"Diet, hell," she said, "if you'll excuse it, darling. Do you know how many operations they had to make after you were so ungentlemanly as to put a bullet into me, and how many operations to erase the signs of those operations? I was a shadow, a skeleton, when they finished carving me up and putting me back together. And then it seemed like a good idea to try to keep my new svelte figure. Some people do not have as sharp eyes as others. Obviously. I have been here for several days. If anyone among your people had recognized this sylph-like creature as Vadya, you would not have been sent here, would you? They would have sent someone I did not know, instead."
"You knew I was coming?"
"Of course not. We did not know who was coming; but we knew someone else probably would be, besides those already here. It is not a job for a college boy with a degree in accounting or foreign relations, even if he can draw his pistol in a fraction of a second and make magnificent scores on the targets that look like men but are really paper. Nor is it a job for an unclaimed maiden with beautiful ideals and strange yearnings." Vadya smiled. "It is a job for crude, realistic people like you and me, darling. Of course, now that you are here, I will probably have to kill you, but I am glad to see you nevertheless. Let us get out of these soapsuds and have a drink."
3
SOME PEOPLE HAVE A thing about fraternizing with the enemy. They seem to feel that disloyalty is something you can catch across a table, like the common cold. They act as if the only safe way to remain faithful to duty and country is to quarantine yourself with none but certified patriots in a place where no sinister bacteria of subversion can possibly reach you from the infected creeps on the other side.
Personally, I have a little more faith in my loyalty than this, and if the enemy wants to fraternize, I'm happy to be fraternized with. Why work like hell to ferret out someone's intentions by devious methods, when you can maybe get him, or her, to tell you all about them over a cold rum Coffins?
As I settled down in a wooden chair under one of the numerous brown-thatched cabanas that sprouted like mushrooms from the sand in front of the hotel, sharing beach space with some green palms and a rustic life-guard tower, I reminded myself that Vadya undoubtedly had reasons of her own for renewing our old acquaintance. She hadn't picked the exact moment of my arrival to go gamboling in the surf for nothing. Well, that was all right. We'd played this game before, and while the score had been very close upon occasion, I was a little ahead on points. At least I'd never had to have any of her bullets dug out of me.
I sat back and sipped my drink and listened to the surf, therefore, waiting for her to break the silence first and set the conversational mood however she pleased. Far up the beach some kids were popping firecrackers. It's about the only thing I really have against the Mexicans. They don't wait for the local equivalent of the Fourth of July; they'll set the damn things off any time of the year, day or night-and in our business we tend to be kind of allergic to sudden loud noises.
Aside from the distant explosions, everything was very peaceful. A little spidery sand crab of some kind popped out of a hole not six feet away; a shore bird, perhaps a sandpiper, tripped along down where the sand was wet, daintily avoiding the waves that reached out for him. There were some islands off the point on which the hotel stood. Across the blue bay to the left was the city of Mazatlбn, spread out along the shore.
It looked like a sizeable community. I remembered that Mac had credited it with a population of seventy-five thousand. Clouds hung around the horizon as a reminder that this was the tail end of the rainy season down here, but the rest of the sky was blue and the sun was bright.
Vadya stirred and reached out to pat my hand lightly, and the sand crab, if that's what it was, scuttled back into its miniature den.
"Darling," Vadya said, "it is nice to see you again, even if you did almost kill me."
I said, "That'll teach you. When you slip a guy a Mickey, don't stand around waiting to see him fall on his face. He might just manage to get out a gun and shoot you first."
"I guess I was fatuous to expect an apology." Her voice was a trifle sharp. "Or even an expression of-regret."
I grinned. "Cut it out. Under similar circumstances, you'd have done exactly the same thing to me, if I'd been dumb enough to let you. You might even have shot straighter than I did." This wasn't getting us anywhere, and I asked, "Who's handling the main job for you here, or is it a big secret?"
It was a crude, head-on approach, and she stalled automatically: "Why, I am handling the job. The whole job. Why should I need anybody else?"
I said, "Because it's not your type of job and you know it. You're just running interference, I figure. You're here to make with the sex, and the guns if necessary; to take me out of play at the proper time – me, or whoever was sent. For the heavy work, the primary objective, they'd have somebody else lined up, somebody with more muscle and less finesse. Who is it?"
"Do you really expect me to tell you?"
"Sure," I said. "Why be cagey about something I'm bound to find out pretty soon, anyway?"
Vadya shrugged. "All right. If you must know, Harsek is coming. I was handy, vacationing in Acapulco. I was just rushed up here to keep track of the subject until Harsek arrives."
I whistled softly. "Harsek, eh? The Mad Czech?"
"He is not so mad. He is just very, very tough. Tougher than you are, darling."
"Nobody's tougher than me," I said, grinning. "Except perhaps you. Certainly not a fat bully-boy with a shaved head who's made his reputation scaring poor little Turks and Arabs with his silly Luger. A Luger, for Christ's sake! A story-book pistol with a trigger pull that works around fifteen corners before it gets to where the gun goes off; a muzzle-light cannon that – shakes like a leaf in the breeze. I never knew a Luger-boy yet who wasn't strictly for show."
Vadya laughed. "You are just talking to make yourself brave."
"Who needs courage against Harsek?" I asked flamboyantly. "All I'll need is a fly-swatter. There'll be nothing left but a spot of grease. When is he coming?"
"I have told you all I'm going to," she said, smiling. "And you have given me nothing in return but boasts and ballistics."
"Harsek," I said thoughtfully. "I thought he functioned strictly in the Near East. They must want whatever we've got-or whoever we've got-pretty badly to pry Harsek loose from his favorite stamping grounds and send him all the way over here. How much manpower does he plan to use?"
"Really, darling! You want a great deal of information in exchange for none at all."
"Exchange?" I said. "Why, I thought we were just having a pleasant chat. Two old Mends-well, enemies – meeting again after so many months. You make it sound like bargaining day at the local mercado. What do you want to know?" She didn't answer at once. I watched a white seabird commit apparent suicide out there, hurling itself deliberately into the waves. A moment later it was airborne again, presumably with something in its beak or claws, but that was a detail I couldn't make out at the distance. Of course, it could have missed its target. This happens, even among birds. I said, casually, "It's a screwball deal, isn't it?"
"What is?" Vadya's voice had a cautious sound.
"A bunch of grown people getting all stirred up about some kook's psychedelic visions." Regardless of my own beliefs, I had a hunch that a skeptical attitude would be more profitable here. I asked, "What's Spanish for flying saucer, anyway?"
She glanced at me warily. "Plato volante, I believe," she said. "Or disco volante. Why?"
I grinned at her. "All right, play it close to the chest if you like. But I must say I'm starting to wonder about those guys in Washington. I've had a lot of weirdies sprung on me in the way of assignments, but this is the first time they've put me to chasing imaginary spacecraft, or even the screwball who imagined them."