Voyage of Vengeance

  “Pretty uninhabited,” I said, hoping he would then volunteer information.

  “Oh, it will get lively shortly,” he said. “Half the shipping lanes of the world converge straight ahead.”

  I didn’t want him to think I didn’t know what I was doing. It would undermine his confidence. “So when do we get there?” I asked.

  “Oh-eight-hundred hours Thursday,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Always glad to help.”

  Maybe Teenie would know. I went down ladders and aft to the race track. It was not all that big and pretty tightly banked. Teenie was on a racing bicycle, bent low, pedaling like mad, ponytail streaming in the wind of her passage. The swoosh, swoosh, swoosh as she went round made me dizzy. Whipping my head made me aware that I had an ache there.

  She didn’t look like she was stopping. I yelled, “Teenie, where are we going?”

  Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. “Don’t bother me,” her voice whipped by. “I’m trying to clock twenty miles.”

  “Teenie,” I called, “where is the ship going?”

  Swoosh, swoosh, “Ask Madison. You’re disturbing my rhythm.”

  I left. Madison was up in the squash court. He had a glove and was playing handball against the backboard.

  “Madison,” I said.

  He jumped. It made him hit the ball too hard so that it struck against a ventilator, ricocheted sideways, flew out into the air and then down into the sea.

  “Don’t do that!” he said. “I thought for a minute you were the Mafia.”

  “Madison,” I said, “there are two places we mustn’t go: one of them is the United States and the other one is Turkey.”

  He was mopping his face with a towel to remove the sweat. “Turkey?” he said. “But this is a Turkish yacht.”

  “Not the same thing,” I said. “They want me in Turkey just like they want you in the US. Shotguns and things. So where are we going?”

  Madison sat down in a deck chair and the deck steward handed him a tall drink of water and threw a bathrobe over his shoulders. “Well,” said Madison, “it’s like this. He took on the whole country single-handed after the king banished him. And he got so immortal that in his last fight, when he was dead, they tied his body on a horse and the enemy, just seeing it, fled in complete rout.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “You see, I’ve got to make this trip pay off,” said Madison. “I’ve got to learn all I can about notorious outlaws who became immortal. It might come in handy in PR, you see. And now I’ve got a chance to view some of this firsthand. Hussan-Hussan was a bust. So I’ve got to make up for lost time.”

  “Madison,” I said patiently, “where are we going?”

  He looked at me in some alarm. “Do you feel all right, Smith? Maybe you should get more exercise.”

  “Please, Madison. How did we get to going where we are going?”

  “Heavens on Earth,” said Madison to the sky, “he’s suffering memory lapses. Oh, this is bad, Smith. You have to remember what you have written yesterday in order to alter it today. It just proves you’ll never make a real pro PR man.”

  “Madison,” I said in a deadly voice.

  “Oh, all right, all right. I’ll refresh your memory if you can’t make it on your own. At 3:00 AM Teenie came tearing down to my cabin, scared me half out of my wits: I thought the Mafia had boarded us. But she said you were demanding to know who I wanted to research next and I told her and she went back to tell you, and so here we go.”

  “Here we go where?” I said.

  “Oh, dear, you don’t even remember when I’ve jogged your brain. All right. El Cid. Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, eleventh century. The national hero.”

  “Of what country?” I said.

  “Spain,” he said.

  “Spain is a big country,” I said. “WHAT PORT?”

  “Oh, you want to know what PORT we’re going to. Well, why didn’t you say so? Although, for the life of me, I can’t see how you forgot ordering it. Teenie was all over the ship at an ungodly hour telling everyone you were absolutely disgusted with Casablanca and wouldn’t spend another hour in the place. Frightful row, leaving so quickly. So we’re sailing to investigate Charlton Heston—I mean El Cid.”

  “In . . . ?” I said.

  “Valencia, Spain,” he said, exasperated. “Don’t you ever go to the movies? Listen, when all this blows over and we go home, I’m going to introduce you to my analyst. You need help, Smith.”

  The sports director was there, dragging me away. “You don’t look too good,” he said. “That’s strange, because the steward said you didn’t hit the pot last night. You need a few laps.”

  “That’s what I seem to be suffering from,” I said. But I jogged anyway. It really bothered me. True, I hadn’t liked Casablanca. But, Gods, I had sure better be careful of that hashish!

  Had I only looked, I would have seen Fate jogging along beside me, and had I then really inspected the apparition, I would have seen that it had begun to bare its fangs.

  PART FIFTY-SEVEN

  Chapter 1

  We went through the narrow and heavily trafficked Straits of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean Sea. The water got bluer, the sun brighter and the clouds whiter. We turned northeasterly and began to draw a creaming wake along the Costa del Sol of Spain.

  Suffering from too much exercise after too much hash and seeking to avoid too much sun, I went below to my salon in the late afternoon.

  I got the viewers out of a cabinet and set them up.

  Suddenly I realized my time was all askew. It was only late morning in New York.

  The Countess Krak was sitting in a chair facing the Whiz Kid double. Thank Gods he didn’t know me or of me, for he had on a hypnohelmet. Beyond him, through a window could be seen the yellowish landscape of lower Manhattan so she must be in the Empire State Building.

  Numerous texts had been spread out and one was stamped, as I could see in Krak’s peripheral vision, Massachusetts Institute of Wrectology.

  I was startled. She must be using a hypnohelmet for its designed purpose: speed training.

  She clicked it off and lifted the helmet from the head of the double. She snapped her fingers and the young man woke up.

  “Now do you think you can pass your final exams?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I lost so much time fooling around on that job. I’ll have to get real high marks to overcome the lack of classroom work.”

  “What do you think you’ll do when you graduate?” she said.

  “Oh, I’m sure about that,” he said. “Twoey has to have new designs for pig troughs and every night he’s pushing me to get through with school so I can begin useful work on his farm. He’s also rooting around for ideas on how to raise the standard of living of pigs. I’ll be busy all right. I never dreamed there was so much civil engineering connected with pigs. Opened a whole new world for me.”

  “What are you going to do if the media hits you when you go back to school for your exams?”

  “Duck,” said the double. “But if Jettero ever needs me for public appearances or anything, all he has to do is say the word. I’m not forgetting how he rescued me from that crazy psychiatrist! One minute there I was about to be turned into a vegetable and the next there I was in a van looking at Jettero. And Jesus, was I ashamed of myself right then for ever daring to think I could pose as him. And I know darned well you didn’t tell me to think that when I had the helmet on.”

  “No, I don’t have to do that,” said the Countess Krak. “Jettero can stand on his own.”

  “He certainly can,” said the double. “What a guy!”

  I suddenly seethed. All that (bleeped) adulation for Heller! Couldn’t people see what a sneaky, rotten (bleep) he really was? Him and his Royal officer ways. It made me feel nauseated.

  “Well, all right,” said the Countess Krak. “I’ve got to go tell my class of microwave engineers to go to lunch and I suggest you do the same.”
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  “I’m real grateful to you,” said the double. “If there’s anything I can do for you or Jettero my whole life, you only got to say the word.”

  I gritted my teeth. The two-way-response radio was lying there. Wasn’t there some kind of an order I could give Raht? Something that would make these people suffer for all the horrible things they had done to me?

  I couldn’t think of anything.

  The “dress for dinner” gong went. The steward got me into a white evening jacket and black tie. He was all chattery.

  “Clothes in Spain,” he said, “are very good and very inexpensive. And while Valencia isn’t Madrid, I think we can find some proper yachting togs all the same. So when we get in, what say you and I go ashore in the morning and outfit you more fittingly.”

  “And I won’t have to exercise?” I said.

  “I have influence with the sports director,” he said.

  And so it was that after a rather professorial dinner where I got told all about El Cid and a very harrowing night wherein Arabs danced with camels on the head of a pin, I found myself, the following day, walking the busy streets of Valencia, Spain, stopping in at shops and getting rigged out to look more the part of a yacht owner.

  I suspected that the steward was probably getting a commission, but shopkeepers were so insistent that I looked magnifico and terrifico and fantastico in this or that and were so impressed that I owned el yate grandisimo newly arrived, I couldn’t refuse very much. The cost was not that great and I landed back aboard with a taxicab full of boxes.

  I wanted to show Teenie that she wasn’t the only one who could run off and come back with clothes, but she and Madison weren’t there. They had gone off to a library.

  That evening, right after dinner, we were suddenly inundated with a flamenco troupe. The chief steward explained to us that while this was not Andalusia in southwest Spain, the flamenco was very good and, indeed, as I sat in the yacht’s music salon, the stamping heels, swirling skirts, castanets and guitars soon got me shouting and clapping with them. The girls were black-eyed and pretty and although the men certainly looked like they carried knives, they didn’t object when the ship’s officers and Madison were forced into the dance. Teenie had a stamping contest with a young Spanish dancer and seemed to win or so they said. I got into it at last.

  Later, I was exhausted in my bedchamber but Teenie was all fired up. She kept cavorting around the room. “Oh,” she said, “I’ve got to get me a mantilla and a comb and some castanets and some of those skirts with flounces! When you whirl, you can show everything clean up to your neck!”

  “You’re an exhibitionist,” I said.

  “Of course,” she said. “And you wait until I eat enough to get some flesh on me. Hey, speaking of eating, how would you like some candy?”

  We fought. I lost.

  At dawn, no less, the steward woke me up. “You’ll be late!” he said, rushing about, laying out new clothes. He shaved me and pushed me into a cold shower and rushed me into my clothes so fast, and I was so groggy, I didn’t get a chance to ask him what I was being late for.

  Somebody pushed a roll and coffee at me as we got into a car. We sped off.

  Finally I asked, “Where are we going?”

  Madison’s eyes glowed. “We’re on our way to the outlaw hangout of El Cid!” he said.

  We drove north along the coast. Suddenly the (bleepedest) biggest castle-fortress you ever saw stretched away to our right. I looked to the left. All along the mountaintops ranged the hugest fortifications I have ever seen. It was all in ruins but the white stone, the pillars, the steps which mounted to the structures perched upon the crags were impressive! It seemed to go on for miles.

  “This is a ‘hangout’?” I said.

  “Yes, yes!” cried Madison. “The hideaway of El Cid! Get out of the car!”

  “You want me to climb that?” I gaped.

  They didn’t pay any attention at all. They were up and away. I was being pushed from behind by one of our guides.

  All day long, except for a picnic lunch eaten with the threat of eagles stealing it, I dizzily tried to walk with closed eyes so I wouldn’t get dizzy and fall. A guide finally put a rope around my neck just in case.

  At dinner, back aboard, I could hardly lift my fork. I desperately wanted to get to bed and cool my aching muscles with deep slumber.

  A folkloric troupe suddenly appeared and performed for us on the sundeck. The chief steward kept waking me up. “These are the true dances of Valencia. This was Moslem for so long, the culture is stamped deep. Listen to the Arab scale they use in their music.”

  Teenie and Madison had to learn some of the dances. And when they found that Teenie could ripple her belly muscles in time to their refrains, they accepted her utterly.

  In the bedchamber later, Teenie kept waking me up. “Oh, I’ve got to have some of those bangles! And did you see those gauze trousers? No? That’s just it; they’re so thin the audience can watch what you do with everything you’ve got. Oh, I’ve got to get some. Inky, for Christ’s sakes, are you going to sleep on me? Now eat your candy like a good boy!”

  And that was about all I could recall of that night.

  But the next morning, the steward didn’t seem to be in any rush and I blessed my luck.

  I had Madison for company in the breakfast salon.

  “You know what I found out?” he glowed, as he chomped his bacon and eggs. “That El Cid was an absolute PR masterpiece!”

  “Don’t talk so loud, Mad. My head hurts.”

  “Oh, you’ll really love this,” he said. “You’re so amateur when it comes to PR that you just plain won’t believe it. But El Cid was the total creation of PR men. In the eleventh century, too! You see, when he went outlaw against the king of Castile, he was really trying to set up a kingdom for himself right here in Valencia, totally separate from Spain. But his PR figured, hey, that’s not so good for his immortality so they rewrote the whole script. They tailored it up so he looked like a Spanish national hero and he’s been one ever since! Man, I wish I knew the name of his PR. What an expert he must have been!”

  Such enthusiasm did not fit my mood. Trying to hold my head in a position where it would not hurt yet still not fall off, I went down on the dock, intending to limp off somewhere beyond the reach of sports directors—maybe to a cool, quiet park.

  Teenie was standing at an ice cream cart, probably intending to top off her breakfast with an helado. I stepped quickly out of view between two buildings. She might have ideas for more excursions.

  Suddenly a cab came roaring up. An arm from the back seat suddenly pointed at Teenie. The cab screeched to a halt beside her.

  A burly figure leaped out. The black-jowled man! He went right up to Teenie. He was shouting, but because of dock noise, I couldn’t make out what he was saying. But he was angry!

  Teenie took a bite of the ice cream, not looking at him. The man gave the ice cream cart a shove.

  I was amazed. Where had this man come from? And why was he so upset at Teenie for eating ice cream?

  He had dropped his voice and I couldn’t hear what he was saying. But he was shaking his fist at her! She just kept on eating ice cream.

  He kept on talking. She offered him some ice cream. He pushed it away. She put her arm around his shoulder. He pushed it off. She gave him a kiss on the cheek and he grabbed out a handkerchief and wiped off the resultant sticky goo.

  She was talking soothingly.

  The ice cream man apparently hadn’t been paid yet. He was standing there with his hand out. He looked cross over having had his cart shoved. Teenie put her arm around the black-jowled man again. She was saying something in his ear.

  Suddenly the black-jowled man reached into his pocket and pulled out some pesetas and paid the ice cream man. Teenie took the black-jowled man’s handkerchief and wiped the last of the ice cream off her hands. She was continuing to talk as she did so.

  The man looked around helplessly. Then he opened t
he door of the cab. Teenie got in and they drove away.

  Unease stirred me. But then I shrugged. I shouldn’t have. In my stupidity, I assumed that there was simply no understanding teenagers. Or middle-aged men who would fly all over the place just to get another crack at unripe tail.

  Little did I know what Fate was building up for me. Had I even guessed, I would have run until there was no more wind left in me.

  Looking back on it, I am utterly amazed that I never even came close to fathoming what was really going on!

  I was at RISK!