The Vivero Letter

by Desmond Bagley

  Quintana Roo, seen from .the air, looked like a piece of mouldy cheese. The solid vegetative cover was broken only .occasionally by a clearing which showed as a dirty whitish-grey among the virulent green of the trees. I did not see a single water-course, no rivers and not even a stream, and I began to appreciate Halstead's point of view about the difficulties of archeological exploration in the tropics.

  At one point Fallon broke off his discussion to speak with the pilot on the intercom, and the plane wheeled slowly and began to descend. He turned to me and said, 'We'll have a look at Camp Two.'

  Even from a thousand feet the forest looked solid enough to walk on without touching ground. There could have been a city the size of London under that sea of green and you'd never see it. I reminded myself not to be so bloody cocky in the future about things I knew nothing about. Halstead might be a faker, if what Pat Harris said was true, but a faker, of all people, must have a knowledge of his field. He had been right when he had said that this was going to be a tough job.

  Camp Two came and went before I had a chance to get a good look at it, but the plane banked and turned and we orbited the site, standing on one wingtip. There wasn't much to see: just another clearing with half a dozen prefabricated huts and some minuscule figures which waved their arms. The jet couldn't land there, but that wasn't the intention. We straightened on course and rose higher, heading for the coast and Camp One.

  About twenty minutes and eighty miles later we were over the sea and curving back over the white surf and gleaming beaches to touch down at the airstrip at Camp One. The jet bumped a bit in the coastal turbulence but put down gently and rolled to a stop at the further end of the strip, then wheeled and taxied to a halt in front of a hangar. As I left the plane the heat, after the air-conditioned comfort of the flight, was like the sudden blow of a hammer.

  Fallon didn't seem to notice the heat at all. Years of puttering about in this part of the world had already dried the juices from him and he had been thoroughly conditioned. He set off at a brisk walk along the strip, followed by Halstead, who also didn't seem to mind. Katherine and I followed along more slowly and, by the time we got to the hut into which Fallon had disappeared she was looking definitely wilted and I felt a bit brown around the edges myself.

  'My God!' I said. 'Is it always like this?'

  Halstead turned and gave me a smile which had all the elements of a sneer. 'You've been spoiled by Mexico City,' he said. The altitude up there takes the edge off. It's not really hot here on the coast. Wait until we get to Camp Two.' His tone implied that I'd feel bloody sorry for myself.

  It was cooler in the hut and there was the persistent throb of an air-conditioning unit. Fallon introduced us to a big, burly man. 'This is Joe Rudetsky; he's the boss of Camp One.'

  Rudetsky stuck out a meaty hand. 'Glad to meet you, Mr. Wheale,' he boomed.

  I later found out how Fallon had managed to organize the whole operation so quickly. He had merely appropriated the logistics unit from one of his oil exploration teams. Those boys were used to operating in rough country and under tropical conditions, and this job was very little different from a score of others they had done in North Africa, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. When I explored the camp I admired the sheer efficiency of it all. They certainly knew how to make themselves comfortable -- even to ice-cold Coca-Cola.

  We stayed in Camp One all that day and slept there the night. Fallon and Halstead checked the mountain of equipment they evidently thought they needed, so Katherine and I did the same with the scuba gear. We weren't going to take it to Camp Two because that would be pointless; Camp Two was a mere centre of exploration and if and when we discovered Uaxuanoc it would be abandoned and Camp Three would be set up on the city site.

  We worked until lunchtime and then stopped for something to eat. I wasn't very hungry -- the heat affected my appetite -- but I relished the bottle of cold lager that Rudetsky thrust into my hand. I'd swear it hissed going down.

  Katherine and I had completed our inspection and found everything present and in working order, but Fallon and Halstead still had quite a way to go. I offered to give them a hand, but Fallon shook his head. 'It's mostly instrument checking now,' he said. 'You wouldn't know how to do that.' His gaze wandered over my shoulder. If you turn round you'll see your first Maya.'

  I twisted in my chair and looked across the strip. On the other side of the flattened ground and standing within easy running distance of the trees were two men. They were dressed in rather baggy trousers and white shirts and stood quite still. They were rather too far away for me to distinguish their features.

  Fallon said, They don't know what to make of us, you know. This is an unprecedented invasion.' He looked across at Rudetsky. 'Have they given you any trouble, Joe?'

  The natives? No trouble at all, Mr. Fallon. Those guys are from up the coast; they have a two-bit coconut plantation.'

  'A cocal,' said Fallon. 'These people live entirely isolated lives, cut off from everything. The sea on one side -- the forest on the other. There'll be just the one family -- the cocal won't support two -- and they're dependent entirely on their own resources.'

  That seemed a grim life. 'What do they live on?' I asked.

  Fallon shrugged. 'Fish, turtles, turtle eggs. Sometimes they're lucky enough to shoot a wild pig. Then twice a year they'll HO sell their copra and that gives them a little ready money to buy clothing and needles and a few cartridges.'

  'Are those the indies sublevados you talked about?'

  Fallon laughed. 'These boys aren't rebels -- they wouldn't know how to start. We'll meet the indios sublevados in the interior, and the chicleros, too.' He switched to Rudetsky. 'Have you had any chicleros round here?'

  Rudetsky nodded grimly. 'We ran the bastards off. They were stealing us blind,' He looked across at Katherine who was talking to Halstead, and lowered his voice. 'They murdered a native last week; we found his body on the beach.'

  Fallon didn't seem perturbed. He merely picked up his pipe and said, 'You'd better keep a good watch, and don't let them in the camp on any account. And you'd better have the men stay in the camp and not go wandering around.'

  Rudetsky grinned. 'Where is there to go?' he asked.

  I began to wonder what kind of a country I was in where a murder could be taken so casually. Hesitantly, I said, 'Who or what are chicleros?'

  Fallon pulled a sour face. 'The result of an odd penal system they have here. There's a tree which grows in the forest, the zapote; it grows only here, in Guatemala and in British Honduras. The tree is tapped for its sap and that's called chicle -- it's the basic material of chewing gum. Now, no man in his right mind will go into the forest to gather chicle: the Maya certainly won't because he's too intelligent to risk his skin. So the government dumps its convicts in here to do the job. It's a six months' season but a lot of the chicleros stay all the year round. They're a local scourge. Mostly they kill each other off, but occasionally they'll knock off an outsider or an Indian.' He drew on his pipe. 'Human life isn't worth much in Quintana Roo.'

  I thought that over. If I heard Fallon aright then this forest was deadly. If the Mayas whose native land it was wouldn't work in the forest then it must be positively lethal. I said, 'Why the devil don't they grow the trees in plantations?'

  His face twisted into a wry grin. 'Because of the same argument that's been used for slavery ever since one man put a yoke on another. It's cheaper to continue using convicts than to start plantations. If the people who chew gum knew how it was produced, every stick would make them sick to their stomachs.' He pointed the stem of his pipe at me. 'If you ever meet any chicleros. don't do a damn tiling. Keen your hands I'll to your sides, don't make any sudden moves and like as not they'll just pass you by. But don't bet on it.'

  I began to wonder if I was still in the twentieth century. 'And where do the indies sublevados come into all this?'

  'That's quite a story,' said Fallon. 'The Spaniards took two hundred years to get on top of the
Mayas, and the Lakondon tribe they never licked. The Mayas were kept down until 1847 when they rose in rebellion here in Quintana Roo. It was more populated in those days and the Mayas gave the Mexicans, as they now were, a hell of a trouncing in what was known as the War of the Castes. Try as they might the Mexicans could never get back in again.- In 1915 the Mayas declared an independent state; they dealt with British Honduras and made business deals with British firms. The top Maya then was General Mayo: he was a really tough old bird; but the Mexicans got at him through his vanity. They signed a treaty with him in 1935. made him a general in the official Mexican army and invited him to Mexico City where they seduced him with civilization. He died in 1952. After 1935 the Mayas seemed to lose heart. They'd had a tough time since the War of the Castes and the land was becoming depopulated. On top of famine, which hit them hard, the Mexicans started to move colonists into Chan Santa Cruz. There are not more than a few thousand of the indios sublevados left now, yet they still rule the roost in their own area.' He smiled. 'No Mexican tax collectors allowed.'

  Halstead had broken off his conversation with his wife. 'And they don't like archeologists much, either,' he observed.

  'Oh, it's not as bad as it was in the old times,' said Fallon tolerantly. 'In the early days of General Mayo any foreigner 'coming into Quintana Roo was automatically a dead man. Remember the story I told of the archeologist whose bones were built into a wall? But they've lost a lot of steam since men. They're all right if they're left alone. They're better than the chicleros.'

  Halstead looked at me and said, 'Still glad to be-along with us, Wheale?' He had a thin smile on his face.

  I ignored him. 'Why isn't all this common knowledge?' I asked Fallon. 'A government running a species of slavery and a whole people nearly wiped out surely calls for comment.'

  Fallon knocked out his pipe on the leg of the table. 'Africa is popularly known as the Dark Continent,' he said. 'But mere are some holes and corners of Central and South America which are pretty blade. Your popular journalist sitting in his office in London or New York has very limited horizons; he can't see this far and he won't leave his office.'

  He put the pipe in his pocket. 'But I'll tell you something. The trouble with Quintana Roo isn't the Indians or the chicleros; they're people, and you can always get along with people somehow.' He stretched out his arm and pointed. There's your trouble.'

  I looked to where he was pointing and saw nothing unusual -- just the trees on the other side of the strip.

  'You still don't understand?' he asked, and swung round to Rudetsky. 'What kind of a job did you have in clearing this strip?'

  The hardest work I've ever done,' said Rudetsky. 'I've worked in rain forest before -- I was an army engineer during the war -- but this one beats all hell.'

  That's it,' said Fallon flatly. 'Do you know how they classify the forest here? They say it's a twenty-foot forest, or a ten-foot forest, or a four-foot forest. A four-foot forest is getting pretty bad -- it means that you can't see more than four feet in any direction -- but there are worse than that. Add disease, snakes and shortage of water and you realize why the chicleros are among the toughest men in the world -- those of diem that survive. The forest is the enemy in Quintana Roo. and well have to fight it to find Uaxuanoc.'

  II

  We went to Camp Two next day, travelling in a helicopter which flew comparatively slowly and not too high. I looked down at the green tide which flowed beneath my feet and thought back to the conversation I'd had with Pat Harris about Jack Gatt and our hypothetical encounter in Quintana Roo. While I had envisaged something more than Epping Forest I certainly hadn't thought it would be this bad.

  Fallon had explained the peculiarities of the Quintana Roo forest quite simply. He said, 'I told you the reason why there is no native gold in Yucatan is because of the geology of the area -- there's just a limestone cap over the peninsula. That explains the forest, too, and why it's worse than any other.'

  'It doesn't explain it to me,' I said. 'Or maybe I'm particularly stupid.'

  'No; you just don't have the technical knowledge,' he said 'The rainfall is quite heavy, but when it falls it sinks right into the ground until it meets an impermeable layer. Thus there is a vast reservoir of fresh water under Yucatan, but a shortage of water because there are no rivers. The water is quite close to the surface: on the coast you can dig a hole on the beach three feet from the sea and you'll get fresh water In the interior sometimes the limestone cap collapses to reveal the underground water -- that's a cenote. But the point is thai the trees always have water available at their roots. In any other rain forest, such as in the Congo, most of the water is drained away into rivers. In Quintana Roo it's available to the trees and they take full advantage.'

  I looked down at the forest and wondered if it was a twenty-foot forest or a four-footer. Whatever it was, I couldn't see the ground and we were less than five hundred feet high If Jack Gatt had any sense he wouldn't come anywhere near Quintana Roo.

  Camp Two was much simpler than Camp One. There was a rough hangar for the helicopter -- a wall-less structure looking something like a Dutch barn; a dining-room-cum-lounge, a store hut for equipment and four huts for sleeping quarters All the huts were factory-made prefabs and all had been flown in by helicopter. Simpler it might have been but there was no lack of comfort; every hut had an air-conditioning unit and the refrigerator was full of beer. Fallon didn't believe in roughing it unless he had to.

  Apart from the four of us there were the cook and his helper to do the housekeeping and the helicopter pilot. What he was going to do, apart from flying us back and forward between camps, I didn't know; in the search for Uaxuanoc the helicopter would be about as much use as a bull's udder.

  All around lay the forest, green and seemingly impenetrable. I walked to the edge of the clearing and inspected it, trying to assess it by the rating Fallon had given. As near as I could tell this would be a fifteen-foot forest -- a rather thin growth by local standards. The trees were tall, pushing and fighting in a fiercely competitive battle for light, and were wreathed and strangled by an incredible variety of parasitic plant life. And apart from the purely human sounds which came from the huts everything was deathly silent.

  I turned to find Katherine standing near me. 'Just inspecting the enemy,' I said. 'Have you been here before -- in Qumtana Roo, I mean?'

  'No,' she said. 'Not here. I was on digs with Paul in Campeche and Guatemala. I've never seen anything like this before.'

  'Neither have I,' I said. 'I've lived a sheltered life. If Fallon had taken the trouble to explain things when we were back in England as he explained them at Camp One I doubt if I'd be here at all. This is a wild-goose chase if ever there was one.'

  'I think you underestimate Fallon -- and Paul,' she said 'Don't you think we'll find Uaxuanoc?'

  I jerked my thumb at the green wall. 'In this? I wouldn't trust myself to find the Eiffel Tower if someone dumped it down here.'

  'That's just because you don't know how to look and where to look,' she said. 'But Paul and Fallon are professionals; they've done this before.'

  'Yes, there are tricks to ever trade,' I admitted. 'I know there are plenty in mine, but I can't see much use for an accountant here. I feel as out of place as a Hottentot at a Buck House garden party.' I looked into the forest. Talk about not being able to see the wood for the trees -- I'll be interested to see how the experts go about this.'

  I soon found out because Fallon called a conference in the big hut. There was a huge photo-mosaic pinned to a cork board on the wall and the table was covered with maps. I was curious to know why the helicopter pilot, a Texan called Harry Rider, was included in the discussion, but it soon became clear.

  Fallon broke open the refrigerator and served beer all round, then said succinctly, The key to this problem is the cenotes. We know Uaxuanoc was centred on a cenote because Vivero said so, and there was no reason for him to lie about that. Besides, it's the most likely occurrence -- a city must
have water and the only water is at the cenotes.'

  He took a pointer and stepped up to the photo-mosaic. He laid the tip of the pointer in the centre, and said. 'We are here, next to a very small cenote on the edge of the clearing.' He turned to me. 'If you want to see your first Mayan structure you'll find it next to the cenote.'

  I was surprised. 'Aren't you going to investigate it?'

  'It's not worth it; it won't tell me anything I don't know already.' He swept the pointer around in a large circle. 'Within ten miles of this point there are fifteen cenotes, large and small, and around one of them may be the city of Uaxuanoc.'

  I was still trying to clarify in my mind the magnitude of me problem. 'How big would you expect it to be?' I asked.

  Halstead said, 'Bigger man Chichen Itza -- if we can believe Vivero's map.'

  'That doesn't mean much to me.'

  The centre of Copan is over seventy-five acres,' said Fallon. 'But you mustn't confuse a Mayan city with any other city you've seen. The centre of the city -- the stone structures we are looking for -- was me religious and administrative centre, and probably the market-place. Around it, for several square miles, lived the Mayas of the city. They didn't live in neat little houses built into streets as we do but in an immense system of small-holdings. Each family would have its own little farm, and the household buildings were very little different from the huts that the Mayas now build, although probably more extensive. There's nothing wrong with the Mayan hut -- it's ideally suited to this climate.'