The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘I had a crazy idea I might be able to do something about my brother.’

  ‘That you can forget,’ said Pat briefly.

  ‘So I’ve found out,’ I said gloomily.

  ‘I’m glad you realize it,’ he said. ‘Gatt would swat you like a fly and never give it another thought. Why don’t you quit and go home, Jemmy; go back to that little farm of yours? You’ve found out there’s no treasure to be hunted, and you don’t give two cents for all the lost cities in Latin America, do you? Why stick around?’

  ‘I’ll stick around as long as Gatt does,’ I said. ‘He might leave himself open long enough for me to get at him.’

  ‘Then you’ll wait until hell freezes over. Look, Jemmy: I’ve got fifteen operatives on to him now, and I’m no nearer finding out what he’s up to than when I started. He’s a smart cookie and he doesn’t make mistakes—not those kind of mistakes. He keeps himself covered all the time—it’s a reflex with him.’

  ‘You’ll agree he’ll be interested in what we’ll be doing in Quintana Roo?’

  ‘Apparently so,’ said Pat. ‘He’s certainly keeping tabs on this operation.’

  ‘Then he’ll have to follow us there,’ I said. ‘He can’t do anything from Mexico City. If he’s so bloody interested in hypothetical treasure in Uaxuanoc, he’ll have to go to Uaxuanoc to pick up the loot. Do you agree with that?’

  ‘It’s feasible,’ said Pat judiciously. ‘I can’t see Jack being so trusting as to send anyone else—not with what he thinks is at stake.’

  ‘He won’t be on his home ground, Pat. He’s a civilized city type—he’ll be out of his depth. From what I can gather Quintana Roo is as unlike New York City as Mars is. He might make a mistake.’

  Pat looked at me in astonishment. ‘And what makes you think you’re any different? I grant you that Gatt is a city type, but civilized he is not. Whereas you are a city type and civilized. Jemmy, you’re a London accountant; you’ll be just as much out of your depth in the Quintana Roo as Gatt.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘We’ll be on equal terms—which is more than can be said right now.’

  He drained his glass and slammed it down on to the table with a bang. ‘I think you’re nuts,’ he said disgustedly. ‘You talk a weird kind of sense, but I still think you’re nuts. You’re as batty as Halstead.’ He looked up. ‘Tell me, can you handle a gun?’

  ‘I’ve never tried,’ I said. ‘So I don’t know.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ he said. ‘What are you going to do if you do come up against Gatt on even terms, as you call it? Kiss him to death?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ll see when the time comes. I believe in handling situations as they happen.’

  He passed his hand over his face in a bemused way and looked at me for a long time without saying anything. He took a deep breath. ‘Let me outline a hypothetical situation,’ he said mildly. ‘Let us suppose that you’ve managed to separate Jack from his bodyguards, and that’s a pretty foolish supposition in the first place. And let us suppose that there the two of you are, a pair of city slickers, babes in the wood.’ He stuck out a rigid finger. The first—and last—thing you’d know was that Jack had bush-whacked you with a lupara, and you’d be in no condition to handle any situation.’

  ‘Has Gatt ever killed anyone himself?’ I asked.

  ‘I’d guess so. He came up through the ranks in the Organization. Served his apprenticeship, you might say. He’ll have done a killing or two in his younger days.’

  ‘That’s a long time ago,’ I observed. ‘Maybe he’s out of practice.’

  ‘Agh, there’s no talking to you,’ said Pat in a choked voice. ‘If you have any brains you’ll go back where you came from. I have to stick around, but at least I know what the score is, and I get paid for it. But you’re the kind of guy that Kipling wrote about—”If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, then maybe you don’t know what the hell is going on.”’

  I laughed. ‘You have quite a talent for parody.’

  ‘I’m not as good as Fallon,’ he said gloomily. ‘He’s turned this whole operation into a parody of security. I used the bug Gatt planted on us to feed him a queer line, and what does Fallon do? He stages a goddamn TV spectacular, for God’s sake! I wouldn’t be surprised, when you fly down to that airstrip he’s built, if you don’t find the CBS cameras already rolling and hooked up into a coast-to-coast broadcast—and a line of Rockettes from Radio City to give added interest. Every paisano in Mexico knows what’s going on. Gatt doesn’t have to bug us to find out what we’re doing; all he has to do is to ask at any street corner.’

  ‘It’s a tough life,’ I said sympathetically. ‘Does Fallon usually behave like this?’

  Harris shook his head. ‘I don’t know what’s got into him. He’s turned over control of his affairs to his brother—given him power of attorney. His brother’s a nice enough guy, but I wouldn’t trust anyone that far with a hundred million bucks. He’s thinking of nothing else but finding this city.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘He seems to be worried about something else. He goes a bit dreamy at unexpected moments.’

  ‘I’ve noticed that, too. Something’s bugging him, but he hasn’t let me in on it.’ Harris seemed resentful at the idea that something was being kept from him. He rose to his feet and stretched. ‘I’m going to bed—there’s work to do tomorrow.’

  IV

  So there it was again!

  First Sheila, and now Pat Harris. He hadn’t said it as bluntly as Sheila, but he’d said it nevertheless. Apparently, my exterior appearance and mannerisms gave a good imitation of Caspar Milquetoast—the nine-to-fiver, the commuter par excellence. The trouble was that I wasn’t at all sure that the interior didn’t match the exterior.

  Gatt, from Pat’s description, was lethal. Maybe he wouldn’t shoot anyone just to make bets on which way he’d fall, but he might if there was a dollar profit in it. I began to feel queasy at the thought of going up against him, but I knew I couldn’t turn back now.

  Pat’s assessment of Halstead was quite interesting, too, and I wondered how much Katherine knew about her husband. I think she loved him—in fact, I was sure of it. No woman in her right mind would tolerate such a man otherwise, but maybe I was prejudiced. At any rate, she consistently took his side in any argument he had with Fallon. The very picture of a faithful wife. I went to sleep thinking about her.

  SIX

  We went to Camp One in Fallon’s flying office—a Lear executive jet. Pat Harris didn’t come with us—his job was to keep tabs on Gatt—so there were just four passengers, Fallon, the Halsteads and myself. Fallon and Halstead engaged in another of their interminable professional discussions, and Katherine Halstead read a magazine. Halstead had done a bit of manoeuvring when we entered the plane and Katherine was sitting on the other side of him and as far from me as it was possible to get. I couldn’t talk to her without shouting across a technical argument so I turned my attention to the ground.

  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 whitishgrey 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 b
een 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 sell their copra and that gives them a little ready money to buy clothing and needles and a few cartridges.’

  ‘Are those the indios 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 thing. Keep your hands 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 indios 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 t
he 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 then. 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 there are some holes and corners of Central and South America which are pretty black. 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?’