Montezuma’s Revenge

The car pulled off the road under the giant pines and they smoked cigarettes while they waited. An occasional car passed on the road behind them, the only sound other than the wind stirring the pine needles high above. Across the valley below the lower slopes of the dormant volcano Popocatepetl rose up to the distant summit with a banner of cloud flying from it. Robl consulted his watch and the return trip began. There was no conversation. D’Isernia looked out at the scenery and whistled an aria from Madama Butterfly, Robl stared sternly ahead, Tony guarded the sundered piece of painting. They halted finally a block from the Hotel Vasco.

“Emerge now,” Robl ordered. “Have the examination made. The money is here?”

“It should be here this afternoon.”

“It had better be. Remember, you will be contacted at four this afternoon. If all is well the exchange will be made tonight.”

They were all waiting in Sones’s room when Tony returned, all except Stocker that is, who was undoubtedly still sitting insomniacly over his charge.

“Report,” Sones ordered.

“I saw the painting, it looked authentic enough.” Tony opened the folded handkerchief while he talked. “I was going to scrapings but Robl thought some kind of butchery was more in order. He cut a corner from the painting.”

Lizveta Zlotnikova looked at the fragment as at a fresh-slain corpse and screamed shrilly. “Beasts, swine,” she snarled through her teeth as she gently took up the canvas, adding even more insulting-sounding terms in richly throbbing Russian. Bearing the sundered canvas like a newborn, she left the room.

“They will be contacting me at four this afternoon to make sure that the money is here by then, I didn’t let them know it had already arrived. If the painting checks out the exchange will be made tonight. And there is one other thing ...” He hesitated,

“What?”

“I met—the man who owns the painting. He said it was from his collection. And there was a memorial Mass there, sort of funny, because he wasn’t dead and ...”

“Have you been drinking, Hawkin?”

“No I haven’t, not a drop, nor have I had coffee or breakfast either.” His stomach emitted a dreadful growl at this realization. “I’m going to order something up now.”

“Not before you explain just what it is you are talking about. Or who. What man?”

Tony clenched his fists at his side. “Adolf Hitler, that’s who. I’ve been talking with him. The picture is from his collection, you told me so yourself. He’s alive and well in a wheel chair.”

A thoughtful silence fell. Billy Schultz gaped. Sones opened his eyes wider and wider nor did he take them off Tony who crossed to the phone and contacted room service fairly swiftly, then ordered a club sandwich with turkey, a side of fried beans, a large guacamole salad with tortillitas, a jug of coffee and a bottle of Bohemia ale.

“Just repeat that,” Sones said when he hung up.

“Adolf Hitler. I have been talking with him about the purchase of one of his paintings.”

“He’s supposed to be dead,” Billy squeaked.

“The reports must have been exaggerated.”

“You are sure of this, Hawkin? Washington will want to know everything.”

“I’m not sure of anything. He had a little white mustache and hair over his eye. And he offered to sell one of his own watercolors. It was bad enough to be real.”

“I must contact Washington.”

“In school, you know, they told us he was dead.”

“I hope this is the food,” Tony said, hurrying to the door to answer the knock, saliva beginning to flow in anticipation.

“Absolutely authentic,” Lizveta Zlotnikova said, coming in, doing some quick work with her handkerchief at her reddened eyes. “The pigments, canvas, characteristic of the period. The brush strokes even more evidence, the hand of the master, what sureness. What kind of creature could deface such a masterpiece?”

She raised the sodden handkerchief again and Tony f back a sudden desire to comfort her, perhaps hold her to his manly bosom, sudden warm memories of her female one burning strongly before him.

“Then the meet is on. Get back to your room, Hawkin, and tell Stocker about this. And if I were you, I would not mention to anyone, repeat anyone, about whom you met today.”

Tony opened the door, then closed it again and turned.In the rush of the morning’s events he had completely forgotten what he had been told earlier.

“I’m sorry, but what was the password to get back into my room?”

“Two knocks, space, one more knock. Password Horsefly. You had better shape up, Hawkin, start catching on to things.”

Good news in the form of a tray-bearing waiter appeared in the hall outside and Tony intercepted his lunch, stopped, tipped and dismissed the man, then went through the ritual of admittance to his own quarters. The chill eye at the crack in the door ac~ cepted “Horsefly” and let him in. The curtains were drawn, the room dark, the bed unmade.

“Want some of this?” Tony asked.

“Don’t drink on thu job, nor eat either.”