An excerpt from Payback
© 1993 Mark Seymour

Payback

When DaSilva finished his phone call to the Colonel he had an odd expression on his face. I'd had a shower and gotten dressed by then, and was starting on my second glass of orange juice, so I was feeling pretty good. "What'd our friend the Colonel say?"

"He said he was terribly sorry that I had to leave so suddenly for Brazil, and hoped it wasn't because of anything he'd said." He smiled. "He was quite anxious that the two of us get together just as soon as I got back. I think he is afraid he'll won't get the money."

The Colonel always had liked money, as far back as I'd known him. He'd always had more deals going, from weapons to drugs to prostitution to frozen steaks, than anyone in the Zone. "Anything else?"

DaSilva shrugged. "He said something very strange, about you..."

Why was I not surprised. "And that was?"

"He said, how did he put it exactly? 'Tell that driver of mine, when you see him, that he doesn't work for me anymore. Tell him that he might be able to find a job in the Rung Sat, if he's lucky. Tell him exactly that.' That's what he told me to say, Jack." He shrugged again. "What does this mean, this Rung Sat?"

The Rung Sat Special Zone. Just hearing the name again, after twenty years, sent a chill down my spine. The Zone was four hundred square miles of mangrove swamp spreading from the outskirts of Saigon south and east towards Vung Tau on the coast. The Rung Sat, like the other Special and Secret Zones along the coast to the south, had long been sheltered territory for the Viet Cong, and throughout the Sixties there were SEAL and UDT teams stationed on its northern edge, at Nha Be, running interdiction and ambush missions into the swamp. They'd tried everything to kill Charlie in there. Napalm. A series of B52 Arclight missions, dropping twenty tons of bombs at a time from fifty thousand feet up in a giant surprise package, the bombers unheard and invisible against the sky. Fuel-air explosives, clearing off an acre of triple-canopy jungle as clean as if you'd hit it with a giant lawnmower. Spooky, the night stalkers: C130s loaded with night-vision scopes and banks of 7.62mm gatling guns and 20mm cannon and a huge 105mm cannon shooting out the tail, carving up anything they could see. Poison gas, too, even though it was against the Geneva Convention. Not that they cared; they just wanted everything that moved in the Rung Sat dead. But, after all that, Charlie was still there. So, after everything else, they sent in the Colonel, and the Colonel's men. Including me, unfortunately. Which meant that I'd never get to sleep well again. "It means that I should get the hell out of town for awhile."

"Indeed?" DaSilva got a funny look in his eye. "Since I have to go back to Brazil for the week your friend will require anyway..." He nodded, deciding. "My business there will not require Isabel's talents."

Which brought up something that'd been on my mind for awhile. "Exactly what are her duties for Ladronco?"

He smiled. "You ask one thing, but you mean another."

"How's that?"

"You spent a lot of effort inquiring about whether she slept with me." He shrugged. "That is a matter for she and I, but you were right to ask, I suppose. That does not matter." He looked me in the eye. "Your mistake was assuming that is all she does for me."

"Okay, okay..." I put up my hands defensively. "So I'm just an old jarhead who doesn't understand business or women." I shrugged. "So, enlighten me."

"Isabel has an unusual talent." He frowned at my smile. "Not, however, what you are thinking, though that is also true." He shook his head. "And however valuable she may be for that..." His chin indicated the bed. "She is infinitely more valuable to me, and to Ladronco, for her real talent."

I nodded. "And that is?"

"Imagine, though it may be hard for you if you are so ignorant of business..." He grinned. "For argument's sake, let us say you are in a very critical, very expensive negotiation with a clever opponent." I nodded, trying to keep up, though I'd've done better after another couple glasses of orange juice. "Now, the other party brings out a tape recorder and places it on the table. If you are, say, your Colonel, and the discussion is so sensitive that the mere existence of such a tape could be embarrassing, if not fatal, what would your reaction be?"

"If I was the Colonel"? I smiled. "I'd tell you to get that fucking machine out of there before I shoved it up your ass."

"Precisely." DaSilva nodded. "But what would your reaction be if I, on the other hand, were to bring into the room a beautiful woman, introducing her as my associate?"

"I'd probably ignore you and talk to her."

He chuckled. "You are a better businessman than you give yourself credit for, my friend. Because, when Isabel is in the room, that is exactly what happens. Men say things they shouldn't, or their attention wanders at a critical juncture, and I then have an advantage over them they do not suspect."

"So that's it? She sits there looking gorgeous and you win on points?"

"Oh, no." He shook his head somberly. "Nothing so foolish and simple as that." He sighed, staring into the distance. "What did the clerk in the grocery store say to you the last time you purchased something?" His eyes bored into mine. "Not just the general idea, not just the tone, not just what you can remember, but every word, inflection, accent, and whispered meaning that was said."

"I wouldn't have a clue."

"Nor would I." He shrugged. "But, if you had taken Isabel to the store with you, she could tell you. Repeat the entire conversation, your side and his, word for word, intonation for intonation." He nodded. "Now. Tomorrow. Next week. A year from now. As precise, no, more precise than that tape recorder the Colonel offered to put up your ass."

My eyes went wide. "I'm impressed. I didn't know anyone could do that."

"Isabel can, but there are few like her in the world." He smiled. "So be careful of what you say to her, Jack, particularly what you whisper to her in the night. She has a nasty habit of repeating your own words to you when you least desire it."

"Thanks." I smiled. "I'll watch my mouth."

Right then, as if on cue, the latch on the door clicked and it opened an inch, then we heard Isabel whispering to someone I assumed was Mendes. Finally she threw the door open. "Ah, so you are up. I was afraid you might still be asleep." Her smile made the sun-lit room even brighter. She turned, extending her hand to the stocky man who'd followed her in. "You've met my friend Chico, yes?"

Mendes bowed. It wasn't quite a challenge, but in the martial arts you show respect to your betters, so I got up off the couch and did a formal bow in return. He took my hand when I put it out, which was a good sign. His grip was warm and strong. "I understand he's seen more of me than I have of him." Mendes laughed; not everyone in Brazil, it seemed, had the same dentist; he'd undoubtedly been born without the advantages that money brought to Isabel and DaSilva. Poverty also made the best fighters, I'd found, and he looked like he'd seen some action along the way. I'd also be interested to find out what that bulge was under his jacket. "Perhaps you could remind him that we're on the same side."

She laughed. "No, Chico is on my side." Her fist bounced off the rock of his shoulder. "I was the one who brought him to Paulo, after all." She came over and touched my arm. "You are well?"

I nodded. "I'm fine. He's has been taking good care of me while you were out."

"So?" She raised an eyebrow at DaSilva. "Trying to win him over already?" She laughed. "I think you will have a difficult time of it. He is a hard man, a hard man, you know." She winked at me.

Hell, I could get hard just looking at her, but I didn't think it was the right time to bring the subject up. Plus, now that I knew what she could do, I'd be much more careful about what I brought up at all. "I've explained the situation to DaSilva, and he's just gotten off the phone with the Colonel."

Mendes grunted and sat down in a chair across from DaSilva. Isabel came and sat by me on the couch. "So, what is happening?"

DaSilva smiled and poured her some coffee. He handed it to me and I succeeded in stroking the soft inside of her thigh under cover of the coffee cup, getting a sharp elbow in the ribs in return. DaSilva pretended not to notice my grunt. "It seems that our dear friend the Colonel is willing to wait while I take care of urgent Ladronco business in Brazil, which is good. That will give Kandinsky the time he needs to build a mockery of the Colonel's device." DaSilva nodded at me through the steam from his coffee. "But what is not good, perhaps, is that the Colonel has dismissed his driver from his service."

She cocked her head at me and I nodded. "I think the Colonel has figured out whose side I'm on."

Leaning close, she whispered in my ear. "My side as well, I hope."

I touched the smooth side of her face with my fingers, then sighed. "I guess I should take a little vacation while the Colonel cools down. Go back to the ranch, maybe. I haven't been in quite awhile."

"Splendid!" DaSilva sat forward, setting his coffee on the table. "While I, of course, must go to Sao Paulo to make the delay seem legitimate, why should Isabel make the long dreary journey when there is someone here who can show her the real America?"

I wasn't sure if he was kidding, for a second. But when I looked at Isabel, it was pretty obvious she thought it was a wonderful idea, too. After our morning in bed, cut much too short by my sleepiness, so did I. "Are you sure?"

"It is a marvelous idea!" Her eyes flashed. "I have always wanted to see the West, the broad spaces of this country." She started ticking off her fingers. "The Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, the Valley of Monuments, the..."

"Whoa, whoa!" I put up a hand. "That's a couple thousand miles of driving you're talking about." I laughed, laying on the accent. "Beside, darlin', we're goin' to Texas."

"Good!" She started on the tour of her fingertips again. "The Rio Grande, the oil wells, the Alamo..."

I gathered up her fingers in mine. She looked up at me, puzzled. "We're only going to be gone a week, Isabel. That's a month of sightseeing." She pouted. I wanted to bite that lip, but the two men were watching. "Well, okay, we'll try and get by the Alamo." Her smile was blinding. "But I warn you, you may be disappointed."

"Why?" She frowned. "Is it too like Disneyland?"

I thought of the little rundown hacienda where the best of Texas had died, glorified all to hell by John Wayne and a thousand TV movies, and shook my head. "No, it's just that it's in the middle of downtown San Antonio now, and that's sometimes a little different than you imagined."

She sighed. "So, what can we see? Where can we go?"

"Go?" The hell with what the others thought; I leaned forward and kissed her. "I'll take you to the best place ever made: my grandfather's half section in the Hill Country."

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