They had drifted away from the seafront now and were pushing their way up a narrow street towards one of the heights which lay behind the old town. On all sides the throbbing of the combos, the rattle of tambourines and the yowl of electric guitars filled the air. The roadway was filled with a stream of papier-mâché mandarins, Popeyes and mythical beasts, all pressing down towards the sea. But the population here was predominantly colored, the laughter more boisterous, the dancing less inhibited.
Kuryakin followed the beaked mask as it threaded its way to the top of the street, across a cobbled square, and up a steep, stepped path traversing the side of a bluff sprinkled with wooden shacks among the trees. Several times the grotesque headed turned in a questing way - almost as though she knew that she was being followed and wanted to make sure he was still there, the agent thought with a frown.
He quickened his pace as the girl in the Carnaval mask sprang agilely across a gap in a ruined wall and began to climb a street - it was more of a path, really - so steep that it had to be buttressed every two yards with risers of planking pegged into the hard earth.
Again the beak swung his way as he closed the gap between them. The shanties clinging to the sides of the cliff were ablaze with light and shaking with music. This was getting ridiculous - he must approach her right away. Now…
As he panted up the steps, his eyes came level with the girl's hurrying heels. How odd, he thought, that she should be wearing rope-soled espadrilles with a smart town suit. Suddenly suspicious, he sped up, drew level with her—and halted. The girl in the mask had stopped outside the door of one of the huts. A dim light burned behind a window looking onto a tiny porch.
"Now just a minute…" Illya began, when the girl turned toward him, raised a pair of slender arms, and lifted the beaked mask from her head and shoulders.
"Man, I thought you was never going to catch up," she said with a silvery laugh. "Still, I guess it saves us walkin' all the way up here to get a drink, eh? And it is Carnaval time…"
The Russian stood rooted to the spot. Above the girl's plump cheeks, lustrous violet eyes twinkled in an eighteen-year-old face the color of mahogany.
---
He was still cursing himself for not realizing that the vendors of Carnaval masks would sell many of the same type in one evening when he got back to his hotel - footsore and still a little humiliated at the embarrassing explanation he had had to make to the girl on the heights. All in all, it had not exactly been his day: when he hadn't realized it, he had been tailed; when he had wanted to be tailed, he had lost the follower; except for the good fortune of finding O'Rourke, all his inquiries had drawn blanks; and now he had made a fool of himself!... Better to write the whole day off, have a nice refreshing bath, and get up early to catch the first available plane: to Brasilia tomorrow!
He unlocked his door, switched on the lights in his room and checked his personal "signposts" to make sure it had not been searched in his absence.
Dropping the ridiculous coolie's head on a settee, he dragged off his jacket and strode through to the bathroom to switch on the taps.
"This absurdly large perforated thing is a silencer," the girl said. She was sitting on the edge of the tub. "The gun behind it is small. It's a Berretta, and unless you shoot terribly accurately, you haven't a hope in hell of stopping a man with one. The only thing is - I'm afraid I do shoot terribly accurately."
She rose swiftly to her feet. "Now - into the other room, if you please," she said briskly. "There are one or two questions I want to ask you..."
Chapter 7
Trespassers Will Be Liquidated
ILLYA KURYAKIN slumped into an easy chair, sighed, and broke open a pack of cigarettes. "Look, I don't know who you are..." he began.
"Put that down," the girl rapped. "I've seen that one before: the first cigarette to come out of that pack is a bolt of metal, painted white. It comes out fast, because there is a powerful spring inside the pack - and it hits me right between the eyes. By the time I've recovered consciousness, you have the gun."
The agent shrugged and tossed the pack onto the bed. There were unusual glints of copper in the mass of dark hair, he saw in the bright lights of the hotel room, and the face was even more rakish and thoroughbred than he had thought
"All right," the girl was saying, "we'll have your hands lying along the arms of the chair if you please… that's it… and now perhaps you'll tell me just exactly who you are and what you're doing here."
"Surely we have the roles reversed?" Kuryakin murmured. "Those are my lines you are saying."
The girl tossed her head impatiently. "I lose my temper easily," she warned, "and a slug from a Berretta can be very painful - through the ear or a wrist, for example."
"Oh, come now," the Russian said easily, leaning forward to rise from the chair. "You know very well you wouldn't use that thing, even if it is silenced."
He dropped abruptly back into his seat. He had seen the almost imperceptible whitening of the knuckle as the girl put the first pressure on the trigger. "So-ho," he said softly. "We really would have used it, would we? Or else we know enough to bluff - knowing also that a professional couldn't afford to take a chance on it."
"All right, all right," the girl said. "So you read the sign, which told me what I wanted to know too; so let's just assume we're both professionals shall we, and go on from there?... I repeat: Who are you and what are you doing here?"
"My dear young lady, there is no secret about that: you could have found out simply by coming up to me and asking. There was no need for all the melodrama."
"I'm waiting."
"My name is Illya Kuryakin; I live in New York; and I am in Rio looking for a friend who has disappeared."
"What was his name and what was he doing here?"
"His name is Williams, I hope. He was investigating something for some friends of mine."
"Investigating what?"
"I'm sorry, but I do not think that is any of your business."
"That's just where you're wrong," the girl said. "It is just that which makes it my business. For these friends of yours on whose behalf the so-called Mr. Williams was investigating are actually friends of mine - and they have never heard of Mr. Williams!"
"Friends of yours?" the Russian echoed. "You're working for the D.A.M.E.S.? But this is ridiculous!"
"I did not say I was working for the Daughters of America Missionary Emergency Service. Your Mr. Williams affected to be doing that: he went all over, asking questions and searching around, claiming to be a lawyer briefed by the organization. This was not true; nor is there a New York lawyer named Williams with his particular description. Naturally enough, therefore, there are a number of interested parties wanting to find out what gives.
"I see. And you represent which one of them?"
"So, to begin with," the girl said, ignoring, his questions, "I ask you once more: Who sent you here? And who sent Williams?"
"The same people."
"Thank you very much. And there's no use pretending to be a member of the C.I.A., the Brazilian counter intelligence service, or any special branch of the Rio police. I have friends in many places arid I have checked them all."