Anders sighed out a long exasperated breath. His chin dropped toward his chest and he contemplated the veins in the backs of his hands. He made a few faces and glimpsed the tail ends of various rationalizations and in the end he said, “All right. How do we get our hands on Draga?”
Chapter 16
She felt cramped in the truck seat — too many hours of sitting. The night was muggy and the shirt was pasted to her; she felt unclean. She said, “What if someone has to pee?”
“You go in the bushes, ducks.”
The armory was a low pink stucco shoebox. A high chainlink fence enclosed a paved yard on which squatted two dark green tanks, their cleated treads glistening under the lights, and several trucks and Jeeps. Beyond the armory the road rolled away through open fields.
Anders, in the back seat, yawned audibly. It was the only sound any of them made until Carole shifted in her seat to ease her rump. They had run out of conversation more than an hour ago.
Harry seemed imperturbable but she’d detected signs of unease in Glenn Anders. The death of the girl had unraveled his nerves.
Along both shoulders of the dusty road cars were parked — she’d counted forty-odd. Crobey had told her to ignore the rest, they were only interested in one of them. Nobody intended to start a fight with the entire platoon.
She felt conflicting pulls toward Anders. There was an urge to comfort him; but something else held her back — a lingering distrust. He was one of them, the apparatchiks. She dealt with his kind all the time: the people who ran the studios. A movie executive was a sorry creature whose guiding principle was fear: “Let’s take another meeting. We want to keep our options open.” Things were stalled forever by their dithering. And in the end the decision usually was negative; very few heads of production had ever been fired for turning down a project. It was always safer to say no. Soon Anders might begin to remember he was an organization man. He had never altogether forgotten it: I’d be happier if we had better evidence...
Harry’s hand dropped casually upon her shoulder and she tipped her cheek against his knuckles, wondering what would become of them.
There was a plan of sorts — she wasn’t sure she had faith in it. The first step was to isolate the old tycoon and force information out of him. That was dicey, as Harry put it. But if they could pry the location of Rodriguez’s hiding place out of the old man then they would keep the old man on ice while they made their way to what Harry with a straight face had designated as the Bad Guy’s Hideout.
The weapon of Harry’s choice was gas and they’d spent nearly twenty-four hours and the major part of Carole’s cash to obtain cartons of Mace canisters, tear-gas grenades and the military handcuffs that now crowded the rear compartment of the Bronco beside Anders’ seat. Ballistic arms were there as well — the light automatic guns Harry had been disassembling in Santana’s house — but if they had to resort to those they would fail. The guns were only for defense: to cover a running retreat.
She stirred, lifted Harry’s hand off her shoulder and tried to read the luminous dial of his diver’s watch. “How much longer, for God’s sake?”
“Settle down. This is mañana country. A couple hours of lectures and then the boys probably shoot a few racks of pool — most of them haven’t got all that much to go home to.”
It was frightfully hot, a night for long cool drinks; she squirmed in her sweat and poked her head half out the open window in the search for air. Below the truck a crowd of red ants were dragging a huge dung beetle stubbornly across the earth. She had done her hair up with a few pins in an attempt to leave her neck bare and cool but it hadn’t helped. She desperately wanted a shower.
Harry had withdrawn his hand and she sat far over on her side of the seat, not so much watching the armory as thinking about Harry. It was always her tendency to expose the ludicrous side of things: Can you honestly picture yourself facing this man across the breakfast table every day for the rest of your life? If what she felt toward him was infatuation, what would happen when it wore out? God knew she was not at ease in Harry’s world. She could not bear the thought of losing him — but what was the alternative? Think about the derivation of that word “wedlock.”
Then she thought, I am putting the cart ahead of an unborn horse. But she had no pride left. She would demand that he marry her. Or at least live with her. It came to the same thing; in her tradition — inescapable — marriage was not an experiment but a contract. And now she felt like a Victorian belle — setting her cap for him.
And then what?
Abruptly she turned to face his profile. “Harry?”
“What, ducks?”
“You could be a stunt director.”
“A what?”
“In the movies. Stunts. Airplanes, special effects. You know.”
“I did that a couple of times. In Yugoslavia a few years ago. A guy I knew was making war pictures.”
“Didn’t you like it?”
“The truth. I love it. But I felt like a damn silly ass, play-acting at war.”
“You were young then.”
From the back seat Anders said with a nervous laugh, “Harry’ll never be old.”
But Harry kept his eyes on Carole, grave and gentle — she felt an outpouring of love: She touched his cheek fondly. She was thinking that in nature, no matter what the species, only one male in a hundred was any good. I’m not about to let him go. And to hell with the impossibility of it.
Harry said, “If that’s a job offer I think I’ll take it. This was going to be my last caper anyhow, wasn’t it?”
She breathed, “Oh, Harry!” — like an ingenue; and threw herself into his arms.
“Heads up,” Glenn Anders said, very mild. “Here they come.”
Entangled with Harry she twisted her head to bring the armory into her field of vision. Men emerged in clusters, all of them in fatigues. A good deal of talk; some calling back and forth, good nights and hasta luegos. She straightened in the seat in abrupt alarm. “How do we know which one he is?”
“He’ll be wearing a silver bar,” Harry said. “Scrunch down a little.”
She slid down in the seat until she could barely see over the rim of the windowsill. Anders hissed, “I don’t see him!”
“Give him time.”
The soldiers were separating, going to their cars. Right in front of the Bronco the battered ruin of a pickup truck started up, flicked on its headlights and gnashed away down the two-lane. By ones and twos the Guardsmen climbed into vehicles and the parking shoulders gradually emptied, streams of red tail-lights retreating in both directions. No one paid any attention to the Bronco. After five minutes nothing was left on the road shoulder except a glossy Trans Am with discreet racing stripes, parked directly opposite the entrance to the armory.
Anders said, “I guess he didn’t come to the meeting then.” Was it relief in his voice?
“Wait it out,” Harry said.
“That’s the only car left. It must belong to the night guard.”
“No. Leave a car alone on this road overnight and you’d come out in the morning and find you didn’t have any tires or battery. The night guard’s car must be parked inside the compound.”
“That’s a point.”
The scheme had been to follow the car and, given the opportunity, run it off the road and trap the driver. Apparently that no longer was going to be necessary — if in fact the Trans Am didn’t belong to a watchman.
The armory door opened. Harry tensed beside her and she heard a quiet click behind her — Anders getting out a pair of handcuffs.