Checkmate in Rio Read online

  Luisa sat still and silent, the tears drying on her cheeks and her hands awkwardly holding Cabral's as he lay sideways on the floor trapped inside his fallen chair. Cabral groaned, gradually awakening.

  Both Silveiro and Mendes had their guns drawn. They approached Nick's prone figure as if he were some kind of strange animal that might suddenly leap up and turn upon them. Which was just about what he was forced to do.

  The creaking sound began.

  Silveiro looked around uncertainly. Carla went on unheedingly to grab Luisa by the hair and throw her roughly to the floor.

  Nick rolled over slowly and staggered to his feet with his hands half-raised, as if he had the strength to do no more.

  The creaking went on. He could not look. But it seemed to him he felt the faintest breath of a draught.

  "Enough," he said tiredly. "Enough." Two guns pointed inexorably at him. "Carla, leave the girl alone. She has nothing to do with this." He swayed on his heels and almost toppled. "I asked her to come because Rosita would not. I thought perhaps… some kind of a distraction. Her stepfather, you see…" He trailed off incoherently and let his eyes half-close.

  Carla smiled at him. "So you think you can still bargain," she said softly. "Well, perhaps you can." She slapped Luisa hard across the face. "Who will take this? You or she?" Luisa's small jaw tightened.

  "Carla, don't," Nick moaned. "Do anything you like to me. Don't do that to her."

  "Anything I like?" said Carla gently.

  Nick paused for effect.

  "Yes," he said humbly, and let his chin sag to his chest.

  Carla walked slowly across the junk-filled room toward him.

  "Be careful, Carla!" Silveiro warned her sharply. "Don't get in front of the guns. Mendes, get over there and watch him."

  On the pretense of watching Mendes move Nick sneaked a swift look up at the ceiling. A square hole showed where there had been no square hole before. His heart soared. Of course, it was barely possible that it was someone other than Roz…

  "I'll be careful," murmured Carla. She stopped a few feet away from Nick and slightly to one side. "So you'll do anything I say? Tell me all I want to know?"

  "What else is there for me to do?" he asked abjectly. "I have to."

  He heard one sharp tap from up above him.

  "What was that?" Silveiro swung about, his eyes searching.

  Carla was oblivious.

  "I don't believe you," she said softly. And her fingers shot out across the gap between them to rake across his eyes.

  "Now ain't that too damn bad!" he roared exuberantly, and leapt. "Pepito!"

  It was a strange word for a battlecry, but that's what it was.

  He caught Carla by the arm, twisted it, and slammed her into Mendes. The man staggered back and lost his balance — but he still held the gun. He fired a wild shot that slammed into the wall behind Nick. Nick took a deep breath and held it while he pulled Carla to him, trapping her arms in a painful twist behind her back. He backed against the wall, maneuvering her from side to side to use her against both Mendes and Silveiro.

  "Shoot the girl!" screamed Carla. "Let me go, you…" she called him a name that was so awful it was almost funny. "Luiz! Get her! Shoot Luisa!"

  Nick swung her briskly in a horrible parody of a dance.

  The percussion instruments were at it again in the night club somewhere over their heads. Must have come in very handy for them on a number of occasions, Nick thought grimly as he waltzed.

  God, it took a long time. He hadn't even heard it drop.

  "The trapdoor!" Silveiro shouted suddenly, and darted away from Nick and Carla and their strange embrace. "It's open!" He raised his gun and fired rapidly into the opening. Mendes swung toward him.

  "Mendes!" Carla screamed hysterically. "Shoot Luisa, I tell you! Get me out of this!"

  Damn. Mendes was alert again. Still, he'd try. Got to get that gun.

  Using Carla as a battering ram he charged at Mendes. But Carla's legs got in his way. Also, she bit him savagely at the base of his throat. His head jerked back and Mendes dodged around him. Silveiro fired again. And then, strangely, sighed and dropped his gun. He tottered for a moment, hung like a falling tree, and fell. Carla struggled frantically, cursing and spitting. Mendes stopped dodging and stood there watching them, like a man watching a wrestling match he knows is rigged. Then he too crumpled to the floor. Carla sagged suddenly in Nick's arms. He dropped her like a sack of potatoes and cast a swift look at Luisa and Cabral. Both were still and silent. But their eyes were open.

  His lungs were bursting. He stumbled over Carla and made his way to the open trapdoor. Gathering his strained muscles together, he leapt. And missed. Jesus Christ, he thought. You're getting old, Carter. Spots danced before his eyes as he grabbed a chair and thrust it beneath the opening.

  He whistled once and pulled himself painfully up to the dark room with the window. His fingers were slipping and he felt himself falling back when the small strong hands reached him and helped him up.

  "Oh, Nick…" a low voice whispered. "Quickly, to the window. There's no one outside now."

  "Close the trap," he mumbled. "Got to… keep them… under."

  He stumbled to the window and sank down to his knees. The trapdoor closed behind him. He heard the window open quietly and felt her hands slide under his arms and drag him up. His head rested on the sill as he looked out into the dark, cool night. He breathed deeply. Drafts of sweet, clean air flooded into his lungs.

  "Roz…" he murmured. "Roz. Good girl. Sweet baby."

  She crouched beside him anxiously, slim but not at all like a boy in the close-fitting pants she had chosen for climbing in through windows and tossing a small nerve-gas pellet called Pepito. He kissed the soft, slightly parted lips, and felt tremendously refreshed.

  "They've hurt you terribly," she whispered.

  "You should see the other fellas," he said cheerfully. "Come on, now. We still have work to do."

  They opened up the trapdoor and went back into the basement rooms that had so much horror in them. Holding his breath, Nick scouted for Wilhelmina and Hugo, and found them only when he battered open the big cabinet in the torture room. He went up again for air. Rosalind was already there.

  "How long?" she whispered.

  "Several minutes yet. Untied Cabral?"

  She nodded. "Looks bad. But he should make it."

  "He'd better," Nick said grimly. "Poor bastard. Let's try to get them up here first."

  Working with frantic speed and with every ounce of their strength, they moved a table beneath the trapdoor and hoisted the dead weights of Luisa and Cabral into the upper room and propped them near the window.

  "Stay here," he ordered. "It's almost time. I'll finish this myself."

  He went below once more.

  The strangest thing about it was the eyes. They were staring at him now, watching his every move. But that was the way the gas worked, and that was the way it started to wear off. None of them would be moving yet for quite a while. But they could watch him, and they did.

  He went back into the torture room and went through the cabinets, swiftly selecting several documents and microfilms. Someone else would have to find the rest, even if it was the police. They would be fascinated, he knew, at the evidence of a Chinese Communist headquarters in the basement of the lavish Carioca Club.

  Someone in the next room moaned. It seemed only fitting.

  Nick left the torture room and looked down at his victims. They stared back at him.

  He steeled himself. They could not be allowed to live.

  Silveiro's lips trembled as Hugo flashed down toward his heart. Mendes tried to move. And died.

  Carla…

  Carla started babbling wordlessly as Nick approached her. There was one thing more he wanted to be absolutely sure of. His hand went down between the soft, firm breasts he'd touched before under conditions very different… and he found the key. A golden key that bore the number One.


  The sounds she was making formed into words. But the words were meaningless. They were the chattering of a very small child, the garbled wanderings of an old… old… old… unthinkably old woman.

  Her face was drawn and colorless. The eyes were dim and murky. She started writhing on the floor and the strange words grew wilder. She screamed.

  He stood over her and stared at what was left of the woman who had writhed beneath him on the beach. And he had seen enough in his lifetime to know that the dim eyes would never clear, that the rocking, wrenching movements would never again be anything but convulsive contortions, that the wild babble of words would never form an intelligible, human pattern. He looked at her and thought of many things, of the men who had died by his hand and of the men and women who had died by hers, and of the ones who were left.

  Hugo snapped shut.

  Nick turned away and left her. He vaulted up through the trapdoor and closed it against the awful sound in that room of death.

  Carla Langley went on screaming.

  * * *

  Nick groaned in his sleep and woke himself. For a moment he felt a chill, as of something vital left undone, but then he remembered that whatever was left of them was safely accounted for. He remembered the sound of drums, the trumpet, and the scream; the swift departure from the window down the back street; Luisa stroking Perez Cabral's hand as they sat slumped, afterwards, in the luxurious living room of their suite, and saying: "Forgive me… please forgive me…" And Cabral murmuring, "She would be proud of you. I loved her too. You don't know how I loved her."

  There were a hundred loose ends to be tied up. There always were. But they had the makings of a story for Cabral to tell the police, and enough time left to polish it. Tomaz and Sleepy were the only ones left who knew enough to be a nuisance to Milbank and Montez, and they would lie their heads off to save their necks and incidentally cover Nick and Rosalind for what they were.

  Rosalind turned over in her sleep. He touched her gently with his aching fingers and he felt her stir into wakefulness.

  "Nick… darling. Oh, Nick, I dreamed…"

  "So did I," he murmured. "Let me hold you. Let me hold you close and love you."

  "Just hold me close and let me sleep," she whispered drowsily.

  His arms enfolded her. His body ached and his face was bruised and swollen, but apart from that there was nothing wrong with him. Nothing at all.

  Nor with her.

  "I thought you said you wanted to sleep," he said a few moments later.

  "Not yet. Do you?"

  "No."

  It was a long, wonderful while before they did.