Hot Sky at Midnight

“Just about.”

“Good. While I’m getting dressed, call Farkas at his hotel. Tell him we’re about to eat and ask him if he’d like to join us.”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“To find out if he knows anything about the plan to overthrow the Generalissimo. And if he can tell me where Davidov is.”

“Shouldn’t you talk with Davidov before you ask Farkas about any of that?” Jolanda asked. “You’re only guessing that Farkas is involved. If he isn’t, and you tip him off to what’s going on, you may wind up letting Kyocera know things that you’d be better off not having them know.”

Enron stared at her admiringly. He let a smile slowly emerge and broaden.

“You have a good point there.”

“You see? I’m not really all that stupid, am I?”

“I may have misjudged you, it would seem.”

“You simply can’t believe that a woman who’s as good in bed as I am can also think straight.”

“On the contrary,” Enron said. “I have always thought that intelligent women make the best bed partners. But sometimes if a woman is too beautiful I fail to notice how intelligent she also is.”

Jolanda glowed with pleasure. It was as if he had canceled out all the cruel things he had said to her with a single oblique compliment.

Indeed she is extremely stupid, Enron thought. But she was right that he would have to be careful with Farkas.

“The thing is,” he said, “that time is moving along, and we haven’t yet been able to locate your friends. I might as well begin sounding Farkas out. There is the risk that you mention: but there’s also the possibility that I’ll learn something from him. Call him. Invite him to have dinner with us tonight, or else lunch tomorrow.”

The phone light came on again as Jolanda moved toward the desk. She looked at Enron uncertainly.

“Answer it,” Enron said.

Kluge, again. “I’ve got your Davidov for you. He changed hotels, but he’s still here. All four of them are. Spoke B, the Residencia San Tomas, in the town of Santiago.”

“Are all the hotels in this place named for saints?” Enron asked.

“Many of them. The Generalissimo is a very religious person.”

“Yes. I suppose he would be. What name is our man using now?”

“Dudley Reynolds, still. The other three are named James Clark, Phil Cruz, Tom Barrett on their passports.”

Enron glanced at Jolanda. She shrugged and shook her head.

“They’re probably the ones we want,” Enron said to Kluge. “All right. Keep an eye on them. Stay in touch. If I don’t answer, put the call on seek. Call me anywhere, anytime there’s news. Let me know where they go, who they see.”

Jolanda said, when Enron had broken the contact, “Do we try to see them tonight;”

“Are you good friends with these people?”

“I know Mike Davidov very well. The other names are ones I’ve never heard of at all. But of course they’re all fakes.”

“How well do you know Davidov? You ever sleep with him?”

“What does that have to do with—”

“Please,” Enron said. “I don’t give a damn about your chastity or the lack thereof. I need to know what kind of a relationship you had with this Davidov.”

Jolanda’s face colored. Her eyes flamed with anger.

“I’ve slept with him, yes. I’ve slept with a lot of people.”

“I realize that. Davidov is what I’m asking about, right now. You and he were lovers, and now you turn up here with me, a visiting Israeli. How will he react? Will it bother him?”

“We were just friends. When I was in L.A. I stayed with him, that’s all. It was always a very casual thing.”

“He won’t be bothered, you say?”

“Not in the least.”

“All right,” Enron said. “Call him. The Residencia San Tomis, in the town of Santiago. Ask for Dudley Reynolds. Tell him you’re here with a newsman from Israel that you met in San Francisco, and that I’d like very much to talk with him as soon as possible.”

“Do I say what it is you’d like to discuss?”

“No. He can figure it out. Call him.”

“Right,” Jolanda said. She programmed the phone. Almost at once a synthetic voice said, “Mr. Reynolds is not in his room. Is there a message for him?”

“Leave your name and our room number at this hotel,” Enron told Jolanda. “Ask him to call back, any hour, whenever he comes in.”

“What now?” she asked, when she was done.

“Now call Farkas, and invite him to have dinner with us.”

“But shouldn’t you wait until—”

“There are times when I get tired of waiting,” said Enron. “A calculated risk. I need to get things moving. Call Farkas.”

They agreed to meet in the town of Cajamarca, at a cafe right against the rim, not far from Farkas’s hotel. Getting together on what was essentially Farkas’s turf struck Enron as being a good idea. He wanted Farkas to feel safe, relaxed, congenial. We are beginning to create a splendid friendship, you and I, linked by our memories of Caracas long ago and now by our confraternal acquaintance with the splendid body of Jolanda Bermudez: that was the idea. We trust each other. We can share significant secrets with each other for our mutual benefit. Indeed.

Farkas arrived late at the cafe. Enron found that bothersome. But he kept himself under tight control while he waited, ordering a nonalcoholic drink, and then another. Jolanda had a couple of cocktails, long greenish-blue drinks of a species unknown to Enron, probably sweet and sticky. And at last, nearly half an hour after the rendezvous time, the eyeless man came swaggering in.

Watching Farkas’s grand, almost regal entry, Enron suddenly found himself not so sure that it was going to be all that easy to strike up a chummy and profitably manipulative relationship with him. He had forgotten, or perhaps had never bothered to notice, what a commanding figure Farkas was: extraordinarily tall, almost a giant, really, with an athlete’s wide shoulders and easy grace. It hadn’t been just a fascination for the bizarre that had drawn Jolanda to him. Farkas moved with wonderful self-assurance, never making a misstep as he walked between the tables, nodding and waving to the bartender, the waiters, the busboy, even some of the other customers.

And he was so damned strange. Enron saw Farkas as if for the first time, staring in wonder and distaste at that lofty white half dome of a head set like a chunk of marble atop the long muscular neck, the shining forehead curving up and up without interruption from the bridge of his nose to the high, receding hairline. Farkas seemed scarcely human. Some kind of weird mutant creature, a monstrous head on a human body. But of course that was what he was: a weird mutant creature.

This will take some careful managing, Enron thought.

But he was fundamentally confident that it would all work out. He always was. And so far it always had.

Effortlessly Farkas slipped into the vacant seat between Enron and Jolanda. He smiled and nodded to Jolanda with just the right mixture of friendliness and tact, and in almost the same gesture offered his hand warmly to Enron. Enron admired that. What had taken place between Farkas and Jolanda earlier that day was being tacitly acknowledged, but not rubbed in his face.

“Sorry to have been so late,” Farkas said. “Some urgent calls came in just as I was getting ready to go out. Have you been waiting long?”

“Five or ten minutes,” said Enron. “We’ve already had a drink. You need to catch up with us.”