The Terrible Ones

And So We Say Farewell

The ancient Ford took the curve like a racer at Le Mans.

“How much further?” Nick shouted above the sound of his own speed.

“About thirty seconds worth, at the rate you’re going,” Paula yelled back. “I don’t understand you at all. First you want to walk because it’s quieter and then you steal a car from some wretched dirt farmer with five banana trees and a mortgage on his shack. Slow up, will you? You’ll go right past the village! There’s Toury, down the slope to the right.”

Nick slowed and looked at the tiny cluster of houses huddled together near the waterline. He drove on for several hundred yards and swerved sharply into the rough driveway of a small coffee plantation. He glanced at his watch in the dashboard light before tugging loose the wires he’d crossed several minutes before when he’d helped himself to the parked car. Twelve forty-five. Not bad. Twenty minutes to take a quick and silent walk, hijack an antique buggy, and park two minutes’ walk away from a boatdock in Toury.

“We weren’t followed when we left,” he said. “But I know we were followed earlier. Doesn’t make sense. Why weren’t we followed again when we left LeClerqs? Because somebody already knew where we were going?”

“That’s impossible,” Paula said coolly. “Who could know? And don’t tell me Marie and Jacques.”

“I won’t. Show me to the boatshed and we’ll wait and see who comes. Unless of course we’ve been beaten to the punch.”

He slid out of the car, closed the door lightly, and waited for Paula to join him. She was not the sort of woman who liked to have doors held open for her.

She led him down the hillside past the back doors of the sleeping village to a sagging boardwalk at the water’s edge. From the center of it a dilapidated dock jutted out into the sea, and to either side of the dock’s landward end there were several sheds in various stages of disrepair. Each of the sheds had two doors, one leading into its rear from the boardwalk and another, almost the width of the shed itself, opening into the sea. Some of the sheds were open and empty. One or two of them were too ramshackle for use.

Paula led him behind the sheds and past the outjutting dock to the far end of the boardwalk. Boards creaked beneath their feet. Wilhelmina waited in Nick’s hand, ready to meet company. The shed at the farthest end of the walk leaned crazily sideways into the softly lapping water. They made their way toward it. Both its doors were closed. Paula stopped at the rear door and raised a key to the lock.

Nick placed a hand lightly on her arm. “Wait.” He took a quick look at the shed beside it. It was open to the night and in reasonably good condition. And it stood between their shed and whoever else might come along the boardwalk.

“In here,” he whispered. “Into the corner, away from the door. Ah!” His groping hands found what they sought. “Get under this tarpaulin and stay there until Duclos gets here.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort!” she hissed angrily. “We can wait in Henri’s shed—”

“You will keep your mouth shut for once and do as you’re told,” Nick grated, and his voice carried icy authority. “Get under there and keep quiet.” He shook the tarpaulin out in case of lurking rats, and thrust her under it. A muffled voice said “Damn you to hell!” and then the canvas subsided.

Nick peered out of the shed and padded along the boardwalk to the locked one where their boat should be waiting. He moved around it carefully, feeling rather than seeing the loose boards and the gaping holes of decay. The lock was a laugh, he thought. Anyone who wanted to could force his way in there inside of three minutes. He found a slanting gap almost a foot high and several inches wide. With the caution that had kept him alive through a good many years of hunting and being hunted he jabbed the nose of his pencil flash in through the gap, crouched down low, and flicked on the switch. He saw the tiny beam cut into the thick blackness inside. But there was no reaction from within. He was about to take a look inside when he heard the soft clipclop of a horse’s hooves on the road above the village. The sound stopped almost at once. It could be a villager. But he doubted it.

There were low reeds growing alongside the inside edge of the ancient boardwalk. Nick groped his way into them and found himself ankle-deep in slush but pretty well hidden.

Minutes passed. Then the boardwalk creaked. If it was the boatman, Henri Duclos, he was more than an hour early.

And Henri would not need to jab a flashlight on and off to inspect every beat-up boatshed.

The light swung into the shed where Paula lay hidden beneath the tarpaulin. It seemed to linger there. Nick stiffened, hoping to God that the intruder hadn’t spotted the sole of a shoe or a lock of hair protruding from under the canvas.

He hadn’t. He left the second last shed, and his light swung to the last shed in the line. The beam focused briefly on the door and then went out. The man glided toward the door and started fumbling with the lock with something that didn’t sound like a key.

Nick’s finger itched on Wilhelmina’s trigger. But the inky blackness made accurate shooting impossible, even at close range, and right now he would rather question than kill. Also he preferred to see a fellow’s face before he shot him.

He rose from the reeds in a slight rustle of sound and leapt at the shadowy back with one arm swinging into a Commando hook around the neck and Wilhelmina ready to jab into the ribs. But the man’s hearing must have been as acute as Nick’s own for he was turning even as Nick leapt and he squirmed like an eel when the muscular arm clamped around his throat. He slammed the flashlight against Nick’s head and kicked out with one sharp-toed foot. Both blows were light and glancing and would have meant nothing if the two men had been on solid ground, but they were not — the planking lurched beneath their combined weight and threw them both off-balance. Nick tightened his grip involuntarily and stepped back onto a board that tilted beneath his feet. Rotting wood suddenly splintered underneath him and he felt his right leg drop abruptly between the shattered planks and into an abyss of cold water. The other man, still in his grip, sprawled out heavily on top of him; Nick’s elbow struck the boardwalk and Wilhemina went flying. The flashlight clattered to a stop and cast a sidelight on their tangled forms.

Tom Kee twisted savagely and half-freed himself, sliding one hand inside his jacket as he tried to rise. Nick saw his slit-eyed face and his quick movement at the same time. He tightened his pressure on the throat with one hand and snaked the other out to clamp a vise-like, screwing grip around the Chinaman’s thin wrist. Tom Kee squealed shrilly.

“Fidelista traitor!” he panted, and tried to wrench away. Nick was in no mood to bandy compliments. His thigh was jammed tightly between the rotting boards and his weight was distributed in an uncomfortably awkward way. He held onto Tom Kee with all the strength that he could muster and screwed the arm around until the shoulder bent toward him. Then he jerked viciously. Something snapped with a sound like a pistol shot. The Chinaman screamed and chopped wildly at Nick’s temple. Nick rocked sideways and felt his fingers loose at the other man’s throat. Tom Kee clawed at them with desperate strength and tore himself away. He leapt to his feet and slammed a kick into Nick’s face. Nick ducked, caught a glancing blow on the side of his head, and dimly saw the Chinaman’s good hand reach again into its owner’s jacket.

Nick clawed at the planking and heaved himself upward. The sharp splinters of the boardwalk dug through his trouser leg and raked into his flesh like the prongs of an animal trap. Tom Kee’s arm reached out toward him, pointing. Nick wrenched himself free as a tiny tongue of flame spat in the darkness and bit into his arm. He leapt sideways and then dived forward, arms outstretched and reaching for the gunhand. There was another zap! of sound and he had Tom Kee by the arm and over his head before he felt the sting. The Chinaman slammed down headfirst onto the boardwalk and Nick went after him. He landed heavily with his knee in the other man’s back and his arm jerking under his chin. There was another crack, even sharper this time, and Tom Kee lay crumpled in the stillness of death. Nick got up and heaved a sigh. So much for the question-and-answer game. He knew the fellow was Chinese, but that was all he knew.

“Are you all right?” He started at the voice. For a moment he had forgotten all about Paula. Then he was glad of her voice in the darkness. “Yes. Grab that light and let’s have a quick look at him.” She shone the light down onto the prone form as Nick turned the body over.

“He’s one of them,” she said quietly. “I’ve seen him in Santo Domingo with Tsing-fu.”

But there was nothing on his body to tell them anything more about him.

Nick dragged Tom Kee to the edge of the boardwalk and thrust him between the rotten planks and the sighing reeds. Then he walked back to the borrowed boathouse with Paula by his side.

“I wanted to help you,” Paula said as they sat down together on the tarpaulin. “But I could see so little in the dark and I was afraid of hitting you.”

“ ‘Afraid’ is not the word for you, Paula,” Nick said quietly. “You did the right thing. Except,” he added, “that you were supposed to stay under the tarpaulin.”

She laughed softly. “Now you know that was impossible for me!” Her hand rested lightly on his arm and he tingled at her touch. “You are hurt,” she said gently. “Please let us go to the boat before Henri comes. I know there are medical supplies on board.”

“They’ll keep,” said Nick. “I’d rather stay where we are and keep an eye out for more visitors.”

She was silent for a moment. Nick stared out onto the boardwalk and wondered again about her friends Marie and Jacques. Jacques had known they were going to the castle, Jacques had known that they were coming here… He wondered if they could really trust Henri Duclos.

“Do you know,” said Paula, “that you have not even told me your name?”

He stared at her in the darkness. It was true. Jacques had not even wanted to know — it was safer that way, he had said— and the occasion had never seemed to have arisen with Paula. He had a cover name, of course, and papers to go with it. But he was sure of Paula now, if of nothing else.

“My friends call me Nick,” he said.

“Nick. I like that.” Her hand brushed lightly over his bearded cheek. “I wonder what you really look like.” She drew her hand away.

“Ugly as hell,” Nick said cheerfully. “Chinless and covered with warts.”

She laughed again. It was a pleasant sound; not a girlish giggle but a woman’s laugh. “And your body — that is a facade too, I suppose?”

“Ah, no,” said Nick, suddenly very conscious of his body and its proximity to hers. “No, it’s all solid me — except for the padded shoulders and the built-up shoes.”

“I did not like you at first,” she said abruptly.

“That was my impression,” Nick murmured.

“You see, I had expected—”

“I know, Paula.” Nick chuckled. “A posse of men. You told me once or twice. But look at it our way. Time and time again the United States has sent squads of men into a country to help, and time and time again half the world has turned on us and snarled about American intervention. Lately certain groups have begun to capitalize on this, sending up fake howls for help and then screaming to the world that Uncle Sam has done it again. We know for a fact that we’ve fallen for a couple of deliberate traps, It’s only a propaganda gambit, but it pays off for them in hatred for us every time. So, no posse. No Marines. Least of all into Santo Domingo, where they’re already spitting at us. We’re getting a little tired of spit. That’s why you’ve had to settle for one man rather than a squad.”

“I should have understood that. I am sorry.” She paused and then said, “But I am glad that you are the one man. It was wrong of me to be — so ungrateful. Would you like me to tell you now about Alonzo?”

“That would be nice,” Nick said drily, and checked the radium dial of his Cuban Army watch. One fifteen. It was still as black as a coalpit outside and as silent as the grave.

“He is a member of a special force of Cubans who have a camp in the hills west of Santo Domingo. I know it is hard for you Americans to understand this, but many of us in the Dominican Republic cannot think of them as enemies. They are propagandists, infiltrators, advisers — call them what you will. Of course they are Communists. But they bring with them a kind of revolutionary spirit that our country needs, a hope that some day we will have a leader who is neither fool nor Fascist. We do not work with them, but neither do we obstruct them and they do not interfere with us. Or so I thought. At any rate, one or two of them have become our friends. Alonzo Escobar was very taken with little Luz, one of my Terrible Ones. He has been seeing much of her.”

“And did she know where you were going when you left Santo Domingo?”

“Yes.” Paula gave a little sigh. “Whenever any one of us goes anywhere we always tell three others. It is a rule, and it has often helped us out of trouble. This time, it seems, it made trouble for us. It is obvious that she must have told him where you were to land. I wonder if he also expected a platoon.

But she’s the only one who could have told him and I can’t think why she did. He is not such a catch as a man. I hope she has not gone over to the Fidelistas.”

“I hope not,” Nick said thoughtfully. “I suppose it would be understandable if she did.” But his thoughts were quite different from his words. He had seen one badly tortured girl already and he had an unpleasant feeling that somewhere there might be another, name of Luz.

“What are you thinking?” Paula asked a little sharply.

“To tell you the truth,” he lied, “I was wondering how come you’re so blond and leggy and almost English looking. Oh, I approve, of course. But I can’t help wondering.”

“Oh. I am almost English. Only my father was one-half part Spanish. He died a long, long time ago….”

She was telling him, suddenly, about life under Trujillo and about her husband, Tonio Martelo, who had died six years ago of a bullet in the head for being a member of a political organization opposed to the dictator. He had been more than a member, he had been its leader. He had called his group La Trinitaria, after the independence fighters of an earlier century. But every last man of his group had either died in prison or been shot after a farcical trial, and every one of their families had been stripped of all possessions while Trujillo bragged about the stolen millions he had waiting for him in the banks of Switzerland. And because he was a braggart he let slip something about a cache of gold and precious stones that he had not yet sent away. One hundred million dollars worth. One hundred million dollars in golden ornaments and coins, in precious stones and semi-precious gems, in rubies, sapphires, emeralds, black pearls… all stolen. Some had been stripped off the widows of his victims, and it was said that these gave him his greatest pleasure.

With his death the rumors spread like wildfire, until there was so much fantasy in them that the truth seemed altogether lost. Years passed, and the story of the treasure lay dormant. But the wives of the victims had not forgotten. Under Paula’s leadership they had formed a group dedicated to the righting of old wrongs — and the finding of the treasure. And they had been extremely interested when a new story had found its way to them through the underground, the story of a Chinese treasure hunt and of various clues leading to the cache. There was also the suggestion of a special Chinese use for the easily negotiable gold and jewels in a project of their own called Operation Blast. No one knew what Blast could be.

“Hold it a minute!” Nick whispered suddenly. He was enthralled with Paula’s story but he was still tuned in to the world outside. And he had heard the distant sound of running feet. It was still too early for Duclos.

The boardwalk thumped and creaked and the footsteps slowed to a fast walk. Someone came toward them, whistling breathily and pausing between notes to pant with exertion. A light flashed on and off three times.

“It is Henri!” Paula breathed, springing to her feet.

“Careful!” Nick was beside her at the door.

Her light flashed three times into a dark face whose eyes blinked in the glare.

“Paula! Thank God you are here early! Who — who is that with you?” A hand flashed to a shoulder holster.

“It’s all right, Henri. He is a friend.” Paula went to him with her long, quick strides. “What is the matter — is someone after you?”

“No, no!” he gasped, still fighting for breath to speak. “I do not think so, anyway. But there has been a terrible tragedy, terrible!”

“What is it?” she rapped.

“Jacques.” Henri drew his hand across his twitching face and swallowed noisily. “Jacques, Marie, the whole house up in flames! It burnt in minutes, only minutes, right to the ground. Police, everybody crowding around, nobody could do anything. The heat unbearable, white flames eating into everything, everything all gone!”

“No!” Paula cried. It was a cry of agony and disbelief.

“Yes, yes, I am so sorry. God knows I am sorry. Incendiaries, they say. Deliberate arson, horrible.”

“Evita too,” Paula whispered. Nick grasped her shoulders and felt her trembling violently. “Oh, God. Burnt alive!”

“Evita! I do not know Evita,” Henri said hurriedly. “But they died in seconds, seconds only. It was deliberate, for sure. Someone heard explosions, and a horse leaving the village, and looked out. There was no horse any more, but the house was one big sheet of flame. Catastrophe! We cannot leave tonight, Paula. Tontons Macoute are everywhere, questioning. Anybody missing, dreadful trouble. Tomorrow instead, maybe not even then. Also, now they think that djuba thing was murder, and they are hunting for a man. Everybody must be accounted for, or else the family — you know what they do to family of a missing man.”

Paula nodded slowly. “But we can’t go back there,” she said quietly. “We have to leave.”

“No, no, we cannot go. You will have to hide!”

“We have to go, Henri,” Nick said firmly. “And we will go. But you don’t need to. I’ll pay what you want for the boat, but I’m going to take it out of here tonight.”

Henri stared at him. “Paula is my friend,” he said finally. “There is no payment for the boat. Leave it in the cove at San Jorge where Paula will show you. If I can collect it, I will. If not—” he shrugged.

“Thanks, Henri,” said Nick. “Show me the boat.”

Ten minutes later they were out in the bay. It was a small boat with a tiny motor and a lateen sail; nothing much to look at, but it would take them where they were going. On board there were medical supplies, fishing gear, rough fishermen’s clothes, a little food.

A mild breeze edged them seaward. Nick could see the lights of other small boats dotting the sea. Paula sat in the stern and stared at nothing.

“We are early, there is no need to hurry,” she said tonelessly. “If they are searching for us they will not find us out here. But we must wait to go into San Jorge with the rest of the fishing boats or we might be stopped when we get there. Drop the net and fish if you like. We have time. Also it will look better.”

Nick spread the net and calculated how much time they had. Plenty, he decided. They could drift for a couple of hours before heading directly for San Jorge. Both of them could use the rest. A slight foggy drizzle was oozing down upon them, and he lowered the lateen sail over the spar so it could serve as a shelter. Then he found the sea anchor and pitched it overboard so that they would not drift too far out to sea. Paula did not even notice as he opened the medicine chest and applied rough plasters to the two bullet scrapes inflicted by Tom Kee.

When he finished he looked at her in the dim light of their inboard lamp. Her face was expressionless but her cheeks were wet. It was not from the rain, he knew.

“Paula.”

No answer.

“Paula. Get under the sail. I know what you’re thinking— but don’t. We have all the more reason now to take hold of ourselves and get on with the job.” He knew it must have sounded inane, but there were times when even he ran out of the right things to say. “Come here.”

He reached for her gently and drew her beneath the canvas shelter. Then he cupped her face between his hands and kissed her tenderly.

And suddenly she was in his arms.