He answered straight away because he'd expected the question and had already got a directive on it.
'That's immaterial. But if you can get the girl out, everyone would appreciate it,'
Chapter Thirteen: SHADIA
'The damned creature was twenty feet long, can you imagine?'
Van de Jong broke some bread.
'Who came out of it?' I asked him.
He'd come to join me for dinner at my table and it suited my book: he was a compulsive talker so I didn't have to listen, and he provided good cover. The solitary image is always suspect They both came out of it, of course! He does it for the tourists, when there are any. Listen to me — the anaconda does not crush its victim. It merely throttles it. So all this fellow does is to keep the coils away from his throat. In any case, man is not its habitual prey, so it is just confused when a man comes to wrestle with it, you see.' He gave a laugh, showing a gold tooth. 'But it is fun to watch. You should see it I will take you tomorrow.'
The Kobra cell was across the room: the five men and the woman they called Shadia. The Burdick girl was sitting in the corner with someone on each side of her. They were eating, but seemed more to be waiting.
The Indian boy came to our table again.
'Voce precisa alguma coisa?'
'Nada. Tudo esta bem.'
We were eating paiche with farinha and de Jong was on his third rum punch: he had so far made three jokes about the ulcer I was using as an excuse for not drinking.
The Burdick girl looked pale in the light of the oil lamps. She didn't talk very often but sometimes I could make out a few of the words. The woman was asking her about life in an American college and the answers were token and desultory:
'It's okay, I guess,' and 'you can get into a whole lot of subjects,' mat kind of thing. The Kobra policy was consistent: it was public knowledge mat Pat Burdick was on an expedition in Brazil with selected companions, and she could even be seen there if anyone were interested. The conversation I had so far overheard was about the Amazon, insects, and American college life: all subjects appropriate to the cover. The party wasn't keeping to its quarters upstairs, but was eating openly in public, and I assumed that if anyone went over to the table in the corner and said excuse me but aren't you Pat Burdick she would say yes, I am.
I didn't intend to do that.
'It is different with those damned piranhas, my friend. Have you seen them at work?'
I said I hadn't.
It had taken me a long time to analyse the data inherent in the directive Ferris had given me. London doesn't tell you more than you need to know for your health but it can't stop you forming your own conclusions.
They are not so big,' said de Jong, 'but when they are in a feeding frenzy they can pick a hundred-pound animal down to the bones, can you imagine?' He speared his fish steak with his fork. 'Of course, I suppose we avenge ourselves!' His laughter was attracting some attention among the group of animal trappers near the bar, and someone laughed in response. He seemed to like this, and raised his glass of rum.
The big ceiling fans stirred the air above our heads, and sent the fly-papers twisting. The nights were cooler here: the thermometer by the desk was down to 97° and they'd thrown open the double doors to let the air in through the mosquito screens.
Conclusion 1: Since Ferris had instructed me to knock out the Kobra cell, termination being optional, it was obvious that any physical threat to the Secretary of Defence could be dealt with. Pat Burdick must have been told mat if she tried to escape or call the police her father would be killed and in most hostage situations the captor means what he says. But if I could knock out Kobra it would amount to outside intervention even though the girl hadn't asked for it, and the Bureau must be covering the Defence Secretary in some way.
Conclusion 2: This meant that I could in fact get a message to the girl, to the effect that if she could escape, her father would be safe. But there was a risk and London hadn't told me to do that. Ignore.
Conclusion 3: The Defence Secretary was in constant touch with London and would know that London had someone penetrating the Kobra operation and had obviously asked for his daughter's life to be spared if that were possible. But I believed that even if the Defence Secretary were not involved, the Bureau might have set up the Kobra mission in any case.
Corollary to Conclusion 3: Regardless of the Burdick involvement, London wanted Kobra and they wanted Kobra with that brand of calculated desperation that would keep a human computer like Egerton at the signals console in Whitehall till he dropped dead of fatigue, the brand of desperation that had knocked out one agent after another in Milan and Geneva and Cambodia and New York in order to leave one man alive in the end-phase to do the job.
'That is why my mail order business is successful, you see.' De Jong slit open a papaya with his knife. 'I give them the real thing, and they know it. The jewellery is crude but it is genuine. Look at this!'
He began throwing small objects on to the woven cloth.
I heard the telephone at the desk begin ringing.
'Dyed bones and teeth, fish scales, caiman scales, seed pods, stones. Aren't they attractive? Wouldn't you be tempted to buy this kind of thing if you saw examples in your own mail box?'
Said I would.
I had looked across at the woman several times during the past half an hour and she had twice found my eyes on her. She was young and sexually aware and would expect the distant attention of any man in the room and I was duly giving her mine. The second time she didn't look away and I'd finally turned my head to hear what de Jong was saying.
'I suppose you know what this is? It's a blowgun dart. And I suppose you know what they put on the tip when they mean to kill. Every schoolboy knows.' He pushed the pointed sliver of bone across the cloth towards me.
The telephone had stopped ringing.
'Curare,' said de Jong. 'Of course when I sell these things through the mail there is nothing on their tips — I need live clients, not dead ones!' He laughed loudly and got an echo from the group of steadily-drinking trappers near the bar.
One of the boys was on his way across to the table in the corner.
'You know something? The CIA is in trouble right now for stocking these gadgets, can you imagine? But they use sodium cyanide. You know what they call the gun? A "nondiscernible microbionoculator". Where is progress, my friend?' He raised his glass of rum.
Zade and Kuznetski were leaving the corner table and taking Pat Burdick with mem to the lobby, the boy leading the way. It looked pre-arranged. The three others remained at the table with Shadia. I would have given a lot to follow them out after thirty seconds' interval but that would be fatal.
There was a brief exchange of voices in the lobby and then I beard footsteps on the stairs, hurrying. They were taking the call in one of their rooms. My watch read 21:17 but that didn't mean the call hadn't been arranged to be made precisely on the hour: in a remote village on the Amazon a delay of seventeen minutes would be routine.
In Pat Burdick's frightened eyes there had been the light of hope as she had passed our table. She might not know the terms of the deal but in any case they wouldn't mean anything to her because she was young and she didn't want to die and she wouldn't care if these people were asking an entire squadron of nuclear bombers in exchange for her life. But even if she had enough pride to tell her father he must expend her if that was the only way, she wouldn't be allowed to say it. Zade would have rehearsed her and he'd be there beside her.
Daddy, you must do whatever they tell you.