Hurricane Gold

by Charlie Higson

  ‘I let anybody come here who wants to,’ said El Huracán calmly.

  ‘That’s a damn lie,’ said Mrs Glass. ‘I know full well that if you can’t pay your way you’re sent packing.’

  ‘I cannot send these children away,’ said El Huracán. ‘They have seen too much of my world. They might tell tales of my island and give away my secrets.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you shoot them on sight?’

  ‘I had to find out who they were.’

  ‘I paid my way,’ said Mrs Glass. ‘I gave you the papers.’

  ‘Yes. And very valuable they are too.’ El Huracán nodded to one of his servants, who placed the leather pouch containing the naval documents on the table.

  El Huracán stroked the US Navy insignia. ‘These will assure you a long and comfortable stay here in Lagrimas Negras,’ he said, and then looked up at Mrs Glass. ‘You know, of course, that you can never leave?’

  ‘I know it now,’ said Mrs Glass. ‘And I think it stinks.’

  ‘Oh, you will get used to it,’ said El Huracán. ‘In time you will forget that there ever was a world outside these shores.’

  ‘Those documents do not belong to her,’ said Precious angrily. ‘They belong to my father. If you had any decency you’d give them back to me.’

  ‘You know very well that they do not belong to your father, either,’ said El Huracán. ‘He himself stole them.’

  ‘My father is not a thief.’

  ‘Isn’t he?’ said El Huracán. ‘I know your father, Precious. There have been occasions when I have had need of his plane and his skills as a pilot. He is not a bad man. He was just trying to get by, like everybody else. But he should never have got involved with these stolen secrets. For him smuggling was a great game. This is different. The stakes are higher. These papers have touched the lives of many people. Touched them with the hand of death.’

  ‘Smuggling’s one thing,’ said Mrs Glass, ‘turning traitor and selling state secrets is another. He shoulda left it to the professionals.’

  ‘Is that what you are?’ said Precious. ‘A professional? A professional what? Murderer? Crook? Kidnapper?’

  ‘I guess you could call me a spy,’ said Mrs Glass.

  ‘A spy for who?’

  ‘Whoever will pay me most.’

  ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ said Precious. ‘Manny told us all about you. How you married some gangster in Los Angeles, how you were nearly killed in a shoot-out.’

  ‘He didn’t tell you the rest,’ said Mrs Glass, ‘because he didn’t know. He didn’t tell you about how I went into hiding, travelled down through Mexico into South America, hung out there a coupla years before heading across the Pacific to Japan. I had decided to do a world tour and learn everything I could about crime.

  ‘In Japan I met with the Yakuza, in China it was the tongs. I spent time with gangs in India and the Balkans. In Italy I made friends with the Cosa Nostra, which was how I met dear, departed Strabo. I finally wound up in Germany, where I discovered that it was impossible to tell who were the crooks and who were the politicians. It was a crazy time there. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party was growing.

  ‘I met an American called Alan Glass. He was a fascinating guy – smart, ruthless, charming. He taught me everything there was to know about being a spy. He knew everyone and played them all off against each other. In the end I don’t think he even knew whose side he was on. He was a double-triple-quadruple agent. He sold secrets to the Russians, the British, the Americans, the Germans, and they all thought they were his best buddies. We married, and for a time we had a ball. But it couldn’t last. One day he wasn’t there any more. He’d disappeared. I never saw him again. I reckon it was the Russians took him, but I can’t be sure.

  ‘Next morning I was on a plane back to the States. Went straight to Washington. I was welcomed as a heroine. One of their best agents in Europe. Gave them a lot of baloney, kept them happy, told them what they wanted to hear, had dinner with the president. They turned a blind eye to my less than honest past.’

  ‘Why?’ said Precious. ‘Why would they? I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I told you, honey,’ said Mrs Glass, taking a sip of wine. ‘I was a cast-iron, gold-plated heroine, and, besides, they knew I could be useful to them. The big problem in America right now is organised crime. The gangs are taking over. And back then in nineteen thirty, when I showed up, we still had Prohibition, so things were just about as bad as they could be. They were looking for someone to work with the Bureau of Investigation and infiltrate the gangs.

  ‘I did what they wanted; I went back to my old ways. The first gangster I dealt with was Legs Diamond. Got close to him, set him up, and watched him die. And as I watched him bleed to death I made a decision: this wasn’t going to be me. I wanted something better for myself. I had contacts in crime and espionage and politics all round the world. I set myself up as a mercenary, smuggling secrets wherever they were wanted.’ She paused, and then looked at Precious. ‘And that,’ she said, ‘is how I ended up at your father’s house.’

  Now she turned her attention to James. ‘I’ve dealt with New York gangsters, Russian secret police from the OGPU, Japanese assassins and Mexican bandits, but an English schoolkid came closest to sinking me.’ She raised her glass in a mock toast. ‘Here’s to you, James Bond,’ she said. ‘I hope you’re satisfied with what you’ve done, because you’re stuck here with me for the rest of your miserable life.’

  ‘I’m afraid that is true,’ said El Huracán with a shrug. ‘I can never let you two leave.’

  James felt a cold, sick feeling inside. He had woken from his dream. Precious had been right. They had come blundering out to the island with no real thought of what would happen when they got here.

  Precious hung her head in her hands and two fat tears dropped into her plate.

  James was dimly aware that El Huracán was still talking, his voice calm and even, like a schoolmaster discussing a lesson.

  ‘. . . you will have to pay your way. You may stay in your guest rooms tonight, but in the morning you will move to the worker dormitories. We will see where you are best suited. In the kitchens, perhaps, or helping to grow food. You look strong, James: there is always construction work to be done. Or, perhaps, you would rather be a waiter or a barman?’

  James said nothing. He would not let his life be decided for him like this. He was damned if he was going to give up without a fight. They’d got this far. They would see it through to the finish. Now was not the time to say anything, though. He would wait until he was alone with Precious and then they would think and plan and choose their moment.

  At six o’clock in the morning, before any of the ‘guests’ were up, James was taken to the whipping post in the main square, where twenty men were waiting patiently. They were all Indians, dressed in loose white cotton work clothes. A foreman called Morales divided them up into teams and set them each a task. James was assigned to a gang whose job was to rebuild an old stone bridge near the harbour. They worked steadily until twelve, when they were given a lunch of rice, corn and beans, and then had to carry on until sunset. The pace was easy-going, the men worked slowly but steadily. James didn’t have any trouble keeping up and he enjoyed the physical labour: mixing cement and carrying stones.

  While he worked he took the opportunity to study the comings and goings at the harbour. Two small ships put in during the day and unloaded supplies. Three armed guards patrolled the harbour side and carefully searched each sailor as he got on and off the ship. Two other guards stayed in a stone watchtower, manning a heavy machine gun.

  There was no hope of sneaking aboard one of the ships. El Huracán’s men watched like hawks and the sailors were in an obvious hurry to get away as quickly as possible.

  The next day James’s gang climbed to the highest point on the island to repair a massive steel water tower. From here he got a clear view of the sea. It was obvious that it would be hopeless to try to swim anywhere. There was no other land in s
ight in any direction and his experience on the reef that completely surrounded the island had shown him just how dangerous these waters were.

  They worked on the water tower for two days, cutting thin steel and aluminium sheets with powerful snippers and patching up some of the joins where the pipes entered the tank.

  Sitting in the sun with an ocean breeze cooling his skin, James could almost imagine spending the rest of his days here. He wondered how long it would take him to forget his old life.

  No.

  That must never happen. He was not going to stay here and rot.

  His resolve grew stronger when he was assigned to his next job. There was a narrow canyon in the centre of the island, which was crossed by a rickety bridge. The bridge was guarded at either end, and James was intrigued to find out what went on on the other side. A winding path led through a patch of forest to a hidden area. This was where El Huracán grew most of his food. There were chickens, bees in hives, goats and sheep. What fertile land there was, was densely planted with corn and vegetables, mostly tomatoes, peppers and onions.

  James was surprised to see that all the farm labourers were old, in their fifties and sixties, though it was hard to tell exactly as they were so malnourished and poorly treated that they were old before their time. And, unlike the other workers on the island, only a handful of them appeared to be Mexican. They looked worn down and miserable as they toiled with bony bent backs over the crops. He was even more surprised to see that armed guards in little wooden observation towers watched them, as if they were prison labourers.

  James and his gang had come to repair some barbed-wire fencing and he had been told not to talk to the elderly labourers. He watched them as they worked on under the sun. At one point one of the workers threw down his shovel and shouted something at a guard. The guard casually strolled over and brutally clubbed him to the ground with the butt of his rifle, and after that none of the other workers looked up from what they were doing.

  At lunchtime James’s works gang was escorted to a shaded area that overlooked a wide stony riverbed. There were more old people here, digging up piles of dirt and sieving them over long, wooden waterways. They were skinny and ragged and feeble looking.

  James had made friends with an Indian called Moises, who spoke a little English and some Spanish, and he managed to ask him what they were digging for.

  ‘Oro,’ said Moises quietly, and in such a way as to let James know that he should ask no more questions.

  Oro was Spanish for gold. These wretched old skeletons were panning for gold.

  They finished work early, so that they could get back across the island before it got dark. As they strolled through the trees, James asked Moises who the people were. Moises was smoking a huge, hand-rolled cigarette, as were most of the other Indians. The path was thick with pungent smoke.

  ‘Dinari,’ said Moises.

  ‘Money?’ said James.

  ‘Sí. They have no dinari. No money. They work for El Huracán.’

  ‘What? You mean they’re guests who have run out of money…?’

  ‘Don’t talk about this,’ Moises interrupted. ‘Silencio.’ And he would say no more.

  James knew not to ask him any more questions. El Huracán’s men had mastered the art of the stone face. They would not be any help to James if he wanted to escape. They were all either fiercely loyal to their ruler, or too scared of him to say anything.

  That night, James was feeling thoroughly depressed and hopeless. A Cuban rumba band was playing in the plaza and there was a lively atmosphere. People were chatting and dancing and most were drunk. This was hardly surprising, as there was little else for anyone to do all day except drink.

  He looked around at the confident, ruthless faces of the men. If these tough criminals and gangsters couldn’t find a way off the island, then what hope did he have? He had tried asking a couple of them if they knew of any way to escape and they had just laughed in his face.

  ‘Hey, kid!’ a fat man with tiny yellow eyes was calling to him.

  He went over.

  ‘Get us a dark rum, kid, two glasses. No, better still, bring us a whole bottle.’

  ‘I’m not a waiter,’ said James.

  The man raised his eyebrows.

  ‘A little young to be a guest,’ he said.

  James shrugged. The man was sitting at a table under a grape vine with another American, a wiry man with a twitch.

  ‘Tough guy, are you?’ said the other man and again James shrugged.

  ‘Pull up a chair and join us,’ said the first man.

  James sat down. He soon found out that the men called themselves Chunks and Dum-Dum. They were both bank robbers, and they started telling him stories about their exploits in America, each trying to outdo the other. James supposed that everyone else here had already heard these stories. Soon they got on to stories about dead bodies, and the gruesome killings they had witnessed. It was obvious that they were trying to scare James, but he had seen more than most in his short life and didn’t scare easily.

  ‘But the cruellest death I ever saw,’ said Chunks, ‘was right here on Lagrimas. Guy’s name was Bobby King. Didn’t know him well. Grifter. Full of himself.’

  ‘Killed his wife,’ said Dum-Dum.

  ‘Didn’t take to life on the island,’ Chunks went on. ‘Tried to get a message out. Bribed one of the peons. The old lizard found out.’

  ‘The Hurricane finds out everything,’ said Dum-Dum. ‘You don’t get nothing past him. Eyes and ears everywhere.’

  ‘He put King in a kinda rat run,’ said Chunks. ‘La Avenida de la Muerte, he calls it, the Avenue of Death. Told him if he got to the end he was free to leave.’

  ‘Leave the island?’ said James, his interest aroused.

  ‘Sure,’ said Dum-Dum, ‘but the guy didn’t stand a chance.’ He laughed. ‘Sure was something to see. I won a stack of dough betting on how far he was gonna get. Chunks, here, he was way off. But, you see, before King went in there, we none of us knew what he was up against.’

  ‘The first thing was baby crocs,’ said Chunks. ‘Tank full of the little snappers. Boy, that was funny. You shoulda heard him yell.’

  ‘Like a baby he was,’ said Dum-Dum. ‘Yelling all the way through the scorpions and the spikes.’

  ‘Never even made it halfway through the run,’ said Chunks, sadly shaking his head. ‘I made a bad bet there.’

  ‘Ever seen a man eaten by a jaguar?’ leered Dum-Dum, leaning in close to James with wide, bloodshot eyes, and breathing alcohol fumes over him as he laughed raucously. ‘Neither had I until that day. I seen a lot a things, but I never want to see that again.’

  ‘But if he’d got to the end?’ said James.

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘El Huracán would have let him go? Is that what you’re saying? King would have been free to leave the island?’

  ‘That’s what the old lizard said. He also said that nobody had ever got to the end, so… .’

  ‘Burnt the soles right off his feet,’ said Chunks. ‘You could smell him frying.’

  ‘Tell me all about it,’ said James. ‘I want to hear exactly what he had to go through…’

  26

  A Willing Sacrifice?

  ‘This is the ball court,’ said El Huracán. ‘There are ball courts in all Mayan cities, right next to the temples. Do you know about the ancient Mayan ball game?’

  James shook his head.

  ‘They took it very seriously,’ said El Huracán. ‘It was half religious ritual, half sport. I suppose you could say the same of baseball! The ancient American civilisations had a very interesting approach to life and death and warfare. Warfare became something of a game and their games became like war.’

  It was Sunday, a day of rest, and the old Mexican was showing James around the ruins. They were fenced off and out of bounds to the ‘guests’, but he seemed proud of them and was happy to show them off to James. Enough of them were still standing to give an idea of what the
place had once been like and James pretended to be interested in order to get a better look at the rat run.

  ‘For the Mayans,’ said El Huracán, settling down on the stepped seating that surrounded the court, ‘the aim of warfare was not to kill men but to capture them. The greatest warrior was the one who could catch the most enemies. The prisoners would then be brought back to the city and taken to the temple, where they would have their living heart torn out of their chests by a priest, as an offering to the ever-hungry gods.

  ‘The ball game was a religious ceremony played in their honour. There were games at every religious event. Sometimes the players would be captured slaves, but not always. The aim of the game was to keep a ball bouncing against the sides of the court and not let it fall into the middle.

  ‘The players were not allowed to use their hands or feet to touch the ball, which was heavy and made of solid rubber. Instead, they used their hips, chests, shoulders and knees, and they protected their bodies with padding.

  ‘They had to keep the ball moving at all times,’ El Huracán went on, ‘as it represented the sun moving across the skies. Do you see those stone rings set high up on the walls?’

  James nodded.

  ‘The players had to try and pass the ball through them. Not easy if you cannot kick it or throw it. The losing team in a game would often be beheaded. So you see, James, you must take your sport seriously.’

  El Huracán laughed and slapped James on the back. Then he got up and led James over towards the pyramid base.

  ‘Even the gods played the ball game,’ he said. ‘It was central to the Mayan way of life. Have you ever heard about the Hero Twins?’

  ‘No,’ said James.

  ‘Perhaps one day I will tell you about them.’

  They had arrived at the flattened pyramid in which El Huracán had built the start of his run. James could see it snaking through the stones at their feet and leading away towards the second, smaller pyramid.

  ‘This building was once much taller,’ said El Huracán. ‘Many layers have been removed. In the past there would have been steps leading right up into the sky.’