The Golden Serpent

Chapter 7 A Die Is Cast

“Six months ago,” El Tigre said, “my fortunes were very low, Señor Carter. I had lost many men, the pickings were poor, and the Federal police — may I live to spit in their milk — were closing in on me. Since I am not a man to surrender, I was prepared to die. Then, suddenly, a miracle — the police ceased to pursue me. They sent a message to me — that if I remained in this area, and did not operate, I would not be bothered. I could not understand it.” He drank from the bottle and tossed it to Nick. Nick drank, wondering if yoga would do him any good in this, situation. If he went into a trance would it shake off the lethal effect of the mescal? He decided not.

“A short time later,” went on the bandit chief, “a CIA man got in touch with me. He posed as a tourist who had gotten lost. He had credentials which seemed genuine. I accepted him as such. We had much talk together.”

Nick Carter nodded in understanding. The picture was clearing just a bit. The CIA had found a use for El Tigre, so they had used political weight and influence to call off the police. But why?

“There was talk of a Serpent Party,” said El Tigre. “Of which I knew little. It had just started. But the CIA man was very concerned — he said that the Serpent Party was backed by the Red Chinese and that in time they would try to take over power in Mexico. I am afraid I laughed at him, Señor Carter, but he was very serious. He wished to use me, and my men, as a nucleus, a cadre, to fight any revolution which the Serpent Party might start. I was to recruit as many men as possible for that purpose. In the meantime I was not to operate as a bandido, but remain quietly in hiding. Does any of this make sense to you, amigo?”

Nick admitted that it did. He took back some, if not all, of the nasty things he had been thinking about the CIA. Give them credit — they planned a long time ahead. If they thought there was danger of a Chinese-inspired revolution in Mexico — a danger always present in that politically volatile country (look at the record) — then they would at least have a force ready to fight back, a banner to which the counter-revolutionary forces could rally. El Tigre would not be the first bandit to fight for Mexico’s freedom.

“I was promised many supplies and much money,” said El Tigre. “Meantime I was to sit tight, refrain from robbing the rich and giving to the poor, and recruit men. All of which I did, Señor. But nothing came of it. I have heard nothing from the CIA since. Another agent was to come, to live with me and my men, but he never came. The supplies and the money never came. So you will understand, perhaps, why I am disappointed that you are not of the CIA?” He took a huge drink from the bottle of mescal.

Nick puffed on the maduro cigar. What a mess! Still he must find a way through this murky labyrinth to accomplish his own mission.

“There has been a large snafu somewhere,” Nick said. “Perhaps the CIA is not really to blame. Their agent may have been killed before he could contact you, and you—”

“There was a man killed,” said El Tigre. “Near the very place where my men found you. His clothes were burned and his body sunk in the pond.”

Nick stared at the man. “You saw that?”

El Tigre shrugged. “Not I. One of my men. We keep a sharp lookout and do not miss much. The man was killed by an American, one who goes by the name of Maxwell Harper. Sometimes he stays at the castle with La Perra. But I do not think he is sleeping with her. I have it that they are not simpatico. If they were lovers I do not think The Bitch would pick up bums and tramps, at times hitchhikers, and take them home with her. We have watched her do so.”

Nick ignored this further insight into Gerda von Rothe’s character. Her rather strange sexual mores could wait.

“Was the American, this Harper, was he alone when he killed the man?”

“No. There was another, one who passes as a mestizo, with him. He is really a Chinese. But he did not kill the man. The gringo did that with a Tommy gun. Then, as I say, they put him in the pond and burned his clothes. When they had gone my men fished the body out of the water and examined it. They brought me the news and I also examined the body. Then we put it back in the pond. It did not seem to be of our business.” El Tigre took another long black stogie from the box and lit it.

So much for Siegfried, or whatever his real name had been, whom The Bitch had been expecting. Harper and the Chinese had intercepted and dealt with him in a final sort of way. And Gerda von Rothe, desperate for help, had offered Jamie McPherson the job that the ex-Nazi could not do because he had been suddenly taken dead.

El Tigre took a drink and gave the bottle to Nick. “Drink!” He added, “I found the SS tattoo on the dead man very interesting. There are a great many Nazis hiding in South America, I hear. But the CIA man was only interested in the Red Chinese. He said nothing of Germans.”

“I don’t think he could have known anything about the Nazis,” Nick said. He was trying to keep the last drink of mescal down. His stomach was aflame. After fighting down nausea, he asked, “Did the CIA man say anything about the castle, about El Mirador? Were you asked to keep an eye on the woman?”

El Tigre shook his mane of black hair. “Nothing. Except that we were to keep away from it. He did not appear concerned with El Mirador. I thought it was because The Bitch is so rich, and so important in the States. Do you really think she is seventy years old, Señor Carter? You have seen her closer than I have, you have spoken with her. What do you think?”

The non sequitur interrupted Nick’s train of thought. He stared through the hanging cigar smoke at the bandit. Then, “I cannot really say. Certainly she does not look it, or act it. She looks no more than thirty-five, forty at the most. She is very beautiful in a cold, rather cruel sort of way. Yet all the stories about her, the publicity over the years, they all claim that she is really seventy and has been kept young by her creams and lotions — and her way of life. I am a skeptic and I find it hard to believe. Yet there she is. But I do not see what it has to do with the matter at hand.”

His resolve had firmed in the last few minutes. The CIA was wrong about El Mirador and The Bitch. They had to be! And he was going to prove it. He was going for broke. If he was wrong he would only be hanged, drawn and quartered.

“It has very much to do with the matter at hand,” said El Tigre. He spat on the floor and grinned at Nick. “Provided, of course, that we agree on the matter at hand.”

Nick glanced at his watch again. It was ten. “I want to get into that castle,” he said. “And take it apart.”

El Tigre nodded. “So do I. I will be even more specific — I wish to steal everything in the castle that is worth stealing.

I will no longer honor my word to the CIA. My patience is at an end. After the raid I will break up my band and we will scatter. I shall perhaps go to South America — there is not really much future in the bandit business anyway. But first — ah, first — I must rape The Bitch. I have promised myself that.”

Nick was aware of the mescal working in him. The room was moving slowly around him and he could hear the faint music of a carousel in the distance. With a great effort he kept his words from slurring.

“I must confess,” he said carefully, “that I find that a strange ambition. Why rape? If what you say is true, about the way she picks up men, raping The Bitch should not be necessary.”

“Ah,” cried El Tigre. “Ah, but it would not be the same! There would not be the same fierce pleasure. I am a violent man, Señor Carter. I admit it. All of us have our little perversions, and one of mine is that I cannot enjoy a woman who gives herself freely.”

It was the mescal that laughed. Nick said, “Then perhaps you will be disappointed, amigo. She will probably welcome you.”

“Then I should be most desolate.” El Tigre pulled at his beard. “I have been counting on this rape for a long time. The Bitch is so — well, truly that. A bitch! Proud. Arrogant. She has used her riding crop on the peasants and Indians around here as if she owned them. I am going to humble that pride. I will make her scream and cry for mercy.”

Nick Carter shrugged. Why not? Gerda von Rothe was nothing to him, except as a lead to accomplishing his mission. And he was sure now that his real work, the source of all the mystery — of the counterfeit notes and the Golden Serpent Party — lay in or near the castle of El Mirador. So he would use El Tigre for his own ends. Just as El Tigre was using him.

The bandit chief was staring dreamily off into space, a cigar drooping from his mouth, the mescal bottle in his hand. He picked up something from the floor beside him and flung it at Nick. “I look at that picture every night before I go to sleep, Señor Carter. And promise myself I will one day have her. Now is the time.”

It was one of the slick American fashion magazines, tattered and ripped, the cover missing. The date was five years previous. There was a full-page layout showing Gerda von Rothe lounging by a swimming pool in a bikini. She looked like a Venus done by Botticelli, the lush and fleshy curves starkly revealed by the tiny suit. The caption read: “The Miracle of Sixty-five!”

Nick scanned the text with bleary eyes, the type writhing and undulating like a live thing. There was something about Black Oxen, and another fictional allusion, H. Rider Haggard’s She, and a lot more about the creams and strict health routine used by the fabulous von Rothe to hang on to her youth.

Killmaster — was he really Killmaster? — shoved the magazine back at El Tigre. The room was floating now. He was himself suspended a foot off the ground.

“Maybe,” he managed to say. “Maybe it’s true, but I still think it’s some trick.” He had to laugh.

“I hope not,” said El Tigre. “That would be most cruel of Fate. I have looked forward so much to the raping of this seventy-year-old woman. It will be the greatest of thrills — and I am a man who has had many thrills in my time. What are you doing, Señor Carter?”

“I,” said Señor Carter, “am going to throw up, amigo. Toss my cookies. I hope you will overlook my bad manners, but I am drunk. And that will not do. There is work to be done.”

“It is true,” agreed El Tigre, “that you are completamente borracho. I am sorry. It is, perhaps, that you do not have the head for drinking. But be my guest, Señor. As indeed you already are. Feel free to vomit to your heart’s content.”

As he spewed in a corner Nick found himself thinking that it was most unjust of El Tigre to denigrate his drinking ability. Nick Carter could drink with any man. Well, nearly any man. Then the hot gush filled his throat again and he thought of nothing. When at last he turned back to the desk, pale and shaking, he saw that El Tigre was on his feet. The bandit leader was canted to one side, like a bearded Tower of Pisa, but he was smiling.

“Come,” he told Nick. “Now we ride. I myself will take you to the castle. We will make our plans on the way. We will work together and each shall have what he wants. As you gringos say — you scrub my back and I will scrub yours, sí?”

“Sí.” He was feeling a little better. Whether he could stay on a horse remained to be seen.

El Tigre thrust out a big hand. “Now we will shake, my good friend. I like you. I trust you. You of AXE are of the salt of the earth. I spit in the milk of the CIA.”

They shook hands. El Tigre lurched out into the mine shaft and began bawling orders that sent the bandits scrambling about like wild men. Nick was given back the Webley.

It was Pancho, the younger brother, who insisted on the blindfold again. El Tigre could not have cared less. But Pancho, as he tied the bandana over Nick’s eyes, was as friendly as ever. “It is for your own protection, hombre. When the great one is borracho he forgets. But I do not. But if you do not know this place you cannot betray us and we will not have to kill you. Is it not so?”

Nick agreed that it was so.

“Let’s go!” yelled El Tigre. “We do not have all night. My amigo must not be late for his appointment with La Perra.”

It was a ride Killmaster was never to forget. This time he had a horse and a saddle with a pommel to hang on to, and it was just as well. El Tigre, with a long lead on Nick’s mount, took them at a furious pace. Sliding, slipping, climbing. Up hills and through ravines and over mesas. Finally the bandit reined in. “You can take off the blindfold now, amigo. We are nearly there.”

They were on a low butte overlooking the highway. A gibbous moon shed some faint light. In the distance Nick could see lights in El Mirador. The gate and guardhouse were in darkness. Probably intentional. He remembered the guard he had seen cleaning the Tommy gun.

He glanced at his watch, finally made it out to be eleven-thirty. Half an hour until he was to meet Gerda von Rothe at the postern gate.

“Now,” said El Tigre, “we will make our plans, amigo. They are very simple. Listen.”

They talked for fifteen minutes and reached complete agreement. Killmaster knew he had cast the die now, crossed the Rubicon, and there could be no turning back. He needed El Tigre and the bandit needed him. Each for their separate purposes. What Nick was going to do was illegal in the extreme — he was going to break a hell of a lot of laws. No help for it. In any case he and Hawk had agreed that he was to handle matters his own way. If he was wrong — well, that just didn’t bear thinking about.

El Tigre patted him on the knee. “It is time you go, amigo. I will see you at the appointed time. Buena suerte.”

Nick slid out of the saddle. He must go the rest of the way on foot, and very quietly. He shook hands with El Tigre. “Adiós.”

El Tigre leaned down toward the AXEman. “Be very careful, amigo. Most cautious. There is one thing I forgot to mention — we have seen The Bitch take many men into the castle. We have never seen any of the men come out.”

Thanks a lot, said Nick. Under his breath. He watched as El Tigre led the other horse away down the gentle back slope of the butte. Well — here it was. This was it.

He knew that he was still a little drunk. His head ached. But all in all he was in fair shape, considering the mescal he had put away. What a character, that El Tigre.

Killmaster took another look at his watch. Only ten of twelve now. Then he stiffened, his eyes on the hour hand of the watch. It was trembling, moving, in frenetic little jerks. The DF was working. Someone was using a powerful transmitter in the vicinity. The hour hand stopped at last, pointing directly at the castle.

Nick felt a sense of relief. His hunch was beginning to pay off.