The Vivero Letter

I

We went to Camp One in Fallon’s flying office — a Lear executive jet. Pat Harris didn’t come with us — his job was to keep tabs on Gatt — so there were just four passengers, Fallon, the Halsteads and myself. Fallon and Halstead engaged in another of their interminable professional discussions, and Katherine Halstead read a magazine. Halstead had done a bit of manoeuvring when we entered the plane and Katherine was sitting on the other side of him and as far from me as it was possible to get. I couldn’t talk to her without shouting across a technical argument so I turned my attention to the ground.

Quintana Roo, seen from the air, looked like a piece of mouldy cheese. The solid vegetative cover was broken only occasionally by a clearing which showed as a dirty whitish-grey among the virulent green of the trees. I did not see a single water-course, no rivers and not even a stream, and I began to appreciate Halstead’s point of view about the difficulties of archeological exploration in the tropics.

At one point Fallon broke off his discussion to speak with the pilot on the intercom, and the plane wheeled slowly and began to descend. He turned to me and said, ‘We’ll have a look at Camp Two.’

Even from a thousand feet the forest looked solid enough to walk on without touching ground. There could have been a city the size of London under that sea of green and you’d never see it. I reminded myself not to be so bloody cocky in the future about things I knew nothing about. Halstead might be a faker, if what Pat Harris said was true, but a faker, of all people, must have a knowledge of his field. He had been right when he had said that this was going to be a tough job.

Camp Two came and went before I had a chance to get a good look at it, but the plane banked, and turned and we orbited the site, standing on one wingtip. There wasn’t much to see: just another clearing with half a dozen prefabricated huts and some minuscule figures which waved their arms. The jet couldn’t land there, but that wasn’t the intention. We straightened on course and rose higher, heading for the coast and Camp One.

About twenty minutes and eighty miles later we were over the sea and curving back over the white surf and gleaming beaches to touch down at the airstrip at Camp One. The jet bumped a bit in the coastal turbulence but put down gently and rolled to a stop at the further end of the strip, then wheeled and taxied to a halt in front of a hangar. As I left the plane the heat, after the air-conditioned comfort of the flight, was like the sudden blow of a hammer.

Fallon didn’t seem to notice the heat at all. Years of puttering about in this part of the world had already dried the juices from him and he had been thoroughly conditioned. He set off at a brisk walk along the strip, followed by Halstead, who also didn’t seem to mind. Katherine and I followed along more slowly and, by the time we got to the hut into which Fallon had disappeared she was looking definitely wilted and I felt a bit brown around the edges myself.

‘My God!’ I said. ‘Is it always like this?’

Halstead turned and gave me a smile which had all the elements of a sneer. ‘You’ve been spoiled by Mexico City,’ he said. ‘The altitude up there takes the edge off. It’s not really hot here on the coast. Wait until we get to Camp Two.’ His tone implied that I’d feel bloody sorry for myself.

It was cooler in the hut and there was the persistent throb of an air-conditioning unit. Fallon introduced us to a big, burly man. ‘This is Joe Rudetsky; he’s the boss of Camp One.’

Rudetsky stuck out a meaty hand. ‘Glad to meet you, Mr. Wheale,’ he boomed.

I later found out how Fallon had managed to organize the whole operation so quickly. He had merely appropriated the logistics unit from one of his oil exploration teams. Those boys were used to operating in rough country and under tropical conditions, and this job was very little different from a score of others they had done in North Africa, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. When I explored the camp I admired the sheer efficiency of it all. They certainly knew how to make themselves comfortable — even to ice-cold Coca-Cola.

We stayed in Camp One all that day and slept there the night. Fallon and Halstead checked the mountain of equipment they evidently thought they needed, so Katherine and I did the same with the scuba gear. We weren’t going to take it to Camp Two because that would be pointless; Camp Two was a mere centre of exploration and if and when we discovered Uaxuanoc it would be abandoned and Camp Three would be set up on the city site.

We worked until lunchtime and then stopped for something to eat. I wasn’t very hungry — the heat affected my appetite — but I relished the bottle of cold lager that Rudetsky thrust into my hand. I’d swear it hissed going down.

Katherine and I had completed our inspection and found everything present and in working order, but Fallon and Halstead still had quite a way to go. I offered to give them a hand, but Fallon shook his head. ‘It’s mostly instrument checking now,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t know how to do that.’ His gaze wandered over my shoulder. ‘If you turn round you’ll see your first Maya.’

I twisted in my chair and looked across the strip. On the other side of the flattened ground and standing within easy running distance of the trees were two men. They were dressed in rather baggy trousers and white shirts and stood quite still. They were rather too far away for me to distinguish their features.

Fallon said, ‘They don’t know what to make of us, you know. This is an unprecedented invasion.’ He looked across at Rudetsky. ‘Have they given you any trouble, Joe?’

‘The natives? No trouble at all, Mr. Fallon. Those guys are from up the coast; they have a two-bit coconut plantation.’

‘A cocal,’ said Fallon. ‘These people live entirely isolated lives, cut off from everything. The sea on one side — the forest on the other. There’ll be just the one family — the cocal won’t support two — and they’re dependent entirely on their own resources.’

That seemed a grim life. ‘What do they live on?’ I asked.

Fallon shrugged. ‘Fish, turtles, turtle eggs. Sometimes they’re lucky enough to shoot a wild pig. Then twice a year they’ll sell their copra and that gives them a little ready money to buy clothing and needles and a few cartridges.’

‘Are those the indios sublevados you talked about?’

Fallon laughed. ‘These boys aren’t rebels — they wouldn’t know how to start. We’ll meet the indios sublevados in the interior, and the chicleros, too.’ He switched to Rudetsky. ‘Have you had any chicleros round here?’

Rudetsky nodded grimly. ‘We ran the bastards off. They were stealing us blind.’ He looked across at Katherine who was talking to Halstead, and lowered his voice. ‘They murdered a native last week; we found his body on the beach.’

Fallon didn’t seem perturbed. He merely picked up his pipe and said, ‘You’d better keep a good watch, and don’t let them in the camp on any account. And you’d better have the men stay in the camp and not go wandering around.’

Rudetsky grinned. ‘Where is there to go?’ he asked.

I began to wonder what kind of a country I was in where a murder could be taken so casually. Hesitantly, I said, ‘Who or what are chicleros?’

Fallon pulled a sour face. ‘The result of an odd penal system they have here. There’s a tree which grows in the forest, the zapote; it grows only here, in Guatemala and in British Honduras. The tree is tapped for its sap and that’s called chicle — it’s the basic material of chewing gum. Now, no man in his right mind will go into the forest to gather chicle; the Maya certainly won’t because he’s too intelligent to risk his skin. So the government dumps its convicts in here to do the job. It’s a six months’ season but a lot of the chicleros stay all the year round. They’re a local scourge. Mostly they kill each other off, but occasionally they’ll knock off an outsider or an Indian.’ He drew on his pipe. ‘Human life isn’t worth much in Quintana Roo.’

I thought that over. If I heard Fallon aright then this forest was deadly. If the Mayas whose native land it was wouldn’t work in the forest then it must be positively lethal. I said, ‘Why the devil don’t they grow the trees in plantations?’

His face twisted into a wry grin. ‘Because of the same argument that’s been used for slavery ever since one man put a yoke on another. It’s cheaper to continue using convicts than to start plantations. If the people who chew gum knew how it was produced, every stick would make them sick to their stomachs.’ He pointed the stem of his pipe at me. ‘If you ever meet any chicleros, don’t do a damn thing. Keep your hands to your sides, don’t make any sudden moves and like as not they’ll just pass you by. But don’t bet on it.’

I began to wonder if I was still in the twentieth century. ‘And where do the indios sublevados come into all this?’

‘That’s quite a story,’ said Fallon. ‘The Spaniards took two hundred years to get on top of the Mayas, and the Lakondon Tribe they never licked. The Mayas were kept down until 1847 when they rose in rebellion here in Quintana Roo. It was more populated in those days and the Mayas gave the Mexicans, as they now were, a hell of a trouncing in what was known as the War of the Castes. Try as they might the Mexicans could never get back in again. In 1915 the Mayas declared an independent state; they dealt with British Honduras and made business deals with British firms. The top Maya then was General Mayo; he was a really tough old bird; but the Mexicans got at him through his vanity. They signed a treaty with him in 1935, made him a general in the official Mexican army and invited him to Mexico City where they seduced him with civilization. He died in 1952. After 1935 the Mayas seemed to lose heart. They’d had a tough time since the War of the Castes and the land was becoming depopulated. On top of famine, which hit them hard, the Mexicans started to move colonists into Chan Santa Cruz. There are not more than a few thousand of the indios sublevados left now, yet they still rule the roost in their own area.’ He smiled. ‘No Mexican tax collectors allowed.’

Halstead had broken off his conversation with his wife. ‘And they don’t like archeologists much, either,’ he observed.

‘Oh, it’s not as bad as it was in the old times,’ said Fallon tolerantly. ‘In the early days of General Mayo any foreigner coming into Quintana Roo was automatically a dead man. Remember the story I told of the archeologist whose bones were built into a wall? But they’ve lost a lot of steam since then. They’re all right if they’re left alone. They’re better than the chicleros.’

Halstead looked at me and said, ‘Still glad to be along with us, Wheale?’ He had a thin smile on his face.

I ignored him. ‘Why isn’t all this common knowledge?’ I asked Fallon. ‘A government running a species of slavery and a whole people nearly wiped out surely calls for comment.’

Fallon knocked out his pipe on the leg of the table. ‘Africa is popularly known as the Dark Continent,’ he said. ‘But there are some holes and corners of Central and South America which are pretty black. Your popular journalist sitting in his office in London or New York has very limited horizons; he can’t see this far and he won’t leave his office.’

He put the pipe in his pocket. ‘But I’ll tell you something. The trouble with Quintana Roo isn’t the Indians or the chicleros; they’re people, and you can always get along with people somehow.’ He stretched out his arm and pointed. ‘There’s your trouble.’

I looked to where he was pointing and saw nothing unusual — just the trees on the other side of the strip.

‘You still don’t understand?’ he asked, and swung round to Rudetsky. ‘What kind of a job did you have in clearing this strip?’

‘The hardest work I’ve ever done,’ said Rudetsky. ‘I’ve worked in rain forest before — I was an army engineer during the war — but this one beats all hell.’

‘That’s it,’ said Fallon flatly. ‘Do you know how they classify the forest here? They say it’s a twenty-foot forest, or a ten-foot forest, or a four-foot forest. A four-foot forest is getting pretty bad — it means that you can’t see more than four feet in any direction — but there are worse than that. Add disease, snakes and shortage of water and you realize why the chicleros are among the toughest men in the world — those of them that survive. The forest is the enemy in Quintana Roo, and we’ll have to fight it to find Uaxuanoc.’

II

We went to Camp Two next day, travelling in a helicopter which flew comparatively slowly and not too high. I looked down at the green tide which flowed beneath my feet and thought back to the conversation I’d had with Pat Harris about Jack Gatt and our hypothetical encounter in Quintana Roo. While I had envisaged something more than Epping Forest I certainly hadn’t thought it would be this bad.

Fallon had explained the peculiarities of the Quintana Roo forest quite simply. He said, ‘I told you the reason why there is no native gold in Yucatán is because of the geology of the area — there’s just a limestone cap over the peninsula. That explains the forest, too, and why it’s worse than any other.’

‘It doesn’t explain it to me,’ I said. ‘Or maybe I’m particularly stupid.’

‘No; you just don’t have the technical knowledge,’ he said. ‘The rainfall is quite heavy, but when it falls it sinks right into the ground until it meets an impermeable layer. Thus there is a vast reservoir of fresh water under Yucatán, but a shortage of water because there are no rivers. The water is quite close to the surface; on the coast you can dig a hole on the beach three feet from the sea and you’ll get fresh water. In the interior sometimes the limestone cap collapses to reveal the underground water — that’s a cenote. But the point is that the trees always have water available at their roots. In any other rain forest, such as in the Congo, most of the water is drained away into rivers. In Quintana Roo it’s available to the trees and they take full advantage.’

I looked down at the forest and wondered if it was a twenty-foot forest or a four-footer. Whatever it was, I couldn’t see the ground and we were less than five hundred feet high. If Jack Gatt had any sense he wouldn’t come anywhere near Quintana Roo.

Camp Two was much simpler than Camp One. There was a rough hangar for the helicopter — a wall-less structure looking something like a Dutch barn; a dining-room-cum-lounge, a store hut for equipment and four huts for sleeping quarters. All the huts were factory-made prefabs and all had been flown in by helicopter. Simpler it might have been but there was no lack of comfort; every hut had an air-conditioning unit and the refrigerator was full of beer. Fallon didn’t believe in roughing it unless he had to.

Apart from the four of us there were the cook and his helper to do the housekeeping and the helicopter pilot. What he was going to do, apart from flying us back and forward between camps, I didn’t know; in the search for Uaxuanoc the helicopter would be about as much use as a bull’s udder.

All around lay the forest, green and seemingly impenetrable. I walked to the edge of the clearing and inspected it, trying to assess it by the rating Fallon had given. As near as I could tell this would be a fifteen-foot forest — a rather thin growth by local standards. The trees were tall, pushing and fighting in a fiercely competitive battle for light, and were wreathed and strangled by an incredible variety of parasitic plant life. And apart from the purely human sounds which came from the huts everything was deathly silent.

I turned to find Katherine standing near me. ‘Just inspecting the enemy,’ I said. ‘Have you been here before — in Quintana Roo, I mean?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not here. I was on digs with Paul in Campeche and Guatemala. I’ve never seen anything like this before.’

‘Neither have I,’ I said. ‘I’ve lived a sheltered life. If Fallon had taken the trouble to explain things when we were back in England as he explained them at Camp One I doubt if I’d be here at all. This is a wild-goose chase if ever there was one.’

‘I think you underestimate Fallon — and Paul,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think we’ll find Uaxuanoc?’

I jerked my thumb at the green wall. ‘In this? I wouldn’t trust myself to find the Eiffel Tower if someone dumped it down here.’

‘That’s just because you don’t know how to look and where to look,’ she said. ‘But Paul and Fallon are professionals; they’ve done this before.’

‘Yes, there are tricks to every trade,’ I admitted. ‘I know there are plenty in mine, but I can’t see much use for an accountant here. I feel as out of place as a Hottentot at a Buck House garden party.’ I looked into the forest. ‘Talk about not being able to see the wood for the trees — I’ll be interested to see how the experts go about this.’

I soon found out because Fallon called a conference in the big hut. There was a huge photo-mosaic pinned to a cork board on the wall and the table was covered with maps. I was curious to know why the helicopter pilot, a Texan called Harry Rider, was included in the discussion, but it soon became clear.

Fallon broke open the refrigerator and served beer all round, then said succinctly, ‘The key to this problem is the cenotes. We know Uaxuanoc was centred on a cenote because Vivero said so, and there was no reason for him to lie about that. Besides, it’s the most likely occurrence — a city must have water and the only water is at the cenotes.’

He took a pointer and stepped up to the photo-mosaic. He laid the tip of the pointer in the centre, and said, ‘We are here, next to a very small cenote on the edge of the clearing.’ He turned to me. ‘If you want to see your first Mayan structure you’ll find it next to the cenote.’

I was surprised. ‘Aren’t you going to investigate it?’

‘It’s not worth it; it won’t tell me anything I don’t know already.’ He swept the pointer around in a large circle. ‘Within ten miles of this point there are fifteen cenotes, large and small, and around one of them may be the city of Uaxuanoc.’

I was still trying to clarify in my mind the magnitude of the problem. ‘How big would you expect it to be?’ I asked.

Halstead said, ‘Bigger than Chichén Itzá — if we can believe Vivero’s map.’

‘That doesn’t mean much to me.’

‘The centre of Copan is over seventy-five acres,’ said Fallon. ‘But you mustn’t confuse a Mayan city with any other city you’ve seen. The centre of the city — the stone structures we are looking for — was the religious and administrative centre, and probably the market-place. Around it, for several square miles, lived the Mayas of the city. They didn’t live in neat little houses built into streets as we do but in an immense system of small-holdings. Each family would have its own little farm, and the household buildings were very little different from the huts that the Mayas now build, although probably more extensive. There’s nothing wrong with the Mayan hut — it’s ideally suited to this climate.’

‘And the population?’

‘Chichén Itzá was about 200,000 according to Morley,’ said Halstead. ‘Uaxuanoc might run upwards of a quarter-million.’

‘That’s a devil of a lot of people,’ I said in astonishment.

‘To build the immense structures they did require a lot of hands,’ said Fallon. ‘These were a neolithic people, remember, using stone tools to carve stone. I expect the centre of Uaxuanoc will be about one hundred acres, if we can rely on Vivero’s map, so the outer city would have been populous, with more people in it than in the whole of Quintana Roo now. But there’ll be no trace left of the outer city; timber buildings don’t last in this climate.’

He tapped with the pointer again. ‘Let’s get on with it. So we have fifteen cenotes to look at, and if we don’t find what we’re looking for we’ll have to go further afield. That will be unfortunate, because within twenty miles of here there are another forty-nine cenotes and it’s going to take a long time if we have to investigate them all.’

He waved the pointer at the pilot. ‘Fortunately we have Harry Rider and his helicopter so we can do it in reasonable comfort. I’m getting too old to tackle the forest.’

Rider said, ‘I’ve already had a look at some of those water-holes, Mr. Fallon; in most of them there’s no place to put down — not even my chopper. It’s real thick.’

Fallon nodded. ‘I know; I’ve been here before and I know what it’s like. We’ll run a preliminary photo survey. Colour film might show up differences in vegetation due to underlying structures, and infrared might show more. And I’d like to do some flights early morning and late evening — we might get something out of the shadows.’

He turned and regarded the photo-mosaic. ‘As you can see, I’ve numbered the cenotes under consideration. Some are more likely than others. Vivero said there was a ridge running through Uaxuanoc with a temple at the top and a cenote at the bottom. Cenotes and ridges seem to be associated in this area, which is bad luck; but it cuts the possibles down to eleven. I think we can forget numbers four, seven, eight and thirteen for the time being.’ He turned to Rider. ‘When can we start?’

‘Any time you like — I’m fuelled up,’ said Rider.

Fallon consulted his watch. ‘We’ll fix up the cameras, and leave directly after lunch.’

I helped to load the cameras into the helicopter. There was nothing amateurish or snapshottery about this gear; they were professional aerial cameras and I noticed that the helicopter was fitted with all the necessary brackets to receive them. My respect for Fallon’s powers of organization grew even more. Allowing for the fact that he had more money to chuck about than appeared decent, at least he knew how to spend it to the best advantage. He was no playboy of the jet-set circuit spilling his wealth into some casino owner’s pocket.

After a quick lunch Fallon and Halstead made for the helicopter. I said, ‘What do I do?’

Fallon rubbed his chin. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anything you can do,’ he said, and over his shoulder I saw Halstead grinning widely. ‘You’d better rest up this afternoon. Stay out of the sun until you’re used to this heat. Well be back in a couple of hours.’

I watched the helicopter take off and disappear over the trees feeling a little silly and like an unwanted spare part. Katherine was nowhere to be seen — I think she’d gone into the hut she shared with Halstead to unpack their personal gear. I wondered what to do and wandered disconsolately to the far end of the clearing to look at the Mayan building Fallon had mentioned.

The cenote was about thirty feet in diameter and the water lay about fifteen feet down in the pit. The sides of the pit were almost sheer, but someone had cut rough steps so as to get to the water. I was startled by the sudden noisy throb of an engine close by and found a small pump run by a petrol engine which had apparently come into operation automatically. It was pumping water from the cenote up to the camp — another bit of Fallonese efficiency.

I didn’t find a building although I looked hard enough, and after half an hour of futile searching I gave up. I was about to go back to the camp when I saw two men on the other side of the cenote looking at me. All they wore were ragged white trousers and they stood as still as statues. They were small, sinewy and brown, and a stray sunbeam falling through the leaves reflected in a coppery sheen from the naked chest of the nearest man. They regarded me solemnly for the space of thirty seconds and then turned and vanished into the forest.

III

The helicopter came back and Fallon dumped a load of film spools on the table in the big hut. ‘Know anything about film processing?’ he asked.

‘In an amateur sort of way.’

‘Umph! That might not be good enough. But we’ll do the best we can. Come with me.’ He led me into another hut and showed me his photographic department. ‘You should be able to get the hang of this,’ he said. ‘It’s not too difficult.’

There was no dabbling in trays of hypo for Fallon; he had the neatest darkroom set-up I’d ever seen — and he didn’t need a darkroom. I watched him as he demonstrated. It was a big box with a sliding, light-tight door at one side and a slot at the other. He slid open the door, put a spool of undeveloped film into a receptacle and threaded the leader through sprockets. Then he closed the door and pressed a button. Fifteen minutes later the developed colour film uncoiled through the slot on the other side, dry and ready for screening.

He took the cover off the box and showed me the innards — the sets of slowly turning rollers and baths of chemicals, and the infra-red dryer at the end — and he explained which chemicals went where. ‘Think you can handle it? It will save time if we have someone who can process the film as quickly as possible.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ I said.

‘Good! You can carry on with these, then. There’s something I want to talk over with Paul.’ He smiled. ‘You can’t really carry on a sensible conversation in a whirlybird — too noisy.’ He held up a spool. ‘This one consists of stereo pairs; I’ll show you how to cut it and register it accurately into frames when it’s developed.’

I got stuck in to developing the films, pleased that there was something I could do. All it took was time — the job itself was so simple it could have been contracted out to child labour. I developed the last spool — the stereos — and took it to Fallon, and he showed me how to fit the images into the double frames, which was easy if finicky.

That evening we had a magic-lantern show in the big hut. Fallon put a spool into the film strip projector and switched on. There was just a green blur on the screen and he chuckled. ‘I seem to have got the focus wrong on that one.’

The next frame was better and the screen showed an area of forest and a cenote reflecting the blue of the sky. It just looked like any other bit of forest to me, but Fallon and Halstead discussed it for quite a while before moving on to the next frame. It was a good two hours before all the pictures were shown and I’d lost interest long before that, especially when it seemed that the first cenote had proved a bust.

Fallon said at last, ‘We still have the stereo pictures. Let’s have a look at those.’

He changed the projectors and handed me a pair of polaroid glasses. The stereo pictures were startlingly three-dimensional; I felt that all I had to do was lean forward to pluck the topmost leaf from a tree. Being aerial shots, they also gave a dizzying sense of vertigo. Fallon ran through them all without result. ‘I think we can chalk that one off our list,’ he said. ‘We’d better go to bed — we’ll have a heavy day tomorrow.’

I yawned and stretched, then I remembered the men I had seen. ‘I saw two men down at the cenote.’

‘Chicleros?’ asked Fallon sharply.

‘Not if chicleros are little brown men with big noses.’

‘Mayas,’ he decided. ‘They’ll be wondering what the hell we’re doing.’

I said, ‘Why don’t you ask them about Uaxuanoc? Their ancestors built the place, after all.’

‘They wouldn’t know about it — or if they did, they wouldn’t tell us. The modern Maya is cut off from his history. As far as he is concerned the ruins were made by giants or dwarfs and he steers clear of them. They’re magical places and not to be approached by men. What did you think of that building down there?’

‘I couldn’t find it,’ I said.

Halstead gave a suppressed snort, and Fallon laughed. ‘It’s not so hidden; I spotted it straightaway. I’ll show you tomorrow — it will give you some idea of what we’re up against here.’

IV

We established a routine. Fallon and Halstead made three flights a day — sometimes four. After each flight they would hand me the films and I would get busy developing them and every night we would screen the results. Nothing much came of that except the steady elimination of possibilities.

Fallon took me down to the cenote and showed me the Mayan building and I found that I had passed it half a dozen times without seeing it. It was just by the side of the cenote in thick vegetation, and when Fallon said, ‘There it is!’ I didn’t see a thing except another bit of forest.

He smiled, and said, ‘Go closer,’ so I walked right to the edge of the clearing and saw nothing except the dappled dazzle-pattern of sun, leaves and shadows. I turned around and shrugged, and he called, ‘Push your hand through the leaves.’ I did as he said and rammed my fist against a rock with an unexpected jolt.

‘Now step back a few paces and have another look,’ said Fallon.

I walked back, rubbing my skinned knuckles and looked again at the vegetation through narrowed eyes. It’s a funny thing — one moment it wasn’t there and a split second later it was, like a weird optical illusion, but even then it was only the ghostly hint of a building made up imperfectly of shadows. I lifted my hand and said uncertainly, ‘It starts there — and ends... there?’

‘That’s right; you’ve got it.’

I stared at it, afraid it would go away again. If any army staff in the world wants to improve its camouflage units I would strongly advise a course in Quintana Roo. This natural camouflage was just about perfect. I said. ‘What do you think it was?’

‘Maybe a shrine to Chac, the Rain God; they’re often associated with cenotes. If you like you can strip the vegetation from it. We might find something of minor interest. But watch out for snakes.’

‘I might do that, if I can ever find it again.’

Fallon was amused. ‘You’ll have to develop an eye for this kind of thing if you contemplate archeological research in these parts. If not, you’ll walk right through a city and not know it’s there.’

I could believe him.

He consulted his watch. ‘Paul will be waiting for me,’ he said. ‘We’ll be back with some film in a couple of hours.’

The relationship between the four of us was odd. I felt left out of things because I didn’t really know what was going on. The minutiae of research were beyond me and I didn’t understand a tenth of what Fallon and Halstead were talking about when they conversed on professional matters, which is all they ever spoke to each other about.

Fallon rigidly confined his relationship with Halstead to the matter in hand and would not overstep it by an inch. It was obvious to me that he did not particularly like Paul Halstead, nor did he trust him overmuch. But then, neither did I, especially after that conversation with Pat Harris. Fallon would have received an even more detailed report on Halstead from Harris and so I understood his attitude.

He was different with me. While regarding my ignorance of archeological fieldwork with a tolerant amusement, he did not try to thrust his professional expertise down my throat. He patiently answered my questions which, to him, I suppose, were simple and often absurd, and let it go at that. We got into the habit of sitting together in the evening for an hour before going to bed, and we yarned on a wide variety of topics. Apart from his professional work he was well read and a man of wide erudition. Yet I was able to interest him in the application of computers to farming practice and I detailed what I was doing to Hay Tree Farm. It seemed that he owned a big ranch in Arizona and he saw the possibilities at once.

But then he shook his head irritably. ‘I’ll pass that on to my brother,’ he said. ‘He’s looking after all that now.’ He stared blindly across the room. ‘A man has so little time to do what he really wants to do.’

Soon thereafter he became abstracted and intent on his own thoughts and I excused myself and went to bed.

Halstead tended to be morose and self-contained. He ignored me almost completely, and rarely spoke to me unless it was absolutely necessary. When he did volunteer any remarks they were usually accompanied by an illconcealed sneer directed at my abysmal ignorance of the work. Quite often I felt like taking a poke at him, but I bottled up my temper for the sake of the general peace. In the evenings, after our picture show and discussion, he and his wife would withdraw to their hut.

And that leaves Katherine Halstead, who was tending to become a tantalizing mystery. True, she was doing what she said she would, and kept her husband under tight control. Often I saw him on the edge of losing his temper with Fallon — he didn’t lose his temper with me because I was beneath his notice — and be drawn back into semi-composure by a look or a word from his wife. I thought I understood him and what made him tick, but I’m damned if I could understand her.

A man often sees mystery in a woman where there is nothing but a yawning vacuity, the so-called feminine mystery being but a cunning façade behind which lies nothing worthwhile. But Katherine wasn’t like that. She was amusing, intelligent and talented in a number of ways; she sketched competently in a better than amateur way, she cooked well and alleviated our chuck-wagon diet, and she knew a hell of a lot more about the archeological score than I did, although she admitted she was but a neophyte. But she would never talk about her husband in any way at all, which is a trait I’d never come across in a married woman before.

Those I had known — not a few — always had something to say about their mates, either in praise or blame. Most would be for their husbands, with perhaps a tolerant word for their weaknesses. A few would praise incessantly and not hear a word against the darling man, and a few, the regrettable bitches, would be acid in esoteric asides meant for one pair of ears but understood by all — sniping shots in the battle of the sexes. But from Katherine Halstead there was not a cheep, one way or the other. She just didn’t talk about him at all. It was unnatural.

Because Fallon and Halstead were away most of the day we were thrown together a lot. The camp cook and his assistant were very unobtrusive; they cooked the grub, washed the dishes, repaired the generator when it broke down, and spent the rest of their time losing their wages to each other at gin rummy. So Katherine and I had each other for company during those long hot days. I soon got the film developing taped and had plenty of time on my hands, so I suggested we do something about the Mayan building.

‘We might come up with an epoch-making discovery,’ I said jocularly. ‘Let’s give it a bash. Fallon said it would be a good idea.’

She smiled at the idea that we might find anything of importance, but agreed that it would be something semi-constructive to do, so we armed ourselves with machetes and went down to the cenote to hew at the vegetation.

I was surprised to see how well preserved the building was once it was denuded of its protective cover. The limestone blocks of which it was built were properly cut and shaped, and laid in a workmanlike manner. On the wall nearest the cenote we found a doorway with a sort of corbelled arch, and when we looked inside there was nothing but darkness and an angry buzz of disturbed wasps.

I said, ‘I don’t think we’d better go in there just yet; the present inhabitants might not like it.’

We withdrew back into the clearing and I looked down at myself. It had been hard work cutting the creepers away from the building and I’d sweated freely, and my chest was filthy with bits of earth turned into mud by the sweat. I was in a mess.

‘I’m going to have a swim in the cenote,’ I said. ‘I need cleaning up.’

‘What a good idea,’ she said. ‘I’ll get my costume.’

I grinned. ‘I won’t need one — these shorts will do.’

She went back to the huts and I walked over to the cenote and looked down into the dark water. I couldn’t see bottom and it could have been anything between six inches and sixty feet deep, so I thought it was inadvisable to dive in. I climbed down to water level by means of the steps, let myself into the water and found it pleasantly cool. I splashed about for a bit but I didn’t find bottom, so I dived and went down to look for it. I must have gone down thirty feet and I still hadn’t found it. It was bloody dark down there, which gave me a good indication of conditions if I had to dive for Fallon. I let myself up slowly, dribbling air from my mouth, and came up to sunlight again.

‘I wondered where you were,’ Katherine called, and I looked up to see her poised on the edge of the cenote, silhouetted against the sun fifteen feet above my head. ‘Is it deep enough for diving?’

‘Too deep,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t find bottom.’

‘Good!’ she said, and took off in a clean dive. I swam slowly around the cenote and became worried when she didn’t come up, but suddenly I felt my ankles grabbed and I was pulled under.

We surfaced laughing, and she said. ‘That’s for pulling me under in Fallon’s pool.’ She flicked water at me with the palm of her hand, and for two or three minutes we had a splashing match like a couple of kids until we were breathless and had to stop. After that we just floated around feeling the difference between the coolness of the water and the heat of the direct sun.

She said lazily, ‘What’s it like down there?’

‘Down where?’

‘At the bottom of this pool.’

‘I didn’t find it; I didn’t go down too far. It was a bit cold.’

‘Weren’t you afraid of meeting Chac?’

‘Does he live down there?’

‘He has a palace at the bottom of every cenote. They used to throw maidens in, and they’d sink down to meet him. Some of them would come back with wonderful stories.’

‘What about those who didn’t come back?’

‘Chac kept them for his own. Sometimes he’d keep them all and the people would become frightened and punish the cenote. They’d throw stones into it and flog it with branches. But none of the maidens would ever come back because of that.’

‘You’d better be careful, then,’ I said.

She splashed water at me. ‘I’m not exactly a maiden.’

I swam over to the steps. ‘The chopper should be coming back soon. Another batch of film to be processed.’ I climbed halfway up and stopped to give her a hand.

At the top she offered me a towel but I shook my head. ‘I’ll dry off quickly enough in the sun.’

‘Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘But it’s not good for your hair.’ She spread the towel on the ground, sat on it, and started to rub her hair with another towel.

I sat down beside her and started to flip pebbles into the cenote. ‘What are you really doing here, Jemmy?’ she asked.

‘I’m damned if I know,’ I admitted. ‘It just seemed a good idea at the time.’

She smiled. ‘It’s a change from your Devon, isn’t it? Don’t you wish you were back on your farm — on Hay Tree Farm? Incidentally, do you always make hay from trees in Devon?’

‘It doesn’t mean what you think. It’s a dialect word meaning a hedge or enclosure.’ I flicked another pebble into the pool. ‘Do you think that annoys Chac?’

‘It might, so I wouldn’t do it too often — not if you have to dive into a cenote. Damn! I don’t have any cigarettes.’

I got up and retrieved mine from where I had left them and we sat and smoked in silence for a while. She said, ‘I haven’t played about like that in the water for years.’

‘Not since the carefree days of the Bahamas?’ I asked.

‘Not since then.’

‘Is that where you met Paul?’

There was the briefest pause before she said, ‘No. I met Paul in New York.’ She smiled slightly. ‘He isn’t the type you find on the beach in the Bahamas.’

I silently agreed; it was impossible to equate him with one of those Travel Association carefree holiday advertisements — all teeth, sun glasses and suntan. I probed deeper, but went about it circuitously. ‘What were you doing before you met him?’

She blew out a plume of smoke. ‘Nothing much; I worked at a small college in Virginia.’

‘A school teacher!’ I said in surprise.

She laughed. ‘No — just a secretary. My father teaches at the same college.’

‘I thought you didn’t look like a schoolmarm. What does your father teach? Archeology?’

‘He teaches history. Don’t imagine I spent all my time in the Bahamas. It was a very short episode — you can’t afford more on a secretary’s salary. I saved up for that vacation for a long time.’

I said, ‘When you met Paul — was that before or after he’d started on this Vivero research?’

‘It was before — I was with him when he found the Vivero letter.’

‘You were married then?’

‘We were on our honeymoon,’ she said lightly. ‘It was a working honeymoon for Paul, though.’

‘Has he taught you much about archeology?’

She shrugged. ‘He’s not a very good teacher, but I’ve picked up quite a lot. I’ve tried to help him in his work — I think a wife should help her husband.’

‘What do you think of this Vivero thing — the whole caper?’

She was silent for a time, then said frankly, ‘I don’t like it, Jemmy. I don’t like anything about it. It’s become an obsession with Paul — and not only him. Look at Fallon. My God, take a good look at yourself!’

‘What about me?’

She threw her cigarette away half-smoked. ‘Don’t you think it’s ridiculous that you should have been jerked out of a peaceful life in England and dumped in this wilderness just because of what a Spaniard wrote four hundred years ago? Too many lives are being twisted, Jemmy.’

I said carefully, ‘I wouldn’t say I’m obsessional about it. I don’t give a damn about Vivero or Uaxuanoc. My motives are different. But you say that Paul is obsessed by it. How does his obsession take him?’

She plucked nervously at the towel in her lap. ‘You’ve seen him. He can think or talk of nothing else. It’s changed him; he’s not the man I knew when we were married. And he’s not only fighting Quintana Roo — he’s fighting Fallon.’

I said shortly, ‘If it weren’t for Fallon he wouldn’t be here now.’

‘And that’s a part of what he’s fighting,’ she said passionately. ‘How can he compete with Fallon’s reputation, with Fallon’s money and resources? It’s driving him crazy.’

‘I wasn’t aware that this was any kind of competition. Do you think Fallon will deny him any credit that’s due to him?’

‘He did before — why shouldn’t he do it again? It’s really Fallon’s fault that Paul is in such a bad state.’

I sighed. Pat Harris was dead right. Katherine didn’t know about Halstead’s bad reputation in the trade. The advertising boys had got it down pat — even her best friend wouldn’t tell her! I debated for a moment whether or not to tell her all about Pat Harris’s investigations, but to tell a woman that her husband was a liar and a faker was certainly not the best way of making friends and influencing people. She would become more than annoyed and would probably tell Halstead — and what Halstead would do in his present frame of mind might be highly dangerous.

I said. ‘Now, look, Katherine: if Paul has an obsession it has nothing to do with Fallon. I think Fallon is eminently fair, and will give Paul all the credit that’s coming to him. That’s just my own personal opinion, mind you.’

‘You don’t know what that man has done to Paul,’ she said sombrely.

‘Maybe he had it coming to him,’ I said brutally. ‘He doesn’t make it easy for anyone working with him. I’m not too happy about his attitude to me, and if he keeps it up he’s going to get a thick ear.’

‘That’s an unfair thing to say,’ she burst out.

‘What the hell’s unfair about it? You asked to come on this jaunt on the grounds that you could control him. Well, you just do that, or I’ll do a bit of controlling in my own way.’

She scrambled to her feet. ‘You’re against him, too. You’re siding with Fallon.’

‘I’m not siding with anyone,’ I said tiredly. ‘I’m just sick to death of seeing a piece of scientific research being treated as though it were a competitive sporting event — or a war. And I might tell you that that attitude is one sided — it doesn’t come from Fallon.’

‘It doesn’t have to,’ she said viciously. ‘He’s on top.’

‘On top of what, for God’s sake? Both Fallon and Paul are here doing a job of work, and why Paul doesn’t get on with it and await the outcome is beyond me.’

‘Because Fallon will...’ She stopped. ‘Oh, what’s the use of talking? You wouldn’t understand.’

‘That’s right,’ I said sarcastically. ‘I’m so dumb and stupid I can’t put two and two together. Don’t be so bloody patronizing.’

It’s said that some women appear more beautiful when angry, but for my money it’s a myth probably bruited about by constitutionally angry women. Katherine was in a rage and she looked ugly. With one quick movement she brought up her hand and slapped me — hard. She must have played a lot of tennis in her time because that forehand swing of hers really jolted me.

I just looked at her. ‘Of course that solves a lot of problems.’ I said quietly, ‘Katherine, I admire loyalty in a wife, but you’re not just loyal — you’ve been brainwashed.’

There was a sudden throb in the air and then a roar as the helicopter appeared over the trees and passed overhead. I looked up and saw Paul Halstead’s head twist around to watch us.