River of Death. Alistair MacLean
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more than mild. ‘But my orders - ’
‘Here are your new orders,’ Spaatz said. He produced his Luger.
The cabin of the thirty-seater aircraft was battered, scruffy, unclean and more than a little noisome, which pretty accurately reflected the general appearance of the passengers, who would never have made it to the ranks of the international jet-set. Two of them could have been classified as exceptions or at least as being different from the others although neither of them would have made the jet-set division either, lacking, as they did, the pseudo-aristocratic veneer of your true wealthy and idle layabout. One, who called himself Edward Hiller—in this remote area of southern Brazil it was considered poor form to go by your own given name—was around thirty-five, thickset, fair-haired, hard-faced, obviously European or American and dressed in tan bush-drills. He seemed to spend most of his time in moodily examining the scenery, which, in truth, was hardly worth the examining, inasmuch as it duplicated tens of thousands of square miles in that virtually unknown part of the world: all that was to be seen was an Amazonian tributary meandering its way through the endless green of the rain forest of the Planalto de Mato Grosso. The second exception—again because he seemed not unacquainted with the basic principles of hygiene-claimed to be called Serrano, was dressed in a reasonably off-white suit, was about the same age as Hiller, slender, black-haired, black-moustached, swarthy and could have been Mexican. He wasn’t examining the scenery: he was examining Hiller, and closely at that.
‘We are about to land at Romono.’ The loudspeaker was scratchy, tinny and the words almost indistinguishable.
‘Please fasten seat-belts.’
The plane banked, lost altitude rapidly and made its approach directly above and along the line of the river. Several hundred feet below the flight-path a small, open outboard motorboat was making its slow way upstream.
This craft—on closer inspection a very dilapidated craft indeed—had three occupants. The largest of the three, one John Hamilton, was tall, broad-shouldered, powerfully built and about forty years of age. He had keen brown eyes, but that was about the only identifiable feature of his face as he was uncommonly dirty, dishevelled and unshaven, giving the impression that he had recently endured some harrowing ordeal, an impression heightened by the fact that his filthy clothes were torn and his face, neck and shoulders were liberally blood-stained. Comparatively, his two companions were presentable. They were lean, wiry and at least ten years younger than Hamilton. Clearly of Latin stock, their olive-tinged faces were lively, humorous and intelligent and they looked so much alike that they could have been identical twins, which they were. For reasons best known to themselves they liked to be known as Ramon and Navarro. They considered Hamilton—whose given name was, oddly enough, Hamilton—with critical and speculative eyes.
Ramon said: ‘You look bad.’
Navarro nodded his agreement. ‘Anyone can see he’s been through a lot. But do you think he looks bad enough?’
‘Perhaps not,’ Ramon said judicially. ‘A soupçon, perhaps. A little touch here, a little touch there.’ He leaned forward and proceeded to widen some of the already existing rents in Hamilton’s clothing. Navarro stooped, touched some small animal lying on the floorboards, brought up a bloodied hand and added a few more artistically decorative crimson touches to Hamilton’s face, neck and chest then leaned back to examine his handiwork critically. He appeared more than satisfied with the result of his creative workmanship.
‘My God!’ He shook his head in sorrowful admiration. ‘You really have had it rough, Mr Hamilton.’
The faded, peeling sign on the airport building-hardly more than a shack—read: ‘Welcome to Romono International Airport’ which was, in its own way, a tribute to the blind optimism of the person who had authorised it or the courage of the man who had painted it as no ‘international’ plane had ever landed or ever would land there, not only because no-one in his right senses would ever voluntarily come from abroad to visit Romono in the first place but primarily because the single grass runway was so short that no aircraft designed later than the forty-year-old DC3 could possibly hope to land there.
The aircraft that had been making the downriver approach landed and managed, not without some difficulty, to stop just short of the ramshackle terminal. The passengers disembarked and made for the waiting airport bus that was to take them into town.
Serrano kept a prudent ten passengers behind Hiller but was less fortunate when they boarded the bus. He found himself four seats ahead of Hiller and therefore was in no position to observe him any more. Hiller was now observing Serrano, very thoughtfully.
Hamilton’s boat was now closing in on the river bank. Hamilton said: ‘However humble, there’s no place like home.’
Using the word ‘humble’ Hamilton was guilty of a grave understatement. Romono was, quite simply, a jungle slum and an outstandingly malodorous example of the genre. On the left bank of the aptly named Rio da Morte, it stood partly on a filled-in, miasmic swamp, partly in a clearing that had been painfully hacked out from a forest and jungle that pressed in menacingly on every side, anxious to reclaim its own. The town looked as if it might contain perhaps three thousand inhabitants: probably there were double that number as three or four persons to a room represented the accommodation norm of Romono. A typically sleazy end-of-the-line—only there was no line-frontier town, it was squalid, decaying and singularly unprepossessing, a maze of narrow, haphazardly criss-crossing alleys—by no stretch of the imagination could they have been called streets-with the buildings ranging from dilapidated wooden shacks through wine-shops, gambling dens and bordellos to a large and largely false-fronted hotel rejoicing, according to a garish blue neon sign, in the name of the OTEL DE ARIS, some misfortune having clearly overtaken the missing capitals H and P.
The waterfront was splendidly in keeping with the town. It was difficult to say where the river bank began for almost all of it was lined with houseboats—there had to be some name for those floating monstrosities—relying for their construction almost entirely on tar paper. Between the houseboats were piles of driftwood, oil cans, bottles, garbage, sewage and great swarms of flies. The stench was overwhelming. Hygiene, had it ever come to Romono, had gratefully abandoned it a long time ago.
The three men reached the bank, disembarked and tied up the boat. Hamilton said: ‘When you’re ready, take off for Brasilia. I’ll join you in the Imperial.’
Navarro said: ‘Draw your marble bath, my lord? Lay out your best tuxedo?’
‘Something like that. Three suites, the best. After all, we’re not paying for it.’
‘Who is?’
‘Mr Smith. He doesn’t know it yet, of course, but he’ll pay.’
Ramon said curiously: ‘You know this Mr Smith? Met him, I mean?’
‘No.’
‘Then might it not be wise to wait for the invitation first?’
‘No reason to wait. Invitation’s guaranteed. Our friend must be nearly out of his mind by now.’
‘You’re being downright cruel to that poor Mr Hiller,’ Navarro said reproachfully. ‘He must have gone out of his mind during the three days we stayed with your Muscia Indian friends.’
‘Not him. He’s sure he knows he knows. When you get to the Imperial keep close to a phone and away from your usual dives.’
Ramon looked hurt. ‘There are no dives in our fair capital, Mr Hamilton.’
‘You’ll soon put that right.’ Hamilton left them and made his way in the gathering dusk through winding, ill-lit alleyways until he had passed clear through the town and emerged on its western perimeter. Here, on the outskirts of the town and on the very