The Vivero Letter

by Desmond Bagley

  I went forward at a crouch and joined him. 'What the hell's going on?'

  'Halstead made a break for it,' he said, breathing heavily. 'He ran for the forest and we tried to follow him. Then they opened up on us.'

  'What about Halstead? Did they fire on him?'

  'I reckon he's dead,' said Rudetsky. 'I saw him go down as be reached the trees.'

  There was a muffled sound from behind and I turned to see Katherine. 'Get back to the hut,' I said angrily. 'It's dangerous here.'

  Two big tears squeezed from beneath her eyelids and rolled down her cheek as she turned away, and there was a dispirited droop to her shoulders.

  I waited there at the edge of the camp for a long time but nothing happened; no more shots nor even the sound or sight of a living thing. Just the livid green of the forest beyond the cleared ground of the city of Uaxuanoc.

  III

  Everything we did was under observation -- that I knew. So I had a problem. We could take all the valuables down to the Denote quite openly and sink them, or we could be underhand about it and do it in secret. On balance, I thought that secrecy was the best bet because if we did it openly Gatt might get worried and jump us immediately with the job only begun. There was nothing to stop him.

  That meant that all the packages Fallon had made up had to be broken open and the contents smuggled down piece by piece to my hut next to the cenote. Probably it would have been best to have just dumped the stuff as I had first suggested, but it seemed a pity to do that when the cave was available, so we used the cave. That meant going down there while Rudetsky lowered the loot, and that was something better left for after nightfall when prying eyes would be blinded.

  For the rest of the daylight hours we contrived to give the camp an appearance of normality. There was a fair amount of coming and going between the huts and gradually all the precious objects were accumulated on the floor of my hut, where Rudetsky filled up the metal baskets we had used for bringing them from the bottom of the cenote in the first place.

  Also on the agenda was the fortification of the hut, another task that would have to wait until after darkness fell, but Smith and Fowler wandered about the camp, unobtrusively selecting materials for the job and piling them in places where they could be got at easily at night. Those few hours seemed to stretch out indefinitely, but at last the sun set in a red haze that looked like dried blood.

  We got busy. Smith and Fowler brought in their baulks of timber which were to be used to make the hut a bit more bullet-proof and began to hammer them in position. Rudetsky had organized some big air bottles and we hauled the raft into the side and loaded them aboard. It was tricky work because they were heavy and we were working in the dark. We also loaded all the treasure on board the raft, then Katherine and I went down.

  The cave was just as we had left it and the air was good. I rose up inside, switched on the internal light I had installed and switched off my own light. There was a broad ledge above.

  water-level on which the loot could be stored, and I sat on ft and helped Katherine from the water. 'There's plenty of room to stash the stuff here,' I said.

  She nodded without much interest, and said, 'I'm sorry Paul caused all this trouble, Jemmy. You warned me, but I was stupid about it.'

  'What made you change your mind?'

  She hesitated. 'I started to think -- at last. I began to ask myself questions about Paul. It was something you said that started it. You asked me what it was I had for Paul -- love or loyalty. You called it misplaced loyalty. It didn't take me long to find the answer. The trouble is that Paul hasn't -- wasn't -- always like this. Do you think he's dead?'

  'I don't know; I wasn't there when it happened. Rudetsky thinks he is. But he may have survived. What will you do if he has?'

  She laughed tremulously. 'What a question to ask at a time like this! Do you think that what we're doing here will do any good?' She waved her hand at the damp walls of the cave. 'Getting rid of what Gatt wants?'

  'I don't know,' I said. 'It depends on whether we can talk to Gatt. If I can point out that he hasn't a hope in hell of getting the stuff, then he might be amenable to a deal. I can't see him killing six or seven people for nothing -- not unless he's a crazy-mad killer, and I don't think he's that'

  'Not getting what he wants might send him crazy-mad..'

  'Yes,' I said thoughtfully. 'Hell be bloody annoyed. Hell need careful handling.'

  'If we get out of this,' she said, 'I'm going to divorce Paul. I can't live with him now. I'll get a Mexican divorce -- it will be valid anywhere because we were married in Mexico.' I thought about that for a bit, then said, 'I'll look you up. Would you mind that?'

  'No, Jemmy; I wouldn't mind.' She sighed. 'Perhaps we can begin again with a fresh start.'

  'Fresh starts don't come so easily,' I said somberly. Well never forget any of this, Katherine -- never!' I prepared to put on my mask. 'Come on; Joe will be wondering what has gone wrong.'

  We swam out of the cave and began the long job of transferring the treasure from the basket which Rudetsky had lowered into the cave. Basket after basket of the damned stuff came down, and it took us a long time, but finally it was all put away. We bad been under for two hours but had never gone below sixty-five feet so the decompression time was just under an hour. Joe lowered the hose which dangled alongside the shot line and we coupled the two valves at the end to the demand valves on our scuba gear. During the hour it took us to go up he fed us air- from the big bottles on the raft instead of using the air compressor which would have made too much noise.

  When we finally reached the surface, he asked, 'Everything okay?'

  'Everything is fine,' I answered, and swore as I stubbed my toe on an air bottle. 'Look, Joe: tip all these bottles over the side. Gatt might start to get ideas -- he might even be a diver himself. He wont be able to do a damned thing without air bottles.'

  We rolled the bottles over the side and they splashed into the cenote and sank. When we got ashore I was very tired but there was still much to do. Smith and Fowler had done their best to armour the hut, but it was a poor best although no fault of theirs. We just hadn't the material.

  'Where's Fallon?' I asked.

  'I think he's in his own hut.'

  I went to look for Fallon and found him sitting morosely at his desk. He turned as I closed the door. 'Jemmy!' he said despairingly. 'What a mess! What a godawful mess!'

  'What you need is a drink,' I said, and took the bottle and a couple of glasses from the shelf. I poured out a couple of stiff tots and pushed a glass into his hand. 'You're not to blame.'

  'Of course I am,' he said curtly. I didn't take Gatt seriously enough. But who would have thought this Spanish Main stuff could happen in the twentieth century?'

  'As you said yourself, Quintana Roo isn't precisely the centre of the civilized world.' I sipped the whisky and felt me warmth in my throat. 'It's not out of the eighteenth century yet.'

  'I sent a message out with the boys who left,' he said. 'Letters to the authorities in Mexico City about what we've found here.' He suddenly looked alarmed. 'You don't think Gatt will have done anything about them, do you?'

  I considered that one, and said at last, 'No, I shouldn't think so. It would be difficult for him to interfere with them all and it might tip off the authorities that something is wrong.'

  'I should have done it sooner,' said Fallon broodingly. The Department of Antiquities is goddamn keen on inspection: this place will be swarming with officials once the news gets out.' He offered me a twisted smile. 'That's why I didn't notify them earlier; I wanted the place to myself for a while. What a damned fool I was!'

  I didn't spare him. 'You had plenty of warnings from Pat Harris. Why the hell didn't you act on them?'

  'I was selfish,' he said. He looked me straight in the eye. 'Just plain, selfish. I wanted to stay while I could -- while I had time. There's so little time, Jemmy.'

  I drank some whisky. 'You'll be back next season.'

 
He shook his head. 'No, I won't. I'll never be back here. Someone else will take over -- some younger man. It could have been Paul if he hadn't been so reckless and impatient.'

  I put down my glass. 'What are you getting at?'

  He gave me a haggard grin. 'I'll be dead in three months, Jemmy. They told' me not long before we left Mexico City -- they gave me six months.' He leaned back in his chair. They didn't want me to come here -- the doctors, you know. But I did, and I'm glad I did. But I'll go back to Mexico City now and go into a hospital to die.'

  'What is it?'

  'The old enemy,' said Fallon. 'Cancer!'

  The word dropped as heavy as lead into the quiet hut and there was nothing I could say. This was the reason he had been so preoccupied, why he had driven so hard to get the job done, and why he had stuck to one purpose without deflection. He had wanted to do this last excavation before he died and he had achieved his purpose.

  After a while I said softly, 'I'm sorry.'

  He snorted. 'You're sorry! Sorry for me! It seems as though I'm not going to live to die in hospital if you're right about Gatt -- and neither is anyone else here. I'm sorry, Jemmy, that I got you into this. I'm sorry for the others, too. But being sorry isn't enough, is it? What's the use of saying "Sorry" to a dead man?'

  Take it easy,' I said.

  He fell into a despondent silence. After a while, he said. When do you think Gatt will attack?'

  'I don't know,' I said. 'But he must make his move soon.' I finished the whisky. 'You'd better get some sleep.' I could see Fallon didn't think much of that idea, but he said nothing and I went away.

  Rudetsky had some ideas of his own, after all. I bumped into him in the darkness unreeling a coil of wire. He cursed briefly, and said, 'Sorry, but I guess I'm on edge.'

  'What are you doing?'

  'If those bastards attack, they'll be able to take cover behind those two huts, so I took all the gelignite I could find and planted it. Now I'm stringing the wire to the plunger in our hut. They won't have any cover if I can help it.'

  'Don't blow up those huts just yet,' I said. 'It would come better as a surprise. Let's save it for when we need it.'

  He clicked his tongue. 'You're turning out to be quite a surprising guy yourself. That's a real nasty idea.'

  'I took a few lessons out in the forest.' I helped him unreel the wire and we disguised it as much as we could by kicking soil over it. Rudetsky attached the ends of one set of wires to the terminals of me plunger box and slapped the side of it gently with an air of satisfaction. I said, 'It'll be dawn fairly soon.'

  He went to the window and looked up at the sky. 'There's quite a lot of cloud. Fallon said the rains break suddenly.'

  It wasn't the weather I was worried about. I said, 'Put Smith and Fowler on watch out at the edge of the camp. We don't want to be surprised.'

  Then I had an hour to myself and I sat outside the hut and almost nodded off to sleep, feeling suddenly very weary. Sleep was something that had been in short supply, and if I hadn't had that twenty-four hour rest in the forest tree I daresay I'd have gone right off as though drugged. As it was I drowsed until I was wakened by someone shaking my shoulder.

  It was Fowler. 'Someone's coming,' he said urgently.

  'Where?'

  'From the forest.' He pointed. 'From over there -- I'll show you.'

  I followed behind him to the hut at the edge of the camp from which he had been watching. I took the field glasses he gave me and focused on the distant figure in white which was strolling across the cleared land.

  The light was good enough and the glasses strong enough to show quite clearly that it was Gatt.

  Eleven

  There was an odd quality in the light that morning. In spite of the high cloud which moved fast in the sky everything was crystal clear, and the usual heat haze, which lay over the forest even at dawn, was gone. The sun was just rising and mere was a lurid and unhealthy yellow tinge to the sky, and a slight breeze from the west bent the branches of the trees beyond the cleared ruins of Uaxuanoc.

  As I focused the glasses on Gatt I found to my disgust that my hands were trembling, and I had to rest the glasses on the window-sill to prevent the image dancing uncontrollably. Gatt was taking his time. He strolled along as unconcernedly as though he were taking his morning constitutional in a city park, and stopped occasionally to look about at the uncovered mounds. He was dressed as nattily as he had been when he flew into Camp One, and I even saw the tiny point of whiteness that was a handkerchief in his breast pocket.

  Momentarily I ignored him and swept the glasses around the perimeter of the ruins. No one else showed up and it looked as though Gatt was alone, a deceptive assumption it would be wise to ignore. I handed the glasses to Rudetsky, who had come into the hut. He raised them to his eyes, and said, 'Is that the guy?'

  That's Gatt, all right.'

  He grunted. Taking his time. What me hell is he doing? Picking flowers?'

  Gatt had bent down and was groping at something on the ground. I said, 'Hell be here in five minutes. I'm going out there to talk to him.'

  That's taking a risk.'

  'It has to be done -- and I'd rattier do it out mere man back here. Can anyone use that rule we've got?'

  'I'm not too bad,' said Fowler.

  'Not too bad -- hell!' rumbled Rudetsky. 'He was a marksman in Korea.'

  That's good enough for me,' I said with an attempt at a grin. 'Keep your sights on him, and if he looks like pulling a fast one on me, let him have it.'

  Fowler picked up the rifle and examined the sights. 'Don't go too far away,' he said. 'And keep from between me and Gatt.'

  I walked to the door of the hut. 'Everyone else keep out of sight,' I said, and stepped outside, feeling like a condemned man on his way to the gallows. I walked towards Gatt across the cleared ground, feeling very vulnerable and uncomfortably aware that I was probably framed in someone's rifle sights. Obeying Fowler's instructions, I walked slowly so Gatt and I would meet a little more than two hundred yards from the hut, and I veered a little to give Fowler his open field of fire.

  Gatt had lit a cigar and, as he approached, he raised his elegant Panama hat politely. 'Ah, Mr. Wheale; lovely morning, isn't it?' I wasn't in the mood for cat-and-mouse chit-chat so I said nothing. He shrugged, and said, Is Professor Fallon available?'

  'No,' I said shortly.

  He nodded understandingly. 'Ah, well! You know what I've come for, of course.' It wasn't a question, but a flat statement.

  'You won't get it,' I said equally flatly.

  'Oh, I will,' he said with certainty. 'I will.' He examined the ash on the end of his cigar. 'I take it that you are doing the talking for Fallon. I'm surprised at that -- I really am. I'd have thought he was man enough to do his own talking, but I guess he's soft inside like most people. But let's get down to it. You've pulled a lot of stuff out of that cenote. I want it. It's as simple as that. If you let me have it without trouble, there'll be no trouble from me.'

  'You won't harm us in any way?' I queried.

  'You just walk out of here,' he assured me.

  'What guarantees do I have of that?'

  He spread his hands and looked at me with honesty shining in his eyes. 'My word on it.'

  I laughed out loud. 'Nothing doing, Gatt. I'm not that stupid.'

  For the first time anger showed in him and there was a naked, feral gleam in his eyes. 'Now, get this straight, Wheale. I'm coming in to take that loot, and there's nothing you or anyone else can do to stop me. You do it peaceably or not -- it's your choice.'

  I caught a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye and turned my head. Some figures in white were emerging from the forest slowly; they were strung out in a straggling line and they carried rifles. I swung my head around to the other side and saw more armed men coming across from the forest.

  Clearly the time had come to put some pressure on Gatt. I felt in my shirt pocket for cigarettes, lit one and casually tossed the matchbox up an
d down in my hand. 'There's a rifle sighted on you, Gatt,' I said. 'One wrong move and you're a dead man.'

  He smiled thinly. 'You're under a gun, too. I'm not a fool.'

  I tossed the matchbox up and down, and kept it going. 'I've arranged a signal,' I said. 'If I drop this matchbox, you get a bullet. Now, if those men out there move ten more yards, I drop this box.'

  He looked at me with the faintest shadow of uncertainty. 'You're bluffing,' he said. 'You'd be a dead man, too.'

  'Try me,' I invited. 'There's a difference between you and me. I don't particularly care whether I live or die, and I'm betting that you do. The stakes are high in this game, Gatt -- and those men have only five more yards to go. You had my brother killed, remember! I'm willing to pay a lot for his life.'