Everything's Eventual

   The stylus was withdrawn. Where it had touched, between the second and third knuckles of the third finger of his left hand, there was a small hot spot. It was the only real pain, although his arm still tingled and the muscles still jumped. Yet it was horrible, being shocked like that. Fletcher felt he would seriously consider shooting his own mother to avoid another touch of the little steel dildo. An atavism, Heinz had called it. Someday he hoped to write a paper.

   Heinz's face loomed down, lips pulled back and teeth revealed in an idiotic grin, eyes alight. "How do you describe it?" he cried. "Now, while the experience is still fresh, how do you describe it?"

   "Like dying," Fletcher said in a voice that didn't sound like his own.

   Heinz looked transported. "Yes! And you see, he has wet himself! Not much, just a little, but yes . . . and Mr. Fletcher—"

   "Stand aside," the Bride of Frankenstein said. "Don't be an ass. Let us take care of our business."

   "And that was only one-quarter power," Heinz said in a tone of awed confidentiality, and then he stood aside and refolded his hands in front of him.

   "Mr. Fletcher, you been bad," Escobar said reproachfully. He took the stub of his cigarette from his mouth, examined it, threw it on the floor.

   The cigarette, Fletcher thought. The cigarette, yes. The shock had seriously insulted his arm—the muscles were still twitching and he could see blood in his cupped palm—but it seemed to have revitalized his brain, refreshed it. Of course that was what shock treatments were supposed to do.

   "No . . . I want to help . . ."

   But Escobar was shaking his head. "We know Núñez will come to the city. We know on the way he will take the radio station if he can . . . and he probably can."

   "For awhile," said the Bride of Frankenstein. "Only for awhile."

   Escobar was nodding. "Only for awhile. A matter of days, perhaps hours. Is of no concern. What matters is we give you a bit of rope, see if you make a noose . . . and you do."

   Fletcher sat up straight in the chair again. Ramón had retreated a step or two. Fletcher looked at the back of his left hand and saw a small smudge there, like the one on the side of Tomás's dead face in the photograph. And there was Heinz who had killed Fletcher's friend, standing beside his machine with his hands folded in front of him, smiling and perhaps thinking about the paper he would write, words and graphs and little pictures labeled Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 and, for all Fletcher knew, Fig. 994.

   "Mr. Fletcher?"

   Fletcher looked at Escobar and straightened the fingers of his left hand. The muscles of that arm were still twitching, but the twitch was subsiding. He thought that when the time came, he would be able to use the arm. And if Ramón shot him, so what? Let Heinz see if his machine could raise the dead.

   "Do we have your attention, Mr. Fletcher?"

   Fletcher nodded.

   "Why do you want to protect this man Núñez?" Escobar asked. "Why do you want to suffer to protect this man? He takes the cocaine. If he wins his revolution he will proclaim himself President for Life and sell the cocaine to your country. He will go to mass on Sunday and fuck his coke-whores the rest of the week. In the end who wins? Maybe the Communists. Maybe United Fruit. Not the people." Escobar spoke low. His eyes were soft. "Help us, Mr. Fletcher. Of your own free will. Don't make us make you help us. Don't make us pull on your string." He looked up at Fletcher from beneath his single bushy eyebrow. He looked up with his soft cocker spaniel eyes. "You can still be on that plane to Miami. On the way you like a drink, yes?"

   "Yes," Fletcher said. "I'll help you."

   "Ah, good." Escobar smiled, then looked at the woman.

   "Does he have rockets?" she asked.

   "Yes."

   "Many?"

   "At least sixty."

   "Russian?"

   "Some are. Others came in crates with Israeli markings, but the writing on the missiles themselves looks Japanese."

   She nodded, seeming satisfied. Escobar beamed.

   "Where are they?"

   "Everywhere. You can't just swoop down and grab them. There might still be a dozen at Ortiz." Fletcher knew that wasn't so.

   "And Núñez?" she asked. "Is El Cóndor at Ortiz?"

   She knew better. "He's in the jungle. Last I knew, he was in Belén Province." This was a lie. Núñez had been in Cristóbal, a suburb of the capital city, when Fletcher last saw him. He was probably still there. But if Escobar and the woman had known that, there would have been no need of this interrogation. And why would they believe Núñez would trust Fletcher with his whereabouts, anyway? In a country like this, where Escobar and Heinz and the Bride of Frankenstein were only three of your enemies, why would you trust a Yankee newspaper reporter with your address? Loco! Why was the Yankee newspaperman involved at all? But they had stopped wondering about that, at least for now.

   "Who does he talk to in the city?" the woman asked. "Not who he fucks, who he talks to."