He faded into the haze, and took a table where he could watch the door.
It was almost an hour later when Alexei Kropotkin stumbled through the crowd towards the exit. Two other men were reeling along with him, a total of six legs seeming scarcely enough to support and balance them all. Illya felt a twinge of frustration. Kropotkin backed up by two shipmates would be even less likely to feel coöperative, even if he was still sober enough to talk straight—which seemed doubtful.
Then Illya wondered carefully. Kropotkin had been rather pointedly alone before, and he didn't look like the type to become suddenly sociable. And he had been nursing a solitary beer. All things considered...
Illya stood up with studied unsteadiness, dropped some coins on the table and wandered towards the door.
Outside, fog was coming up from the harbor, and the air was warm and sticky. Illya hurried into direction the three men had turned, trotting on silent rubber-soled feet. Ahead he could hear the clatter of incautious footsteps on the pavement.
It was late, and the streets were almost deserted. Here and there couples hurried to their various destinations, and occasional solitary figures reeled from doorway to doorway or strode purposefully on unguessable errands. But somewhere ahead, seen dimly through the floating veils of white, two men supporting a third hurried more than drunks would have been expected to. And Illya came behind them, but faster.
Then the street was empty, and the trio stopped. Illya faded into a shadow just as one of them turned around for a check of the vicinity. A light from somewhere caught an unexpected glitter in the other's hand. Illya propelled himself from hiding, feet pounding across the twenty-odd feet that separated him from the group.
His sudden appearance caught the two men by surprise, and they dropped their burden. One flashing hand struck the wrist of the knife-wielder, and the blade spun away into the dark. The other was reaching for his own weapon, but a soft shoe caught him in the pit of the stomach and he did a passable imitation of the knife.
The first man fell back a few steps, tugging at his pocket. Illya stepped forward and took his wrist in a bone-aching grip. "Don't you know it's dangerous to play with knives?" he inquired politely. "Sometimes they slip, and you get cut yourself."
He twisted at the wrist he held, pulling it out of the pocket, and another knife clattered to the stones. An application of pressure and a foot behind the other's ankles brought him to his knees with a gasp. "Quem mandou você?" he asked. "Who sent you?"
Shifting his grip to his left hand, he fumbled briefly for the dropped knife. He brought it up slowly, level with the other's eyes. "Somebody paid you to get this particular sailor," he said softly. "Who was it?"
His subject's mouth remained stubbornly closed, but his eyes were very wide and focused on the point of the knife as it moved slowly back and forth like the swaying head of a coiled cobra.
"Would you have trouble breathing with your nose split?" asked Illya gently. "Or I could put your eyes out—very slowly. But I wouldn't do that until last." He touched the tip of the blade very lightly to the man's cheek and began to press. "It will be harder to talk when both your cheeks have been opened."
"No—no! I don't know who he was. A man with dark skin—like an Indio he was. But a strange accent. He paid us good money, and gave us a picture of the man, and his name—a funny name. He just said to take him out and kill him, and make it look like an ordinary street killing. There are many of them."
Illya considered this. "Where did he find you?"
"We met in Tiradentes Square. He told some people he needed a job done, and we were the cheapest who applied. It was all cash in advance."
"And you went ahead with the job after having been paid?"
"But of course, senhor," said the man, with a trace of injured pride in his voice. "Raul and I are honest men."
Slowly Illya let the knife down. The story was simple enough to be true, and nothing could be done about it. Tiradentes Square was the most likely spot in Brazil to find bargain-priced murderers, and every agent in the western hemisphere knew it. These scum probably deserved to die the same kind of death they had intended for Kropotkin, but in their world it would come for them soon enough, and unnecessary death was neither his specialty nor part of his assignment. He released the man's wrists and stepped back.
"All right. You've earned your money. Now get out of here and take your brother with you. He'll feel better in a couple of days."
The man got slowly to his feet, and spoke hesitantly. "Uh, senhor...My knife?"
"What?"
"You have my knife."
Illya looked at him, wondering if he understood the implication. "That's right."
"Uh, I would like to have it back. It cost much money. It is a good knife." He gathered a little courage, and held out a hand. "Senhor, my wife would be very angry if I came home without it. She would think I sold it for wine. And I need it—to earn my living with."
Illya stared at the unsuccessful assassin, and shook his head slowly. "You'd better get started before I give you back your knife point first. I don't like you."
"But senhor—you don't know my wife..."
Illya took a menacing step towards him, and he fell back a pace. "Can you leave it in the alley after we go? I could come back for it later."
"Go!" shouted Illya angrily, as he felt the beginnings of sympathy rising for this amazingly inept little man, and unwilling to show him any more mercy that absolutely necessary.
Raul was still moving, down on the pavement some distance away, clutching spasmodically and gasping painfully. The knife-owner helped him to his feet and supported him as they started away. After a few steps he turned once more to say, "You could just toss it back in the alley..."
Illya cocked his arm to a throwing position, and the two scuttled away into the darkness.
Bright Brazilian sunlight poured golden across the sofa in the suite at the Leme Palace Hotel, where Illya had brought Alexei Kropotkin the night before. The sailor, with administrations of coffee and thiamine pills, had recovered nicely from the aftereffects of the chloral hydrate he had ingested along with his last beer.
His two would-be killers had also been impatient to get the job over with, and had taken him along while he was still conscious, but unable to control his movements.
He nodded in agreement with Illya's comment on his luck. "With two balvani like that, they could as easily have given me too much rather than too little. And then they wouldn't have needed the knives."
"Did you understand what they were saying?"
"I could hear them, but I don't know the language. This Portuguese is beyond me except for a few necessary words like cerveja and puta, and they didn't get mentioned."
Illya had spent most of an hour convincing Alexei of the facts as far as they were known. He even went so far as to tell him about the bomb in his baggage in Capetown, though not so far as to tell him where Napoleon and Suzie had gone. He started to explain about the rocket, but Kropotkin stopped him again. "Nyet. I do not understand, so do not tell me. The less I know of it the happier I shall be."