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  "No—no police!" she said quickly. "These men are the police."

  My jaw dropped. "What?"

  "I will explain another time," she said. "Now I am afraid to return to my room."

  My face must have shown my too-good-to-be-true excitement, for she took my arm, laughing. "You disappeared in a street brawl, and you reappeared in one, like a genie of violence. It is coincidence, our meeting here, but how glad I am to see you! I know you would not deceive me."

  "Never!" I agreed. "Our politics may differ, but—"

  "I am on a private mission for my government, nothing to do with you." She glanced sidelong at me. "Unless you were sent to intercept me?"

  "No," I said. "I'm here on business of my own, helping a—a friend." Fu Antos was not exactly my friend, at any rate not in the usual sense, but that was too complicated to explain. "I had no notion you were here."

  "I believe you. So we trust each other."

  "Yes." And I did trust her. She would not be mixed up in dirty politics—not the lying, killing kind—even though she did work for the Communist government of Cuba. She would not lie to me, because she was not that type of person. "About the manner we parted, before—"

  "Do not be concerned. Fidel told me you were breaking up an international drug-smuggling operation, and could not blow your cover."

  Just like that, the Communists had covered for me! But I suppose the cat will cover for the mouse, if the cat has reason. I knew Fidel would as readily send an assassin after me, if it suited his convenience. But we had no quarrel at the moment. So I took Dulce to my room. No one seemed to notice or care. And it was a real pleasure to speak English freely again.

  But caution did not desert me. I knew she had a mission to accomplish, and she knew I had one too. These missions obviously could get us killed. It was just possible—not likely, but possible—that my room was bugged. I didn't know how such things were in Brazil, and could not openly inquire. So we had to pretend that this was merely a pickup: girl is mugged on beach, man who once knew her rescues her, man gets reward.

  The irony was that I would gladly have settled for the script as reality, and looking at her, I knew she felt the same. We would have to do what we both desired—and thereby cheapen it distressingly. What a waste!

  But she was injured. There was the saving grace. A valid pretext not to perform—until the time was right.

  "Let me help you," I said.

  "No—it is not bad," she demurred.

  I drew her into the bathroom. "Come on. I'll take care of it." The bathroom was huge, with a sunken black marble tub like a small swimming pool and a deep orange rug on the floor and a monstrous wall mirror. Last night all this opulence had embarrassed me; now I was glad for it.

  "I think I got hit here," she admitted, pointing to her left breast.

  "Brute kicked you; I saw it," I said. "Any ribs broken?"

  "I don't think so," she said. But she winced as I touched the place. Then I saw a small stain of blood seeping through. She stood unresisting as I undid her bathing suit. It was one of those tight one-piece affairs, so I had to peel it off her upper torso. Her breasts were exposed, and as I had strongly suspected, they were completely authentic. I favor breasts of any size, but these were classics.

  The bruise was on the left side just below the breast.

  "You're lucky," I said. "His foot bounced off your rib, just breaking the skin. A little higher and to the front—" I paused, for this reminded me of a real breast injury I had once seen, a broken-bottle savage, and that reminded me of Chiyako, the love that would always be with me.

  I shook off that memory. I could not bring the dead back to life. I soaked a towel in hot water and sponged off the bruise. It was ugly but not bad. To clean around it sufficiently, I had to wipe off some of Dulce's breast, too, a necessary but delightful task. She might have pulled away, expressing affront. She didn't. She made a little sound that might have been pain but wasn't. "I am here to contact the urban guerrillas," she murmured in my ear as though they were words of love.

  "You don't have to tell me," I whispered back. "In fact, I don't want to know."

  She shook her head, while her hands drew me down to the rug with her. I realized that she was undressing me, and it had an electrifying effect. This was hardly the ideal spot, but if that was what she wanted—! "I must tell you, for now you have helped me, and they will never believe you are not my contact."

  "Mmmm," I agreed. I had become involved with her, in more than one sense. Apparently she did not hold my sudden prior absence against me, and was quite ready to pick up where we had left off. Marvelous!

  "I brought much money—half a million American dollars," she said, indicating her handbag, that I had not noticed before.

  All women had handbags; why notice them? Especially when there was so much else about a woman to notice.

  "Half a what?" I yelped, abruptly realizing what she had said.

  "Make love, not noise," she said, putting her forefinger across my lips. We were both pretty well undressed now. In one way I was surprised that she came on so warmly, so fast; in another way I wasn't. She had thought a lot of me, in Cuba, and now we would be together only briefly before our separate missions carried us away as carelessly as they had brought us together. So she was taking immediate advantage of the opportunity, as was I.

  "Yes, that was what they were after," she said. "They must have ransacked my room, looking for it, then come after me directly. I was supposed to meet my contact on the beach, give him the money, help the local group get properly organized. But he was late, or maybe they got him before coming after me."

  I saw it now. Pretty girl collecting shells on beach, young man strikes up conversation. Only he hadn't showed. The police, evidently tipped off by some informer, had come instead. I wasn't really sorry to see the Communist plot broken up; Latin America already had too much violence. But I had gotten involved. "But if those were the police," I asked, "why didn't they just arrest you? These things happen all the time. International incidents, spying, deals. Don't they usually just usher the agent out quietly?"

  "Perhaps. But they wanted the money. If I were dead, they could deny there ever was any money, and who should know otherwise? My government would never admit to it, of course. It is in American dollars so that they cannot be traced; they incriminate no one, and can be spent easily. So the Death Squad—"

  "Death Squad?" I whispered in her delicate ear as I slid my knee along her smooth thigh. "What's that?"

  Now her lips caressed my ear lobe. "You do not know about them?"

  I shifted position, kissed her on the mouth en route, and found her other ear. If this were a game, I liked it; if it were only a cover for shop talk, I still liked it. "All I know is that five thugs attacked you, tried to kill you, or at least beat you up. You say they were police."

  She smiled, stretched, winced as she felt her bruises, then slid her body across mine in amazing stages. First her leg twined over mine like the lead-in for the yoko guruma sacrifice throw; then her warm hips and abdomen rolled on mine in a simulated uki-goshi hip throw (though that is normally initiated from a vertical position!); then one breast followed the other in a pneumatic dance across my chest like a tate shiho gatame four-quarter holddown. At last her lips commenced their electrifying trek, kissing their way from one side of my neck to the other in the most stimulating strangle I ever experienced.

  When she reached my ear, she let the rest of her body subside. My own could hardly be described as doing the same. She snuggled in for a paragraph-sized explanation. I tried—I really tried!—to pay attention. To her words.

  "Here in Brazil, many people commit crimes yet escape punishment. Notorious gangsters get off because no one dares testify against them. Corrupt politicians use their leverage to cover up their foul dealings. Businessmen cheat the public and hire high-priced lawyers to keep the law off. Everyone knows these things, yet no one acts. Except the Death Squad. They—"

  I heaved,
unable to lie still any longer lest I burst. My mouth caught her ear as another organ found other lodging. "Vigilantes! Now I understand. They take the law into their own—"

  But now she was moving too. Conversation ceased as our torsos interlocked ecstatically. There was an obstruction, and I had my verification that despite Dulce's proficiency and enthusiasm I was the first to proceed this far with her. She was a "Senorita," a maiden, and she had evidently saved it for me: a signal compliment, considering she could not have known whether we would ever meet again. She was so hot inside it was as though my member were burning. "Wait! Wait!" she breathed. "Not now." But it was now, and the barrier was down.

  Her legs crossed over the small of my back as we rolled over, as if she were trying a do-jime scissors strangle, and her heels kicked an erotic tatoo over my kidneys. My eye caught the action in the mirror, and it was some effect.

  Deeper, deeper. I buried my face in her brown hair, so silky and clean smelling, and wondered irrelevantly why she wasn't wearing her glasses. She had always worn them, in Cuba. My mind does that: summoning inconsequential distractions at times I least wish it. "I never dreamed it could be so good," she said, and I felt like a heel for my wandering thoughts.

  Well, if this bathroom were bugged, I hoped the bugs were getting a good eyeful. There was nothing fake about this. "It's good, all right," I mumbled somewhat awkwardly, sounding insincere when I damn well was sincere.

  She blinked her eyes several times, and I thought she was starting to cry. Had I blown it?

  "Can you see if my contact lenses are in place?" she asked me. "I haven't used them long, and this excitement—"

  So that explained the glasses. I looked into her eyes. "I see a little edge of something, transparent," I said.

  "That's it. Just slipped aside." She laughed—which was quite an effect, since I had not yet withdrawn. "In all that battle with the death squad they stayed in place, but you were so energetic that—"

  "All right!" I mumbled, embarrassed.

  In due course we dressed. Dulce rang room service and ordered a meal for us both, since she spoke the language. Of course it could have been done in English, but I was sure the food would be better in Portuguese, if that makes any sense.

  I was not mistaken. Dulce did it up proper. We started with a plate of Brazilian appetizers: garlicky unshelled fried shrimps, white hearts of palm, lettuce, tomatoes, black olives, Portuguese sardines and sausages. I nibbled, knowing that I could stuff myself without ever getting past the appetizers.

  Then an entree of bossa nova crisp deep-fried chicken loaded with garlic and served with flavorful white rice and a bowl of delicious purplish black beans resting in their own souplike sauce.

  There was also wine. I'm not a drinker, but at social events like this I find it hard to decline. So I accepted what Dulce offered: Portuguese Casals Garcia Vinto Verde, a clear, almost astringent green wine. And of course black coffee, so popular in Latin American countries.

  For dessert we had guava paste with hard white cheese and some fruit I didn't recognize.

  Then Dulce clapped her hand to her forehead. "I forgot the ice cream!" she cried.

  I kneaded my full stomach. "Don't worry about it. I couldn't eat another bite of anything."

  "That's the problem!" she said, genuinely upset. "You love ice cream, and now you can't eat any, even if I order it."

  She remembered our days in Cuba, where my sinful weakness for ice cream had manifested. They had had such good ice cream! But it hardly seemed worth such fretting now. Then I realized what was really bothering her.

  Dulce didn't say so directly, but we both knew that our impromptu date was ending. She was grateful for my help against the Death Squad thugs, and glad for the chance to entertain me her way, but she had a mission. She would have to try again to make contact with her guerrilla group. And of course I was still waiting for Kan-Sen's call. So this was it: we would finish our meal, and perhaps spend the afternoon together, but that was all. Sad, but necessary. But we couldn't talk about it openly, so we talked about ice cream. Psychologically, I believe this is called transfer. Now I felt dejected about missing that ice cream.

  Dulce got up to go to the bathroom, and abruptly sat down. "What's the matter?" I asked.

  She passed her hand over her face. "Maybe I ate too much, or drank too much. We don't get wine like this in Cuba, anymore."

  "Here, I'll help you," I said, standing.

  Then I felt it. An incipient dizziness, not that of wine. Some sort of drug. It had hit me later than her, because I was larger; we had eaten the same meal.

  There was a forceful rapping on the door.

  Dulce looked at me, realizing. "The Death Squad!"

  "We don't know that!" I said, moving unsteadily to the door. "Probably just a routine—"

  The rapping came again, loud, peremptory. "Open up! It's the police!" a voice called.

  Suddenly I was nervous. Police—Death Squad. Much the same, here.

  "Don't open it!" Dulce cried, rising—and fell on her face on the table, spilling her remaining coffee.

  But in my drug-muddled state I felt it better to answer the summons. If it were innocent, good; if not, I wanted to fight before I passed out. I had no weapon, and surely they were armed. I cast about, and spied a spray bottle of deodorant. Hmm—if it worked for James Bond... I picked it up.

  I steeled myself against the drug and opened the door. I half hoped I would find Kan-Sen outside, or even Fu Antos, masquerading as police. I was disappointed.

  There were four men in police uniforms. They had drawn guns. They did not stand on ceremony. "You are under arrest," one said in passable English, and grabbed my wrist. He brought out a set of handcuffs.

  I was hardly in condition to resist effectively, but this did not strike me as normal procedure. They hadn't even asked my name! Then I got a look at the last man in line, and recognized him. He was huge, with a scar on his face; I had fought him once before, in New York City, and knew him for my enemy. I don't have such sharp memory for faces, ordinarily, but he was something special. The sight of him temporarily cleared my head; I knew my life was in peril.

  The bracelet locked in place about my left wrist. I grabbed that wrist with my right hand, jerked it out of the man's grasp, and struck upward with my elbow. I augmented the blow by pushing against my own closed fist, transmitting extra power to the elbow. His chin received a considerable jolt.

  Then I swung the loose handcuff like a flail across the second man's head, making him drop the pistol. And up against the third man's face. They had given me quite a close-quarters weapon. Ordinarily I wouldn't try combat against armed men, knowing the odds were greatly against me. But in this case I knew I was in trouble, and the snapping of the handcuff on my wrist had caused them to relax. Thus my instant, explosive action caught them by surprise.

  Now I came up against the giant, and I knew he was more formidable than the other three combined. I discovered I still held the spray bottle in my left hand; in fact I had pushed against it, not my fist. Well—

  I depressed the stud on top, aiming it at the giant's face. A thin mist spurted out. In a Bond movie it would have blasted forth to blind him; with me it merely made a small sweet-smelling cloud that bothered no one. The pressure was low. Just my luck; as a weapon it was ludicrous.

  The giant looked at the feeble spray. His mouth cracked open. Laughter erupted like gas from a volcano. Then he raised his gun. I had no choice. I attacked. I feinted with the handcuff, so that he jerked the weapon out of position, then I clipped him on the chin with my open right palm. The slap was not hard enough to do him damage. That put me in position, and I did an o soto gari leg sweep on him. He stepped back, resisting—but he was on the landing at the top of the stairs, and his foot came down on air. He had to fall.

  I had been lucky; I knew it. Probably the man had known I was drugged, and had not anticipated effective action. He would have been correct, had I not been galvanized by my sudden recognit
ion of him.

  He cracked his head on the wall as he landed, and lay still, strewn across the stairs.

  My dizziness returned full force as the excitement of combat abated. I staggered along the landing. I started to fall, saw the deep well of the staircase before me, clutched at the rail. I started down, missed a step—and the giant's leg tripped me. I twisted as though brought down by a leg throw myself. But below me was no practice mat. Just a fuzzy descent.

  I saw the steps come at my face. I ducked my head, taking a roll. It was an automatic reflex, a good one.

  I never felt the impact.

  Chapter 3

  Gift of Tongues

  Dulce woke with a splitting headache. Her tongue felt so swollen that there was hardly room for it in her mouth, and there was a metallic taste. Her awareness was fuzzy, her muscles leaden, and she could not coordinate well.

  A man was slapping her in the face with a wet towel, bringing her to. He was thin, pockmarked by smallpox, and wiry. His skin was very dark; he was a Caboclo or copper-colored mulatto derived from white, black and Indian ancestry. Probably a peasant from the interior, she judged; illiterate, come to the more progressive coast to make his fortune. And winding up as a typical Death Squad thug.

  "Wake up, bitch!" the man said in Portuguese. "I want you alert and squealing for this."

  She understood him. She had a certain gift of tongues, and spoke and read English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, some Japanese and some Russian. But she didn't care to advertise this ability at the moment.

  She looked about. She was in a modern wooden house, on a big old wooden bed. This was evidently a domicile of the upper middle class; the room was big and airy, but a bit rundown in the furnishings. There was a window, and through it she could see the branches of a tree, so she knew she was on the second floor. No doubt this was a liberated house whose former owner had died of indigestion: a mixture of too much anti-government politics and lead. This was part of an estate; had there been near neighbors, she would have been gagged so as not to alert them.