by Robert Stone
"Tell them what you do, Michael," Miss McKie said.
Michael told the Americans he taught English at Fort Salines. They had never heard of it. Wallace treated him like an apprehended criminal and they walked down toward the water.
"So who's in the plane?" Wallace asked. "An American citizen?"
"I really don't know," Michael said.
His tone seemed offensive to Wallace. For a moment Michael thought he would get some kind of epicene mimicry for his impertinence. I really don't know. Cop sarcasm to show him his place.
"No? Maybe you know what's in it."
Michael waited for someone to mention the dive shop but no one did. Turning onto the Carenage toward the harbor, they passed the youth who had brought Michael the roulette chip. He stood at the edge of a gathering crowd and knitted his brows. Jeeps full of island soldiery passed.
Consul Scofield led them to a waiting boat of the island Coast Patrol. Beside it, he drew himself up in a political manner and introduced himself formally.
"On the advice of Vice Consul Wallace, I've asked the American citizens to come down to the harbor. Obviously there's been a tragedy—a plane is missing and we have some eyewitness reports of an explosion occurring the night before last. On such short notice we haven't been able to do much, although we have located what we think is the scene of an accident. Vice Consul Wallace would like a few of you to come out while we try to raise the remains."
"I'll go!" Liz McKie said, raising her hand to volunteer. Wallace and Scofield looked at each other. Scofield shrugged.
"We'd like Mr. Ahearn to come with us," Wallace said. "Especially we'd like Mr. Ahearn. We think he might be able to help us."
Michael tried to understand what the DEA man might mean by this. As far as he could remember, he had not damaged the plane in getting the doors open or left any particular evidence. No one had raised any question of a dive except McKie, who was keeping her own confidence.
"I don't understand why I should have to go out there," Michael said.
"Don't you?" Wallace asked. "We think it would be helpful if you were there. Maybe as a witness when we bring up the body. We think it would be really helpful."
"Actually," Consul Scofield said, "it would be real cooperation. We'd be grateful. Bureaucratic reasons."
"It's psywar," Liz McKie said quietly to Michael. "He wants you out there because he wants you scared."
"Should I go?" Michael asked.
"He might give you local problems if you don't."
"You might help me with those."
"It's possible. It's also possible he might get smart and go have a look at the dive shop. "You were down there last night, no?"
Michael looked away without answering and they set out, beyond the small pretty harbor to the edge of the reef, or at least to an arm of it, one that stretched from the base of the Morne that towered over them to the Puerto Rico Trench, eight miles of descending terraces that bottomed out in the deepest spot in the Atlantic, pole to pole. It was toward that spot that the plane's third case was little by little making its inexorable way. At least Michael hoped it was.
On the way out Consul Scofield remonstrated with the hot-rodding Coast Patrol helmsman.
"Doucement," he called over the engine noise. "Doucement, mon ami."
The man at the wheel laughed agreeably and did slow down a bit. Wallace kept his eyes on Michael, who was balanced on a small partition in the stern beside Liz McKie. He was holding the green roulette chip in his hand.
"Where'd you get that?" asked the insatiable McKie. "Souvenir or something?"
Michael shrugged.
At the edge of the reef, where the plane had gone down, a single barge with a rusted A-frame crane was riding the rising surf. Steersmen held their boats against the incoming tide.
Coast Patrol divers had lowered and secured the crane's light tackle. As the Americans' boat came up, a young man on the barge, an islander, supervised the operation. There were two divers in the water, who looked to be blancs. The man in charge signaled to the crane operator.
"He's done this sort of thing before," McKie said to Michael. "He's got a pretty good idea what's down there."
Michael, who knew, took a deep breath. The crane started up. Everyone waited for the surfacing.
After a minute or so, the pale blue water swirled and clouded. A lubricant can hit the surface. One of the hands on the barge began to shout in Creole. Michael thought he could make out a shadow on the deeper side of the reef line. He shielded his eyes from the declining sun.
Then some kind of creature raced to the surface only a few feet from his boat. It was a huge unwieldy thing, crazily shaped but certainly, Michael thought, alive. It had antennae, claws, spines, a tail. And it was surrounded by fish, fish of such variety and in such uncountable numbers that anyone arguing that the fish were gone, that the reef was barren and lifeless, would stand refuted. Tangs and butterfly fish and wrasses. And there were shrimp adhering to the main body of the creature, hanging on.
Then it hit the surface, and Michael thought that the size of it was the strangest thing. Nothing that lived on the bottom, nothing he could think of, was of such a size. Nothing went surrounded by fish in such a way, in the mandibles of shrimp, wrapped in some kind of rainbow jelly.
The surface did not at first hold it down. Whatever it was showed most of its length to the breathing world, then spun. In their boats, the barge hands and the blancs and the others watched it spin across the top of the water. The thing bounced along the surface as though it were trying to escape a predator, zigzagging, darting this way and that. It made a noise that was like the farting of a hundred exhausted penny balloons.
On the barge, one of the deck hands called out in Creole and everyone turned to him. He called a second time, repeating the same word. The man at the wheel of Michael's boat took off his gold-braided cap.
"What is it?" the diplomat asked.
"It's a floater," said Mr. Wallace.
Then Michael realized that the rainbow jelly was oil slick, that the fish and other creatures were eating the creature. He caught a fraction of a second's whiff of foul breeze. It had a kind of face, Michael saw, a head and body. Both were beyond imagining. They bounced like enormous corks in the sandy water over the reef. They were the remains of the pilot, of whose posthumous existence Michael thought he had seen enough. He turned away. Then he noticed that even hardboiled Mr. Wallace had found another quarter on which to cast his cop's gaze. The islanders crossed themselves—and Michael too—in recognition that Guinée awaited plenty of those who served the trade. Fishermen and emigrants, smugglers and divers, pilots and contrabandists and policemen, all might find their way to Guinee one day, at the bottom of the trench at the bottom of the world. Even for Miss McKie, who was just passing through for the world's information, especially for Miss McKie, Guinee yawned. Even Miss McKie uttered a prayer.
20
WHEN WHAT HAD BEEN the pilot was decently encased and removed to the Mennonite Hospital, Vice Consul Wallace led everyone back to the hotel. He was eager to get in touch with Colonel Junot of the new National Defense Forces.
"There is going to be a police investigation," he explained to everyone. "We'd appreciate it if folks would make themselves available to the authorities."
The consul, Scofield, seemed mainly interested in his ride back to the capital.
"Where's Colonel Junot?" Michael asked Liz McKie. From the inshore patio of the hotel, he had just caught sight of the young man Lara had sent him in the morning.
"I have no idea," she said. "Contrary to what everybody thinks, Colonel Junot and I are not joined at the hip."
Michael stood up. The consul and vice consul, who appeared to have little to say to each other, were observing him from another table.
"I'm off," Michael said.
"What?" McKie said. "Where?"
"Maybe I'll get some sleep."
The American consul came over and greeted Liz McKie facetiously. Sh
e treated him in the same spirit.
"I'm sure you'll want to get back to the capital by daylight, Consul. Better see that the police give you an escort.
"Since the coup," she explained to Michael, "there are burning roadblocks. They call 'em 'Père Lebrun,' and they're what 'necklaces' are in South Africa. You can ask old Van Dreele. Some of the locals aren't too impressed by diplomatic plates. Some of them don't care for the good old Stars and Stripes."
"I was going to ask you about that," the consul said. "I thought you might have seen Colonel Junot."
McKie sighed. Shortly a car was provided for the consul.
"Are you a friend of Lara Purcell?" he asked Michael as he left.
"Yes," Michael said, without much thinking about it.
"Give her my very best," Consul Scofield said. "Tell her she's missed. She's the most fascinating person on the island."
"I'll tell her."
On the way upstairs, Michael signaled to the boy from the lodge that he was coming, and went into his room. Before he could slide the lock, McKie pushed her way in and was standing next to him.
"Oh my God," she said, "you're going after her."
He began wearily to deny it.
"Bullshit. You went down to the plane. Did you get everything?" She had no need of an answer. "That chip—that's from her, right? You're going back to her."
Michael began to throw a few things in his shoulder bag.
"You don't get it, do you, Professor? These Colombian militia types are without mercy. They kill everyone. Do you think they'll clear out of here and let you live? Do you think that smart bitch will give you a break? Even if they let her live?"
"I don't know about the Colombians. They're buying the hotel. Maybe they'll see reason."
She stood in the doorway and put a hand against the door to block his way.
"Reason!" She screamed the foolish word at him. "Why can you not see the deep shit you're in? Wallace will get you. He'll work you into an indictment of this whole business."
"You've told me about the stick," Michael said, zipping the bag. "Tell me about the carrot."
She seemed to calm down a little.
"The carrot, Michael? The carrot is you give everything you have about this operation and its political connections. Not to mention its academic connections. I get you off this rock. We get you lawyers. We get you immunity." She paused, out of offers, trying to think of treasures untold beyond immunity. "Didn't you see that pilot?" she asked. "Don't you think death is kind of ugly?"
"What are you, Liz, a philosopher?"
She stepped aside.
"You're so nuts," she said. "My story is a public service."
Outside, the boy from the lodge was still waiting for him.
21
THEY WENT ALONG the road in one of the hotel's old four-wheel-drive sightseeing vehicles. The thing was in grave disrepair but serviceable. Finally the boy, whose name was Christian, drove them down a dogleg. At the end of it they got out and started walking in the direction of the ocean.
Stunted pine, mahogany and schefflera grew around them; in spite of the fresh runoffs the soil was dry. When they had gone something like a mile over the trail they came to a gate with razor wire, framed by tall walnut trees. There was hardly any breeze.
Men in camouflage fatigues approached them. Michael saw that they were not islanders but lean mestizos, apparently the Colombians of whom he had been hearing so much. They looked in his shoulder bag; one looked at his passport.
Christian spoke to them in fluent Spanish, telling them, as far as Michael could understand, that someone—he, Michael—was on the way through. A few minutes later they came to a cleared field, an airstrip with a hangar and what might be sleeping quarters. Somewhere, someone was beating the ogan, the iron drum of the ceremonies. People were singing.
"Wete mo danba dlo," Christian told him.
They walked on. Goats munched on the shaved cane and the coarse grass between the dismembered stalks. Once in a while one raised its head and turned a wise, wicked gaze on them.
At the far end of the strip, people were sitting in the lateafternoon shade, huddled around the Haitian-style houses and the strange churchly bulk of the lodge with its columns and tower. Another drum picked up the beat of the ogan.
He was trying to keep up with Christian when he heard a high-pitched cry, almost a scream. He looked across the cut canefield and saw Lara running toward him. She was waving a red handkerchief over her head.
He stopped and waited for her. She came calling his name. Two Colombian milicianos rose as though to intercept her, but finally made no move. She took him by the hand and led him down the road to the lodge building and the hounfor.
"I'm with my brother," Lara said. He put an arm around her shoulder. She seemed crazy and lost.
"You see, Michael," she said, the words spilling out as they walked toward the hounfor. "I'm with John-Paul again. We'll be together."
People came out of the thatched buildings where they had been sheltering to look at them.
"Come, Michael," Lara said. "This is the ceremony of retirer! Wete mo danba dlo! For John-Paul." She was holding his arm with a grip that hurt. "Michael, he came to me. Back from Guinee, from the bottom of the ocean. But I have to wait for Marinette because she has custody of my soul."
Her hair was streaked and soiled with ashes and straw and insects, living and dead.
"Yes, my love," he said.
"And, Michael, you have a soul, eh? You have a petit bon ange."
"Is that what it's called?"
"That's how we call it," she said. "And it's here," she said, "it's here for you."
Gently Michael moved her past the crowd of people in front of the lodge and through its entrance. There might once have been doors; now there were only cool shadows that closed around them. In the meeting room of the lodge he saw Roger Hyde together with a middle-aged woman and a pair of milicianos. The woman looked out of place there. She was dressed for the city and did not have the appearance of a believer.
"I admire your coming, Michael," Roger Hyde said. "You did the right thing."
Michael thought there was more force of conviction to the first statement than to the second.
"What a nice-lookin' guy," Hilda said. "Anybody tell you you should be in the movies?"
"Nobody," Michael said. The milicianos watched Hilda.
"So sit down," Hilda said to Michael. "Like dry off. Maybe you still wet, huh?"
"No," Michael said.
"I'm just joking with you. What's your name? Michael? I'm just joking with you, Michael."
"No," Michael said. "I had time for a shower and everything. To get the salt off."
"To get the salt off," Hilda repeated. "Was there blood? The guy didn't have, like, blood all over him? From the impact?"
While Michael tried to stammer an answer, the drums and the hounfor outside exploded in triumphant rolls. Lara had disappeared from his side. In a moment he heard her outside.
"She's calling the name of the god," Roger told him.
"Such a pretty girl," Hilda said. "Pretty girl, pretty fella. Nice pair you make, the two of you."
"I thought that immediately" Roger Hyde said. "As soon as I saw them together."
"So what happened, Michael?" Hilda asked. "What were you doing out there with our airplane?" She laughed as though the situation were droll. "All in the dark and wet there. What happened?"
"It was easier than I expected," he said. "It didn't take much—"
"What were you doing out there, Michael?" she shouted, interrupting him, pushing her powdered slumkid's face in his way. "Who told you to go down?"
"Lara did," he said. Saying it that way made him feel somehow like a snitch.
"Lara did," Hilda repeated. "How did you find out the plane was down?"
"She told me. She came to the hotel."
"She came to your hotel and asked you to dive on a crashed plane? And you said sure?"
"I was ready to d
o it."
Hilda looked him over.
"Love, huh? Love makes you do crazy things, right?"
He nodded.
Hilda asked one of her Colombian miliciano associates if he thought love made people do crazy things. The soldier considered a moment.
"Claro que sí" he said.
"Sure it does," Hilda confirmed. "Lie and cheat and steal. All that. Right, Michael?"
"The first two containers weren't a problem. Maybe I got careless." A certain tension settled on the room. Roger Hyde drew himself up and looked at the floor. Hilda grew more serious.
"Careless," she said and shook her head. Michael understood that he should not be accusing himself of things. "Careless is bad, Michael."
"But I don't really think I was careless. I handled everything step by step."
He could see Roger cheer up a bit. He felt fairly calm.
"My friends say," Hilda told him, "that when somebody makes a mistake, somebody's got to pay. It goes for you. It goes for me."
"He did his best," Roger said. "I saw him chasing down after it. It got away from him in the current. Anyway," he said, refilling a glass of brown rum, "we can make it up. We can cover it in a few months' business."
"Other people have made mistakes," Hilda said.
"Everybody does," Roger agreed.
"But," she said, "you don't want to hear about what happened to them." Then she laughed and said something in Spanish that made the Colombians laugh loudly and caused Roger to warily chuckle.
"So you did your best, mister? If there was a next time maybe you'd get it right?"
"I was careful," Michael said. "I did my best. I went after it."
His plea had a summary quality that made him uneasy.
"I should carry the cross?" Hilda asked. "I should explain for you characters? Get my own ass in the bad chair?"
"It can be made up," Roger said.
"I," Michael said, "I'd do anything I could to make it up."
"Yeah?" Hilda asked. "There in America you would?"
"Yes," Michael said.