High Adventure
Donald E. Westlake
This rumpus is for
Emory and Elisa King, and for
Stewart and Lita Krohn, and for
Compton Fairweather, all of whom
may recognize a tree or two in passing;
and for Abby Adams,
who walked this line.
FROM HEY DAD, THIS IS BELIZE! by Emory King (abridged)
The Atayde Brothers Circus visited Belize in the late twenties. It was around the same time Lindbergh flew into Belize City with his famous plane. They set up their tent near Memorial Park, and when the people of Belize saw what was inside they rushed the place by the thousands.
Animals! Boys, there were elephants, camels, show horses, polar bears, lions, tigers from India, and even giraffes. On the 10th of September the circus band marched through the streets and we almost had a riot.
And a regular band it was too. All the members had uniforms with gold braid and wore high hats and marched like soldiers. The leader of the band was a Mexican Army Major named Ismael G. Amaton. He was on the wrong side in some revolution in Mexico in those days and had been forced to run away and join the circus to keep from being killed.
Every weekend people came from all over to see the circus. There were clowns, performing horses, acrobats from El Salvador, trapeze artists, beautiful German girls dressed all in spangles and tights, who rode bicycles. It was a sight for the people of Belize.
Well boys, the circus stayed around Belize City for about two months, giving shows every weekend to packed audiences. But a funny thing happened. The circus went broke.
Nobody knows why. Maybe someone ran off with the cash. But the circus did not have the money to move on. Little by little, a few of the circus people left. Some went to Honduras and Guatemala. Some went back to Mexico. A few stayed on in Belize.
When there was only about 50 people left, with all the animals and equipment, they decided to sell what they could and rent a boat to take them to Progresso.
A storm came up when the boat, which looked like Noah’s Ark, got as far as Caye Caulker’s northern point. They could not go out to sea, so they came up to San Pedro and landed.
Well, if you ever saw a circus it was that day. The boat got as close to shore as possible, and they put the poor beasts into the sea to get ashore as best they could.
It was a downhearted bunch of people and a sad bunch of animals. Imagine giraffes and elephants, and dancing horses on the beach.
Of course, we villagers did everything we could to help. Water and meat and food for the animals soon put the town in trouble, but somehow we fixed them up alright. The circus people were nice, and put on a couple of shows for us in the main park.
Oh those were the days, boys. Ever since then, whenever we Belizeans hear of a big project that is going to do great things in the country, we say: Bigger circus than this come to Belize and broke up.
PART ONE
THE FAMOUS PLANE
1
THE CRESCENT EMPIRE
The girl was a real pest. “I think it’s terrible,” she said.
Kirby Galway nodded. “I think so, too,” he murmured, jiggling ice cubes in his glass. Around them the party brisked along, intense meaningless conversation on all sides, mammoth paintings of house parts—a keyhole, a windowsill—visible above and between all those talking heads. In the middle distance, receding ever farther from Kirby’s grasp, was his target of opportunity for this evening, one Whitman Lemuel, assistant curator of the Duluth Museum of Pre-Columbian Art, here in New York on a buying expedition, here at this Soho gallery party as a form of relaxation and a story to tell the home folks in Duluth.
Kirby had just this morning learned of Lemuel’s presence in New York, had burrowed out Lemuel’s evening plans by late this afternoon, and had come down through the snowy city to crash the party early, so as to be ready when his mark arrived. Tall and handsome and self-assured, proud of his luxuriant ginger moustache, dressed with casual impeccability, Kirby was yet to find the party he couldn’t crash. And in Soho? He could have come here straight from the jungle, in his hiking boots and oil-stained khakis and battered bush hat, and still they would have swept him right on in, assuming he was either an artist or an artist’s boyfriend.
He was neither. He was a salesman, and his customer this evening was one Whitman Lemuel.
Or was to have been; things were looking decidedly worse. Was it the door Lemuel now angled toward?
It had begun well. Kirby had introduced himself in tried-and-true fashion, by actually introducing the other fellow: “Aren’t you Whitman Lemuel?”
Non-famous people are always delighted to be recognized by strangers. “Why, yes, I am,” said the round-faced Lemuel, eyes benign behind round glasses, broad mouth smiling over polka-dot bow tie.
“I want you to know,” Kirby said, “I was really impressed by that upper Amazon show you put together a while back.”
“Oh, yes?” The smile grew broader, the eyes more benign, the bow tie brighter. “Did you see it in Duluth?”
“Unfortunately not. In Houston. It traveled very well.”
“Yes, it did, really,” Lemuel agreed, nodding, but his expression very faintly clouded. “Still, there were parts of it that couldn’t leave the museum, simply not. I’m afraid you didn’t get the full effect.”
“What I saw was definitely impressive. I’m Kirby Galway, by the way.”
As they shook hands, Lemuel said, “Are you connected with the Houston museum?”
“No, no, I’m merely an amateur, an enthusiast. I live in Belize now, you see, and—”
“Ah, Belize!” Lemuel said, brightening even more.
“You know it?” Kirby asked, with an innocent smile. “Most people’ve never heard of the place.”
“Oh, my dear fellow,” Lemuel said. “Belize. Formerly British Honduras, independent, now, I believe—”
“Very.”
“But, I tell you, Mister, umm …”
“Galway. Kirby Galway.”
“Mister Galway,” Lemuel said, excitement making him bob slightly on the balls of his feet, “I tell you, Belize is fascinating. To me, to someone in my position, fascinating.”
“Oh, really?” Kirby said. His smile said, fancy that.
“It’s the very center,” Lemuel said, gesturing, slopping his drink on his wrist, not noticing, “the very center of the ancient Mayan world.”
“Oh, it can’t be,” Kirby said, frowning. “I thought Mexico was—”
“Aztecs, Aztecs,” Lemuel said, brushing those Johnny-come-latelys aside. “Olmecs, Toltecs,” he grudgingly acknowledged, “but comparatively little Mayan.”
“Guatemala, then,” Kirby suggested. “There’s that place, what is it, Tikal, where they—”
“Of course, of course.” Lemuel’s impatience was on the wax. “Until very recently, we thought those were the primary Mayan sites, that’s true enough, true enough. But that’s because no one had studied Belize, no one knew what was in those jungles.”
“Now they do?”
“We’re beginning to,” Lemuel said. “Now we know the Mayan civilization covered a great crescent shape, extending from Mexico south and west into Guatemala. But do you know where the very center of that crescent is?”
“Belize?” hazarded Kirby.
“Precisely! Coming up out of Belize now, there are pre-Columbian artifacts, jade figures, carvings, gold jewelry, that are just astonishing. Wonderful. Unbelievable.”
“Well, now, I wonder,” Kirby said thoughtfully, baiting the hook. “On my land down in Belize there’s—”
“Mayan?” said an assertive female voice. “Did I hear someone say Mayan?”
It was the girl, intro
ducing herself, inserting herself, spoiling Kirby’s aim just as he was releasing the arrow. Damn pest. As annoyed as any fisherman at the arrival of a loud and careless intruder, Kirby turned to see an unusually tall young woman in her middle 20s, perhaps only two or three inches shorter than Kirby’s six feet two. She was attractive, if sharp-featured, with a long oval face and straight hair-colored hair and eyes that flashed with commitment. Her paisley blouse and long abundant skirt and brown leather boots all seemed just a few years out of date, but Kirby could see that the heavy figured-silver chain around her neck was Mexican and the large loop earrings she wore were Central American, probably Guatemalan, native handicraft. He sensed trouble. Damn and hell, he thought.
Whitman Lemuel, obviously finding the presence of a good-looking young woman taller than himself an even more exciting prospect than the thought of long-dead Mayans, was welcoming her happily into their enclave, saying, “Yes, are you interested in that culture? We were just talking about Belize.”
“I haven’t been there yet,” she said. “I want to go. I did my postgraduate work at the Royal Museum at Vancouver, classifying materials from Guyana.”
“You’re an anthropologist, then?” Lemuel asked, while Kirby silently fretted.
“Archaeologist,” the pest answered.
“Slim pickings from Guyana, I should think,” Lemuel commented. “But, ah, Belize now—”
“Despoliation!” she said, eyes shooting sparks.
Kirby had never heard anyone use that word in conversation before. He gazed at her with new respect and redoubled loathing.
Lemuel had blinked at the word, as well he might. Then he said, doubtfully, “I’m not really sure I …”
“Do you know what they’re doing down there in Belize?” demanded the pest. “All those Mayan cities, ancient sites, completely unprotected there in the jungle—”
“For a thousand years or more,” Kirby said gently.
“But now,” the pest said, “the things buried in them are suddenly valuable. Thugs, graverobbers, are going in there, tearing structures apart—”
This was the worst. Kirby couldn’t believe such bad luck, to have this conversation at such a moment. “Oh, it isn’t that bad,” he said, determinedly interrupting her, and attempted to veer them all away in another direction by introducing what ought to be a sure-fire new topic of conversation: “What worries me down there is the war in El Salvador. The way things are going—”
But she wasn’t to be that easy to deflect. “Oh, that,” she said, dismissing it all with a colt-like shake of her head. “The war. That’ll be over in one or two generations, but the destruction of irreplaceable Mayan sites is forever. The Belizean government does what it can, but they lack staff and funds. And meanwhile, unscrupulous dealers and museum directors in the United States—”
Oh, God. Please make her stop, God.
But it was too late. Lemuel, looking like a man who’s just had a bug fly into his mouth, stood fiddling with his bow tie and shifting from foot to foot. “Well, my drink, umm,” he said. “My glass seems to be empty. You’ll both excuse me?”
Now, that was unfair. The girl wasn’t Kirby’s fault, and it was really very bad of Lemuel to lump them together like that and march off. It meant Kirby had no polite choice but to stay, at least for a minute or two, and if he did manage to make contact with Lemuel again this evening it would be more difficult to get to the point of his sales pitch in a natural way.
Meanwhile, the girl seemed just as content to deliver her diatribe to an audience of one. “My name is Valerie Greene,” she said. She extended a slim long-fingered hand for Kirby to either bite or shake.
He shook the damn thing. “Kirby Galway,” he said. “It’s been very—”
“Did I hear you say you live in Belize now?”
“That’s right.”
“And are you an archaeologist, by any chance?”
“No, I’m afraid not.” Then, because Valerie Greene’s bright-bird eyes kept looking expectantly at him, he was forced to go on and explain himself: “I’m a rancher. Or, that is, I will be. I’m accumulating land down there. At the moment, I’m a charter pilot.”
“What company do you work for?”
“I have my own plane.”
“Then you must be aware,” she said, “of the pillaging that is taking place on archaeological sites in Belize.”
“I’ve seen some things in the paper,” he acknowledged.
“I think it’s terrible,” she said.
“I think so, too,” he murmured, watching Whitman Lemuel recede not toward the bar but toward the door.
Terrible. But not fatal, he consoled himself, not necessarily fatal. In fact, Lemuel’s obvious unease when artifact theft was mentioned simply confirmed Kirby’s belief that the man was a definite prospect. If Kirby failed to hook him tonight, there would always be another time, in New York or in Duluth or somewhere. Today was January 10th, so there were still almost three weeks before he was due to return to Belize; plenty of time to find two or three Whitman Lemuels. And in any event, he already had a couple of fish on the line.
“The people who do that sort of thing,” Valerie Greene was saying, continuing doggedly and blindly to plow her own narrow field, “have no sense of shame.”
“Oh, I agree,” Kirby said, watching the white-painted fire door close behind Whitman Lemuel’s back. “I couldn’t agree more. Well, goodbye,” he said, smiled with sheathed hatred, and walked away.
Pest.
2
FLIGHT 306
On a bright sunny afternoon in early February, the temperature 82 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale, a man named Innocent St. Michael drove out from Belize City to Belize International Airport to watch the plane from Miami land. His lunch—with a fellow civil servant and a sugar farmer from up Orange Walk way and a chap interested in starting a television station—sat easily under his ribs, eased down with Belikin beer and a good cigar. The air conditioning in his dark green Ford LTD breathed its icy breath on his happy round face. His white shirt was open at the throat, his tan cotton suit was not very wrinkled yet at all, and in the cool of the car he could still smell the sweet tangs of both his aftershave and his pomade. How nice life is, how nice.
Innocent had been graced by God with 57 years of this nice life so far, and no immediate end in sight. A man who loved food and drink, adored women, wallowed in ease and luxury, he was barrel-bodied but in wonderful physical condition, with a heart that could have powered a steamship. The efforts of assorted Mayan Indians, Spanish conquistadores, African ex-slaves, and shipwrecked Irish sailors had been combined in his creation, and most of them might have been pleased at the result of their labors. His hair was African, his mocha skin Mayan, his courage Irish, and the deviousness of his brain was all Spanish. He was also—and this is far from insignificant—both Deputy Director of Land Allocation in the Belizean government and an active real estate agent. Very nice.
The road out from Belize City to the International Airport is somewhat better maintained than most of the thoroughfares in that nation, and Innocent sprawled comfortably on the seat, two thick fingers resting negligently on the steering wheel. He honked as he drove past the whorehouse, and the girls at the clothesline waved, recognizing the car. A moment later he turned left onto the airport road.
Air Base Camp was to his right, the British military installation, where two Harrier jet fighters crouched like giant black insects beneath their camouflage nets, dreaming of prey. Perhaps they were among those which had gone south not long ago to play in the Falklands war. They were here as part of a 1,600-man British peacekeeping force, the last true colonial link, made necessary by neighboring Guatemala’s claim that Belize was in fact its own long-lost colony, which it had threatened to reabsorb by force of arms.
However, since the world recently had seen the result of Argentina’s belligerence in its own similar territorial dispute with Great Britain, Guatemalan rhetoric had begun to ease of late, and a sett
lement might yet be found. This prospect Innocent approved; although war iself is good for business, threats of war sour the entrepreneurial climate. Innocent St. Michael had lots of land he wished to unload on eager North Americans, and it was only the possibility of war with Guatemala that had so far delayed the land rush.
Belize International Airport is a single runway in front of a small, two-story, cream-colored, concrete-block building without glass in its first-floor windows. Taxis and their drivers make a dusty clutter around the building, sun glinting painfully from battered chrome and cracked windshields. Innocent steered around them and parked in the grassy area marked with a rough-hewn sign: VISITORS. He slid the LTD near the only other vehicle there, a crumbling maroon pickup he thought he knew. So Kirby Galway was back, was he? Innocent smiled in anticipation of their meeting.
Kirby himself was around on the shady side of the building, hunkered down like a careless native boy but dressed for business: short-sleeved white shirt, red and black striped necktie, khaki slacks, tan hiking boots. “Welcome home!” Innocent said, approaching, hand outstretched, beaming in honest pleasure. Seeing Kirby reminded Innocent of his own wit, intelligence, guile; the thought of how he had snookered Kirby Galway could always make him happy. “I was afraid you were gone forever,” he said, squeezing Kirby’s hand hard, pumping it up and down.
Kirby squeezed back; the young fellow was surprisingly strong. With his own smile, he said, “You know me, Innocent. The bad penny always turns up.”
If there was one thing that even slightly marred Innocent’s pleasure in having clipped Kirby, it was that for some reason Kirby never seemed to mind. Where was the resentment, the grievance, the sense of humiliation? Just to remind him, Innocent said, “Well, you know me, Kirby. Good or bad, if there’s a penny around I want some of it.”
“Oh, you’ve had enough from me,” Kirby said, with an easy laugh. One more shared squeeze and they released one another’s hands. “Selling any more land?” Kirby asked.
“Oh, here and there, here and there. You back in the market?”
High Adventure Page 1
