Heart of Fire Read online

  Finding a weapon in any large city wasn’t a difficult task, and Jillian wasn’t timid about it. She would have brought one from the States if she had been confident of getting it through customs, but smuggling a weapon was rather different from smuggling birth control pills, especially if she’d been caught.

  She walked slowly past the line of taxis in front of another hotel, studying the drivers without making it obvious. She was looking for one who didn’t look quite as prosperous as the others, though none of them looked well off. Maybe “seedy” was the word. Finally she selected one; he was unshaven, a little more slovenly than the others, his eyes bloodshot. She walked up to the vehicle with a smile, and in her imperfect Portuguese asked to be taken to the docks.

  The driver wasn’t inclined to talk. Jillian waited a few moments as he negotiated the traffic in the crowded streets before calmly saying, “I want to purchase a weapon. Do you know where I can find one?”

  He glanced quickly in the rearview mirror. “A weapon, senhora?”

  “A pistol. I prefer an automatic, but it doesn’t matter if it’s a . . . a—” She couldn’t think of the word for “revolver” in Portuguese. She made a circle with her finger and said “revolver” in English.

  His dark eyes were both wary and cynical. “I will take you to a place,” he said. “I will not stay. I do not want to see you again, senhora.”

  “I understand.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “Will I be able to find another taxi back to the hotel?”

  He shrugged. “There are many tourists. Taxis are everywhere.”

  By that she assumed she might or might not be able to catch another taxi. If necessary, she would walk to a public telephone and call for one, though she didn’t relish the idea of walking in this heat. She had dressed sensibly in a thin cotton skirt, and her legs were bare, but a steam bath was a steam bath no matter what you were wearing.

  He drove her to a rather seedy section of town, run-down but not yet a slum. She gave him a generous tip and didn’t look back as she walked into the shop he had indicated.

  Within half an hour she was the owner of a .38 automatic, easy to clean and maintain, and an impressive supply of ammunition weighted down her shoulder bag. The man who had sold it to her hadn’t even looked curious. Perhaps American women bought weapons from him every day; it didn’t take much of a stretch of imagination to visualize it. He even called a taxi for her and allowed her to wait just inside his door until the vehicle appeared.

  When she got to the hotel she found that Rick and Kates still hadn’t returned, but she hadn’t expected them. Rick was still so put out that he might well leave her on her own all night, a prospect she knew he hoped would alarm her, but it didn’t. She wasn’t there to sightsee, and the room service menu was more than adequate; it wouldn’t bother her at all to remain at the hotel for the rest of the day. She would even welcome the chance to rest.

  But Rick and Kates returned to the hotel late that afternoon and came to her room, both of them smiling and in a good mood. Jillian smelled liquor on their breath, but they weren’t drunk.

  “We found a guide,” Rick announced jovially, having finally come out of his sulks. “We’re supposed to meet him at seven to do the planning.”

  “Here at the hotel?” It seemed convenient to her.

  “Naw, at this bar where he hangs out. You’ll have to come. You know more about this planning stuff than we do.”

  Jillian sighed inwardly. She could think of better places to discuss this than in a crowded bar where any number of people might overhear them. “Who is the guide? I don’t believe I heard you mention his name.”

  “Lewis,” Kates said. “Ben Lewis. Everyone we asked said that he’s the best. I guess he’ll do. If he leaves the bottle alone, he should be all right.”

  That sounded truly encouraging. She sighed again. “Is he an American?”

  Rick shrugged. “I guess. He did have kind of a southern accent.”

  To Jillian’s way of thinking, that pretty well nailed down the man’s country of origin. She managed to keep the comment to herself.

  “He was born in the States,” Kates said, “but who knows if he still considers himself an American? I believe the term is ’expatriate.’ No one seemed to know how long he’s been down here.”

  Long enough to have gone completely tropical, Jillian would have bet. Slower, less concerned with detail. But most places in the world lacked the obsession with speed and efficiency that characterized the States, and she herself had learned to slow down when in other countries. She had been on digs in Africa among people who had no word for “time” in their language; the concept of putting themselves on a schedule would have been utterly alien to them. It had been a matter of adapt or go insane; it would be interesting to see which option Mr. Lewis had chosen.

  “He’s the type who wants to run the show,” Rick said. “If half of what we heard about him is true, I guess he does what he damn well pleases.”

  She could tell that Rick had been impressed by this Lewis person. Her brother’s taste had been frozen in mid-adolescence, however, so she decided to reserve judgment. Rick was impressed by any swaggering bully, believing machismo to be the essence of manhood. She began to lower her expectations of the guide they had hired.

  At Rick’s request, she was ready at six-thirty. She knew him well enough to realize he wished she were some sort of blond bombshell who was willing to use her body to dazzle and influence this man, who had somehow impressed him, but even if she were willing to bleach her hair she just didn’t have the basic material to be a bombshell. One of the requirements was voluptuousness, and Jillian fell far short of that. She’d always been glad, too, because it looked like a lot of effort to haul around the large breasts that seemed to turn men into slavering idiots.

  She was what she was: neat, trim, pleasant to look at but not a raving beauty. If anyone had asked her what her best feature was, she’d have said it was her brain.

  As a concession to the heat, however, she wore a halter-top dress; it was, in fact, the only dress she had packed. Except for the skirt and blouse she had worn on the flight down, she’d brought only sturdy trousers, shirts, and boots.

  During the taxi ride through Manaus with Rick and Kates she took the time to look around and admire what she saw. It was a beautiful city and she wished she had time to explore it, but then, she always felt that way. She never had enough time in the cities of today’s world; her work was with those of past worlds—dead cities, burial grounds—trying to piece together the past so as to learn how those long-ago people had lived as well as how the human race had come to be in its present position. Archaeology tried to find the roadway humans had traveled to the present, and to learn how they had changed over the millennia. It was a puzzle she never tired of trying to solve.

  The bar she and Rick and Kates stepped into wasn’t the ritziest joint she had ever been in, but neither was it the worst. She took it in stride, even the way the men at the bar all turned to survey her with hooded eyes. Had she been alone she wouldn’t have entered the place except in an emergency. Still, it was dim and blessedly cool and filled with the low hum of voices. The scents of alcohol, tobacco, and sweat swirled around with the lazy movements of the two ceiling fans.

  She was flanked by Rick and Kates as they moved toward a table set against the wall, where a lone man lazed as if half asleep, an open bottle of whiskey in front of him. His appearance was deceptive, however. Even from beneath those half-lowered lids she could see intensity gleaming in his eyes. As they approached, he shoved out a chair with his foot and gave Jillian a look that had about as much in common with the looks from the men at the bar as a shark had in common with a trout. The men at the bar might have speculated, but they kept their thoughts to themselves. This man, in his mind, already had her stripped, spread-eagled, and penetrated, and didn’t care if she knew it.

  “Well,” he drawled. “Hello there, sweetcakes. If you aren’t taken, why don’t you sit down o