The Diving Dames Affair - Leslie Peter. Страница 5

"You heard what they said? You heard the exchange they called?"

"I cannot recall the name. But on each occasion, it seemed to be a name unknown to the operator. The lady telephoning insisted, and said, yes, it was the correct name - it was a place in the mountains before that city, where they make a new lake."

"A small place in the mountains behind Brasilia where they're building an artificial lake - probably a dam," Solo said. "Senhor Oliveira, you have been more than helpful. I cannot thank you enough."

"It is nothing, senhor."

"One more question I must ask you. If you could see both the car and the truck, you must have been some way further up the hill. Did you see anything else - anything at all - which might have had anything to do with the accident? Was there anyone else around, near the scene of the disaster?"

"No, there was nothing. Just the car and the truck. If there had been anything, I would have seen it."

"Thank you again," Solo said - and he ran back to the Buick, turned, and headed for the main road and Rio.

"God go with you," the old man replied, urging his mule to resume its laborious climb.

---

The driver of the tan Chevrolet, who had been following Napoleon Solo ever since he had left the airport, put away his binoculars and opened the trunk of the car. He propped open the lid of a small short-wave transceiver and fiddled with switches and dials. Then he held a single can to one ear and spoke softly into a hand microphone.

"Greerson," he said. "The subject visited the hospital this morning and left with Garcia, the police captain. He stayed some time in Garcia's office, called on the rental company, a couple of newspaper offices, and then drove out to the place where the girls left the road... He's just spent a quarter of an hour searching the area and yacking to some peasant on a mule. Then he turned and headed back for the city… Okay, Schwarz had better pick him up at the next intersection: he saw me pass while he was on the road... What's that?... Oh, him. Sure I will. Right away..."

He swung the Chevrolet around and went slowly back down the hill. After the third hairpin, he saw Miguel Oliveira jogging slowly towards him on the mule.

The man called Greerson drove a few yards past and braked. He got out of the car and called after the old man: "Hey! You!"

The mule continued its upward plod. The old man did not turn his head. Swearing, the driver of the Chevrolet dropped his cigarette to the ground, swiveled his heel on the butt, and shouted again: "Hey, old man! Are you deaf?"

This time, Oliveira turned his head. He spoke without checking the pace of the mule. "Are you addressing me, senhor?"

"Of course I'm addressing you, you old fool," Greerson snapped in his bad Portuguese. "Do you see anyone else around?"

The old man halted the beast and sat waiting patiently while Greerson strode up to him. "What do you want with me, senhor?" he said.

"First, I want to teach you to speak when you're spoken to, peasant. Get off that mule."

Oliveira sat silent and regarded him impassively.

"I said get off!" Greerson shouted. He raised his right forearm across his chest and struck the old man viciously, backhanded, on the face. Oliveira's broad-brimmed hat fell to the ground. His leathery cheek had flushed a dull red with the blow. And still he stared unwinkingly at his attacker.

Greerson hit him again: a wicked right to the solar plexus. The old man gave a choking grunt, folded for wards over the neck of the mule, and slid to the ground.

The driver of the Chevrolet drew back a foot with a pointed shoe and kicked him, once on the side of the head and twice in the kidneys. After a while, Oliveira rolled slowly over and tried to sit up, supporting himself on gnarled hands. "Why… why do you do this to me, senhor?" he croaked. A thin thread of scarlet ran from one side of his bruised mouth.

Measuring his distance carefully, Greerson drew back his foot for the fourth time. He caught the old man full on the chin with the iron-studded heel. This time, he did not get up.

The rasping of a cicada in a tree across the road shivered the hot silence as Greerson, panting, straightened his tie, smoothed down the front of his jacket, and looked cautiously around. The stretch of road between the hairpins lay empty in the sun. Neither human beings nor vehicles broke the succession of wooded undulations rising to the brassy sky. The mule stood motionless in a patch of shadow cast by a stunted oak, its head hanging low.

Bending down, Greerson seized the unconscious figure of Miguel Oliveira by the shoulders, hauling it into the roadway not too far from the spots of blood that were already darkly congealing in the dust of the roadside.

After a final look up and down, he lit a cigarette, walked quickly to the Chevrolet and backed it a hundred yards up the road.

Then, steering carefully, he accelerated down towards the recumbent figure in the dust.

Chapter 3

Up-Country Girls

AFTER THE COMFORTABLE red earth of the coffee country and the alternating woods and escarpments of Minas Gerais state, the plateau on which Brasilia is built seemed almost indecently bare. Solo leaned his forehead against the cool double glass and scanned the bleak terrain sliding past below the plane's wing. Threads of silver splashed the ravines here and there, and way off to the northeast a wide, shallow river coiled itself between trees. But there was nothing he could see that suggested in any way the building of a new dam or an artificial lake.

The smart young corporation lawyer in the government office, his Bahia university degree framed on the peeled sycamore wall behind him, was equally discouraging.

"I cannot imagine how you can have been so misinformed, Senhor Williams," he said with a frown. "Every hydroelectric project connected with Brasilia was completed before life in the town began, naturally. If such a supplementary scheme existed, and if there were options to acquire, be sure that we should know of them. This is a new town, hardly five years old, and there is little here yet but civic and municipal buildings: physically, there is no place for any undercover dealing to go!"

"I understand," Solo said. "I should explain that of course I did not come to Brazil only to explore these options - if they exist - but on another matter entirely. It was just that I heard of them in a roundabout way and thought it might conceivably be worth investigating."

"Quite. You will forgive me - but you are sure that you have the right city?'

The agent grinned suddenly, disarmingly. "No," he said frankly, "to tell you the truth, I'm not, and that's the hell of it!"

"Well, in that case…"

"I heard of it from an old man, a countryman - and I was the one who first mentioned Brasilia, thinking this must be the city he meant from his description. You know, white towers rising against a blue sky, the whole modem city bit. But of course he may have agreed just to be polite - the courtesy of your peasants can be exhausting!"

The young lawyer smiled. "Of course the description would fit Getuliana just as well," he murmured.

"Getuliana?"

"Another of our bright new cities - scheduled population of one million, mostly to be employed in light industry, red carpet to be unrolled at the beginning of 1970. But it's still in the steel frame and cement-mixer stage now - and I shouldn't wonder if there weren't some hydroelectric schemes tied up with that."