“A short time later,” went on the bandit chief, “a CIA man got in touch with me. He posed as a tourist who had gotten lost. He had credentials which seemed genuine. I accepted him as such. We had much talk together.”
Nick Carter nodded in understanding. The picture was clearing just a bit. The CIA had found a use for El Tigre, so they had used political weight and influence to call off the police. But why?
“There was talk of a Serpent Party,” said El Tigre. “Of which I knew little. It had just started. But the CIA man was very concerned — he said that the Serpent Party was backed by the Red Chinese and that in time they would try to take over power in Mexico. I am afraid I laughed at him, Señor Carter, but he was very serious. He wished to use me, and my men, as a nucleus, a cadre, to fight any revolution which the Serpent Party might start. I was to recruit as many men as possible for that purpose. In the meantime I was not to operate as a bandido, but remain quietly in hiding. Does any of this make sense to you, amigo?”
Nick admitted that it did. He took back some, if not all, of the nasty things he had been thinking about the CIA. Give them credit — they planned a long time ahead. If they thought there was danger of a Chinese-inspired revolution in Mexico — a danger always present in that politically volatile country (look at the record) — then they would at least have a force ready to fight back, a banner to which the counter-revolutionary forces could rally. El Tigre would not be the first bandit to fight for Mexico’s freedom.
“I was promised many supplies and much money,” said El Tigre. “Meantime I was to sit tight, refrain from robbing the rich and giving to the poor, and recruit men. All of which I did, Señor. But nothing came of it. I have heard nothing from the CIA since. Another agent was to come, to live with me and my men, but he never came. The supplies and the money never came. So you will understand, perhaps, why I am disappointed that you are not of the CIA?” He took a huge drink from the bottle of mescal.
Nick puffed on the maduro cigar. What a mess! Still he must find a way through this murky labyrinth to accomplish his own mission.
“There has been a large snafu somewhere,” Nick said. “Perhaps the CIA is not really to blame. Their agent may have been killed before he could contact you, and you—”
“There was a man killed,” said El Tigre. “Near the very place where my men found you. His clothes were burned and his body sunk in the pond.”
Nick stared at the man. “You saw that?”
El Tigre shrugged. “Not I. One of my men. We keep a sharp lookout and do not miss much. The man was killed by an American, one who goes by the name of Maxwell Harper. Sometimes he stays at the castle with La Perra. But I do not think he is sleeping with her. I have it that they are not simpatico. If they were lovers I do not think The Bitch would pick up bums and tramps, at times hitchhikers, and take them home with her. We have watched her do so.”
Nick ignored this further insight into Gerda von Rothe’s character. Her rather strange sexual mores could wait.
“Was the American, this Harper, was he alone when he killed the man?”
“No. There was another, one who passes as a mestizo, with him. He is really a Chinese. But he did not kill the man. The gringo did that with a Tommy gun. Then, as I say, they put him in the pond and burned his clothes. When they had gone my men fished the body out of the water and examined it. They brought me the news and I also examined the body. Then we put it back in the pond. It did not seem to be of our business.” El Tigre took another long black stogie from the box and lit it.
So much for Siegfried, or whatever his real name had been, whom The Bitch had been expecting. Harper and the Chinese had intercepted and dealt with him in a final sort of way. And Gerda von Rothe, desperate for help, had offered Jamie McPherson the job that the ex-Nazi could not do because he had been suddenly taken dead.
El Tigre took a drink and gave the bottle to Nick. “Drink!” He added, “I found the SS tattoo on the dead man very interesting. There are a great many Nazis hiding in South America, I hear. But the CIA man was only interested in the Red Chinese. He said nothing of Germans.”
“I don’t think he could have known anything about the Nazis,” Nick said. He was trying to keep the last drink of mescal down. His stomach was aflame. After fighting down nausea, he asked, “Did the CIA man say anything about the castle, about El Mirador? Were you asked to keep an eye on the woman?”
El Tigre shook his mane of black hair. “Nothing. Except that we were to keep away from it. He did not appear concerned with El Mirador. I thought it was because The Bitch is so rich, and so important in the States. Do you really think she is seventy years old, Señor Carter? You have seen her closer than I have, you have spoken with her. What do you think?”
The non sequitur interrupted Nick’s train of thought. He stared through the hanging cigar smoke at the bandit. Then, “I cannot really say. Certainly she does not look it, or act it. She looks no more than thirty-five, forty at the most. She is very beautiful in a cold, rather cruel sort of way. Yet all the stories about her, the publicity over the years, they all claim that she is really seventy and has been kept young by her creams and lotions — and her way of life. I am a skeptic and I find it hard to believe. Yet there she is. But I do not see what it has to do with the matter at hand.”
His resolve had firmed in the last few minutes. The CIA was wrong about El Mirador and The Bitch. They had to be! And he was going to prove it. He was going for broke. If he was wrong he would only be hanged, drawn and quartered.
“It has very much to do with the matter at hand,” said El Tigre. He spat on the floor and grinned at Nick. “Provided, of course, that we agree on the matter at hand.”
Nick glanced at his watch again. It was ten. “I want to get into that castle,” he said. “And take it apart.”
El Tigre nodded. “So do I. I will be even more specific — I wish to steal everything in the castle that is worth stealing.
I will no longer honor my word to the CIA. My patience is at an end. After the raid I will break up my band and we will scatter. I shall perhaps go to South America — there is not really much future in the bandit business anyway. But first — ah, first — I must rape The Bitch. I have promised myself that.”
Nick was aware of the mescal working in him. The room was moving slowly around him and he could hear the faint music of a carousel in the distance. With a great effort he kept his words from slurring.
“I must confess,” he said carefully, “that I find that a strange ambition. Why rape? If what you say is true, about the way she picks up men, raping The Bitch should not be necessary.”
“Ah,” cried El Tigre. “Ah, but it would not be the same! There would not be the same fierce pleasure. I am a violent man, Señor Carter. I admit it. All of us have our little perversions, and one of mine is that I cannot enjoy a woman who gives herself freely.”
It was the mescal that laughed. Nick said, “Then perhaps you will be disappointed, amigo. She will probably welcome you.”