Гарри Гаррисон - The QE2 Is Missing

“And so!” Mrs. Wunderbaum reached out and patted her hand consolingly. “They’re all the same. The business worries them all the time and they never tell you why, so you worry too, and so what do you get. Trouble. It’s that kind of world.”

The waiter made a fortunate interruption and Hank bent over the menu with deep concentration. After they had ordered, the two women had a heart-to-heart talk about the perfidiousness of men, nodding in complete agreement. Hank was greatly relieved when Wunderbaum returned, pulled out his chair, and dropped heavily into it.

“Young man,” he said, “you got yourself a deal.”

“But… why?” his wife wailed.

“I’ll tell you later.”

“I knew it,” she said, nodding with resignation.

“Later meaning never. Around the world, a trip we’re going to take you said. Some trip. When you’re not kvetching about the food you’re on the phone to New York. Maybe we better go home, if only to cure your heartburn.”

“Mr. Greenstein,” he said, suddenly smiling happily. “I think maybe you saved my life from dying from indigestion and maybe even you saved my business because I know what they do as soon as my back is turned. Have some wine.”

The rest of the luncheon was spent in amiable conversation. Wunderbaum knew Hank’s firm, had even done business with it and had met his father a few times. When they had finished he squinted at his watch and pushed back his chair.

“Come on, Momma, we got some packing to do.”

“A room has been reserved for you at the Wentworth Hotel,” Hank said. “You can stay there a few days if you like, or return to the States whenever you want to. And I’d like to thank you for doing what you are doing. It’s really great.”

“My pleasure. You enjoy the rest of the trip for us. Only watch out for the steak and kidney thing. It’ll kill you.”

Frances said goodbye to the couple, and watched them as they left the restaurant, waving back when they did. Then she sipped her wine, tapped her fingernails on the glass and smiled very sweetly at Hank.

“Now,” she said, “you free-wheeling son of a bitch. You are going to tell me everything, and I mean everything, about whatever the hell is going on around here. The QE2 indeed!”

“Can I tell you about it after we get aboard? We only have a couple of hours to pack and everything…. “

“No! Speak. What was in that letter?”

“Here,” he said resignedly. “Read it for yourself.”

She did, with growing astonishment, slowly from beginning to end — and then once again before she handed it back.

“There are things about you I really don’t know,” she said.

“I’m sorry. But don’t hate me for not telling you before. When I first met you, why, telling you was, of course, out of the question. By the time we decided to get married it was too late. I couldn’t just blurt it out. I mean, you know, sweetest, your husband-to-be is a part-time agent for quasi-legal Jewish organizations. Perhaps, you maybe wouldn’t have thought much of the idea. Or of marriage to someone…. “

“You can’t think very much of me if you believe that.”

“I do think very much of you, that’s the trouble, I love you so much I couldn’t think if possibly losing you. Maybe I was just afraid. Maybe it’s good it came out this way, before we actually marry. In case you might want to change your mind.”

He looked absolutely demolished and Frances’s heart went out to him. “You’re absolutely the most foolish man I know. If anything I want to marry you even more. Perhaps the Captain of the ship will perform the ceremony. Very romantic. Do they still do that sort of thing…? “

“Darling! Listen. And think before you answer. Be sensible and think about the fact that your family might lot look on me as a prime example of a husband as much as you do.”

“I’m marrying you and my family isn’t. My father is in anti-Semitic, anti-American old Tory who will hange his mind the instant he sees his first grandchild.”

“You’re wonderful and I’ll make an honest woman of you yet! But this could be dangerous…. “

“Aboard the QE2 in the middle of a luxury cruise? Don’t be silly.”

“There are some very strange and possibly tough customers aboard.”

“There will also be some pretty strange and tough British sailors and sergeants-at-arms or whatever they call them, if I know my Cunard. They won’t let anything happen. Will you be carrying a gun? What will you be doing?”

“Nothing quite as adventurous or dangerous as that. Just keeping an eye on these people to try to find out what they are up to. If there is going to be any trouble it won’t be my department. I hope.”

“I hope so, too — but I don’t think we need worry. If I remember that little raid on Entebbe, the Israelis can take very good care of themselves indeed. Now pay the bill and let’s go for a cruise.”

As always, Leandro Diaz had mixed feelings about Mexico City, possibly because he had been living in London for such a long time. London is a fine city when you have money, perhaps the best in the world, but the Paraguayan refugees were poor and always short of funds. And then there was the English weather, always a burden to someone born in the tropics. Mexico had a far more favorable climate, familiar food — and the pleasure of talking Spanish all the time.

The drawbacks were the smog. And the crowds. Mexico’s population had doubled in less than seventeen years and it was killing the country. He would never get used to the perpetual, grinding, inescapable poverty that squeezed in upon him. Beggars were on all sides; ragged and filthy children pressed forward with their palms outstretched. Diaz tried to ignore them. He would never have come to this slum street if the voice on the phone had not instructed him to do so. For a lot of reasons the meeting had to be arranged in a very roundabout and cautious way. He pushed through the crowds and finally saw his goal ahead, just as it had been described to him.

In the middle of the row of mean shops, pale green and garish pink, stood the Pulqueria La Providencia. Even from here he could smell the rank odor of the pulque. Fermented juice of the agave, the century plant, sweet and cloying, with a smell so sickening that he always wondered how people could drink it. But it was cheap and it contained alcohol, and if you mixed it with pineapple juice it was almost bearable.

Diaz pushed through the rickety screen door, which seemed to function only as a trap to keep the buzzing hordes of flies locked inside. There was one customer asleep, drunk, his head pillowed on his arms. Otherwise the bar was empty, with just the owner rinsing out glasses in an enamelled basin. He had a three-day growth of beard and a wall-eye and he watched coldly as Diaz approached.

“Good evening,” Diaz said. A slight movement of the man’s head was his only response. “I was told to come here. For a message.”

“You got a name?”

“Leandro Diaz.”

“That’ll be twenty pesos.”

Diaz knew that no payment was needed, that this was pure graft. But it was easier to pay than argue. It had been hard enough to set this meeting up in any case. He passed over the money. It vanished and the barman jerked his head towards the door.

“Outside turn left. Go three blocks straight then turn the corner and there is a restaurant called the Parador.”

“Do I turn right or left at the corner?”

A disgusted grunt was his only answer; he had had hi: twenty pesos worth. The restaurant should not be hard to find.

While he walked, there was a marked improvement in the neighborhood, with the slums giving way to a factory block, then a street with small shops. It was easy enough to locate the restaurant, a two-meter-wide neon-bordered sombrero hung over the doorway, emblazoned with the name. He went in, blinking in the near darkness after the full sunlight outside. It was too early for dinner and only an ancient pair of American tourists sat near the front window sharing a Turkey Mole. A waiter came towards him bearing a wide menu.