Алистер Маклин - River of Death

The helicopter cabin was dimly lit even although the precaution had been taken of pulling black drapes across the windows. Hamilton, Navarro and Ramon were having their evening meal of cold meat, bread, beer and soda – the beer for Hamilton, soda for the twins.

Ramon shivered theatrically. ‘I don’t think I much care for this place.’

‘Not many people do,’ Hamilton said. ‘But it suits Brown – alias Mr Jones – and his friends well enough. Defensively speaking, it’s probably the most impregnable place in South America. Years ago I traced Brown and his fellow-refugees to a place called San Carlos de Bariloche near Lake Ranco on the Argentine-Chilean border. God knows that was fortress enough, but he didn’t feel secure even there so he moved to a hide-out in the Chilean Andes, then came here.’

Navarro said: ‘He knew you were after him?’

‘Yes. For years. Our wealthy friend in Brasilia has been after him for much, much longer. There may well be others.’

‘And now he no longer feels secure even here?’

‘I’m almost certain he doesn’t. I know he was in the Lost City this year, and several times in the past few years. But he likes his comforts and there are none in that ruin. He may have taken a chance and returned. It’s highly unlikely, but I have to check. Otherwise there’s no point in going to the Lost City.’

‘You have to have this confrontation between Brown and his friend.’

‘Yes. I have no proof. This – ah – meeting will give me all the proof I ever require.’

‘Remind me to take care of myself. I want to be alive to see it.’ Navarro turned and gazed at the curtain facing downstream. ‘It will not be easy to get into this place?’

‘It will not be easy. Brown’s estate here – it’s known as Kolonie Waldner 555 – is better guarded than the Presidential Palace. The estate is hotching with trained killers as guards – and when I say that I mean they’re trained and proven killers. There’s dense jungle to the north and south – Paraguay lies to the south and Brown is a close friend of the President there – there’s this river to the east and a large number of German settlements, populated almost exclusively by ex-members of the S.S., lie astride the roads to Asunción and Bella Vista. You won’t even find a single river pilot here who is Brazilian born, they’re all Germans from the River Elbe.’

Ramon said: ‘In view of the fact of what you’ve just told us, a thought occurs to me. How do we get in?’

‘I’ll admit I’ve given the matter some thought myself. Not much option really. There’s a road used by supply trucks, but it’s too long, too dangerous and has to pass through an armed gatehouse with electrified fences stretching away on both sides. There’s also a landing stage about ten miles downriver from here – about fifteen miles north of the Paraguayan border. The road up to the compound is about a mile long and usually heavily patrolled. But it’s the only other way. At least there are no electrified fences along the right bank of the Paraná – or there weren’t the last time I was there. We’ll wait two hours and move on in.’

‘Would it be in order,’ Navarro said, ‘if we gave you what is known as a couple of old-fashioned looks?’

‘Help yourself,’ Hamilton said agreeably. He opened a rucksack, brought out three silenced Lugers, three spare magazines and three sheathed hunting knives and distributed those. ‘Sleep if you can. I’ll watch.’

The helicopter, not under power, drifted with the current down the right bank of the Paraná, keeping as close inshore as possible to avoid the bright light of a brilliant half moon riding high in a cloudless sky. A door in the fuselage opened, a figure appeared, stepped down on to one of the pontoons and lowered an anchor quietly to the bed of the river. A second figure appeared with a bulky package under his arm: there came a subdued hiss and within thirty seconds a rubberised dinghy was fully inflated. A third man emerged from the fuselage carrying a small outboard motor and a medium-sized battery. The first two men stepped gingerly into the dinghy and took those items from him: the engine was clamped on to the transom aft, the battery lowered to the duckboard floor and coupled up to the engine.

The engine, once started, was almost soundless and the south-east wind, the prevailing one in that area, carried what little noise there was upstream. The painter was unhitched from the helicopter and the dinghy moved downstream. The three occupants were crouched forward, listening intently and peering, not without some apprehension, into the gloom beneath the overhanging branches of the rainforest trees.

A hundred yards ahead the river curved to the right. Hamilton switched off the electric motor, the twins dipped paddles into the water and very soon, a paddle occasionally touching the bank, they rounded the bend.

The landing stage, less than two hundred yards ahead, projected out into the river for a distance of twenty feet. Behind it, on land, there was a guardhouse which threw enough light to illuminate the cracked and splintered timber of the stage and two men, rifles shoulder-slung, maintaining a comfortable and relaxed guard on a couple of bent-wood chairs. Both were smoking and they were sharing a bottle. They stood up as two other men came out from the guard-house. They talked briefly, then the two relieving guards took over their chairs – and the bottle – while the previous guards went inside the guard-house.

The dinghy grounded silently on the muddy bank of the river and was secured by its painter to the low-hanging branch of a tree. The three men disembarked and disappeared into the undergrowth.

After they had gone about ten yards Hamilton said to Navarro in a barely audible whisper: ‘What did I tell you? No electrified fences.’

‘Watch out for the bear-traps.’

There were four men inside the guard-house, all dressed in uniforms of the field-grey colour used by the Wehrmacht in the Second World War. Fully clad, they were lying on camp beds: three were asleep or appeared to be. The fourth was reading a magazine. Some instinct – there was certainly no sound – made him glance upwards and towards the doorway.

Ramon and Navarro were smiling benevolently at him. There was nothing particularly benevolent, however, about the discouragingly steady silenced Lugers held in their hands.

On the landing stage the two new guards were gazing out over the Paraná when someone cleared his throat, almost apologetically, behind them. They immediately swung around. Hamilton wasn’t even bothering to smile.

Inside the guard-house all six guards were securely bound beyond any hope of escape and were more than adequately gagged. Ramon looked at the two telephones then questioningly at Hamilton, who nodded and said: ‘No chances.’

Ramon sliced through the wires while Navarro started to collect the prisoners’ rifles. He said to Hamilton: ‘Still no chances?’

Hamilton nodded. The three men left, threw the rifles into the Paraná, then began to move up the road connecting the landing stage with Kolonie 555. The twins pressed in closely to the forest on the left-hand side of the road while Hamilton kept to the right. They moved slowly, with the stealth and silence of Indians: they had long moved at will through the disaffected tribes of the Mato Grosso.

When they were only yards from the compound Hamilton waved his two companions to a halt. The compound of the Kolonie was well lit by the moon. It was built in the basic form of a barrack square and was perhaps fifty yards across. Eight huts faced on to this central square. Most of those were extremely ramshackle, but one at the far left of the square was a solidly built bungalow. Close by that was an arched metal shed and, beyond that, a short runway. At the entrance to the compound, diagonally across the square from the bungalow, was a thatched hut which could well have been a guardhouse, a probability reinforced by the fact that a solitary figure leaned against the entrance wall. Like his colleagues on the landing stage he was in paramilitary uniform and carried a slung rifle.