Gretta cocked her ear and focused intently on the footsteps. She would have just one chance to take out the man called Claude and she couldn't waste it. She raised the spade that she'd grabbed as a weapon on the way out of the statue and prepared to swing. The face came around the rock and the eyes opened like umbrellas at the sight of the spade hurtling toward them.

Arnold dropped to the ground and grabbed his head just as he heard the sickening crunch and the muffled roar from Claude. He rolled over and out of the way as Gretta stepped past him and around the rock to stand over Claude's outstretched body. The flattened cigar was still burning in his mouth and bits of hot ash blistering the skin around his lips. She stood on his ankles so he couldn't move and aimed the spade at his groin.

"You made a very big mistake, lady," Claude spat away the cigar remnants and wiped gingerly at his broken lips, teeth and nose.

"You sound funny, Claude. Having a little trouble breathing?"

His grin was grotesque with the blood running down his chin but his eyes were riveted on the spade. "Make the most of your moment 'cause it ain't gonna last."

"You've got that right." She raised her arms and rammed the spade down into his groin. Claude sat up like a spring-loaded trap door, his head banging against the shaft of the spade, his fingers clutching and grasping it trying to pull it free. He was roaring and gurgling and when Gretta stepped off his ankles, his legs began thrashing wildly.

"I'm going to be sick." Arnold rolled onto his face and lay still.

"Just be a minute, Arny." She picked up a large flat rock and went back to Claude. "This is for Thomaso." A clang and a tortured grunt echoed of the rock face and then there was a pause before Arny heard her speak again. "And this one, Claude my man, this one is for me." She raised her hands high above her head and slammed the rock down, smashing the handle of the spade.

"Okay, ready to go, Arny?"

***************

Fall arrived at the usual time but in disguise as late summer. Restaurant patios were still open and occupied by the coffee and cappuccino drinkers; people who were reluctant to move indoors because the calendar dictated. A hint of a breeze stirred the napkins under the empty ashtray on the table and Arnold moved it more to the center.

He picked up his mug of hot chocolate and let the smell romance his nostrils before he took a swallow. Over the rim of the mug he watched Gretta's eyes, those intoxicating, dangerous, devious eyes. She had phoned him at his work and invited him for a coffee and as much as he tried to be angry, his immediate inclinations was to accept.

"I understand you're reestablished and successful again at Cutter and Glimb." She tilted her head slightly and her wheat coloured hair slipped across the edge of one of the incredible eyes.

He nodded and set down his mug. "Mister Glimb was most generous and accommodating. I'm assuming you know that already."

"I heard that the Reynolds promotion brought a lot of new clients banging at the door, you must be very pleased."

"Yes Gretta, I'm very pleased. Tell me why we're having this conversation again?"

"Was your apartment satisfactorily restored?"

"Yes it was. Thank you. Look what--?"

"I said that I'd pay you back somehow, although that's nothing you didn't already have, is it?" She drank from her coffee and tossed her hair off her face. Arnold felt his stomach shift. Every little move, every little action sent goose bumps down his back.

"I consider the fact that I made it back at all compensation enough." The reply was terse. He took another swig of chocolate and then melted slightly when she grinned, lowering her eyes.

Arnold had slept the entire flight back from Mexico and moved through the confusion at immigration in a daze. Gretta and the professor had somehow managed to explain away his lack of papers and achieve his release. They put him in his own limo, prepaid, and sent him home with his handy back pack as his only luggage. When he let himself into the apartment with the key, miraculously not lost, he flicked on the light and let out a short yelp. The place was immaculate.

Everything was restored exactly as before including his award bowl, which somehow had been professionally repaired. The only difference he could see was instead of his old twenty-seven inch TV, he now had a forty-two inch LCD panel TV with surround sound. Arnold went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, preparing himself for bad news but once again, everything was fresh and clean. He pulled out a container of juice, poured a glass and flopped down at the kitchen table-that was when he noticed the envelope.

The letter was on Cutter and Glimb stationery and from the office of the president. It stated that Arnold was expected and welcomed back to work at his earliest convenience to assume his new position as chief of account promotions for the firm and that he would be on the executive floor in his own office with, of course, a commensurate increase in salary and benefits.

The success of the Reynolds promotion set off a landslide of interest in C&G and they had become the 'Go to Guys' for advertising, all due to Arnold's talent.

A recommendation received from an internationally prominent but anonymous source, prompted the swift reparations to his domicile and the extent of the above decisions. It was signed by both partners, the firm accountant and lawyer and in a postscript, congratulations from the entire staff.

The words blurred on the page and he had to shake his head to organize them again. He reread the letter and dropped it on the table; his closed eyes building images of the memories over the last few weeks.

********************

Vincent had been so astonished to see Gretta come around the edge of the statue's base instead of Claude, he dropped his pistol and raised his hands to ear level. The professor had managed a wide smile and a raised fist before laying back and letting his breath go slowly. Feldman was still twitching on the ground in a large pool of blood from his stomach wound and Harley was turning a pale blue in the bright sunshine, his thighbone jutting angrily through his jeans.

Gretta gave them all a cursory glance and went to the professor, propping him on her lap and smoothing his brow with tender fingers. Arnold leaned weakly on the rocks, his stomach still roiling from the scene behind him. He looked about and blinked hard, hoping to somehow awaken and find it was all a very bad dream but it wasn't and when he thought about Gretta's recriminations against Claude, he did some arithmetic, counting a total of ten dead people-four by the indescribable Gretta.

Magically, or so it seemed at the time, Captain Miguel Gomez of the Federales and his band of merry policemen appeared on site with a medevac helicopter and in short order, moved the entire group, bodies and all, back to the hospital in Minatitlan.

Gretta Lawrence, as he now knew her, told him how she had taken the job at C&G as William Howard's niece as cover. The real niece had been removed to a safe house, allowing Greta to take her place both at work and home hoping Gravestone would come after her. The congress needed to flush out the dangerous competition in order to gain the assistance of the Mexican authorities-namely Captain Gomez.

They couldn't touch Gravestone this time but they knew there would be other opportunities. It was satisfaction enough to have recovered the location of the treasure and have it documented for the world so that he couldn't move on it again.

Feldman died on the flight back to Minititlan and Harley went into hospital. Vincent was extradited back to Canada and Arnold just followed orders without question, walking, sitting, signing and whatever else someone in authority demanded of him and when he was put on the plane and told he was going back to Canada too, he nodded and fell asleep.

********

"You didn't doubt you'd make it back really, did you, Arny?"

He tried to look at her objectively, to see beyond the siren allure, to get to some place that would tell him: this is Gretta ground zero. Not a chance. "After what I saw you do down there, Gretta, I'm surprised anyone made it back."

"A lot didn't." Her voice was frank.

"I know for God's sake! That's what I mean!" A lady at the next table moved her poodle pup to a chair further away from Arnold and gave him a dark look. He grimaced.

"Arnold, it's what I do." She slurped the last of her coffee and fiddled, balancing the mug on its rim.

"Oh you're not going to give me that bit about the Congressional Artifact Club or whatever the hell it is, are you?"

"Congress of International Antiquities." She paused then set her mug aside and leaned across the table, lacing her fingers. "The letter you found when you got home-"

"How do you know about that?"

"-mentioned an anonymous recommendation. Who do you think that might have been, Arny? Santa Clause?" He stared at her, completely out of words. "The award bowl. You think anyone at C&G would have thought twice about fixing that?"

She sat back and picked at the edge of the napkins. When he kept staring, processing what she had said and realizing that she could be telling the truth, he felt something inside shift and he sagged on the chair, propping his head with two fingers under his brow.

"That business in Mexico," she began, her voice low, "those men were sent to kill all of us, Arny. Gravestone didn't want anyone else to know about the statue's treasure that's why that animal, Claude was along. He was the executioner." Arnold looked up and made a face. "I know what you're thinking. If he was a killer, what am I? I'm a woman who does this kind of work because I believe in the ultimate goals of the institution I represent and I make no bones about that. I have to live my life as somewhat of a chameleon to accomplish what they deem necessary. The legal system can't handle it all, Arny, it's too big, too fast and too often-and for the record, I'm not the only person in the world doing this-Cheesy wasn't connected to any university, he works for the Congress too, but I'm probably the only woman doing it that has found herself falling for someone she used and, you might say, abused."

He kept staring, waiting for the register to ring and then suddenly it did-loudly! Falling for? Did she say, falling for?

"Did you say-?"

"Falling for . . . yes I did."

"But I- we- I never even- we didn't . . ."

"Oh for heaven's sake, young man. I'm sitting here trying to have a relaxing cup of coffee and all I can hear is your inane blather. The young woman as much as proposed publicly, the least you could do is get up and kiss her." The woman gathered up her dog and threaded her way huffily through the patio tables to the street.

"I like that idea," Gretta laughed.

"But- but . . ."

"Arny, Arny." She stood and came around to his chair, forced her way onto his lap and gave him the most sensuously thrilling kiss he'd ever dreamed of, to the raucous applause of the other patrons.

***************

The football traveled the width of the large screen and straight into the hands of the intended receiver for a touchdown. Arnold pumped the air, spilling some of his popcorn on the sofa as he did.

"That pretty much puts a lock on it," he said. "Or, as someone I know once stated, 'That's all she wrote'."

Gretta smiled and uncoiled from the corner of the sofa, draping a pair of languid arms around his neck. "I thought my aphorisms didn't please you."

"Gretta, I can't get your aphorism out of my mind."

"You are a dirty boy, Arnold Wainright." She leaned up and nibbled an ear.

"Something I always wanted to ask," he said, suddenly serious.

"What, baby?"

"How come the Mexican police didn't charge you with- with uhmm . . .?"

"Disposing of the garbage?" She twirled a finger in the hair behind his ear. "Cheesy told you what happened to the banditos, right?" He nodded. "Well, I just beat them to it in our case."

"But how did they know who the good guys were?"

"Remember you said you heard Cheesy on the radio talking to Vincent?" She blew warm breath inside his collar. "He was talking to Captain Miguel about Vincent. He had been in contact with the Captain ever since he couldn't raise Thomaso. The Captain had recommended Thomaso and when he went off the air it sent up a flare." Gretta wriggled closer, a gentle finger slipping into Arnold's opposite ear.

"So that's how they knew where we were all the time? That GPS on the professor's radio." He shifted nervously, feeling his goose bumps rise.

"Yes, and if he had arrived and found us dead, he would have executed the others anyway."

"Jesus, what a bunch." Gretta's ministrations had subtly forced him lower on the sofa to the point where she maneuvered herself onto his lap, arms still about his neck. "Uhmm, what are you doing?"

"Getting comfy. I don't know how long I'll be here."

"You mean before your CIA flashes another Gretta signal in the sky?"

"As a matter of fact."

"So you're just going to keep doing this- this archaeology agent thing?"

"I usually get paid for my trade secrets so I want to know what you're offering."

"Isn't a share of my apartment and my bed enough?"

"Maybe that'll do, for now."

"But it's not enough?"

"No," she said, shifting higher and giving him a peck on the lips. "I think I deserve more" She wriggled provocatively and kissed him again.

END