Montezuma’s Revenge

Montezuma’s Revenge Harry Harrison

To ANTHONY BURGESS,

Gratitudinously

He weren’t no saint—but at jedgment

I’d run my chance with Jim,

‘Longside of some pious gentlemen

That wouldn’t shook hands with him.

He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing,—

And went for it thar and then;

And Christ ain’t a-going to be too hard

On a man that died for men.

John Hay, Jim Bludso

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists

One

From a pigeon’s eye view, and there are pigeons enough in our nation’s capital, fed and fat from tourist popcorn and sandwich crusts, the National Gallery looked just as it always has done. White marble, domed and impressive, a suitable repository for the finest art from all over the world displayed for the pleasure of the American citizenry. Here the sweat-soaked sons of Kansas and California, Texas and Maine sought welcome relief from the steam-bath heat and shattering glare of a Washington summer, wallowing in wide-eyed wonder before the fleshy expanses of the Rubens matrons, shuffling glazed-eyed past the exuberances of the impressionists, while all of this time they were unaware of the human drama being played out in their midst.

If their attention had not been elsewhere they might have noticed him standing to one side in the book and art shop, a man with a decidedly worried expression that kept slipping back to his face no matter how he tried to dispel it with a professional smile. He was thin, of medium height, tanned and jet haired, his nose slightly too large for his face although he was not unhandsome for all of it, his smoothly pressed suit was beige and unassuming, his neatly knotted tie of an austere tone; he stood erect yet at ease with his hands clasped behind him, master of all he surveyed—which was indeed the case.

“Mr. Hawkin,” a rounded, pink sort of girl said, trotting up to him with a thick book extended before her. “A gentleman wants this but there’s no price in it ...”

“Master Drawings of Degas, second edition, eight ninety-five plus tax.”

She thanked him breathlessly, impressed by this feat of total recall, eyes swimming moistly like fish behind their thick lenses, and hurried back to her customer. All appeared to be as it should be, postcards, books, prints, colored slides selling briskly, a run on Ingres items, which was to be expected with the loan exhibition upstairs of the artist’s Roman sketches, but said run craftily countered by preordering of Ingres items so that the racks stayed full and the profits mounted. Yet, despite all this, all was definitely not as it should be as Hawkin’s quick glance at the heavy-set man in the black suit proved. While ostensibly displaying an intense interest in the file of Fragonard prints he was in reality staring intently at Hawkin who caught a quick glint of those deep-set eyes and turned hurriedly away, the smile slipping from his face yet one more time, pushed from position by memory of those same eyes and even colder voice earlier that morning.

“Be available at noon,” he had said, nothing more, then moved silently away among the racks.

Hawkin’s first reaction had been anger; who was this stranger to come here and speak to him in this manner? The security office was close by and Legree, the chief, was luxuriating there in his rolls of fat and keeping them firm with coffee and cake to tamp his ample breakfast down.

“Just be available,” he ordered in his calorie-rich voice. “If the man says be there, then be there. I know him. He’s government.”