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Show u f'R CARIBBEAN SIM life, CONSPIRACY iiiil'illiilii k BRENIDA CONRAD V cM THE STORY SO FAR: Anne Heywood, beautiful dauEhter oJ a wealthy New York newspaper publisher, goes to Puerto Puer-to Rico on an assignment for her father's paper. Also on the Island are Pete Wilcox, Wil-cox, a reporter on her father's paper, now a U. S. Army Intelligence officer; Miguel Valera, a Puerto Rican educated In the United States who Is a secret U. S. agent; Richard Taussig, an engineer whose Identity as a German agent Is suspected but not yet proved; and Russell Rus-sell Porter, a young American engineer, and his wife, Sue, who has given Mr. Taussig some valuable plans. Realizing her mistake. Sue has come to Anne for help. Anne agrees to meet Mr. Taussig, who thinks she has them. I cnAPTER xvn The little hills along the horizon were like small conical dips of green and brick-red ice cream dotted over the landscape. The narrow road, winding and curving between the sweeping lanes of flamboyants was lovely. It must be very beautiful, Anne thought, when the trees were scarlet with bloom. "Where are we going?" she asked. Mr. Taussig turned back with a smile. "I think we might tell her. Or shall we surprise her?" "We are going to a coffee plantation, planta-tion, Miss Heywood," Diego Gon-garo Gon-garo said. The road was full of Army trucks now. She kept thinking how easy it would be to call out to one of the blond sunburnt boys at the wheel. But she didn't do it. Then they were climbing, the tires shrieking as they went around hairpin curves with steep banks on one side and scarred bare cuts on the other, in the face of the hill where they'd widened the road. Below them was a river and a power plant. Mr. Taussig opened his guide book and unfolded the map to the back cover. Anne saw him take a pencil out of his pocket, make a circle on the map and fold it again. She straightened up a little, a sudden idea dawning in her mind. The map was not like the one in her book. The island in the center of it was not the same size, or the same color. It was more elaborate and detailed and took up most of the page, while hers was a small rectangle rec-tangle in the middle of a lot of ocean. She settled back in the corner feeling feel-ing Diego Gongaro's eyes on her face. It was in the car again, the thing she'd felt orv the way to the sugar mil'.,'.;: vas danger. On the eft the bank sloped across a Self' of cane to a narrow valley of r'.iture land. She could see a A . cows grazing, and as they rounded a sharp curve she saw a yellow and black airplane sprawled in the pasture, like a great grounded ground-ed wasp. She sat quietly waiting. The road curved again, and they came up to a faded blue stucco wall with a broad archway ,in the center. They drove through open iron gates and pulled up at the house, blue stucco also, with dark balconies at the upstairs windows, closed tight and heavily shuttered. . "Here we are," Gongaro said. He handed her out onto the marble slab in front of the door, then reached into the car and picked up her handkerchief. hand-kerchief. " Is this yours, Se-norita?" Se-norita?" "Thanks," she said. "I'm always doing that." "I know," Diego Gongaro said. She understood that the remark had some meaning, but not knowing what, let it go. "The house is yours, as the Spanish Span-ish say, Miss Heywood," Taussig said. v He followed her into the cool foyer. foy-er. The irony in his voice tapped cut a sharp warning in the back of her head. "Upstairs, please. Miss Heywood," Hey-wood," Diego Gongaro said. He opened a double door at the top of the stairs. "There is your story, Miss Heywood," Hey-wood," Taussig said. He pointed to the plane lying in the field. Anne waited. She was not afraid now. It was as if the alert had sounded, and she was ready, every nerve poised and keen. "Please sit down, Miss Heywood." Hey-wood." His whole intonation and the rigid posture of his body made it sound exactly as if he'd said, "Bitte set-zen set-zen Sie sich, Fraulein." She hadn't thought of him that way before. She sat down. Gongaro moved to the gallery and stood there, his hands behind his back twitching impatiently. impatient-ly. Through the spindles of the balustrade Anne could see a man crossing the field to the plane. It was their chauffeur. She could tell by his cap and the outline of his head. She looked back at Taussig. He was pulling open the fastener of his brief case. She watched calmly as he took out a small blue steel automatic auto-matic and put it on the desk beside him. She wasn't frightened. It came to her with a burst of something like joy that she wasn't "Go on, Mr. Taussig." she said. "Airplanes themselves are no longer long-er news. Perhaps you know that." "That plane is news, Miss Heywood." Hey-wood." he said curtly. "As you will soon see." The khaki-colored field car mounted mount-ed the steep road above Cayay. Two long fingers of light reached out in the dark. The sharp empty curves sprang into relief and vanished in the blackness as the powerful motor ;l:irted high naked banks. Below ho'n tha valleys were heavily blan keted with mist as dense as white snow. Pete Wilcox sat behind the driver and the soldier with him, perched up in the topless vehicle built for speed over rough terrain and not for looks. He hung on with one hand and held the ear phone of the two-way radio to his ears. The first message had come through as he passed the barracks at Cayay. "Calling P.J.W. Calling P.J.W." Then the code. Their car was leaving leav-ing the Granada. He was waiting impatiently. "Acting on Information Received," as they put it in G 2, it wasn't the first time since he'd left San Juan at 4:45 that the ghastly doubt had come to him that Information Infor-mation Received might have been cooked up especially to get him out here. He waited. "Calling P.J.W. Calling Call-ing P.J.W." the soft monotonous voice said in his ear. Their car was passing Fort Buchanan. He looked at the spot on his map that was supposed to be their destination, desti-nation, and settled back, grim-faced and hard-eyed. They had begun to descend the other side of Cordillera. The scout car swayed from side to side around the hairpin curves. The soldier in front of him was pale green but not actively sick . . . yet. "This about it, sir?" he called back over his shoulder. The bank dropped down below them in a tropical trop-ical jungle, lush and green and dense. "We want an iron gate on the right," Pete said. "Okay, sir." They made another sharp turn. "That it, sir?" Pete saw it at the same time, set in a ten-foot hedge "Go on, Mr. Taussig," she said. of hibiscus and roses. It was a high ornamental grille, barred, bolted and tied with a chain. A sign in Spanish Span-ish said "Private Property. Beware of the Dogs." The driver grinned. "I guess they don't want anybody to come see 'em, Captain." Around the first half circle of the winding road beyond the gate the driver pulled into the bank. "Okay, sir," he said. "Him and me are surveying this road. That the idea, sir?" Pete nodded. "Be careful you don't get run over." They got out instruments and set them up. Pete waited with the earphone ear-phone on his head. He was getting jumpy again. He had recognized the voice on the phone. Its owner was to meet him here if and when, he thought. He lighted a cigarette. The hands on the clock on the dash and the Hands of his watch moved together in a slow conspiracy. Finally Fi-nally it came, low and monotonous. "Calling P.J.W. Calling P.J.W." Their car was going through May-aquez. May-aquez. Borinquen was signing off. The rest was up to him. He took the phones off and jumped out of the car. "Get going, boys," he said. "A man's coming. He'll ask for me. I'D be up that mule track. Keep your eye on the road below. A black car will go in the gate. Give it half an hour, and then park across in front so nobody can get out, and sit tight." "Oh, boy!" the driver said. He saluted with a broad grin. "Yes, sir." "Don't shoot unless somebody pulls a gun. Shoot hell out of anybody any-body who does." He made his way up the mule track through the coffee trees. It was cool and green under the ferny branches covering them with shade. He kept climbing, trying to get the idea out of his head that he might be walking into some kind of a trap laid for himself as well as Anne. At last he came out into a clear flat patch of ground and looked down. He could see a valley below and the red-tiled roof of the house. Beyond it he caught the glenm of the sun on the shiny nose of a tri-motored tri-motored plane. Suddenly he straightened up at a new sound in the stillness of the green mountain top, dropped his cigarette, cig-arette, put his foot on it and waited, his face grim and his jaw tight Miguel Valera was coming up the mule track. He came into the clearing and stopped. For a moment the two of them stood looking at each other wtih steady appraisal. Miguel Valera Va-lera came forward. "We're going to start down," he said. "We can get there before they do. If you don't mind" doing as I tell you, there ought not to be any trouble. We have plenty of time." j "Before we go," Pete said quiet- ly, "I'd like to know where you stand in this business." "At the moment my chief interest is Miss Heywood," Valera answered evenly. "The rest of it is up to you. I'd like to keep out of sight if possible, for reasons of my own. If I can't, Okay. Are you ready?" Pete looked at him for an instant. in-stant. "All set," he said. They crossed a ravine and started up a rounding slope. "What about your people?" Pete asked. "The peons?" "Yes." "They're all right. The common people have an idea what democracy democra-cy means, even out here." The road ahead of them was lined with royal palms. A man came riding out of an archway in the blue stucco wall He nodded at Miguel and set off down the road. They crossed the dirt compound and entered the house. "Upstairs," Miguel said. "I don't get your part in all this," Pete said. "Whose side are you on?" "My people's," Miguel said calmly. calm-ly. "That depends on your point of view, doesn't it?" "I think not. Be quiet. They're coming." Pete looked at him in the half-dark. half-dark. It could still be a trap. " It is a story, Miss Heywood," Mr. Taussig said, "that I should not have told you if you'd minded your own business. Perhaps I should be as concise as possible, because time is precious." Anne crossed her knees and leaned back in her chair. "There is not much point in your taking notes, since unfortunately you will not be able to write the story. I'm telling it to you to keep my end of the bargain, and because there is a little writing I'm going to ask you to do. And please, Miss Heywood, don't be so detached. It's annoying. If you think this is a joke, you are quite wrong." "I'm just interested, Mr. Taussig." Taus-sig." She spoke calmly. It was the fatalism of the end of the road. It was even a pleasure to be able to make him angry. He recovered from his annoyance. "You may remember the five gentlemen gen-tlemen you spied on under the courtyard court-yard stairs night before last," he said. "If you had not left your handkerchief hand-kerchief there we might not have realized how stupid you were be-ins." " He doesn't know Miguel was there," Anne thought. "It was stupid," stu-pid," she said. "The gentlemen three of whom are with you today feel that something some-thing must be done to save their work. For your . . . story, our work is simply to render the Gibraltar Gi-braltar of America hors de combat when the signal is given." He tapped his brief case. "The plans are simple and very carefully organized. I regret there isn't time to go into them in detaiL I think I hear the motor of our plane being tuned up. We have a skeleton organization, however, that will function. The plane you see out there, for instance, serves a dual purpose. It brings money, and it brings ammunition. Both are downstairs in the storage rooms we passed, under a couple of feet of coffee beans which, since the market mar-ket is so bad, Don Alvaro wisely refuses to sell." "Does Don Alvaro know about it?" Anne asked slowly. "Don Alvaro," said Mr. Taussig, "has the old-fashioned idea that wars are fought and won or lost on the field of honor." "How very quaint of him." A cobra glint shone in the concentric con-centric circles of his spectacles for an instant. "His brother-in-law, however, has the modern notion of the bloodless war. When the time comes, for instance, in-stance, your Panama Canal will fall with very little loss of life, and quite intact." "I wouldn't count on it too heavily," heav-ily," Anne said. "As you won't be here to see it. Miss Heywood, you can take my word that it will. There are a great many Sue Porters in the world." He reached under his coat, brought a tiny camera out of the concealed pocket in his sleeve and put it on the table. "I was able to micro-photograph the charts before you stole them, fortunately. One of the notes I will require you to write will be to Mrs. Porter, telling her where you put th'cm. So, if you will just take this pen. Miss Heywood, and write as I dictate, we will get under way. (TO BE CONTINUED) |