The Codex

28

Marcus Aurelius Hauser examined his white shirtfront, and, finding a small beetle making its laborious way up it, he plucked it off, crushed it between spatulate thumb and forefinger with a satisfying chitinous crackle, and tossed it away. He turned his attention back to Philip Broadbent. All that archness, that fey effeteness, was gone. Philip squatted on the ground, shackled hand and foot, filthy, bug bitten, unshaven. It was disgraceful how some people just could not maintain their personal hygiene in the jungle.

He glanced over to where the guide, Orlando Ocotal, was being held by three of his soldiers. Ocotal had caused him considerable trouble. He had almost made good his escape, which Hauser had only prevented by the most dogged pursuit. A whole day had been wasted. Ocotal’s fatal flaw had been in assuming a gringo, a yanqui, would not be able to track him in the swamp. He evidently hadn’t heard of a place called Vietnam.

So much the better. Now it was out in the open. They were almost through the swamp anyway, and Ocotal had outlived his usefulness. The lesson he would teach Ocotal would be a good one for Philip, too.

Hauser inhaled the fecund jungle air. “Do you remember, Philip, when we were packing the boats? You wanted to know what we were going to do with these manacles and chains?”

Philip did not answer.

Hauser remembered how he had explained that the manacles were an important psychological tool to manage the soldiers, a sort of portable brig. Of course, he would never actually use them. “Now you know,” Hauser said. “They were for you.”

“Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with?”

“All in good time. One doesn’t kill the last in the family line lightly.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Delighted you asked. Shortly I’ll be taking care of your two brothers, who are behind us in the swamp. When the last of the Broadbent line has been made extinct, I will take what is mine.”

“You’re a psychopath.”

“I am a rational human addressing a great wrong that was once done to me, thank you.”

“What wrong is this?”

“Your father and I were partners. He deprived me of my share of the loot from his first big discovery.”

“That was forty years ago.”

“Which only compounds the crime. While I struggled for forty years to make a living, your father bathed in luxury.”

Philip struggled, rattling his chains.

“How wonderful is the turn of the wheel. Forty years ago your father cheated me out of a fortune. I went on to a lovely place called Vietnam while he went on to riches. Now I stand to gain it all back and more. The irony of it is delicious. And to think, Philip, you brought me this on a silver platter.”

Philip said nothing.

Hauser inhaled again. He loved the heat and he loved the air. He never felt so healthy and alive as in the jungle. All that was missing was the faint perfume of napalm. He turned to one of the soldiers. “Now we will do Ocotal. Come, Philip, you won’t want to miss this.”

The two dugouts were already packed, and the soldiers shoved Ocotal and Philip into one. The soldiers fired up the engines, and they headed into the maze of pools and side channels at the far end of the lake. Hauser stood in the bow keeping an eye out.

“That way.”

The boats motored on until they came to a stagnant pool, cut off from the main channel by the lowering water. The piranhas, Hauser knew, had been concentrated in the pool by the subsiding water. Long ago they had eaten all the available food and were now eating each other. Woe to any animal that blundered into one of those stagnant pools.

“Cut the engine. Drop anchor.”

The engines sputtered off, and the ensuing silence was broken only by the two soft splashes of the rock anchors.

Hauser turned and looked at Ocotal. This was going to be interesting.

“Stand him up.”

The soldiers pulled Ocotal to his feet. Hauser took a step forward and gazed on his face. The Indian, dressed in a Western shirt and shorts, was straight and cool. His eyes showed neither fear nor hatred. This Tawahka Indian, Hauser thought, had proven to be one of those unfortunate people motivated by superannuated notions of honor and loyalty. Hauser disliked such people. They were unreliable and inflexible. Max had also proven to be a person like that.

“Well, Don Orlando,” Hauser said, giving the honorific an ironic emphasis. “Have you anything to say for yourself?”

The Indian gazed at him unblinkingly.

Hauser removed his pocketknife. “Hold him tight.”

The soldiers grasped him. His hands were tied behind his back, and his feet were loosely tied together.

Hauser opened the little knife and sharpened the blade on a whetstone with a quick zing, zing. He tested it against his thumb and smiled. Then he reached out and scored a long cut across Ocotal’s chest, cutting through the fabric of his shirt to his skin below. It wasn’t a deep cut, but the blood began to run, turning the khaki black.

The Indian did not even flinch.

He made a second shallow cut on the shoulders, and two more cuts on the arms and back. Still the Indian showed nothing. Hauser was impressed. He hadn’t seen such stamina since his days questioning captured Viet Cong.

“Give the blood a little time to flow,” he said.

They waited. The shirt darkened with blood. A bird screamed somewhere in the depths of the trees.

“Throw him in.”

The three solders gave him a shove, and he went over the side. After the splash there was a moment of calm, and then the water began to swirl, slowly at first, and then with more agitation, until the pool seethed. There were flashes of silver in the brown water like fluttering coins, until a red cloud billowed up, turning the water opaque. Tatters of khaki cloth and strings of flesh rose to the surface and bobbed on the chop.

The boiling went on for a good five minutes before it finally began to subside. Hauser was pleased. He turned to see Philip’s reaction and was gratified by it.

Very gratified indeed.