The Dead Man's Brother (27 page)

I heard the bone in his arm crunch as I missed my target, his neck. He cried out again then, but Morales was already astir.

I released the handle of the machete and clawed after the pistol belt with my right hand. With my left, I hooked him around the neck and dragged him in front of me.

I saw the flash and heard it just as my fingers found and unsnapped the holster. Two more came my way before I could get the pistol out and return the fire. With each shot, Dominic jerked slightly. Morales emptied his pistol as I fired twice, then he dropped it and slumped.

Dominic had gone limp in my arms and I could hear Morales cursing. I released my grip on my shield and let him fall to the ground. As I did, my left hand brushed my side and felt something wet and sticky. Whether it was his blood or mine, I could not tell.

I stepped around Dominic and moved slowly in the direction from which he had come. When I reached the rock he had occupied, I sat on it and watched Morales.

He raised his head and looked back at me. I could not distinguish his features.

"I am wounded," he said, after a time.

"I never would have guessed."

There was a long silence, then, "Wiley? Ovid Wiley?" he asked. "That is you?"

"Whatever is left of me," I said.

"I should never have trusted you."

"Perceptive of you."

A stray beam of moonlight showed me then that his rifle lay fairly close to him.

I rose and went to him, keeping him covered. I kicked his empty pistol into the brush and moved the rifle far out of reach.

Then I returned and rolled him over onto his back. He permitted this without making a sound. There was blood on his shirt and trousers.

I stuck the pistol behind my belt and carefully removed his shirt. I struck a match then and regarded him.

"How bad is it?" he asked, our eyes meeting.

"You have holes in your shoulder and belly," I told him, shaking out the light. "Do you hurt anywhere else?"

"I don’t think so," he said, with a heavy exhalation. "I don’t know. It’s the one in my stomach that’s getting to me."

I located his canteen, took a drink, propped him up and gave him one, took another myself. I used his shirt to wipe off his shoulder, then wadded it and soaked it, pressed it against the wound in his abdomen. I placed his good hand upon it, then propped him in a sitting position, his back against the bole of the nearest tree. I took another drink of water, then lit a cigarette and gave it to him.

"Thanks," he said.

I returned to the rock, taking the canteen with me.

"You carried it off neatly," he said. "I never expected to run into that."

I grunted, thinking he was talking about what had just occurred. He went on, however:

"How did you get them to the village that quickly? Was the timing accidental, or do you deserve full credit?"

"There was some luck involved," I said, not willing to let him know that I did not understand.

He coughed then and let out a brief groan.

"Well?" he asked, his voice sounding strained. "Did you get what you were after?"

"Yes."

"Are you certain?"

"What do you mean?"

He chuckled weakly.

"Just so. Just so," he said. "I meant only that a man can never be too certain, can he?"

I decided not to grant him the Pyrrhic victory of being bothered by his suggestion. After all, what was it to me whether there was something wrong with the papers?

Yet it did bother me. After what we had been through, to have them turn out worthless would be a hell of an epilogue. There could be no such thing, in a moral sense, as seeing the right thing done with the papers. But Emil’s notion struck me as being the least disagreeable, and I was willing to help effectuate it. It seemed most likely that Morales was just bowing out ungracefully, and I decided not to pursue the matter with him.

I went and fetched Dominic’s canteen. I did not feel up to touching him, let alone covering him over at the moment.

I took Morales a drink and listened approvingly as his breath came faster and faster.

"How long have you known about me?" he said.

"That you have been acting in your capacity as a Tupamara—or whatever the hell you want to call yourself—rather than a cop? That you may indeed be Saci?" I asked. "I don’t know. I got to thinking about it sometime after you released us."

He snorted.

"Was your job to get the papers or to get me?"

I could not avoid a small feeling of triumph, since I had been wandering blindfolded with the donkey’s tail tickling my forearms.

"The papers, of course," I said. "You are not considered especially important."

He snarled and spat.

"I will be a
cause célèbre
! A rallying cry for the movement! Diplomats will be kidnapped and exchanged for my freedom. You have grasped more than you can hold, Ovid. By taking me, you further the cause!"

Here he broke into another coughing spell, seized his stomach and bit back a moan.

"How much longer until they arrive?" he asked.

"Who?"

"Your co-workers, your fellow officious intermeddlers. Whatever the hell you call the other pigs. You have had your moment of glory now. When do they close in?"

"Is it getting bad?" I asked him.

He cursed.

Then, "You could have carried some morphine, for emergencies!" he snarled.

"You seem to be laboring under a misapprehension," I said, returning to the stone and taking another drink of water. "It does not matter to me one way or another whether you are or are not Saci. The only thing that matters is that you are Morales, and that I have promised to kill you."

"You are lying!" he said. "Dead, I would be a martyr. I am too big for you to touch, dead or alive."

Then, "Who did you promise?" he asked.

"I promised myself," I told him, "because of the way you treated Maria, and me. But don’t flatter yourself you’ll be a martyr. Che Guevara you are not. You’ll sink without a ripple. How many people know who Saci really is?"

"I do not believe you," he said. "If you are not lying, why don’t you use another bullet and be done with it?"

I lit my first cigarette of the century.

"Because I want to watch you die," I said.

After his next, longest bout of coughing and cursing, he steadied his voice and said softly, "I can hurt you yet."

I continued smoking. Let him talk. It was all he could do now. And what did he think he could tell me that would hurt me?

"The man who gave you the papers," Morales said, with vicious pleasure in his voice. "I don’t know who he is—but he is not Emil Bretagne."

So. I kept my own voice neutral, except for a note of fatigue it was not hard for me to inject.

"I don’t care," I said.

He had more to say, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of appearing to pay attention. Bit by bit, he wound down, his final sally a failure. Eventually he sank into silence. I waited for the night to pass.

I insisted on speaking with him in private. I clammed up on everything else and kept repeating my request until they finally got the idea that I meant what I was saying.

They chased Maria out of the hut and left me alone with him. I doubted they had had time to bug the place, but we spoke in whispers.

"Claude?" I said. "How do you feel?"

He was lying on a cot, regarding the roof, several fresh dressings on his upper body. He smiled faintly, then said, "I’ll recover."

He turned his head then and met my eyes.

"How did you find out?" he asked.

"Morales told me you were not Emil. He thought I would find it distressing. He was wrong."

"Where is Morales now?"

"Dead."

"How?"

"I killed him."

"Were you alone with him when he told you?"

"Except for a corpse."

"Have you told anyone else?"

"No. Nor do I intend to."

"That is good of you. It gives me some time. What made you decide I was Claude when you learned I was not Emil?"

"Actually, I had suspected you of being Claude earlier. Emil disappeared prior to your apparent death. It seemed doubtful to me that he could have learned of it so quickly, while flitting about the country rechanneling money. And why would it be necessary for him to break into his own safe to get the records? And his disappearance, your apparent death and his reappearance with a whole new set of objectives seemed a bit strange. But it was your avoidance of Maria yesterday that told me who you really were. Even Morales was not certain as to your true identity, though. It puzzled him that a man trained in finance, with full knowledge of the enterprise and a strong physical resemblance should suddenly appear on the scene and cause a stir. He speculated that you were a Soviet agent engaged in an elaborate scheme to embarrass the CIA. He was somewhat hurt that his organization had not been taken into confidence on this, because they would have assisted, he said. He did not get to question you for very long, did he?"

"No. It was only a matter of minutes before the counterattack came."

His eyes wandered toward the roof once more.

"You have guessed what became of my brother then," he said.

"When you ran into difficulties in Rome, I assume you discussed with him the matter of coming to Brazil in a hurry. He was quite concerned over this because he was in with Morales’ crowd—which is the reason Morales spotted you as an impostor immediately—and he was not living up to his end of the bargain with you, as to the disbursement of the funds you were diverting. He persuaded you to meet with him in Lisbon, where he tried to explain what he had done and swing you over to his way of thinking before you came to Brazil, saw it for yourself and caused him trouble. I choose to believe that he had the gun, and when a fight followed the inevitable argument it was discharged accidentally, killing him—a facial wound at that, enough to fool even Maria as to who it was, for the brief look she had. The thought occurred to you also, and you decided to assume his identity and undo as much as you could of what he had done."

"Thank you," he said. "That is essentially correct. Only the three of us know it—for now."

The three of us. He, I—and Maria. Or to put it in the proper order, he and Maria. And I.

"Tell me, would you have access to the funds you succeeded in sequestering if you were someone other than Emil Bretagne?"

"Yes," he said, turning his head toward me once more, eyes narrowing, "I set it up that way. Some are even in a thumbprint account. My thumb, naturally. Why?"

"If you were to die again, then both Bretagnes would be completely out of the picture and you would be free to direct the expenditures you had in mind for this area personally."

"I do not understand."

"The doctor they brought, the one who patched you up, said that you would live."

"Yes."

"Then it is really quite simple. He was mistaken in his prognosis. He will come in and spend some time with you, then step outside and let it be known that you suffered a relapse with massive internal hemorrhaging and ultimate cardiac arrest, then sign a death certificate stating that Emil Bretagne died here today. Then we will all depart, leaving you to recuperate and go about your business. Oh, yes. Your deathbed request was that your remains be interred here by the natives you had come to love so dearly for their simple kindness, etcetera."

"How would you manage this? And why would you do it?"

"Do you get the newspaper every day?"

"Yes. Usually it’s a day or two late, though. The bus drivers drop off a few at the stations. One of the tribesmen gets me one."

"Thank you. That clears up something. You sent Vera hunting for me because of that write-up in the paper, correct?"

"Yes. That made you the only CIA agent I knew of. I read her the article and told her I had to talk with you. She said that she would locate you and bring you here. She is a very strange, resourceful woman."

"I daresay. Still, he couldn’t have known all that. He must really have been down to his last card for this round."

"Who are you talking about?"

"I’ve known the CIA man who is in charge of this operation for a long while. I was not aware that he was an agency man until he led the rescue party to me in the jungle this morning. I’ve known him for years as a second-rate art critic. It was very good cover. It gave him a reason for running all over Europe and having free time on his hands. It must have been in this role—perhaps even the reason for his assuming it—that he backed into this thing by way of his investigation of Sign of the Fish operations. It will hardly be a great distortion that I will be asking him to have confirmed—that Emil Bretagne died here, today, rather than a few weeks ago in Lisbon."

"He is so good a friend that he would do this thing if you ask him?"

"Hell, no. But you are no longer important to him. It’s those records that he wants. And since I’m the only person who knows where they are I am certain that we can reach an understanding."

He lay there a while, apparently thinking it over, then said, "I don’t know how to thank you."

I hauled out my filthy wallet and fetched forth a soiled card.

"Here," I said. "Keep me in mind when there’s some native artwork that needs marketing."

He accepted it and nodded. He smiled.

"
Requiescat in pace
," I said. "
Mors janua vitae
."

*

Later, I was to see small, cryptic reports in the back pages of the Times concerning Bassenrut, minor governmental shakeups and a continuing crackdown on revolutionaries. The usual stuff. Maria had seen me off at the airport, and she had brought Vera along. Vera had given me a
figa
—a thumb-through-fist good luck charm—which I had dropped into my pocket, and Maria had given me a lukewarm goodbye kiss which I could not gracefully decline.

She was remaining, of course, to do some sort of work with the tribes of the Matto Grasso. They both saw me off again, several hours later, after my plane blew three tires on its left side, flopped about a bit and had its fuel catch fire. I do not know whether it was the figa or Berwick’s good luck hypothesis catching up with me, but there were two deaths and I was the only passenger who was not injured in some way. My second departure worked all right, though it is an awkward thing to say goodbye twice in the same morning.