The Vivero Letter

I

Mexico City was hot and frenetic with Olympic Gamesmanship. The hotels were stuffed to bursting, but fortunately Fallon owned a country house just outside the city which we made our headquarters. The Halsteads also had their home in Mexico City but they were more often than not at Fallon’s private palace.

I must say that when Fallon decided to move he moved fast. Like a good general, he marshalled his army close to the point of impact; he spent a small fortune on telephone calls and the end result was a concentration of forces in Mexico City. I had a fast decision to make, too; my job was a good one and I hated to give it up unceremoniously, but Fallon was pushing hard. I saw my boss and told him of Bob’s death and he was good enough to give me six months’ leave of absence. I bore down heavily on the farm management, so I suppose I deceived him in a way, yet I think that going to Yucatán could be construed as looking after Bob’s estate.

Fallon also used the resources that only money can buy. ‘Big corporations have security problems,’ he said. ‘So they run their own security outfits. They’re as good as the police any time, and better in most cases. The pay is higher. I’m having Niscemi checked out independently.’

The thought of it made me a bit dizzy. Like most people, I’d thought of millionaires as just people who have a lot of money but I hadn’t gone beyond that to the power and influence that money makes possible. That a man was able to lift a telephone and set a private police force in motion made me open my eyes and think again.

Fallon’s house, was big and cool, set in forty acres of manicured grounds. It was quiet with unobtrusive service, which clicked into action as soon as the master set foot in it. Soft-footed servants were there when you wanted them and absent when not needed and I settled into sybaritic luxury without a qualm.

Fallon’s tray had not yet come from New York, much to his annoyance, and he spent a lot of time arguing the archeological toss with Halstead. I was pleased to see that loss of temper was now confined to professional matters and did not take such a personal turn. I think much of that was due to Katherine Halstead, who kept her husband on a tight rein.

The morning after we arrived they were at it hammer and tongs. ‘I think old Vivero was a damned liar,’ said Halstead.

‘Of course he was,’ said Fallon crossly. ‘But that’s not the point at issue here. He says he was taken to Chichén Itzá...’

‘And I say he couldn’t have been. The New Empire had fallen apart long before that — Chichén Itzá was abandoned when Hunac Ceel drove out the Itzás. It was a dead city.’

Fallon made an impatient noise. ‘Don’t look at it from your viewpoint; see it as Vivero saw it. Here was an averagely ignorant Spanish soldier without the benefit of the hindsight we have. He says he was taken to Chichén Itzá — he actually names it, and Chichén Itzá is only one of two names he gives in the manuscript. He didn’t give a damn whether you think Chichén Itzá was occupied — he was taken there and he said so.’ He stopped short. ‘Of course, if you are right, it means that the Vivero letter is a modern fake, and we’re all up the creek.’

‘I don’t think it’s a fake,’ said Halstead. ‘I just think that Vivero was a congenital liar.’

‘I don’t think it’s a fake, either,’ said Fallon. ‘I had it authenticated.’ He crossed the room and pulled open a drawer. ‘Here’s the report on it.’

He gave it to Halstead, who scanned through it and dropped it on the table. I picked it up and found a lot of tables and graphs, but the meat was on the last page under the heading Conclusions. ‘The document appears to be authentic as to period, being early sixteenth-century Spanish. The condition is poor — the parchment being of poor quality and, perhaps, of faulty manufacture originally. A radio-carbon dating test gives a date of 1534 A.D. with an error of plus or minus fifteen years. The ink shows certain peculiarities of composition but is undoubtedly of the same period as the parchment as demonstrated by radiocarbon testing. An exhaustive linguistic analysis displays no deviation from the norm of the sixteenth century Spanish language. While we refrain from judgement on the content of this document there is no sign from the internal evidence of the manuscript that the document is other than it purports to be.’

I thought of Vivero curing his own animal skins and making his own ink — it all fitted in. Katherine Halstead stretched out her hand and I gave her the report, then turned my attention back to the argument.

‘I think you’re wrong, Paul,’ Fallon was saying. ‘Chichén Itzá was never wholly abandoned until much later. It was a religious centre even after the Spaniards arrived. What about the assassination of Ah Dzun Kiu? — that was in 1536, no less than nine years after Vivero was captured.’

‘Who the devil was he?’ I asked.

‘The chief of the Tutal Kiu. He organized a pilgrimage to Chichén Itzá to appease the gods; all the pilgrims were massacred by Nachi Cocom, his archenemy. But all that is immaterial — what matters is that we know when it happened, and that it’s consistent with Vivero’s claim to have been taken to Chichén Itzá — a claim which Paul disputes.’

‘All right. I grant you that one.’ said Halstead. ‘But there’s a lot more about the letter that doesn’t add up.’

I left them to their argument and walked over to the window. In the distance light reflected blindingly from the water of a swimming pool. I glanced at Katherine Halstead. ‘I’m no good at this sort of logic chopping,’ I said. ‘It’s beyond me.’

‘It’s over my head, too,’ she admitted. ‘I’m not an archeologist; I only know what I’ve picked up from Paul by a sort of osmosis.’

I looked across at the swimming pool again — it looked very inviting. ‘What about a swim?’ I suggested. ‘I have some gear I want to test, and I’d like some company.’

She brightened. ‘That’s a good idea. I’ll meet you out there in ten minutes.’

I went up to my room and changed into trunks, then unpacked my scuba gear and took it down to the pool. I had brought it with me because I thought there might be a chance of getting in some swimming in the Caribbean somewhere along the line and I wasn’t going to pass up that chance. I had only swum in clear water once before, in the Mediterranean.

Mr.s Halstead was already at the pool, looking very fetching in a one-piece suit. I dumped the steel bottles and the harness by the side of the pool and walked over to where she was sitting. A flunkey in white coat appeared from nowhere and said something fast and staccato in Spanish, and I shrugged helplessly and appealed to her. ‘What’s he saying?’

She laughed. ‘He wants to know if we’d like something to drink.’

‘That’s not a bad idea. Something long and cold with alcohol in it.’

‘I’ll join you.’ She rattled away in Spanish at the servant who went away. Then she said. ‘I haven’t thanked you for what you’ve done for Paul, Mr. Wheale. Everything has happened so quickly — I really haven’t had time to think.’

‘There’s nothing to thank me for,’ I said. ‘He just got his due.’ I refrained from saying that the real reason I had brought Halstead into it was to keep him close where I could watch him. I wasn’t too happy about husband Paul; he was too free with his accusations and his temper was trigger-quick. Somebody had been with Niscemi when Bob had been killed and though it couldn’t have been Halstead that didn’t mean he had nothing to do with it. I smiled pleasantly at his wife. ‘Nothing to it,’ I said.

‘I think it was very generous — considering the way he behaved.’ She looked at me steadily. ‘Don’t take any notice of him if he becomes bad-tempered again. He’s had... had disappointments. This is his big chance and it plays on his nerves.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said soothingly. Privately I was certain that if Halstead became unpleasant he would get a quick bust on the snoot. If I didn’t sock him then Fallon would, old as he was. It would be better if I did it, being neutral, then this silly expedition would be in less danger of breaking up.

The drinks arrived — a whitish concoction in tall frosted glasses with ice tinkling like silver bells. I don’t know what it was but it tasted cool and soothing. Mr.s Halstead looked pensive. She sipped from her glass, then said tentatively, ‘When do you think you will leave for Yucatán?’

‘Don’t ask me. It depends on the experts up there.’ I jerked my head towards the house. ‘We still don’t know where we’re going yet.’

‘Do you think the trays have a riddle — and that we can solve it?’

‘They have — and we will,’ I said economically. I didn’t tell her I thought I had the solution already. There was an awful lot I wasn’t telling Mr.s Halstead — or anybody else.

She said, ‘What do you think Fallon’s attitude would be if I suggested going with you to Yucatán?’

I laughed. ‘He’d blow his top. You wouldn’t have a chance.’

She leaned forward and said seriously, ‘It might be better if I went. I’m afraid for Paul.’

‘Meaning what?’

She made a fluttery gesture with her hand. ‘I’m not the catty kind of woman who makes derogatory statements about her own husband to other men,’ she said. ‘But Paul is not an ordinary man. There is a lot of violence in him which he can’t control — alone. If I’m with him I can talk to him: make him see things in a different way. I wouldn’t be a drag on you — I’ve been on field trips before.’

She talked as though Halstead were some kind of a lunatic needing a nurse around him all the time. I began to wonder about the relationship between these two; some marriages are awfully funny arrangements.

She said. ‘Fallon would agree if you put it to him. You could make him.’

I grimaced. ‘I’ve already twisted his arm once. I don’t think I could do it again. Fallon isn’t the man who likes to be pushed around.’ I took another pull at the drink and felt the coolness at the back of my throat. ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said finally.

But I knew then that I’d put the proposition to Fallon — and make him like it. There was something about Katherine Halstead that got at me, something I hadn’t felt about a woman for many years. Whatever it was. I’d better keep it bottled up, this was no time for playing around with a married woman — especially one married to a man like Paul Halstead.

‘Let’s see what the water’s like,’ I suggested, and got up and walked to the edge of the pool.

She followed me. ‘What have you brought that for?’ she asked, indicating the scuba gear.

I told her, then said. ‘I haven’t used it for quite some time so I thought I’d check it. Have you done any scuba diving?’

‘Lots of times,’ she said. ‘I spent a summer in the Bahamas once, and spent nearly every day in the water. It’s great fun.’

I agreed and settled down to checking the valves. I found that everything was working and put on the harness. As I was swilling the mask out with water she dived into the pool cleanly, surfaced and splashed at me. ‘Come in,’ she called.

‘Don’t tell me — the water’s fine.’ I sat on the edge of the pool and flopped in — you don’t dive with bottles on your back. As usual, I found it difficult to get into the correct rhythm of breathing; it’s something that requires practice and I was short of that. Because the demand valve is higher in the water than the lungs there is a difference of pressure to be overcome which is awkward at first. Then you have to breathe so as to be economical of air and that is a knack some divers never find. But pretty soon I had got it and was breathing in the irregular rhythm which feels, at first, so unnatural.

I swam around at the bottom of the pool and made a mental note to change the belt weights. I had put on a little flesh since the last time I wore the harness and it made a difference to flotation. Above, I could see Katherine Halstead’s sun-tanned limbs and I shot upwards with a kick of the flippers and grabbed her ankles. As I pulled her under I saw the air dribbling evenly from her mouth in a regular line of bubbles rising to the surface. If I had surprised her it certainly didn’t show; she had had sense enough not to gasp the air from her lungs.

She jack-knifed suddenly and her hands were on my air pipe. With a sudden twitch she pulled the mouthpiece away and I swallowed water and let go of her ankles. I rose to the surface gasping and treading water to find her laughing at me. I spluttered a bit and said, ‘Where did you learn that trick?’

‘The beach-bums in the Bahamas play rough,’ she said. ‘A girl learns to look after herself.’

‘I’m going down again,’ I said. ‘I’m out of practice.’

‘There’ll be another drink waiting when you come out,’ she said.

I dropped to the bottom of the pool again and went through my little repertoire of tricks — taking the mouthpiece out and letting the pipe fill with water and then clearing it, taking the mask off and, finally, taking off the whole harness and climbing into it again. This wasn’t just a silly game; at one time or another I’d had to do every one of those things at a time when it would have been positively dangerous not to have been able to do them. Water at any depth is not man’s natural element and the man who survives is the man who can get himself out of trouble.

I had been down about fifteen minutes when I heard a noise. I looked up and saw a splashing so I popped to the surface to see what was going on. Mr.s Halstead had been smacking the water with the palm of her hand, and Fallon stood behind her. I climbed out, and he said, ‘My tray has arrived — now we can compare them.’

I shucked off the harness and dropped the weight belt. ‘I’ll be up as soon as I’ve dried off.’

He regarded the scuba gear curiously. ‘Can you use that — at depth?’

‘It depends on what depth,’ I said cautiously. ‘The deepest I’ve been is a little over a hundred and twenty feet.’

‘That would probably be enough,’ he said. ‘You might come in useful after all, Wheale; we might have to explore a cenote.’ He dismissed the subject abruptly. ‘Be as quick as you can.’

Near the pool was a long cabin which proved to be changerooms. I showered and dried off, put on a terry-towelling gown and went up to the house. As I walked in through the French windows Fallon was saying ‘...thought it was in the vine leaves so I gave it to a cryptographer. It could be the number of veins on a leaf or the angle of the leaves to the stem or any combination of such things. Well, the guy did a run-through and put the results through a computer and came up with nothing.’

It was an ingenious idea and completely wrong. I joined the group around the table and looked down at the two trays. Fallon said, ‘Now we’ve got two trays, so we’ll have to go through the whole thing again. Vivero might have alternated his message between them.’

I said casually, ‘What trays?’

Halstead jerked up his head and Fallon turned and looked at me blankly. ‘Why, these two here.’

I looked at the table. ‘I don’t see any trays.’

Fallon looked baffled and began to gobble. ‘Are... are you nuts? What the hell do you think these are? Flying saucers?’

Halstead looked at me irefully. ‘Let’s not have any games,’ he said. ‘Murville called this one a tray, Juan de Vivero called that one a tray, and so did Goosan in his letter to Herrick.’

‘I don’t give a damn about that,’ I said frankly. ‘If everyone calls a submarine an aeroplane, it still can’t fly. Old Vivero didn’t call them trays and he made them. He didn’t say, “Here, boys, I’m sending you a couple of nice trays.” Let’s see what he did say. Where’s the transcription?’

There was a glint in Fallon’s eye as he held out the sheaf of papers which were never far from him. ‘You’d better make this good.’

I flipped the sheets over to the last page. ‘He said, “I send you gifts made in that marvellous manner which my father learned of that stranger from the East.” He also said, “Let the scales of enmity fall from your eyes and look upon these gifts with proper vision.” Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

‘Not much,’ said Halstead.

‘These are mirrors,’ I said calmly. ‘And just because everyone has been using them as trays doesn’t alter the fact.’

Halstead made a sound of irritation, but Fallon bent and examined them. I said, ‘The bottom of that “tray” isn’t copper — it’s speculum metal — a reflective surface and it’s slightly convex; I’ve measured it.’

‘You could be right at that,’ said Fallon. ‘So they’re mirrors! Where does that get us?’

‘Take a closer look,’ I advised.

Fallon picked up one of the mirrors and Halstead took the other. After a while Halstead said, ‘I don’t see anything except the reflection of my own face.’

‘I don’t do much better,’ said Fallon. ‘And it’s not a good reflective surface, either.’

‘What do you expect of a metal mirror that’s had things dumped on it for the last four hundred years? But it’s a neat trick, and I only came upon it by accident. Have you got a projection screen?’

Fallon smiled. ‘Better than that — I have a projection theatre.’

He would have! Nothing small about millionaire Fallon. He led us into a part of the house where I had never been, and into a miniature cinema containing about twenty seats. ‘I find this handy for giving informal lectures,’ he said.

I looked around. ‘Where’s the slide projector?’

‘In the projection room — back there.’

‘I’ll want it out here,’ I said.

He looked at me speculatively, and shrugged. ‘Okay, I’ll have it brought in.’

There was a pause of about ten minutes while a couple of his servants brought in the projector and set it on a table in the middle of the room, acting under my instructions. Fallon looked interested; Halstead looked bored; Mr.s Halstead looked beautiful. I winked at her. ‘We’re going to have a fine show,’ I said. ‘Will you hold this mirror, Mr.s Halstead?’

I puttered around with the projector. ‘I’m using this as a very powerful spotlight,’ I said. ‘And I’m going to bounce light off the mirror and on to that screen up there. Tell me what you see.’

I switched on the projector light and there was a sharp intake of breath from Fallon, while Halstead lost his boredom in a hurry and practically snapped to attention. I turned and looked at the pattern on the screen. ‘What do you think it is?’ I asked. ‘It’s a bit vague, but I think it’s a map.’

Fallon said, ‘What the hell! How does it...? Oh, never mind. Can you rotate that thing a bit, Mr.s Halstead?’

The luminous pattern on the screen twisted and flowed, then steadied in a new orientation. Fallon clicked his tongue. ‘I think you’re right — it is a map. If that indentation on the bottom right is Chetumal Bay — and it’s the right shape — then above it we have the bays of Espiritu Santo and Ascension. That makes it the west coast of the Yucatán Peninsula.’

Halstead said. ‘What’s that circle in the middle?’

‘We’ll come to that in a minute,’ I said, and switched off the light. Fallon bent down and looked at the mirror still held by Mr.s Halstead and shook his head incredulously. He looked at me enquiringly, and I said, ‘I came across this bit of trickery by chance. I was taking photographs of my tray — or mirror — and I was a bit ham-handed; I touched the shutter button by accident and the flash went off. When I developed the picture I found that I’d got a bit of the mirror in the frame but most of the picture was an area of wall. The light from the flash had bounced off the mirror and there was something bloody funny about its reflection on the wall, so I went into it a bit deeper.’

Halstead took the mirror from his wife. ‘This is impossible. How can a reflection from a plane surface show a selectively variable pattern?’ He held up the mirror and moved it before his eyes. ‘There’s nothing here that shows.’

‘It’s not a plane mirror — it’s slightly convex. I measured it; it has a radius of convexity of about ten feet. This is a Chinese trick.’

‘Chinese!’

‘Old Vivero said as much. “...that stranger from the East which the Moors brought to Cordoba.” He was Chinese. That stumped me for a bit — what the hell was a Chinaman doing in Spain in the late fifteenth century? But it’s not too odd, if you think about it. The Arab Empire stretched from Spain to India; it’s not too difficult to imagine a Chinese metal worker being passed along the line. After all, there were Europeans in China at that date.’

Fallon nodded. ‘It’s a plausible theory.’ He tapped the mirror. ‘But how the hell is this thing done?’

‘I was lucky,’ I said. ‘I went to the Torquay Public Library and there it was, all laid out in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I was fortunate that the Torquay Library is a bit old-fashioned because that particular item was dropped from later editions.’

I took the mirror from Halstead and laid it flat on the table. ‘This is how it works. Forget the gold trimmings and concentrate on the mirror itself. All early Chinese mirrors were of metal, usually cast of bronze. Cast metal doesn’t give a good reflective surface so it had to be worked on with scrapers to give a smooth finish. Generally, the scraping was done from the centre to the edge and that gave the finished mirror its slight convexity.’

Fallon took a pen from his pocket and applied it to the mirror, imitating the action of scraping. He nodded and said briefly, ‘Go on.’

I said, ‘After a while the mirrors began to become more elaborate. They were expensive to make and the manufacturers began to pretty them up a bit. One way of doing this was to put ornamentation on the back of the mirror. Usually it was a saying of Buddha cast in raised characters. Now, consider what might happen when such a mirror was scraped. It would be lying on its back on a solid surface, but only the raised characters would be in contact with that surface — the rest of the mirror would be supported by nothing. When scraper pressure was applied the unsupported parts would give a little and a fraction more metal would be removed over the supported parts.’

‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ said Fallon. ‘And that makes the difference?’

‘In general you have a convex mirror which tends to diffuse reflected light,’ I said. ‘But you have plane bits where the characters are which reflects light in parallel lines. The convexity is so small that the difference can’t be seen by the eye, but the short wavelengths of light show it up in the reflection.’

‘When did the Chinese find out about this?’ queried Fallon.

‘Some time in the eleventh century. It was accidental at first, but later they began to exploit it deliberately. Then they came up with the composite mirror — the back would still have a saying of Buddha, but the mirror would reflect something completely different. There’s one in the Ashmolean in Oxford — the back says “Adoration for Amida Buddha” and the reflection shows Buddha himself. It was just a matter of putting a false back on the mirror, as Vivero has done here.’

Halstead turned over the mirror and tapped the gold back experimentally. ‘So under here there’s a map cast in the bronze?’

‘That’s it. I rather think Vivero re-invented the composite mirror. There are only three examples known; the one in the Ashmolean, another in the British Museum, and one somewhere in Germany.’

‘How do we get the back off?’

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I’m not having that mirror ruined. If you rub a mercury amalgam into the mirror surface it improves the reflection a hundred per cent. But a better way would be to X-ray them.’

‘I’ll arrange it,’ said Fallon decisively. ‘In the meantime we’ll have another look. Switch on that projector.’

I snapped on the light and we studied the vague luminous lines on the screen. After a while Fallon said, ‘It sure looks like the coast of Quintana Roo. We can check it against a map.’

‘Aren’t those words around the edge?’ asked Katherine Halstead.

I strained my eyes but it was a bit of a blurred mish-mash nothing was clear. ‘Might be,’ I said doubtfully.

‘And there’s that circle in the middle,’ said Paul Halstead. ‘What’s that?’

‘I think I’ve solved that one,’ I said. ‘Old Vivero wanted to reconcile his sons, so he gave them each a mirror. The puzzle can only be solved by using both mirrors. This one gives a general view, locating the area, and I’ll lay ten to one that the other mirror gives a blown-up view of what’s in that little circle. Each mirror would be pretty useless on its own.’

‘We’ll check on that,’ said Fallon. ‘Where’s my mirror?’

The two mirrors were exchanged and we looked at the new pattern. It didn’t mean much to me, nor to anyone else. ‘It’s not clear enough,’ complained Fallon. ‘I’ll go blind if we have much more of this.’

‘It’s been knocked about after four hundred years,’ I said. ‘But the pattern on the back has been protected. I think that X-rays should give us an excellent picture.’

‘I’ll have it done as soon as possible.’

I turned off the light and found Fallon dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. He smiled at me. ‘You’re paying your way, Wheale,’ he said. ‘We might not have found this.’

‘You would have found it,’ I said positively. ‘As soon as your cryptographer had given up in disgust you’d have started to wonder about this and that — such as what was concealed in the bronze-gold interface. What puzzles me is why Vivero’s sons didn’t do anything about it.’

Halstead said thoughtfully, ‘Both branches of the family regarded these things as trays and not mirrors. Perhaps Vivero’s rather obscure tip-off just went over their heads. They may have been told the story of the Chinese mirrors as children, when they were too young to really understand.’

‘Could be,’ agreed Fallon. ‘It could also be that the quarrel between them — whatever it was — couldn’t be reconciled so easily. Anyway, they didn’t do anything about it. The Spanish branch lost their mirror and to the Mexican branch it was reduced to some kind of a legend.’ He put his hands on the mirror possessively. ‘But we’ve got them now — that’s different.’

II

Looking back, I think it was about this time that Fallon began to lose his grip. One day he went into the city and when he came back he was gloomy and very thoughtful, and from that day on he was given to sudden silences and fits of absent-mindedness. I put it down to the worries of a millionaire — maybe the stock market had dropped or something like that — and I didn’t think much about it at the time. Whatever it was it certainly didn’t hamper his planning of the Uaxuanoc expedition into which he threw himself with a demoniac energy. I thought it strange that he should be devoting all his time to this; surely a millionaire must look after his financial interests — but Fallon wasn’t worried about anything else but Uaxuanoc and whatever else it was that had made him go broody.

It was in the same week that I met Pat Harris. Fallon called me into his study, and said, ‘I want you to meet Pat Harris — I borrowed him from an oil company I have an interest in. I’m fulfilling my part of the bargain; Harris has been investigating Niscemi.’

I regarded Harris with interest although, on the surface, there was little about him to excite it. He was average in every way; not too tall, not too short, not too beefy and not too scrawny. He wore an average suit and looked the perfect average man. He might have been designed by a statistician. He had a more than average brain — but that didn’t show.

He held out his hand. ‘Glad to meet you, Mr. Wheale,’ he said in a colourless voice.

‘Tell Wheale what you found,’ ordered Fallon.

Harris clasped his hands in front of his average American paunch. ‘Victor Niscemi — small time punk,’ he said concisely. ‘Not much to say about him. He never was much and he never did much — except get himself rubbed out in England. Reform school education leading to bigger things — but not much bigger. Did time for rolling drunks but that was quite a while ago. Nothing on him in the last four years; he never appeared on a police blotter, I mean. Clean as a whistle as far as his police record goes.’

‘That’s his official police record, I take it. What about unofficially?’

Harris looked up at me approvingly. ‘That’s a different matter, of course,’ he agreed. ‘For a while he did protection for a bookie, then he got into the numbers racket — first as protection for a collector, then as collector himself. He was on his way up in a small way. Then he went to England and got himself shot up. End of Niscemi.’

‘And that’s all?’

‘Not by a hell of a long way,’ said Fallon abruptly.

‘Go on, Harris.’

Harris moved in his chair and suddenly looked more relaxed. ‘There’s a thing you’ve got to remember about a guy like Niscemi — he has friends. Take a look at his record; reform school, petty assault and so on. Then suddenly, four years ago, no more police record. He was still a criminal and still small time, but he no longer got into trouble. He’d acquired friends.’

‘Who were...?’

‘Mr. Wheale, you’re English and maybe you don’t have the problems we have in the States, so what I’m going to tell you now might seem extraordinary. You’ll just have to take my word for it. Okay?’

I smiled. ‘After meeting Mr. Fallon there’s very little I’ll find unbelievable.’

‘All right. I’m interested in the weapon with which Niscemi killed your brother. Can you describe it?’

‘It was a sawn-off shotgun,’ I said.

‘And the butt was cut down. Right?’ I nodded. ‘That was a lupara; it’s an Italian word and Niscemi was of Italian origin or, more precisely, Sicilian. About four years ago Niscemi was taken into the Organization. Organized crime is one of the worse facts of life in the United States, Mr. Wheale; and it’s mostly run by Italian Americans. It goes under many names — the Organization, the Syndicate, Cosa Nostra, the Mafia — although Mafia should strictly be reserved for the parent organization in Sicily.’

I looked at Harris uncertainly. ‘Are you trying to tell me that the Mafia — the Mafia, for God’s sake! — had my brother killed?’

‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘I think Niscemi slipped up there. He certainly slipped up when he got himself killed. But I’d better describe what goes on with young punks like Niscemi when they’re recruited into the Organization. The first thing he’s told is to keep his nose clean — he keeps out of the way of the cops and he does what his capo — his boss — tells him, and nothing else. That’s important, and it explains why Niscemi suddenly stopped figuring on the police blotter.’ Harris pointed a finger at me. ‘But it works the other way round, too. If Niscemi was up to no good with regard to your brother it certainly meant that he was acting under orders. The Organization doesn’t stand for members who go in to bat on their own account.’

‘So he was sent?’

‘There’s a ninety-nine per cent probability that he was.’

This was beyond me and I couldn’t quite believe it. I turned to Fallon. ‘I believe you said that Mr. Harris is an employee of an oil company. What qualifications has he for assuming all this?’

‘Harris was in the F.B.I.,’ said Fallon.

‘For fifteen years,’ said Harris. ‘I thought you might find this extraordinary.’

‘I do,’ I said briefly, and thought about it. ‘Where did you get this information about Niscemi?’

‘From the Detroit police — that was his stamping-ground.’

I said, ‘Scotland Yard is interested in this. Are the American police collaborating with them?’

Harris smiled tolerantly. ‘In spite of all the sensational stuff about Interpol there’s not much that can be done in a case like this. Who are they going to nail for the job? The American law authorities are just glad to have got Niscemi out of their hair, and he was only small time, anyway.’ He grinned and came up with an unexpected and parodied quotation. ‘“It was in another country and, besides, the guy is dead.”’

Fallon said, ‘It goes much further than this. Harris is not finished yet’

‘Okay,’ said Harris. ‘We now come to the questions: Who sent Niscemi to England — and why? Niscemi’s capo is Jack Gatt, but Jack might have been doing some other capo a favour. However, I don’t think so.’

‘Gatt!’ I blurted out ‘He was in England at the time of my brother’s death.’

Harris shook his head. ‘No, he wasn’t. I checked him out on that. On the day your brother died he was in New York.’

‘But he wanted to buy something from Bob,’ I said. ‘He made an offer in the presence of witnesses. He was in England.’

‘Air travel is wonderful,’ said Harris. ‘You can leave London at nine a.m. and arrive in New York at eleven-thirty a.m. — local time. Gatt certainly didn’t kill your brother.’ He pursed his lips, then added, ‘Not personally.’

‘Who — and what — is he?’

‘Top of the heap in Detroit,’ said Harris promptly. ‘Covers Michigan and a big slice of Ohio. Original name, Giacomo Gattini — Americanized to Jack Gatt. He doesn’t stand very tall in the Organization, but he’s a capo and that makes him important.’

‘I think you’d better explain that.’

‘Well, the Organization controls crime, but it’s not a centralized business like, say, General Motors. It’s pretty loose, in fact; so loose that sometimes pieces of it conflict with each other. That’s called a gang war. But they’re bad for business, attract too much attention from the cops, so once in a while all the capos get together in a council, a sort of board meeting, to iron out their difficulties. They allocate territory, slap down the hotheads and decide when and how to enforce the rules.’

This was the raw and primitive world that had intruded on Hay Tree Farm, so far away in Devon. I said, ‘How do they do that?’

Harris shrugged. ‘Suppose a capo like Gatt decided to ignore the top bosses and go it on his own. Pretty soon a young punk like Niscemi would blow into town, knock off Gatt and scram. If he failed then another would try it and, sooner or later, one would succeed. Gatt knows that, so he doesn’t break the rules. But, while he keeps to the rules, he’s capo — king in his own territory.’

‘I see. But why should Gatt go to England?’

‘Ah,’ said Harris. ‘Now we’re coming to the meat of it. Let’s take a good look at Jack Gatt This is a third-generation American mafioso. He’s no newly arrived Siciliano peasant who can’t speak English, nor is he a half-educated tough bum like Capone. Jack’s got civilization; Jack’s got culture. His daughter is at finishing school in Switzerland; one son is at a good college in the east and the other runs his own business — a legitimate business. Jack goes to the opera and ballet; in fact I hear that he’s pretty near the sole support of one ballet group. He collects pictures, and when I say collects I don’t mean that he steals them. He puts up bids at the Parke-Bernet Gallery in New York like any other millionaire, and he does the same at Sotheby’s and Christie’s in England. He has a good-looking wife and a fine house, mixes in the best society and cuts a fine figure among the best people, none of whom know that he’s anything other than a legitimate businessman. He’s that, too, of course; I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t one of your biggest shareholders, Mr. Fallon.’

‘I’ll check on it,’ said Fallon sourly. ‘And how does he derive his main income? The illegitimate part?’

‘Gambling, drugs, prostitution, extortion, protection,’ reeled off Harris glibly. ‘And any combination or permutation. Jack’s come up with some real dillies.’

‘My God!’ said Fallon.

‘That’s as maybe,’ I said. ‘But how did Niscemi suddenly pitch up at the farm? The photograph of the tray only appeared in the Press a few days before. How did Gatt get on to it so fast?’

Harris hesitated and looked at Fallon enquiringly. Fallon said glumly, ‘You might as well have the whole story. I was upset at Halstead’s accusation that I stole the Vivero letter from him, so I put Harris on to checking it.’ He nodded to Harris.

‘Gatt had men following Mr. Fallon and probably Halstead, too,’ said Harris. ‘This is how it came about.

‘Halstead did have the Vivero letter before Mr. Fallon. He bought it here in Mexico for $200. Then he took it home to the States — he lived in Virginia at the time — and his house was burgled. The letter was one of the things that were stolen.’ He put the tips of his fingers together and said. ‘The way I see it, the Vivero letter was taken by sheer chance. It was in a locked briefcase that was taken with the other stuff.’

‘What other stuff?’ I asked.

‘Household goods. TV set, radios, a watch, some clothing and a little money.’

Fallon cocked a sardonic eye at me. ‘Can you see me interested in second-hand clothing?’

‘I think it was a job done by a small-time crook,’ said Harris. ‘The easily saleable stuff would be got rid of fast — there are plenty of unscrupulous dealers who’d take it. I daresay the thief was disappointed by the contents of the briefcase.’

‘But it got to the right man — Gerryson,’ I said. ‘How did he get hold of it?’

‘I wondered about that myself,’ said Harris. ‘And I gave Gerryson a thorough going-over. His reputation isn’t too good; the New York cops are pretty sure he’s a high-class fence. One curious thing turned up — he’s friendly with Jack Gatt. He stays at Jack’s house when he’s in Detroit.’

He leaned forward. ‘Now, this is a purely hypothetical reconstruction. The burglar who did the Halstead residence found himself with the Vivero letter; it was no good to him because, even if he realized it had some value, he wouldn’t know how much and he wouldn’t know where to sell it safely. Well, there are ways and means. My guess is, it was passed along channels until it came to someone who recognized its value — and who would that be but Jack Gatt, the cultured hood who owns a little museum of his own. Now, I don’t know the contents of this letter, but my guess is that if Gatt was excited by it then he’d check back to the source — to Halstead.’

‘And what about Gerryson?’

‘Maybe that was Gatt’s way of getting a second opinion, said Harris blandly. ‘Mr. Fallon and I have been talking about it, and we’ve come to some conclusions.’

Fallon looked sheepish. ‘Er... it’s like this... I... er... I paid $2,000 to Gerryson for the letter.’

‘So what,’ I said.

He avoided my eyes. ‘I knew the price was too low. It’s worth more than that.’

I grinned. ‘You thought it might be... is the word hot, Mr. Harris?’

Harris winked. ‘That’s the word.’

‘No,’ said Fallon vehemently. ‘I thought Gerryson was making a mistake. If a dealer makes a mistake it’s his business — they take us collectors to the cleaners often enough. I thought I was taking Gerryson, for a change.’

‘But you’ve changed your mind since.’

Harris said, ‘I think Mr. Fallon got took. I think Gatt fed the letter to him through Gerryson just to see what he’d do about it. After all, he couldn’t rely on Halstead who is only another young and inexperienced archeologist. But if he gave the letter to Mr. Fallon, who is the top man in the business, and then Mr. Fallon started to run around in the same circles as Halstead, Gatt would be certain he was on the right track.’

‘Plausible, but bloody improbable,’ I said.

‘Is it? Jack Gatt is no dumb bunny,’ said Harris earnestly. ‘He’s highly intelligent and educated enough to see a profit in things that would be right over any other hood’s head. If there’s any dough in this Gatt will be after it.’

I thought of the golden gutters of the roofs of Uaxuanoc and of the king’s palace plated with gold within and without. I thought of the mountain of gold and the burning sign of gold which Vivero had described. Harris could very well be right.

He said, ‘I think that Halstead and Mr. Fallon have been trailed wherever they’ve been. I think that Niscemi was one of the trailers, which is why he was on the spot when your golden tray was discovered. He tipped off Gatt, and Gatt flew across and made your brother an offer for it. I’ve investigated his movements at the time and it all checks out. When your brother turned him down flat he told Niscemi to get the tray the hard way. That wasn’t something that would worry Jack Gatt, but he made damned sure that he wasn’t even in the country when the job was pulled. And then Niscemi — and whoever else was with him — bungled it, and he got himself killed.’

And Gatt was the man whom that simple Devonshire farmer, Hannaford, had liked so much. I said, ‘How can we get at the bastard?’

‘This is all theoretical,’ said Harris. ‘It wouldn’t stand up in a law court.’

‘Maybe it’s too theoretical,’ I said. ‘Maybe it didn’t happen like that at all.’

Harris smiled thinly, and said, ‘Gatt has this house under observation right now — and Halstead’s house in the city. I can show you the guys who are watching you.’

I came to attention at that and looked at Fallon, who nodded. ‘Harris is having the observers watched.’

That put a different complexion on things. I said, ‘Are they Gatt’s men?’

Harris frowned. ‘Now that’s hard to say. Let’s say that someone in Mexico is doing Gatt a favour — the Organization works like that; they swap favours all the time.’

Fallon said, ‘I’ll have to do something about Gatt.’

Harris asked curiously, ‘Such as?’

‘I swing a lot of weight,’ said Fallon. ‘A hundred million dollars’ worth.’ He smiled confidently. ‘I’ll just lean on him.’

Harris looked alarmed. ‘I wouldn’t do that — not to Jack Gatt. You might be able to work that way with an ordinary business competitor, but not with him. He doesn’t like pressure.’

‘What could he do about it?’ asked Fallon contemptuously.

‘He could put you out of business — permanently. A bullet carries more weight than a hundred million dollars, Mr. Fallon.’

Fallon suddenly looked shrunken. For the first time he had run into a situation in which his wealth didn’t count, where he couldn’t buy what he wanted. I had given him a slight dose of the same medicine but that was nothing to the shock handed him by Harris. Fallon wasn’t a bad old stick but he’d had money for so long that he tended to handle it with a casual ruthlessness — a club to get what he wanted. And now he had come up against a man even more ruthless who didn’t give a damn for Fallon’s only weapon. It seemed to take the pith out of him.

I felt sorry for him and, more out of pity than anything else, I made conversation with Harris in order to give him time to pull himself together. ‘I think it’s time you were told what’s at stake here,’ I said. ‘Then you might be able to guess what Gatt will do about it. But it’s a long story.’

‘I don’t know that I want to know,’ said Harris wryly. ‘If it’s big enough to get Jack Gatt out of Detroit it must be dynamite.’

‘Is he out of Detroit?’

‘He’s not only out of Detroit — he’s in Mexico City.’ Harris spread his hands. ‘He says he’s here for the Olympic Games — what else?’ he said cynically.