes, I can see that even here in the middle of nowhere you’ve heard of the Angel of Death of Auschwitz,” Caine said, his green eyes glittering. “He was responsible for more human suffering and death than any man in the world. What’s one death amid all that carnage?”

“One death is what it’s all about,” the priest said.

“It doesn’t do any good to talk about it. I’ve seen Auschwitz and I tell you Mengele wasn’t fit to walk the earth. I’m not sorry about any of it.”

“But who nominated you to do it?” Father José asked. Caine shrugged and spat over the gunnel. His spittle was touched with pink. His gums still bled a little from where Rolf had knocked out one of his teeth.

“It just happened that way. Besides, I was the right man for the job. You said it yourself. I’m a hunter. God didn’t create the jaguar to be a vegetarian,” Caine said.

“I should turn you over to the authorities when we reach Iquitos,” the priest said unhappily.

“Are you going to?”

Drops of rain with the size and force of marbles began to fall into the river. The surface of the river looked like a vast field of water flowers splashed up by the raindrops. A small waterfall cascaded over the edge of the canvas sunscreen under which the two men sat. Father José stretched his bony frame and sighed.

“‘He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone,’” the priest said, staring into the gray wall of rain. “No, I won’t betray you to the authorities. But when, we dock in Iquitos, let’s just pretend we never met.”

“In a way we never did,” Caine said, getting up. He walked to the prow of the lancha and just stood there in the rain. The raindrops smashed like bullets, soaking Caine’s new clothes and molding them to his body. He had bought the cheap slacks and shirt for a few soles at the one tin-roofed general store in Flor de Punga, a tiny riverfront village. He had landed the raft there and caught a lift back to Iquitos with Father José, who was taking the mission lancha downriver to straighten out a delayed shipment of medical supplies, which were being held up by the customs office in Iquitos. Father José told him that it would take a lot of palaver and a judicious bribe before he would be able to get the shipment released.

The lancha was piloted by a young caboclo seminarian, who drove the boat day and night with the reckless audacity, if not the skill, of a Grand Prix driver. By the afternoon of the fourth day they were approaching Iquitos, about a half-day’s journey downriver from the junction of the two great rivers, the Marañon and the Ucayali, which join to form the Amazon River. And Father José had waited all that time before confronting him.

The rain felt cool and refreshing to Caine. He was feeling much better. Maybe that was why Father José had held off talking about it. Out of a rare sense of delicacy, not wanting to confront Caine while he was still weak and shivering with fever. Well, at least it was out in the open between them, Caine thought with a sense of relief. Now he no longer had to pretend to be the oilman McClure for the priest. One of the real hardships for a spy is often trying to pretend to be less interesting than he really is. In fact, Koenig had once warned them about agents who deliberately courted danger out of pure boredom with their cover roles.

The priest had treated him with Lomotil, chloroquine, and penicillin. The medicine combined with canned food and lazy days of rest on the boat to bring Caine back into relatively good condition. At long last he felt that the nightmare was ending. Except for the Starfish. That was still running. For the rest all he wanted was to collect his money and C.J. from Wasserman and take off for Zurich. He wanted to make his dream about skiing in the Alps with her come true.

Father José came over and stood beside him in the rain. The priest’s head was bowed and his hands were clasped behind him in the posture of a penitent, submitting himself to the flagellation of the raindrops. They stood like carved figures, rocking slightly with the motion of the boat. Rainwater ran down their faces in tiny rivulets.

“I lied just now about not judging you. I’m still judging you—I can’t help it,” Father José said.

“I guess you’re as human as the rest of us, Padre,” Caine said.

“Just tell me this, was it truly necessary to kill him?” Father José asked, his earnest gaze searching Caine’s face.

“I don’t know,” Caine said softly, his voice almost lost in the hiss of the rain. For an instant their glances touched and they both looked away.

“I think you found the darkness I warned you about, didn’t you?” Father José asked.

“Yes, you were right, but there’s something else. I think it’s possible that killing Mengele was the first decent thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Caine said. “Maybe it makes up for … well, maybe it makes up for some of the other things I’ve done. I don’t know. But when and if the time ever comes for God to judge me, I’ve got a few questions of my own to put to Him,” he added.

“We all do,” Father José murmured sadly.

The two men stood side by side for a long time in the cooling rain, each of them locked into his own private world of darkness and light. Finally the rain began to slacken and Father José suggested a cup of coffee, which they brewed on the little Primus stove under the sunscreen. They shared one cup between them as though it were a kind of communion.

They docked at Belén, a floating slum of small boats and shacks on stilts which formed the port section of Iquitos. Belén was built on a long, narrow mud flat joined by a ramshackle wooden bridge to the town built on a bluff overlooking the river. It was late afternoon, the tropic sun caught in the distant treetops like a giant yellow balloon.

Caine helped Father José tie the lancha to a rotting wooden pier that balanced precariously over the river. The air was pungent with the smells of mud and garbage and decaying fish. Caboclos swarmed along the wharf, laden with heavy reed baskets and clay water jugs. Day laborers were loading bananas and animal skins onto a rusty Booth Line freighter. Scores of pirogues and lanchas were beached on the mud flat and the air was alive with the cries of Indians and traders hawking goods. After the isolation of the jungle the sudden return to the world startled Caine. All the noise and vitality stunned him, and he felt more than ever an alien in the crowd.

Father José and Caine parted without abrazo, or even a handshake. They glanced briefly at each other and then the priest kind of nodded. Caine hopped onto the pier and walked toward the narrow wooden footbridge that joined the port to the town, without turning back. Yet as the Indians jostled and shoved around him while he crossed the bridge, Caine could feel the priest’s dark-eyed gaze burning into his back.

Caine climbed up the muddy street to the Malécon, the old-fashioned promenade that ran along the bluff overlooking the river. At a number of places he had to walk around barricades of crumbled cement, where the rise and fall of the river had taken giant mouthfuls out of the walkway. Young couples and tradesmen strolled arm-in-arm along the Malécon, past Victorian buildings fronted with white tiles decorated with blue floral patterns, relics of the rubber boom around the turn of the century when Iquitos had been a thriving city instead of a sleepy jungle town. The air was redolent with the scent of decay from the port, characteristic of a city with a past more alive than its present. Caine turned off the Malécon and went into a large sidewalk café called the Caravelle.

Caine sat at the bar and ordered a pisco sour from the sweating Indian barman. The café was filled with the smell of cigarette smoke and the vinegar scent of ceviche. Anticuchos, skewered chunks of seasoned beef heart, were roasting over a nearby charcoal brazier. It was incredible how keen his sense of smell had become in the jungle, Caine thought as he stared at his reflection in the tarnished mirror behind the bar. He scarcely recognized the gaunt face in the mirror as his own. The sun had burned it to a reddish mahogany, covered by a coppery-blond stubble of whiskers. His skin was stretched taut over his cheekbones and his tangled hair badly needed cutting. Only his eyes hadn’t changed. They were as cold and green as ever, only now they seemed larger somehow. He drank the pisco sour and ordered another.

A bright green-and-red parrot squawked from a cage at the other end of the bar. A stuffed monkey snarled at him from atop a branch nailed to a wall, next to a poster advertising Cristal beer. The monkey, the parrot, and him—they were all out of place here. For a second the taste of monkey meat was in his mouth again and he almost gagged. Maybe they should stuff and mount me on the wall too, he mused, and tried to avoid the monkey’s glass eyes.

Overhead a ceiling fan slowly stirred the heavy air. The tables were filled with local tradesmen dawdling over their liquor, plus a few wide-eyed tourists. At a nearby table a red-faced dealer in animal skins, with an accent rich in the vowels of London’s Chelsea district, was regaling the tourists with some story about how he had single-handedly captured a boa constrictor.

“The bugger must have run thirty feet, by God. Had a fair time wrestling him into the bag, I don’t mind telling you. When he wrapped himself around my chest, I thought sure he was going to put ‘paid’ to me. Fearsome thing, an anaconda. Tackle anything in the jungle, even a jaguar. I’ve seen ’em swallow a two-hundred pound capybara whole, I have. You wrestle a boa, you’ll find out what the jungle’s all about.”

“Weren’t you afraid?” a well-dressed American woman asked, her voice tremulous with an appropriate note of awe.

“Not a bit of it,” the Englishman said. “You’ve got to treat ’em like a woman, show ’em who’s boss. That’s what I say.” He winked.

I’ll bet that’s what you say, Caine thought, and grimly drained his drink, the foam leaving a frothy mustache on his lip. At another table several perspiring Peruvian businessmen in dark, shiny suits morosely discussed the falling price of raw rubber. At the other end of the bar a local grower was bargaining with an American trader over a consignment of chicle. The Englishman tried to convince the American woman that there was a fortune to be made in shipping parrots to the States.

“Top dollar. Absolutely top dollar,” he guaranteed, paternally patting her knee and giving it a sly squeeze. Caine began to wonder why he had been in such a hurry to get back to civilization.

He spotted two long-haired American hippies in faded, patched blue jeans and T-shirts, morosely sipping from brown bottles of Cristal at a corner table. He ordered three cold bottles of Cristal and carried them over to the hippies. He placed the bottles on the table, as though he were paying an entrance fee, and sat down to join them.

“What’s happening, man?” Caine said. One of the hippies looked disdainfully up at Caine, then he shrugged and grabbed one of the bottles.

“Ain’t nothing happened in Iquitos since the rubber boom, Jack,” he said, and took a long pull at the bottle. The other hippie twitched nervously and regarded Caine with wide, vacant eyes. His nostrils were red and partially eaten away from cocaine. He sniffed a dribble of snot back into his nose and languidly reached for the third bottle, staring through Caine as if he were transparent.

“You guys hang out in Belén?” Caine asked.

“Who wants to know?” the first hippie said, thrusting his lip out belligerently.

“Just asking.” Caine shrugged.

“Just telling,” the hippie retorted with a self-satisfied grin.

“Suppose I wanted to move something and didn’t want the local pigs to know about it, who would I talk to?” Caine said, and put a couple of hundred-sol bills on the table next to the beer.

“Talk to the Chinaman,” the hollow-eyed hippie said, reaching for the money with the same languid gesture. Caine planted his bottle on the bills and held it there.

“Where do I find him?” he asked.

“Import-export office, at the end of the Malécon, near the old Clube Iquitos. The big iron building with the fancy colonnade. Shit, man. Everybody knows the Chinaman,” the first hippie said.

Caine left them sitting there, arguing about the money, and stopped off at a nearby barbershop for a haircut and shave. He left the barbershop feeling pounds lighter and cleaner, his skin and hair gleaming like burnished copper in the brief tropic sunset. Insects swarmed around the ornate streetlights on the Malécon as darkness fell over the river. A waxy yellow moon hung over the jungle with the haunting face of a primeval deathmask. He found the building with the faded sign above the doorway, that read: A. FONG.IMPORT-EXPORT.

Import-export was the classic cover for a smuggling operation in river ports around the world. There was sure to be a lucrative trade in smuggling illegal animals, gold, and, most of all, raw cocaine out of Iquitos on the run to Bogotá, the so-called “Colombian connection,” Caine thought as he mounted the rickety stairs and knocked on the office door. Even though he had the Payne passport, it was essential that he get to Lima without risking an encounter with the Peruvian authorities.

Ah Fong was a short fat Chinese man with a smiling, perspiring Buddha face. He was wearing a neat white linen suit and he bowed several times as he led Caine into his private office. The office was as hot as a greenhouse and lush with orchids and other jungle flowers. But Fong’s pride and joy was a purplish Venus flytrap, and his face shone with sweaty pleasure as he invited Caine to watch him feed it.

Fong’s short fingers plucked a live fly from a swarming glass jar and he held it delicately, then shook it like a thermometer. He dropped the dizzy fly into the brightly colored open pistil. The fly staggered drunkenly among the down-pointing hairs of the petals as it slipped downward. Fong smiled happily as the petals suddenly closed over the fly. Caine wondered if he, too, was walking into a trap again.

“I fear you do not take pleasure in the Venus plant, señor,” Fong said, gently touching his fingertips together over his bulging belly as they sat across from each other at Fong’s lacquered black desk.

“I’m afraid my sympathies are all with the fly, but por favor, don’t let my opinions interfere with your pleasure,” Caine said.

“My pleasure is in your presence here,” Fong said, bobbing his sweating face in a little bow.

“Your house reveals the presence of a man of exquisite taste and sympathy,” Caine replied.

Fong leaned back and brought out a lacquered Chinese cigar box. He offered the box to Caine, then took a cigar for himself. He sniffed the cigar appreciatively and the two men lit up.

“How may I be of service to you, señior?”

“I need to return to Lima as soon as possible, but I wish to avoid the inconvenience of the Peruvian authorities, especially the aduaneros at Customs. I was told that ‘El Chino’ is a man of considerable influence in such matters. Naturalmente, I came to seek your advice.”

“Will you be carrying contrabando?” Fong inquired shrewdly.

“Neither contrabondo, nor coca, nor anything else. Only myself. Your men can search me if you wish. Naturalmente, I wish to compensate you for your kindness.”

“I can see that you are a serious man, señor, so I will be frank. I have a plane leaving this evening for Lima. I am shipping a quantity of animals for transshipment to the U.S. There will be no problem with the aduaneros at either end. If a man of your …” Fong paused, searching for the right word. “… delicacy does not mind sharing cargo space with our little jungle friends, I would be honored with your patronage.”

Caine smiled. That was funny, he thought. After what he had gone through in the jungle, that was funny.

“How much?” Caine asked.

“Will you be returning to Iquitos, señor?”

“Not unless there’s a slipup,” Caine said, and smiled coldly. Fong glanced at his smile and shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“I see,” Fong said, pensively tapping his fingertips together. “In that case, señor, the fare will be five hundred dollars.”

“Two hundred. I’m not a millonario.”

“As you wish, señor. For two hundred, I recommend the Satco or the Lansa airline offices in the Hotel Turista. But for a man of your stature, I would be honored to have your patronage for four hundred and fifty, in advance.”

“Four hundred and no questions asked,” Caine said and stood up. Fong stood up and extended his hand, palm upward. Caine counted out four hundred dollars and gave it to him. Fong smiled like a sweating Buddha and bowed.

“There will be no problemas, señor. You have the word of ‘El Chino.’ Be at the aeropuerto at eight tonight. Just tell the aduanero you are going on El Chino’s plane.”

“It’s a pleasure doing business with a serious man,” Caine said and bowed.

“Buen viaje, señor,” Fong said.

When Caine left him, he was standing with the glass fly jar in his hand, indulgently contemplating his Venus flytrap.

Caine spent the next hour shopping at the brightly lit shops around the small town plaza. He bought a lightweight overnight suitcase, toiletries, an inexpensive white linen suit, and a new pair of shoes. He changed into the new clothes, leaving the old ones in the store’s dressing room. He stopped at the telegraph office and sent a telegram to the classified section of the L.A. Times to place an ad in the Personals column, which read: “C.J. Don’t be mean, Lima bean. Stop. Bring bread and paper soonest. Stop Hot signed Crillon Stop.”

He gave Wasserman’s Hollywood address for billing and hoped that she would readily decipher the message that he wanted her to meet him at the Hotel Crillon in Lima with money and a new passport from Wasserman. Then he found a dilapidated Chevy with a hand-painted taxi sign stuck in the window and went out to the airport.

The airport terminal was little more than a large, dilapidated shed. It was almost deserted except for a few caboclos and a young Indian boy who tried to sell him a fan made of parrot feathers. When Caine shrugged him off, he pressed Caine to buy some carved Yagua arrows. Caine walked up to the aduanero, a sleepy Peruvian in an ill-fitting brown uniform, his face slick with the humid heat. Behind the aduanero a centipede crawled along the wall and disappeared into a large, jagged crack. Fong was as good as his word. Caine simply mentioned the plane of El Chino and the aduanero lethargically waved him through the gate.

An ancient twin-prop DC-3 was being loaded with wire-mesh crates packed with parrots and spider monkeys. The silver plane gleamed in the harsh light of naked bulbs that lit the tarmac as the Indian laborers manhandled the heavy crates into the cargo bay. Many of the animals were worth more than a thousand dollars apiece, duty-free, to pet fanciers and medical laboratories. If this shipment was any indication, Fong was indeed a serious man, Caine thought.

A lanky American in faded jeans, T-shirt, and wearing a Yankee baseball cap stood in the doorway of the plane, cupping his hands around his mouth, so that his shouts could be heard over the screeching animals. When he saw Caine, he waved and motioned him to a steel ladder. Caine climbed up and the American, whom he took to be the pilot, pulled him in.

“Where you heading, Sam?” the American said.

“Lima. You the pilot?” Caine asked.

“Nobody but. El Chino send you?”

“Nobody but, Sam.” Caine grinned.

“That’s the ticket.” Sam winked, then he leaned out the doorway and shouted at one of the workmen.

“Arriba, arriba, you fucking turkey! Right side up! Los animales arriba! Hey you, Sam! Sí, sí, usted, you shithead. Move it, arriba!” he shouted, then turned to Caine and said conversationally, “Did you see that, Sam? Those dumb bastards were loading a crate of monkeys upside down. Christ! Hey, hand me a beer, will you? They’re in a crate behind the seat up front.”

Caine went up to the cabin and found the beer. He opened two bottles with an opener attached by a cord to the pilot’s seat and brought them back, handing one to Sam. They grinned and took long gulps.

“Do you call everybody Sam?” Caine asked.

“Sure. In this business nobody has any name anyway, right?” Sam asked, his blue eyes twinkling. “Besides, it makes it easy to remember,” he said.

After about an hour the plane was loaded and fueled. Sam leaned out of the cabin window and yelled something at the tower as Caine strapped himself into the copilot’s seat. The plane began to taxi even before the runway lights switched on and then they were hurtling down the runway and they were up. The plane climbed in a slow arc over the scattered lights of Iquitos, reflecting off the tin roofs of the town. Then they were over the jungle that stretched as dark and endless as the ocean all the way to the moonlit horizon.

The sound of the engines was deafening, drowning the shrieks of the terrified animals as the plane rattled and bucked its way through the cloud cover up to the starlit night. It felt and sounded as though the old DC-3 were shaking itself to pieces, and Caine wondered what were the odds on surviving a night crash in the jungle. But Sam nonchalantly ignored the noise and popped open another bottle of Cristal.

Caine found himself dozing off, until he was roused by the high-pitched scream of the engines as they fought for higher altitude in the thin air. They were approaching the massive barrier of the Cordillera. The instrument panel gleamed like stars in the cabin darkness and around them the night was filled with stars, like a distant city in the black sky. Sam told him that they would reach Lima in about an hour. Caine opened another beer and they shared it between them.

“Hey, Sam, you got a lady?” Sam shouted over the roar of the engines. Flames shot out of the prop exhausts, and it looked as though the wings were on fire. Snow gleamed a pale blue on the peaks of the Cordillera, so close beneath them that Caine felt he could reach out and scoop up a handful.

“Yeah, I’m meeting her in Lima in a few days. What about you?” Caine said.

“Are you kidding? This country spoils a man. For five bucks you can get the most beautiful young thing you ever saw, plus a room for a couple of hours. That’s about what I figure it’s worth. Five bucks and you can walk away, as easy as you please. Not like some of those American dames who act like they’re giving you the crown jewels of England. And then they expect you to give them bed and board just because you made them a few times. Shit, there ain’t nothing they’re giving you, you can’t have for five bucks.”

“What about love?” Caine asked.

“Listen, Sam. When most American women say, ‘I love you,’ the operative word is I. Now you take the Latin women. They know how to treat a man.”

“Sounds like you had a rough time,” Caine put in.

“I flew F-fours in Nam. When I got back, I found my wife had been fucking everything on two legs. It cost me all my separation pay just to get rid of her. Now you figure it. She fucks her brains out while I’m off risking my life and the courts give her all my money,” Sam said, shaking his head in wonder at the injustices of the world. “I figured, piss on the whole thing,” he concluded.

“Well, maybe I’ve got a good one,” Caine said.

“Don’t bet on it,” Sam said darkly, his face livid in the glow from the dashboard dials. “You find me a woman who ain’t looking out for Number One and I’ll show you a ding-a-ling broad.”

“Yeah, well we do it, too. We’re no saints.”

Sam laughed and slapped the dash with delight.

“Now that’s the fucking truth, Sam,” he exclaimed and turned with a wide grin to Caine. “Hey, you been in Nam?”

“I was there,” Caine said.

“That’s what I figured. Funny, you can always tell. I don’t know what it is. The way a guy moves, or something. But you can always tell, can’t you?”

“Sure, we’re the ones who look like born suckers,” Caine said.

“Fucking A, Sam!” Sam exclaimed delightedly and happily slapped at the dashboard. “Hey, are you on the run?”

Caine hesitated, wondering just how far he could trust the pilot.

“I might have to lay low for a while,” he admitted.

“Well, if you’re looking for a place where they don’t ask for papers or anything else, try the Pension Adolfo. It’s in the zona roja, off La Colmena. Just tell them Sam sent you. After all, us shitheads have got to stick together. And don’t worry about Fong or me. We’re making mucho money off of these dumb animals, so we don’t give a shit about anything. It’s the only way, Sam. The only way.”

The walking wounded, Caine thought. Is there anyone who isn’t a secret casualty? he wondered. He leaned back and stretched restlessly. Directly ahead he could just make out the distant sky glow from the lights of Lima, brightening the horizon like a moon-rise.

Sam brought the DC-3 down in an easy three-point landing and taxied over to the cargo area. As Caine started down the ladder, Sam flipped him a casual salute, readjusted the baseball cap to a jauntier angle, and began loudly cursing the cargo handlers for being a bunch of incompetent Sams. Caine’s stomach tensed as he approached the aduaneros. They were armed with automatic rifles, but they merely looked at him curiously and waved him through the gate. He walked through the crowded terminal and out to the taxi stand. He told the driver to take him to the Pension Adolfo in the zona roja, which is what the red-light district is always called throughout Latin America.

The taxi drove through the heavy traffic on Avenida Nicholas de Piérola, called “La Colmena” by the Limeños. The broad avenue was noisy with horns and dazzling bright with electric and neon signs. All the noise and people jangled his nerves with a gnawing persistence, like the ringing of an unanswered telephone. It’s just culture shock, he told himself. The transition had been too abrupt. That very afternoon he had still been gliding down the trackless Amazon with Father José. The world was going to take getting used to again, he mused.

He checked into the Pension Adolfo and went directly to his room. As Sam had indicated, they hadn’t asked for his passport and registered him as a Señor Smith. It was better to play it safe and keep his presence in Lima quiet for a few days until he could connect with C.J. and get back to L.A. under a new cover name, he decided. Just in case, he made all the usual checks on the room before locking the door and wedging a chair under the handle. Then he took a long hot shower, his first in weeks, and went to bed.

She was sitting by herself at a corner table next to the panoramic window that overlooked the bright moving lights along La Colmena, twenty stories below. She wore a simple navy-blue dress, her golden arms and shoulders gleaming in the candlelight. Her shining flaxen hair was pinned up to highlight her long slender neck, encircled by a single strand of pearls, and women around the room nudged their husbands with annoyance because there wasn’t a man in the restaurant who could take his eyes off her. If she was aware of the effect she was having, she gave no sign of it as she nervously toyed with the pearl necklace. After all that had happened, Caine could scarcely bring himself to approach her. She was the loveliest woman he had ever seen.

He had staked out the lobby of the Crillon for three days, using standard surveillance techniques to avoid the appearance of loitering. He hadn’t approached her when she checked in that afternoon because he wanted to be certain she wasn’t being tailed. When he was sure she was clean, he waited till the evening, when he spotted her in the lobby, heading for the elevator. She was dressed for dinner and he figured she was going to the Sky Room restaurant on the top floor. She was absentmindedly looking out the window at the lights of the city below as he approached her table. He waited till she spotted his reflection in the shiny glass and turned to him with a start.

“Hello, C.J.,” Caine said.

“It’s you, Johnny. It’s really you,” she said, her eyes wide and watery.

“It’s been too long,” he said.

“For God’s sake, sit down. You’ve got me all jumpy,” she said brightly and nervously touched her hand to her hair. He sat down and leaned forward, clumsily kissing her on the mouth. He cursed himself. It wasn’t at all the way he had planned it.

“My God, what have they done to you?” she said, her eyes brimming as she stared at him. She bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling. He shook his head with a wry grimace.

“It’s okay. It’s all over now. From now on it’s just you and me,” he said, and took her hand. For a moment she looked away.

“You don’t know what it’s been like, these past weeks. Couldn’t you have called or written, or something? I didn’t know if you were dead or alive or what.”

“No, I couldn’t,” he said simply.

“Jesus, Johnny. What’s happening?”

“I told you. It’s all over now. You and I are going back to L.A. tomorrow. Wasserman owes me a lot of money. Then we’re off to Switzerland and we’re both through with the life back there for good. That’s what you want too, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, more than you know,” she replied happily, and taking his hand in hers, she bent forward and gently kissed his hand.

The waiter came over and Caine ordered two pisco sours. She looked away again, then turned to him and began gaily.

“Karl gave me a passport for you and ten thousand dollars. Is it all right?”

Caine nodded. Maybe it was just that she was nervous at seeing him again, but there was something wrong and he couldn’t put his finger on it. He couldn’t help remembering something Koenig had said, that women were an agent’s Achilles’ heel. It was bad if you needed one, and worse if you loved her.

“You don’t know how glad I was to see your message in the Times. ‘Don’t be mean, Lima bean,’ indeed. Although it took me a while to figure that ‘Hot Crillon’ was the Hotel Crillon in Lima. Cute, mister, very cute,” she chattered brightly and his sense of her forced gaiety was beginning to get to him. What the hell is it? he wondered.

“What’s the matter, C.J.? Has Karl or anybody been pressuring you?”

Tears began to roll down her cheeks, leaving a thin black trail of mascara. She sniffed, trying to choke them back.

“It’s been awful,” she said. “I was followed everywhere in L.A. And I think the phone is being tapped. Then last week a man from the FBI showed up at the beach house, wanting to know if I had heard from you. He asked me all kinds of questions about something called ‘the Starfish.’ Over and over. It was terrifying, Johnny. My God, what are you mixed up in?”

“I don’t know all the pieces. Maybe I never will. But you have to believe me. Our part in all this is over; but the sooner we get out of the States, the better for both of us. Now for God’s sake, stop crying. Anyone would think you weren’t happy to see me,” he said.

She forced a smile and muttered, “Oh, shit. I must be a mess”—wiping her eyes with a handkerchief.

“You’re the prettiest mess I ever saw,” he said.

“Talk like that can get a man into trouble, mister,” she said, a silly grin painted on her face, as though on a doll’s face. Things were going wrong and he didn’t know why it was happening or how to stop it. Their love was trickling through his hands like water.

“Damn,” she said. “Look, give me a minute to go to the powder room and pull myself together. Then let’s start again, like we’re just meeting. Please, Johnny,” she pleaded, and he knew that whatever it was, it was important to her. He nodded and she got up and walked shakily toward the ladies’ room.

He lit a cigarette, his first since the jungle, and waited for her to come back. He waited a long time. He was about to go after her when he saw her coming back, looking more composed. She might have pulled it off except that her color was high and her eyes were bright and feverish. She put her hand on the back of his neck, bent down, and kissed him.

“Forget the food, handsome. Let’s go down to my room and get reacquainted,” she whispered in his ear.

“Don’t get cute with me, sailor. I’m cheap, but I’m not easy,” he said and finally won a smile from her.

She kept his hand clenched tightly in hers as they made their way to the elevator and down to her room. As soon as she closed the door, she threw her arms around him and hugged him desperately for what seemed like hours.

“Don’t talk. For God’s sake, don’t say anything? Just take off your clothes and make love to me. Make it matter,” she whispered and kissed him tremulously on the mouth.

She unzipped her dress and wriggled out of it. Then she stripped off her bra and panty hose and hugged herself for an instant before diving under the bedcover. Her eyes, which were bluer than the Mediterranean, never left him as he sat down on the edge of the bed and began to undress. As he pulled off his shirt, he vowed to get to the bottom of this. He wasn’t going to lose her because of the Starfish, or Wasserman, or the Company, or any damn thing else.

He was just pulling off his shoes when suddenly the door crashed open and five uniformed Peruvian security policemen rushed in, their guns drawn. As they clamped the handcuffs on Caine, his gaze desperately sought C.J.’s face. She was cowering under the bedcover, drawn up to her chin, her eyes wild and anguished, like those of a trapped animal.