"The clouds are clearing away," he announced. He snapped his fingers at an old monk who stood nearest the throne. "Fetch the case bearing the flares and flare gun," he ordered. "In a minute or two, the clouds will be gone and I shall send the signal. The battle is long overdue."
"I don't suppose," I said, trying to decide whether to set off one of my gas bombs and wiping out everybody in the throne room, including myself, "you'd like to discuss sending that signal, would you?"
Don Carlos stared at me for a long time, his face impassive, his eyes only barely glowing red in the centers. Then, obviously convinced that I was making a joke, he leaned back in his throne and let out a series of guffaws that actually made the painting of The Last Supper rattle against the wall. There was dead silence from the monks and guards behind me. Apparently, when Don Carlos laughed, he laughed alone, unlike other bosses who insisted that underlings share their warped sense of humor. Don Carlos finally wound down and the famous painting stopped rattling against the wall.
"Along with everything else," the fanatical giant said, his face set like cement, his eyes glowing again, "you have an abominable sense of humor, Mr. Nick Carter. There is, of course, nothing to discuss. My people await the signal and I'm certain they've grown impatient by now. We will not even discuss what is to happen to you, to your two Indian friends and to those others on this mountaintop who have continued to show disloyalty to me. Once the revolution commences below, all of you will be dispatched. In case you are interested in the method, it will be a simple death. You will all be thrown from the summit of Alto Arete. If the fall doesn't kill you, the poisoned bits of metal will rip your flesh to shreds when you try to descend. If you survive that, Cuban Marines await you below. This time, no miracle and no ally will come to your rescue. Ah, the signal flares have arrived."
The monk bringing the leather case containing the signal gun and flares approached the throne, bowed and handed the case up to his master. I entertained a faint hope that the man was a Ninca, one of Sagacio's friends, and that he had booby-trapped the damned case. But that wasn't to be. Don Carlos opened the case and took out the flare gun. I naturally wanted to stall him as long as possible, not knowing what a stall would do to help, but there was something else that bothered me. Something the President had told me when he had sent me on this assignment. "There's a rumor that someone in the country once did something rather atrocious to him or to his family." I had asked Chief Botussin about it, but he had no knowledge of anything atrocious ever having been done to Don Carlos. I had to find out the story there — I hate dying with a mystery lingering in my brin.
I asked Don Carlos Italla about it. He slumped back in his throne, the flare gun on his lap, the case of flares beside him.
"You are the first man who has shown an interest in that travesty of justice," he said. "The clouds haven't fully cleared, so I will take the time to reply."
When he was sixteen, he said, his voice getting tight as he remembered, he and a group of his Indian friends went into the capital to see the sights. There, because he happened to smile at a young woman (not an Indian), a priest who was half drunk slapped him around until his face was bloody. Police and others stood by and watched, then chased Ancio and his friends from the city.
"I developed then a hatred for all Indians because the persecution stemmed from the fact that I was Indian. I developed a hatred for non-Indians because they were the ones doing the persecuting. But I learned an important lesson about the power of priests, of holy men. I decided to become a priest and to someday avenge the wrong that was done to me, the shame that was put upon me in the presence of my friends."
He stopped and I waited for him to go on. But that was it, the whole bag. All this — this whole bloody revolution and all the killing that had already taken place, plus the distinct threat of a third world war — had come about because a 16-year-old boy had been flogged by a stupid and drunken priest on the streets of the capital. That event had festered in the brain of this evil giant. Nothing atrocious had happened to the young Ancio, except in his own mind, and I knew that no power on earth could reverse the course of that demented mind.
"Detain them while I give the signal," Don Carlos said, standing suddenly and stepping from the throne. "If they so much as move an eyelash to stop me…"
He got no further. A thunderous explosion ripped through the bowels of the earth beneath us. The whole palace shook like a treehouse in a hurricane. The painting of The Last Supper clattered to the floor. Vases and goblets and other knick-knacks crashed and shattered on the marble floors all around us. The silk draperies flapped in the breeze.
Don Carlos was still standing there, looking puzzled, when a second explosion came. It ripped up through the front of the throne room, near the door behind Uturo and me and the other warrior. I turned to see the door itself disappear in a pillar of rising flame. The guards and monks standing there were knocked about like pins in a bowling alley, their clothing on fire.
I spun back around in time to see Don Carlos disappear through the draperies to his balcony. I leaped onto the pedestal, dashed past the throne, jumped down the other side and was through the drapes just as Don Carlos had primed the flare gun and was raising it above his head.
As he had said, there was nothing to discuss anymore. I didn't say a word, not even a shout or a grunt. I made a flying leap, hit the giant squarely in the back and felt us both plunging forward against the low outer wall of the balcony.
In seconds, we were flying through space. The main thought in my mind was that it was no longer foggy. The clouds were indeed gone and that flare would have been seen all the way to Florida. I hadn't given a single thought to what might have caused that explosion, but it couldn't have come at a better time. My main interest, in that moment, was to land in such a way that I didn't break every bone in my body.
Fortunately, the throne room was on the second floor at the rear of the palace. There was a soft flower garden below instead of a cobblestoned courtyard. And I landed smack on top of Don Carlos. That excess fat around his middle not only provided a cushion for me, but kept him from being killed in the process.
For a big man, he was swift. He lay on the ground no more than two seconds before he was up, the flare gun raised again. I had no weapons other than the gas bombs. So I rushed him again and reached for the outstretched hand holding the flare.
Don Carlos saw me coming. He lashed out and swept me aside like a pesky gnat. I quickly regained my bearings and took dead aim on the middle of his back. I hit him with all my strength, my legs churning like pistons. Don Carlos let out a bellow of rage, but my charge had the desired effect. I pushed him halfway across the garden and made him lose his grip on the flare gun. The gun flew toward the rear wall and landed beside an open gate. It was dark beyond that gate, but I knew from Luis Pequeno's description of the mountaintop that the gate opened up to a narrow ledge overlooking a sheer drop of a thousand feet.
Don Carlos ignored me now, and rushed headlong toward the gate and the flare. He still carried the case with the other flares and I wondered why he was so protective of it. I rushed after him. We both reached the gate at the same time. Don Carlos started to stoop for the flare gun, saw me rushing toward him, and lashed out with the flare case.
He caught me square in the face and I went down at his feet like a rock. I felt woozy, but turned over in time to see him bringing the case down in a slam that would have knocked all the juices out of my head. I spun over on the ground and Don Carlos struck a spot where my head had been. The case broke open and two flares popped out onto the ground. They rolled through the open gate and lay near the edge of the mountain.