The Menacers Read Free

Alive, the subject goes nowhere but Los Alamos. This is the preferable solution. The other is, however, perfectly acceptable. Oh, and Eric…”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Try to complete this mission within a reasonable time. It is only a favor we are doing to certain people in Washington, who want to make sure the matter is in competent hands. I have another assignment for you, or will have, as soon as I can find you an adequate partner. Unfortunately, young ladies of character and mentality suitable for our type of work seem to be in short supply lately, and our trained people are all engaged elsewhere.”
    I said, “Yes, sir. If I stumble over a sufficiently bloodthirsty chick, I’ll let you know.”
    I hung up and sat there for a little, thinking about flying saucers, for God’s sake.

2
    In the morning, I had a taxi run me out to the airport early enough for me to have breakfast in the glass-walled restaurant overlooking the field. It had no particular character. It looked like any glossy airport restaurant anywhere in the world.
    When I got back down to the Mexicana desk, where they were just starting to check in my flight, I discovered something that might have come as a traumatic shock to a younger and less hardened member of the organization: I learned that Mac wasn’t quite omniscient and infallible. At least he didn’t know Mexican airlines. What I mean is, I had no reservation. Whatever passenger list he’d had my name put on somewhere, that particular list hadn’t got here.
    The young man behind the counter studied all his documents and manifests and records and shook his head. He went into the office and came out shaking his head some more. We held a consultation, and he assured me he would get me on the plane somehow. I showed him the corner of a fifty-peso note I’d taken in change at the hotel. He grinned.
    “You will catch your plane, señor,” he said, looking me straight in the eye, “you will catch it, and it will cost you nothing extra.”
    So much for the prevalent theory that everybody in that country has his hand out. Chastened, I stood and waited beside my suitcase until, at eight o’clock, the deadline for no-shows, he waved me forward and checked me through. We took off, and would have had a good view of the high valley in which the Mexican capital lies, the cradle of the old Aztec civilization, if it hadn’t been for the new Los-Angeles-type mist. If they haven’t got a real smog problem yet, there in the Distrito Federal, they soon will have.
    At Guadalajara, we were booted out of the plane for twenty minutes, after which we climbed over some pretty spectacular mountains and glided down to the coast and Puerto Vallarta, a pretty little seaport, where we had to deplane again, as the jargon goes. They don’t let you stay aboard their aircraft while they’re brushing and currying it between runs.
    I’d been pretty relaxed so far, enjoying the ride and the scenery, but now as we got back into our seats and were flown up the green Pacific coastline towards Mazatlán, which means the place of the deer, I felt the familiar, nervous, beginning-of-the-job tightness take hold of my throat and abdomen. It’s a sensation you never lose, no matter how long you stay in the business. At least I don’t seem to.
    Not only was I working again after several months’ layoff, but I was working with people who were bound to resent me, which meant I couldn’t trust them even to make it to the john without explicit instructions and careful supervision…
    My contact was there, all right, in the Mazatlán terminal, in her snug white linen pants and her crazy palm-leaf hat. She wasn’t exactly what I’d expected. She looked like a kid. I don’t mean the cuddly, blonde, lisping, baby-face type, but the slim, dark, big-eyed, hollow-cheeked kind of young girl who doesn’t seem aware of the fact that she’s going to be beautiful some day.
    She annoyed me at first glance, which wasn’t quite fair, since