The Vivero Letter

I

As I dressed next morning I reflected on the strange turns a man’s life can take. Four weeks previously I had been a London accountant — one of the bowler hat brigade — and now I was in exotic Mexico and preparing to take a jump into even more exotic territory. From what I could gather from Fallon the mysteriously named Quintana Roo was something of a hell hole. And why was I going to Quintana Roo? To hunt for a lost city, for God’s sake! If, four weeks before, anyone had offered that as a serious prediction I would have considered him a candidate for the booby-hatch.

I knotted my tie and looked consideringly at the man facing me in the mirror: Jemmy Wheale, New Elizabethan, adventurer at large — have gun, will travel. The thought made me smile, and the man in the mirror smiled back at me derisively. I didn’t have a gun and I doubted whether I could use one effectively, anyway. I suppose a James Bond type would have unpacked his portable helicopter and taken off after Jack Gatt long ago, bringing back his scalp and a couple of his choicest blondes. Hell, I didn’t even look like Sean Connery.

So what was I supposed to do about Jack Gatt? From what Pat Harris had said Gatt was in an unassailable position from the legal point even if he had given the word to Niscemi. There wasn’t a single charge to be brought against him that would stick. And for me to tackle Gatt on his own terms would be unthinkably stupid — the nearest analogy I could think of was Monaco declaring war on Russia and the United States.

What the devil was I doing in Mexico, anyway? I looked back on the uncharacteristic actions of my recent past and decided that the barbed words of that silly little bitch, Sheila, had probably set me off. Many men have been murdered in the past, but their brothers haven’t run around the world thirsting for vengeance. Sheila’s casual words had stabbed me in the ego and everything I had done since then had been to prove to myself that what she had said wasn’t true. Which only went to show I was immature and probably a bit soft in the head.

Yet I had taken those actions and now I was stuck with the consequences. If I quit now and went back to England, then I suppose I’d regret it for the rest of my life. There would always be the nagging suspicion that I had run out on life and somehow betrayed myself, and that was something I knew I couldn’t live with. I wondered how many other men did stupidly dangerous things because of a suspected assault on their self-respect.

For a short period I had talked big. I had browbeaten a millionaire into doing what I wanted him to do, but that was only because I had a supreme bargaining counter — the Vivero mirror. Now Fallon had the mirror and its secret and I was thrown back on my own resources. I didn’t think he’d break his promises, but there wasn’t a thing I could do if he reneged.

The grey little man was still around. He was dressed in some pretty gaudy and ill-fitting clothes and he wore his disguise with panache, but he wished to God he wore his conservative suit and his bowler hat and carried his rolled umbrella instead of this silly lance. I pulled a sour face at the man in the mirror; Jemmy Wheale — sheep in wolf’s clothing.

My mood was uncertain and ambivalent as I left the room.

I found Pat Harris downstairs wearing a stethoscope and carrying a little black box from which protruded a shiny telescopic antenna. He waggled his hand at me frantically and put his finger to his lips, elaborately miming that I should be quiet. He circled the room like a dog in a strange place, criss-crossing back and forwards, and gradually narrowed his attention to the big refectory table of massive Spanish oak.

Suddenly he got down on to his hands and knees and disappeared beneath the table, completing his resemblance to a dog. All I could see were the seat of his pants and the soles of his shoes; his pants were all right, but his shoes needed repairing. After a while he backed out, gave me a grin, and put his finger to his lips again. He beckoned, indicating that I should join him, so I squatted down, feeling a bit silly. He flicked a switch and a narrow beam of light shot from the little torch he held. It roamed about the underside of the table and then held steady. He pointed, and I saw a small grey metal box half hidden behind a crossbeam.

He jerked his thumb and we climbed out from under the table and he led me at a quick walk out of the room, down the passage, and into Fallon’s study which was empty. ‘We’ve been bugged,’ he said.

I gaped at him. ‘You mean, that thing is...’

‘...a radio transmitter.’ He took the stethoscope from his ears with the air of a doctor about to impart bad news. ‘This gadget is a bug finder. I sweep the frequencies and if there’s a transmitter working close by this thing howls at me through the earphones. Then, to find it, all I have to do is watch the meter.’

I said nervously, ‘Hadn’t you better shut up about it?’ I looked about the study. ‘This place...’

‘It’s clean,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ve checked it out.’

‘Good God!’ I said. ‘What made you think there even might be anything like that?’

He grinned. ‘A nasty suspicious mind and a belief in human nature. I just thought what I’d do if I were Jack Gatt and wanted to know what goes on in this house. Besides, it’s standard procedure in my business.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘Was anything said in that room — anything important?’

I said cautiously, ‘Do you know anything about what we’re trying to do?’

‘It’s all right — Fallon filled me in on everything. We stayed up pretty late last night.’ His eyes lit up. ‘What a hell of a story — if true!’

I cast my mind back. ‘We were all standing around that table talking about the trays. It was then I broke the news that they were really mirrors.’

‘That’s not too good,’ said Harris.

‘But then we went into the projection room,’ I said. ‘And I demonstrated what would happen when you bounced a light off the mirrors. Everything else was said in there.’

‘Show me this projection room,’ said Harris. So I showed him, and he donned his stethoscope and spent a few minutes twiddling the knobs on his gadget. At last he unclipped the earphones. ‘Nothing here; so there’s a good chance that Gatt knows only that these things are mirrors but can’t know the particular significance.’

We went back into the study and found both Fallon and Halstead. Fallon was unsealing a large envelope, but stopped dead when he heard what Harris had to say. ‘The conniving bastard!’ he said in some wonder. ‘Rip out the goddamn thing.’

‘Hell, no!’ objected Harris. ‘I want that transmitter left where it is. It will be useful.’ He looked at us with a slow smile. ‘Do any of you gentlemen fancy yourselves as radio actors? I think we can feed Jack Gatt quite a line. All you have to remember is to say nothing important in that room.’

Fallon laughed. ‘You’re quite a conniver yourself, Harris.’

‘I’m a professional,’ said Harris easily. ‘I don’t think we’ll make it a live show; there’d be too much chance of a slip-up. This calls for a nicely edited tape which we can feed into that microphone.’ He paused. ‘I’ll keep an eye on that room. Someone will have to change the batteries; they won’t last for ever.’

‘But where is it transmitting to?’ asked Halstead.

‘Probably the car that’s parked up the road a piece. Those two guys have been staked out there for a couple of days now. My guess is that they have a receiver linked to a tape recorder. I won’t bother them until they’ve swallowed the story we’re going to concoct, and maybe not even then. It’s one thing knowing something, but it’s even better when the opposition doesn’t know that you know it. My advice is to come the innocent bit. You’re not supposed to know that Jack Gatt even exists.’

Fallon was right about Harris; he was the most deceitful man I’ve ever met, and an accountant is no stranger to wool-pulling. When I came to know him better I’d trust him with my life, but I wouldn’t trust him not to know more about me than I did myself. His business was information and he gathered it assiduously, on the job and off it. He had a mind like a well-organized computer memory but, unlike a good computer, he tended to play tricks with what he knew.

Fallon ripped open the envelope. ‘Let’s get down to business. These are the X-ray prints — life size.’ He sorted them out and gave us each two prints, one of each mirror.

They were very good, startling in clarity of details that had only been hinted at in the screened reflections. I said, ‘Mr.s Halstead was right; these are words around the circumference.’ I looked closer. ‘I can’t read Spanish.’

Fallon took a reading glass and mumbled a bit to himself. ‘As near as I can make out it goes something like this. On your mirror it says: “The path to true glory leads through the portals of death.” And on my mirror: “Life everlasting lies beyond the grave.”’

‘Morbid!’ commented Harris.

‘Not very precise instructions,’ said Halstead ironically.

‘It may mean something,’ said Fallon doubtfully. ‘But one thing is certain; this is definitely the coast of Quintana Roo.’ He moved the magnifying glass over the print. ‘And, by God, cities are indicated. See those square castle-like things?’

I sensed the air of rising excitement. ‘Those two at the top must be Cobá and Tulum,’ said Halstead tensely. ‘With Chichén Itzá to the west.’

‘And there’s Ichpatuun on Chetumal Bay. And what’s that south of Tulum? Would that be Chunyaxche?’ Fallon lifted his head and stared into the middle distance. ‘A city was discovered there not long ago. There’s a theory it was the centre of the seaboard trade on the coast.’

Halstead’s hand stabbed down. ‘There’s another city indicated just inland of it — and another here.’ His voice cracked. ‘And here’s another. If this map is accurate we’ll be discovering lost cities by the bushel.’

‘Take it easy,’ said Fallon and laid the print aside. ‘Let’s have a look at Uaxuanoc.’ He took the other print and stared at it. ‘If this corresponds to the small circle on the large-scale map then we ought to be able to pinpoint the position.’

I looked at my copy. Hills were indicated but there was no scale to tell how high they were. Scattered over the hills were crude representations of buildings. I remembered that Vivero had said in his letter that the city was built on a ridge lying east and west.

Halstead said, ‘The layout looks like a mixture of Chichén Itzá and Cobá — but it’s bigger than either. A lot bigger.’

‘There’s the cenote,’ said Fallon. ‘So this place would be the temple of Yum Chac — if Vivero is to be believed. I wonder which is the king’s palace?’ He turned and grasped a large cardboard tube from which he took a map. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time on this map,’ he said. ‘A lifetime.’

He unrolled it and spread it on the desk, weighing down the corners with books. ‘Everything the Mayas ever built is marked here. Do you notice anything odd about it, Wheale?’

I contemplated the map and said at last, ‘It looks crowded in the south.’

‘That’s the Petén — but that was the Old Empire which collapsed in the eleventh century. The Itzás moved in later — new blood which gave the Mayas a shot in the arm like a transfusion. They reoccupied some of the old cities like Chichén Itzá and Cobá, and they built some new ones like Mayapan. Forget the south; concentrate on the Yucatán Peninsula itself. What looks funny about it?’

‘This blank space on the west. Why didn’t they build there?’

‘Who says they didn’t?’ asked Fallon. ‘That’s the Quintana Roo. The local inhabitants have a rooted objection to archeologists.’ He tapped the map. ‘They killed an archeologist here, and built his skeleton into a wall facing the sea as a sort of decoration — and as a warning to others.’ He grinned. ‘Still want to come along?’

The grey little man inside me made a frightened squawk but I grinned back at him. ‘I’ll go where you go.’

He nodded. ‘That was a while ago. The indios sublevados have shot their bolt. But it’s still not a pleasure trip. The inhabitants tend to be hostile — both the chicleros and the Chan Santa Rosa Indians; and the land itself is worse. ‘That’s the reason for this big blank space — and Uaxuanoc is plumb in the middle.’

He bent over the map, and compared it with the print ‘I’d put it about there — give or take twenty miles. Vivero didn’t have the benefit of a trigonometric survey when he did this scrawl; we can’t rely on it too much.’

Halstead shook his head. ‘It’s going to be one hell of a job.’ He looked up and found me smiling. I couldn’t see what was going to be difficult about it. I’d been browsing through Fallon’s library and studying the pictures of Mayan cities; there were pyramids the size of the Washington Pentagon, and I didn’t see how you could miss seeing one of those.

Halstead said coldly, ‘Take a circle twenty miles across — that’s over three hundred square miles to search. You can walk within ten feet of a Mayan structure and not see it.’ His lips drew back in a humourless smile. ‘You can even be walking on it and not know it. You’ll learn.’

I shrugged and let it pass. I didn’t believe it was as bad as that.

Fallon said worriedly, ‘What I don’t know is why this man Gatt should be so interested. I can’t see any conceivable motive for his interference.’

I regarded Fallon in astonished silence, then said, ‘The gold, of course! Gatt is a treasure hunter.’

Fallon had a baffled look on his face. ‘What gold?’ he said dimly.

It was my turn to be baffled. ‘You’ve read the Vivero letter, damn it! Doesn’t he describe the king’s palace as being plated with gold? Doesn’t he go on and on about gold? He even mentions a mountain of gold!’

Halstead gave a shout of laughter and Fallon looked at me as though I had gone out of my mind. ‘Where would the Mayas get the gold to cover a building?’ he demanded. ‘Use a bit of common sense, Wheale.’

For a moment I thought I had gone crazy. Halstead was laughing his head off and Fallon was looking at me with an air of concern. I turned to Harris who spread his hands and shrugged elaborately. ‘It beats me,’ he said.

Halstead was still struggling to contain himself. It was the first time I’d seen him genuinely amused at anything. ‘I don’t see what’s funny,’ I said acidly.

‘Don’t you?’ he said, and wiped his eyes. He broke into chuckles. ‘It’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in years. Tell him, Fallon.’

‘Do you really think Uaxuanoc is dripping in gold — or that it ever was?’ Fallon asked. He too was smiling as though an infection had spread to him from Halstead.

I began to get angry. ‘Vivero said so, didn’t he?’ I picked up the prints and thrust them under Fallon’s nose. ‘You believe in these, don’t you? Vivero placed cities where you know there are cities, so you believe him that far. What’s so bloody funny about the rest of his story?’

‘Vivero was the biggest liar in the western hemisphere,’ said Fallon. He looked at me in wonder. ‘I thought you knew. I told you he was a liar. You’ve heard us discussing it.’

I told myself to relax, and said slowly, ‘Would you mind spelling it out again in words of one syllable?’ I glanced at Harris who, by his expression, was as puzzled as I was. ‘I’m sure that Mr. Harris would like to be let in on the joke, too.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Fallon. ‘You really took the Vivero letter at its face value.’ Halstead again broke into laughter; I was getting pretty tired of that.

Fallon said, ‘Let’s take one or two points in the letter. He said the de Viveros were of ancient lineage and had been hammered by the Moors so that the family fortunes were lost. He was a goddamn liar. His father was a goldsmith — that’s true enough — but his grandfather was a peasant who came from a long line of peasants — of nobodies. His father’s name was Vivero, and it was Manuel himself who added on the aristocratic prefix and changed it to de Vivero. He did that in Mexico — he would never have got away with it in Spain. By the time Murville visited the Mexican branch of the family the myth had really taken hold. ‘That’s why he couldn’t believe that a de Vivero had actually made the tray.’

‘So he was a liar on that point. Lots of people lie about themselves and their families. But how do you know he was lying about the gold? And why should he spin a yarn like that?’

‘All the gold the Mayas ever had was imported,’ said Fallon. ‘It came from Mexico, from Panama and from the Caribbean islands. These people were neolithic, they weren’t metal workers. Look at Vivero’s description of their weapons — wooden swords with stone edges. He was right there, but the stone would be obsidian.’

‘But the Mayas had gold,’ I objected. ‘Look what they found when the cenote at Chichen Itzá was dredged.’ I’d read about that.

‘So what did they find? A hell of a lot of gold objects — all imported,’ said Fallon. ‘Chichén Itzá was an important religious centre and the cenote was sacred. You find sacred wells all over the world in which offerings are made, and Yucatáns are particularly important in Yucatán because water is so precious. There were pilgrimages made to Chichén Itzá over a period of hundreds of years.’

Harris said, ‘You can’t put up a public fountain in New York without people throwing money into it.’

‘Exactly,’ said Fallon in a pleased voice. ‘There seems to be a primitive attraction to water in that sense. Three Coins in the Fountain — and all that kind of thing. But the Mayas had no gold of their own.’

I was confused. ‘Then why the hell should Vivero say they had?’

‘Ah, that puzzled me at first, but Halstead and I discussed it and we’ve come up with a theory.’

‘I’d be pleased to hear it,’ I said sourly.

‘Vivero found something — there’s no doubt about that. But what it was, we don’t know. He was cryptic about it because no doubt, he didn’t want to give the secret away to anyone who might read that letter. The one thing he was quite clear about was that he wanted to reserve the honour of discovery for his sons — for the de Vivero family. So if he couldn’t actually tell his sons this mysterious secret then he had to find some other way of attracting them — and that was what they would confidently expect to find. Gold!’

I slumped in my chair dejectedly. ‘And why would the Spaniards be expecting to find gold where there wasn’t any? You’ve got me going round in circles.’

‘It’s simple enough. The Spaniards came to Mexico looking for plunder — and they found it. They raided the Aztecs and found gold in plenty in the temple treasuries and in Montezuma’s palace. What they failed to realize was that it wasn’t a continuing supply. They weren’t deep-thinking men and it never occurred to them that this hoard of gold which they had looted from the Aztecs had been built up over centuries, a little year by year. They thought there must be a major source, a huge mine, perhaps. They gave it a name, They called it Eldorado — and they never stopped looking for it. It didn’t exist.

‘Consider these Spanish soldiers. After they had looted the Aztecs, Cortes divided the spoils. When he had received and swindled his captains, and the captains had put their sticky fingers into what was left, there was little enough for the common soldiers. A gold chain, perhaps — or a wine cup. These men were soldiers, not settlers, and always on the other side of the hill was Eldorado. So they attacked the Mayas, thinking this was Eldorado and, after the Mayas, Pizarro attacked the Incas of Peru. They brought down whole civilizations because they weren’t prepared to sweat and dig the gold from the ground themselves. It was there, right enough, but it certainly wasn’t in Yucatán. The Mayas, like the Aztecs, certainly had plenty of gold, but not in such quantities that they could cover buildings or make rainwater gutters from the stuff. The nobles wore small pieces of gold jewellery and the temple priests used certain gold implements.’

Harris said, ‘So all this talk about gold by Vivero was just a come-on to get his boys moving?’

‘It seems so,’ said Fallon. ‘Oh, I daresay he did surprise the Mayas by melting gold and casting it. That was something they hadn’t seen before. I’ll show you a piece of genuine Mayan goldwork and you’ll see what I mean.’ He went to a safe, unlocked it, and returned with a small gold disk. ‘This is a plate, probably used by a noble. You can see it’s very nicely chased.’

It was very thin and flimsy looking. The design was of a warrior holding a spear and a shield with other figures bearing odd shaped objects. Fallon said. ‘That probably started out as a nugget found in a mountain stream a long way from Yucatán. The Mayas beat it flat into its present shape and incised that design with stone tools.’

I said, ‘What about the mountain of gold? Was that another of Vivero’s lies? Couldn’t there have been a mine?’

‘Not a chance,’ said Fallon decisively. ‘The geology is dead against it. The Yucatán Peninsula is a limestone cap — not auriferous at all. No other metals, for that matter — that’s why the Mayas never got out of the Stone Age, smart though they were.’

I sighed. ‘All right, I accept it. No gold.’

‘Which brings us back to Gatt,’ said Fallon. ‘What the hell is he after?’

‘Gold,’ I said.

‘But I’ve just told you there is no gold,’ said Fallon exasperatedly.

‘So you did,’ I said. ‘And you convinced me. You convinced Harris, too.’ I swung round to face Harris. ‘Before you heard this explanation did you believe there was gold in Yucatán?’

‘I thought that was what this was all about,’ he said. ‘Buried treasure in ruined cities.’

‘There you are,’ I said. ‘What makes you think Gatt believes any different? He may be an educated man, but he’s no archeological expert. I’m not an illiterate myself, and I believed in buried treasure. I didn’t have the technical knowledge to know Vivero was lying, so why should Gatt? Of course he’s after the gold. He has the same mentality as the Conquistadores — just another gangster unwilling to sweat for his money.’

Fallon looked surprised. ‘Of course. I hadn’t allowed for the lay mind. He must be told the truth.’

Harris wore a crooked smile. ‘Do you think he’d believe you?’ he asked sardonically. ‘Not after reading the Vivero letter, he wouldn’t. Hell, I can still see that king’s palace all shiny in the sun, even though I know it’s not true. You’d have a whale of a job convincing Gatt.’

‘Then he must be a stupid man,’ said Fallon.

‘No, Gatt’s not stupid,’ said Harris. ‘He just believes that men who spend as much time as you have on this thing, men who are willing to spend time in the jungle looking for something, are looking for something very valuable. Gatt doesn’t believe that scientific knowledge is particularly valuable, so it must be dough. He just measures you by his own standards, that’s all.’

‘Heaven forbid!’ said Fallon fervently.

‘You’re going to have trouble with Jack,’ said Harris. ‘He doesn’t give up easily.’ He nodded to the prints on the table. ‘Where did you have those made?’

‘I have an interest in an engineering company in Tampico. I had the use of a metallurgical X-ray outfit.’

‘I’d better check up on that,’ said Harris. ‘Gatt might get on to it.’

‘But I’ve got the negatives here.’

Harris looked at him pityingly. ‘What makes you think those are the only negatives? I doubt if they’d get it right first time — they’d give you the best of a series. I want to see what has happened to the others and have them destroyed before Gatt starts spreading palm-oil among your ill-paid technicians.’

Harris was a professional and never gave up. He had a total disbelief in the goodness of human nature.

II

Fallon’s way of organizing an archeological expedition was to treat it like a military operation — something on the same scale as the landing on Omaha Beach. This was no penurious egghead scratching along on a foundation grant and stretching every dollar to cover the work of two. Fallon was a multimillionaire with a bee in his bonnet and he could, and did, spend money as though he had a personal pipeline to Fort Knox. The money he spent to find Uaxuanoc would have been enough to build the damn place.

His first idea was to go in by sea, but the coast of Quintana Roo is cluttered up with islands and uncharted shoals and he saw the difficulties looming ahead so he abandoned the idea. He wasn’t troubled about it; he merely chartered a small fleet of air freighters and flew his supplies in. To do this he had to send in a construction crew to build an airstrip at the head of Ascension Bay. This eventually became his base camp.

As soon as the airstrip was usable he sent in a photographic reconnaissance aircraft which operated from the base and which did an aerial survey, not only of the area in which Uaxuanoc was suspected to be, but of the entire provinces of Quintana Roo and Yucatán. This seemed a bit extravagant so I asked him why he did it. His answer was simple: he was cooperating with the Mexican Government in return for certain favours — it seemed that the cartographic department of the State Survey was very short on information about those areas and Fallon had agreed to supply a photo-mosaic.

‘The only person who ever took aerial photographs of Quintana Roo was Lindbergh,’ he said. ‘And that was a long time ago. It will all come in very useful professionally.’

From Ascension Bay helicopters set up Camp Two in the interior. Fallon and Halstead spent quite a lot of time debating where to set up Camp Two. They measured the X-ray prints to the last millimetre and transferred reading to Fallon’s big map and eventually came to a decision. Theoretically, Camp Two should have been set up smack on the top of the temple of Yum Chac in Uaxuanoc. It wasn’t, of course; but that surprised nobody.

Halstead favoured me with one of his rare smiles, but there didn’t seem to be much real humour in it. ‘A field trip is like being in the army,’ he said. ‘You can use all the mechanization you like, but the job gets done by guys using their own feet. You’re still going to regret coming on this jaunt, Wheale.’

I had the distinct impression that he was waiting for me to fall flat on my face when we got out in the field. He was the kind of man who would laugh himself silly at someone slipping on a banana skin and breaking his leg. A primitive sense of humour! Also, he didn’t like me very much.

While all this was going on we stayed at Fallon’s place outside Mexico City. The Halsteads had given up their own place and had moved in, so we were all together. Pat Harris was around from time to time. He departed upon mysterious trips without warning and came back just as unexpectedly. I suppose he reported to Fallon but he said nothing to the rest of us for the quite simple reason that everyone was too busy to ask him.

Fallon came to me one day, and said, ‘About your skindiving experience. Were you serious?’

‘Quite serious. I’ve done a lot of it.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘When we find Uaxuanoc we’ll want to investigate the cenote.’

‘I’ll need more equipment,’ I said. ‘The stuff I have is good enough for an amateur within reach of civilization but not for the middle of Quintana Roo.’

‘What kind of equipment?’

‘Oh, an air compressor for recharging bottles is one of the biggest items.’ I paused. ‘If the dives are more than a hundred and fifty feet I’d like a stand-by recompression chamber in case anyone gets into trouble.’

He nodded. ‘Okay; get your equipment.’

He turned away and I said gently, ‘What do I use in place of money?’

He stopped. ‘Oh, yes. I’ll ask my secretary to arrange all that. See him tomorrow.’

‘Who is going down with me?’

‘You need someone else?’ he asked in surprise.

‘That’s a cardinal rule — you don’t dive alone. Especially into the murky depths of a hole in the ground. Too many things can go wrong underwater.’

‘Well, hire somebody,’ he said a little irritably. This was a minor part of the main problem and he was only too eager to get rid of it.

So I went shopping and bought some lovely expensive equipment. Most of it was available locally, but the recompression chamber was more difficult. I saw Fallon’s secretary about that and a few telephone calls to the States produced a minor flap in the far-flung Fallon empire; it also produced a recompression chamber on the first available air freighter. Maybe that piece of equipment was an extravagance, but it’s one thing getting the bends in England where the port hospitals are equipped to handle it and where the Navy will give a hand in an emergency, and it’s quite another thing to have nitrogen bubbling in your blood like champagne in the middle of a blasted wilderness. I preferred to play safe. Besides, Fallon could afford it.

I ended up with enough gear to outfit an average aqualung club, and normally I should have been full of gloating at the opportunity to handle and use all those efficient and well-designed tools of the diver’s trade — but I wasn’t. It had come too easy. This wasn’t something I’d sweated for, something I’d saved up to buy, and I began to see why rich people became bored so easily and began to indulge in way-out entertainments. Not that Fallon was like that, to give him his due; he was all archeologist and very professional.

Then I rounded up Katherine Halstead and took her down to the pool. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Show me.’

She looked at me in surprise. ‘Show you what?’

I pointed to the scuba harness I had brought down. ‘Show me that you can use that thing.’

I watched her as she put it on and made no attempt to help her. She seemed familiar enough with it and chose the belt weights with care, and when she went into the water she did it the right way without any fuss. I put on my own gear and followed her and we drifted around the bottom of the pool while I tested her on the international signals which she seemed to understand. When we came out, I said, ‘You’re hired.’

She looked puzzled. ‘Hired for what?’

‘As second string diver on the Uaxuanoc Expedition.’

Her face lit up. ‘You really mean that?’

‘Fallon told me to hire someone — and you can’t come along as a passenger. I’ll tell him the bad news.’

He blew up as predicted, but I argued him into it by saying that Katherine at least knew something about archeology and that he wouldn’t get an archeological diver this side of the Mediterranean.

She must have worked on her husband because he didn’t object, but I caught him looking at me speculatively. I think it was then that he was bitten by the bug of jealousy and began to have the idea that I was up to no good. Not that I cared what he thought; I was too busy drilling his wife into the routine of learning how to use the air compressor and the recompression chamber. We got pretty matey and soon we were on first name terms. Up to then I’d always called her Mr.s Halstead, but you can hardly stick to that kind of thing when you’re both ducking in and out of a pool. But I never laid a finger on her.

Halstead never called me anything but Wheale.

III

I liked Pat Harris. As a person he was slow and easy-going, no matter how mistrustful and devious he was when on the job. Just before we were due to leave for Quintana Roo he seemed to be spending more time at the house and we got into the habit of having a noggin together late at night. Once I asked him, ‘What exactly is your job, Pat?’

He ran his finger down the outside of his beer glass. ‘I suppose you could call me Fallon’s trouble-shooter. When you have as much dough as he’s got you find an awful lot of people trying to part you from it. I run checks on guys like that to see if everything is on the up and up.’

‘Did you run a check on me?’

He grinned, and said easily, ‘Sure! I know more about you than your own mother did.’ He drank some cold beer. ‘Then one of his corporations sometimes has security trouble and I go and see what’s going on.’

‘Industrial espionage?’ I queried.

‘I guess you’d call it that,’ he agreed. ‘But only from the security angle. Fallon doesn’t play dirty pool, so I stick to counter-espionage.’

I said, ‘If you investigated me, then you must have done the same with Halstead. He seems a pretty odd type.’

Pat smiled into his beer. ‘You can say that again. He’s a guy who thought he had genius and who has now found out that all he has is talent. That really disappoints a man — settling for second best. The trouble with Halstead is that he hasn’t come to terms with it yet; it’s really griping him.’

‘You’ll have to spell it out for me,’ I said.

Pat sighed. ‘Well, it’s like this. Halstead started out as a boy wonder — voted the graduate most likely to succeed and all that kind of crap. You know, it’s funny how wrong guys can be about other guys; every corporation is stuffed full to the brim with men who were voted most likely to succeed, and they’re all holding down second-rate jobs. The men at the top — the guys who really have the power — got there the hard way by clawing their way up and wielding a pretty sharp knife. There are a hell of a lot of corporation presidents who never went to college. Or you have guys like Fallon — he started at the top.’

‘In his business,’ I said. ‘But not in archeology.’

‘I’ll give you that,’ said Pat. ‘Fallon would succeed in anything he put his hand to. But Halstead is a second-rater; he knows it but he won’t admit it, even to himself, and it’s sticking in his craw. He’s eaten up with ambition — that’s why he was going solo on this Uaxuanoc thing. He wanted to be the man who discovered Uaxuanoc; it would make his name and he’d salvage his self-respect. But you twisted his arm and forced him in with Fallon and he doesn’t like that. He doesn’t want to share the glory.’

I contemplated that, then said cautiously, ‘Both Fallon and Halstead were free in throwing accusations at each other. Halstead accused Fallon of stealing the Vivero letter. Well, we seem to have cleared up that one, and Fallon is in the clear. But what about Fallon’s charge that Halstead pinched the file he’d built up?’

‘I think Halstead is guilty of that,’ said Pat frankly. ‘Look at the timetable. Fallon, out of interest’s sake, built up a dossier of references to the Vivero secret; Halstead knew about it because Fallon told him — there wasn’t any need to keep it under wraps because it didn’t seem all that important. Fallon and Halstead came back to civilization after a dig, and Halstead found the Vivero letter. He bought it up in Durango for two hundred dollars from an old guy who didn’t know its value. But Halstead did — he knew it could be the key to the Vivero secret, whatever that was. And apart from that it was archeological dynamite — a city no one had even heard of.’

He reached out and opened another bottle of beer. ‘I checked on the date he bought it. A month later he picked a quarrel with Fallon and went off in a huff, and Fallon’s Vivero dossier disappeared. Fallon didn’t think much of it at the time. As I say, the Vivero file didn’t seem so important, and he thought Halstead might have made a genuine error and mixed up some of Fallon’s papers with his own. And he didn’t think it worth his while to add to the grief that Halstead was stirring up just about that time. He thinks differently now.’

I said slowly, ‘It’s all very circumstantial.’

‘Most evidence is,’ said Pat. ‘Crimes are usually committed without witnesses. Another thing that inclines me to think he did it is his general reputation in the profession.’

‘Not good?’

‘A bit smelly. He’s under suspicion of faking some of his results. Nothing that anyone can pin on him, and certainly not enough to justify him being drummed out of the profession publicly. But certainly enough for anything he produces in the future to be inspected mighty carefully. There’s nothing new in that, of course; it’s been done before. You had a case in England, didn’t you?’

‘That was in anthropology,’ I said. ‘The Piltdown man. Everyone wondered why it didn’t fit in to the main sequence and there was a lot of theory-twisting to jam it in. Then science caught up with it when they developed radiocarbon date testing and discovered it was a fake.’

Pat nodded. ‘Some guys do that kind of thing. If they can’t make a reputation the straight way, they’ll make it the crooked way. And they’re usually like Halstead — second-raters who want to make a quick name.’

‘But it’s still circumstantial,’ I said stubbornly. I didn’t want to believe this. To me, science was equated with truth, and I didn’t want to believe that any scientist would stoop to fraud. And maybe I didn’t want to believe that Katherine Halstead was the kind of woman who would marry a man like that.

‘Oh, he hasn’t been found with dirty hands,’ said Pat. ‘But I guess it’s just a matter of time.’

I said, ‘How long have they been married?’

‘Three years.’ The hand holding his glass suddenly hovered halfway to his lips. ‘If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, my advice is — don’t! I know she’s quite a dish, but keep your hands off. Fallon wouldn’t like it.’

‘Quite a thought-reader, aren’t you?’ I said sarcastically. ‘Mr.s Halstead is safe from me, I assure you.’ Even as I said it I wondered how far that was true. I was also amused at the way Harris had put it — Fallon wouldn’t like it. Pat’s first loyalty was to his boss and he didn’t give a damn about how Halstead might react. I said, ‘Do you think she knows what you’ve told me — about her husband’s reputation?’

‘Probably not,’ said Pat. ‘I can’t see anyone going up to her and saying, “Mr.s Halstead, I have to tell you your husband’s reputation is lousy.” She’d be the last person to find out.’ He regarded me with interest. ‘What made you push her on to Fallon in this diving caper? That’s twice you’ve made the boss eat crow. Your credit’s running out fast.’

I said slowly, ‘She can control her husband where other people can’t. You know the foul temper he has. I’ve no intention of spending my time in Quintana Roo keeping those two from assaulting each other. I’ll need some help.’

Pat cocked his head on one side, then nodded abruptly. ‘You just might be right. Trouble won’t come from Fallon, but Halstead might stir something up. I’m not saying he’s nuts, but he’s very unstable. You know what I think? I think if he gets a fraction too much pressure on him one of two things will happen — either he’ll split right open like a rotten egg, or he’ll blow up like a bomb. Now, if you’re in a pressure situation, either way brings you grief. I wouldn’t rely on him in a jam, and I’d trust him as far as I could throw the Empire State Building.’

‘Quite a recommendation. I’d hate to have you write out a testimonial for me, Pat.’

He grinned. ‘Yours might be a bit better. All you have to do, Jemmy, to get a hundred per cent score is to stop being so goddamn unobtrusive and neutral. I know you English have a reputation for being quiet, but you push it too far. Do you mind if I speak frankly?’

‘Can I stop you?’

He snorted with laughter. ‘Probably not.’ He lifted his glass. ‘I’m probably just cut enough to tell the truth — it’s a failing of mine which has earned me a couple of black eyes in my time.’

‘You’d better go ahead and tell me the worst. I promise not to sock you.’

‘Okay. You’ve got some iron in you somewhere, or you wouldn’t have been able to strongarm Fallon the way you have. He can be a tough guy to handle. But what have you done since? Fallon and Halstead are running things now and you’re sitting on the sidelines. You’ve twisted Fallon’s arm again over Mr.s Halstead — something that doesn’t matter a damn, and he’ll remember it. What the hell are you doing on this jaunt, anyway?’

‘I had a crazy idea I might be able to do something about my brother.’

‘That you can forget,’ said Pat briefly.

‘So I’ve found out,’ I said gloomily.

‘I’m glad you realize it,’ he said. ‘Gatt would swat you like a fly and never give it another thought. Why don’t you quit and go home, Jemmy; go back to that little farm of yours? You’ve found out there’s no treasure to be hunted, and you don’t give two cents for all the lost cities in Latin America, do you? Why stick around?’

‘I’ll stick around as long as Gatt does,’ I said. ‘He might leave himself open long enough for me to get at him.’

‘Then you’ll wait until hell freezes over. Look, Jemmy: I’ve got fifteen operatives on to him now, and I’m no nearer finding out what he’s up to than when I started. He’s a smart cookie and he doesn’t make mistakes — not those kind of mistakes. He keeps himself covered all the time — it’s a reflex with him.’

‘You’ll agree he’ll be interested in what we’ll be doing in Quintana Roo?’

‘Apparently so,’ said Pat. ‘He’s certainly keeping tabs on this operation.’

‘Then he’ll have to follow us there,’ I said. ‘He can’t do anything from Mexico City. If he’s so bloody interested in hypothetical treasure in Uaxuanoc, he’ll have to go to Uaxuanoc to pick up the loot. Do you agree with that?’

‘It’s feasible,’ said Pat judiciously. ‘I can’t see Jack being so trusting as to send anyone else — not with what he thinks is at stake.’

‘He won’t be on his home ground, Pat. He’s a civilized city type — he’ll be out of his depth. From what I can gather Quintana Roo is as unlike New York City as Mars is. He might make a mistake.’

Pat looked at me in astonishment. ‘And what makes you think you’re any different? I grant you that Gatt is a city type, but civilized he is not. Whereas you are a city type and civilized. Jemmy, you’re a London accountant; you’ll be just as much out of your depth in the Quintana Roo as Gatt.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘We’ll be on equal terms — which is more than can be said right now.’

He drained his glass and slammed it down on to the table with a bang. ‘I think you’re nuts,’ he said disgustedly. ‘You talk a weird kind of sense, but I still think you’re nuts. You’re as batty as Halstead.’ He looked up. ‘Tell me, can you handle a gun?’

‘I’ve never tried,’ I said. ‘So I don’t know.’

‘For Christ’s sake!’ he said. ‘What are you going to do if you do come up against Gatt on even terms, as you call it? Kiss him to death?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ll see when the time comes. I believe in handling situations as they happen.’

He passed his hand over his face in a bemused way and looked at me for a long time without saying anything. He took a deep breath. ‘Let me outline a hypothetical situation,’ he said mildly. ‘Let us suppose that you’ve managed to separate Jack from his bodyguards, and that’s a pretty foolish supposition in the first place. And let us suppose that there the two of you are, a pair of city slickers, babes in the wood.’ He stuck out a rigid finger. The first — and last — thing you’d know was that Jack had bush-whacked you with a lupara, and you’d be in no condition to handle any situation.’

‘Has Gatt ever killed anyone himself?’ I asked.

‘I’d guess so. He came up through the ranks in the Organization. Served his apprenticeship, you might say. He’ll have done a killing or two in his younger days.’

‘That’s a long time ago,’ I observed. ‘Maybe he’s out of practice.’

‘Agh, there’s no talking to you,’ said Pat in a choked voice. ‘If you have any brains you’ll go back where you came from. I have to stick around, but at least I know what the score is, and I get paid for it. But you’re the kind of guy that Kipling wrote about — “If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, then maybe you don’t know what the hell is going on.”’

I laughed. ‘You have quite a talent for parody.’

‘I’m not as good as Fallon,’ he said gloomily. ‘He’s turned this whole operation into a parody of security. I used the bug Gatt planted on us to feed him a queer line, and what does Fallon do? He stages a goddamn TV spectacular, for God’s sake! I wouldn’t be surprised, when you fly down to that airstrip he’s built, if you don’t find the CBS cameras already rolling and hooked up into a coast-to-coast broadcast — and a line of Rockettes from Radio City to give added interest. Every paisano in Mexico knows what’s going on. Gatt doesn’t have to bug us to find out what we’re doing; all he has to do is to ask at any street corner.’

‘It’s a tough life,’ I said sympathetically. ‘Does Fallon usually behave like this?’

Harris shook his head. ‘I don’t know what’s got into him. He’s turned over control of his affairs to his brother — given him power of attorney. His brother’s a nice enough guy, but I wouldn’t trust anyone that far with a hundred million bucks. He’s thinking of nothing else but finding this city.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘He seems to be worried about something else. He goes a bit dreamy at unexpected moments.’

‘I’ve noticed that, too. Something’s bugging him, but he hasn’t let me in on it.’ Harris seemed resentful at the idea that something was being kept from him. He rose to his feet and stretched. ‘I’m going to bed — there’s work to do tomorrow.’

IV

So there it was again!

First Sheila, and now Pat Harris. He hadn’t said it as bluntly as Sheila, but he’d said it nevertheless. Apparently, my exterior appearance and mannerisms gave a good imitation of Caspar Milquetoast — the nine-to-fiver, the commuter par excellence. The trouble was that I wasn’t at all sure that the interior didn’t match the exterior.

Gatt, from Pat’s description, was lethal. Maybe he wouldn’t shoot anyone just to make bets on which way he’d fall, but he might if there was a dollar profit in it. I began to feel queasy at the thought of going up against him, but I knew I couldn’t turn back now.

Pat’s assessment of Halstead was quite interesting, too, and I wondered how much Katherine knew about her husband. I think she loved him — in fact, I was sure of it. No woman in her right mind would tolerate such a man otherwise, but maybe I was prejudiced. At any rate, she consistently took his side in any argument he had with Fallon. The very picture of a faithful wife. I went to sleep thinking about her.