The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘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 them that survive. The forest is the enemy in Quintana Roo, and we’ll 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 that 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 airconditioning 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 Quintana 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 every 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 the problem. ‘How big would you expect it to be?’ I asked.

  Halstead said, ‘Bigger than 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 the 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.’

  ‘And the population?’

  ‘Chichen Itza was about 200,000 according to Morley,’ said Halstead. ‘Uaxuanoc might run upwards of a quartermillion.’

  ‘That’s a devil of a lot of people,’ I said in astonishment.

  ‘To build the immense structures they did require a lot of hands,’ said Fallon. ‘These were a neolithic people, remember, using stone tools to carve stone. I expect the centre of Uaxuanoc will be about one hundred acres, if we can rely on Vivero’s map, so the outer city would have been populous, with more people in it than in the whole of Quintana Roo now. But there’ll be no trace left of the outer city; timber buildings don’t last in this climate.’

  He tapped with the pointer again. ‘Let’s get on with it. So we have fifteen cenotes to look at, and if we don’t find what we’re looking for we’ll have to go further afield. That will be unfortunate, because within twenty miles of here th
ere are another forty-nine cenotes and it’s going to take a long time if we have to investigate them all.’

  He waved the pointer at the pilot. ‘Fortunately we have Harry Rider and his helicopter so we can do it in reasonable comfort. I’m getting too old to tackle the forest.’

  Rider said, ‘I’ve already had a look at some of those water-holes, Mr Fallon; in most of them there’s no place to put down—not even my chopper. It’s real thick.’

  Fallon nodded. ‘I know; I’ve been here before and I know what it’s like. We’ll run a preliminary photo survey. Colour film might show up differences in vegetation due to underlying structures, and infrared might show more. And I’d like to do some flights early morning and late evening—we might get something out of the shadows.’

  He turned and regarded the photo-mosaic. ‘As you can see, I’ve numbered the cenotes under consideration. Some are more likely than others. Vivero said there was a ridge running through Uaxuanoc with a temple at the top and a cenote at the bottom. Cenotes and ridges seem to be associated in this area, which is bad luck; but it cuts the possibles down to eleven. I think we can forget numbers four, seven, eight and thirteen for the time being.’ He turned to Rider. ‘When can we start?’

  ‘Any time you like—I’m fuelled up,’ said Rider.

  Fallon consulted his watch. ‘We’ll fix up the cameras, and leave directly after lunch.’

  I helped to load the cameras into the helicopter. There was nothing amateurish or snapshottery about this gear; they were professional aerial cameras and I noticed that the helicopter was fitted with all the necessary brackets to receive them. My respect for Fallon’s powers of organization grew even more. Allowing for the fact that he had more money to chuck about than appeared decent, at least he knew how to spend it to the best advantage. He was no playboy of the jet-set circuit spilling his wealth into some casino owner’s pocket.

  After a quick lunch Fallon and Halstead made for the helicopter. I said, ‘What do I do?’

  Fallon rubbed his chin. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anything you can do,’ he said, and over his shoulder I saw Halstead grinning widely. ‘You’d better rest up this afternoon. Stay out of the sun until you’re used to this heat. Well be back in a couple of hours.’

  I watched the helicopter take off and disappear over the trees feeling a little silly and like an unwanted spare part. Katherine was nowhere to be seen—I think she’d gone into the hut she shared with Halstead to unpack their personal gear. I wondered what to do and wandered disconsolately to the far end of the clearing to look at the Mayan building Fallon had mentioned.

  The cenote was about thirty feet in diameter and the water lay about fifteen feet down in the pit. The sides of the pit were almost sheer, but someone had cut rough steps so as to get to the water. I was startled by the sudden noisy throb of an engine close by and found a small pump run by a petrol engine which had apparently come into operation automatically. It was pumping water from the cenote up to the camp—another bit of Fallonese efficiency.

  I didn’t find a building although I looked hard enough, and after half an hour of futile searching I gave up. I was about to go back to the camp when I saw two men on the other side of the cenote looking at me. All they wore were ragged white trousers and they stood as still as statues. They were small, sinewy and brown, and a stray sunbeam falling through the leaves reflected in a coppery sheen from the naked chest of the nearest man. They regarded me solemnly for the space of thirty seconds and then turned and vanished into the forest.

  III

  The helicopter came back and Fallon dumped a load of film spools on the table in the big hut. ‘Know anything about film processing?’ he asked.

  ‘In an amateur sort of way.’

  ‘Umph! That might not be good enough. But we’ll do the best we can. Come with me.’ He led me into another hut and showed me his photographic department. ‘You should be able to get the hang of this,’ he said. ‘It’s not too difficult.’

  There was no dabbling in trays of hypo for Fallon; he had the neatest darkroom set-up I’d ever seen—and he didn’t need a darkroom. I watched him as he demonstrated. It was a big box with a sliding, light-tight door at one side and a slot at the other. He slid open the door, put a spool of undeveloped film into a receptacle and threaded the leader through sprockets. Then he closed the door and pressed a button. Fifteen minutes later the developed colour film uncoiled through the slot on the other side, dry and ready for screening.

  He took the cover off the box and showed me the innards—the sets of slowly turning rollers and baths of chemicals, and the infra-red dryer at the end—and he explained which chemicals went where. ‘Think you can handle it? It will save time if we have someone who can process the film as quickly as possible.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ I said.

  ‘Good! You can carry on with these, then. There’s something I want to talk over with Paul.’ He smiled. ‘You can’t really carry on a sensible conversation in a whirlybird—too noisy.’ He held up a spool. ‘This one consists of stereo pairs; I’ll show you how to cut it and register it accurately into frames when it’s developed.’

  I got stuck in to developing the films, pleased that there was something I could do. All it took was time—the job itself was so simple it could have been contracted out to child labour. I developed the last spool—the stereos—and took it to Fallon, and he showed me how to fit the images into the double frames, which was easy if finicky.

  That evening we had a magic-lantern show in the big hut. Fallon put a spool into the film strip projector and switched on. There was just a green blur on the screen and he chuckled. ‘I seem to have got the focus wrong on that one.’

  The next frame was better and the screen showed an area of forest and a cenote reflecting the blue of the sky. It just looked like any other bit of forest to me, but Fallon and Halstead discussed it for quite a while before moving on to the next frame. It was a good two hours before all the pictures were shown and I’d lost interest long before that, especially when it seemed that the first cenote had proved a bust.

  Fallon said at last, ‘We still have the stereo pictures. Let’s have a look at those.’

  He changed the projectors and handed me a pair of polaroid glasses. The stereo pictures were startlingly three-dimensional; I felt that all I had to do was lean forward to pluck the topmost leaf from a tree. Being aerial shots, they also gave a dizzying sense of vertigo. Fallon ran through them all without result. ‘I think we can chalk that one off our list,’ he said. ‘We’d better go to bed—we’ll have a heavy day tomorrow.’

  I yawned and stretched, then I remembered the men I had seen. ‘I saw two men down at the cenote.’

  ‘Chicleros?’ asked Fallon sharply.

  ‘Not if chicleros are little brown men with big noses.’

  ‘Mayas,’ he decided. ‘They’ll be wondering what the hell we’re doing.’

  I said, ‘Why don’t you ask them about Uaxuanoc? Their ancestors built the place, after all.’

  ‘They wouldn’t know about it—or if they did, they wouldn’t tell us. The modern Maya is cut off from his history. As far as he is concerned the ruins were made by giants or dwarfs and he steers clear of them. They’re magical places and not to be approached by men. What did you think of that building down there?’

  ‘I couldn’t find it,’ I said.

  Halstead gave a suppressed snort, and Fallon laughed. ‘It’s not so hidden; I spotted it straightaway. I’ll show you tomorrow—it will give you some idea of what we’re up against here.’

  IV

  We established a routine. Fallon and Halstead made three flights a day—sometimes four. After each flight they would hand me the films and I would get busy developing them and every night we would screen the results. Nothing much came of that except the steady elimination of possibilities.

  Fallon took me down to the cenote and showed me the Mayan building and I found that I had passed it half a dozen times without se
eing it. It was just by the side of the cenote in thick vegetation, and when Fallon said, ‘There it is!’ I didn’t see a thing except another bit of forest.

  He smiled, and said, ‘Go closer,’ so I walked right to the edge of the clearing and saw nothing except the dappled dazzle-pattern of sun, leaves and shadows. I turned around and shrugged, and he called, ‘Push your hand through the leaves.’ I did as he said and rammed my fist against a rock with an unexpected jolt.

  ‘Now step back a few paces and have another look,’ said Fallon.

  I walked back, rubbing my skinned knuckles and looked again at the vegetation through narrowed eyes. It’s a funny thing—one moment it wasn’t there and a split second later it was, like a weird optical illusion, but even then it was only the ghostly hint of a building made up imperfectly of shadows. I lifted my hand and said uncertainly, ‘It starts there—and ends…there?’

  ‘That’s right; you’ve got it.’

  I stared at it, afraid it would go away again. If any army staff in the world wants to improve its camouflage units I would strongly advise a course in Quintana Roo. This natural camouflage was just about perfect. I said. ‘What do you think it was?’

  ‘Maybe a shrine to Chac, the Rain God; they’re often associated with cenotes. If you like you can strip the vegetation from it. We might find something of minor interest. But watch out for snakes.’

  ‘I might do that, if I can ever find it again.’

  Fallon was amused. ‘You’ll have to develop an eye for this kind of thing if you contemplate archeological research in these parts. If not, you’ll walk right through a city and not know it’s there.’

  I could believe him.

  He consulted his watch. ‘Paul will be waiting for me,’ he said. ‘We’ll be back with some film in a couple of hours.’

  The relationship between the four of us was odd. I felt left out of things because I didn’t really know what was going on. The minutiae of research were beyond me and I didn’t understand a tenth of what Fallon and Halstead were talking about when they conversed on professional matters, which is all they ever spoke to each other about.