night should let us know if there’s extra guards.”
The bed springs creaked again and Slater’s bulk appeared in the doorway. “You damn fools think I’m gonna stick my head in that rattrap? Screw the money. I’m savin’ my ass.”
Erikson crossed the room in two strides and picked up Slater by his shirtfront. I heard Slater’s grunt as Erikson pinned him to the wall. “You’re in this with the rest of us,” Erikson told him coldly. “And the first sign I see of your cutting out, I’ll personally see to it your ass goes nowhere.” He released his hold, and Slater slid halfway to the floor. He went back into the bedroom rubbing his chest.
“Let’s get some sleep,” Erikson said. “We’ll save the food for the morning.”
No one joined Slater in the bedroom.
Erikson, Melia, and I stretched out on the floor using the compactly packed one-man life rafts for pillows. I laid the.38 on the floor beside me.
It was a long time before I closed my eyes.
I had my hand on the Smith & Wesson before I realized that something had wakened me.
Melia was bending over Erikson, whispering to him. Erikson followed her to a window at the edges of which I could see both daylight and sunshine. I rose quickly and joined them. Erikson gave me one quick glance, then moved to one side.
I could see why Melia’s aunt had found the apartment an ideal location for spying on unannounced Fidelista activity. The window looked down over the high prison walls into a part of the compound. In one corner, a squad of soldiers stood with rifles at the ready. Across the way, two more soldiers half-led, half-dragged a limping figure to a post against a scarred wall. They tied him roughly to the post.
I knew, but I had to ask. “Wilson?” I said.
“Yes.” Erikson spit it out as he continued to stare down into the prison yard. His face was set in harsh lines. An officer stepped up behind Wilson and tried to blindfold him. Wilson jerked his head from side to side until the officer stopped trying. He moved to one side and made a downward sweep of his arm.
Puffs of smoke rose unevenly from the leveled rifles. Although it was only a block away, some freak of acoustics kept the sound from being heard. Wilson jerked left, then right as the ragged volley struck him. The officer walked in close again, placed a revolver against Wilson’s head, and fired.
The whole thing hadn’t taken three minutes.
It took only another thirty seconds for the same two soldiers to cut Wilson’s body loose from the post and drag it away.
Erikson put his hand on my arm. “Nothing about this to Slater,” he said.
I didn’t answer him. We all moved away from the window. Melia had made no comment from start to finish.
I settled down to wait out what I knew was going to be a long day.
Chico Wilson had not been an easy man to like, but the callousness of his death made me ask myself what I was doing there.
In view of what I’d just witnessed, there was no sensible answer.
Erikson repacked the haversacks in the late afternoon. Once again he discarded all but the essentials. These consisted mainly of the one-man life rafts, the plastic explosives, personal gear, and a small, oilskin-wrapped item about the size of a hand compass which I had watched Erikson stow carefully during each of the previous repackings. Melia sat on the floor as motionless as an Indian idol. Her dark eyes were fixed broodingly upon space.
Slater came out of the bedroom once to complain about the lack of food. Erikson shut him up brusquely, and Slater returned to the bedroom grumbling under his breath. For once I sympathized with him. I was hungry myself, and once on the street, I knew we couldn’t risk a food stop.
At sundown Erikson rousted Slater and checked the appearance of Slater’s uniform. Melia had found a shapeless black dress of her aunt’s in a closet. She changed into it, leaving behind the more conspicuous dress in which she had escaped from the brothel with us. Erikson and I took five minutes to run through the action we’d planned when we reached the museum.
Then we waited for darkness.
There was the same conspicuous absence of pedestrians when Melia led us from the apartment. In the second block the girl turned into a passageway between two buildings. It was far too confined to be called an alley. On the next street, an ancient, rust-pocked truck was parked. Ladders on its roof overhung both front and rear. Melia spoke familiarly to a man standing just inside the edge of the passageway.
He replied volubly in a staccato burst of language. “What’s his beef?” Erikson demanded, interpreting the tone as I had.
“He says that after what happened this morning you have not offered enough money,” Melia replied.
I saw Erikson’s right shoulder drop. “Hold it,” I said. I knew he intended to leave a body in the passageway and take over the panel truck. “We need someone who knows the city better than we do.” I pulled up my shirt, unzipped the money belt, and cleaned it out. I turned up the pouch to show that it was empty, then gave the bills in my hand to Melia. “You can get that from her when the job is done,” I told him. “Understand?”
“Good luck,” she said to me.
“Good luck yourself,” I returned.
She was walking back through the passageway even before we boarded the truck. Slater got in beside the driver. Erikson and I rode in the back with a collection of dented buckets and dirty sponges. There were small windows in each side panel. The night sky had a luminosity that made it by far the brightest night since we had been on the island.
The ladders on the roof creaked as the truck started with a jerk. “Where are you taking us?” I asked the driver.
“She said the National Museum, no?” he said in surprise.
“Yes. Just checking. Circle it when we get there.”
“Now,” he said a few moments later. I looked out a side panel window at the museum’s stone massivity. Two night-lights burned steadily inside the front entrance. There was no light in the rear.
“Drive up on the sidewalk and across the lawn behind the tamarind trees,” I told the driver. “Put out your lights.”
He half turned to look at me.
We piled out of the truck. The driver and Slater wrestled an extension ladder from the roof. Its ratchets clicked loudly in the stillness as they ran it up the side of the building almost to the top of a second-story window. “When I get inside, you two come up the ladder,” I told Erikson and Slater.
I swarmed up the ladder rungs and came to a stop head-high with the window. Once more I pulled up my shirt and unzipped my money belt. I removed the last item it contained, my compact tool kit with no item in it longer than eight inches.
With a roll of adhesive I taped a square on the window glass, mitering the corners. I took a pencil-shaped, diamond-tipped glass cutter and traced the outline of the tape. When I punched the square of glass, it fell inward, prevented from falling to the floor and shattering by the restraining tape.
I took from the kit what looked like a large fountain pen. It was a miniature torch good for a three-minute burn. I burned off the window lock, shielding the glow from the street with my body. I tried to raise the bottom section of the window, but it was frozen in its tracks from disuse. I reached in through the cut-out square of glass, took hold of the bottom edge of the upper section, and pulled it down. It made only a faint squeaking noise.
I joggled the top of the ladder along the face of the building to clear a space at the window, then put my head inside and waited until my eyes adjusted to the different kind of darkness. A well of dim light came up from below. The second floor was a mezzanine which looked down on the first floor.
I climbed higher on the ladder and inched my way inside through the open top section of window. When I
