The Vivero Letter

by Desmond Bagley

  'I doubt if it will do us any good,' I said. The two-bottle pack was heavy on my shoulders and I knew I couldn't run very fast, and Katherine would be even more hampered. There was a distinct likelihood that we'd be picked off running for the cenote.

  'Time to go,' said Fallon, and picked up the rifle. He had assembled all the weapons in a line near the window. He shrugged irritably. 'No time for protracted farewells. Jemmy. Get the hell out of here.' He turned his back on us and stood by the window with the rifle upraised.

  I heaved away the table which barricaded the door, then said to Katherine, 'When I open the door start running. Don't think of anything else but getting to the cenote. Once you are in it dive for the cave. Understand?'

  She nodded, but looked helplessly at Fallon. 'What about. . .?'

  'Never mind,' I said. 'Move . . . now!'

  I opened the door and she went out, and I followed her low and fast, twisting to change direction as soon as my feet hit the soil outside. I heard a crack as a rifle went off but I didn't know if that was the enemy or Fallon giving covering fire. Ahead, I saw Katherine zip round the corner of the hut and as I followed her I ran into a gust of wind that was like a brick wall, and I gasped as it got into my mouth, knocking the breath out of me. There was remarkably little rifle fire -- just a few desultory shots -- and no bullets came anywhere near that I knew of.

  I took my eyes off Katherine and risked a glance upwards and saw the possible reason. The whole of the hillside above the cenote was in violent motion as the wind lashed the trees, and waves drove across as they drive over a wheatfield under an English breeze. But these were hundred-foot trees bending under the blast -- not stalks of wheat -- and this was something stronger than an English zephyr. It suddenly struck me that anyone on the hillside would be in danger of losing his skin.

  But there was no time to think of that. I saw Katherine hesitate on the brink of the cenote. This was no time to think of the niceties of correct diving procedure, so I vetted to her 'Jump! Jump, damn it!' But she still hesitated over the thirty-foot drop, so I rammed my hand in the small of her back and she toppled over the edge. I followed her a split-second later and hit feet first. The harness pulled hard on me under the strain and then the water closed over my head.

  Twelve

  As I went under I jack-knifed to dive deeper, keeping a lookout for Katherine. I saw her, but to my horrified astonishment she was going up again -- right to the surface. I twisted in the water and went after her, wondering what the hell she thought she was doing, and grabbed her just before she broke into the air.

  Then I saw what was wrong. The mask had been ripped from her head, probably by impact with the water, and the airline was inextricably tangled and wound among the bottles on her back in such a position that it was impossible for her to even touch it. She was fast running out of air, but she kept her head, and let it dribble evenly and slowly from her mouth just as she had done when I surprised her in Fallon's swimming pool back in Mexico City. She didn't even panic when I grabbed her, but let me pull her under water to the side of the cenote.

  We broke into air and she gasped. I spat out my mouthpiece and disentangled her airline, and she paused before putting the mask on. 'Thanks!' she said. 'But isn't it dangerous here?'

  We were right at the side of the cenote nearest the hill and protected from plunging fire by the sheer wall of the cenote. but if anyone got past Fallon we'd be sitting ducks. I said, 'Swim under water for the shot line, then wait for me. Don't worry about the shooting -- water is hard stuff -- it stops a bullet dead within six inches. You'll be all right if you're a couple of feet under; as safe as behind armour plate.'

  She ducked under the water and vanished. I couldn't see her because of the dancing reflections and the ripple on the water caused by the driving wind, but the boys on the hillside evidently could because of the spurts of water that suddenly flicked in a line. I hoped I was right about that bit of folklore about bullets hitting water, and I breathed with relief as there was a surge of water at the raft as she went beneath it and was safe.

  It was time for me to go. I went down and swam for the raft, going down about four feet. I'll be damned if I didn't see a bullet dropping vertically through the water, its tip flattened by the impact. The folklore was right, after all.

  I found her clinging to the shot line beneath the raft, and pointed downwards with my thumb. Obediently she dived, keeping one hand in contact with the rope, and I followed her. We went down to the sixty-five-foot level where a marker on the rope indicated that we were as deep as the cave, and we swam for it and surfaced inside with a deep sense of relief. Katherine bobbed up beside me and I helped her climb on to the ledge, then I switched on the light.

  'We made it,' I said.

  She took off her mask wearily. 'For how long?' she asked, and looked at me accusingly. 'You left Fallon to die; you abandoned him.'

  'It was his own decision,' I said shortly. 'Switch off your valve; you're wasting air.'

  She reached for it mechanically, and I turned my attention to the cave. It was fairly big and I judged the volume to be in excess of three thousand cubic feet -- we'd had to pump a hell of a lot of air into it from the surface to expel the water. At that depth the air was compressed to three atmospheres, therefore it contained three times as much oxygen as an equal volume at the surface, which was a help. But with every breath we were exhaling carbon dioxide and as the level of CO2 built up so we would get into trouble.

  I rested for a while and watched the light reflect yellowly from the pile of gold plate at the further end of the ledge. The problem was simple; the solution less so. The longer we stayed down, the longer we would have to decompress on the way up -- but the bottles in the back-packs didn't hold enough air for lengthy decompression. At last I bent down and swished my mask in the water before putting it on.

  Katherine sat up. 'Where are you going?'

  'I won't be long,' I said. 'Just to the bottom of the cenote to find a way of stretching our stay here. You'll be all right -- just relax and take things easy.'

  'Can I help?'

  I debated that one, then said, 'No, You'll just use up air.

  There's enough in the cave to keep us going, and I might need what you have in that bottle.'

  She looked up at the light and shivered. 'I hope that doesn't go out. It's strange that it still works.'

  The batteries topside are still full of juice,' I said. 'That's not so strange. Keep cheerful -- I wont be long.'

  I donned my mask, slipped into the water and swam out of the cave, and then made for the bottom. I found one of our working lights and debated whether or not to switch it on because it could be seen from the surface. In the end I risked it -- there wasn't anything Gatt could do to get at me short of inventing a depth charge to blow me up, and I didn't think he could do that at short notice.

  I was looking for the air cylinders Rudetsky and I had pushed off the raft and I found them spread out to hell and gone. Finding the manifold that had followed the cylinders was a bit more tricky but I discovered it under the coils of air hose that spread like a huge snake, and I smiled with satisfaction as I saw the spanner still tied to it by a loop of rope. Without that spanner I'd have been totally sunk.

  Heaving the 'cylinders into one place was a labour fit for Hercules but I managed it at last and set about coupling up the manifold. Divers have very much the same problem of weightlessness as astronauts, and every time I tried to tighten a nut my body rotated around the cylinder in the other direction. I was down there nearly an hour but finally I got the cylinders attached to the manifold with all cocks open, and the hose on to the manifold outlet with the end valve closed. Now all the air in the cylinders was available on demand at the end of the hose.

  I swam up to the cave, pulling the hose behind me, and popped up beside the ledge holding it triumphantly aloft. Katherine was sitting at the further end of the ledge, and when I said. 'Grab this!' she didn't do a damn thing but merely turned and looked
at me.

  I hoisted myself out of the water, holding the end of the hose with difficulty, and then hauled in a good length of it and anchored it by sitting on it. 'What's the matter with you?' I demanded.

  She made no answer for some time, then said cheerlessly, 'I've been thinking about Fallon.'

  'Oh!'

  'Is that all you can say?' she asked with passion in her voice, but the sudden violence left her as soon as it had come. 'Do you think he's dead?' she asked more calmly.

  I considered it. 'Probably,' I said at last.

  'My God, I've misjudged you,' she said in a flat voice. 'You're a cold man, really. You've just left a man to die and you don't care a damn.'

  'What I feel is my business. It was Fallen's decision -- he made it himself.'

  'But you took advantage of it.'

  'So did you,' I pointed out.

  'I know,' she said desolately. 'I know. But I'm not a man; I can't kill and fight.'

  'I wasn't brought up to it myself,' I said acidly. 'Not like Gatt. But you'd kill if you had to, Katherine. Just like the rest of us. You're a human being -- a killer by definition. We can all kill, but some of us have to be forced to it.'

  'And you didn't feel you had to defend Fallon,' she said quietly.

  'No, I didn't,' I said equally quietly. 'Because I'd be defending a dead man. Fallon knew that, Katie; he's dying of cancer. He's known it ever since Mexico City, which is why he's been so bloody irresponsible. And now it's on his conscience. He wanted to make his peace, Katie; he wanted to purge his conscience. Do you think I should have denied him that -- even though we're ail going to die anyway?'

  I could hardly hear her. 'Oh, God!' she breathed. 'I didn't know -- I didn't know.'

  I felt ashamed. 'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I'm a bit mixed up. I'd forgotten you didn't know. He told me just before Gatt's attack. He was going back to Mexico City to die in three months. Not much to look forward to, is it?'

  'So that's why he could hardly bear to leave here.' Her voice broke in a sob. 'I watched him looking over the city as though he were in love with it. He'd stroke the things we brought up from here.'

  'He was a man taking farewell of everything he loved,' I said.

  She was quiet for a time, then she said, 'I'm sorry, Jemmy; I'm sorry for the things I said. I'd give a lot not to have said them.'

  'Forget it.' I busied myself with securing the hose, then began to contemplate what I'd do with it. The average diver doesn't memorize the Admiralty diving tables, and I was no exception. However. I'd been consulting them freely of late, especially in relation to the depths in the cenote, and I had a fairly good idea of the figures involved. Sooner or later we'd have to go to the surface and that meant decompressing on the way up, the amount of decompression time depending on the depth attained and the length of time spent there.

  I had just spent an hour at nearly a hundred feet and came back to sixty-five and I reckoned if I spent another hour, at least, in the cave, then I could write off the descent to the bottom of the cenote as far as decompression went. The nitrogen would already be easing itself quietly from my tissues without bubbling.

  That left the ascent to the surface. The longer we spent in the cave the more decompression time we'd need, and the decompression time was strictly controlled by the amount of air available in the big cylinders at the bottom of the cenote. It would be unfortunate, to say the least, to run out of air while, say, at the twenty-foot decompression stop. A choice between staying in the water and asphyxiation, and going up and getting the bends. The trouble was that I didn't know how much air was left in the cylinders -- Rudetsky had been doing the surface work on the raft and he wasn't available to tell me.

  So I took a chance and assumed they were half full and carried on from there. My small back-pack bottles were nearly empty, but the ones on Katherine's harness were nearly full, so that was a small reserve. I finally figured out that if we spent a total of just over three hours in the cave I would need an hour and three-quarters, decompression -- a total of five hours since we had dived under the bullets. There could possibly have been a change up on top in five hours. I grinned tightly. There wasn't any harm in being optimistic -- Gatt might even have shot himself in frustration.

  I consulted my watch and considered it lucky that I'd made a habit of wearing the waterproof and pressure proof diver's watch all the time. We'd been down an hour and a half, so that left about the same time to go before vacating the cave. I stretched out on the hard rock, still weighing down the hose, and prepared to wait it out.

  ' Jemmy I'

  'Yes.'

  'Nobody ever called me Katie before -- except my father.'

  'Don't look upon me as a father-figure,' I said gruffly, 'I won't,' she promised solemnly.

  The light went out -- not with a last despairing glimmer as the batteries packed in, but suddenly, as though a switch had been turned off. Katherine gave a startled cry, and I called out, Take it easy, Katie girl! Nothing to worry about.'

  'Is it the batteries?'

  'Probably,' I said, but I knew it wasn't. Someone had turned the light off deliberately or the circuit had been damaged. We were left in a darkness that could be felt physically -- a clammy black cloak wrapped around us. Darkness, as such, had never worried me, but I knew it could have peculiar effects on others, so I stretched out my hand. 'Katie, come here!' I said, 'Let's not get too far away from each other.'

  I felt her hand in mine. 'I hope we'll never be that.'

  So we talked and talked in the blackness of that cave -- talked about every damned thing there was to talk about -- about her father and his work at the college, about my sports of fencing and swimming, about Hay Tree Farm, about the Bahamas, about my future, about her future -- about our future. We were forgetful enough in that darkness to believe we had a future.

  Once she said, 'Where did the wind come from so suddenly?'

  'What wind?'

  'Just before we ran for the cenote.'

  I came back to the real and bloody world with a jerk. 'I don't know. Rider was telling me there was a hurricane off-coast. Maybe it swung inland. He was keeping an ear open for the weather forecasts, I do know that' The crash of the chopper and the chase in me forest seemed to have happened an aeon before.

  I looked at my watch and the luminous dial swam ghostlike in the darkness. It was just about tune to go and I said so. Katherine was practical about it. 'I'll get ready,' she said.

  My mouth was dry and I could hardly get the words out 'You're not coming,' I said.

  There was a brief gasp in the darkness. 'Why not?'

  There's only enough air to take one of us to the top. If we both go well both die. You can't go because God knows what you'd find up there. Even if Gatt has given up you'd still have to find the compressor parts which Rudetsky hid away and get the compressor going again. Could you do that?'

  'I don't think so,' she said. 'No, I couldn't.' Then I must do it. God knows I don't like leaving you here, but it's the best way.'

  'How long will you be?'

  'Nearly two hours going up and maybe another hour to get the compressor going. You won't run out of air here, Katie; you should have enough for another seven or eight hours.'

  'Seven hours will be too late, won't it? If it's as much as seven hours you won't be coming back at all. Isn't that right. Jemmy?'

  It was -- and I knew it. 'I'll be back long before then,' I said, but both of us knew the chances against it.

  Her voice was pensive. 'I'd rather drown than just run out of air slowly.'

  'For God's sake!' I burst out. 'You'll stay in this bloody cave until I get back, do you hear me? You'll stay here -- promise me!'

  'I'll stay,' she said softly, and then she was suddenly in my arms. 'Kiss me, darling.' Her lips were on mine and I held her tight, despite those damned clammy and unromantic rubber wet-suits we wore.

  At last I pushed her away. 'We can't waste time,' I said, and bent down, groping for the hose. My fingers encountered so
mething metallic which clattered on the rock, and I grasped it, then found the hose with my other hand. I pulled down the mask and whatever I was holding was in my way so I thrust it impatiently under the harness straps. 'I'll be back,' I promised, and slipped into the water, dragging the hose.

  The last thing I heard before going under the water was Katie's voice echoing desolately round the cave. 'I love you -- love you.'

  II

  I was holding the weight of about seventy feet of hose which tended to drag me down and I lost some height before I reached the shot line, but once there I was able to hold on to it while I hauled up more hose. When I felt resistance I stopped, and fastened the hose to the line with one of my fin-fasteners. I wouldn't need the fins from now on and the hose needed to be fastened so as to take the weight off me. That done, I went up slowly to the thirty foot mark, letting the air bubble from my mourn as it expanded in my lungs due to the lessening pressure and holding down my speed to less than that of the rising bubbles.