Robert Butler - The Hot Country

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The Hot Country: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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In
, Christopher Marlowe Cobb (“Kit”), the swashbuckling early 20th century American newspaper war correspondent travels to Mexico in April and May of 1914, during that country’s civil war, the American invasion of Vera Cruz and the controversial presidency of Victoriano Huerta, El Chacal (The Jackal). Covering the war in enemy territory and sweltering heat, Cobb falls in love with Luisa, a young Mexican laundress, who is not as innocent as she seems.
The intrepid war reporter soon witnesses a priest being shot. The bullet rebounds on the cross the holly man wears around his neck and leaves him unharmed. Cobb employs a young pickpocket to help him find out the identity of the sniper and, more importantly, why important German officials are coming into the city in the middle of the night from ammunition ships docked in the port.
An exciting tale of intrigue and espionage, Butler’s powerful crime-fiction debut is a thriller not to be missed.

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We rode on for a few moments and I was quiet, thinking what those lies might have been, hoping that Villa would lay them out to me openly.

“He may try to shoot you,” Slim said.

This comment came into my head as I was deep in thought and I didn’t quite grasp it at first.

“We need to talk about that,” Slim said.

We were down to two hundred yards to go. It sank in. “Yes,” I said. “Let’s.”

Slim said, “Don’t forget. He’s been known in the heat of the moment just to draw his pistol and shoot someone. Even men he’s friendly with up to the last second.”

Slim paused. We’d talked about this much before. I believed him.

Slim said, “If I somehow can end up behind him and if he draws and doesn’t shoot instantly, I might could get the drop on him. Though I guess I’d just have to go ahead and plug him, since at that point we’d be pretty much up the Rio Mierda anyway.”

I knew Slim would be willing to do that. I said, “Thanks, but forget it.”

“You sure?”

“We wouldn’t even make it to the horses,” I said.

“We could go out in a blaze of gringo glory.”

“What’s the use? We’d never be able to tell the story in a bar.”

“In hell,” he said.

“If they got bars, it ain’t hell,” I said.

“Now, don’t go taking away my last hope in the hereafter.”

“Just see if you can bury me somewhere instead of feeding me to the zopilotes .”

A few more moments of silent riding, and the red caboose was getting close. Who expected to die in a goddam red caboose?

“He may not do it,” Slim said.

We said no more. Slim pulled his horse up. He and I both got down. “At least let me try to clear the way,” he said.

I nodded and was about to follow, but he had another thought and turned around to face me. “He’s always testing for cojones.

“Let me go first,” I said.

Slim hesitated. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

“I know.”

I pushed past him and went up the steps of the caboose with heavy feet and I arrived in Villa’s open door.

He was standing over his desk in shirtsleeves, a map spread out before him, two of his Mexican officers on his far side, wearing ersatz military tunics. And there was Mensinger. He was ramrod-straight at the end of the desk, the only one of them facing the door, though his head was angled slightly downward, as he watched Villa point to the map. In the center of his forehead was a tomato-red welt the size of a leghorn egg. He was back in his linen suit, but without the jacket. His tie was knotted tightly.

They were unaware of me. I knocked at the doorjamb. Mensinger was slow raising his face, and as interested as I was in him and his reactions, Villa instantly turned his face at my knock and I could see nothing but him. He straightened up sharply. His restless animal’s eyes fixed on me, and I was glad I was coming into this trying to be aggressively confident, because he did know how to intimidate. He straightened without taking his eyes off me; he squared around without taking his eyes off me; he said “Step into the room” without taking his eyes off me.

Without hesitating I made one strong stride into the room, and not far from his right hand I saw the Smith & Wesson.32 lying on his desk just as it was when I first met him. I took a second step, which was still pretty firm but not quite as strong as the first, and I stopped because somewhere in that process, faster than I could honestly say I was able to notice, Villa had snatched up his.32 and was pointing it square between my eyes. He took one quick stride toward me and everything suddenly slowed down, though I was sure he was still going fast: He began another step, the muzzle growing in my sight, the very tip of the muzzle, the black hole from which I expected a bullet to hurtle as soon as he finished bringing his right leg forward, which I could see happening at the lower periphery of my sight, though I was primarily focused on the muzzle, and I was working hard to stand still so I could at least die without flinching and with my eyes open, which was what I expected, to die, momentarily, because his right foot landed and his upper body, which had remained perfectly squared toward me all this time, now had the lower body squared perfectly beneath it, now he was motionless, Pancho Villa, and everything came to a stop in this room and, as far as I knew, in the desert outside and in the wide world beyond, and I was not flinching, I was not closing my eyes, though I expected the trigger-squeeze and the flare and the end of my life any moment now, any moment.

But the moment passed, and then another, and then another. I let my eyes shift very slightly from the muzzle to the face behind the muzzle, and those dark, wide eyes of his — as dark as but totally unlike Trask’s dark eyes — these predator eyes were anything but opaque, they were clearly aware, they were seeing, they were hiding nothing.

He advanced again, quickly. The muzzle grew suddenly larger and then it vanished from my sight. It landed coldly, heavily, against my forehead. Pancho Villa’s eyes held onto me without the tiniest flicker and his pistol pressed against me only long enough for me to think once more that the end had come. Then the muzzle abruptly left my forehead and his forearm jerked upward and I felt my sombrero fly off.

He took one step back from me. Not a retreat. He was just giving himself some shooting room so he wouldn’t be spattered with my blood.

I did not flinch. I did not blink. I did not breathe.

“You ran away,” Villa said.

I breathed. Just that. No other movement.

And then I spoke: “I ran away from nothing. I ran to something.” He was listening. I kept talking. Very calmly. Taking my time. Like over a tankard of pulque . Shoot me if you want, you bandit son of a bitch; listen if you want: That had to be my attitude. Cojones . “I knew what the German would ask you,” I said, tempted to look at Mensinger when I spoke of him. But I resisted that. Better to treat him as if he did not exist. I said, “I knew what he would offer. I knew all that when I came here. I also knew my own country gave you exile not so long ago, when your entire Army of the North could fit inside this railroad car. I knew my government would do better by you than the Germans. The first proof has just landed outside. I’ve brought you a cavalry of the air. An aeroplane and the services of your old compañero, Birdman Slim. Both are gifts of the United States of America. And there will be more support for General Pancho Villa and his vision for Mexico.”

I stopped talking.

The pistol remained.

I said, “The proof is in my right hand. A real letter from the President of the United States. Not a fake, like the one given you by the man standing at your desk. He and his country held you in contempt, and that made me angry. That was why I left. They brought you a fabricated lie. Any English-speaking person would see through their forgery.”

Villa’s pistol slowly descended now. He held it at his side, pointing at the floor, his arm straight. I moved my eyes — just my eyes — from Villa’s face and past his right shoulder and across the desk to Mensinger’s. There was a faint twitching in his right cheek, affecting now that side of his mustache, now his right eye, now his mustache, now both at once. He was seething. I brought my eyes slowly back to Villa, who casually turned his head and looked over his shoulder at Mensinger.

All Mensinger could say was “Lies. This invading American swine is the liar.”

Villa looked back to me. Just as casually. Keeping a straight face.

I thought to invoke the aeroplane again. But this was no longer a matter of explanations or logic or offers made and fulfilled. Ultimately the way Pancho Villa understood the world was in his right hand. I figured since I was in this deep, I had no choice but to go in deeper.

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