"Too small," Nick grunted again. Their camera lens seemed to point off in another direction and they left the red snapper behind.
Mike shook his head in wonder. "How do you actually catch something, like you did that squid? What happens?"
"The same as other fishing. The fish grabs the bait and you haul it in."
"No line," Mike reminded him.
"You don't need any. Do you see this little stud? You throw it and the plug returns to you, bringing along what you've caught. You catch anything you want."
"What do you mean, you catch anything you want?" Mike said indignantly. Suppose what you want doesn't figure your bait looks very appetizing and says the hell with it?"
"Then I push this switch," the Russian explained, again condescending. "A powerful fish lure is activated.
A lure so effective that no fish, at least none that we've run into so far, can resist it."
"Holy smokes," Mike Edwards blurted. "Look, how big a fish can you take with that tackle?" He thought about it. "Could you take a twenty pound salmon?"
"Any size. Well, at least any size that a sports fisherman would likely be interested in. Say, up to five hundred pounds."
"Five hundred pounds! That light tackle?" Mike looked at him as though the other was demented.
"Besides, no man alive could-wrestle in a five hundred-pound fish, certainly not without the heaviest equipment."
The Russkie demonstrated. "See this little dial? It's for power. If you're fishing for trout or such small fresh water fish, you turn it all the way over here. If you're fishing for, say, a five hundred-pound shark, you turn it all the way around to here. In between, obviously, are for fish in between. Ah, ha. Now here is a better customer. He will go perhaps fifteen pounds, eh?"
Mike said, protest in his voice, "Holy smokes, did you say that you were soon going to put these on the international market?"
Page 19
"Yes. At thirty dollars a set. We are confident that they will sweep the sport fishing field."
Mike shook his head. "Sweep it? At a price like that, for equipment which will take anything from a trout to a whale, you'll sink the sport fishing field. You'll put every fishing equipment company outside the Soviet Complex out of business overnight."
The Russian yelped, "Got him," and flicked the stud that brought his catch in. He said to Mike, "Well, that would be too bad, I suppose, but business is business, as you capitalists say. Other models are suited to commercial fishing. A great advantage when you can seek out your catch."
Mike Edwards closed his eyes in pain, reopened them "again to watch wide-eyed as the other brought in a long, vicious looking fish of a species Mike didn't recognize.
He said, "I'll have to get on up to the hotel See you later, Mr. Galushko."
He reeled up the path, Frank Jones' words coming back to him again. For the sake of picking up foreign exchange for their tourists, they'd dump this little item on the world market for peanuts, and one more Western field of endeavor would go down the drain.
Chapter VII
Two evenings later, Mike Edwards was able to talk a dozen or so of the Russkie vacationists into a tapa tour of Malaga. Actually, he hadn't been stressing the tapa tour this season. He'd had disastrous luck with the Russkies who took it. Something fantastic, something unforeseeable, invariably developed.
The tapa tour consisted of pub-crawling about the multitude of bodegas in Malaga. Tapa means the equivalent of the American free lunch of the pre-World War One days, and the institution still reigned supreme in Spain, although they now sometimes charged a small amount for the tasties. A Spaniard seldom took a drink without something to eat with it: a few shrimp, cheese and bread, french fried fresh sardines, a touch of potato salad, smoked mussels or oysters, a portion of stew. The portions were tiny; so small that you could consume as many as twenty tapas during the course of an evening without killing your appetite for dinner.
Mike's parties would wander up and down the old streets of the medieval Andulusian city, stopping periodically to have a glass of Sherry here, a small beer there. This had been fine with the British or French tourists, but the Russkies! Ah, the Russkies. They usually started off docile enough, having their copas of Sherry or Malaga muscatel, the best in the world, but invariably before the evening was over discipline melted away and the night could end on any note, usually noisy and calamitous, sometimes with several of the tourist group winding up in the local pokey from which Mike would have to bail them out, the following day. The Malaga police took a dimmer view of Russkie tourists than did those of Torremolinos, not being dependent on their spending.
But this was his chance to get Catherina more or less to himself. At least he'd have the opportunity to talk to her. It was difficult in Torremolinos, since she was practically always the center of a group, usually a drunken group dominated by Vovo and his capers. He hadn't invited Vovo to the tapa tour, avoiding the overgrown Cossack.
They drove into Malaga in one of the company buses and started the tour with small glasses of fino at Vincente's and the tapa was gambas pil pil , a manner of serving small shrimp in a sizzling sauce of butter, garlic and red peppers. It is one of the most delicious dishes of 'Southern Spain. They made enough of a hit with Nick Galushko, Ana Chekova and the others that they had to repeat the Page 20
performance several times, though the idea of the tapa tour was to take but one tapa at each stop.
Mike didn't mind. It enabled him to get Catherina Saratov off to himself. -
They sat at one of the small tables, while the others bellied up to the bar, and Mike came quickly to the point. He said, "Look, why don't you like me?"
Her eyes widened in what would seem to be distress. She said quickly, "But I do. What in the world do you mean, Mr. Edwards?"
Mike said, "Look, call me Mike. You've been avoiding me. At least, unless you're with a group of others. Every time I try to get you alone for a few minutes, you have some excuse."
She sipped at her fino, looked at him over the edge of her glass. She said finally, "Actually, I like you very much Mike. I imagine I always have since, well, since you blushed so hugely there on the beach when you told me about my bathing suit. You have a… a boyish quality that I suspect appeals to many women. Certainly it does to me."
He ignored that boyish quality bit, and said, "Well then, why…"
She put a hand on his arm, which didn't make him feel any the worse, but said, "To what end? Do you think that my moral code is looser than that of your Western girls? Admittedly, most of my compatriots are, shall we say, somewhat philosophical about sexual mores, but I assure you, Mike, I'm not." She added mischievously, "In spite of my bathing suit."
Mike flushed. "That's not it at all. I'm sure your code is at least as high as mine. Come to think of it, I suppose mine isn't very high."
She said, "Very well. I leave in a few days. Just what sort of a relationship did you have in mind for us, Mike? A quick-what do you Americans call it?-a roll in the hay? I make no pretensions of virginity, Mike, but I do not go in for-what is the other Americanism?-one night stands."
It struck Mike like a blow. Actually, he hadn't figured it out at length. What did he have in mind? He had never been this attracted to a girl before in his life. But certainly he hadn't had the usual tourist one night stand in mind. He got fed up to here with women who had a quick roll in the hay with their tourist guide in mind. They were a dime a dozen. Hell, they were a nickel a gross in tourist season on the Costa del Sol.
One of the Russkies was roaring questioningly at Mike whether or not they were going to spend the rest of the evening here. He had a tumbler of wine in his beefy hand, rather than the usual small copa glass.