I didn’t spare him. ‘You had plenty of warnings from Pat Harris. Why the hell didn’t you act on them?’
‘I was selfish,’ he said. He looked me straight in the eye. ‘Just plain selfish. I wanted to stay while I could—while I had time. There’s so little time, Jemmy.’
I drank some whisky. ‘You’ll be back next season.’
He shook his head. ‘No, I won’t. I’ll never be back here. Someone else will take over—some younger man. It could have been Paul if he hadn’t been so reckless and impatient.’
I put down my glass. ‘What are you getting at?’
He gave me a haggard grin. ‘I’ll be dead in three months, Jemmy. They told me not long before we left Mexico City—they gave me six months.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘They didn’t want me to come here—the doctors, you know. But I did, and I’m glad I did. But I’ll go back to Mexico City now and go into a hospital to die.’
‘What is it?’
‘The old enemy,’ said Fallon. ‘Cancer!’
The word dropped as heavy as lead into the quiet hut and there was nothing I could say. This was the reason he had
been so preoccupied, why he had driven so hard to get the job done, and why he had stuck to one purpose without deflection. He had wanted to do this last excavation before he died and he had achieved his purpose.
After a while I said softly, ‘I’m sorry.’
He snorted. ‘
You’re
sorry! Sorry for me! It seems as though I’m not going to live to die in hospital if you’re right about Gatt—and neither is anyone else here. I’m sorry, Jemmy, that I got you into this. I’m sorry for the others, too. But being sorry isn’t enough, is it? What’s the use of saying “Sorry” to a dead man?’
‘Take it easy,’ I said.
He fell into a despondent silence. After a while, he said, ‘When do you think Gatt will attack?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But he must make his move soon.’ I finished the whisky. ‘You’d better get some sleep.’ I could see Fallon didn’t think much of that idea, but he said nothing and I went away.
Rudetsky had some ideas of his own, after all. I bumped into him in the darkness unreeling a coil of wire. He cursed briefly, and said, ‘Sorry, but I guess I’m on edge.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘If those bastards attack, they’ll be able to take cover behind those two huts, so I took all the gelignite I could find and planted it. Now I’m stringing the wire to the plunger in our hut. They won’t have any cover if I can help it.’
‘Don’t blow up those huts just yet,’ I said. ‘It would come better as a surprise. Let’s save it for when we need it.’
He clicked his tongue. ‘You’re turning out to be quite a surprising guy yourself. That’s a real nasty idea.’
‘I took a few lessons out in the forest.’ I helped him unreel the wire and we disguised it as much as we could by kicking soil over it. Rudetsky attached the ends of one set of wires to the terminals of the plunger box and slapped the
side of it gently with an air of satisfaction. I said, ‘It’ll be dawn fairly soon.’
He went to the window and looked up at the sky. ‘There’s quite a lot of cloud. Fallon said the rains break suddenly.’
It wasn’t the weather I was worried about. I said, ‘Put Smith and Fowler on watch out at the edge of the camp. We don’t want to be surprised.’
Then I had an hour to myself and I sat outside the hut and almost nodded off to sleep, feeling suddenly very weary. Sleep was something that had been in short supply, and if I hadn’t had that twenty-four hour rest in the forest tree I daresay I’d have gone right off as though drugged. As it was I drowsed until I was wakened by someone shaking my shoulder.
It was Fowler. ‘Someone’s coming,’ he said urgently.
‘Where?’
‘From the forest.’ He pointed. ‘From over there—I’ll show you.’
I followed behind him to the hut at the edge of the camp from which he had been watching. I took the field glasses he gave me and focused on the distant figure in white which was strolling across the cleared land.
The light was good enough and the glasses strong enough to show quite clearly that it was Gatt.
There was an odd quality in the light that morning. In spite of the high cloud which moved fast in the sky everything was crystal clear, and the usual heat haze, which lay over the forest even at dawn, was gone. The sun was just rising and there was a lurid and unhealthy yellow tinge to the sky, and a slight breeze from the west bent the branches of the trees beyond the cleared ruins of Uaxuanoc.
As I focused the glasses on Gatt I found to my disgust that my hands were trembling, and I had to rest the glasses on the window-sill to prevent the image dancing uncontrollably. Gatt was taking his time. He strolled along as unconcernedly as though he were taking his morning constitutional in a city park, and stopped occasionally to look about at the uncovered mounds. He was dressed as nattily as he had been when he flew into Camp One, and I even saw the tiny point of whiteness that was a handkerchief in his breast pocket.
Momentarily I ignored him and swept the glasses around the perimeter of the ruins. No one else showed up and it looked as though Gatt was alone, a deceptive assumption it would be wise to ignore. I handed the glasses to Rudetsky, who had come into the hut. He raised them to his eyes, and said, ‘Is that the guy?’
‘That’s Gatt, all right.’
He grunted. ‘Taking his time. What the hell is he doing? Picking flowers?’
Gatt had bent down and was groping at something on the ground. I said, ‘He’ll be here in five minutes. I’m going out there to talk to him.’
‘That’s taking a risk.’
‘It has to be done—and I’d rather do it out there than back here. Can anyone use that rifle we’ve got?’
‘I’m not too bad,’ said Fowler.
‘Not too bad—hell!’ rumbled Rudetsky. ‘He was a marksman in Korea.’
‘That’s good enough for me,’ I said with an attempt at a grin. ‘Keep your sights on him, and if he looks like pulling a fast one on me, let him have it.’
Fowler picked up the rifle and examined the sights. ‘Don’t go too far away,’ he said. ‘And keep from between me and Gatt.’
I walked to the door of the hut ‘Everyone else keep out of sight,’ I said, and stepped outside, feeling like a condemned man on his way to the gallows. I walked towards Gatt across the cleared ground, feeling very vulnerable and uncomfortably aware that I was probably framed in someone’s rifle sights. Obeying Fowler’s instructions, I walked slowly so Gatt and I would meet a little more than two hundred yards from the hut, and I veered a little to give Fowler his open field of fire.
Gatt had lit a cigar and, as he approached, he raised his elegant Panama hat politely. ‘Ah, Mr Wheale; lovely morning, isn’t it?’ I wasn’t in the mood for cat-and-mouse chitchat so I said nothing. He shrugged, and said, ‘Is Professor Fallon available?’
‘No,’ I said shortly.
He nodded understandingly. ‘Ah, well! You know what I’ve come for, of course.’ It wasn’t a question, but a flat statement.
‘You won’t get it,’ I said equally flatly.
‘Oh, I will,’ he said with certainty. ‘I will.’ He examined the ash on the end of his cigar. ‘I take it that you are doing the talking for Fallon. I’m surprised at that—I really am. I’d have thought he was man enough to do his own talking, but I guess he’s soft inside like most people. But let’s get down to it. You’ve pulled a lot of stuff out of that cenote. I want it. It’s as simple as that. If you let me have it without trouble, there’ll be no trouble from me.’
‘You won’t harm us in any way?’ I queried.
‘You just walk out of here,’ he assured me.
‘What guarantees do I have of that?’
He spread his hands and looked at me with honesty shining in his eyes. ‘My word on it.’
I laughed out loud. ‘Nothing doing, Gatt. I’m not that stupid.’
For the first time anger showed in him and there was a naked, feral gleam in his eyes. ‘Now, get this straight, Wheale. I’m coming in to take that loot, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to stop me. You do it peaceably or not—it’s your choice.’
I caught a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye and turned my head. Some figures in white were emerging from the forest slowly; they were strung out in a straggling line and they carried rifles. I swung my head around to the other side and saw more armed men coming across from the forest.
Clearly the time had come to put some pressure on Gatt. I felt in my shirt pocket for cigarettes, lit one and casually tossed the matchbox up and down in my hand. ‘There’s a rifle sighted on you, Gatt,’ I said. ‘One wrong move and you’re a dead man.’
He smiled thinly. ‘You’re under a gun, too. I’m not a fool.’
I tossed the matchbox up and down, and kept it going. ‘I’ve arranged a signal,’ I said: ‘If I drop this matchbox, you
get a bullet. Now, if those men out there move ten more yards, I drop this box.’
He looked at me with the faintest shadow of uncertainty. ‘You’re bluffing,’ he said. ‘You’d be a dead man, too.’
‘Try me’ I invited. ‘There’s a difference between you and me. I don’t particularly care whether I live or die, and I’m betting that you do. The stakes are high in this game, Gatt—and those men have only five more yards to go. You had my brother killed, remember! I’m willing to pay a lot for his life.’
Gatt looked at the matchbox with fascination as it went up into the air, and winced involuntarily as I fumbled the next catch. I was running a colossal bluff and to make it stick I had to impress him with an appearance of ruthlessness. I tossed the box again. ‘Three more yards and neither of us will have to worry any more about the treasure of Uaxuanoc.’
He broke! ‘All right; it’s a stand-off,’ he said hoarsely, and lifted both arms in the air and waved them. The line of men drifted to a halt and then turned to go back into the forest. As I watched them go I tossed the matchbox again, and Gatt said irritably, ‘For Christ’s sake, stop doing that!’
I grinned at him and caught the box, but still held it in my fingers. There was a slight film of sweat on his forehead although the heat of the day had not yet started. ‘I’d hate to play poker with you,’ he said at last.
‘That’s a game I haven’t tried.’
He gave a gusty sigh of exasperation. ‘Listen, Wheale: you don’t know the game you’re in. I’ve had tabs on Fallon right from the beginning. Christ, I laughed back there at your airstrip when you all played the innocent. You really thought you were fooling me, didn’t you? Hell, I knew everything you did and everything you thought—I didn’t give a damn what action you took. And I’ve had that fool Harris chasing all over Mexico. You see, it’s all come down
to one thing, one sharp point—I’m here and I’m on top. Now, what about it?’
‘You must have had some help,’ I said.
‘Didn’t you know?’ he said in surprise, and began to laugh. ‘Jesus! I had that damned fool, Halstead. He came to me back in Mexico City and made a deal. A very eager guy, Halstead; he didn’t want to share this city with Fallon—so we made the deal. He could have the city and I’d pick up the gold and get rid of Fallon for him.’ The corners of his mouth downturned in savage contempt. ‘The guy was too chicken to do his own killing.’
So it had been Halstead just as Pat Harris suspected and when we found Uaxuanoc he had tipped off Gatt. No wonder Pat had been running round in circles when Gatt knew our every move. It made me sick to realize how ambition could so corrupt a man that he would throw in his lot with a man like Gatt. The funny part about it was that Halstead had meant to cheat Gatt all along; he had never expected anything of value to turn up for Gatt to get his hands on.
I said in a hard voice, ‘Where is Halstead now?’
‘Oh, the guy’s dead’ said Gatt casually. ‘When you chased him out my chicleros got a little trigger-happy and he caught one.’ He grinned. ‘Did I save you the trouble, Wheale?’
I ignored that. ‘You’re wasting your time here. You’re welcome to come and take your loot but you’ll get wet doing it.’
‘Not me,’ said Gatt. ‘You! Oh, I know what you’ve done with it. Halstead didn’t die right away and he told me where the stuff was—after a bit of persuasion. It took time or I’d have been here sooner before you put the stuff in the water. But it doesn’t matter, not really.’ His voice was calm and soft and infinitely menacing. ‘You can get it back, Wheale; you’re a diver, and so is that Halstead bitch. You’ll swim down and get it back for me.’
‘You don’t know much about deep diving. It’s not a five-minute job.’
He made a slashing motion with his hand. ‘But you’ll do it all the same.’
‘I don’t see how you can make me.’
‘Don’t you? You’ll learn.’ His smile was terrible. ‘Let’s say I get hold of Fallon and go to work on him, hey? You’ll watch what I do to him and then you’ll go down. I promise you.’ He dropped the stub of his cigar and tapped me on the chest. ‘You were right when you said there’s a difference between you and me. I’m a hard man, Wheale; and you just think you’re hard. You’ve been putting up a good imitation lately and you had me fooled, but you’re like all the rest of the common punks in the world—soft in the middle, like Fallon. When I start taking Fallon apart slowly—or the girl, maybe—or that big ox, Rudetsky—then you’ll dive. See what I mean?’
I saw. I saw that this man used cruelty as a tool. He had no human feeling himself but knew enough to manipulate the feelings of others. If I really had made an arrangement with Fowler I’d have dropped that matchbox there and then and taken my chance on being killed as long as he was eliminated. And I cursed my thoughtlessness in not bringing a pistol to shoot the bastard with.
I caught my breath and strove to speak evenly. ‘In that case you must be careful not to kill me,’ I said. ‘You’ve heard of the goose and the golden eggs.’
His lips curled back from his teeth. ‘You’ll wish I had killed you,’ he promised. ‘You really will.’ He turned and strode away and I went back to the hut—fast.
I tumbled in the door and yelled, ‘Shoot the bastard!’ I was in a blind rage.
‘No good,’ said Fowler from the window. ‘He ducked for cover.’
‘What gives?’ asked Rudetsky.
‘He’s mad—staring stone mad! We’ve balked him and he’s done his nut. He can’t get his loot so he is going to take it out in blood.’ I thought of that other madman who had shouted crazily, ‘Weltmacht oder Niedergang!’ Like Hitler, Gatt had blown his top completely and was ready to ruin us and himself out of angry spite. He had gone beyond reason and saw the world through the redness of blood.
Rudetsky and Fowler looked at me in silence, then Rudetsky took a deep breath. ‘Makes no difference, I guess. We knew he’d have to kill us, anyway.’
‘He’ll be whipping up an attack any minute,’ I said. ‘Get everyone back in the hut by the cenote.’
Rudetsky thrust a revolver into my hand. ‘All you gotta do is pull the trigger.’
I took the gun although I didn’t know if I could use it effectively and we left the hut at a dead run. We had only got halfway to the cenote when there was a rattle of rifle fire and bits of soil fountained up from the ground. ‘Spread out!’ yelled Rudetsky, and turned sharply to cannon into me. He bounced off and we both dived for cover behind a hut.
A few more shots popped off, and I said, ‘Where the hell are they?’
Rudetsky’s chest heaved. ‘Somewhere out front.’
Gatt’s men must have gone on to the attack as soon as Gatt had gone into cover, probably by pre-arranged signal. Shots were popping off from all around like something in a Western movie and it was difficult to tell precisely where the attack was coming from. I saw Fowler, who was crouched behind an abandoned packing case on the other side of the clearing, suddenly run in the peculiar skittering movement of the experienced soldier. Bullets kicked up dust around him but he wasn’t hit and he disappeared from sight behind a hut.
‘We’ve gotta get outa here,’ said Rudetsky rapidly. His face was showing strain. ‘Back to the hut.’
He meant the hut by the cenote and I could see his point. There wasn’t any use preparing a hut against attack and then being caught in the open. I hoped the others had had the sense to retreat there as soon as they heard the first shots. I looked back and cursed Rudetsky’s neat and tidy mind—he had built the camp with a wide and open street which was now raked with bullets and offered no cover.
I said, ‘We’d better split up, Joe; two targets are more difficult than one.’
‘You go first’ he said jerkily. ‘I might be able to cover you.’
This was no time to argue so I ran for it, back to the hut behind us. I was about two yards from it when a chiclero skidded around the corner from an unexpected direction. He was as surprised as I was because he literally ran on to the gun which I held forward so that the muzzle was jammed into his stomach.
I pulled the trigger and my arm jolted convulsively. It was as though a great hand plucked the chiclero off his feet and he was flung away and fell with all limbs awry. I dithered a bit with my heart turning somersaults in my chest before I recovered enough from the shock to bolt through the doorway of the hut. I leaned against the wall for a moment gasping for breath and with the looseness of fear in my bowels, then I turned and looked cautiously through the window. Rudetsky was gone—he must have made his break immediately after I had moved.
I looked at the revolver; it had been fully loaded and there were now five shots left. Those damned thugs seemed to be coming from all directions. The man I had shot had come from
behind
—he had apparently come up from the cenote. I didn’t like the implications of that.
I was wondering what to do when the decision was taken from me. The back door of the hut crashed open under the impact of a booted foot. I jerked up my head and saw,
framed in the doorway, a chiclero just in the act of squeezing off a shot at me with a rifle. Time seemed frozen and I stood there paralysed before I made an attempt at lifting the revolver, and even as my arm moved I knew I was too late.
The chiclero seemed to
flicker
—that movement you see in an old film when a couple of frames have been cut from the action producing a sudden displacement of an actor. The side of his jaw disappeared and the lower half of his face was replaced by a bloody mask. He uttered a bubbling scream, clapped his hands to his face and staggered sideways, dropping his rifle on the threshold with a clatter. I don’t know who shot him; it could have been Fowler or Rudetsky, or even one of his own side—the bullets were flying thick enough.