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  Atlanta Extreme

  Randy Wayne White writing as Carl Ramm

  one

  The woman who met him at the Fort George Hotel in Belize City, Belize, Central America, told him that she was a whore. She said it with a toss of her head, a quick, penetrating glare of contempt, an expression of aloof indifference that effectively communicated that she didn’t give a good goddamn what James Hawker thought of her, anyway, so why try to hide anything?

  Hawker sat at the bar and studied the label on the bottle of beer he was drinking. Belikin Beer, Belize Brewing Company, Ltd. Nice drawing of a Mayan ruin on the label. Hawker had studied many labels of many varied beers in the last year. He had been traveling almost continually. When a man is being hunted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, travel becomes a way of life.

  For the last two months he had been living in a seaside estate in Puerto Cabello, not far from Caracas, Venezuela. In South and Central America, Hawker had discovered, a man is asked only one question of importance: Can you pay? If that question is answered satisfactorily, there are no more questions. On the strength of his portfolio at the Swiss bank of Grand Cayman Island, Hawker had always answered satisfactorily.

  So lately he had been living the fast, elaborate life of the wealthy American expatriate. Rented villas overlooking the sea. Maids and man-servants. Invitations to strange, formal dinner parties peopled with swarthy men in white tuxedos and beautiful, dangerous-looking women. It was the kind of life that international spies lived. And escaped Nazis. And international drug runners. And businessmen from places like Toledo or Dubuque who embezzle the cream off the second set of books, abandon the wife and kids, and run off with the gum-chewing secretary.

  But it was not James Hawker’s kind of life. He had had enough of isolation. He had had enough of cryptic conversations with people he did not trust and did not like. He had ridden with too many lunatic women in fast sports cars and bedded enough Latin beauties to last a lifetime.

  Hawker had had enough of running and enough of living the soft life. That’s why now, now for the first time in months, he was happy. He was happy because he had another mission.

  Hawker put the bottle of beer on the counter and considered the woman who sat next to him. She was of the long, lithe, tropical variety: finely grained mahogany skin; pale brown eyes; a touch of Mayan ancestry in the high cheekbones; a blend of slave ancestry in the ripe hips and jutting breasts; a solid dash of Spanish-European in the delicate nose, mouth, and the dark spill of black hair that framed the beautiful duskiness of her face. Her speech was articulate, accented with Spanish, but touched with the cool English of British boarding schools, not the inarticulate street slur of Belize. And the white blouse, tropical-print skirt, and gold jewelry she wore all had the crisp aura of money. If she was a whore, Hawker decided, she was a damn expensive whore.

  Hawker said, “I came to Belize because it was my understanding that Colonel Wellington Curtis of Atlanta, Georgia, was going to meet me here. At the bar of the Fort George Hotel. At eight P.M. on this particular Tuesday in June. It is now eight twenty-three P.M., and I really don’t care if you are a whore or a secretary or a prima ballerina. All I am asking is: Why did Colonel Curtis send a messenger instead of meeting me as had been arranged? Why did he send you?”

  Again the woman’s dark eyes flashed at him. “You are disappointed, Mr. Hawker? Perhaps the colonel was thinking of your comfort. You have had a long journey from Venezuela. For reasons with which I am unfamiliar, it was inappropriate for you to fly by commercial airline or, for that matter, to travel under your real name. So you have spent the last two days in small bush planes—I know how cramped and hot they are—and cheap hotels. The colonel told me that his inquiries about you indicate that you are a man who, when he relaxes, prefers to relax with women.” Her lips formed a condescending smile. “Perhaps the colonel wishes you to relax before your meeting with him. Perhaps that is why he sent his whore as messenger.”

  Hawker nodded and took a sip of his beer. “If that’s the reason you’re here, then the colonel has wasted your time and mine. I have been sufficiently … relaxed during my months in South America. I need no more relaxation. I need only to see the colonel.”

  “You do not find me attractive?” Without taking her eyes from Hawker the woman opened an ornate gold case and put a cigarette between her lips. When Hawker made no move to light the cigarette for her, she fumbled for a small lighter and added, “Or perhaps the inquiries the colonel made about you were misleading. Perhaps you do not like women.”

  Hawker noted that her hands shook slightly as she lit the cigarette. He also noticed that she snapped the lighter closed too firmly, as if to compensate for her momentary lack of control. Hawker replied calmly, “You do not understand, Laurene—that is your name, isn’t it? Laurene Catocamez? I’m here on business. Whether I find you attractive or not is immaterial. What’s important is what I have to say to Colonel Curtis. And what I have to say can’t wait for a recreational roll in the hay with you, which, frankly, I wouldn’t accept even if there was time.”

  The woman blew a funnel of smoke and tapped the cigarette on an ashtray, her eyes narrowing slightly. “I see,” she said. “You seem to be a man who appreciates frankness, Mr. Hawker, so I hope you do not mind if I am now frank with you. I have not been sent to Belize just to entertain you. I have been sent to interview you before your meeting with Colonel Curtis. The colonel, though he has never met you, knows of your reputation. He has told me about you, for as well as being his whore, I am also his confidante. Colonel Curtis admires your work as an American vigilante. He has heard good things about your wars on the criminals of Los Angeles and Detroit and Washington. As you no doubt know, Colonel Curtis is, in his way, also a vigilante. Though he is an American, he has helped finance, arm, and lead the great rebel cause in my country. He and his mercenaries have fought side by side with my people in a revolution that will not end until the communist regime now in control is destroyed.”

  “I know,” put in Hawker. “In that regard I am in support of the colonel and his work.”

  “As you should be. Colonel Curtis is a great man. He admires you and your work, too, Mr. Hawker. Even so, he does not know why you want this meeting with him. It is his sincere hope that you have come to offer your considerable abilities to our cause. But Colonel Curtis also knows that his work in Central America has many powerful enemies back in the United States. One of those enemies is Senator Thy Estes, who, according to our sources, is also your lover. The colonel knows that his enemies have been inventing terrible lies about how he gets money to fund this revolution. They have accused him of torture and extortion and God knows what else. Frankly Colonel Curtis wonders if you have come to Central America to assassinate him.” Laurene Catocamez gave him a sharp look of appraisal as she inhaled on her cigarette. “Is that why you are here, Mr. Hawker? Have you come to murder Wellington Curtis?”

  Hawker couldn’t help but smile. He hadn’t realized that Curtis, who had been described to him as a Southern aristocrat and military hobbyist, was capable of setting up an intelligence network sophisticated enough to collect such accurate data. Who in the hell besides a few close friends and a couple of airplane pilots knew that he and Thy Estes, the buxom redheaded senator, were lovers? And how many people knew that he was a vigilante? It was an impressive demonstration of Curtis’s organization, and Hawker took it for what it was: a warning; a warning that Curtis was more than just a military adventurer.

  “You are right, Laurene,” Hawker said easily, “I am a man who appreciates frank
ness. Even so, if I were here to kill Colonel Curtis, you really don’t think that I would admit it, do you?”

  “Your eyes would tell me what your tongue might not.”

  “Is that right? You are a mind reader? And what do my eyes tell you now, Laurene?”

  The woman studied him carefully, and as she did, Hawker felt, to his surprise, a strong surge of physical desire for her. Perhaps it was the disdain in her manner or the petulant way in which her lips pursed as she stared at him, but the wanting was there: a strong abdominal surge, like pain.

  “What do my eyes tell you?” Hawker repeated.

  The woman looked deeply into his eyes, and then, after long seconds, seemed to shake herself from a light trance and turned away. “Very little,” she said quickly. “Almost nothing.”

  “Oh? Why is it that I think you’re lying?”

  The woman pressed her cigarette into an ashtray. “Lying? How absurd. It’s really just a trick of mine, you know,” she said, smiling for the first time. “I pretend I can read things in people. People love to think someone else knows about them. Really knows about them. I guess it gives them a little break in their loneliness. My grandmother was a gypsy. When I tell people this, they immediately believe that I can see into their eyes. They are anxious to accept anything I say about their past or future as true.” She laughed. “Of course, I always tell them what they want to hear. It is a trick. My grandmother could do it, though. She really could see into the past. And the future.”

  “But you can’t? You don’t have the gift?”

  The woman looked at Hawker. “Sometimes,” she said slowly. “Sometimes I can see things. Sometimes I have the gift.”

  “Yet you saw nothing in my eyes.”

  The woman stood abruptly. “What I saw or did not see does not matter. The future is not ours to control, is it? But I am convinced you have not come to assassinate Colonel Curtis. I do not know why you are here, but I don’t think you have come to kill him. That is all that matters. Tomorrow I will take you to him. It is a long journey. You should get some sleep.”

  “Colonel Curtis isn’t here? He’s not in Belize?”

  “No, he is in Guatemala, in the jungle, near the border of El Salvador and Masagua, where our rebel army trains. He wishes you to see the operation before you pass judgment on him.”

  “And you are convinced that I haven’t already passed judgment?”

  “I am satisfied with our interview. It is enough. We will leave at first light.”

  Without looking at him Laurene Catocamez turned and walked from the bar. Her hips swung beneath her jet-black hair, and her breasts vibrated tautly, braless, beneath the white blouse as she pushed through the double doors and disappeared.

  It was a moment before Hawker realized that before leaving, she had taken the key to his room.…

  two

  Hawker gave it five minutes, finished his beer, paid the bill. The bartender was a solicitous little man with an earring and a gold tooth. He felt called upon to offer something in return for Hawker’s Belizean-dollar tip.

  “Your lady very boss, mon. Very boss. She get mad at you, sir? She walk out?”

  “She’s not my lady—man.”

  “Not nosy, sir, not nosy. Just trying to help. You need the womans, sir, I be the one to see. I get you fine, clean womans, sir. Very young, very cheap. What you say, sir?”

  “I say, why is it that people are trying to supply me with women lately? Do I look that hard-up?”

  “Don’t understand, sir. Talk plain to old Sam. I get you fine, clean young womans if you want, sir.”

  Hawker patted the counter. “Not right now, thanks, Sam. Maybe another time.”

  On the bar’s big-screen television Flipper was squeaking and splashing, trying to tell Chip to follow. The satellite dish reception was bad, and it appeared to be snowing on the dolphin, which, in TV land, was king of the sea. No one in the bar was watching, anyway. At a table across the room three Englishmen sat over gin and tonics, discussing their respective banana crops. In the corner, sitting alone, was a huge, bearish black man with a thick black beard and mustache. He was reading a magazine. Near a window that overlooked the fluorescent green of the Caribbean sea, a group of Americans talked of the dangers and demands of their scuba-diving holiday on Ambergris Cay. They talked loudly so that everyone in the bar could hear.

  “That damn barracuda was six feet long, no shit, a fucking six-footer, and he came right up to us. Frankie started to panic, but I grabbed his arm and settled him down. Gave him the take-it-easy signal. ’Cudas won’t bother you unless you’re wearing something shiny, but Frankie really lost his cool when he saw it. Of course, the only place where he’s logged any real diving time is Lake Erie. I try to make it down to Florida at least a couple of times a year, so I know how ’cudas act. You have to respect them, but hell, there’s no real reason to be afraid of them. A fucking six-footer, no shit.…”

  There were three women at the table and five men. The women, Hawker noted, seemed to be bored by the ongoing macho routine of the men. One of the women was rather pretty in a stocky, blue-eyed Midwestern way, and she smiled at Hawker. Hawker smiled in return and hurried out.

  It was a strange mixture of people in a strange country. Belize had the feel of a mud-lot carnival: cheap, gaudy, raw. The country used to be known as British Honduras, a colony of the crown for nearly one hundred and twenty years. But then, in 1981, the United Kingdom granted the country its independence. The local government changed the country’s name to Belize while, at the same time, begging the British not to withdraw their troops. The people of Belize knew—as did everyone else—that the Gautemalan army would march in the day after Her Majesty’s forces sailed out. The British agreed to stay. As James Hawker trotted down the steps, through the lobby of the hotel and outside, he wondered why the British cared. From what he had seen the people of Belize were lazy, dirty, and undependable. Belize City itself was nothing more than a massive slum built around four or five international banks. In the open markets of the city flies swarmed around squawling black babies while their parents, apparently unconcerned, laughed and danced to American hits on their ghetto blasters. On almost every corner of every block, Rastafarians, in their greasy dreadlocks, hustled drugs: “You want buy good ganjah, mon? Five ounces or five tons, mon, whatever you want. You do the white train, mon? I got good snort; good cocaine. Set you down right nice and easy.…” The most memorable thing about Belize City was its smell. The city smelled of rotting fruit, bad fish, and the raw sewage that flowed out Haulover Creek, the river that ran past the crowded stilt shacks in the center of town.

  Most people came to Belize for the scuba diving off Ambergris Cay or the fishing off the Turneffe Islands. Hawker had come because Colonel Wellington Curtis considered it a country neutral to his cause. His cause was to help the rebels overthrow the government of Masagua, a tiny banana republic wedged in between the troubled nations of Guatemala and El Salvador. Hawker’s friend and aide, Jacob Montgomery Hayes, had arranged the meeting after first listing the reasons why Curtis’s operation needed to be stopped. Thy Estes had accompanied Hayes, visiting Hawker at his seaside retreat in Venezuela. It was a pleasant reunion for all of them. Hawker hadn’t seen Hayes since he had gone renegade (in the opinion of the CIA) and escaped to Ireland. He hadn’t seen Thy Estes since he enlisted her aid to help him escape from Belfast, two CIA agents hot on his tail. So at first their meeting had a party atmosphere. Champagne for the senator, American beer for Hawker, and freshly pressed mango juice for Hayes the vegetarian.

  But it wasn’t long before Hayes got down to business. Hayes was stocky, aesthetic, early sixties, balding; a pipe smoker who was part business tycoon, part Zen Buddhist, part field biologist, part philosopher; an exacting, quiet man whom Hawker admired very much. It seemed like a long, long time ago that Hayes, a billionaire, had offered to finance Hawker on his vigilante operations. Since those days the two men had grown to be much more than just financier and
employee. They had become close friends. So Hawker listened quietly as Hayes described Curtis, his operation, and why the operation had to be destroyed.

  Hayes began, saying, “Colonel Wellington Curtis—he’s an honorary colonel in the Georgia militia, by the way, not a real colonel—is a true Southern aristocrat. His family landed at Jamestown before the Pilgrims. They spread through Virginia and into Georgia. They were plantation owners, slave owners; moneyed people who controlled the counties in which they lived and sometimes even the states in which they lived. They fought with distinction in the Civil War and afterward helped rebuild the South through their support of the Democratic Party. The fortune of the Curtis family has dwindled since those times, but even so, Wellington Curtis is a very wealthy man. Most of his wealth was inherited, but he is still an impressive individual, a brilliant historian who has written two classic books on military history: War Craft, which is about naval warfare, and The Killing Tree, which concerns the Civil War.” From a leather briefcase Hayes took two thick volumes and put them on the table. “You may want to read them, James.”

  Hawker nodded but did not pick up the books. Hayes continued. “About ten years ago Curtis became interested in the conflicts of Central America. It is my understanding that he became interested while doing research for a book he was writing on revolutions. The conflicts of Central America became an absolute passion with him, and before long, he began donating money to the rebel cause in Masagua, a tiny country, which, like Nicaragua, has fallen under Soviet control. Curtis hates communism, just as you and I do. He wrote a brilliant treatise entitled “Lies of the Workers,” which every major New York magazine refused to publish. Curtis finally published it and circulated it himself—”

  “Wait a minute, Jake,” Hawker said, interrupting. “This is the guy you want me to stop? It sounds like we ought to join him, if you ask me.”

  “Up to this point I think you’re right, James,” Hayes said calmly, tapping his pipe into an ashtray. “I agree. Much of what Curtis has done is admirable. But in the last two years he has changed, changed drastically. Back in Atlanta he was known as a fine man, a decent man, a humanitarian man. Politically he is ultra–right wing, but even his adversaries on the left admired him for his honesty and sense of fair play. But three years ago Wellington Curtis decided that sending money and mercenaries to Masagua wasn’t enough. He decided that in order to really contribute he would have to go there, himself. He decided he would appoint himself general of his little army and take full control of the rebel movement. Apparently he did rather well during the first year there. Brilliant historians aren’t always brilliant military leaders in the field. But he was. He and his men fought bravely and honorably, and he made the Moscow-backed regulars of Masagua look foolish more than once. But then something happened. I don’t know what. Maybe a year in the jungle fighting for survival is a little too much for someone from a cultured background to stand. At any rate Curtis’s methods began to change. And his ideas, his … philosophies became unsound. In Masagua gruesome stories of his troops beheading babies, torturing women, and raping little boys and girls began to filter out of the jungle. Rather than refuting the news stories, Curtis cut down on his contact with the outside world. He refused to do any more interviews and warned that any journalists found within his camp would be executed on sight.”