Montezuma’s Revenge

“I will be waiting too. Waiting here for your safe return. Come to me and tell me what has happened. Go safely.” Her hands went behind his head and her lips engulfed his in a warm and exceedingly rich kiss. It lasted a long time and eventually, short of air, he pushed away, though it was hard to push her wit! pushing silk and full-rounded flesh. Once out of the room he found he was sweating, though the hallway was cool. Now which was Sones’s room, fifteen perhaps, the one next to Lizveta Zlot-nikova’s. She had a nice name, with a certain richness to it. She had a certain richness herself which had not been obvious at first. The door in front of him opened suddenly, startling him, and Sones peered out.

“Why are you just standing there in the hall? What do you want?”

“To report. They are sending a car for me, someone phoned me, sounded like Robl, that’s all he said. It will be here, I hadn’t realized, look at the time, it’s here now.”

“Then get down there—and better not fumble this one, Hawkin. There is a lot riding on it. You better do a lot better than you have done up to now.”

Hurried on by this enthusiastic praise, Tony went to the lobby and was leaning toward the dining room and a quick cup of coffee, which he was yearning after more and more, when he saw Heinrich at the front door, jerking an impatient thumb. He sighed for thoughts of coffees lost, and changed direction.

“You are late.”

“I thought some coffee ...”

“There is no time.”

The dark bulk of the Packard hulked outside the entrance, Robl and D’Isernia both in large black hats peering at him from the back seat.

“You are late,” Robl said when he joined them.

“It couldn’t be helped. Are we going to see the painting now?”

“Later. We go to Mass first.”

“Today is April thirtieth,” D’Isernia said, and both men nodded gravely. They were wearing almost identical dark suits and as soon as the car had left the city they took out black armbands and pinned them to their sleeves. What could it possibly mean? Tony cudgeled his brain for holidays he might have forgotten, could think of none, Mexican or American. Easter was over. Mass? On a Saturday?

“You wouldn’t mind telling me what this is all about?”

“You will understand later,” D’Isernia said sternly, pinning a black rosette to his pocket.

“Can you at least tell me where we are going?”

“To the Hacienda Pantitlan. It is in ruins, burned during the revolution, but the chapel is intact. It suits our needs.”

They turned off the paved road onto a dirt track between the fields of high sugar cane. There was another car ahead of them, Heinrich slowed so the dust would settle before they reached it, and at least one other vehicle was visible through the cloud behind them. Very quickly the vine-covered walls and crumbling brick chimneys of the hacienda came into view ahead. Hein turned off into the grassy field and parked the Packard next to the other cars there, fifteen at least, and still more arriving. The occupants, all middle-aged or older, were proceeding slowly toward the chapel, mostly men, a very few women, all dressed in mourning, black clothes and sable armbands.

“We will wait until the others are inside,” D’Isernia said, looking at Tony’s lime-green shirt and shaking his head. “You cannot go in dressed like that. Stay back with Heinrich and you may observe from the rear. There is a small room there where you go after the services. We will join you there. Do you understand?”

Tony nodded gravely as though all this made any sense, and attempted to assume as morose an air as the others while t waited. The last car arrived, the last party of funereal septuagenarians tottered into the chapel, then they followed. It was dark inside the church, dimly illuminated by candles on the altar, and the atmosphere was more redolent of goats and hay than ecclesiastical incense. The rustle and whispering stopped as a man in dark suit and dog collar rose and began to speak in quavering German. Heinrich pulled Tony’s sleeve and they moved off to one side where they could watch but not be observed themselves,

“Would you mind telling me what is going on?”

“It is a commemoratory Mass as you can see.” He snorted with some feeling and spat noisily on the first floor. “The Spaniards have held this kind of a service before in Madrid, with plenty of Germans and Italians, of course. First time in this country. Dead, twenty-seven years ago today.”

“Who?”

“Nummer Eins. Number one. Hitler, Adolf, born Schicklgruber.”

“You have got to be kidding!” The massed voices rose in prayer before them.

“I wish I were. Old memories die hard, good or bad. I had no inkling of this before today. I left a message for Jacob Goldstein and I pray he gets it on time. There should be people here he is interested in.”

“Hochhande?”

“Who knows. But nothing is to be lost by finding out just who the momsehrim are who attend an obscenity like this.”