Coralie Simone blushed. "I'm sorry about that," she said, "but I wanted to make sure you didn't follow me here."
"You could have saved yourself the trouble, as you see. Why not?"
"Because I have an investigation to carry out and don't like snoopers. You wouldn't say who you were."
"So have I and neither would you. But before we start quarreling again let us deal with this man - otherwise both our investigations will fail." He rose to his feet, made his way to the tree with the overhanging brand and worked his way along it until he could drop safely to the ground on the far side of the fence.
"The sleep dart will take care of this specimen for an hour," he said as he came up to the girl and the recumbent guard. "But I need him to be out of the way for at least two - so that he cannot possibly raise an alarm until I'm well away. If only I knew how often he is supposed -"
"He patrols a five hundred yard sector of the fence," the girl said crisply. "I've been checking. He doesn't have to make contact - or not necessarily - with the men on either side. There is no overlapping. And he isn't due for relief for another three hours."
"So he's just possibly not going to be missed?"
"Exactly. We are more than a hundred and fifty yards from the nearest adjoining sector."
The agent was rolling the unconscious guard over onto his face. "Okay," he said. "So if we take off his belt… so… and strap his arms to his sides… like this... and lash his wrists together with his tie… we should be able to prolong his period of forced inactivity beyond the hour given to us by the dart. Now what about his knees, his ankles, and some sort of gag?"
"You could use this," the girl said doubtfully. "It's of no further use to me now." She was holding up the two torn halves of her jacket.
Kuryakin took the green tatters from her. He ripped a back panel into three sections, binding the guard's ankles with one, his knees with another, and using the third to tie into place a wadded handkerchief which he rammed into the man's open mouth. "That should keep him out of the way until they start to look for him when he doesn't report at the end of his shift," he murmured as they dragged the bound and gagged man into the shelter of a thorn bush. "Now what about you, young. Aha!"
"What is it, Sherlock Holmes?"
The agent was looking at the remaining half of the D.A.M.E.S. jacket which he held in his hands. Below the torn collar a name tape, shiny with continued use, slightly soiled from contact with other clothes, was neatly sewn. On the pale ribbon, red letters spelled out C. SIMONE.
"Unless your principals specialize in detail work more perfect than any used by the world's intelligence services," Illya said slowly, "this is an old jacket that's been worn a lot. It really is your own garment - not a cover disguise. You really do work for the D.A.M.E.S."
"Of course I do," the girl said impatiently. "I work for the Special Investigation section. Lots of our girls come from very particular families and we have to take special care about conditions and so on when we send teams abroad. We're always having to make inquiries about one thing or another - and of course when we find people pretending to be D.A.M.E.S. when they're not, then naturally the Committee wants to find out why."
"But why didn't you say so? It would have saved so much -"
"How like a man! Why should I tell you? Who are you, anyway?"
"I work for the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. The man who is missing is a colleague of mine from the same Section."
"So you're from U.N.C.L.E.! Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I didn't…" Illya sighed in exasperation. "Because nobody told me you would have a representative down here. I imagine they didn't know."
"No, they wouldn't," Coralie Simone said. "We didn't tell you."
"Why on Earth not?"
"Mrs. Stretford - the Commandant - said that since your Mr. Waverly couldn't be bothered to be cooperative, she didn't see why she should."
"So you wasted all that time checking on me, and I - Never mind! Since we are both trying to find out what's going on here, suppose we join forces for the time being, okay?" Illya smiled his rare and charming smile.
The girl hesitated. Then the smooth skin around her eyes crinkled delightfully, the wide mouth stretched in the lean face. There was a flash of teeth. "Agreed," she cried with a laugh. "It's a deal - for the time being!"
"Splendid. What now, then? I'm trying to find out what goes on in the grounds of that estancia back there."
"So am I. All the trucks seem to go there and not along the made-up road leading to the power station. I want to have a closer look. Do you think... if we kept on this side of the fence and circled the place from above..."
Kuryakin was shaking his head. "Not a chance," he said. Even if we could make it past the guards and the dogs, there's not a shadow of cover. Look!" His gesture encompassed the sweep of bare hillside above the trees masking the estancia, the slant of rocky slope beyond it, and the barren wall of cliff rising behind that. "Do you have a change of clothing in the car?"
"Yes," Coralie said. "Why?'
"Because I'm going to make a frontal foray. As long as you are not dressed like one of their spurious D.A.M.E.S, you can be my assistant when I ask for information about the Candomblé."
'Candomblé. I keep hearing that word. I've spoken to a lot of the local Negroes, and some Indians too. All of them seem afraid to talk about the dam - even if they've been forced to leave their homes by the scheme - because of the Candomblé. What is it, a secret society?"
"Not exactly. More like a religion. There are a number of different cults here in Brazil - all of them a mixture of African and Indian worship with Christianity and Spiritualism. The two most affecting simple Negro and Indian people are Candomblé and Umbanda. In both cases, their gods are a mixture of Christian and pagan ones; both believe that you can communicate with those gods or their representatives by means of mediums. But the initiates of Candomblé - so it is believed - can be visited by, or get in touch with, their gods personally, whereas the umbandistas' mediums have to have the gods' wishes interpreted through a guide, rather in the manner of a western séance."
"How fascinating," the girl said. "But why the difference?"
"I don't know too much about it," Kuryakin replied. "But the main reasons go back to the days of slavery. The most intelligent African slaves brought over to Brazil were the Yoruba. They had the most complex religions and gods - and the mixture of these with Catholicism produced Candomblé... the cult with the strongest African influence, radiating outwards from Bahia. The less developed Bantu from Angola, centered more on Rio, were that much more swayed by the great Spiritualist movement which swept Brazil in the last century, and their cult is the one called Umbanda today."
"But why should a religious cult bar local people from -"
"We'll ask," Illya said, interrupting, "when we get there."
---
But the tall, white haired Negro with the Harvard accent and the lined face who met them in the Candomblé tenda - a wooden building like a mission hut which stood among trees to one side of the estancia - was uncooperative. They had not been challenged at the gate and they had followed the drive, which skirted the building and then sloped downhill towards a thicket, until a signpost had directed them towards the hut. A Negro woman in a white robe had left them in a waiting room while she'd gone to call Pai Hernando.