by Ned Beauman
‘Really, Mr Coehorn, I haven’t seen a crowd like this in one place since the day we got here,’ said Maisoneuve. ‘A lot of the Banisters have come down off the steps.’
‘You mean the temple’s unguarded?’
‘Closest it’s ever been, I’d say.’
Coehorn got to his feet. Here was an excitement he hadn’t felt since those first clashes in 1938. Not long ago it had struck him that, like his father, he had founded a corporation. The industry in which the corporation did most of its business was the satisfaction of his whims and languors, and in that respect it might resemble a sort of burlesque of Eastern Aggregate, but it was no less functional or self-sustaining. He would never underrate his achievement. And yet he still wanted the temple as badly as ever. Shielding his eyes against the daylight he hurried out of the bungalow. He was ready to seize the moment, even if the last seventeen hours hadn’t set much of a precedent in that regard.
But as he rounded the south-west corner of the temple with Irma and Pennebaker at his side, the first person he met was a tall man whom he recognised as one of Whelt’s stooges.
‘Mr Coehorn, I’ve been sent to tell you that, with all due respect, you’d better not get any ideas,’ the man said. ‘We’re watching, and if we think you’re looking to try anything funny, we’ll be back up there holding you off before you can say “Jack Robinson”. What’s happening now is for our people and your people alike so you can just forget all that for the time being. No touchdowns in halftime.’
‘What do you mean, “what’s happening now”?’ said Coehorn.
‘We’re getting rid of Trimble.’ The man tried to sound stern as he said this but his glee was so uncontainable that his voice warbled in the middle. He gestured behind him. Coehorn could see that Leland Trimble was being manhandled towards the perimeter of the clearing, with another big Angeleno clutching his left arm and Mac Parke, Coehorn’s own athletic trainer, clutching his right. Pressing at their rear like a wedding party were scores of others, close to the entire population of both camps, craning their necks or jostling forward or spreading out at the sides to get a better look. There was a lot of noise, but he couldn’t make out any individual cries, only a sort of swarmy, hysterical jubilation.
‘What is this?’ said Coehorn. ‘Is this some Indian ritual we’ve suddenly adopted? Are we driving a scapegoat out of the village in the hopes of a good harvest?’ Striding forward, he raised his voice. ‘Stop this at once!’
Trimble looked up. His hair was disheveled and he’d lost a sandal but he seemed to be unharmed. ‘Mr Coehorn!’
The sky was the color of the temple and Coehorn’s face was damp, but by the standards of the jungle this wasn’t rain yet, just something the sky had to push out before it really started, like the water left behind in the showerhead from the last time you used it. By now he was close enough to speak directly to Parke. ‘Let him go! Do you really think anyone who dines at my table is going to be humiliated like this? What the hell is wrong with you?’
‘That’s it, Mr Coehorn,’ said Trimble. ‘Talk some sense into them.’
The procession had stopped. ‘We’ve all decided, sir,’ said Parke, who most of the time was nothing but plasticine features and dumb obedience, like a cut-rate golem. ‘He’s got to go.’
‘You’ve “decided”? Have you forgotten who you work for? If for some reason Trimble isn’t welcome up in the cheap seats any more, that’s fine. We’ve got plenty of room for him down here. In fact if you’re not careful he will have your cabin, Parke.’
‘He’s done things.’
‘Done what? Published a newspaper? Brokered any number of complicated deals between the two camps? He’s indispensible.’
‘You don’t know, sir. You wouldn’t understand.’
‘I understand perfectly well. I know what I’m looking at. This is mob justice and it’s disgusting. For eight years we stay basically civilised and now this. What are you proposing to do? Feed him to the jaguars?’
‘No, sir. It’s exile. He only has to leave the site. He can go wherever he likes. But he can’t come back.’
‘How will he survive in the jungle? Look here, just because one isn’t infatuated with another person’s company that doesn’t mean one has the right to send them off into …’ Coehorn remembered Walter Pennebaker was standing beside him. ‘The point is, I won’t allow it.’
Irma took his arm. ‘Elias,’ she hissed.
‘What is it, Irma?’
‘Elias, look at me.’ He did, and was alarmed by her eyes. ‘Let this happen.’
‘What?’
‘Let them send him away.’
He could feel her fingernails digging into his bicep, and he wanted to look away from her but somehow he couldn’t. ‘Irma, what in the world has come over you? I’ve never seen you like this.’
‘I’m not going to tell you again, Elias. Let. This. Happen.’ She was hissing now, and that last word was the tip of a switchblade held right up to his cornea.
The crowd had fallen almost silent. They were watching to see what he would do. He reached out to give the reporter’s hand a good shake. ‘Best of luck, Trimble. Look me up when we all get back to New York.’
Coehorn didn’t stay to see what would happen. Instead, attempting to recover a modicum of authority, he insisted that Irma and Pennebaker return to the bungalow with him. At their backs, Trimble could be heard yelling, something about somebody’s lovechild, something about somebody’s probation terms, but Coehorn didn’t listen. They trotted along most of the way because the real rain had started now, the hyperemesis, the Tommy-gun barrage, the collapsing aqueduct, the doubled gravity. Everywhere, cabins would be springing new leaks, always directly over your bed, your table, your trunk. The sight of the water rivering down over the antique limestone made Coehorn nostalgic for New York sidewalks in the spring. ‘Your bags are packed, Pennebaker?’ he said when they got inside. ‘You have the stone? You’re ready to go?’
‘I sort of thought we were putting it off until tomorrow,’ said Pennebaker.
‘It’s not even noon. There are hours of daylight left.’
‘But Mr Coehorn, I haven’t slept.’
‘You can sleep tonight. Better not to waste any more time.’
‘And we haven’t finished working on the stuff I have to say.’
‘Oh, I can’t spend one minute more on all that,’ said Coehorn, waving his hand. ‘Just think back over our discussions and select the best and most truthful material and put it in an intelligent order and I’m sure we can trust you not to disappoint us.’
*
Although he knew it was futile, Yang spent a long time trying to talk Whelt out of going down inside the temple. His first argument was that they didn’t need any more silver. After the suit of armor that Gracie Calix had discovered had been winched up and filleted of its bones, what remained was about forty pounds of metal, which would make more than enough silver nitrate film to shoot the rest of Hearts in Darkness (just as soon as all the other obstacles withdrew). But Whelt, who so seldom showed any hungers at all, talked about silver like a greedy prospector. Even if they didn’t find another full suit of armor, he said, there might at least be a few trinkets. If there was even one more ounce of silver left, they had to have it.
Yang’s second argument was that it was too dangerous. Perhaps the alcove Calix had found was nothing more than that, or perhaps this structure they thought they knew so well was in fact as hollow as a clapboard house. But if the temple did indeed have an internal architecture, it wasn’t likely to resemble the hotellish corridors and stairways of an Egyptian pyramid. Whelt might easily get stuck somewhere too tight or too sheer to climb back up. (Halloran joked that in that case they could just disassemble the other half of the temple to get him out, which provoked an icy stare from Whelt.) Also, if Whelt’s lantern went out he might find himself lost down there in the dark like a spelunker. The camp had no rope available that was long enough to use as a clew. But Whelt sai
d there was no reason why they shouldn’t take Rusk’s ‘perpetual motion machine’ apart temporarily. And such a clew could also be helpful for communication: one tug for ‘I am still okay’, two tugs for ‘Please send someone down to help’ and three tugs for ‘I am beyond rescue so do not risk the life of another but rather leave me to die’. This caused Yang to exclaim that if they really had to send someone inside, it shouldn’t be the director of the picture, because they couldn’t afford to lose him. But Whelt said he couldn’t trust anyone else to do it in case their thoroughness were impaired by irrational fear.
Despite the weather, the celebrations following Trimble’s banishment had kindled into a small carnival, with singing, dancing, and competitive games, and members of the crew were somewhat taken aback by the suggestion that they might be expected to do any work that afternoon. All the same, Whelt was soon up on top of the temple looping the rope twice around his midriff. Because the nitration of the Mayan suit of armor was not yet underway, he wore its engraved headpiece as a protective helmet. Yang had nagged him into agreeing that if he did find catacombs to explore, he would nevertheless return from this preliminary descent within an hour. He climbed down to the suspended platform they’d constructed the previous day to rescue Calix, and the last remark he made before he disappeared into the silver mine was, puzzlingly, ‘This reminds me of the time I was invited to Mr Spindler’s house.’
After an hour of waiting, Yang reeled up the line about eighty feet until it was almost taut, and then gave it a tug. Whelt tugged back once, so Yang payed the rope back out. After two hours, Yang went through the same procedure, and again Whelt tugged back once – rather irritably, if that was possible. After three hours, ditto.
After four hours, Yang tried to reel up the rope yet again, but this time it just kept reeling and reeling until he held the frayed end in his hands.
*
‘You know how to get to the river, don’t you?’ someone had said, and he’d nodded. None of them were intending to escort him all the way, but Trimble nevertheless walked quite a distance on that bearing just in case he was followed. They really believed he was going to leave the site for good. They were wrong and they could stay wrong.
If he felt like it, he could go anywhere. He’d never bothered to pick up more than a few words of Pozkito, but he knew he could walk into that Indian guerrilla camp beyond the dam, a white man in tatters without so much as a wormy cherimoya to trade, and within a year he’d be their commandant. Or he could raft down towards San Esteban until he found some real business underway – timber, cattle, sugercane, loans – it didn’t matter what, just as long as people did well enough out of it that they had something to lose. If that got boring he could take a steamship back to New York, become editor of the Mirror, or president of the stock exchange, or mayor of the city, or whatever he wanted. He’d already proven his capabilities beyond doubt.
But if a collection agency put a padlock on your store, you didn’t just shrug your shoulders and call your cousin in Poughkeepsie to ask about a job. You stayed on the block; you watched; you waited; you pissed on your shoes sooner than take your eyes off that store. Because it was still yours, and so was everything in it, and before long you were going to find a way to take it back. To geek out on the temple now would have been a waste of eight years’ work. His whole operation had worked on the principle of ownership without possession, and he was entirely comfortable letting other people look after his holdings for him. If those holdings weren’t all piled up in his cabin at once, that didn’t mean they weren’t his, and if he couldn’t go near the temple for a while, the same applied.
They probably thought it was a withering indignity to be dragged away shouting like that. But sometimes back in New York he might get bounced from three nightclubs in one night, and he always outlived his lifetime bans. He told himself not to resent how they’d treated him. They couldn’t possibly understand how much he’d given them, and in their position he might have done just the same. But of course he would have done it sooner and he would have done it better. Where they merely pricked he would have impaled. His old friends didn’t seem to understand that he would have no choice but to get even with them, and so they hadn’t gone nearly far enough to make sure he wouldn’t dare come back. They weren’t just ungrateful like children but soft like children too. He’d seen it in the earnestness with which they’d asked that silly question – ‘You know how to get to the river, don’t you?’ – so that they could congratulate themselves afterwards for their generous behavior. They’d never admit how sheepish they had felt in those last moments when they were alone with him in the trees, like a few God-fearing junior salesmen showing a hooker the door after the fun got a little out of hand. But he knew them. By the very feebleness of their attempt to pull him down, they’d proven how easy it would be to climb back up.
At regular intervals over the last eight years he’d spent entire days or nights crouched in the boughs of a tree at the edge of the clearing, watching the site from a distance through the opera glasses he’d bought from Irma, trying to understand its clockwork better. Everyone except him thought of the two camps as separate, independent, because they hadn’t seen how even tiny events in one were connected to tiny events in the other. If he noticed anybody going anywhere or doing anything that he couldn’t immediately explain, he made sure to find out more the next day. He wanted omniscience and most of the time he had it. Now that he couldn’t interview anyone directly any more, he’d have to do a lot more peeping at the ant farm. But he knew there wouldn’t be much going on this afternoon because of the weather, so at this stage it was probably better to turn his attention to food and shelter and weapons. He was about to set off north when he became aware of movement on the hunting path nearby.
If it had been any further away, he couldn’t have heard it over this drenching rain, which turned every bower in the jungle into a private booth. He got down and crawled a few yards through the undergrowth in that direction until he could see who was coming without being seen himself.
No one would be out today without a good reason – you could practically drown out here just by yawning too wide – and he might have guessed it would be Pennebaker. The bookkeeper looked miserable but determined as he trudged along with a knapsack on his back and a pith helmet on his head, a quarter of a mile down, only two or three thousand to go. Cradled like an infant in his arms was the chunk of Mayan limestone that Coehorn had chosen to send back to his father. Trimble took some satisfaction in knowing that the balance of power at the site was about to tilt wildly, not only because that treacherous lush had lost his two best advisors in one morning, but also because the Hearts in Darkness crew might at last start paying attention to Burlingame. The meek really shall inherit the earth, apparently.
Then, between the trees, Trimble caught sight of somebody else further up the trail. Meinong, the German army officer, was hurrying to catch up with Pennebaker.
Trimble had kept a close eye on him in the days since his sensational arrival. He was smart, observant, patient, slippery. Was he, like Trimble, ambitious? Would he, like Trimble, make the most of his gifts? He hadn’t yet given any sign, but it wasn’t hard to imagine him as a rival.
Not until Meinong was just behind him did Pennebaker hear the footfalls and turn. ‘Oh, Mr Meinong! Did Mr Coehorn send you after me? Did something happen?’ Trimble could only barely make out the words.
‘Yes, Mr Pennebaker,’ said Meinong. ‘There is some concern that Miss Lopez’s performing mouse may have stowed away in your rucksack.’
Pennebaker’s reply was inaudible.
Meinong said, ‘Perhaps you could check the rucksack just once more all the same.’
‘Okay.’ Pennebaker looked down at the stone. ‘I’m not supposed to let anybody else touch this until I get to New York, but maybe you could hold it for a minute?’
‘I should be happy to, Mr Pennebaker,’ said Meinong.
Pennebaker passed the stone to him before s
hrugging the rucksack off his shoulders and swinging it around to his front. He was fiddling with the buckles when Meinong brought the stone down on his head with both hands, cracking his right socket and bursting the eyeball.
The accountant dropped the rucksack and toppled over. As he lay there, slack, the rain swilled from his ruined orbit a mixture of dark blood and vitreous yolk. He was probably kaput already, but Meinong nevertheless knelt down, raised the stone over his head, and slammed it down once more.
With that accomplished, he grabbed Pennebaker’s body by the ankles and began to drag it away from the hunting path. As quietly as he could, Trimble slid backward, just in case Meinong came in this direction. The rainforest was like the Bowery: if you left anything unattended in the street for an afternoon it would get stripped down to a grease stain. Still, if Meinong was as clever as Trimble estimated, he’d at least deal with the brass fittings in Pennebaker’s rucksack and the fillings in his teeth, either of which would be enough to prove the skeleton wasn’t Pozkito when it was found one day with weeds growing through the eye sockets. Honduras might well have scavengers that ate metal but Trimble hadn’t heard about them yet.
‘Hey! Who’s that?’
Trimble looked up, startled, and so did Meinong.
Joe Hickock, the grip who had reacted so melodramatically to that row over the fugitive turkeys in ’44, was approaching with an axe in his hand. For all four men to coincide on the hunting trail like this was quite a mischance, but then again this was the quickest and most familiar route to the river, and no one risked an avant-garde shortcut in a rainstorm. Meinong let Pennebaker’s feet drop and moved forward to intercept Hickock. ‘Ja, hallo, I am Herr Meinong. I don’t believe we have met.’
