The nine-month caper

“I just wondered what sort of a man would want a professional prostitute for a girl friend,” I said.

“And what’s the matter with that?” She was indignant again. “We make best kind girl for any man. Girls like us are loyal an’ he always know where we are, an’ we treat our men very good.”

“Sure. Sure,” I agreed hastily. “I didn’t mean— Is this boy friend of hers a Dominican?”

“I don’ know.” Dovita shrugged. “She don’ talk to me about him. They only just start in together. You so hot to know, you gonna have to ask her. But tomorrow, ’cause she no around tonight.”

“All right, I will. What’s her name?”

“Consuela.”

That was it. I was on the track all right. Only I’d have to drift for the next day or so until I could get to Consuela herself. If I played it right, she’d lead me to Raoul Marti. And if I kept playing it right, he might tell me where the German scientist had been taken.

Meanwhile, Dovita’s hand was moving farther up my leg. I put business aside and took a really good, look at her. With her dark eyes shining brightly and the way her tongue was licking her lips, she looked like a hungry cat. I touched her breast again—this time all on my own. Her face broke into a smile, and now she looked like a cat with a mouthful of canary feathers.

“No more questions now?” she purred softly.

“No more questions,” I assured her.

“Then we make love, no?”

“We make love, yes.” I’m not made out of Wood, and Dovita’s sexy appearance and provocative ways were getting to me. Frustrated by Victoria, further investigation postponed until I could latch onto Consuela, I could think of no good reason why I shouldn’t take advantage of Dovita’s willingness to “entertain” me.

This she set about doing in a highly professional way. She guided my hands over the contours of her lush body and then nibbled her way down from my ears to my neck to my chest. Her fingertips played havoc with my erogenous zones as she unbuttoned my clothing. Her mouth was a will-o’-the-wisp darting hither and thither over my body, pinpointing erotic responses and sending signals of passion to my brain—which returned them with interest to the organ of my manhood.

It was here, finally, that her lips fastened hungrily. So wondrous was her skill that my whole body responded. My back arched and I thrust upward and every muscle tensed. For a moment the thrill was so great that I felt the blood rushing to my head. My hands tangled spasmodically in her ebony tresses, and I felt as if the top of my skull was about to fly off.

And then all hell broke loose.

There was the sound of a mortar shell exploding very close by. Even closer came the steady chatter of a sub-machine gun. There was the crackle—-several sharp cracks in a row, really-—of rifle fire.

The electric light bulb in the ceiling fixture shattered, and we were plunged into darkness. It all happened so fast that it was a moment before the message of agony reached my brain. It originated with Dovita. Her reaction to the sudden holocaust had been to clench her teeth. And the instant of clenching had changed my rushing ecstasy to sharp pain.

I slapped her jaw—not too lightly, I’m afraid. Her face muscles relaxed, and I pulled free. As soon as that happened, Dovita seemed to unfreeze and spring into action. She was across the room in a jiffy and at the bureau standing in the corner there. Her back was to me for an instant, and when she turned around, she held a large Luger in two hands. She held it awkwardly, and not too steadily, but that didn’t make it look any the less menacing. You see, the safety was off, and her finger was on the trigger, and it was pointed at my belly with just enough accuracy to insure that if it went off it would blast my guts into a collage on the wall behind me.

“Hey!” I said. “What-—?”

“The revolution has begun!” she announced. Her eyes were blazing with a fervor that was fanatical.

“What revo -?”

“We will drive the junta out!” she said, her voice exultant. “And we will drive the Yankee gringos out with them!”

“But—?”

“The Yankess must go or die!”

“I was just leaving-—-”

“Every citizen is a soldier of the revolution. And every gringo is an enemy. Now, Mr. Victor, you will pay for your country’s meddling!”

Her finger tightened on the trigger . . .

CHAPTER SEVEN

I LUNGED straight forward and down, slamming into the floor with my groin. The bullet whistled over my rear and grazed it as I leaped. My outstretched hand hooked Dovita’s ankle and yanked the floor out from under her.

The gun went off again as she fell. I scrambled over her and got a grip on the hand that was holding it. I shook the Luger loose and it went spinning across the floor. I straddled Dovita, my knees pinning her shoulders, sitting on her bosom—very soft, very comfortable -— and got my breath back.

Outside there was a symphony of gunfire. The ratatat of submachine guns, the ping of rifle bullets, the intermittent boom of mortar shells exploding-—all the sounds of a small-scale war getting off the ground filled the night. There was an odor of smoke wafting through the broken window. A searchlight beam swiveled past and lit up the room. I got a good look at Dovita’s face.

It was still feline. Only now it looked like an enraged tigress, rather than a passionate pussycat. The upper lip was curled back in a savage snarl. Her eyes were dark pools of venom. They were staring at my face with a look that raked the flesh from my cheekbones. I smiled at her and she spat at me.

I wrapped one hand around her throat and kept it there while I climbed off her and retrieved the Luger. When I had it, I let her go and sat on the floor well out of the line of any gunfire that might come through the window. Then, holding the gun on her, I politely asked her what the hell was going on.

“The rebels, they have struck,” she said, looking at me contemptuously. “The day of the Yankee in Santo Domingo is at an end.”

“You mean a revolution has broken out?”

“Si.”

“Well, okay. But why would that make you want to kill me?”

“You are a Yankee. That is enough reason.”

“Aww, come on. That’s not very hospitable. Just a few minutes ago you were all sexy syrup for me. I’m still the same guy. Why should you be out for my blood now?”

“Because you must pay for exploiting us.”

“Me personally?”

“Si. All North American gringos.”

Something occurred to me. “I don’t get it, Dovita. Why are you so het up? You’re not even a Dominican. You’re a Cuban. And a refugee from Castro to boot. I’d think you’d be against this revolution, if anything. Isn’t it the same kind of thing that drove you out of Cuba?”

She looked at me for a long moment, and then shrugged her shoulders in a way that said she had nothing to lose by telling me the truth. “I am Cuban, si,” she said. “But I am not anti-Castro. I am one of those who bring our glorious revolution to this country.”

“Well, I’ll be damned! So the Cassandras were right. Old Fidel is exporting Communism throughout Latin America. Is he the one behind this revolution now?”

“You Yankees! You have the mind running only on the one track! A Castro in Cuba, and you blame the Russians. Now a revolution here, and you blame Castro. I wish it were true, but it isn’t. Castro has cooperated with the Dominican revolutionaries, but we have been unsuccessful in gaining control of the revolution. Of course we will keep trying. But the truth is that it is not of Castro’s making and it is not Communist. It is a genuine people’s revolt against the military junta of Trujillo-ites who overthrow the democratically elected government of the republic.”

“Then why are you, a Cuban Red, so concerned?”

“I told you, because we will cooperate with the revolutionaries until the time comes to seize power from them. Or, what is more likely, if the same old pattern is followed and you Yankees come to the aid of the landowners’ government, then the rebels will voluntarily relinquish power to us in exchange for our help. The United States may be our greatest ally in getting control of the rebellion. You will see.”

“But what about you, Dovita? Did you come here originally as some kind of undercover agent to help get the revolution started?”

“No. I come to keep track of the traitors who fled Cuba when Castro take power. Here, in this house, the anti-Castro prostitutes act as liaison for much counter-revolutionary activity. I keep tabs on them for when the day of reckoning comes. Now it is here.”

“That Consuela you mentioned before-—is she one of the anti-Castroites?”

“What kind of fool you take me for? Of course she is. You think I no guess that why you so anxious to contact her? I know her boyfriend just defect. I guess he have information for you. But you never get it, Mr. Victor. We get him first. Him and the girl, they both die. And you too, Mr. Victor. You too.”

“But not right away. I have the gun,” I reminded her.

“But we have the house now. You never get out alive.”

“If I die, I’ll make damn sure you die first,” I told her. I was getting irked with her threats.

“Then it will be so.” Her eyes were the ice-cold eyes of the zealot. “I do not matter.”

“Where will I find Consuela and Raoul Marti?” I asked her.

“I never tell you that. Torture me, kill me, I never tell.”

“Those aren’t bad ideas,” I mused, “but I don’t have the time. Right now, first things first. And the first item on the agenda is survival. Now, if you were me, how would you go about getting out of here alive?”

“If I was you, Mr. Victor, I would surrender to me.”

“Somehow, I don’t have any faith in your treatment of prisoners, Dovita, my love. Your finger gets a little too itchy when it’s wrapped around a trigger. So I think we’ll just keep things the way they are.”

There was a burst of machine-gun fire very close at hand. It seemed to come from the downstairs of the house. The rebels were getting close. Dovita smiled when she heard it.

I crawled across the floor to the door and inched it open. There were four guerillas working their way down the hallway. They would stop in front of each door. Two of them would break it down and spring back out of the line of fire. The other two would plunge into the doorways with their machine guns chattering. They were mopping up, and they weren’t stopping to ask any questions. It would only be a matter of minutes before they reached our door.

I crossed over to the window and raised my head cautiously. Immediately a rifle bullet pinged off the sill. I spotted a pair of snipers on the roof of the building across from us. I knew they’d nail me before I got one leg over the window ledge. That particular exit was definitely closed for the duration.

“You are trapped, Mr. Victor.” Dovita’s voice was exultant.

“When those apes hit this room, you won’t be so happy,” I reminded her. “You won’t get a chance to show your credentials. Those babies are out for blood, and they don’t much care whose it is.”

“Then we will indeed die together.”

“That kind of togetherness I can do without nicely, thank you.” My mind was racing, desperately trying to find a way out. But meanwhile the chatter of the guns was getting closer; the trap was closing. I had to act and act quickly. I had to take the long chance.

I grabbed Dovita and pulled her to her feet, twisting her arm behind her. I made her stand beside the door, out of the line of fire from the window. When I heard them kicking in the door of the room next door, I flung our door wide open.

The two gunners were just moving into the other doorway as I heaved Dovita at them. They swung around to fire, but she was between me and them. I dived over the bannister and I heard her scream behind me as the bullets tore through her body. It was a dirty trick, but it was her or me.

My sudden, twisting swan dive landed me belly-up atop a pair of rebels. The three of us went down in a sprawling mixup of arms and legs. I pulled one of them over on top of me just in time to catch the spray of bullets coming from the bozos leaning over the banister. He screamed and began bleeding all over me. I yanked his tommygun out of his grasp and fired at close range at the other rebel who was tangled up with us. His face dissolved, and I raised the gun and pointed it upstairs. The four gunsels up there backed off, out of sight. They pegged some shots at me and I returned their fire, but neither of us hit anything. Playing it safe the way they were, they were out of range.

I spotted a large, stout wooden table in the center of the hallway and made a dash for it. A spattering of bullets trailed me, but I made it. I crawled under it and settled myself with the tommygun in my lap.

“Good evening once again, Mr. Victor.” It was the madam. She’d been crouching under the table through-out.

“Hi. Nice spot you’ve picked out here.”

“I owe it all to you, Mr. Victor.” Surprisingly, she seemed less fluttery now than when I’d met her earlier in the evening. “Your sudden descent made it possible for me to get away from my captors.” She pointed to the two dead rebels on the floor across from us.

“They took you prisoner, huh? Surprising, considering the nasty mood these guys are in. I would have thought they’d simply kill you like everybody else.”

“No. They must have had orders to the contrary. You see, I’ve always been in very solidly with the government. They probably want me alive so they can torture me for information. A woman in my profession learns much which would be of interest to those trying to stage a coup.”

“Yes,” I said. “Like for instance the whereabouts of Raoul Marti.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “So that’s what you were really after,” she said. “I wondered. The man from O.R.G.Y. indeed!”

“Indeed!” I told her. “That part was true. But you’re right. It’s imperative that I find Marti before the rebels do. And I suspect that you can tell me where he is.”

“Certainly. He’s with Consuela.”

“And where would that be?”

“There’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you. They’re in the basement of this house. Marti has been hiding out there. Consuela paid me well to let him stay there. But it’s only a matter of time before the rebels find them there. There’s only one exit, and that leads into the house, and the house is surrounded.”

“Let’s get to them and—” I started to say. But just then one of the foursome upstairs tried to sneak down the steps. I fired a short burst and splattered parts of him over the runner. The fire was returned by the other three, but as long as we stayed under the table we were sheltered from their bullets.

I moved around in a small circle under the table, looking for the safest way to make a dash for it.

“Where does that doorway lead?” I asked the madam.

“To the kitchen.”

“And is that where the door to the cellar is?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s try for it. You crouch down in back of me, and when I run, you stay with me. Keep to my left, and that way we’ll present less of a target. If we take them by surprise, they won’t have time to really aim.”

“All right.” She did as I said. Then, just as I was poised to go, she broke into a giggle.

“What the hell is funny?” I asked.

“The view.” Despite the situation, she was positively simpering.

“What—-?” And then I realized. In my hurry to escape upstairs, I hadn’t paused to grab my pants. I was stark naked. And the “view” she was talking about was my bare bodkin poised for flight.

“I wasn’t dressed for a revolution,” I told her. “My apologies. And now, if you can control your mirth, what do you say we find out whether it’s easier for them to hit a nude target or a painted one?”

“That’s not very gentlemanly, Mr. Victor. I’ve always thought I applied make-up with discretion and I don’t think you--”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to insult you. Now will you for Pete’s sake just accept my apology and let’s get back to trying to stay alive. Are you ready?”

“I’m ready, Mr. Victor,” she said stiflly.

“Then let’s go!”

I jumped out from under the table and bolted. I ran in a crouch, as fast as I could. The madam kept up with me all the way. There was a tattoo of bullets in our wake, but somehow we made it into the kitchen.

I heard the footsteps racing down the stairs and knew they’d be right behind us. I pushed the madam through the cellar door and followed right behind her. It was a narrow staircase, and I stopped halfway down and waited for the door to open behind us. When it did, I fired a burst and there was a scream. A body tumbled down the stairs and nearly knocked me off my feet. The door was hastily closed. I grabbed the gun still clutched in the dead man’s hands and continued down to the cellar.

“He’s a friend,” the madam was explaining to the two young Cubans huddled there. “Mr. Victor, this is Consuela. And this is Raoul Marti.”

“Hi.” I tossed Marti the extra gun. “Better hold onto it,” I told him. “We’re going to have to fight our way out of here.”

“Raoul was ready to do that without a gun,” the girl told me. “We had decided that there would be no other choice.”

“I don’t see how,” the madam said. “They will have summoned help upstairs by now. They don’t even have to come down after us. All they have to do is wait us out.”

“Are you sure there’s no other way out of here?” I asked.

“That stairway to the kitchen is the only exit,” the madam assured me.

“How about windows?”

“There is one, but-—”

“I have already investigated it,” Marti interrupted. “There is a guard stationed there. You can see his feet.”

“Maybe we can overpower him,” I suggested.

“It wouldn’t do any good,” Marti sighed. “It leads to a courtyard that’s filled with rebels at the moment.”

Throughout this conversation, Consuela had been staring at me. Now she spoke. “Aren’t you chilly?” she asked irrelevantly.

“Sorry,” I said, remembering my nudity and rearranging the tommygun I was holding as best I could to cover it. “I was being entertained by a friend of yours when all this started.”

“What friend?” she asked curiously.

“Dovita,” I replied.

“Oh, that one! She is very unprofessional. She is so oversexed I think she would give it away.”

“Not any more she won’t,” I told Consuela. “I’m afraid she’s dead.”

“Oh.” Consuela didn’t exactly seem broken up at the news. “It served her right. She was a Castro spy, you know.”

“I found that out,” I said. “But how is it that you knew?”

“She was one of our contacts here,” Raoul told me. “Before I defected. When I did, I warned Consuela about her.”

“What did you do with the German?” I asked Raoul. I didn’t know whether either one of us would live through this, but it seemed sensible to find out what I could while I could.

“He was put on a ship to Barranquilla,” he told me without hesitation.

“Then he’s not in Santo Domingo. But why Barranquilla? And I hate to show my ignorance, but where the hell is that?”

“The reason, I don’t know. But Barranquilla is a small seaport on the coast of Colombia.”

“Is he a prisoner?” I asked.

“That’s hard to answer. He wasn’t treated like a prisoner. But Castro’s guards were always right beside him.”

“Did they go to Colombia with him?”

“Si.”

“This is all very interesting,” the madam interrupted, “but wouldn’t it be better if you gentlemen postponed this discussion and concentrated on getting us out of here?”

“But how can we get out?” Consuela asked. “We’re trapped.”

“I have checked,” Raoul echoed, “and there is no way out of this cellar except the stairs, or that window. And death awaits us by both routes.”

“I wonder why the devil I always seem to get myself trapped in basements,” I murmured, remembering the Cuban interlude.

“What?” The madam hadn’t quite heard me.

“Nothing,” I told her. There was no point in going into my recent history. I reflected briefly that, despite the professional status of the ladies, it was unlikely that this subterranean venture would yield such fruitful material for the O.R.G.Y. files as my last one had. There wasn’t a bottle of champagne in sight. And besides, there was all that hostility surrounding us and waiting to pounce.

I wandered around the cellar, hoping I might find something Raoul had missed. I did, in the form of a large furnace standing in the center of the cement floor. I strode over to it and opened the door. The dust of month-old ashes greeted me, making me cough.

Putting my hand over my mouth, I struck my head inside the furnace and craned it around so that I could look upward. A large tunnel of pipe angled toward the ceiling of the basement and then arched out of sight. I took my head out of the furnace and studied the pipe from the outside. It looked quite stout, and seemed to be made of some sort of iron alloy. “Do you have any idea where this might lead?” I asked the madam.

“No. Not really. Still, eventually it must reach the chimney, I suppose.”

“If it does, then we’ll have a chance of escaping,” I told them. “In any case, it’s our only chance.”

“You mean you want us to try to crawl through there?” The madam looked very dubious.

“It’s the only thing we can do.”

“But will it be wide enough for us to pass through?”

“Just about. It is at this end, anyway. Of course, it might narrow farther on. There’s no way of telling.”

“But if it does, won’t we get stuck up there?’

“It’s a possibility. But it’s a chance we just have to take.”

“But suppose we do get stuck! Then what?”

“Then nothing-—until Christmas,” I answered impatiently.

“Until Christmas? What do you mean?”

“I mean that when Santa comes down this particular chimney, what’s left of us will probably still be enough to provide a considerable roadblock,” I told her sarcastically. “Until then, I’d say the only other thing we might have to worry about is the possibility that somebody may decide to toast marshmallows. If that happens, things could get a little warm for us.”

“I don’t understand you, Mr. Victor.”

“Skip it. All I’m saying is this is the only possible way out. So let’s just get started and worry about all the catastrophic things that can happen when they happen.”

Raoul, the slenderest of us, went first. The madam followed, and then Consuela, with me bringing up the rear. There were two reasons why I went last. The first one was that I’d looped a tommygun to my ankle so that if there was any pursuit I might have a chance of discouraging it—always providing the pipe was wide enough for me to pull the gun up and manipulate it, of course. The second reason was that I had the widest shoulders of any of us, and if I did get stuck in the pipe, by being last I wouldn’t block off the escape route for the others.

The hardest part was angling up from the mouth of the furnace into the opening of the pipe itself. I rubbed a lot of skin off my torso just doing that. I’d attached a short piece of rope to the inside of the furnace door and I pulled it shut behind me and let the rope drop. Our pursuers would figure out our escape hatch sooner or later, but there was no point in making it easy for them.

I started inching upward then, lying on my back at the 45-degree angle of the pipe and using my feet as a lever to push me. By rolling my eyes as far up as they would go in their sockets, I could just make out Consuela’s legs above me. It was easier to see the furnace below, and I kept my eyes on it. If that door opened, I intended to pull up the tommygun and start shooting.

However, by the time Raoul reached what must have been the ceiling of the basement, there was still no sign of pursuit. “It is a very tight turn here,” he called down. “We must all slide down a little so that I can turn over on my belly to get past it. Then you must all do the same.”

When I reached the bend, I saw what he meant. It had been difficult for the rest of them to get past it. It was damn near impossible for me. The main obstacle was a ridge of iron where the pipes joined. With much grunting, by hunching my shoulders, I managed to pull through it. But that made me overconfident, and when I pulled the rest of my body through too fast, my rear end wedged in the juncture. I damn near unmanned myself before I managed to pull loose.

After that, though, it was easier for a while. The pipe went horizontally; as near as I could tell it was following the baseboard of the main room of the house. There were several smaller pipes branching off from it, but the main one, thank goodness, didn’t narrow. What it did do, after we’d crawled the horizontal length, was angle upward again.

There were two more such junctures and I rubbed my tail raw before the pipe ended in a wide, vertical, stone chimney. There was more room now, but climbing straight up was obviously going to be quite difficult. Raoul wisely called a halt so that we might rest before attempting it. He propped himself in the opening of the chimney. The rest of us were still strung out in the pipe. I was still bottom man, with Consuela just above me. That was the position when she made her delicate little announcement.

“I,” she said demurely, “have to go to the bathroom.”

“Why is it,” I wondered aloud, “that James Bond never seems to run into little predicaments like this?”

“I can’t help it,” Consuela said a little whinily. “I have to.”

“Well, you’ll just have to wait,” the madam told her in the tone of voice mothers reserve for little children on long automobile trips.

“I think we’d better move on,” Raoul said.

“And quickly,” I agreed squeamishly.

“I’ll try to wait,” Consuela promised.

“I’d very much appreciate that,” I told her.

Raoul pulled himself up in the chimney and braced his feet against the opposing walls. In this way he managed to make some upward progress. Then he braced his back against one wall and his feet against the other wall and reached down with one hand to pull the madam up. When she too had managed to wedge herself halfway up the chimney, I pushed up against Consuela from underneath—with some trepidation, I admit—until she was braced in a similar position. Then I managed to move upward into the mouth of the chimney myself.

Raoul reached the top and pulled the madam up beside him. When she jumped down to the roof, he pulled Consuela up and she followed. Then Raoul jumped to the roof, and a moment later I joined them there.

Just as my feet hit it, there was a burst of gunfire from an adjoining roof. The four of us fell flat, and then crawled behind the chimney to get as much cover as was possible. I heard the sound of footsteps coming up from the stairwell below us.

I spotted the trapdoor which must lead to the stairwell. It was made of some kind of heavy metal. There was an iron crossbar which could be slid into place to latch it. But it wasn’t latched now. I inched across the roof to the trapdoor.

When I reached it, I flung it open and fired blindly down the stairs. There were screams and curses and the sound of at least one body falling. I slammed the trapdoor shut and slid the crossbar into place. That would hold them for a while. Then I ducked another burst of sniper fire and rejoined my three companions behind the chimney.

“They have us pinned here.” Raoul put the obvious into words.

“How about the roof on the other side?” I peered into the darkness behind us.

“Nothing coming from there yet,” the madam observed.

Raoul crawled over to the edge of the roof and then back to us. “It’s a long jump,” he said, “but I think I can make it. I have had experience with such leaps when running from the police as a boy in Havana.”

“What about the ladies?” I asked him.

“Never.” He shook his head. “Nor you, Mr. Victor. I doubt that you could make it. You are not so light and small as I am.”

I crawled back to the edge of the roof with him and saw that he was right. I know my own limitations. I could never have leaped that distance. And it was three long stories to the ground.

“There is a clothesline over there,” Raoul observed. “If I jump successfully, I can toss it back. Then we can secure it at both ends and you three can cross hand over hand.”

It looked risky as hell, but there was no other choice. The three of us crouched in the shadow of the chimney as Raoul tensed himself to run and jump. He sprang as though he’d been fired form a cannon, shot across the roof and dived into the air. A crackle of sniper fire pinged at his heels.

Raoul fell short of the neighboring roof. His toes grazed the edge and then his body plunged downward. Somehow he managed to grab the edge with one hand as he fell and he hung onto it. Sitting there, able to do nothing but watch, my own muscles tensed as he painstakingly tried to pull himself up.

He managed to secure a grip with his other hand on the edge of the roof. Now he was trying to chin himself with both hands. A flashlight beam shot up at him from the courtyard below. I could see the tendons of his arms stand out in its glow. Inch by inch he managed to raise himself until his shoulders were level with the rooftop. Just then the rebels in the courtyard began shooting at him.

I raced over to the edge of the roof and shot back at them with the tommygun. I aimed at the light, and I hit it. Just as it went out, I saw Raoul successfully heave himself up onto the roof.

A moment later he’d cut the clothesline loose. He weighted one end of it with a brick and tossed it to me. We both secured the rope, leaving just a little slack, and then I tossed the brick back to him with the excess rope attached to it. He tied that, and now there was a double strand of stout rope running between the two rooftops. Whether it would be strong enough to support the weight of a human being, the next few moments would tell.

The madam was the first to try it. Raoul and I both used our weight to anchor the ends, and the gutsy madam pulled herself across. She was lucky. Beneath her they hadn’t yet come up with another light, and there was no attempt to fire on her. They were still sniping at me from the other roof, but that couldn’t be helped. I just crouched as low as I could and trusted to the shadows to hamper their aim.

Now it was Consuela’s turn. She hesitated just a moment before she started. “I still have to go to the bathroom,” she told me a little shamefacedly.

“If the impulse strikes you while you’re crossing, don’t hesitate for an instant,” I advised her. “There are only enemies below.”

She started across. Suddenly a flashlight beam shot up again and caught her. Shots rang out. Nature took over and Consuela relieved herself. Just before I fired and knocked out the second flashlight, I heard the disgusted cries of “Caramba!”--and some stronger curses which defy translation-—from the courtyard below. And then she was safely on the other side.

Now it was my turn. I tied the tommygun to my ankle so I’d have both hands free, and started across. But I was much heavier than either of the two women. Halfway across, the rope suddenly gave, and abruptly tore loose from its mooring on the roof I’d left. I went hurtling into space.

Raoul must have grabbed the other end and braced it solidly. Holding onto the rope for dear life, I was caught up short before I’d plummeted more than one story. I dangled there for a moment, too surprised at still being alive to think of what to do next.

Then I felt the rope being tugged from above, and I realized that the three of them must be trying to pull me up. I began climbing as they pulled. I might have made it, too, if a window hadn’t suddenly opened in the house I’d just left and a rebel hadn’t started spraying bullets at me. I kicked out at the wall, and with the momentum the movement gave me I swung around in a wide arc, thus presenting a moving target which would be harder for him to hit.

The maneuver worked. It threw his aim off, all right. But, unfortunately, it had another result. It put an additional strain on the rope where it pressed against the edge of the roof. Just as I hit the widest point of the arc, the rope parted—and once again I plunged into blackness.

This time there was nothing to hold on to. There was nothing but air between me and the ground below. The daring young man on the flying trapeze had lost his trapeze. So now there was nothing to do but fly through the air with the greatest of ease and wait for the ground to come up and hit me. I knew I wouldn’t have long to wait!

CHAPTER EIGHT

THAT ARC I’d swung myself into was all that saved me. Instead of falling straight down, it gave me just enough momentum so that my plunge was angled toward the side of the building I’d been trying to reach. Even so, if Fate hadn’t branded a four-leaf clover on my rump, I would have bounced off the brick wall and kept falling. The fall might not have killed me, but it sure would have snapped too many wishbones for me to put up much of a fight against the rebels below.

However, that four-leaf clover was still stamped valid. Instead of brick, the arc propelled me through a window. I crashed through the glass in an unintentional swan dive, picking up enough slivers of glass in my naked torso to make me look like a china porcupine, and sprawled neatly atop the covers of a large double bed. Dazed, I stayed put. For the umptieth time in the past couple of hours, I wished I’d had enough sense to grab some clothes before I’d fled Dovita’s room. These gymnastics were getting to be damned uncomfortable with my bare bun so vulnerable.

I had no time to dwell on it. The covers beneath me were alive with vigorous and outraged movement. Up near the pillow a head popped out and a man began screaming at me in a torrent of Spanish rage. A second later another man’s head worked itself free of the covers at the foot of the bed and joined in the refrain of curses raining down on me.

“Sorry. Sorry.” I kept repeating in Spanish.

Finally they calmed down a little. The first fellow-— the one whose head was up near the pillows—was demanding an explanation. What, he wanted to know, was the big idea of crashing in on them in this way? Why hadn’t I used the door? And where were my clothes?

I tried to explain to him that there was a revolution going on.

He became very excited again. They knew about the revolution, he told me. But they were not involved. They were non-political. Strictly non-political. They took no sides. All they wanted was to be left alone. They didn’t want to get involved.

There was a lot more of this, and while it was going on, I took stock of my two unwilling hosts. The one up by the pillows sported a pomaded hairdo that might well have started a style with the suburban housewives of Westchester County. The one at the foot of the bed gave off an aura of perfume worthy of a French courtesan. Both of them talked from the wrist. And, since their wrists were exceedingly limp, I wasn’t surprised that their Spanish was marked with the most effeminate of lisps.

No doubt about it. I’d leaped straight into a little fairy hutch. The two of them were fruitier than twin nutcakes. And judging from certain telltale bulges under the sheets, I’d interrupted them in the process of gathering their rosebuds. Well, being the man from O.R.G.Y., I’m more tolerant than most when it comes to the gay sex. But I still had a qualm or two about finding myself naked in bed with a pair of lusting homos. I only hoped that the slivers of glass protruding from my rear would keep them from getting any ideas about persuading me to join their little tête-à-tête.

There was a sudden loud knocking at the door to the room. Hastily, I dived under the covers and found myself between the two Dominican pansies. I ducked my head as the door was flung open.

“Where is the man who came through this window?” a voice shouted in Spanish from the doorway.

Quickly, my hands groped under the twin tents erected by my hosts’ lust. I took a firm grip on the balloons at the base of the center-poles and squeezed gently by way of warning. They got the message.

“He ran right out the door,” one of them told the rebel. “He was in a great hurry.”

“After him!” the rebel shouted. The door slammed behind him and there was the clatter of boots fading away down the hallway.

“They’re gone. You can come out now.”

I relinquished my groiny holds and came out from under the covers.

“Oh, damn!” one of them said. “Why did you let go?”

“Now stop that!” the other said jealously. “You’re flirting with him.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Believe me, I don’t want to come between you two gentlemen.”

“It’s not your fault,” the pomaded one assured me. “It’s just that he’s an alley cat. He simply can’t help making passes at any man he meets.”

“Look who’s calling who an alley cat!” his aromatic bedmate retorted. “You hypocrite! I saw the way you were looking at him before. You were all but licking your lips! It was disgusting!”

“How dare you? You bitch!”

“You just watch out who you’re calling names! I’ll scratch your eyes out!”

“Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! So there!”

“Oo-oo-oh! You make me so mad I could—!”

“Go ahead! Just you try it! I don’t know what I ever saw in a shrew like you anyway!”

“Shrew! That did it!”

Long nails reached across me and raked the cheek under the pomaded pompadour. There was a squeal as the hand was grabbed and bitten. A moment later I felt as if I’d been thrown into a cage of screeching, scratching pussycats.

Somehow I managed to separate them. “Now look, girls—uh, fellows -- I don’t want to be a party-poop, but I’m afraid I can’t hang around for the main event. There’s this revolution going on out there, and I have things to attend to. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll be going now.”

“Well, go ahead,” the sweet-smelling one said nastily. “We didn’t ask you to drop by in the first place. You just intruded yourself in here and caused a lot of trouble. I know your type!”

“Oh, don’t mind him,” Curlylocks told me. “He’s insecure, but he’ll just have to learn to get over it. You don’t really have to leave. Stay a while and he’ll calm down, and then the three of us can have a real party.” He batted his long eyelashes at me.

“No thanks!” I jumped out of the bed as I felt an intimate hand under the covers. “I’d like to oblige, but aside from anything else, I have all these inhibitions. But I wonder if I could ask one favor from you before I leave.”

“Of course, sweetie. Anything at all.”

“Could you lend me some clothes?”

“But of course.” The one with the greasy kid stuff crowning his coiffure got out of bed and crossed over to a closet.

The other one stayed in the bed and sulked for a moment. But then he got interested in the clothing the other one was selecting for me and joined him. They chattered away about styles and fashions for all the world like two buyers at a Dior fashion show. Finally they reached some agreement and came back to me with some garments.

I was still trying to pull the slivers of glass out of my hide. Curlylocks noticed and insisted on helping me. I didn’t trust his motivations, but I was in no position to turn down any offer of help. So—nervously—I lay down on my belly and let him prospect. His fingers were very light, and he seemed to enjoy his work.

“He loves me . . . He loves me not . . .” he chanted in Spanish, pulling petals of glass from my rear end.

The other duzy watched and giggled.

Finally, I was de-glassed and I got up and put on the clothes they’d provided me. Open sandals with jazzy scrollwork, skin-tight, bright red Capris—-the kind of pants Calypso dancers wear—a yellow and green striped shirt that was even brighter than the pants and had flowing sleeves, and, to top it off, a straw hat with a gay rainbow ribbon wrapped around it and dangling over the brim. It was an outfit I normally wouldn’t have been caught dead in, but I suppose it beat walking around naked.

My two couturiers were delighted with the sartorial result. They stood back and oohed and ahhed and clapped their hands. “Isn’t he just gorgeous!” the scented senor exclaimed.

“Simply beautiful!” the other agreed.

The way their eyes were glowing as they stared at me, I was beginning to feel like an hors d’oeuvre set in front of a pair of starving Armenians. “Muchas gracias,” I told them and edged toward the door. They fluttered along with me, both of them now coaxing me to stay. They were right behind me when I opened the door and stepped cautiously out into the hallway.

My timing was perfect. Raoul, Consuela and the madam were just tiptoeing down the staircase from the roof. They looked genuinely happy to see me.

However, my two effeminate buddies behind me seemed anything but happy to see them. “Women!” one of them muttered indignantly. “Wouldn’t you know it,” the other added. “He’s not one of us at all!” The first one put his arm around the other’s shoulders and turned him back toward the bedroom. “Disgusting!” he proclaimed. “Well, if he prefers females . . .” The door slammed shut behind them.

“Who are your friends?” the madam asked. “They don’t seem to like us.”

“It’s a long story and I haven’t time to explain,” I told her. “Let’s get out of here while we still can.”

“Are you thinking of joining the Steel Band or something?” she asked, eyeing my costmne. “You’re certainly a sight to impress the tourists.”

“It’s the latest thing in Caribbean beachwear,” I answered. “Now come on. Let’s go.”

We crept down the rest of the stairs. There was one rebel guard at the foot. He had his back to us. Raoul caved in his skull with the butt of the tommygun. And then we were outside.

To the north we could hear the sounds of battle raging as the rebels attacked the government buildings held by the junta in power. Still farther north was my hotel, where I hoped Victoria Winters and Alan Foster would still be waiting for me. The action seemed to have pretty much swept past us and it was relatively calm where we were now. This gave us a chance to discuss what our next move should be.

The madam had friends who would-hide her and Consuela in this part of the city, and it was decided that they would remain there. But I very much wanted to get back to my hotel and put Vickie and Foster on the trail of the German. And I wanted to bring Marti with me so that we might pick his brain at our leisure. Fortunately, he agreed to accompany me.

We decided it would be foolish to attempt to get through the lines of battle. If the rebels didn’t get us, then the junta troops would. This was one night when nobody would stop to ask which side you were on. Nor would they respect neutrality. The smell of blood was thick in the air and every man was both a potential killer and a potential victim. So, somehow, we had to circumvent the revolution.

Raoul came up with a plan for accomplishing this. His idea was simple. He proposed that we go in the opposite direction from the battle to the fishing wharves. Here we would steal a boat and travel by water along the coastline in the general direction of Haiti. At some point, whenever it seemed relatively safe, we’d beach the boat and head back toward Santo Domingo through the jungle. Thus we’d come on the city from the northern side, hopefully before that district became embroiled in the battle.

So we bid the ladies goodbye and started for the docks. We got there without incident and began prowling the waterfront looking for a dinghy with the oars in it, a boat that hadn’t been chained to its mooring by its owner. Finally we found one. It was secured by a rope which Raoul cut. We got in and then, as quietly as he could, Raoul began rowing out of the harbor.

It wasn’t quietly enough. Before he’d taken more than a few strokes, a fisherman appeared on the docks and began shouting after us excitedly in Spanish. Others joined him and the shouts grew to a furious hubbub. Then one of them gestured and the whole group began to move.

They had realized that no matter how hard Raoul and I rowed, the tide would carry us very close to the point of a jetty protruding out into the water. Now they were racing down the jetty, obviously intending to intercept us.

I pulled on those oars with all my strength, and so did Raoul. But the tide was too powerful, and no matter how hard we tried it kept pulling us toward the rocks. As we came abreast of them, the group of fishermen went into action.

They’d armed themselves with harpoon spears. Now they loosed them at us in a fusillade. We both fell flat in the boat, Lady Luck stayed with us, and neither of us was hit.

But two of the missiles had lodged in the flooring of the dinghy, and now the fishermen were tugging at the ropes attached to them in an effort to pull us close enough so they could get their hands on us. Their fury was their strength, and they might have succeeded if Raoul hadn’t reacted so quickly. While I was vainly trying to pull the harpoons free, he used more sense and quickly cut the ropes attached to them. By now the fishermen were practically hovering over us, poised to jump. Raoul slammed an oar into the belly of the man in front. As he fell back against the others, we both began to row furiously. It worked, and then we were out of range and they could do nothing but stand there shaking their fists and shouting curses after us.

I guess we rowed steadily for more than an hour. We hugged the coastline. Then, when the lights of Santo Domingo had been lost to us for about half of that hour, we made for shore and beached the boat.

Now we walked along the dunes searching the wall of jungle for a path that might lead back toward the northern border of the city. After a while, we found an opening that looked like it might be such a trail. We had to take a chance on it. If it ran out, then we’d just have to retrace our steps back to the beach. It would be impossible to get through that impenetrable jungle at night without a well-worn trail to follow.

Even as it was, following the trail was no cinch. The only light we had to guide us was the moon overhead. The path wound so much we couldn’t be sure we were going in the right direction. And vines, branches and brambles tripped us up and assaulted our bodies every step of the way. Pretty soon the sharpy outfit I’d borrowed from the two gay boys was in tatters. My skin, like Raoul’s, was covered with scratches and bruises and insect bites.

But the worst was yet to come. We heard it before we saw it. A rhythmic, eerie cacophony of human voices that sounded anything but human. It stopped us in our tracks. It hummed and it screamed, it whispered and it swelled, it was both musical and dissonant. Throughout there was a steady, ominous, maddening drumbeat lending body to the noise.

Raoul saw the question in my eyes. “Voodoo,” he explained tersely. “It couldn’t be anything else.”

We went forward a few more yards until we reached a bend in the trail. Cautiously, we peered around it. We could see that the path widened into a large clearing. There was a fire in the center of this clearing. Against its brightness, the figures circling it looked like shadows. It was impossible to tell how many there were.

“Do you think the trail continues on the other side?” I asked Raoul.

“We can only guess.”

“Is there any chance they might let us pass peacefully?”

“Very doubtful. From what I know of the followers of voodoo, they’re fanatic about keeping their rituals secret. Men have been killed for trespassing on their privacy.”

“Maybe we can sneak around them,” I suggested.

“Not likely. In this jungle they’d hear us before we went three feet.”

“Well, we can’t just sit here. What are we going to do?”

“A good question, Mr. Victor. But I’m afraid I don’t have any answer. Except-—-”

“Except?”

“Except that I am sure that the most prudent thing we can do is to simply turn around and go back the way we came.”

“That’s ridiculous! We’ll never get to Santo Domingo at that rate.”

“So we won’t get to Santo Domingo.” Raoul shrugged. “I’d rather stay alive.”

“No!” I objected excitedly. “We can’t—”

The reason I didn’t finish the sentence was that at that moment the decision was taken out of our hands. One of the dancing shadows had spotted us. It detached itself from the main group and came to the edge of the clearing to peer down the trail. Then a shout was loosed and the shadow was running toward us with others close behind. Raoul and I bolted down the trail.

Not soon enough. It only took one vine in our path to stop the two of us. Raoul, in the lead, tripped over it, and I sprawled over him. By the time we were on our feet again, they were on us.

They dragged us back to the clearing. Here a tall man with copper skin and Indian features detached himself from the others and confronted us. He rattled off some words in a patois that neither Raoul nor I understood. When we didn’t answer, he grew angry and shouted an order at a stocky ebony-skinned man behind us. Immediately a small club was slammed into my kidneys, and then the blow was repeated on Raoul. We both reacted the same way—we grunted with pain and we fell to our knees.

Again the leader rattled off some jargon at us. Again our failure to reply enraged him. Again the stocky black man took a step toward us. I steeled myself for the blow I was sure was coming.

But his hand was stayed by the intervention of a girl who stepped between him and us. She spoke to the leader in the same patois and then turned to us. “I have explained that you don’t understand the dialect,” she said. She spoke the words in English with just the lilting trace of a French accent.

“Thanks.” I looked at her curiously.

Her skin was neither ebony, nor copper-toned, but rather a delicate pink-and-white, like the flush of newly opened rose petals. She was young -- in her early twenties I would have judged—and quite beautiful in a fragile way. Her body was slender and covered with a simple white blouse and a rather long flowered peasant skirt. Her face was a perfect oval, delicately sculpted with high cheekbones and a small, straight nose. She wore no make-up, but her lips were naturally red and shaped in a small, sultry pout. Her eyes were blue-green in the firelight. She wore a handkerchief over her head and the tendril of hair escaping from it was a deep shade of reddish brown. She looked like a European, rather than a native.

Now she crossed her arms over her small breasts in a gesture of sympathy and told Raoul and me that we were in a serious predicament. Drily, I replied that we’d managed to figure that out for ourselves. What, I asked her, did she suggest we do to extricate ourselves from it?

“It is not possible,” she said sadly.

“What will be done with us?”

“That is for Pietro to say.” She gestured toward the tall Indian.

“Well, how about asking him?”

“It will do no good. He will decide only when he is ready.”

She seemed friendly, and I decided to capitalize on that. It looked like Raoul and I could use any friends we could get. “What’s your name?” I asked her.

“Simone Duprez. And you?”

“I’m Steve Victor and this is Raoul Marti. Tell me, Simone, what are you doing here?”

“I belong.” She said it simply, as though it explained everything.

“You mean you’re a member of this cult? You practice voodoo?”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“I believe in it.” Her face took on an other-worldly expression and her eyes shone as she said it.

“But you’re not a native.”

“No. I am French. But there are many Caucasians who participate in our rites. The idea that voodoo is only for the Indian, or the Negro, is untrue. Actually, our form of worship was founded by a Frenchman—- Charles Vaudoux—-and ‘voodoo’ is really just another form of his name¹⁴ . The original believers were the French settlers of this island. It was they who spread our gospel to the native Indian slaves and later to the African slaves who were brought here to work the plantations.”

“Very interesting. And just exactly what is it that you believe?” I was trying to get some glimmering of their rites to determine what might be in store for Raoul and myself.

“You will see.” Simone was prevented from saying anything else by Pietro, the chief. Throughout this dialogue, he’d been standing by impatiently. Now he said something to her which was evidently an order to leave. As she moved off, he addressed the little band of men circling us. They dragged us off to the side of the clearing and sat us down there. A few of them stood behind us with clubs and knives to prevent us from trying to escape.

The voodoo ritual was about to begin. It seemed we were to be privileged to watch it. But just what part we might be called on to play was something we could only guess at. Raoul, whispering his apprehension to me, seemed to feel that the price of admission would be our lives.

The drumming continued. It had never stopped. It wasn’t any louder, but I was noticing it more now. That methodical beat might well be our death knell!

Now the participants formed two rough circles around the fire. The inner circle was made up of men. They had their backs to the flames. All of them were bare from the waist up. From the waist down there was a variety of garb ranging from loincloths to Bermuda shorts and ordinary trousers. All were barefoot, as were the women. And, like the women, the men’s circle was composed of a variety of colors and ethnic characteristics, with darker skins in the majority, but quite a few whites with decidedly Caucasian features also present.

The circle of women faced them. All wore simple outfits similar to Simone’s. All wore handkerchiefs on their heads. Their bodies moved in time to the drum- beat, swaying toward the men, and then away from them. Slowly, they began a chant which was unintelligible to me. It swelled in volume for a moment, and then stopped. Immediately, the men picked it up and chanted back at them.

This alternating chorus continued for a while, and each time it grew louder in pitch the women came closer and closer to the men. Suddenly, in the center of the circle, seeming to spring out of the flames, Pietro appeared. His body was smeared with dung. I knew it was dung because the odor reached me clearly. In each hand he held a live chicken by the neck. The chickens were squawking and flapping their wings frantically. But he kept a tight grip and waved them around in gestures that seemed to be a proscribed part of the ritual. The men had turned away from the women now and their circle grew smaller as it tightened around Pietro.

A large kettle stood beside the fire, inside the circle of men, and as the rite progressed, I saw some of the men dip their hands into it as they danced past. They smeared the contents over their bodies, and I guessed that the kettle contained more dung. When all of them were covered with it, they began to vie with one another—-still dancing—-to get closer to Pietro.

After a moment, it became obvious what they were after. Evidently, it would be an honor to have him bestow a live chicken on one of them. Finally he did, and the circle drew back to observe the actions of the chosen one.

It was a white man, fair-haired, with Nordic features. He swung the live bird over his head for a moment as his dance reached a frenzied pitch. Then he brought the bird down and his head darted forward. His teeth ripped at the bird’s neck and tore out its throat. He threw back his head and the bird’s blood poured into his open mouth. Beside me I heard Raoul gag audibly; I gagged right along with him.

Now the circle of men disintegrated and the circle of dancing women closed in on Pietro. The ritual was repeated until he handed one of the women—an Indian -- the remaining bird. She did as the man had done and then, just as he had, she tore at the carcass of the still-warm bird, seemingly bent on devouring flesh, feathers, bones-—-everything.

When she was through, the Nordic man joined her beside the fire. The circle of women fell back and inter-mingled with the men. The couple danced together in a highly erotic fashion for a moment. Then they embraced and sank down to the earth in each other’s arms. Pietro stood directly over them, looking down benignly as they commenced making love.

Then it all started over again, proceeding until another couple were similarly engaged. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth. Each time the ritual grew shorter, until Pietro seemed to be merely handing out the chickens at random to men and women alike. All slaughtered them in the same way, drank the blood, ravaged the carcasses with their mouths, and then joined the orgy of love-making.

At the point where it seemed that everybody was involved, Simone appeared beside me again. Her garments were splattered with chicken blood and dung, although she hadn’t as yet been “chosen.” Her face was burning with a fanatic fever and there were drops of saliva at the corners of her mouth. The very way she held herself made her body seem aflame with erotic desire.

“Watch,” she said. “Now it is my turn. Pietro will honor me with something special. I am to serve the voodoo god himself.” And then she was gone, before I could ask her what she meant.

But I soon found out. At a signal from Pietro, the orgy ceased and the couples squatted in a large semi-circle behind the fire. Pietro drew Simone out in front of this grouping and she too sat down cross-legged. Even from across the clearing I could see her trembling with anticipation.

Pietro snapped his fingers and someone handed him a small bamboo cage. From it he withdrew a tiny infant monkey. He presented this to Simone.

She played with the baby animal for a few moments, caressing and petting it. Then she bent forward and her teeth tore its throat open. She threw her head back and drank the blood. Then she nibbled on the still quivering carcass and finally tossed it aside.

Again Pietro approached her. This time he carried a large wicker basket. He handed Simone the basket and moved well away from her. She took off the lid and reached inside it. I blanched when I saw what she came with.

It was a fer-de-lance, over seven feet long, its tongue spitting venom from between its poisonous fangs. I know something about snakes, and I knew that this one was a member of what is probably the most deadly species in the world. It’s a close relative of the North American rattlesnake, but without the rattle. Its bite is always fatal, and it will bite anything it can. It becomes particularly vicious when incensed by fresh blood. There was a lot of fresh blood smeared over Simone’s clothing and flesh.

I watched, aghast, as she held the writhing reptile in her two hands. One of her hands had it just under the jaws and I could see that her fingers gripped it in a way that would prevent it from biting. Even so, she was flirting with fanged death, and the least slip would make her its victim.

She moved with the snake now in a ritualistic fashion similar to the way in which Pietro had moved with the chickens. Then she held the snake straight out with one hand while its body coiled around her arm. With her other hand, she loosed the cord at the bodice of her blouse.

Her small, pert breasts sprang into view, their tips purplish and distended. They glowed with a fine dew of perspiration. And they fluttered enticingly with the rapid rise and fall of her breathing.

She drew the snake to her bosom. She manipulated it until its head was lodged in the deep cleft between her breasts. Then she released its head. The poison fangs darted for one of her nipples. Astoundingly, the breast alone seemed to move in a quick blur that put it just out of reach of the deadly fangs. When the fer-de-lance reversed itself and went for the other breast, she repeated her response in a truly astonishingly display of muscular control.

Simone must have kept it up for five minutes. I was sure she’d never survive it, but she did. She never touched the monster with her hands. She simply clutched it with her breasts and manipulated it so that the fangs kept missing her by the barest fractions of an inch. Finally she picked it up again and held it away from her.

I breathed a sigh of relief. It was premature. What was to follow was even more fantastic.

Still squatting cross-legged, Simone lifted the hem of her long skirt and prodded the fer-de-lance under it. When the entire length of the serpent had vanished there, she tucked the skirt back under her legs so that it was completely hidden and started to rock back and forth on her haunches. Her eyes stared blindly as her movements quickened into a frantic and erotic sort of writhing.

A sort of low moaning sound came from the onlookers. I didn’t look at them. I was hardly aware of them. I couldn’t take my eyes off Simone.

There was no mistaking the hideous sexuality which had hold of her body. Whatever that deadly monster was doing under her skirts it was eliciting rapture rather than fear from her. How, considering the erotic trance she was in, Simone kept it from biting her, I have no idea. But she did—right up to and including the moment when she was seized by a long spasm of exploding passion.

And then it was over. Simone removed the fer-de-lance and replaced it in the wicker basket. She placed the cover on the basket. One of the men detached him- self from the crowd of onlookers and took the basket from her. Simone remained where she was, bathed in perspiration, still staring straight ahead from unseeing eyes.

Pietro came forth and loomed over her, his body jerking about in a ritualistic fashion. It was obvious that he was working up to having sex with her. But something else came first.

Me!

That’s right. The something else was me. It happened so fast I had no time to fathom the part I was meant to play in the voodoo rite.

Four of the men lifted me by my arms and legs and carried me over to where Pietro was sing-songing his mumbo-jumbo over Simone. When they got there they began tossing my body about in a proscribed fashion. Horror filled me as I realized it was the same pattern of movements that the chickens had been put through!

A moment later I realized that my fate was to be the same. As they held me off the ground, Pietro grasped my head, his claw-like fingers tangling in my hair and digging into my scalp. His blood-smeared face hovered over me for a moment and then swooped down. His mouth was open, the lips drawn back over teeth filed down to razor sharpness.

Those teeth lunged straight for my jugular vein!

CHAPTER NINE

RAOUL SAVED ME. He took advantage of the fact that those who were supposed to be guarding him had shifted their attention to Pietro’s intended sacrifice— me. Just as those voodoo teeth were going for my throat, he grabbed a spear and sent it hurtling with deadly accuracy toward Pietro. It caught the high priest squarely in the back and his weight went sprawling over me.

The suddenness of it made the four who’d been holding me let go. I landed atop Simone, and she and I and the corpse rolled around in a tangle of arms and legs on the ground. Meanwhile Raoul had valiantly grabbed another spear and was holding off his erstwhile guards. The main body of voodoo worshippers was still too stunned by the rapid turn of events to take any action.

I took advantage of this to scramble over to the fire and grab a stout, burning torch. The four who’d been holding me got with it now and started to close in on me. I swung the torch and the live flame seared across the eyes of one of them. He fell back, screaming. I grabbed another torch and swung the two of them in tandem. The other three retreated in the face of my flaming assault.

I darted to the left of them and zigzagged over to Raoul. He was surrounded by about four of them now, and they were closing in for the kill. But I’d moved so quickly and they were so intent on Raoul that they didn’t see me coming. Two of them wore loincloths, and as I swept past behind them, I ignited the loose-hanging garments.

Their screams rang out as I caught a third square in the belly with one of the torches. Raoul plunged his spear deep into the other one’s guts and sprinted down the trail behind us. The other voodoo addicts were just starting to rush us as I followed.

The trail was narrow here, and I quickly judged that the wind was right. I ignited the foliage on both sides as I fled, and after about a quarter of a mile there was a flaming holocaust in my wake. As long as the wind didn’t shift, there would be a wall of flame between us and our pursuers. I tossed my two torches back into the fiery underbrush and caught up with Raoul.

“You must lead a charmed life,” he told me in Spanish.

“It’s a life you saved,” I told him. “Thanks.”

“No thanks necessary. It was obvious that I would be next on the menu. I simply acted when I saw the opportunity.”

“Well, thanks anyway.” I fell silent for a moment and then asked him if he thought we were heading right for Santo Domingo.

“Si. I can tell from the stars. We’ll be all right if this trail continues as it is.”

Luck stayed with us, and the trail led us straight to the outskirts of the city. The morning sun was well up by the time we got there. I’d expected junta soldiers to be guarding the perimeter of the city, but I was wrong. I learned later that they were all busy fighting off the rebels on the other side of town. So Raoul and I reached my hotel without incident.

Victoria Winters and Alan Foster were out on the balcony running between Victoria’s room and mine. Victoria saw us first. “Steve!” she hailed me, leaning over the balcony as we plodded wearily up the street. “We’d given you up for dead.”

“Like they say, the reports of my death were greatly exaggerated.”

“We were sure the rebels must have you. There’s a decidedly murderous attitude toward Yankees in that part of town, from what I hear.”

“Hey, Steve,” Foster chimed in, “where’d you get the froufrou outfit?” He was laughing .at the multicolored rags the clothing I’d borrowed had become.

“It’s a long story,” I told him.

“Well, if you’ll do a little dance for us there, I’m sure the folks in the hotel will be glad to throw you a few centimes.”

“Very funny. But do you mind if we continue this fun-fest upstairs? I’m beginning to feel a little conspicuous.”

“Sure. Come on up.”

Raoul and I drew a lot of stares passing through the lobby, but we ignored them. Once upstairs, I let him have first crack at the shower while I went out to talk to Vickie and Foster. The S.O.B. had his arm conspicuously around her when I came out, but I did my best to ignore this flaunting of their intimacy. I told them what I’d learned from Raoul Marti about the German scientist having been taken to Barranquilla. I told Foster that I thought he should make arrangements for us to go there as quickly as possible.

“That’s going to be easier said than done the way things are right now,” he replied. “All my contacts have been snafued by this topsy-turvy revolution.”

“What’s been happening?” I asked him.

“Right about now, our government’s in the process of landing troops,” he told me.

“What for?” I asked, surprised.

“To help the government put down the Communist revolution,” Foster told me without inflection.

“But is it a Red-dominated rebellion?” I asked.

“No. But the feeling is that there’s a good chance the Commies might take it over.”

“But do we have the right to suppress it because of that chance?”

“Might,” Foster reminded me, “makes right. The U.S. can’t take the chance of a second Commie nation in this hemisphere.”

“We might not have had a first one,” I told him, “if we hadn’t been so willing to support the Batista government in Cuba. It was obviously tyrannical. And the junta that overthrew Juan Bosch here has been just as tyrannical. They were trying their damnedest to turn the clock back to the Trujillo days and establish the kind of iron-fist rule that would be most profitable for them and hell for the Dominican people. So, naturally, the people are rebelling. And I don’t doubt that the Commies are trying to gain control of the revolution. But if you ask me, our intervention will be playing right into their hands.”

“Look, Steve, I’m not trying to start a political argument with you. I don’t make policy. I’m just telling you what I’ve been told will happen. We’re just going to land troops to keep the peace.”

“To put down the revolution and help keep the junta in power, you mean.”

“Maybe. And maybe just long enough to stabilize the situation so the Commies can’t take over. My guess is that eventually some sort of international force will be brought in to act as a buffer between the rebels and the junta government. Meanwhile, our troops will establish some sort of international zone between them. And to do that, they have to back up the junta forces. Other- wise the rebels might swamp them and the revolution would be a fait accompli with Castro commies and home-grown commies in a damn good position to seize power. But let’s drop it, shall we? The only thing that really concerns us right now is that any cooperation we want as far as getting out of Santo Domingo and to Colombia will have to come from the junta government. And that’s something I’m going to have to start working on right away.”

Foster did just that, and he did it speedily and efficiently. By the time I’d had a shower, a meal and a nap, he was back with results in the form of one Captain Ponce Mendoza. The Captain was a mucky-muck in the junta government. He was willing to use his authority to place a plane at our disposal and had offered his own services as pilot.

Yes, he was very helpful. Too helpful. It made me suspicious. “What’s this joker’s angle?” I took Foster aside to ask him the question.

“I’m not sure,” he answered honestly. “We can’t be too particular in the CIA, you know. We work with whoever’s handy and we don’t ask for a pedigree.”

“He’s too damn eager. What’s in it for him?”

“Well, money for one thing. We arrived at a nice gentlemanly price for his influence. Still, I agree with you. He came too cheaply and too easily.”

“Do you really think we can trust him?”

“Not as far as we can throw him. But we don’t have any choice. I don’t have time to go shopping around,” Foster pointed out. “The more we delay, the further Castro’s boys are likely to take our German mark from us. So let’s just hope Mendoza is trying to ingratiate himself with the Yankee and go along with him.”

“Okay,” I agreed reluctantly. “I guess we’ll have to. I just wish I knew what his angle really is. He’s just to damn smooth for my taste.”

Despite my suspicions, Captain Mendoza proved as good as his promise. The very next morning we bid Raoul Marti good-bye and were off to the airstrip in a car provided by Mendoza. The streets were empty as we drove. There was an occasional sporadic outburst of fire in the distance—to the south of the newly established International Zone——but generally Santo Domingo was quiet. Later that afternoon, fighting would break out in earnest again, but by then we would be well on our way.

At the airfield Mendoza’s authority cut through the red tape like magic. A sports plane— a four-seater Piper -- was all gassed up and waiting for us. Mendoza got in behind the wheel. I sat beside him and Vickie and Alan Foster sat in the back. Mendoza taxied the plane smoothly down the field and we soared into the air. I took one last look at Santo Domingo as we circled it, and then there was nothing but the blue-green Caribbean beneath us.

I dozed off. Mendoza’s elbow in my ribs woke me. He pointed, and I saw the seaport of Barranquilla coming up toward us.

Foster had wired ahead, and there was a CIA man waiting for us when we got there. The rest of us waited while they went into a huddle. I could feel Mendoza’s eyes on me when Alan called me over to fill me in on what he’d been told.

“The town is lousy with Red agents,” he told me. “Cuban, Russian, and Chinese. Our man doesn’t know why. He only knows that something must be up and he guesses that it’s something pretty big. He’s been asking Washington for help and he thought that was why we were sent here. When I told him it wasn’t, he was pretty disappointed.”

“Too bad. But what about the German? Does he have a lead on that for us?”

“Sort of. It was shortly after he recognized a Castro agent here that there was this influx of other Commie agents. So he put two and two together and he’d had a tail on this Cuban. He traced him to a cabin-—a sort of hunting lodge-—in the hills on the outskirts of the city. Our man’s had this place staked out for the past few days. As far as he can tell there are five men there. Four of them are Cubans. The third doesn’t look Cuban and he’s older than the other two. It sure sounds like it might be the German.”

“It sure does,” I agreed. “Can we have a look-see?”

“I guess so. What do you think? Should we take Vickie with us? Or should we leave her here to wait with Mendoza?”

“Mendoza! What do you want to leave her with him for? Let’s just pay him off now and get rid of him. I don’t trust him any more now than ever.”

“We need him, Steve. If it is the German and we manage to grab him, we’ll still need a way of getting out of the city. That isn’t going to be easy with the whole bloody Comintern¹⁵ looking for him. They probably already know we’re here, and they’ll be right behind us. So we need Mendoza and his plane to get us out of Barranquilla. If we leave Vickie with him, she can make sure he doesn’t take a powder on us.”

Again I had to agree reluctantly that Foster was probably right. I went over and told Vickie that he wanted to speak to her privately. I stayed with Mendoza while they talked.

His spotless white uniform with the medals and ribbons dribbling all over it made him look like a comic opera figure. But I was dead sure there was more to Mendoza than that. I don’t know why. Maybe it was his eyes. They were too watchful. They missed nothing. Somehow they seemed too shrewd to go with the rest of him. They just didn’t match-up with the cavalry officer mustache, the plastered-down black hair and the dashing pomposity of his military stance. I sure didn’t feel right about leaving Vickie with this character, but as Foster had pointed out, there was no choice.

The CIA contact had a car waiting for us. Foster and I got in and we headed out the rough-hewn highway toward the hills. After a while the highway turned into a dirt road, and we had to slow down and drive more cautiously. Finally he pulled the car off the road and parked it behind a copse of trees and bushes. “From here we have to go on foot,” he told us. Foster and I followed him from the car.

We must have hiked about a mile. Then our man stopped us and pointed toward a small rise in the landscape. “The lodge is just over that hill,” he told us. “From here we have to take it very slowly and very quietly.”

Foster and I nodded and crept behind him as he wormed his way up to the top of the hill. Here he stopped again and pointed. We saw a small hunting lodge made of stone blocks in the Spanish style.

Just as we were casing it, the figure of a girl appeared on the porch. She wore a red gown that was much too dressy for her surroundings. It looked out of place, as did the high heels on her feet, the lavish, fruit-topped hat, and the too-thick make-up on her face. She stretched for a moment and inhaled deeply. Then, as if in response to some order from the inside of the lodge, she swiveled and quickly went back inside.

“Who’s that?” Foster asked the other CIA man. “You didn’t say anything about a woman being here.”

“She wasn’t here yesterday. She must have just come. Looks like a pro from the city. I suspect the Cubans must have gotten lonely and arranged for some female companionship. That wouldn’t be hard to do. Barranquilla is a wide open town.”

“I just hope it doesn’t complicate things.” I struck my two cents worth in.

“No reason why it should,” Foster assured me. “Come on. And keep under cover. Surprise is the most valuable thing on our side. If they see us coming, we’re licked before we start. They can hold out against us forever in that place. It’s built like a fortress.” He started down the hill, darting quickly from bush to bush and tree to tree. We spaced ourselves out and followed him.

My fingers were clammy on the revolver Foster had provided me as we approached the last hundred yards between us and the house. It was all open country, and if they spotted us coming, they’d be able to pick us off with ease. We’d just have to dash for it and keep our fingers crossed.

We dashed and we made it. We were all three out of breath when we reached the porch, but there was no time to stop. We went straight through the door and immediately saw the reason why we hadn’t been spotted.

One of the Cubans had been standing guard all right, but he’d been distracted. The distraction was the girl we’d seen before. Instead of keeping a lookout, he must have just started to play pattycake with her as we were racing that last hundred yards down the hill. Now, as we entered, he froze in the middle of their little game.

He had his arms around her and one of his hands was pulling down the zipper of her red dress. It was far enough down so that it was obvious she wasn’t wearing any slip or bra under it. In his other hand, the guard still held a tommy-gun. But it was pointed at the floor, and he made no effort to raise it as he saw us. His face was a study in conflicting emotions—passion, frustration, surprise, fear—-they were all there. But most of all he just looked like a man who couldn’t think what to do next.

We relieved him of the decision—and of the tommy-gun along with it. He didn’t put up even the pretense of a battle. And he didn’t say a word as we bound and gagged him. The girl had more pep.

“What is going on here?” she chattered in Spanish. “What do you want of me? I have nothing to do with any of this. I am just trying to earn a living. I never saw this man before. I have never been here before. Leave me alone. Let me go.”

“Sorry,” Foster apologized as he tied her. “But don’t worry. We’re not going to hurt you.”

“You treat me good, I treat you good.” She tried another approach. “I can do lots of things you like when I’m not tied up.” She tried to catch Foster’s hand to press it to her breast.

“What is it makes you so irresistible?” I asked him, grinning.

“Don’t be funny.” He scowled back at me. “Some other time,” he told the girl. He stuffed a handkerchief into her mouth and secured it there to cut off any further protests.

Now, cautiously, with Foster in the lead and me bringing up the rear, we started up the stairs. The door at the top was closed. The other CIA man and myself covered Foster as he kicked it open.

The men inside reacted faster than their confederate downstairs had. There were four of them, plus another girl. One of the four men was elderly and had the bearing and features of a Prussian. I guessed him to be the German scientist we were seeking.

One of the Cubans, and the girl, were on the bed, naked. We’d interrupted them at what was obviously a most inopportune moment -- for them. The girl, large-busted and moist with passion, had just been poised to alight on the aroused Cuban. Stretched out horizontally, his back had been arched and his manhood quivering to welcome her. Now, startled, she came down hard and the man grunted as her weight crushed the pouch of his passion beneath him.

The other two Cubans and the German, their backs to us, laughed aloud at the expression of pain that crossed his face. Then, noting his eyes, they swung around and saw us. The German merely shrank away. But the two Cubans sprang into action.

They were as fast as greased lightning, and their guns came out blazing. Foster dived, sprawling flat as he fired back. I ducked outside the door to the room as I fired, getting the wall between myself and the Cuban fusillade. But the other CIA man with us wasn’t so lucky. The first shots blew his face apart and he fell forward spouting blood. He was dead before he hit the floor.

The third Cuban, on the bed, was using the girl as a shield now. With his arm around her neck in a half- nelson, he’d pulled her backward to where his clothes were and managed to pull a gun from a holster there. Still holding the girl, he was pointing the gun at the German and trying to get him out a door on the other side of the room.

Foster was pinned down behind a large armchair, using it as cover as he swapped shots with the other two Cubans. That left it up to me to stop the third one from escaping with the prize. I lunged from the doorway, bullets whistling past my ears, and found myself wrestling with two armfuls of naked Colombian whore. He’d thrown her at me as I came, and steadfastly kept retreating toward the exit with the German. I straight-armed her to get her out of my way, swiveling like a Notre Dame ball-carrier eluding a tackler.

The maneuver not only worked, it saved my life. Just as I reversed positions with the girl, a well-aimed bullet had been coming my way. It caught her just below her left breast. She gave a surprised little whinny and crumpled to the floor behind me.

I lunged for the Cuban now. It was too close a risk a shot. I couldn’t take a chance on hitting the German. He swung his revolver and I twisted so that it just glanced off the side of my head. Then we were wrestling as the German shrank against the wall behind us.

The Cuban was tough, smaller than me, but lithe and wiry. The way he used his body told me he was well-versed in such murderous Japanese arts as valli tudo¹⁶ and karate. Fortunately, I had some experience along these lines myself. We were well-matched.

His hands slugged away at my kidneys and his knee was a hammer pounding away at the anvil of my groin. I tried to push him away. I kept the fingers of one hand in his eyes and with the other hand I was trying to chop at his throat and neck. But he was too fast for me to get in a really telling shot. And although I was counter-pointing his knee action with solid kicks to his shins, they might have been made of pig iron for all the effect my efforts were having.

It was a tangled clinch with both of us afraid to let go, and I don’t know how long we would have gone on waltzing like that if one of his buddies hadn’t tried to come to his aid. The other one was pumping bullets at Foster, still keeping him pinned, when this bozo jumped me from behind. My original dancing partner sprang backward and raised his gun, smiling as he pointed it at my heart, and started to squeeze the trigger.

It would have been curtains if not for the German. All this time he’d been standing by passively, crouching back like a scared rabbit. Now, suddenly, he sprang into action. He grabbed up a lamp off the nightstand and smashed it over the Cuban’s head just as he fired at me.

The bullet grazed my ribcage, searing the flesh. I heaved with all my strength, falling forward so that the weight of the second Cuban was on my shoulders. Then I swung around fast so that his head cracked into the corner of a bureau. The third Castro-ite started for me, but he didn’t get very far. Foster nailed him with a fatal shot before he’d taken more than a step or two.

We stood panting and looked at the carnage around us for a moment. Foster examined the CIA man, determined that he was past help, sighed, and turned to the German. “Brother,” he told him, “I sure hope you’re worth all this.”

“Lay off him,” I told Foster. “He saved my life.”

“Did he now?” Foster said. “I wonder why.”

“I never ask why somebody saves my life,” I said drily. “I just thank them.” I turned to the German. “Thank you,” I told him.

He just nodded and didn’t say anything. He didn’t look frightened any more. But his eyes were cautious and shrewd like a man who’s waiting to see which way the wind blows so he can sail along with it.

“I’m Steve Victor,” I said to him, still feeling grateful. “What’s your name?”

“I am Dr. Hans von Koerner.”

“Is that your real name?” Foster asked sarcastically. He’d obviously taken a dislike to the German.

The German didn’t answer.

“Let’s get going,” I said to Foster.

“Wait a minute.” He was standing at the window and looking out. “Here comes trouble.”

I joined him and looked in the direction from which we’d come. There were half a dozen armed men moving cautiously down the hillside toward the house.

“Who—?” I started to ask.

I was interrupted by Von Koerner at my elbow. “It is the Chinese,” he said. “They”—-he waved at the three horizontal Cubans—“were afraid the Chinese might track us down. They thought they had thrown you—the Americans and the English-—off the track. But they were most apprehensive about the Chinese. It seems they were right.”

“What’ll we do now?” I asked Foster.

“Well, we could hole up here and stand them of. We could probably do that for a long time. Now that we’ve got them spotted, we could probably pick most of them off right away. Then, the way this lodge is built, we could defend it like a fortress. It would take a lot of them to force their way in here once we’re alerted.”

“But we couldn’t get out, either,” I pointed out.

“That, unfortunately, is true.”

“So all they’d have to do is wait us out.”

“Right. I don’t think we can anticipate any reinforcements,” Foster admitted.

“Then we ought to make tracks while we can.”

“Check. They’re more likely to nail us out in the open, but we’ll just have to chance it. Let’s get moving.”

We went out the back of the lodge. There was about 300 yards of open, scraggly field until the woods started. Then we’d have to circle back toward the hill to reach our car.

We’d made about half the 300 yards when there were shouts telling us we’d been spotted. Now we didn’t even bother trying to conceal ourselves. We sprinted for the edge of the woods as fast as we could. The elderly German had trouble keeping up, and Foster and I half-dragged and half-carried him as we ran.

There were rifle shots and a burst from a tommygun. I sprawled flat with Von Koerner. Foster wheeled around and fired back before hugging the ground. He must have hit something, because there was a long, wailing scream. The firing stopped for a moment and we ran again. This time we reached the edge of the woods before the hail of bullets resumed. Covered by the trees now, we managed to work our way back behind the hill that both we and the Chinese had come down.

We could hear them thrashing about behind us in the woods, but we couldn’t see them. At times they sounded perilously close, but we just kept our fingers crossed and continued our flight. Finally we emerged on the dirt road.

The copse of trees behind which the car was parked was a few hundred yards away from us. Another car was parked farther down the road from it. There were two Chinese standing beside it.

We sprinted for our car. Behind us our pursuers came crashing out of the woods and started chasing after us. The two Reds, seeing them, came charging toward us.

We barely escaped being caught in their crossfire. Just as they opened fire we reached the grove of trees, dodged behind it and got into the car. Foster took the wheel, and I began pumping the tommygun I’d taken from one of the Cubans as our pursuers began shooting at the car. They scattered before us as Foster gunned the car out from behind the trees and onto the road with a wild screeching of tires. Then they were running for their car to take up the pursuit as we shot down the open road.

They were closing the distance as we pulled onto the highway. Their car was a souped-up Caddy, and even though Foster had his foot on the floorboard, he couldn’t outdistance them. That left it up to me.

“Alan,” I said, “when I give the word, hit your brakes hard.”

“Check.”

I waited until they’d closed the distance just a bit more. They were shooting for our tires now, and I couldn’t afford to chance waiting any longer. “Now!” I shouted.

Foster hit the brakes. I was braced for it and just as the Caddy was almost on top of us, I shot their front tires full of holes. I also sprayed their windshield, but it must have been bulletproof. Foster gunned the motor again, and we left them behind us in the dust,

The rest of the trip to the airport was uneventful. Vickie and Mendoza were waiting for us, and we made straight for Mendoza’s plane. It was gassed up and waiting. But trouble was also waiting.

Mendoza and Vickie were aboard the plane and Foster and I were just helping Von Koerner in when it hit. Four men suddenly shot out from behind a nearby hanger and rushed us. They weren’t shooting, and it didn’t occur to me until later that this was because they didn’t want to take a chance on hitting Von Koerner.

They were on us before we knew it, swinging gunbutts and fists. It was obvious that it was Von Koerner they were after. They were savage in trying to overcome Foster and myself, but they made no attempt to harm the German.

Foster practically threw Von Koerner into the plane while I tried to fight them off. He slammed the door behind him and signaled to Mendoza to take off without us. Then he was fighting alongside me just as the superior numbers were forcing me to the ground.

They undoubtedly would have swamped the two of us if Mendoza hadn’t started taxiing down the field at that moment. Two of our assailants grabbed onto the struts and wingtip of the plane and were dragged along with it. That evened up the odds.

One of the two we were fighting with had his gun out now. I chopped his arm just as he fired. The blow deflected his aim, but not enough. Foster took the bullet in the shoulder.

He fell backward, grabbing for his gun as he toppled. He came up with it and plugged one of the hoods straight through the heart. The other one bolted. We didn’t bother chasing him.

“Nice playmates you attract,” I panted. “You hurt bad?”

“It burns like hell, but I’ll survive.”

“Who the hell were they?” I asked. “They didn’t look Chinese or Cuban.”

“Russian,” Foster told me. “Look at this.” He’d taken the wallet from the breast pocket of the man he’d shot. There was a Russian passport in it.

“Tell me,” I remarked, “do you suppose Luxembourg and Monaco have agents chasing Von Koerner? Everybody else seems to.”

“Probably. Probably. It certainly seems like it’s getting to be an international sport.”

“My theory is that Von Koerner doesn’t really have a secret weapon or anything else that anybody really wants,” I told Foster sarcastically. “I think he’s really an agent of the Barranquilla Chamber of Commerce engaged in stirring up some tourist trade.”

“Very funny. Hey, look! What the hell’s going on down there?” He pointed at the far end of the field, where Mendoza’s plane was still slowly taxiing.

The bodies of the two Russkies who’d grabbed for the wings were sprawled a good distance away from it. Obviously they’d been shot by somebody inside the plane while Foster and I were fighting off their buddies. It certainly seemed as if Mendoza had had plenty of time to get the plane into the air. At first we thought maybe he’d decided to wait for us. But that wasn’t it.

Now, as we watched, the door to the plane’s cabin was flung open. Vickie was pushed out and went sprawling on the ground. Behind her, I saw Von Koerner with a gun in his hand. Then the door closed again and the plane shot down the runway, picking up speed until it was in the air. I ran over to where Vickie was picking herself up. Foster, hugging his injured shoulder, followed behind me.

“What happened?” I asked when I reached her.

“Mendoza!” she said breathlessly. “He and Von Koerner threw me oil the plane.”

“But why?’,’ I was confused. “If they were in league with the Cubans, or the Russians, or the Chinese, why did they wait until now to show their hand?”

“They’re not,” Foster said. “They’re playing their own game. And they’re obviously both playing the same game.”

“Check.” Vickie agreed. “Mendoza said something to Von Koerner in German and they seemed to fall right in together. I think Mendoza was exactly the person Von Koerner most wanted to contact.”

“I still don’t get it,” I said.

“I do,” Foster replied. “Or at least I think I do. Back in Santo Domingo our friend Mendoza was a big shot with the military junta. Now, this junta made up mainly of Trujillo’s followers. When Trujillo was in power, they had strong ties with the Peronistas of Argentina. The Peron bunch, in turn, was very much involved with the Nazis. After the war South America generally became a haven for Nazis on the lam. Recently, there have been frequent reports of a strong neo- Nazi movement springing up there. There’s even proof of a headquarters somewhere in the Argentinian, or possibly the Brazilian, interior. My guess is that Mendoza’s a member of this movement. And my further guess is that Von Koerner is a dedicated Nazi and has been trying all along to reach them.”

“And now it looks as if he’s succeeded,” I said, looking up at Mendoza’s plane speeding off into the blue.

“Damn! And just when we had him right in our hands,” Foster groaned.

Vickie summed it up. “Mission a failure,” she said. “Mission a complete and utter flop!”

CHAPTER TEN

OUR DESPAIR proved premature. An unexpected break put us back in the race. I was the one who saw the break for what it was as soon as it rolled into view.

It was a military transport plane bearing the insignia of the Colombian Air Force. I spotted it as the three of us were trudging dejectedly back toward the row of hangars. One of the airport maintenance trucks had towed it onto the runway. The two-truck unhitched from it and drove away. As we approached, the four-man crew was just boarding it.

“Hey!” I exclaimed. “There’s our answer. That baby could overtake Mendoza in no time.”

“You’re right,” Foster agreed. “If only we can contact Colombian Intelligence to cut through the red tape for us quickly enough.”

“Never,” Vickie said positively. “They’d have to check on us through Washington and maybe London. By the time we got clearance and they agreed to cooperate, Von Koerner and Mendoza could be halfway across the continent.”

“Look,” I said, “you two are the pros and I’m only the amateur, but it strikes me that this is no time to start going through channels. We’ve just got to act fast and worry about diplomacy later. We’ve got to steal that plane and kidnap the pilot and do it now. Are you game?”

They were game. We sprinted for the plane and reached it just as the last crewman went through the hatch. We followed after him with our guns drawn. The three airmen were dumbfounded as we entered. Vickie and I covered them while Foster went forward and shoved his gun under the pilot’s nose. Then we waved our guns around until the crew members got the idea and disembarked. I went forward and covered the pilot while Foster slid into the co-pilot’s seat. Moments later we were in the air, the nose of the plane pointing in the general direction Mendoza had been heading.

“Keep an eye on the flyboy here while I figure this out,” Foster said. He’d found the radar scope and was fiddling with the equipment.

“Do you know anything about it?” I asked him.

“Luckily, yes. I was a radar man on a sub during the Korean fracas. This stuff looks pretty advanced, but the principle must be the same. I should be able to figure it out.”

A few minutes later Foster twisted a dial and sat back looking smug as the radar screen lit up. “Got it,” he said. “Now, let’s just see . . .” He fiddled with some other dials and then snapped his fingers. “There she is,” he said, pointing to a green blip on the screen. “That’s Mendoza’s plane. He’s about fifty miles southeast of us.”

I held the gun to the pilot’s temple while Foster had him set the controls for the indicated course. We both pretended we knew what he was doing, but the truth was he could have headed the plane in the opposite direction without our being aware of it. But the gun at his head impressed him, and as things turned out he followed our instructions. The plane was a twin-motor job without jets, and we had him open it up to top speed.

Foster watched the radar scope carefully. A while later he pointed out to me that the blip had grown larger. We were closing the distance between Mendoza’s little cabin plane and us rapidly.

Then Foster had a thought and twisted some other dials. The blip of Mendoza’s plane vanished. The screen was empty for a moment. Foster adjusted a dial and pointed. “Look,” he said. “We’ve got company.”

I followed his finger and saw a group of dots moving in formation down near the lower right-hand corner of the screen. “What are they?” I asked.

“Probably pursuit planes,” Foster told me. “We’ve probably got the whole Colombian Air Force on our tail. Judging from their speed, they’re jets. They’ll have no trouble at all catching up with us.”

“Oh, great. Do you think they’ll catch us before we catch Mendoza?”

“It’s touch and go. But even if we do catch up with Mendoza, what are we going to do?”

“Well, we could shoot him down.”

“And risk killing Von Koerner? Don’t forget, he’s what we’re after. If we kill him, we’re just as bad off as if he gets away from us.”

“Well, at least his neo-Nazi pals won’t have him and his weapon—-whatever the hell it is.”

“I know, Steve. If it comes to a choice, you’re right. But remember, our real job is to get him and bring him back alive. Whatever his invention is, we want it.”

“Alan, honestly now, don’t you know what it is, either?”

“No.” He shook his head. The earnest way he looked convinced me that he was telling the truth. “And I’m not sure that anybody except Von Koerner himself does.”

“Oh, hell, Vickie must.”

“No. She knows what it does. But she doesn’t know what it is. That’s what she told me back in Santo Domingo, and I believe her.”

“Well, what is it that it does?” I persisted.

“She won’t tell me.” He held up his hands and grinned. “She simply refuses.”

“What about the Cuban who was knocked off back in Miami? He was a victim of this thing-whatever it is. Doesn’t that seem to indicate that the Castro boys might already have it?”

“Negative. They don’t have it. They killed the Cuban after the German himself used this weapon on him. And my guess is Von Koerner wouldn’t tell them anything about it. If he made a model of whatever it is, he must have destroyed it. We know he doesn’t have it with him now. And we know he isn’t carrying any plans — unless he stashed them in his underwear or something. That could be so, but it’s more likely that he’s just carrying the formula, or the plans, or whatever, around in his head. That’s why it is so important to get him before the neo-Nazis do.”

“Then we’ll just have to try to follow Mendoza to his destination and hope those jets don’t catch up with us before he gets there.”

“Or maybe make Mendoza think we’re going to shoot him down so he’ll make a forced landing. Then we could follow him down. We’d have more of a chance of getting Von Koerner alive if they’re on the ground.”

“Do you think we’ll have the time to do that?” I asked.

Foster studied the Mendoza blip on the radar screen. Then he switched for a look at the jet-dots. They looked a little larger to me now. “The next half-hour will tell,” Foster said. “We’ll see.”

He must have figured it pretty accurately. It was exactly thirty-two minutes later that we sighted Mendoza’s plane. I was in the cabin with Vickie when Foster called back to us that we’d caught up. At the same time Vickie was pointing out through the Plexiglas gun-blister, and I saw that she had spotted the jet-streams of our pursuers approaching fast. I went forward and filled Foster in on this development.

He had the pilot close in fast on Mendoza’s plane. I went back to the gun-blister, and as we came up behind the Piper I fired a few rounds which purposely just missed his wingspan. I could hear Foster arguing with the pilot. He wanted him to get above Mendoza and try to force him down. We’d only have time for one real pass before the jets would be on us. The pilot was trying to stall. I came up behind him, pressed the barrel of my pistol against the back of his neck and clicked off the safety. He got the message. He did as Foster wanted. He swung the plane into a steep climb and then dived at Mendoza. I went back to the gun-blister and tried. for a few more near-misses as we swept past him.

Mendoza dove then, and we lost him in the clouds. When we came out from under them, I spotted the Piper in a steep dive, heading for a crash. At first I thought we’d have to kiss Von Koerner good-bye. Then I saw the two chutes opening far beneath us. Von Koerner and Mendoza had opted to jump.

A moment later the reason for decision became obvious. The jets were on us now, and I realized that to the pair of neo-Nazis it must have looked as if they were with us and pursuing them. By now they must have realized by the way the jets were coming for us that we were the prey and not them. But by now it was too late. They’d already jumped.

Foster had our pilot waggle his wings to show that we wouldn’t put up any battle. Vickie went one step further. She was waving a white rag in front of the Plexiglas to indicate that we surrendered. But I was still concerned with Von Koerner and Mendoza.

From where I was standing in the cabin, I could see a parachute hooked into place over the back of the pilot’s seat. I picked it up and began putting it on. “I’m going after them,” I told Vickie and Foster.

“I’ll go with you,” Foster said, reaching for the parachute strapped to the co-pilot’s seat.

“Me too,” Vickie said.

“You can’t,” Foster pointed out. “There are only two chutes. The crew took the others with them when we put them off.”

“Then I’ll go instead of you," Victoria said. “You’re wounded and you should have that shoulder looked after.”

“Nuts! Let’s you and I go and let Steve stay here,” Foster suggested.

“The hell you say!” I objected.

“Actually, neither of you should go,” Vickie pointed out. “You’ve both got instructions that this is a woman’s job. There are reasons.”

“You two fight it out,” I told them. And before they could start any more arguments, I shoved open the hatch-door and jumped.

I counted out a long free-fall. I didn’t want any of those jets trying to pick me off, and I knew if I waited until the last minute to pull the ripcord I’d be too low for them to shoot by the time they saw me. When I finally did pull the cord, it jerked me right side up and I was looking up at the plane I’d left. I was just in time to see another figure plummet from the hatch. Vickie and Foster must have settled their argument. I wondered who had won.

I didn’t wonder for long. I didn’t have time. With that jungle rushing up at me, I had my own problems. It looked like really wicked terrain, and I could see I’d have my hands full jockeying a landing without getting badly torn up. I picked out a postage stamp between two bristling trees and tried to manipulate the chute straps so I’d land on it.

I almost made it perfectly, but not quite. My chute snagged in the branches of one of the trees and I was caught up short about twenty feet above the ground. I dangled there, wondering what the hell to do next. I didn’t even have a knife to cut myself loose. And even if I had, it sure looked a long way down to the ground.

I looked up automatically, looking to Heaven for some kind of moral support, I suppose. I saw a chute fluttering down into the jungle a few miles to the south of me. Either Foster or Victoria. Whichever one it was, I hoped they had better luck landing than I had.

It was a hell of a time to just hang around, but what else could I do? My armpits were killing me where the straps cut into them, and I would pull myself up by my hands for as long as I could to relieve the pain. But then my wrists would start aching and I’d let go and hang by my armpits again. I don’t know how long I hung there; long enough for the day to start to gray into night, long enough to begin to hallucinate.

I saw myself hanging there until the flesh fell away from my bones. I saw my skeleton hanging there, the skull grinning at the impassive jungle. I saw the chute straps melted by eons of sunlight until the skeleton crumpled to the ground and the bones splintered into fragments. And then I saw the fragments disintegrate into dust. Just dust. No marker for Steve Victor, the man from O.R.G.Y., the man who’d hung around too long.

It was twilight when the sound of movement in the underbrush beneath me brought me back to reality. I squinted downward, and first one and then a group of four or five figures appeared beneath me. Dizzy as I was from the sun and the pain, I could appreciate that they were figures worth studying.

They were all female. The shortest of them was around five-foot-eight, the tallest well over six feet. Some of them carried bows and had quivers of arrows over their shoulders. The others carried spears. All wore the same garment, a sort of skirt which started well down on their hips and ended just below the knee. These skirts were of a coarse fiber which had been dyed either green or brown, and they were slit up one side to the hip, where a knot held them in place. The women wore nothing above the waist. Even in my predicament I could appreciate the impressive array of bare bosoms they presented to view.

One of them saw me and pointed. They conferred among themselves in a language I couldn’t understand. Then three of them started climbing up the tree in which my chute was snared.

They climbed like agile monkeys. Soon two of them were pulling me in toward a crotch in the tree while the third continued upward to where the chute was snared. Here she started sawing away at the straps. The other two held me so that I wouldn’t fall, or be snared in the lines of the freed chute. When I was untangled from it, they started back down the tree and I followed.

On the ground, I tried to thank them. But they simply smiled and shook their heads to show they hadn’t the slightest idea what I was saying. In friendly fashion, they indicated that I should come with them, and I readily followed along.

They led me through the jungle until we reached a small village of mud huts. Here the first thing that struck me was the preponderance of women lounging around. There seemed to be five or six women for every man I saw. And it was the men who were scurrying around preparing some sort of community meal while the women relaxed and chatted in small groups.

This tribal society I’d stumbled on was obviously a matriarchy. The women who had rescued me had carried the caracasses of small, freshly killed game. They were huntresses. And the other women I saw now in the village carried themselves with the same lithe grace and easy authority. Occasionally one of them would give an order to one of the men and he would scurry off to do her bidding. A matriarchy—that’s what this tribe of Amazon beauties was, and no doubt about it.

But I was hard put to place them in relationship to the area in which I found myself. As near as I could tell, I was in the lowlands of Brazil, in the jungle country somewhere between the inland city of Manaus and the banks of the Amazon River. My memory told me that the only Indian tribes in this area should be aborigines. But this group was obviously far advanced beyond the aborigine stage.

What I knew about such things was that anthropology which I had studied in connection with my work, which is sexology. The two are interrelated and have many points of contact, and over the years I had read a great deal in the field of anthropology. However, my researches in this area of South America had occurred more than five years back, and so now I searched my mind to see if I could recall mention of a matriarchal tribe as far advanced as this one.

The more I thought about it, the surer I became that I had never read of such a tribe. However, I did recall an Inca legend which seemed to have some pertinence. It had to do with the Tiahuanaco civilization which preceded the Incas and vanished around 500 A.D.

According to Inca folklore, the Tiahuanacos had flourished on the shores of Peru and Ecuador until some plague borne by the ocean winds had driven them inland. Vague descriptions of this plague sound like it might have been Yellow Jack. The legend goes on to imply that the Tiahuanacos continued to migrate in an easterly direction while their numbers were steadily decreased by sickness. Eventually, the legend concludes, they died off in the jungle wilderness which is today the Brazilian interior. The last to go, according to this tale, were the women, who were far less susceptible to the fevers encountered in the jungle than the men were. In the Inca civilization as late as the Spanish conquest, to call a male a “Tiahuanaco” was a supreme insult since it implied that he was effeminate.

I remembered reading of tribes of Amazons encountered by explorers in Brazil, but such tribes were Negro and had been found far south of here. These people I found myself with now had the handsome features of Indians, and their skins were bronze colored, more golden than red. Indeed, most of the women qualified as stunning beauties, although the men seemed quite puny and even downtrodden.

If these people were the descendants of the Tiahuanacos, I had stumbled into a rare discovery. Any anthropologist would have swapped his autographed copy of Coming of Age in Samoa¹⁷ to be in my shoes. As a sexologist, as the man from O.R.G.Y., I was filled with curiosity concerning their sexual mores, traditions and practices.

The difficulty was communication. Not speaking the lingo, I couldn’t exactly conduct a Kinsey-type survey. And unless they were given to exhibitionism, I wasn’t likely to be able to observe much. Still, first-hand experience was always a possibility. Looking around me at the proud, young bosoms swinging naked in the early night breeze, it was a much hoped-for possibility.

It began to seem even probable after dinner. The stew—-whatever it was-—was quite tasty and I was still savoring its flavor when two of the girls came over and indicated that they wanted me to accompany them to a hut on the far side of the clearing. I did, and was shown into the presence of a truly beautiful young woman. From her bearing, and the deference with which she was treated, I gathered that she was number one lady in the village.

“Zaketa. Zaketa. Zaketa.” She kept repeating it over and over again and pointing at herself until I understood that she was telling me her name

“Steve Victor.” I pointed at my chest. “Steve Victor.”

She nodded to show she savvied, and then we both fell silent. She seemed to be trying to think of a way of overcoming the language barrier. I was content to let her wrestle with the problem while I sat back and admired her.

She was stunning, all right. Her hair was blue-black and very long. It was held back by a wisp of ribbon, and back in the States it might have passed for a pony tail. The face it framed was a perfect oval with high cheekbones and a strong chin and a delightful nose. Her eyes were deep and dark and timeless.

She looked to be just under six feet tall, perhaps half an inch shorter than I. She was seated now, but when she stood up later, I found I’d judged her right. She was dressed no differently than the other women, and her bare bosom might have been sculpted for the statue of a goddess. It was quite large and firm and shaped like the nose-cones of a pair of missiles. It shaded from the bronze of the deep cleft into the gold of the orbs themselves and then into a dark pink marking the circles of the roseates and a deep red where the sharp nipples extended and pointed upward. Her figure generally was sleek, with well-curved hips and long, shapely, lightly muscled legs. As she shifted position to rest lightly on one hip, I saw that her derriére was high and plump and sexy. That was right in keeping with the rest of Zaketa.

Now she began trying to communicate again. It was a laborious procedure. I guess we kept at it for a couple of hours before she got certain things across to me.

Among these was the fact that I was evidently something of a prize. The women of the tribe, Zaketa included, looked down on the men with contempt. They were weak creatures good for little except cooking and cleaning and fathering children. Also, the mortality rate for boy-children was much higher than for girl babies. So, even though the women considered the men inferior, they also prized them for the simple reason that they were scarce. It was a paradox, but an understandable one.

I, however, was evidently something else again. I was strong and virile-looking and there was much about me that was desirable. That was why I had been brought to the head lady. I couldn’t quite fathom (whether she was trying to tell me they thought there was something supernatural about me because I had dropped from the sky into a tree or not. But certainly this seemed to impress her, and if I wasn’t quite a god, I was still rated as a super-being compared to the men of the tribe.

What came next was particularly difficult for her to get across to me. It seemed that Zaketa rated as top lady for rather peculiar reasons. It was a post she would hold for a period of time approximating five years—at least that was as close as I could determine it. At the end of that period, she would be replaced. The end of that period was now at hand, but I gathered that my coming had raised a few theological points relating to the primitive religion from which Zaketa derived her status.

It seems that she became head of the tribe at the age of eighteen. Many factors entered into her selection, but the most important of these was that she was still a virgin at that time. By that age, this was rarely true of many of the girls of the village. Despite the shortage of men, they contrived to lose their virginity. And it was more than just an appetite for sex that drove them to do so.

It was the fact that all but the most devout of them had little desire to attain Zaketa’s position. And for damn good reason. For Zaketa had been bound to keep her virgin status during her five years of rule for a very particular reason. The reason was that she was slated to be a virgin sacrifice to the sun goddess at the end of that time.

All this confirmed my opinion that this lost tribe was in some way descended from the Tiahuanacos. The Incas had copied many of their rites from them. Both groups had worshipped the Sun God and the periodic slaying of virgins as part of a ritual sacrifice was a big part of the Inca religion.

However, my coming had confused things. If I were a messenger from the Sun God, then perhaps Zaketa was not fated to be a virgin sacrifice. Perhaps my coming was a sign that he did not wish her to be sacrificed. But how could they be sure?

It seems that while I’d been stuffing my face with jungle stew, a council of older women had met with Zaketa to consider the question and they’d come up with an answer. Quite an answer! If I, with my murky demi-god status, made love to Zaketa, then she would no longer be a virgin and could obviously not be a sacrifice in keeping with the religious rules. If I refused to make love to her, that would be a sign that the Sun God wanted her for his own and she would be sacrificed at dawn on the following morning. The choice was to be left up to me.

Well, I was pretty tired, but looking at Zaketa I just knew I was all heart. I just had to put my manliness on the line for this poor, passive, frightened maiden. And besides, I was already breathing pretty fast just looking at her breasts heaving as she awaited my decision. So, cavalier that I am, I let her know demurely that I was at her disposal.

Talk about grabbing a jungle jaguar by the tail! Zaketa had been storing up passion since puberty, and she seemed determined to release it all on me in this one night. If she wasn’t going to die for the Sun God, she was going to live it up to the hilt with me.

I couldn’t be sure, but it was almost as if a big part of her lust was some sort of twisted disappointment at not being a virgin sacrifice. She’d been rejected by the Sun God, and now here I was catching her on the rebound. And that bounce was so zingy that I was kept too busy fielding it to make any notes for the files of O.R.G.Y.—-which was really a cotton-pickin’ shame. That night with Zaketa could have filled a whole filing cabinet all by itself.

You see, everything was new to her. Not only was she a virgin, but she’d never even been touched intimately before, never even been kissed. So she savored each new caress as an experience for its own sake, as well as for the feelings of arousal it engendered.

When I kissed her the first time her lips were warm and moist and clinging. As my tongue breached her lips she moaned low in her throat, and her sharp little teeth tried to hold it so that the sensation would be prolonged. She caught on fast, and soon her own tongue was darting like a flame inside my mouth.

I cupped one of her large breasts in my hand and it quivered and swelled as she caught her breath. The tip burned against my palm as she closed her hand over mine, urging me to squeeze it harder and harder. I knew it must hurt, but the pain was a thrilling sensation she wanted to feel to the fullest. The area around the nipple was soft as butter, but the nipple itself grew hotter and harder as I squeezed it.

I took my hand away and looked at it. It was twice the length it had been before, and its normally deep redness was shading into purple. I caught it in my mouth and her nails dug into the back of my neck in a wordless insistence that I nibble more forcefully. When I did, she kept trying to push more and more of the breast between my teeth. It was as if she wanted me to devour it, as if she wanted my lips to envelop it entirely —which was an impossibility.

Suddenly she pulled away and then forced my mouth down against her other breast. I repeated my ministrations while she thrashed about in a sort of semi-ecstatic state. At last I pressed my lips into the deep cleft between her breasts and let my tongue search deep in the crevice. It drove her wild, and I had to stop after a moment because of the way she was clawing me.

She was tugging at my pants now, and I gladly let her remove them. Her eyes grew wide as she gazed upon my inflamed manhood. There was awe in her touch as she reached out very tentatively to grasp it. She stroked it and fondled it and murmured strange words that I didn’t understand. Finally, I had to remove her hand lest I waste the juices of my passion.

She lay passively as I undid the knot of the skirt she was wearing. But when my hand reached to stroke her thighs, she became so excited that she bit into my shoulder with a savagery that drew blood. I had to pull her over on her side and smack her plump, naked bottom to get her to stop biting.

She liked that, too. She flung herself on her belly and indicated that she wished me to spank her. I gave her a few whacks and stopped when her flesh was rosy and quivering. Then I trailed my hand up the back of her legs until they parted.

Quickly, I turned her over and flung my body over hers. She was moving so spasmodically, the lower half of her body virtually twirling, that I had a little difficulty hitting my target. And when I did, I found that her virginity was a solid fact not easily overcome. My efforts to pierce it drove her frantic, and she threw her legs up over my shoulders and locked them around my neck in a grasp that all but strangled me. Still the stubborn flesh of virtue refused to be sundered.

With a whimper of enraged frustration, she pushed me away now. Instinctively, she got up on her hands and knees and crouched. She looked back at me over her shoulder, and it was a look that was half pleading and half lust gone berserk.

I took the cue. I slammed against those soft buttocks from behind and lunged as hard as I was able. It worked. She screamed with pain as the stubborn flesh was finally torn. There was a spurt of blood and I thought to withdraw and relieve the pressure until she recovered from the sudden shock. But Zaketa wouldn’t let me. Her tunnel of love was a pulsating vise, and I was caught in a grip that was inescapable.

So I grabbed her breasts from behind and picked up the frantic tempo she’d initiated. Immediately, she erupted. And she kept erupting. Spasm, upon spasm of ecstasy seized her, each more powerful than the last. When, finally, my own passion exploded in a long, drawn-out, joyful draining, she matched it to the last. And then, her body still locked to mine, she fell forward in a dead faint

But she revived quickly. And she made it obvious that as far as she was concerned, the evening was just beginning. She wanted to experiment, to innovate, to experience everything. Everything! She wanted to feel my manhood at every one of her bodily orifices; she wanted to feel it throb within every conceivable fold of her flesh. She caught it between her breasts and enveloped it. She nuzzled it in her armpit. She kissed the orbs beneath it and rolled them around in her mouth one by one until I thought I’d go out of my mind. And then she got it deep into her throat so that when I erupted again the results nearly choked her.

Still she wasn’t through. She sat on my lap and arranged herself on it, forcing it deep into that narrower entrance. I stroked her vibrating womanhood in this position, and after she had responded several times, she fainted again.

But again she revived, and it went on and on until daybreak. Finally, then, we fell exhausted into each other’s arms and slept. The sun was was well up in the sky when we awoke.

Breakfast was brought to us. It was fruit and some sort of hot chicory fluid that tasted vaguely like coffee. As we ate and drank, Zaketa resumed her efforts to communicate with me again.

She made me understand that while I had given her great joy, I had also presented her with a problem. There must be a virgin sacrifice to the Sun God on noon of this day, and now that she no longer qualified, another virgin must be found. But the trouble was that the virgin must be an adult -- over eighteen, I gathered -- and it was doubtful that there was a female in the tribe who would qualify.

It was grisly, but it was funny, too. I managed to get across my thought that maybe a non-virgin might do as well, but Zaketa was obviously appalled by it. Well, it was her problem, so I simply shrugged and left her to cope with it. I remained behind, half-dozing in the hut, while she went out into the village to do exactly that. It was almost noon when she returned. She was flushed and excited. It seemed her problem had been solved. The Sun God had provided a virgin.

The ceremony was about to start, and I was to be an honored guest. Zaketa led rne from the village and through the jungle until we reached another clearing. In the center of this one, some rocks had been carefully piled to create a sort of altar. Zaketa and I were the only ones permitted to mount to this altar. The other natives clustered below us under the trees around the fringe of the clearing.

There was a sharp, brightly jeweled dagger lying on the altar, and Zaketa picked it up. It wasn’t hard for her to get across to me what was going to happen. I’d read enough about Inca sacrifices to know what could be involved.

It would be a delicate operation. The sacrificial victim would be spreadeagled and tied to the alter. Then an incision would be made under her breasts in such a way that her still beating heart might be removed. Modern surgery has actually copied this centuries-old technique in the most up-to-date heart operations. The heart would in no way be severed from the body until the victim was quite dead. And this could take any time from ten to forty-five minutes.

The whole idea was repugnant to me, but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it. To get my mind off what was coming, I tried to find out from Zaketa how they’d managed to find a virgin. But I wasn’t coming across, and the question remained unanswered until the victim herself was dragged onto the scene.

She was dressed like all the other women -- the same sort of skirt, and bare-breasted. At first glance, she looked to be another fine example of Tiahuanaco anatomy. But at second glance, the differences left me stunned.

She wasn’t a brunette like all the others, but a redhead. Her skin wasn’t bronze, but ivory white. She wasn’t a native, but a Caucasian.

She was Victoria Winters!

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE INTENDED virgin sacrifice was Victoria Winters! “Oh, no!” I said it involuntarily and it came out loud.

Vickie heard it and her head shot up “Steve!” she yelled. “Help me!”

“Yes. Sure,” I said in some confusion.

“What are they going to do to me, anyway?” she wailed as they dragged her closer.

“You’re slated to be a virgin sacrifice,” I told her.

“A what?”

“A virgin sacrifice.”

“But I can’t be,” she protested.

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that I, personally, couldn’t vouch for that, and did she maybe have a testimonial from Foster? But this was no time for levity, so I restrained the impulse. I had to do something and do it fast, or my British heartthrob would be a diced dish.

I turned to Zaketa and held up my hand with as much authority as I could muster. It was like playing a desperate game of charades, but I finally made her see that I, as the representative of the Sun God, was turning thumbs down on this particular sacrifice. Using gestures worthy of a college frat house smut session, I let Zaketa know that this sacrifice was no virgin and therefore inacceptable.

She made a game try at arguing the point. For a few minutes we must have looked like a couple of longshoremen from rival unions cursing each other out in the most obscene deaf-and-dumb language. Finally, she had Victoria dragged over and set about examining her to determine the point of issue for herself. She was pretty rough in the way she went about it, and it was obvious that she’d never win any prizes for sympathetic gynecology. Long after the answer was obvious, she kept poking around sadistically. I guessed that she figured I was the one responsible for Vickie’s unvirginal state and jealousy was making her vengeful. But finally, Zaketa had to reluctantly agree that this female outlander would never do as a virgin sacrifice.

There was much wailing from the other women of the tribe as Zaketa announced her findings. This was followed by some scurrying among the younger girls to grab off a man. It looked like quite a few of them lacked the religious fervor to want to die virgins.

They dispersed, and we trailed back to the village after them. I walked between Zaketa and Victoria. The former made no effort to harm the English girl, but she did keep up a dire murmuring to herself in a way that left no doubt about her feelings. When we were inside the hut, she shook her finger in my face and chattered something which I easily understood to be a warning against any hanky-panky. Then she left Victoria and me alone with each other.

“I don’t think she much likes me,” Victoria observed.

“She thinks I’m leching after you and she's jealous,” I explained.

“Why should she be jealous?”

“She has her reasons.”

“Oh! So it’s like that.”

“Just like that. And none of your business, I might point out.”

“And is she right?” Victoria asked coyly.

“Right about what?”

“About you leching after me.”

“That,” I told her, “is a leading question and even if she is right, I don’t have to be hit over the head to know exactly where I stand with you.”

“Stood,” Victoria cooed. “Past tense.”

“Since when?”

“I don’t know. But why are you fighting it? It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. Maybe I’m just wondering what it is about you that makes that Amazon think you're so terrific.”

“I wish I’d known before that all it took was a little competition to stir up your interest. Maybe if I had, Foster wouldn’t have beaten me out. And speaking of Foster, what about him?”

“What about him?”

“I thought you two were lovebirds. I figured you were knocking yourself out being true to him.”

“Maybe I’d rather be true to you.”

“You aren’t about to be true to anybody,” I told her. “Not you!”

“Look who’s talking!” She looked angry now. “Do you call going native with that big-busted hussy being true to me?”

“For Pete’s sake, I had nothing to be true to. You’ve been Foster’s girl all along.”

“Well,” she announced, “as of now, I’m you’re girl if you want me. Do you?”

“Sure I do.”

“Then keep away from that jungle goddess, or whatever the hell she is. And come here and kiss me.”

I did as she said. Victoria still had it for me as no other woman ever did—-or would. I had to restrain myself from making love to her right then and there. “Later,” I told her. “Right now we’ve got quite a lot of unfinished business to attend to.”

“That’s true.” She moved out of my arms with obvious reluctance. “Which reminds me, are we being held prisoner here, or what?”

“I don’t think so. I haven’t been treated like that at all. And if I had enough influence to save your life, then I must have enough to keep you under my protection.”

“Fine and dandy. But we can’t stay here forever.”

“That’s true. But I’m not sure I know which way to head when we leave here,” I admitted.

“After Von Koerner and Mendoza, of course.”

“Of course,” I echoed sarcastically. “And would you happen to know just which way that might be?”

“As it happens, I do,” she told me sweetly. “I found their chutes and was following their trail when your girl friends grabbed me. They’re heading due south through the jungle.”

“It’s an awfully big jungle.”

“Well, we’re certainly not going to catch them sitting here.”

“True. But we can use all the help we can get. These people seem to know the jungle pretty well. Maybe I can convince Zaketa to help us.”

“Just don’t be too convincing,” Victoria warned me, or she might decide not to let you go. And,” she added as a jealous afterthought, “I might decide to slit your throat.”

As it turned out, Victoria’s jealousy was strictly ex post facto. Zaketa had other things on her mind. It seemed her devirginization had raised some weighty problems of doctrine. She must have figured that those problems might be simplified by my leaving, because she readily agreed to help us on our way. Still, ego forced me to recall that her feelings were far from unmixed. There was also a sadness for the joys we had tasted blended with her willingness to part.

I got across to her that we wanted to head south, and she drew a diagram in the dirt to show me that there was some sort of tribal settlement in that direction She would assign a couple of girls to guide us within walking distance of it if that suited me. It seemed as logical a place to inaugurate our hunt for Von Koerner and Mendoza as any, so I let Zaketa know that would be fine.

It took almost two days of trudging through the jungle before the girls assigned to guide us indicated we were close to another native village. For reasons of their own, they pointed out the trail and vanished before we reached it. Victoria and I hiked the last mile by ourselves. She was tired, but elated because she was sure we were heading in the same direction as our prey.

The natives were friendly. They spoke a sort of Spanish-Portuguese patois which Vickie was somehow able to understand. She found out that two white men had come through the village two days before us, mooched some supplies and continued due south. That could only be Von Koerner and Mendoza.

Vickie asked the head-man if he had any idea what their destination might be. He rolled his eyes, and there was a sort of superstitious awe in his voice as he answered.

“What’s he saying?” I asked, noting the look of excitement that swept over Vickie’s face.

“He says there’s some sort of evil place about three days south of here. I gather the natives give it a wide berth. They’re afraid of it. But there are white men there.”

“What sort of place is it?”

“He says it’s all underground. He makes it sound like some sort of mine, or maybe just a cave at the base of some hills. He’s not really too clear. But he sure is scared. He’s advising us not to go anywhere near it. Evidently he gave the same advice to Von Koerner and Mendoza, but they didn’t heed it. He’s convinced that the white men there are possessed by evil spirits and that anybody who goes there will also be possessed.”

Even allowing for the superstitious fear, it wasn’t too encouraging. But the next morning we cadged some food from them and headed toward the “evil place” anyway. “Do you think this could be some sort of base the neo-Nazis have set up?” I asked Vickie.

“It well might be. That would fit in with what little we know about them.”

“But why here? Why in the middle of the Brazilian jungle? From everything I’ve heard, Argentina is the place they’ve been operating from.”

“Things have been getting hot for them in Argentina. They’ve attracted too much attention and embarrassed the Argentine government. There have been indications that they’ve been skipping to Brazil and holing up in the interior. So this doesn’t surprise me. What does worry me is just how extensive a setup they may have here.” Victoria did indeed look anxious. “After all,” she pondered, “the two of us can’t snatch Von Koerner if they’ve got an army guarding him there.”

“Well, let’s wait and see. There’s no sense trying to make plans until we find out exactly what we’re up against.”

It was shortly before dusk of the third day that we reached the “evil place” and got some glimmering of just exactly what we were up against. The jungle gave way to a small bunch of rolling hills—-an isolated out-cropping that was surrounded by more jungle on all four sides. At the base of one of those hills was a sort of wooden frame structure like the entrance to a mine tunnel. Squatting in front of it was a man with a rifle slung across his knees. Fortunately, we saw him before he saw us, and we quickly ducked back into the concealment of the jungle.

“Dis muz be der blace,” I said to Victoria, my apprehension making me bend over backward to keep it light.

“Yes. But now what?”

“Simple. We just go in and get Von Koerner.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. What else can we do but play it bold as brass? I know the odds are against us, but the big thing we’ve got on our side is the element of surprise. So let’s use it. As soon as it gets dark, I’ll take care of the guard and we’ll go for broke.”

I was right, and Victoria knew it. The moon was just coming up when I crept up on the sentry. I clobbered him with the butt of my pistol, and he never knew what hit him. Victoria helped me drag his unconscious body into the underbrush, and then we returned to the entrance to the tunnel. Inside the mouth of it there was a shaky wooden elevator. We got abroad it, and I operated the pulleys to lower us. We were creaking along cautiously when a voice called out some words in German from below.

Fortunately, I speak German fluently. “Why so early, Karl?” the voice had called. “Our shift has another hour to run.”

“My stomach is bothering me,” I replied quickly in German. “Someone must relieve me now.”

“But you can’t tell that to the Captain. He’ll have a fit.”

“Not with what I know about him,” I yelled back, hoping the words might have more meaning to him than they did to me.

“What is this, Karl? What do you—?”

“Wait until I get down. I’ll tell you. Just wait. You’ll be surprised.” I decided to take another chance with Karl’s buddy. “But take a look down the shaft and make sure there’s no one around to bother us while I tell you.”

“All right.”

“Quick!” I whispered to Victoria. “Take off your bra.” The Tiahuanacos had given her back her clothes before we left their village, and I remembered that there had been a bra among them.

“Steve,” she whispered back now, “you do get the damnedest impulses at the damnedest times.”

“Don’t be funny. Hurry up.”

“Do you think your friend down there will wait? I mean, I’m willing, but—-”

“Oh, shut up!” I took her bra and had her lie down on the platform behind me. Then I crouched on the very edge of it as we descended from the shadows into the glare of the light from below.

“Karl?” He was standing alongside the elevator platform and squinting up toward it as it descended. “The coast is clear. Now what is it about the Captain?”

“Just this!” I lunged as I spoke and garroted him neatly with Vickie’s brassiere. The wind whistled out of his windpipe as I pulled it tight to make sure he wouldn’t be able to yell. Just a little more pressure, and it would have been enough to break his neck. But I wanted him alive for now.

Vickie, her de-bra’ed breasts bobbling interestingly under the skimpy white blouse she wore, hopped off the platform and wrenched the rifle he’d been holding from his hands. She removed the bayonet attached to it and held it to his throat. Fear, plus the way I was choking him, made his eyes bulge.

I eased up a little, and he sucked in air as if his lungs couldn’t get over the surprise of being granted another breath. “Now I want some quick answers,” I told him in German. “And if I don’t get them, the lady will slit your throat. Kapish? Now make them fast, because if you take the time to think up a lie, I’ll strangle you before she slashes you. You got that?”

He nodded like a yo-yo. The way he did it said more than that he merely understood. It said he believed. And it said he’d do what I wanted because, the nodding said, he very much wanted to live.

“How many men here?”

“Fifty-seven.”

“All armed?”

“Ja. All but one. An old man. He just got here.”

“And where is he?”

“In a back area on the next level. They’ve set up some sort of laboratory there for him I think he’s a scientist.”

“Check. How many sentries between here and there?”

“One beside the lift on the next level. One outside the laboratory.”

“How big is this place?”

“Just the two levels. About a dozen rooms-—just caves really. One is quite big. That is where the men have their sleeping quarters.”

“Where is that one?”

“At the rear of this level.”

“Well, we won’t disturb them. What’s in the rest of the caves?”

“Quarters for the officers. They each have an individual suite. The colonel has three rooms. Those are the only ones that are really finished.”

“The colonel. Is he the one in charge of this shooting match?”

“Ja.”

“And where does he take his orders from?”

“Somewhere in Argentina.”

Is your organization very big there?”

“Ja. I think so.”

“Who’s in charge of it?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“The hell you don’t.” I yanked hard on the bra around his neck and his eyes pleaded for mercy. “Who heads the organization?” I asked again.

“Why, the Fuhrer, of course,” he answered when he got back his breath.

“What Fuhrer? What’s his name?”

“Adolf Hitler!”

Victoria stayed my hand before I could choke him again. “Wait,” she said. She turned to the German. “Adolf Hitler is dead,” she told him.

“Nein!” Frightened as he was, he denied it fanatically. It was obvious he wasn’t trying to lie. He believed what he said. “Hitler lives!” he insisted.

“That’s what they believe,” Victoria told me. “It’s the foundation of the whole movement. Those at the top perpetuate the myth to keep the underlings like him in line. You’ll never convince him that Hitler is dead.”

“That’s okay. I don’t have time for a de-Nazification seminar right now anyway.” I turned back to the sentry. “What’s in the next room?” I asked him, pointing down the tunnel.

“Explosives are stored there. Dynamite and ammunition.”

“Show us.” I prodded him down the corridor until we went around a bend and entered a large cave.

“Look at that!” I whistled. There was enough ammo there for a small-scale war. I thought about it a minute and then spoke to Vickie. “Look,” I said, “here’s the plan. You know how to set a long fuse that will give you time to get out of here before it goes off?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now, I’m going after Von Koerner. You stay here with little Hitler, and if I’m not back by exactly one hour from now, you light that fuse and get the hell out. If we don’t get Von Koerner, at least we’ll be sure the heil boys don’t have him either.”

“It’s a good plan except for one thing,” Victoria said. “I should be the one to go after Von Koerner.”

“Don’t be silly. Just do it my way.”

“No. I’m serious, Steve. There’s a very good reason why you shouldn’t go anywhere near that laboratory of his. It’s the same reason why I was assigned to this case in the first place. Intelligence had good reason for assigning a woman, rather than a man.”

“What reason?”

“I’m not supposed to tell you. And we don’t have time to argue. Please. You stay here and let me go after Von Koerner.”

“Negative,” I told her firmly. “No matter what it is you’re talking about, this is no job for a girl.”

“But it is!” she moaned earnestly.

But I wouldn’t buy it, and with time running out she had to agree to do it my way. I hauled the guard back to the elevator shaft. “Call down to your buddy,” I instructed him, “and tell him to come up here. Tell him the captain wants to see him.”

He obeyed, and after a moment the elevator began to move. I waited patiently until I saw the top of a head coming up from below. I smashed the butt of my gun down on it as hard as I could. Then I hauled the body into the cave with the ammo and tied it up. I trussed up the first guard, gave Vickie, a quick good-bye kiss, and lowered myself on the elevator to the bottom level.

There were some electric lights strung through the caverns, but they were very weak. I kept to the sides of the walls, hugging the shadows. If anybody was coming, I wanted to be sure I saw them before they saw me. I was lucky. I didn’t meet a soul.

Finally, I saw the other sentry at the end of the last corridor. But there was no way to get to him without his seeing me coming. I thought about it a minute and decided that the only thing to do was to make him come to me.

I pulled a handful of bullets from my cartridge belt and threw them back the way I’d come. They made a hell of a clatter in the empty passageway. The sentry sprang to his feet with his gun drawn and ran down the corridor to investigate. Crouching low, I sprang at him just before he reached the shadows concealing me.

I caught him just below the knees with a tackle any lineback might have envied. Then I hit him with both hands simultaneously, karate chops, one to the groin and the other to the windpipe so he wouldn’t be able to yell. He sagged over me and it was only then that I realized how hard I had hit him. His neck was broken. He was dead.

I didn’t have time to hold a wake. I didn’t know what kind of attention the sounds of our brief battle, or of the bouncing cartridges, might have attracted. I sprinted for the entrance to the lab.

It was dark except for a lamp pinpointing a desk at the rear of the cavern. Von Koerner was bent over the desk. By the sudden way his body straightened, I knew he’d seen me. But I couldn’t see his expression because his face was lost in the shadows.

His hand shot out across the desk and I thought he was going for a gun. But I was wrong. It was only a flashlight. The beam centered squarely on my groin, remained there a moment, and then rose slowly to shine in my eyes.

“Turn it off,” I told him, waving my gun in the ray from the flashlight so he’d be sure to see it.

“Of course, Mr. Victor.” He flicked it off. “It is an unexpected pleasure to see you again.”

“I’ll bet. We can talk about it on our way out of here.”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Victor. I’m very much afraid that my men will not allow you to depart with me.”

“The hell you say. Come on. Move. In case you don’t follow, you’re my prisoner, Von Koerner.”

“You are laboring under a misapprehension, Mr. Victor. It is you who are my prisoner. I have already rung the alarm to summon the guards. Why don’t you just put down your gun and resign yourself to being my guest?”

“No thanks ” I motioned him toward the door. But it was too late. There were already men running toward it on the double with their guns drawn.

I fired two shots and the two eager beavers in front went down. I kicked the stout wooden door closed and waved Von Koerner backed behind the desk. Then I began pushing some of the lab equipment up against the door.

Suddenly, Von Koemer made a break for it. I hadn’t noticed, but there was another door at the rear of the chamber. I chased after him and pushed the door in with my shoulder before he could get through it. But he wasn’t even trying. Instead, he was standing in front of a large kiln. He’d opened the grate and there was a fire roaring inside it. Before I could reach him, he’d thrown some object into the fire and followed it up with a batch of papers. I saw something metallic begin to melt, but the fiery blaze made it impossible to retrieve it.

“Now you have nothing, Mr. Victor. I have destroyed the weapon and the plans for it. All the formulas and blueprints. All that is left is up here.” He pointed to his temple. “And that I shall never reveal to anyone except the disciples of mein Führer.”

“You’re nuts,” I told him succinctly. “You haven’t had a Führer for twenty years.”

There was a stout bolt on the door, and I’d already slid it into place. Now I looked around at my surroundings. It was a very small chamber, perhaps eight feet square. Most of that area was taken up by the kiln. There was no way out except the door by which we’d entered. And the neo-Nazi nuts were already battering away at that.

I looked at my watch. There was about eight minutes left before Vickie would ignite the fuse. Figure another three minutes before the explosives went off. That left me eleven minutes to contemplate my sins.

That sure as hell wasn’t enough time, so I decided not to try. Instead, I tried to figure some way of giving myself a chance to live through the impending explosion. The door looked like it would hold for at least as long as I had left, so I didn’t waste any time worrying about that. What I was looking for was some sort of shield against the blast.

The kiln was the only answer. It was an outside chance, but I had to take it. Von Koerner looked at me as if I’d lost my mind as I picked up the shovel alongside it and began heaving hot coals up against the door to the chamber. After a while the wood began smoldering and the smoke got pretty thick. But that couldn’t be helped and I didn’t waste time worrying about suffocating or burning to death. First things first. And the first thing was to survive the blast.

There were about two minutes of the eleven remaining when I got the last of the hot coals out of the kiln. I took off my clothes, pointed my gun at Koerner and told him to do the same. Now he really thought I’d flipped my lid. But he did as he was told.

I took the clothing and folded it so it would provide some sort of lining for the sizzling sides of the kiln. One minute left now. I doubled over and backed into the mouth of the kiln, jacknifing my body. It was still hot as hell and I could feel my rear end begin to sizzle as I settled myself.

Finally, all of me was inside the stout iron compartment. I could feel my skin start to blister where it touched the inside of it. Time was up.

“So long, Von Koerner,” I shouted, and pulled the grate closed. An instant later there was a blast and everything went black for me.

When I came to, the first thing I was aware of was that I couldn’t breathe. I kicked open the grating to the kiln, and that was a little better, but not much. The little chamber was filled with smoke. The red-hot coals I’d taken from the kiln had been strewn all around it. The wooden door had been blown in. Von Koerner was under it.

I eased myself out of the kiln. My whole body was one massive blister. I managed to drag myself over to the German. The laboratory beyond him was strewn with bits and pieces of bodies. Most of the roof out there had caved in and it had obviously taken much more of the shock of the explosion than the little room we were in. Still, from the looks of the room, I never would have survived the blast if I hadn’t crawled into the kiln.

At first I was sure that Von Koerner hadn’t. But as I knelt beside him, I saw that he was miraculously still alive. He was obviously going fast-—there was a pool of blood spreading from under him and lapping at my bare feet-—but his eyes flickered in recognition of me. From somewhere, he summoned the energy to speak.

“I am dying, Mr. Victor.”

“Yes. You are.”

“I know. And my secret dies with me. It will remain locked in this brain for eternity. You who would sabotage the Fuhrer will never have it now.”

“Perhaps not. But neither will the Chinese. Or the Russians. Or the Cubans. Or your neo-Nazi buddies Maybe it’s best that way. Maybe it’s best that nobody has it—whatever it is.”

“Whatever it is?” He managed a weak, grisly sort of chuckle. “But you have seen it, Mr. Victor.”

“I have?”

“Yes.” His laugh now seemed to come from the other side of the grave. “The flashlight. That was the only model. The flashlight I shone on you when first you entered.”

“Then it didn’t work,” I said positively. “It had absolutely no effect on me at all. If that flashlight was supposed to be some sort of ray gun, it was a failure.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Victor.” His voice was very weak now and fading. “It worked.”

“Then what did it do?”

“You’ll find out.” The laugh again — this time a hollow echo. “You’ll find out in due time. And then you’ll know why it may be truly said that I invented the ultimate weapon.” His eyes sparkled briefly with a last surge of life. “You’ll find out, Mr. Victor,” he cackled one last time. “You’ll—”

And he died.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“You’ll find out, Mr. Victor!”

The echo of Von Koemer’s dying words followed me as I made my way from the small chamber through the debris of the laboratory. Their meaning would follow me further, but I didn’t know that-—yet. Nor did I fathom the meaning—yet.

I wasn’t wasting any time trying to understand at this point. I had other problems to consider. Like, was I going to be able to get out of this place, or was it going to be my tomb?

The walls had caved in the passageway outside the doorway to the lab. Despite the agony of my blistered skin, I began to heave slabs of rock out of the way in an effort to clear an escape route. Fortunately, my hands hadn’t been burned. But my body ached all over, and it was a slow, grueling procedure. Complicating it was the fact that the blast had knocked the electric lighting system out, so I was forced to work in the dark. All I could do was hope that I was guessing right about the direction in which I was digging. Otherwise, I might dig for hours and come up against nothing but the rock sides of the cave.

I had guessed right. After some hours of digging, I reached a spot where the passageway continued. This area hadn’t been so badly hit by the blast. Nevertheless, I had to keep moving large chunks of rocks out of my Way to get past.

Finally I reached the shaft. The elevator platform was in pieces at the bottom of it. I peered up the shaft. I could see nothing but blackness. I tugged at one of the strands of rope still hanging there. The whole length of it came tumbling down at the pressure I exerted. The same thing happened with a second rope. The third one seemed all right, but when I started to climb it, after a few feet a frayed strand gave way just above where my hands were and I tumbled back to the ground. I landed on my scorched rear, and that hurt like blazes.

That left only one more rope to try. I started climbing it without even stopping to test my weight on it. If it wouldn’t hold me, the jig was up anyway. And if it broke while I was climbing, I wouldn’t be any worse off than I was trapped at the bottom of the shaft.

The rope held—-but only as far as the next level. It was anchored there. There was no other ropes hanging down from the ground level above. I had some matches, and I lit one to peer up the shaft and see what I could see.

About two feet over my head, in the center of the shaft, what was left of the center cable was hanging. Unlike the others, this was made of thick strands of wire, rather than rope. Evidently the blast had split it at that point. As the match burned down to my fingertips, I could see that the end of this cable was just out of reach.

It might be securely fastened to the winch above. Or it might be hanging by a thread. What was left of it might be sturdy and undamaged. Or it might be frayed and ready to part at the slightest pressure. In short, it might hold my weight, and it might not

There was only one way to find out, but that was pretty iffy too. I’d have to leap for the end of the cable, to jump high and at an angle. I might grab it and pull myself up to the ground above. Or I might miss it and fall to the bottom of the shaft. No point in dwelling on that. I jumped.

I got hold of the cable all right, but it was slippery and I almost slid right off the end of it. Only by squeezing my hands so tightly that the wire cut deep into the palms was I able to keep my grip. I dangled there precariously for a long moment before I attempted to climb.

Those first agonizing moments were the hardest. With nothing but my bleeding hands to rely on, each inch I climbed, each fractional shift in position to pull myself higher, renewed the danger of my losing my grip and falling. But, finally, I’d worked my way up high enough so that I was able to grip the strand with my blistered legs and then was able to wrap my legs around it and shift my weight so it was distributed between my hands and feet. After that it was easier.

At long last I pulled myself over the edge of the shaft. I lay on the ground there for a long time, getting my breath back, gulping great lungfuls of welcome fresh air. I thought about Victoria. If she’d set the fuse right, she must have been above ground by the time the blast went off. Then she must have started back for the native village we’d left three days ago. By now she must be well on her way. I worried about her traveling all alone in the jungle at night.

It wasn’t likely that I could catch up with her. She had too much of a head start. I could only hope that she’d be able to make it on her own. For that matter, I could only hope that I’d be able to make it.

I looked up at the stars in the night sky to get my bearings. Then I located the beginning of the trail and started out. Weary, my body blistered, my hands mere hunks of shredded flesh, it was pretty slow going. But I kept moving until the sun was well up in the sky the following day. Then I found a nice, leafy tree, climbed into its branches until I found a shady crotch, and took a long snooze.

It was night when I resumed my journey. I hadn’t gone far when I saw the puma. I was lucky. The wind was blowing my way, so it didn’t catch my scent. It was stretched out right in the middle of the trail, licking its paws. In the patch of moonlight it looked like a giant and not unfriendly pussy cat.

Then it did spot me, and the illusion was quickly dispelled. It sprang to its feet and poised tensely, ready to spring. I stood motionless. We stayed like that a long time before I dared to make the one necessary move. I’d had my gun at my hip all that time, and now I switched the safety off. I knew that once it pounced I’d only have one shot before it was on me. But I had to wait until it leaped to shoot, because it wasn’t close enough for accuracy now.

The slight click of the safety prodded it into action. It jumped. But I couldn’t shoot. The puma fooled me. It leaped sideways, and I wasn’t able to swing around and shoot quickly enough. By the time I corrected my aim, it jumped again, this time straight for me.

I fired. Claws raked my face. Fangs lunged for my throat. And then I was wet with blood as its weight bore me to the ground and the puma literally died in my arms. I pushed it off me and got to my feet. I was still shaking as I continued my journey.

Luckily there were no more incidents like that. The shape I was in, I don’t think I could have coped with any. I must have looked half-dead when I staggered into the native village two days later.

Those natives were damn nice to me. They fed me and bathed me and treated my wounds until I got my strength back. I learned that Vickie had indeed made it there. She’d showed up the day before I had, but she hadn’t stayed. She had made a deal with some of the natives to help her to get back to civilization. They had agreed to guide her to the banks of the Amazon and then to escort her down river to the Purus tributary. They would take this until they reached Manaus, the nearest spot approximating civilization in the Brazilian interior.

I made the same deal. Considering that I had nothing to offer them with me, those natives were most trusting in accepting my word that I would see that they received payment in Manaus. Some four days after I’d arrived, we started out.

I shan’t go into the details of that journey. When I was a kid there was a series of books around which described the adventures of “Bomba, the Jungle Boy” in the Brazilian jungle. Well, their melodramatics hadn’t been exaggerated. Bomba would have felt right at home on my little safari. Deadly snakes, crocodiles, shooting the rapids, an encounter with hostile Indians, even a tropical hurricane—yes, Bomba would have loved it.

I didn’t. I was damn glad when we reached Manaus. I’d had enough of the jungle to last me a lifetime. Believe me, whether you’re playing Bomba, or Thoreau, inside plumbing has it all over getting back to nature.

At Manaus I sent a telegram collect to Charles Putnam at the embassy in Tokyo. I didn’t know what else to do. But the wire that came back was from Miami. It said I should make arrangements to get there as quickly as possible. He also wired me enough money to pay off the natives—I had to convert this into goods for them since currency had no value in their village-—and to arrange for my trip.

There’s only one big hotel in Manaus and I checked into it. I had a bath and a shave and a nap and a steak. Then, feeling more human, I went to the desk and made inquiries about Vickie. I learned she had been there, but had left the city. From the local airline I found out that she had flown to Barranquilla. I made arrangements to hire a plane to take me there. From there I figured that she’d be flying on to Miami and I would do the same.

I figured right. I found out in Barranquilla that she’d joined Alan Foster and the two of them had continued on to Miami. So I caught the first commercial airliner going there.

There was no reception committee waiting for me when I alit at Miami International Airport. But I had the address on the telegram Putnam had sent me. I hailed a cab and told the driver to take me there.

During the drive I thought to myself that Miami hadn’t changed. It had the same tinsel, gaudy atmosphere about it. The beach was still blotted out by neon lights. The streets were still crawling with antlike tourists, breast-bouncing young women and belly-bobbing middle-aged men. But then why should it have changed? Maybe I felt as if I’d left it a century or two ago, but in reality I’d only been gone a little more than a month.

Now the cab pulled up in front of Putnam’s hotel and I got out. I went straight up to the suite of rooms he’d taken. I entered.

“Steve!” It was Victoria Winters. She looked like a million bucks in a tight-fitting green cocktail dress that was cut down so low her quivering breasts seemed about to jump out of it.

She came straight into my arms I kissed her and she kissed back like she really meant it. Her body was hot and eager as it pressed against mine.

“I thought you were dead,” she said when the kiss was finally over.

“I don’t feel dead.” I kissed her again.

“I’ll say you don’t,” she murmured.

“Didn’t Putnam tell you he heard from me?” I asked. “I haven’t seen Putnam. When I reached Barranquilla, there were instructions from British Intelligence to come to Miami. Alan had the same instruction from the CIA. So we came here together. But we were just sitting around waiting to be contacted until tonight. Then Alan was told to come here, and I just came along with him. He’s inside and I’m waiting for him.”

“Just sitting around with Foster and waiting, huh!” I said jealously. “I’ll bet!”

“Well, after all, Steve, I thought you were dead.”

“And now that you know I’m alive? What now? Has Foster still got the inside track? Or do you still feel the way you said you did back in the jungle?”

“I still feel the same way,” she told me softly. She lowered her eyes “I can’t wait,” she added demurely. “I can’t wait to be made love to by the man from O.R.G.Y.”

“You won’t have to,” I assured her. “Just as soon as I tie up the pieces here—”

“But Steve,” she interrupted, “you still haven’t told me how you got out alive. And what happened to Von Koerner? And the invention? What about that?”

“Whoa! Take it slow. I’ll tell you everything. Just give me a chance.”

I started telling Victoria what had happened in the neo-Nazi hideout then. I got as far as when Koemer died before she interrupted me again.

“He was telling you that he used the weapon on you!” she exclaimed. “That flashlight was the weapon! Oh, my poor darling!”

“What are you getting so upset about? Even if he did, it obviously didn’t work. I’m not hurt.”

“Oh, Steve, you don’t know!” She was really distraught, but I couldn’t for the life of me see why she should be.

Before I could find out, we were interrupted by Foster and Putnam emerging from the other room. Foster shook my hand and said something nice about being glad to see me alive. But I wasn’t so sure I believed him. Not the way he looked at Vickie, I wasn’t. He still had that same proprietary air with her. Well, buddy, I assured myself, that’s going to change. You may not know it yet, but you’ve been cut out.

Vickie gave me her hotel address and room number, and I told her I’d contact her as soon as I got through with Putnam. She and Foster left then. I followed Putnam into the other room.

He was as ugly as ever-and as impeccably dressed. He’d swapped his tails for a tropical dinner jacket, but it was still black-tie and he wouldn’t have looked out of place at a diplomatic tea held to promote the Alliance for Progress. He offered me a drink and I accepted. Then we settled back in our armchairs and he had me tell him everything that had happened in detail.

When I was finally through, his face had that undertaker look. “So Von Koerner’s invention died with him,” he mused.

“I’m afraid so. Still, at least the Reds don’t have it. Or the goose-steppers.”

“Quite so, Mr. Victor. That is some consolation. But the price has been high, and it has yet to be paid.”

“What do you mean?”

“You will find out, Mr. Victor. You will find out.” It was the first time I’d ever seen anything approximating emotion on Putnam’s face. I tried to fathom it. Yes, it looked like pity.

“Those were the same words Von Koerner used before he died,” I said. “But I don’t understand. Are you telling me that his weapon had some effect on me that I don’t know about?”

“I’m afraid so, Mr. Victor. Still, we can’t be sure. It is always best to be sure. Perhaps you were spared. We must have you examined and find out. Yes, we must do that quickly.”

“Well, I feel fine, but if you think it’s necessary-”

“I do.”

“Then I’ll go to the doctor for a check-up. I’ll attend to it just as soon as I get settled. In the next day or two.”

“I’m afraid we can’t wait, Mr. Victor. Also, I would prefer to have one of our medical staff examine you. If what I suspect is true, it’s going to be difficult enough to keep it quiet.”

“All right. Set up an appointment. Any time you say.”

“Right now would be best, Mr. Victor.” Putnam’s manner was grave.

“The hell you say!” I was thinking of Victoria waiting for me back at her hotel. “I have plans for tonight.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Victor, but I must insist. For your own sake, I must insist.”

I tried to argue, but he stood firm. And so, an hour later I was closeted with three doctors who’d been hand-picked by Putnam from those working with the CIA. They asked a lot of questions before they got down to their examination.

“Have you been experiencing any nausea, Mr. Victor?”

“Some. I probably picked up a little fever in the jungle.”

“Is there any particular time of day when you feel it?”

“Just after waking up. That’s when I’m weakest, I guess. Jungle fever usually hits like that.”

“How is your appetite generally?”

“Damn good. So would yours be if you’d been living off jungle berries.”

“Do you have any unusual preferences?”

“Well, yeah, now that you mention it. I’ve been getting a yen for spicy stuff and I’ve developed a sweet tooth. Sometimes I feel like I’d just like to glom the damnedest stuff all together and gulp it down. But I suppose that’s because it’s been so long since I’ve had any really decent food ”

They had a lot more zany questions, and they kept shooting them at me for what seemed a long time. I answered as best I could and wished they’d get done with it. Finally they stopped the yakking and began the examination. They were damned thorough, and it was the middle of the night before they were finished.

“If you will come back at three p.m. tomorrow, Mr. Victor, we will have the results of the tests we have taken,” the head medicine man told me. “We’ll know more about your condition then.”

I said good-bye to them, and Putnam saw me to the door. He patted me on the shoulder as I left. That kind of gesture was damn unusual for him. It was as if he was trying to express sympathy.

But sympathy for what? What was wrong with me? What had Von Koerner’s Weapon done to me?

Well, I’d find out. And until I did, I wasn’t going to waste time worrying. Make hay while the moon shines, I told myself. And late as it was, I decided to attend to the matter of Victoria Winters.

It took some doing, but I rounded up some flowers and a couple of bottles of champagne. I took a room in her hotel and washed up quickly. Then, with the flowers under one arm and the champagne under the other, I went down to her room. The door wasn’t locked, so I didn’t stop to knock. I just let myself in very quietly.

It was very dark inside. I more or less guessed at the location of the bed and groped my way over to it. I set the champagne down on the floor beside it, and my hand kept groping until I felt the pillow. I trailed my fingers across it lightly until they encountered a strand of Victoria’s hair.

My fingers followed the hair up to her cheek. Then I bent over and kissed her softly on the lips. “Darling,” she murmured in her sleep. Her lips parted for another kiss.

I granted it, more insistently this time. My hand slid down from her face to her shoulder, and then to her breast. It was very warm, very soft. “Victoria, I’m here,” I whispered. “Your man from O R.G.Y. is here and very ready.”

“Not just now, darling.” She was still three-quarters asleep. “I’m so-o-o tired. Let’s wait until morning.”

“But I’ve waited so long already,” I protested, still whispering. I stroked her breast until the tip grew rigid against my fingers. “Come on, darling, wake up.”

I sensed her eyes opening and trying to adjust to the darkness.

“Hello, Vickie sweetheart.”

“Steve!” she exclaimed loudly. “What are you doing here?” Her voice was very surprised, almost alarmed.

“That’s just exactly what the hell I’d like to know!”

The voice came out of the darkness beyond her, from the other side of the bed. It was immediately followed by the turning on of the bedlamp.

The light blinded me for a moment. But even before I saw him, the familiarity of the voice had registered with me. And now, as my eyes adjusted, I saw Alan Foster’s angry face looking up at me from the pillows “Just what the hell’s the big idea, Victor?” he wanted to know.

I dropped Vickie’s breast like a hot potato and took a step backward with my mouth hanging open. The whole situation had an awfully familiar feel to it. Yes, this was exactly what had happened before, in Tokyo. There too I’d crept into Vickie’s room in the middle of the night only to find that Foster had beaten me to it. But I was even more flustered now because Vickie had led me to believe she was going to give Foster the gate for me.

“Sorry,” I said. “I guess I read the signals wrong.” I started to back out of the room.

Foster was still angry, but Vickie was looking at me sympathetically. “Steve, wait,” she said.

“What the hell for?”

“I want to talk to you.” She turned to Foster. “Alan, please. You know the sacrifice he made. Please go back to your room so I can talk to Steve alone. I really do owe him an explanation.”

I’ll be damned if Foster wasn’t looking at me sympathetically now, too. “Okay,” he agreed without even a token protest. “I’ll see you in the morning.” He hopped out of bed, covered his nakedness with a bathrobe, and then he was gone.

“Well, Vickie?” I asked bitterly. “Want to tell me how come you changed your mind?”

“I didn’t exactly change it. It was changed for me. By circumstance.” She was obviously floundering. “I mean, you were tied up with Putnam and—”

“And you couldn’t wait. So you didn’t waste any time hopping into bed with friend Foster.”

“I could have waited, Steve. But what for? When I realized your condition, I just knew I couldn’t go through with letting you make love to me. I was crying when Alan took me back to the hotel. Crying about you. And that’s really how it happened. He comforted me.”

“By hopping between the sheets with you! Well, that figures. After all, it isn’t the first time. It’s just that I don’t understand why you led me on. Why did you make me believe you wanted me to make love to you if you still want Foster?”

“Because I did. I meant all of it. Only your condition—”

“What condition? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Didn’t Putnam tell you?” She stared at me.

“Tell me what?”

“About what Von Koerner’s weapon did to you?”

“I don’t think he’s sure it did anything yet. He had me examined by a bunch of doctors. They’ll have the results tomorrow. Why? What is it that’s supposed to have been done to me?”

“Then maybe there’s a chance it missed. Oh! But it’s such an outside chance! Poor Steve! I can’t tell you. At least you’ll have one more night before you know. But I can’t make love to you either—-not knowing what I do. Maybe just because I’m a woman with a woman’s feelings, but I can’t do it. You’ll know why tomorrow, after you see Putnam. And if I’m wrong, if the weapon missed you or something, then there’ll be time enough for us to go to bed together.”

But Vickie wasn’t wrong. And when I finally learned what she was talking about, I couldn’t blame her for refusing to let me make love to her. I couldn’t even blame her for seeking solace in Foster’s arms. But she wouldn’t tell me anything more that night. And it wasn’t until the next day that I learned the truth about the effect Von Koerner’s weapon had on me.

Charles Putnam was waiting with the doctors at three p.m. when I arrived at his hotel suite. They all looked very grave. Even Putnam looked graver than usual.

“Mr. Victor,” the doctor in charge began, “I’m afraid we have serious news for you. The tests we took last night have all turned out positive.”

“Just what does that mean?” I wanted to know.

“It means that your condition is extraordinary, Mr. Victor.”

“Will you please stop talking in circles,” I told him, annoyed.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Victor. But I don’t know just how to put this. It’s very difficult.”

“Will you please just spit it out!”

“Of course, Mr. Victor,” One of the other doctors interrupted, “bizarre as the circumstances are, you’ve got nothing to worry about. You’re in excellent health.”

“Swell. So if my health is good, just exactly what the hell is the matter with me?”

The three doctors exchanged uncomfortable looks. Yet there was also something in their looks that was excited, almost elated, as if they’d stumbled on some rare microbe and knew that they would go down in the annals of medical history as the discoverers of it. The ambivalence of their feelings about me kept them tongue-tied. Finally, Putnam came to their rescue.

“I think, gentlemen,” he suggested, “that it might be best if you left me alone with Mr. Victor. Although I’m not a doctor, I think it might be best if I broke the news to him. In a way, I’m responsible for this condition.

One of the doctors did a double-take at that statement. He looked ashamed of himself when Putnam shot him a frosty look that said this was no time for appreciating the humor of unintentional innuendoes. The doctor hung his head and followed the other two as they started from the room.

“Wait a minute!” Putnam held up a small cage. “Take this with you.” There was a rabbit inside the cage. One of the doctors took it from him and they tramped out.

“All right, Putnam, now what the devil is this all about?” I asked him when we were alone.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Victor. I’m sorry I ever asked you to help us in this affair. I’m sorry I’m the one who involved you. I’m afraid I have placed you in a most untenable position.”

“Are you going to keep beating around the bush the way they did?” I demanded.

“No. My apologies. But as the doctor observed, this is quite difficult.”

“Why don’t you just say it!”

“Very well. Von Koerner’s weapon scored a direct hit on you, Mr. Victor. And it worked. It had the effect it was supposed to have. Soon that will be obvious to all who look at you.”

“Obvious how? What effect? What’s wrong with me?”

“Mr. Victor.” He took a deep breath. “You are pregnant.”

“I’m what?”

“Pregnant. That’s what Von Koerner’s weapon was designed to do. To make men pregnant. It was designed to incapacitate fighting men by striking at the very core of their masculinity. That little flashlight you saw was only a small model of a mammoth ray gun that was to have been built and aimed at entire countries without their knowing about it. The ray beamed at such countries would not affect women. That’s why a woman was initially assigned to this case, incidentally. But it was designed to effect certain genetic changes in men. These changes were instantaneous upon contact with the ray. And they brought about an equally instantaneous impregnation.”

“I don’t believe it.” I sat there stunned.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Victor. Remember the Cuban corpse in Miami that put us on Von Koerner’s trail? The autopsy disclosed that he was pregnant. That’s how we knew that Von Koerner must have been in the area. He was pregnant when he was killed. He was the only victim —until you.”

“I’m pregnant?” I was still dazed. “Are you sure?”

“That little rabbit doesn’t lie, Mr. Victor.” He said some more words designed to comfort me, but I don’t think I heard them. He assured me that the government would see to it that my necessary confinement would be carried out with the utmost secrecy. He stressed that the leading obstetrician in the country would be assigned to my case. He told me that I had every right to be proud and not ashamed of my impending motherhood—if such it could be called. Finally, he left me alone to absorb the shock of the news.

It was, I admit, quite a shock. I mean, it’s not an easy thing to learn that you’re about to become the world’s first unwed male mother. However, as my mind adjusted to it, I was able to see certain compensations. As the man from O.R.G.Y., this would provide me with a unique opportunity for investigation. I might at first hand consider the answers to such questions as how mothers-to-be sublimate their sex impulses. I might gain insight into the feelings engendered by the body growing gross and clumsy with child. Yes, I would be my own guinea pig, and there was no telling what important data I might accumulate during this nine—month caper.

I’ve managed to maintain that attitude these past months. And now, with my time growing short before the baby is due, I still approach giving birth with equanimity¹⁸ . I regret having missed out with Vickie. But aside from that, I have only one other regret:

My only regret is that I have but one child to bear for my country!

Unless, of course, it turns out to be twins.

Notes

[←1 ]

Although many scholars do not consider pornography an art form. Thus they explain the difference as eroticism is an art form while pornography is not, while both deal with sexuality.

[←2 ]

Bromo-Seltzer (acetaminophen, sodium bicarbonate, and citric acid), was a brand of antacid to relieve pain occurring together with heartburn, upset stomach, or acid indigestion. First produced by inventor Isaac E. Emerson's drug company of Baltimore, Maryland, in 1888, Bromo-Seltzer was sold in the United States in the form of effervescent granules which must be mixed with water before ingestion. (Wikipedia 2018)

[←3 ]

Jin Ping Mei — translated into English as The Plum in the Golden Vase or The Golden Lotus — is a Chinese novel of manners composed in vernacular Chinese during the late Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). The author took the pseudonym Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng "The Scoffing Scholar of Lanling," and his identity is otherwise unknown. The novel circulated in manuscript as early as 1596, and may have undergone revision up to its first printed edition in 1610. The explicit depiction of sexuality garnered the novel a notoriety akin to Fanny Hill and Lolita in English literature.

[←4 ]

The story, ostensibly set during the years 1111–27, centers on Ximen Qing (or His-men Ch’ing), a corrupt social climber and lustful merchant who is wealthy enough to marry six wives and concubines. After Pan Jinlian secretly murders her husband, Ximen Qing takes her as one of his wives. The story follows the domestic sexual struggles of the women within his household as they clamor for prestige and influence amidst the gradual decline of the Ximen clan. Ximen Qing in the end dies from an overdose of aphrodisiacs administered by Jinlian in order to keep him aroused. In the course of the novel, Ximen has 19 sexual partners, including his 6 wives and mistresses. There are 72 detailed sexual episodes.

[←5 ]

The Vietnam War was a conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese army was supported by the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies and the South Vietnamese army was supported by the United States, South Korea, Australia, Thailand and other anti-communist allies. The Viet Cong also known as Front national de libération du Sud-Viêt Nam or FNL (Front National de Libération), aided by the North, fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region, while the People's Army of Vietnam, also known as the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), engaged in more conventional warfare, at times committing large units to battle. As the war continued, the military actions of the Viet Cong decreased as the role and engagement of the NVA grew. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, and airstrikes. In the course of the war, the U.S. conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam, with huge civilian casualties. During the course of the Vietnam War a large segment of the American population came to be opposed to U.S. involvement in southeast Asia. Public opinion steadily turned against the war following 1967 and by 1970 only a third of Americans believed that the U.S. were justified in sending troops to fight in Vietnam. Nearly a third of the American population were strongly against the war, a position which lasted through subsequent decades. High-profile opposition to the Vietnam War increasingly turned to mass protests and draft-evasion in an effort to shift U.S. public opinion. Riots (accompanied by flag-burning) broke out at the 1968 Democratic National Convention during protests against the war. After news reports of American military abuses such as the 1968 My Lai Massacre, brought new attention and support to the anti-war movement, some veterans joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War. On 15 October 1969, the Vietnam Moratorium attracted millions of Americans. The fatal shooting of four students at Kent State University in 1970 led to nationwide university protests. Anti-war protests declined with the final withdrawal of troops after the Paris Peace Accords in 1973.

[←6 ]

The Kinsey Reports are two books on human sexual behavior, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), written by Alfred Kinsey, Paul Gebhard, Wardell Pomeroy and others. Kinsey was a zoologist at Indiana University and the founder of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction (more widely known as the Kinsey Institute). Sexual Behavior in the Human Female was based on personal interviews with approximately 6,000 women. Kinsey analyzed data for the frequency with which women participate in various types of sexual activity and looked at how factors such as age, social-economic status and religious adherence influence sexual behavior. Comparisons are made of female and male sexual activities. Kinsey's evidence suggested that women were less sexually active than men. The publications were immediately controversial among the general public. The findings caused shock and outrage, both because they challenged conventional beliefs about sexuality and because they discussed subjects that had previously been taboo, particularly regarding diversity in sexual orientations. The collected data are frequently used to support the common estimate of 10% for homosexuality in the general population. The reports also state that nearly 46% of the male subjects had "reacted" sexually to persons of both sexes in the course of their adult lives, and 37% had at least one homosexual experience. 11.6% of white males (ages 20–35) were given a rating of 3 on the “Kinsey scale” (about equal heterosexual and homosexual experience/response) throughout their adult lives. The study also reported that 10% of American males surveyed were "more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55" (in the 5 to 6 range). 7% of single females (ages 20–35) and 4% of previously married females (ages 20–35) were given a rating of 3 (about equal heterosexual and homosexual experience/response) for this period of their lives. 2 to 6% of females, aged 20–35, were more or less exclusively homosexual in experience/response, and 1 to 3% of unmarried females aged 20–35 were exclusively homosexual in experience/response.

[←7 ]

Allen Welsh Dulles (April 7, 1893 – January 29, 1969) was an American diplomat and lawyer who became the first civilian Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), and its longest-serving director to date. As head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the early Cold War, he oversaw the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, Operation Ajax, the Lockheed U-2 aircraft program and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Dulles was one of the members of the Warren Commission.

[←8 ]

The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961. A counter-revolutionary military group (made up of mostly Cuban exiles who traveled to the United States after Castro's takeover, but also some US military personnel), trained and funded by the CIA, Brigade 2506, fronted the armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF) and intended to overthrow the increasingly communist government of Fidel Castro. Launched from Guatemala and Nicaragua, the invading force was defeated within three days by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, under the direct command of Castro.

[←9 ]

Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar born Rubén Zaldívar (January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was the elected President of Cuba from 1940 to 1944, and U.S.-backed dictator from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown during the Cuban Revolution

[←10 ]

The $64,000 Question was a famous USA radio quiz created by Louis G. Cowan, formerly known for radio's first quizzes. He drew the inspiration for the name from the earlier show "Take It or Leave It", and its $64 top prize offering. He decided to expand the figure to $64,000 for the new television program. The $64,000 Question premiered June 7, 1955 on CBS-TV, sponsored by cosmetics maker Revlon and originating from the start live from CBS-TV Studio 52 in New York. It was then aired from October 4, 1955 to November 29, 1955.

[←11 ]

After de cades of political unrest and internal guerillas, Trujillo became president of San Domingo in 1930. For a long time, the U.S. and the Dominican elite supported the Trujillo government. This support persisted despite the assassinations of political opposition, the massacre of Haitians, and Trujillo's plots against other countries. The U.S. believed Trujillo was the lesser of two or more evils. The U.S. finally broke with Trujillo in 1960, after Trujillo's agents attempted to assassinate the Venezuelan president, Rómulo Betancourt, a fierce critic of Trujillo. Trujillo was assassinated on May 30, 1961. In February 1963, a democratically elected government under leftist Juan Bosch took office but it was overthrown in September. On April 24, 1965, after 19 months of military rule, a pro-Bosch revolt broke out. Days later U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, concerned that Communists might take over the revolt and create a "second Cuba," sent the Marines, followed immediately by the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division and other elements of the XVIIIth Airborne Corps, in Operation Powerpack. "We don't propose to sit here in a rocking chair with our hands folded and let the Communist set up any government in the western hemisphere," Johnson said. The forces remained in the country for over a year and left after supervising elections in 1966 won by Joaquín Balaguer.

[←12 ]

So renamed by dictator Rafael Trujillo.

[←13 ]

Christopher Columbus landed on the island on December 5, 1492, which the native Taíno people had inhabited since the 7th century. The colony of Santo Domingo became the site of the first permanent European settlement in the Americas, the oldest continuously inhabited city, and the first seat of the Spanish colonial rule in the New World.

[←14 ]

Either the author or Simone are misinformed. The term voodoo is transliterated phonetically from the French vaudou itself from vodoun in the Fon language (in the African Togo region). Vodoun is itself derived from a Yoruba word meaning « god ». (Wikipedia & Bob 2018)

[←15 ]

The Communist International (Comintern), known also as the Third International (1919–1943), was an international communist organization that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the state". The Comintern was founded after the 1915 Zimmerwald Conference in which Vladimir Lenin had organized the "Zimmerwald Left" against those who refused to approve any statement explicitly endorsing socialist revolutionary action, and after the 1916 dissolution of the Second International.