victim sits with his back to the door. How will it be done?
Under the Home Team Bench
With a grimy index finger, Fritz Lang pulled back the tangle of leaves and vines to get a better look at the game but immediately drew back, violently slamming both elbows into his stomach. He was all too familiar with the symptoms of malaria and knew that without quinine there was no way to stave off the delirium that was sure to come. Fritz pushed his arms even harder to squeeze the chill rolling up through his torso. It worked this time, helped along by rapid breathing, but it wouldn’t be long, he knew, before the strange visions would begin, and the dizziness. Then would come the sweats and the blackouts. He needed quinine.
It was out there, he knew, waiting for him just a short distance away in a bag, a tattered little blue canvas sack. On the edges of Fritz’s feverish brain, the last words of the senior agent were playing over and over.
“You’ve got a two-hour window at the airstrip seven days from now. If you’re not there, we go, and you’ll have to get out on the river. There’ll be a cache set up for that, just in case. The canvas-bag routine; you know it. Pesos for bribes. Some bolivars, too, because you’re pretty close to the Venezuelan border, but I doubt you’ll need them. Astronaut food. Quinine. The usual. Once you’re on the river, it should be a pretty quick run to the coast for a jungle man like you.”
That was two weeks ago. Fritz had found the cocaine processing lab they’d been looking for, so in that sense it was mission accomplished, but he’d been too late for the airplane and had had to go to the backup escape plan. Whether it was the extra time in the Colombian jungle, or whether his body was simply due no matter what, this morning Fritz Lang’s malaria had returned full bore.
He leaned forward again into the vines, put out his finger tentatively, and waited. No chills this time. He leaned forward a little more. Still okay. He reached all the way and pulled the vines aside. Now he could really see and hear the crowd. Amazing, he thought, what a filter the jungle is. Only about fifty yards from the edge of the growth where he was hiding, the soccer game – uh, the football game; get it right, this is South America! – the football game had attracted the whole town. Yet he was barely aware anyone was there.
Or maybe it was the malaria. Through the buzz gathering strength in his brain, Fritz could hear the agent again. “Blue canvas bag, the same kind we always use, with a piece of duct tape on it. Our man will put it under the home team bench, if you can call it a bench. The facilities there are about as low end as they come. Soccer’s huge in all these countries – you know they call it ‘football’? – and every little village has a team and a cow pasture with goal posts.”
Another sudden chill grabbed Fritz at the waist and rushed up to encircle his chest. He sat back, hugging himself again, forcing the shakes to stop with sheer willpower. But he couldn’t stop the buzzing; it was like a million tiny insects in his head, insects that were chewing at ... No, not insects! The noise – it was the crowd! They were yelling about something. For the third time, he made a window for himself, wider this time. Somebody score a goal? No ... well, maybe. A tall, extremely thin player was running along the sidelines with both hands in the air. Yes, he was the one the crowd was cheering. The player stopped under the goal posts and pumped a single fist into the air, raising the crowd to a frenzy. Twice, after he’d sat down with his team, he had to stand and salute the crowd before it turned to the game once more.
Now Fritz had a better understanding of something the agent had said.
“Wait till the end of the game,” he’d instructed. “You got maybe ten, fifteen seconds if you play it right. Doesn’t matter who wins or loses, the place’ll go nuts and everybody’ll go out on the field. Could be you’ll even get lucky and there’ll be a brawl. Anyway, chances are about zero that you’ll be noticed if you act like they do. So you get in, get the bag, and get out. From the field you’re not more than five minutes to the river, so ... Now, if worse comes to worst, forget about the bag altogether. You can still make it without the pesos.”
But not without the quinine. Fritz studied the field, trying to take in as much as he could before the next chill grabbed him. Directly in front of him, fifty yards away, were the goal posts where the player had danced a few seconds ago. The crowd was big for a simple village game; Fritz estimated several hundred at least. And it was a shabby place. At the other end of the field, a small red splash on top of a stake suggested that Coca-Cola had once sponsored a scoreboard, but that was long gone now. There were well-worn players’ benches on either side of the field at what would have been the center line had there been one, but no bleachers for the fans, not even seats. A few tattered canvas chairs were scattered about, but they stood empty, for the majority of the crowd milled along the sidelines, constantly on the move with the play, competing for the best view. The players didn’t even have uniforms. Both teams wore a ragtag mix of different colors. Obviously, you had to be local to know which team was which. The paramilitaries were well equipped though. With camouflage suits and the ever-present AK-47s, they patrolled in pairs.
One thing the agent may have underestimated, Fritz thought. Unless he actually ran directly in and out, thereby attracting attention, it would take more than ten or fifteen seconds to grab the sack and get back to the jungle. All in all, this was not a good deal. If it weren’t for the quinine ... Fritz withdrew his hand and allowed the vines to settle over him again. He had to get as much of an advantage as he could, so his next move would be to slip around through the jungle to the home team side. When the game ended, he would have to be as close to their bench as possible. Now, he mouthed silently to himself, which side has the home team bench?
?
Since there are only two benches, one on either side of the field, Fritz Lang has a fifty-fifty chance of picking the home team one correctly, but logic should improve the odds considerably. How can he tell which bench is most likely to be the home team’s?
First Impressions Revised
Of the four people at the round conference table, it was not hard to tell that the one in charge was the woman with straight, gray hair, the one with the sharply tailored uniform and the double loop of gold cord on her shoulder. She was a large woman, but the ease with which she carried her body demonstrated her obvious comfort with command. Across from her, two of the others, no milquetoasts themselves, showed their respect, addressing the large woman only as “Chief Voltz.” Not “Chief” or “Ma’am,” but “Chief Voltz,” as if a natural bond connected her title and her name. The two were Detective First Grade Levitt Furst and Chief Medical Examiner Marjorie Schenk. They were in civilian clothes.
The fourth person, like the chief, was in uniform. He was a balding man with glasses who somehow managed to look like he was sitting beside and behind his boss at the same time. The man was as slight as the chief was large and, in an earlier time, would never have made the height requirements for a police force. His title was Office Assistant to the Chief, and his name was Mervyn Rivers, although he was widely known at headquarters as “Miss Brooks.”
The meeting had been going on for thirty minutes already and Rivers had yet to say anything. It looked, too, as if any opportunity to contribute would soon end, for Chief Voltz had just made an expansive terminating gesture with her arm to look at her watch.
“Press conference in five minutes.” She held Furst and Schenk alternately with her gaze. “It could be one of the most important we’ve held in the