Wild Country by Dean Ing

man's instructions until she was locked in the ladies' room, and she tucked those instructions where only a lover, or a ravisher, would find them. Then she took a sightseeing tour of Kansas Ringcity and. again without realizing it. ditched the man tailing her.
    On the other hand: while not stupid, Marianne was an amateur. She returned to her motel room for a nap before placing her call, and of course the Ocelot bore a tracer bug behind its Texas license plate by the time she awoke that evening. A professional would have made that call from a row of booths at a busy bus station. Marianne had the brains to avoid her car phone. She found a quiet booth off North Broadway and paid no attention to the kid—actually he was twenty-seven years old—who skated his old surfer into the alley a half block away and then did odd things with the cardboard box he carried.
    Felix Sorel was nothing if not a pro. He could have had her call relayed through La Mariposa, but then two of his own people would have heard him talking in clear uncoded speech with an amateur. Risky business, that. He could have told the woman to call him at Nuevo Laredo, but too many American undercover spooks maintained watch in that known border conduit. Instead, he had given her a number in Monclova; the number of a well-protected place where one could disport with male prostitutes without any hassle from the Mexican police.
    Sorel enjoyed his sport on Tuesday evening, having nothing better to do. On Wednesday he was listening to a youth with a twelve-string guitar and a lovely clear castrate voice when the phone buzzed. A young woman calling herself Quiet Mary needed to speak to someone named Caballo, the horse. Sorel took the call.
    Thanks to the "kid" in the alley near Marianne's phone booth, an excellent typed transcript was made from the monitor on the cardboard box. The syndicate made no immediate move against Sorel or his latina. But a pasty-faced little man with nervous mannerisms soon got concrete galoshes and a resting place on the bottom of the Missouri River for guiding Sorel to what could be considered as a rival syndicate. They already knew Marianne from her license plates. Voiceprints told them she was talking with Sorel himself.
     
    The transcript read as follows:
    : A su servicio …
    P : Buenos tardes, senor. Soy Quiet Mary, y quiero hablar con el caballo .
    :Uno momenta, por favor.
    S : This is the horse, Quiet Mary. You have been quiet a day too long.
    P : I did as you said, but nobody showed up yesterday. It went okay today, only… well, do you want me to give you a set of letters and numbers I got in return?
    S : No. There is no hurry. Memorize it and destroy the paper. But you said "only." Only what?
    P : Uh… this funny nervous little man told me you might be interested in a, um, farming venture in Oregon territory.
    S : I cannot imagine what he has in mind.
    P : Well… I gave him a bag of corn chips; got it?
    S : Continue.
    P : He told me that a group of scientists have developed a strain of corn that could be grown in poor land. And that it does not look like corn at all. Still following me?
    S : Yes. I wonder who else may be following you.
    P : I've taken care of that.
    S : Are these… scientists the same people who took your corn chips?
    P : I don't think so. I'm sure of it, unless my man was lying.
    S : What do the scientists want from me?
    P : They think Oregon is a fine place for crops. Horse. They think you may want to expand as a grower. A very big grower. (LONG PAUSE.) Are you there. Horse?
    S : This is completely… I do not want to hear more details over the phone, Mary. Did your man tell you how one might contact these geniuses of farm management?
    P : Yes, he said I can—
    S : Don't tell me! Set up a meeting for me, and inform me through your usual channel.
    P : You mean Sa—
    S : Yes! I mean that is satisfactory, Mary. You have not been trained for some parts of this work, but you must learn quickly. Can you follow