A waitress whose flesh cascaded in increasing convexities from chin to thigh wobbled over and handed Illya a grubby piece of paper with figures scrawled on it. Behind it was another. On this was written, in English: Thirty-one miles ENE on the road to Brasilia is a fork with a church between the roads. Be there for midday lunch. It was signed Waverly.
"Waverly!" the Russian cried. "But that's ridiculous! How could he possibly be there?... How could he possibly know that we're here?"
"Who is Waverly?" Coralie asked.
"The head of my department at the Command."
"Do you think it's some kind of trap?"
"Oh, no. If it were a fake message, it would be bound to be too clever - you know, too good, too cautious and so on. The fact that it's sent openly in English, in clear, with that laconic phrasing and superb unconcern for security - that's the genuine Waverly, all right. No, what astonished me isn't to hear from him, but to hear he's there!"
"But perhaps he isn't," the girl objected. "The message tells us to be there for lunch. It doesn't say he'll be there too."
Illya looked at the paper again. "So it doesn't," he said. "Let's see… Here! Senhora! Who gave you this paper? Where did you get it?"
But the slatternly waitress, suddenly unable to understand their Portuguese, merely shrugged her vast shoulders, spread her pudgy fingers and vanished into the interior of the house muttering something or other about a boy on a bicycle.
"Never mind," Kuryakin said. "We have the perfect way of finding out." He gestured to the Volkswagen parked across the square. "By the time we've got out of here and found a stream to clean up in, there there'll be just about enough time left to make it...."
---
It was in fact nine minutes after twelve when Illya checked the figures showing on the car's odometer and said, "Here's the thirty-first mile coming up now. But I can see ahead for two or three wiles and there's no sign of a fork."
"Yes," Coralie cried, "the side road we just passed coming in... Stop!... Look, it would be a fork if you were coming the other way, wouldn't it? And there's the church between the two roads, see!"
Illya braked and looked in the rear-view mirror. "Yes, you're right, of course," he said, turning the car on a piece of rough ground. "Thinking of the place as you come from Brasilia, it would never strike you that the fork wasn't one from the other direction!... Why, I believe it's the same junction that boy at the car rental company gave me for -"
"It is, it is," the girl interrupted. "He told me too. The signs tell you to take the right-hand road for Getuliana, but the boy said to take the left-hand one through San Felipe. Do you suppose the coffee shop there is run by his brother or something?"
"There are some misplaced hormones in the family if it is," Illya said. "No, I don't mean the enormous lady, you idiot - Oh! What's that just to the right of the church?"
Beyond the derelict church separating the roads was a dense thicket of tall trees. A short way down the right hand fork something white and metallic glittered in a shaft of sunlight piercing the shadows.
Kuryakin drove slowly down. A huge Cadillac convertible, blinding white from stem to stern, was parked beside the road.
He coasted fifty yards past the empty car and pulled off the road. "Most of my armory went up with the other VW," he said quietly. "But I still have this Walther PPK. It's a big gun, too clumsy for whipping in and out of waistbands and pockets... Do you still have your Beretta?"
The girl nodded.
"Good. You take the Walther and stay in the car to give me covering fire if necessary, and give me the Beretta to take with me, okay?... I'm sure it's all right, but it's better to be certain."
Coralie Simone dropped her chin to the back of the seat and watched him tread warily away among the trees, the big Walther with its brown cross-hatched butt held firmly in her small hand. The agent was grasping the Italian automatic inside the patch pocket of his lightweight jacket.
She watched him circle the Cadillac, glance at the registration number, peer inside the car, and scrutinize the trees surrounding it. Apart from the disused chapel, there wasn't another building in sight. A flock of green parakeets dipped and swooped from one side of the road to the other, and another bird, off in the thicket to her right, reiterated a harsh cry that she couldn't identify. There was a high, thin humming from the countless insects winging beneath the great leaves far above her head. Abruptly she saw Kuryakin stiffen. She brought up the gun and rested it on the seat back as he stared across the road.
The outlines of his sparse body sprang into diamond-hard relief as he stepped from the shadow to the brilliant sunlight barring the dusty surface.
"Sure 'tis over here, we are at-all, Mr. Kuryakin," the voice called from the far side of the highway. "Them blasted insects are a wee bit less attentive here for some reason - besides which we can use the extra few seconds to scrutinize the callers, eh?"
"Tufik!... I mean O'Rourke," Illya cried. "What the devil are you doing here, you old rascal?"
His face broke into a smile, he gestured the girl to join them, and he ran across the road. Behind a screen of flowering shrubs, the huge Irishman sat in his wheel chair at a table which had been erected in a space beneath the frees. On the white cloth covering it were plates, cutlery, glasses and plastic containers filled with food. Behind, the tal1 moustached man called Raoul busied himself with a silver bucket, bottles and a portable icebox laid out on the top of a suitcase. Four folding chairs were pulled up to the table.
"As to what we're doin' here," O'Rourke said, "well, you got the invitation, did you not? Sure, of course you did, for here you are! Well then - we're entertaining some friends to luncheon, that's what."
"Yes, but... It was surprising enough to hear from Waverly, but to find you here..." Illya shook his head, "Oh, I'm sorry - of course you don't know each other," he added as the girl pushed through the bushes to join them. "Manuel O'Rourke – Miss Simone. And this is a colleague of Manuel's, Coralie, whom I know only as Raoul."
"Ortiz," the moustached man smiled as he bowed and shook hands. "It is agreeable to see that now you are together and not one in pursuit of the other, eh?"
"I remember you, of course," Coralie exclaimed, "In Rio! You're the man who was following Mr. Kuryakin too, aren't you?"
"I am desolated to contradict a lady," Raoul said. "But I was actually following you."
"Come on then, let's start; let us begin," O'Rourke said. "We cannot offer you too exotic a meal, for this is peasant country, not like the coast. But there is mungunza, acaraje, a cucumber salad, a cold fish from the Pireneos not too unlike salmon, and vatapá - a Bahia dish made from manihot flour cooked with dende oil and pimentos, with slices of fish in between. Also there is a local white wine which is drinkable so long as you chill it enough to kill the flavor."
"So what about Waverly, then?" Illya asked as they sat down a few minutes later and prepared to eat.
"Waverly?"
The Russian gestured to the vacant fourth chair. "Aren't we going to wait for him?" he asked.
O'Rourke chuckled throatily. "The vatapá would be congealed to hell if we did," he said. "That not Waverly's chair. That's for Rafael - he's away in the forest finding some local leaf for the salad. It's a deal of a job, you know, for 'tis not like the old country, where it's all green grasses and moss and I don't know what-all. You have to go searchin' for your greenstuff in this dried-up hole!"