The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter

by Desmond Bagley

  He was right about that. It had taken three man-days to clear enough ground for a helicopter to land, piloted by a very skilful man. To clear a hundred acres with due archeological care was going to take a small army a hell of a long time.

  He said, ‘I think we’ll abandon this camp now and pull back to Camp One. I’ll get Joe Rudetsky busy setting up Camp Three on the site. Now we can get a helicopter in it shouldn’t prove too difficult. We’ll need quarters for twenty men to start with, I should think. It will take at least a fortnight to get settled in.’

  ‘Why wait until then?’ asked Halstead impatiently. ‘I can get a lot of work done while that’s going on. The rainy season isn’t far off.’

  ‘We’ll get the logistics settled first,’ said Fallon sharply. ‘It will save time in the long run.’

  ‘The hell with that!’ said Halstead. ‘I’m going to go up there and have a look round anyway. I’ll leave you to run your goddamn logistics.’ He leaned forward. ‘Can’t you see what’s waiting to be picked up there—right on the ground? Even Wheale stumbled over something important first crack out of the box, only he was too dumb to see what it was.’

  ‘It’s been there thirteen hundred years,’ said Fallon. ‘It will still be there in another three weeks—when we can go about the job properly.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to do a preliminary survey,’ said Halstead stubbornly.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said Fallon definitely. ‘And I’ll tell you why you’re not. Nobody is going to take you—I’ll see to that. Unless you’re prepared to take a stroll through the forest.’

  ‘Damn you!’ said Halstead violently. He turned to his wife. ‘You wouldn’t believe me, would you? You’ve been hypnotized by what Wheale’s been telling you. Can’t you see he wants to keep it to himself; that he wants first publication?’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about first publication,’ said Fallon energetically. ‘All I want is for the job to be done properly. You don’t start excavating a city in the manner of a graverobber.’

  Their voices were rising, so I said, ‘Let’s keep this quiet, shall we?’

  Halstead swung on me, and his voice cracked. ‘You keep out of this. You’ve been doing me enough damage as it is—crawling to my wife behind my back and turning her against me. You’re all against me—the lot of you.’

  ‘Nobody’s against you,’ said Fallon. ‘If we were against you, you wouldn’t be here at all.’

  I cut in fast. ‘And any more of this bloody nonsense and you’ll be out right now. I don’t see why we have to put up with you, so just put a sock in it and act like a human being.’

  I thought he was going to hit me. His chair went over with a crash as he stood up. ‘For Christ’s sake!’ he said furiously, and stamped out of the hut.

  Katherine stood up. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ said Fallon. He turned to me. ‘Psychiatry isn’t my forte, but that looks like paranoia to me. That man has a king-size persecution complex.’

  ‘It looks very like it.’

  ‘Again I ask you to release me from my promise,’ he said.

  Katherine was looking very unhappy and disturbed. I said slowly, ‘I told you there had been other promises.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Fallon. ‘But Paul, being in the mood he is, could endanger all of us. This isn’t a good part of the world for personal conflicts.’

  I said slowly, ‘Katherine, if you can get Paul to see sense and come back and apologize, then he can stay. Otherwise he’s definitely out—and I mean it. That puts it entirely in your hands, you understand.’

  In a small voice she said, ‘I understand.’

  She went out and Fallon looked at me. ‘I think you’re making a mistake. He’s not worth it.’ He pulled out his pipe and started to fill it. After a moment he said in a low voice, ‘And neither is she.’

  ‘I’ve not fallen for her,’ I said. ‘I’m just bloody sorry for her. If Halstead gets pushed out now, her life won’t be worth living.’

  He struck a match and looked at the flame. ‘Some people can’t tell the difference between love and pity,’ he said obscurely.

  V

  We flew down to the coast and Camp One early next morning. Halstead had slept on it, but not much, because the connubial argument had gone on long into the night. But she had evidently won because he apologized. It wasn’t a very convincing apology and came as haltingly as though it were torn from him by hot pincers, but I judged it politic to accept it. After all, it was the first time in my experience that he had apologized for anything, so perhaps, although it came hesitantly, it was because it was an unaccustomed exercise. Anyway, it was a victory of sorts.

  We landed at Camp One, which seemed to have grown larger in our absence; there were more huts than I remembered. We were met by Joe Rudetsky who had lost some of his easy imperturbability and looked a bit harried. When Fallon asked him what was the matter, he burst into a minor tirade.

  ‘It’s these goddamn poor whites—these chiclero bastards! They’re the biggest lot of thieves I’ve ever seen. We’re losing equipment faster than we can fly it in.’

  ‘Do you have guards set up?’

  ‘Sure—but my boys ain’t happy. You jump one of those chicleros and he takes a shot at you. They’re too goddamn trigger-happy and my boys don’t like it; they reckon this isn’t the job they’re paid for.’

  Fallon looked grim. ‘Get hold of Pat Harris and tell him to ship in some of his security guards—the toughest he can find.’

  ‘Sure, Mr Fallon, I’ll do that.’ Rudetsky looked relieved because someone had made a decision. He said, ‘I didn’t know what to do about shooting back. We thought we might wreck things for you if we got into trouble with the local law.’

  ‘There isn’t much of that around here,’ said Fallon. ‘If anyone shoots at you, then you shoot right back.’

  ‘Right!’ said Rudetsky. ‘Mr Harris said he’d be coming along today or tomorrow.’

  ‘Did he?’ said Fallon. ‘I wonder why.’

  ‘There was a droning noise in the sky and I looked up. ‘That sounds like a plane. Maybe that’s him.’

  Rudetsky cocked his head skywards. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s the plane that’s been flying along the coast all week—it’s back and forward all the time.’ He pointed. ‘See—there it is.’

  A small twin-engined plane came into sight over the sea and banked to turn over the airstrip. It dipped very low and howled over us with the din of small engines being driven hard. We ducked instinctively, and Rudetsky said, ‘It’s the first time he’s done that.’

  Fallon watched the plane as it climbed and turned out to sea. ‘Have you any idea who it is?’

  ‘No,’ said Rudetsky. He paused. ‘But I think we’re going to find out. It looks as though it’s coming in for a landing.’

  The plane had turned again over the sea and was coming in straight and level right at the strip. It landed with a small bounce and rolled to a stop level with us, and a man climbed out and dropped to the ground. He walked towards us and, as he got nearer, I saw he was wearing tropical whites, spotlessly cleaned and pressed, and an incongruous match to the clothing worn by our little party after the weeks at Camp Two.

  He approached and raised his Panama hat. ‘Professor Fallon?’ he enquired.

  Fallon stepped forward. ‘I’m Fallon.’

  The man pumped his hand enthusiastically. ‘Am I glad to meet you, Professor! I was in these parts and I thought I’d drop in on you. My name is Gatt—John Gatt.’

  EIGHT

  Gatt was a man of about fifty-five and a little overweight. He was as smooth as silk and had the politician’s knack of talking a lot and saying nothing. According to him, he had long admired Professor Fallon and had regretted not being able to meet him before. He was in Mexico for the Olympic Games and had taken the opportunity of an excursion to Yucatan to visit the great Mayan cities—he had been to Uxmal, Chichen Itza and Coba—and, hearing that the great
Professor Fallon was working in the area, he had naturally dropped in to pay his respects and to sit at the feet of genius. He name-dropped like mad—apparently he knew everyone of consequence in the United States—and it soon turned out that he and Fallon had mutual acquaintances.

  It was all very plausible and, as he poured out his smokescreen of words, I became fidgety for fear Fallon would be too direct with him. But Fallon was no fool and played the single-minded archeologist to perfection. He invited Gatt to stay for lunch, which invitation Gatt promptly accepted, and we were all set for a cosy chat.

  As I listened to the conversation of this evidently cultured man I reflected that, but for the knowledge gained through Pat Harris, I could have been taken in completely. It was almost impossible to equate the dark world of drugs, prostitution and extortion with the pleasantry spoken Mr John Gatt, who talked enthusiastically of the theatre and the ballet and even nicked Fallon for a thousand dollars as a contribution to a fund for underprivileged children. Fallon made out a cheque without cracking a smile—a tribute to his own acting ability but even more a compliment to the fraudulent image of Gatt.

  I think it was this aura of ambivalence about Gatt that prevented me from lashing out at him there and then. After all, this was the man who had caused the death of my brother and I ought to have tackled him, but in my mind there lurked the growing feeling that a mistake had been made, that this could not be the thug who controlled a big slice of the American underworld. I ought to have known better. I ought to have remembered that Himmler loved children dearly and that a man may smile and be a villain. So I did nothing—which was a pity.

  Another thing which puzzled me about Gatt and which was a major factor contributing to my indecision was that I couldn’t figure out what he was after. I would have thought that his reason for ‘dropping in’ would be to find out if we had discovered Uaxuanoc, but he never even referred to it. The closest he got to it was when he asked Fallon, ‘And what’s the subject of your latest research, Professor?’

  ‘Just cleaning up some loose ends,’ said Fallon noncommittally. ‘There are some discrepancies in the literature about the dating of certain structures in this area.’

  ‘Ah, the patient spadework of science,’ said Gatt unctuously. ‘A never-ending task.’ He dropped the subject immediately and went on to say how impressed he had been by the massive architecture of Chichen Itza. ‘I have an interest in city planning and urban renewal,’ he said. ‘The Mayas certainly knew all about pedestrian concourses. I’ve never seen a finer layout.’

  I discovered later that his interest in city planning and urban renewal was confined to his activities as a slum landlord and the holding up of city governments to ransom over development plans. It was one of his most profitable sidelines.

  He didn’t concentrate primarily on Fallon; he discussed with Halstead, in fairly knowledgeable terms, some aspects of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, and talked with me about England. ‘I was in England recently,’ he said. ‘It’s a great country. Which part are you from?’

  ‘Devon,’ I said shortly.

  ‘A very beautiful place,’ he said approvingly. ‘I remember when I visited Plymouth I stood on the very spot from which the Pilgrim Fathers set sail so many years ago to found our country. It moved me very much.’

  I thought that was a bit thick coming from a man who had started life as Giacomo Gattini. ‘Yes, I rather like Plymouth myself,’ I said casually, and then sank a barb into him. ‘Have you ever been to Totnes?’

  His eyes flickered, but he said smoothly enough, ‘I’ve never had the pleasure.’ I stared at him and he turned away and engaged Fallon in conversation again.

  He left soon after lunch, and when his plane had taken off and headed north, I looked at Fallon blankly and said, ‘What the devil do you make of that?’

  ‘I don’t know what to make of it,’ said Fallon. ‘I expected him to ask more questions than he did.’

  ‘So did I. If we didn’t know he was up to something I’d take that visit as being quite above board. Yet we know it wasn’t—he must have been after something. But what was it? And did he get it?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ said Fallon thoughtfully.

  II

  Pat Harris turned up in the jet during the afternoon and didn’t seem surprised that we had had a visit from Gatt. He merely shrugged and went off to have a private talk with Fallon, but when he came back he was ruffled and exasperated. ‘What’s wrong with the Old Man?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing that I know of,’ I said. ‘He’s just the same as always.’

  ‘Not from where I stand,’ said Pat moodily. ‘I can’t get him to listen to me. All he’s concerned with is pushing Rudetsky. Anything I say just bounces off.’

  I smiled. ‘He’s just made the biggest discovery of his life. He’s excited, that’s all; he wants to get moving fast before the rains break. What’s worrying you, Pat?’

  ‘What do you think?’ he said, staring at me. ‘Gatt worries me—that’s who. He’s been holed up in Merida, and he’s collected the biggest crowd of cut-throats assembled in Mexico since the days of Pancho Villa. He’s brought in some of his own boys from Detroit, and borrowed some from connections in Mexico City and Tampico. And he’s been talking to the chicleros. In my book that means he’s going into the forest—he must have the chicleros to help him there. Now you tell me—if he goes into the forest, where would he be going?’

  ‘Camp Three,’ I said. ‘Uaxuanoc. But there’ll be nothing there for him—just a lot of ruins.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Pat. ‘But Jack evidently thinks differently. The thing that gripes me is that I can’t get Fallon to do anything about it—and it’s not like him.’

  ‘Can’t you do anything yourself? What about the authorities—the police? What about pointing out that there’s a big build-up of known criminals in Merida?’

  Pat looked at me pityingly. ‘The fix is in,’ he said patiently, as though explaining something to a small child. ‘The local law has been soothed.’

  ‘Bribed!’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, grow up!’ he yelled. ‘These local cops aren’t as upright as your London bobbies, you know. I did what I could—and you know what happened? I got tossed in the can on a phoney charge, that’s what! I only got out yesterday by greasing the palm of a junior cop who hadn’t been lubricated by the top brass. You can write off the law in this part of the world.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Accepting all this—what the hell would you expect Fallon to do about it?’

  ‘He has high-level connections in the government; he’s well respected in certain circles and can set things going so that the local law is short-circuited. But they’re personal connections and he has to do it himself. I don’t swing enough weight myself—I can’t reach up that high.’

  ‘Would it do any good if I talked to him?’ I asked.

  Pat shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ He shook his head dejectedly. ‘I don’t know what’s got into him. His judgement is usually better than this.’

  So I talked to Fallon and got a fast brush-off. He was talking to Rudetsky at the time, planning the move to Camp Three, and all his attention was on that. ‘If you find anything in the preliminary clean-up, don’t touch it,’ he warned Rudetsky. ‘Just leave it and clear round it.’

  ‘I won’t mess around with any stones,’ said Rudetsky reassuringly.

  Fallon looked tired and thinner than ever, as though the flesh was being burned from his bones by the fire glowing within him. Every thought he had at that time was directed solely to one end—the excavation of the city of Uaxuanoc—nothing else was of the slightest importance. He listened to me impatiently and then cut me off halfway through a sentence. ‘All this is Harris’s job,’ he said curtly. ‘Leave it to him.’

  ‘But Harris says he can’t do anything about it.’

  ‘Then he’s not worth the money I’m paying him,’ growled Fallon, and walked away, ignoring me, and plunged again into the welter of preparations for t
he move to Camp Three.

  I said nothing of this to the Halsteads; there was no point in scaring anyone else to death. But I did have another conversation with Pat Harris before he left to find out what Gatt was doing. I told him of my failure to move Fallon and he smiled grimly at Fallon’s comment on his worth, but let it go.

  ‘There’s one thing that puzzles me,’ he said. ‘How in hell did Gatt know when to pitch up here? It’s funny that he arrived just as soon as you’d discovered the city.’

  ‘Coincidence,’ I suggested.

  But Pat was not convinced of that. He made me tell him of everything that had been said and was as puzzled as I had been about Gatt’s apparent disinterest in the very thing we knew he was after. ‘Did Gatt have the chance to talk to anyone alone?’ he asked.

  I thought about it and shook my head. ‘He was with all of us all the time. We didn’t let him wander around by himself, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘He wasn’t alone with anyone—not even for a minute?’ Pat persisted.

  I hesitated. ‘Well, before he went to his plane he shook hands all round.’ I frowned. ‘Halstead had lagged behind and Gatt went back to shake hands. But it wasn’t for long—not even fifteen seconds.’

  ‘Halstead, by God!’ exclaimed Pat. ‘Let me tell you something. You can pass along a hell of a lot of information in a simple handshake. Bear that in mind. Jemmy.’

  With that cryptic remark he left, and I began to go over all the things I knew about Halstead. But it was ridiculous to suppose he had anything to do with Gatt. Ridiculous!

  III

  Harry Rider was a very busy man during the next few days. He flew Rudetsky and a couple of his men to Camp Three at Uaxuanoc, dropped them and came back for equipment. Rudetsky and his team hewed a bigger landing area out of the forest, and then the big cargo-carrying helicopter could go in and things really got moving. It was like a wellplanned military operation exploiting a beach-head.