"Sí?" asked the butler, looking McKay over.

"My name is McKay. I want to speak with Diego Vara."

The butler responded in heavily accented English: "And why should Diego Vara want to speak with you?"

McKay stared at the butler soberly, though amused by the folly of his question. McKay was only there, after all, to help save the free world. "I'm looking for Hi Hickenlooper," McKay said evenly. "Mister Vara should know where he is."

Diego at that moment was upstairs, jitterbugging with a young Latin beauty in a sitting room. The 78-rpm record playing on the hi-fi was the throbbing "Sweet Workin' Woman," the biggest hit of 1952 among North American blacks. Diego would slip it out, on such occasions as this, like a secret weapon--as if Lima's most eligible native son needed one. Diego was thirty-one, handsome with raven-black hair, and financially set for life through the Vara family inheritance. But in romance every little bit helps, and nothing, thought Diego as he watched the Latina's shapely, swinging hips, turns women on like "Sweet Workin' Woman."

"Oh, Diego, I love this!" the girl squealed, having never heard anything like it, as she followed Diego's effortless lead. "Where did you get that recording?"

"Hi smuggled it in from the states."

"What do the gringos call it?"

"Rhythm and blues."

"Rrrrrrhythm and blues!" she trilled with delight as they danced. "What will they think of next?"

The butler appeared at the door. "A McKay here to see you!" he yelled above the music.

"McKay?" asked Diego, continuing to dance. The name rang no bell. "What does he want?"

"To find Hi Hickenlooper."

"Sweet Workin' Woman" ended. Diego's arm was around the Latina's waist as they concluded their dance. They smiled at each other. "I'll see him in the Pornography Room," Diego told the butler.

As the butler left, the Latina looked at Diego with a quizzical frown. "The Pornography Room?"

Smiling, Diego told her in a soft, assuring tone, "I want to make sure it's ready to show you." Diego gave her a little squeeze around the waist and walked toward the door.

"I'm not sure I want to see it," the Latina said. She strutted over to the hi-fi. "I'm going to play this rrrrrhythm and blues again."

Diego stopped and turned at the door, to watch as the Latina, with her back to him, bent forward over the hi-fi. "How's the flip side, Diego?" she asked.

Diego, admiring her flip side, said, "Spin it until I get back."

The Pornography Room was a sitting room with an extensive collection of twelfth-century pornographic Peruvian Indian pottery. The erotic pieces were arranged in rows on a long table on one side of the room.

When Diego entered, McKay was standing at the table. The Britisher was holding up one of the pieces, closely examining the two lovers graphically depicted on its top .

"Mister McKay?" Diego asked, walking to the table.

"Yes," McKay said, setting down the piece of pottery to shake Diego's hand.

"I am Diego Vara."

"I was admiring your, uh . . . "

"Pre-Columbian pornographic pottery. Priceless antiquities. The Vara family has special permission to hold them, as a private collection, which must never leave Peru. Please handle with care."

"Of course."

"What can I do for you?"

"Well, I've been looking for Hi. High and low."

"Who is Lowe?"

"I've been looking for Hi high and low."

"Are you a friend of Hi's?"

"We have never met. I've got a job for him."

Diego smiled with amusement. "You don't know much about Hi," he opined. Diego began thoughtfully rearranging a couple of the pottery pieces on the table.

"What do you mean?"

"He is hardly in need of a job. Hi is the sole heir of Hickenlooper Foods."

"Which began as a hamburger stand," McKay said. "I know all there is to know about Hi." McKay began strolling along the table, looking at and carefully handling pieces of the pottery as he spoke. "He is a man who must labor for his father's obsession." Diego had walked over to a couch facing the display table, and was strategically arranging the couch pillows, in anticipation of the Latina's arrival in the Pornography Room. This room, with its impressive vista of smut, was step two, after "Sweet Workin' Woman," in Diego's routine of seduction. On a coffee table in front of the couch was a pair of binoculars, for detailed pottery viewing without leaving the couch's pillowy comfort.

"Hi's father, as a teenager, was with Hiram Bingham," McKay went on. "They discovered Machu Picchu." Diego sat down on the couch to listen to his guest while surveying the display. "And ever since Hi grew up, his father, sparing no expense, has sent him time and again into the Amazon jungle, in search of El Dorado, or whatever lost city he can find."

Diego could see that McKay was indeed well-informed. Hi had taken Diego along on his last trip home, to the Florida panhandle town of Apalachicola, less than two months before. And the conversation Diego witnessed, on a patio of the Hickenlooper estate, between the formerly carefree, outgoing Hi and his imposing, sixty-two-year-old father, was searingly fresh in Diego's memory. It was then that Diego had first learned the true depth of Hi's current despair. The conversation now came back to Diego as McKay rattled on.

"Going hard on the liquor, aren't you?" Edgar Hickenlooper asked disapprovingly, as the family butler served Hi a second drink. Diego was still nursing his first. They were sitting on a patio on a hot day in June.

"It's been a long trip," Hi said absently. "Need a little refreshment."

"There's Royal Crown in the fridge. It used to be your favorite."

"I gave 'em up, Dad. In South America an RC's just too hard to find." Diego, as he listened uncomfortably, could vouch well for that. It was Hi who had introduced him to RCs and moon pies. Pepsi Colas were hard to find too.

"How are things at Hickenlooper Foods?" Hi asked, though he wasn't really interested.

"Let's cut the small talk," said his father. "I wasn't pleased with your last expedition report."

"Why not?"

"You didn't find anything."

"I'm still looking."

"Do you know how much I have spent so far, how much I have squandered, on your fruitless expeditions?"

"We're not looking for fruit. Give me a break, Dad. I didn't ask for this, you know. You sent me down there."

"To find something! Is that asking too much? Have I overburdened you with responsibility?"

"Perhaps I should go," said Diego, starting to rise.

"Stay put," Hi said. "You're like family."

Ignoring Diego, Edgar stared hard at Hi. "I could have made you stay here and learn the food business, but I didn't. You've got a whole jungle to play in down there."

"I hadn't thought of it that way," Hi said wryly. "I owe you a lot."

Diego again started to rise. "I'll just--"

"Stay put," Hi repeated.

"I promised Hiram Bingham," Edgar said with frustration, "after we found Machu Picchu, that my newborn son--the son to whom I gave the name Hiram--would carry on, that even greater discoveries lay ahead."

"I've let you down, Dad, you and ol' Hiram." It was a bitterly mock apology. "I'm still looking."

"And drinking yourself to an early grave. You're becoming a sot, and all because of that Argentine woman."

That struck a raw nerve. Diego would never forget Hi's pained look. Edgar didn't let up. "I know all about it. She left you for Juan Perón. And now rumor has it she's dying of cancer."

"You got it right, Dad." Hi's voice was thick with emotion. Diego knew that Hi had become troubled, depressed. But not till hearing that conversation between Hi and Edgar did Diego appreciate how much. Hi had lost his mother to cancer two years before. Now it has to be tough, Diego thought that day on the patio, to be crazy about a terminally ill woman who dumped you.

"Forget her, Hi," Edgar lectured. "You can't grieve forever. If she's dying, you couldn't have had her long anyway."

"Gee, Dad, you're right," Hi said sardonically. "Every cloud has a silver lining."

"Take your break, then get back to that jungle. Find me a city, any lost city, before someone else beats you to it."

Diego, remembering, sadly shook his head. He rose from the couch and rejoined McKay by the table as the Britisher continued: "Hi's Peruvian mentor in archeology and exploration was your father, the late Francisco Vara."

"Wait," Diego said, politely taking the piece of pottery that McKay was about to set back down on the table. "I want that piece right here in the center." Diego set the piece in just the right spot, then walked back toward the couch.

"And I understand that you, when you have the spare time," McKay resumed, "have accompanied Hi on a number of his fruitless expeditions."

"We're not looking for fruit," Diego found himself saying. Sitting on the couch, Diego was looking through the binoculars at the pottery piece that he had set front and center on the table.

"You must know where Hi is," McKay said. "I've been all over Lima." Diego carefully set the binoculars down ready for use. McKay again picked up the piece that Diego had centrally placed, for another close look at its two copulating lovers. "Where is he?"

"He is in tristeza," Diego said musingly.

"Triesteza? Is that far from here?"

"I mean he is in mourning," Diego said. "He has lost her again."

"Lost who?"

"His Evita."

"Evita--?"

"Perón."

McKay was so stunned that he dropped the piece of pottery he was holding. It shattered on the tile floor.

Diego, in shock, rose from the couch and walked over to look down at the shattered work of art.

"Sorry," McKay said awkwardly. "I'll pick up the pieces."

"Leave it for the butler," Diego said quietly, gazing down at the calamity.

"Tell him to try Elmer's Glue. You can't be serious about Perón."

Diego's eyes were still fixed on the destroyed treasure. "She and Hi were lovers, years ago." Diego shook his head sadly. "The finest damn piece in the world."

"You mean you had her too?"

"I'm talking about this," Diego said a bit sharply, pointing down at the debris on the floor.

McKay thought for a moment about what he had suddenly learned about Hi and Eva. "The dossier on Hickenlooper was not quite complete," McKay said.

Diego began rearranging some pieces on the table, to compensate for the one now missing. "And this job you mentioned," he said. "What is it?"

"I will discuss that with Hi," McKay said.

Diego looked at this guy. He had come into Diego's home, wanting information, destroying a priceless antiquity, and was basically telling Diego to mind his own business. "Then you will have to find him," Diego said. "Now if you will--"

"What if I told you," McKay interrupted, relenting, "that it involves Adolf Hitler?"

Diego stared at him. "Are you saying that Hitler's alive?

McKay evasively looked at some more pottery on the table, though keeping his hands off. "No, I wouldn't say that," he said cryptically.

"Then what?" Diego asked impatiently. "Who do you work for?"

"I can't tell you that."

Diego was fed up. "Let's go," he said. "I have things to do." He turned and started toward the door.

"On second thought--" McKay didn't finish. Anxiously turning from the pottery, he knocked a piece from the table with the cuff of his coat sleeve. The piece shattered on the floor.

Diego stopped. He turned, and looked down at the second shattered piece.

McKay cleared his throat. "Sorry. Looks like more work for the butler." Diego came walking back, looking down at the second lost treasure. "Let's just say I work for Western intelligence. Can you tell me where Hi is?"

Diego said nothing for a moment. "If this job really involves Hitler," he said quietly through clenched teeth, "I will take you to Hi. If he agrees. I'll have to contact him where he is staying."

"Do we have far to go?"

"Buenos Aires. Right now, let's get out of this room."