The Lazarus Drop Read online

  I poured a stiff Scotch, then picked up the vidcom and called Stuart. He was available. He always seems to be. Sometimes I wonder if he has a virtual double just for calls. I told him what happened. He nodded.

  “I begin to think somebody doesn't want you to make this trip,” he said.

  “Too late now,” I said. “I already learned all that Spanish?"

  He smiled. “I won't insult you by telling you to be careful,” he said. “Have an interesting journey."

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  Chapter 4

  Bright letters flowing across a luminous, gray background, tirelessly repeating, “Welcome to Mexico,” and then the same thing in Spanish, “Bienvenidos a Mexico,” bathed a hundred tired, sweaty faces with an intermittent, flickering green light. We sat inside the in the dark, stuffy glider and wondered what was going on. The only light came from the sign outside, and from the dirty brown glow of Mexico City, which outlined the blacked-out glideport buildings.

  Gliders do some things well. They are very good at slipping down a launching track, faster and faster, and then swooping up at the end, pressing your stomach into your knees as they arrow into the sky. They are good at carrying people to their destinations, quietly, with only an occasional murmur of engines, and quickly. Quickly enough anyway. They may not go as fast as the windowless, suborbital guided missiles they euphemistically call astrocruisers, but they more than make up for that in comfort.

  On the other hand, there are some things gliders don't do well, such as sitting for hours at the end of a runway, doors closed, all power off, filled with tourists, most of them grumpy, and all of them beginning to fill the stale, hot air with a mingled aroma of sweat and whatever perfumes they had begun the day with.

  There had been no warning. The glider had swooped in its usual, graceful way over the vast, smoking cauldron that is Mexico City, and touched down light as a feather on the landing strip in the hills above. But instead of pulling up to the terminal to allow us to disembark, the craft had taxied away from the complex of buildings.

  That had been mid-afternoon. Now it was dark, and we sat a couple of hundred meters from anywhere, with no explanation, except a curt announcement that we must stay aboard for the time being, “For reasons of your security."

  “I don't see anything except that sign,” Sister Bergstrom pronounced for the dozenth time, pressing her clammy body against me as she peered out the window. “I don't see anything at all.” Sister Bergstrom gave her fat, pasty face an emphatic shake, setting her damp, blue-veined jowls to quivering again.

  “I really fail to understand what this is all about,” she said, in a tone of voice that implied failure, any failure, was intolerable, and that if she ever found out just who was responsible for putting her in a position where she had to admit a failure, retribution would be swift and merciless.

  Sister Bergstrom belonged to some religious order whose name I forgot as soon as she told me. She was on vacation, the first vacation she had ever had in her life, she said. It was a reward for tireless work, a final gesture, she said, before they put her out to pasture. She didn't call it that, of course.

  Sister Bergstrom, in fact, was a non-stop talker. She had started the minute she sat down next to me.

  “I'm going to Puerto Vallarta. Where are you going?” And before I could answer, “I got to pick anywhere I wanted to go, because I raised more money than any other brother or sister in the whole state of Minnesota."

  By the time the glider began its descent toward the hills surrounding Mexico City, I knew more than I ever wanted to know about Sister Bergstrom. I knew that her father had invented gadgets, the basic little gadgets you never think about. No single one of them had made much money, but there were so many that he died a rich man.

  “Not that it did anybody any good, once my sister got her hands on it. My biological sister, not a true, spiritual sister. She spent it all, every last penny that my poor father worked so hard for.” Sister Bergstrom snorted indignantly. “She spent it having fun."

  I also knew that Sister Bergstrom had an artificial liver, and a microchip standing in for her left ear. I guessed, at least, from the gem-encrusted rings that covered her pudgy fingers, and the godawful necklace around her neck, a piranha-shaped fish leering at the end of a gold chain, that her sister hadn't managed to spend all the family loot. And I knew for certain that her perfume didn't go well with sweat.

  But then I probably didn't smell that great myself. The little shoulder wallet that carried my passport and a wad of Federal District currency felt sticky against my armpit. So did the survival belt under my shirt which contained the other currency, along with a few gadgets I have found handy at one time or another on jobs like this. Nordeen's attaché case was entertaining itself back at my plex in Los Angeles. I had no idea when I might have a use for anything so elegant, but it was free, and I might have to impersonate a gentleman some day.

  The little handgun was zipped snugly away in the side of my left boot, where I could feel its weight pressing against the top of my ankle when I thought about it. Nordeen had been right about that, so far. I had breezed through the gates at the Redlands Glideport without setting off any alarms.

  The whine of turbines took my attention back outside. Two Mexican military hopjets, looking like prehistoric beasts with their drooping wings and noses, were pulling up alongside the glider. The whining stopped, and the door to the glider crew cabin opened. A tense-looking purser stood in the opening, outlined dimly in the green light from the sign.

  “Please accept our apologies for the delay,” he said into the microphone he held in his hand. “Everything is now under control and we are free to disembark.” He didn't mention what had been out of control to begin with.

  “Welcome to Mexico,” he said, and ducked back into the crew compartment.

  The glider door opened from the outside, and a writhing ball of sweaty bodies began pushing and shoving to get out of the dark aircraft. A groundcar with only its parking lights on pulled up between the hopjets. A man in uniform jumped out, and as the groundcar did a smart about face and began heading slowly back toward the terminal complex, he waved toward it, shouted, “Follow us, please,” and jumped back in.

  We herded ourselves into the terminal to wait for our bags, and they opened the bar with an announcement that drinks were courtesy of the Mexican government. That got my attention. They didn't have any decent Scotch, so I grabbed a beer. They say Mexican beer used to be some of the best in the world, but the stuff I had in my hand was distinctly second rate. At least it was cold and wet, so I sacrificed my esthetic principles and ordered another one as they announced the bus to Toluca.

  Nobody actually goes to Mexico City. The glideport is there, and it's the entry point for every other part of the country, but the city itself is a pit. They say it was pretty once, a place of flowers and fountains and aristocrats of immeasurable wealth who lived on the backs of the poor with such grace and style that the poor were proud of their oppression. The rich left long ago, and now only those live there who have to, employees of the space port and its associated industries, living and choking in a poisonous atmosphere so opaque that most of them probably never see the planets their labor serves.

  Nobody really goes to Toluca, either, not to stay. It's an undistinguished mountain town, a few klicks west of Mexico City, a dusty place you pass through on the way to somewhere else, with a couple of large hotels, a hovertrain depot, a smaller station for bus transportation to the underprivileged places which don't rate hovertrain service, and a market which stays open 24 hours to strip as much currency as possible from the tourists before they escape.

  There was no hovertrain service to Morelia. There was supposed to be, but when I tried to buy a ticket, the answer was no. Service was disrupted. For how long? “Por lo pronto,” for the time being, this with a shrug and a sympathetic smile from the ticket agent, who directed me to the other station. There was a bus leaving for Morelia later that
night, he said. Not so nice as the hovertrain, but ... and another shrug and smile.

  Suitcase in hand, I headed across the brightly lighted plaza toward the bus station, which stood next to a large, unlit, hole in the ground with a sign in front announcing the erection, in the near future, of another hotel. Strings of colored lights sheathed all the buildings, etching shadows on the people milling around the square. Three or four groups of musicians occupied different points of the square, playing traditional songs on traditional instruments, and competing to see who could play the loudest. The air was cool, but still bore the smell of the day's heat, mingled with spices and baking meats and hot corn meal. The tourists stood out, betrayed by their clothing, and by their American way of walking, of always looking as if they know exactly where they are going, even when they have no place in particular to go. The locals, on the other hand, had no place to go and knew it. They meandered through the tired trees and bushes someone had planted in better days, sometimes small groups of them, occasional couples here and there looking like lovers. And children. Dozens of children, the slightly older playing watchful parent to the toddlers, scolding them, taking them by the hand to walk from place to place, occasionally breaking away for an impromptu game of tag or a wrestling match.

  I heard a commotion over my shoulder and glanced back. Sister Bergstrom, looking as damp and uncomfortable in this dry, cool mountain air as she had in the heat of the glider, was stalking across the gritty pavement. A young boy stalked behind her, mimicking her moves, to the delight of his friends.

  I wasn't delighted, however, because Sister Bergstrom also had two armed soldiers in tow, and she was steaming straight at me, rings glinting on the pudgy finger she had pointed at my face, and screeching at the top of her voice, “That's him! That's the one who took my necklace! That's the thief."

  I stood there, because I couldn't think of anything else to do, and because the soldiers looked bored, and irritable, and like they might enjoy an excuse for a little action.

  Sister Bergstrom stopped in front of me, her fat breasts heaving from the effort of walking so far. The finger was still pointing, its tip a few centimeters from my nose, and Sister Bergstrom's eyes were red with anger.

  “He's the one. I sat next to him on the flight, and I knew there was something funny about him right away. I can tell those things."

  One of the soldiers stepped forward, hand out.

  “Your papers, Senor."

  I handed him my traveler's permiso, and he stuffed it into a pocket without looking at it.

  “Elevate your hands, please,” he said.

  I raised my hands as high as I could, my most cooperative grin on my face. The soldier rummaged through my pockets and came up with Sister Bergstrom's golden piranha. I felt a sinking sensation in my stomach.

  “You will come,” he said. The other soldier fell in behind me and we started marching across the plaza. Sister Bergstrom took up the rear, waddling along as fast as she could.

  “I knew it all along,” she said to no one in particular. “Even before he started rubbing up against me in the dark, when I was trying to get out of that awful glider. So I wasn't surprised when that nice gentleman warned me that this thief had taken my necklace. Clever about it, he was. He must have done it a lot. I never even felt a thing."

  We passed a cluster of tourists, and Sister Bergstrom stopped, pinioning them with her petulant whine. “He took it right off me. I knew he wasn't right. I can tell. And lucky for me that nice gentleman saw him do it, and told me. He was a foreigner, but very nice. Not one of these Mexicans. I don't suppose they would bother."

  Someone had set me up, no doubt about that. I wondered who the nice foreigner could have been. The name Chandra Beg flashed. He looked enough like a foreigner for even Sister Bergstrom to tell. I hadn't seen him on the glider, but he might have been waiting, and had someone to do the hands-on part of the job. And I wouldn't be surprised if he knew I was on that particular flight. He seemed to know everything about me. Maybe he had decided if I wouldn't play his game, I couldn't play at all.

  But at the moment, my task was to figure a way out of the clutches of the police. I wouldn't do my employers much good sitting in a Mexican jail.

  Sister Bergstrom's voice began mercifully to fade as the guards and I kept walking, and then the lights started going out. I heard it before I saw it. I hadn't realized there were generators going until they stopped, the whine of their rotors descending into audibility, dropping to a grumble, then dying completely. The laughing and the music stopped at the same time as the lights all over the plaza dimmed and flickered, and the only sound was people running. At least the locals ran. Most of the tourists just stood where they were, staring stupidly around them. Then the lights went out completely.

  My escorts forgot all about me as they took off running. I started sprinting, too, toward the only shelter I could think of, the construction pit next to the bus station. I felt rather than saw the edge, and let myself drop and slither down the side. I hit the bottom with a thump and buried my face in the dirt as an explosion echoed off the walls of the buildings surrounding the plaza.

  Something landed on my back, and I jerked and whimpered in spite of myself, then lay there, trying to make myself small, as three or four more explosions rang out.

  Then everything got quiet. There was no screaming or shouting, no sound at all, for I couldn't tell how long. Finally the generators started up again, and the lights returned. I got up, and realized that I still had my suitcase clutched in my right hand. As I straightened, something slid off my back and hit the ground with a soft thump, and in the light that reached the bottom of the construction pit I saw a hand. I wondered if that was what had hit me, and if whoever had lost it would ever need it again.

  By the time I scrambled back out of the pit one of the groups of musicians was beginning the first, tentative notes of a song, and people were coming out of their bolt holes. An ambulance wheeled up, and four men in white jumped out and started picking up the dead and wounded, handling both with an equal lack of gentleness. Most of the victims looked like tourists, and the locals didn't pay much attention to the cleanup work. By the time the ambulance disappeared from the plaza with its bloody cargo, it was business as usual again in Toluca.

  Welcome to Mexico, I thought, and wondered what to do next. I didn't expect to get far without documents, but I didn't feel like going to the local gendarmerie and asking for my permiso, either.

  A hand pressed down on my shoulder, and a familiar voice said, “You will come.” That solved the dilemma for the moment. We walked across the plaza, the soldier just behind me, one hand on my shoulder and the other on the butt of his pistol. On the other side of the square two more soldiers lounged in front of a building of dirty plaster, one with Guardia Civil painted over the door. We walked inside, across a hall, and through another door to a room where an officer sat at a scarred desk, shuffling through a stack of papers. He looked young, and tired, with lines of strain around his deep set eyes. The nameplate on the desk said Capitan Honorio Salazar.

  The soldier saluted smartly and laid my permiso and the necklace on the captain's desk. Salazar picked up the necklace, dangled it briefly in his fingers, and let it drop again.

  “What is this about?"

  “An American tourist has claimed that this man stole that necklace from her. And indeed I found the necklace in his pocket."

  “And where is the complainant?"

  The soldier shrugged. “The mortars. She was not quick enough."

  “Is she dead or wounded?"

  “They say wounded, and unconscious. They took her to the hospital."

  “Then there is no longer a complaint, because there is no longer a person to sign the complaint, que no?"

  “My apologies, capitan. I wished to do the correct thing."

  “You did well enough.” Salazar waved his hand. “You may go."

  The soldier saluted, wheeled and marched from the room. I reached down
to pick up my permiso and follow him.

  “Not you, Senor....” Salazar picked up the document again and looked at it, “Senor Blue.” He motioned toward a chair as he returned his attention to the permiso. “Sit down, please. And give me your passport, if you please."

  “I was framed."

  “Just sit down,” he repeated. I sat and tossed my passport on the desk. He took his time with the papers, then put them down.

  “Your papers say you are a tourist,” he said finally. “A Senor Nathaniel Blue, from Los Angeles, California, United States of America."

  “I was framed,” I repeated. “The last thing I need is some fat lady's junk jewelry."

  He smiled, and suddenly looked even younger. It was a clear, open smile that went all the way to his eyes, the kind of smile that makes you like the person who flashes it.

  “I believe that you did not take the necklace,” he said. “I am prepared to believe that someone tried deliberately to, as you put it, frame you.” He shrugged, and spread his palms outward. “But I do not believe you are a tourist, Senor Blue. You don't look like a tourist."

  “What does a tourist look like Captain?"

  Salazar waved vaguely toward the door. “Like those. Like sheep. Tourists who come to our country always travel in flocks, like sheep. Perhaps it makes them feel more secure, I do not know. But you travel alone, Senor Blue, like the mountain cat. For that matter, tourists are not usually framed by persons unknown who wish them not to go on their tour.” He picked up my permiso and tapped it lightly on his desk.

  “And tourists have round trip tickets, and go to safe places like Puerto Vallarta, or Chihuahua, or Cuernavaca, where the federal authority has some influence and can protect them. You have only a one way ticket, and you seem to be going nowhere from here?"

  “I am going to Michoacan, to Morelia."

  “Tourists do not go to Michoacan, Senor Blue. Michoacan is a dangerous place."

  I shrugged. “Toluca seems to be a dangerous place."