High Adventure

by Donald E. Westlake

  Vernon wasn’t traveling that far. A few miles south of Augustin he turned his coughing orange Honda Civic right onto a logging road that might have led him eventually to Chapayal or Valentin Camp, except that he stopped at a place where it was possible to park to one side of the twin-rutted track.

  Driving out from Belmopan, Vernon had been dressed as though for the office, in white short-sleeved guayabera shirt and dark gray slacks and black oxfords, but now he stood beside the car and changed completely, putting on baggy green army fatigue pants, tall hiking boots, a M*A*S*H T-shirt, a lightweight gray-green windbreaker and a camouflage-design billed cap which he’d bought in a five and dime in Belize City. On branches above and around him, toucans and macaws watched with round rolling eyes, skeptical and amused but still astonished. The squeals and squawks of the jungle ricocheted from high branches through angled pillars of sunlight. It was 9:30 in the morning and the air was damp, not yet too hot. Vernon moved methodically, rigidly, his face expressionless, as though firmly repressing all doubt, all second thoughts. Locking the Honda, staring around one last time at a teeming world in which he was the only human being, he turned away and set off along the narrow spongy trail through the jungle toward the place where he intended to sell out his country.

  The jungle grows quickly, and its leaves retain the night’s moisture. As Vernon strode along, brushing dangled branches aside, his head and arms and windbreaker became increasingly wet, so that he glistened as he passed through sunny patches. He had brought no machete, but this trail was in frequent use and was never overgrown to the point where he had to make a detour. From time to time he passed evidence of recent logging, and twice he heard the sounds of human activity from elsewhere in the forest: once, the faraway buzz of a chain saw, and the other time an abrupt laugh from somewhere off to his right.

  He froze at the laugh. The one danger here was to be discovered by a British patrol. Because Guatemala claimed the entire nation of Belize as its own long-lost province, stolen from it by the British in the nineteenth century, and because various Guatemalan leaders over the years had vowed to reclaim their property by force, one strange element of Belize’s independence was that 1,600 British troops (plus two Harrier jets) remained for what the British-Belizean agreement called “an appropriate period” on Belizean soil, guarding the 150-mile Guatemalan border. Patrols through the mountains and jungles were mostly carried out by Gurkha troops, tough chunky little Asian soldiers from the mountains of Nepal, with a reputation for ruthlessness and bravery.

  Vernon did not want to be found here by a British patrol, whether of Gurkhas or not. They wouldn’t let him go until he had indentified himself, and he could provide no convincing reason for his presence on this remote trail. It would all get back to St. Michael, who would not be satisfied until he found out what his assistant had been up to. Vernon hunkered down on the trail, listening, as wide-eyed but not as brightly colored as the jungle birds overhead, but the laugh was not repeated, and after a while he straightened, and cautiously moved on.

  After half an hour’s walk, he crossed an invisible line on the Earth and was no longer in Belize. He couldn’t tell precisely where that point was, but eventually he knew he was safely in Guatemala and away from possible discovery—except for the return trip, of course—and 20 minutes later he came out to a dirt road, not far from the Guatemalan town of Alta Gracia. To his right, a tall stocky man in high-ranking military uniform stood pissing on the left rear tire of a dusty black Daimler. The man’s head turned, he gazed through extremely dark sunglasses at Vernon, and he nodded a hello as he went on with his tire wash.

  Vernon waited quite a long while, watching the Colonel piss. He was aware of two people in the car—a soldier-chauffeur in the separate driver’s compartment in front, and a woman with a mass of black hair in back—but the Colonel was the only one who mattered.

  This was Colonel Mario Nettisto Vajino, of the Army of Guatemala, until recently a vice minister of defense in the last government but one. The Guatemalan political system alternates rigged elections with American-sponsored coups, but no matter the route of accession the man at the top is always an Army man, always a general, and usually a previous minister of defense. Colonel Nettisto Vajino could reasonably expect to become minister of defense (and a general) in some future government, if he weren’t assassinated along the way.

  This was not the colonel who had once publicly said that Guatemala would deal with the large black population of Belize by “expanding the cemetery,” nor was he the colonel who had dealt with the problem of peasant Indian sit-in strikers in the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City on February 1st, 1980, by sending the police and army to firebomb the embassy, killing 38 people inside, peasants and employees and visitors alike, everybody but the Spanish ambassador himself, who got out with his clothes on fire and left for Spain as soon as he could. This was a different colonel, but not very different.

  The Colonel shook himself, paused briefly to admire himself, tucked himself away in his trousers, zipped up, and approached Vernon, saying, “You’re a bit late.”

  Reflecting how lucky it was that the Colonel didn’t regard him as an equal, and would therefore not offer to shake hands, Vernon said, “I thought I heard a patrol.”

  Nettisto Vajino grimaced, unwillingly looking eastward, toward the lost province. There were no colonels of his sort over there. There was no such thing as a Belizean army as such, only the rather casual Belizean Defense Force, the BDF—known locally as the Bloody Damn Fools—a mere 300 strong. There were policemen as well in Belize, but they didn’t carry guns. In Guatemala, on the other hand, there was the ordinary Army, plus various unofficial private armies, plus three police forces, every one of them armed to the teeth. The busy death squads in their woolen masks and army-issue boots were also well equipped with guns. But when Nettisto Vajino looked eastward, what his mind’s eye had to see was the British peacekeeping force and the Gurkha patrols and the Harrier jets and the memory of the Falkland Islands, and no wonder he grimaced. How Guatemala would love to spread its culture and democracy to Belize!

  Nettisto Vajino shook his head, returning his attention to Vernon, saying, “You’ve brought me something?”

  “Yes.” From a long pocket in the left leg of his fatigue pants, Vernon took a map, which he opened out to a square almost three feet on a side. “I circled the camps in red,” he said.

  “Mm.” Nettisto Vajino carried the map back to the Daimler, where he spread it on the large curved trunk and pursed his lips as he studied it. Vernon, standing beside him, was extremely aware of the woman in the car looking through the rear window at him. She was exotic looking, like Rita Hayworth in “Gilda,” but wilder. She never looked toward the Colonel at all.

  Vernon was also acutely aware of the large Colt .45 in its holster on the Colonel’s right side. It had been his fear—one of his fears—since the beginning of this relationship, that the Colonel would some day pull that gun and simply shoot Vernon dead, as a way of ending the association. Once his usefulness was over.

  Well, his usefulness wasn’t over yet. And when the time came, Vernon was determined that he would resign in his own way. He’d be very quick about it, too.

  Nettisto Vajino tapped his knuckles on the map. “These are all new settlements?”

  “Within the last six months,” Vernon assured him. “That’s what you asked for.”

  The Colonel grunted, continuing to brood at the map, his mind working in some slow and labyrinthine way. Vernon wished he knew what the Colonel’s scheme was, but he didn’t dare ask about it directly. Out would come the Colt, no question.

  What Vernon had brought the Colonel today was a large topographical map of Cayo District, one of Belize’s six districts, one of the three next to Guatemala. The new capital of Belmopan is in Cayo and so was all of Vernon’s trip today until he’d crossed the border. In recent years, refugees from Central American bloodshed, mostly from Guatemala and El Salvador, have made their way in th
e thousands to Belize, where they have been offered land free for the tilling and have started tiny new communities, mostly in the southern half of the country. The Department of Land Allocation, in which Innocent St. Michael was Deputy Director, was of course involved with this aspect of the immigration, so it hadn’t been hard for Vernon to collect the data on the most recent arrivals.

  “Very good,” the Colonel said, though noncommittally, as though it were merely a polite kind of cough he’d learned. Folding the map, his hooded eyes unreadable behind the dark glasses, he said, “And the pictures?”

  “Oh, yes, certainly.”

  From a shirt pocket Vernon removed a roll of Kodacolor film, in its gray-capped black plastic canister, which he placed in Nettisto Vajino’s waiting palm without a word. Why the Colonel wanted photos of Gurkha soldiers and Gurkha patrols, with details of uniform and equipment, Vernon neither knew nor cared. Sufficient that the pay was good, and that by pretending to be a tourist he had received the amused cooperation of his subjects.

  The fact was, Vernon, like most Belizeans, was convinced the Guatemalan claim was just nonsense, old history. The Belizeans wouldn’t permit Britain to give their land away, and the British wouldn’t permit the Guatemalans to just come in and grab it, so that was that. So if some crazy Guatemalan Colonel shows up with money in his hand, willing to pay for a lot of dumb things like maps and photographs, why not take his money? Vernon knew what was going on here was a simple con job, himself giving worthless trash for real cash, but he also realized that to an outsider it could possibly look like, give the impression of, even appear to be …

  … well, treason.

  Expressionless, the Colonel closed his hand around the film roll, making a casual fist. “Wait there,” he said, and turned away, returning to his car. When he opened the right rear door of the Daimler, Vernon caught a glimpse of long bare legs against the black plush. His heart ached in his breast. He wanted to live in a country where he could be a colonel. Maybe the crazy Guatemalans would pull this off after all, and he …

  No. That wasn’t a future he could think about.

  The driver’s door of the Daimler opened and the blank-faced soldier came around the rear of the car with a white envelope in his hand. He gave it to Vernon, turned about, and went back to his place in the car, while Vernon lifted the flap and looked at the sheaf of U.S. greenbacks inside. He couldn’t count it now, not with them still here. Lifting his eyes, he saw the woman looking at him again out the back window. She didn’t gaze with normal curiosity, as one human being looks at another, but with a flat and feral expression, as though she were an animal staring out of its cage. Or was he the animal, and she among the humans?

  The Daimler backed in a half circle, then drove away. Vernon stuffed the envelope into the pocket that had contained the map, and started the long walk back. The sun was higher, the day hotter, the jungle smells stronger. The money was heavy in his pocket.

  18

  WINDING TRAILS

  Parking in the forecourt of the Fort George Hotel, Kirby stepped out of the pickup and nimbly dodged a peach-colored topless Land Rover with official license plates, which had rushed in the EXIT side of the hotel’s circular driveway and now slammed to a stop at the entrance. Its driver, a skinny black man, hopped out and strode briskly inside, and a moment later Kirby followed, strolling into the cool dim lobby and seeing the driver in converse with the desk clerk.

  The house phones were around to the side. Kirby called Lemuel first, let it ring six times, and was about to give up when there was a click and Lemuel’s voice, hushed, suspicious, frightened, said in a half whisper, “Yes?”

  Kirby was used to his customers being a little spooked, since they weren’t used to the criminal’s life, but Lemuel was overdoing it. His manner as soothing as possible, Kirby said, “It’s Kirby Galway, Mister Lemuel.”

  “Galway!” Lemuel managed to sound both relieved and aggrieved. “Where are you?”

  “In the lobby. I just have to take, um, those people … You know?”

  “I certainly do.”

  “To the airport. Then we’re done with them.”

  “Good!”

  “You might as well wait in the room until—”

  “Believe me, I will!”

  Smiling, pleasantly surprised at how well his drug-dealer yam had gone over with this one, Kirby said, “We’ll both breathe easier once they’re gone. I’ll give you a call when I get back, we’ll have lunch in the hotel before we go out to the site.”

  “I’ll wait right here,” Lemuel promised.

  Kirby broke the connection and was about to dial Witcher and Feldspan’s number when he was briefly distracted by seeing, out of the comer of his eye, the passage through the lobby of what appeared to be a good-looking woman. He turned his head, but she was already past, striding rapidly in the wake of the skinny black man from the Land Rover; so she was his passenger. There was only time to register that she was tall, with brown hair under a large floppy-brimmed hat, and that she was dressed for hiking, in khaki shirt and new blue jeans and tall lace-up boots. She carried a gray attaché case in her left hand, and a large and apparently heavy canvas shoulder bag bumped along on her right haunch. Then she was gone, and Kirby dialed the other room number, and Witcher answered on the first ring: “Alan Witcher here.”

  “And Kirby Galway here.”

  “Oh, good! We’re all set, we’ll be right down.” There were mutters in the background; sounding annoyed, Witcher said, “Would you hold on, please? Just one second.”

  “Sure,” said Kirby, and spent the next several seconds listening to muffled conversation and a repeated thumb-thumb. Oh, of course; Witcher had covered the mouthpiece by pressing it to his chest, and Kirby was listening to his heart.

  Then his voice: “Gerry wants to know,” Witcher said, with worlds of meaning, “if your friend is anywhere down there.”

  Kirby grinned. Got them both, by God! “No,” he said. “He’s gone away up-country. There’s a fella up there he says is cheating him. He took a couple local boys and left first thing this morning.”

  “Oh.” Witcher didn’t seem to know what to do with all that information. “Just so he’s not in the lobby.”

  “You’re safe,” Kirby assured him.

  “I’ll tell Gerry,” Witcher said, putting the charge of cowardice back where it belonged.

  Hanging up, Kirby went over to the broad front doorway and looked out at the peach-colored Land Rover, which was just leaving via the ENTRANCE. The girl, in front beside the driver, was slipping sunglasses on. The floppy-brimmed hat, a very sensible defense against the tropic sun, kept him from seeing much of her face. Her jaw was perhaps a little too strong. Then the Land Rover was gone, and a stir in the lobby recalled him to business.

  Kirby helped the bellboy load luggage into the back of the pickup while Witcher and Feldspan checked out, and then they came outside, both behind large-lensed dark glasses. Witcher looked irritable, Feldspan hung over. Good mornings and handshakes were exchanged, and Feldspan said, “We’ll make the plane, won’t we?” His voice was shaky; behind the dark glasses, his eyes asked for pity.

  “Plenty of time,” Kirby assured him.

  “Of course there is,” said Witcher. “Get hold of yourself, Gerry.”

  Gerry didn’t; nevertheless, they all got into the pickup, jounced away from the hotel, and made their way back through the sunny town. Once on the road out to the airport, Kirby took a folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket, handed it across Feldspan to Witcher, and said, “This is the place we’ll meet.”

  Opening the paper, Witcher read aloud: “Trump Glade, Florida. Route 216 south eight point four miles from movie house. Left at sign reading Potchaw 12. Dirt road. Fifteen point two miles to red ribbon on barbed wire fence.” Witcher nodded. “And that’s where you’ll be, I take it.”

  “Rent a car,” Kirby told him. “Don’t take a cab.”

  “Certainly not.”

  “And it
’s just you two there,” Kirby said, “or I don’t get out of the plane.”

  “We understand,” Witcher said. Between them, in the middle of the seat, Feldspan lowered his head, raised a quaking hand to his brow, and faintly moaned.

  “When I’ve got something to deliver,” Kirby said, “I’ll cable you in New York and give you a day and a time.”

  Witcher said, “What if you have something too large to bring out that way? The jaguar stela, for instance. That could be eight or ten feet tall, and it would weigh a ton.”

  “We’d have to do that by ship,” Kirby told him. “There’s places up the coast where we can bring in a small boat at night. It’s expensive, and a lot trickier, but if we’re careful it’ll be okay. I tell you what; if I have anything too big to fly out, I’ll take Polaroids of it, give them to you guys, and once you have a buyer we’ll arrange to get it out by boat.”

  “Fine,” Witcher said.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Feldspan said.

  “Gerry,” Witcher said, through clenched teeth.

  Kirby angled across the empty road and parked on the left verge, beside the easygoing Belize River. “Better here than in the plane,” he said.

  So Witcher, disapproval etched in every line of his being, got out of the pickup, and helped Feldspan out and walked with him down to the river bank. Kirby whistled quietly to himself and looked out at the pleasant day. If he were a man who fished, he’d want to fish right now.

  A horn honked. Kirby looked over as Innocent St. Michael went by in his dark green Ford LTD, heading toward the airport, waving at Kirby from his air-conditioned luxury. Kirby grinned and waved back. Innocent sure did like to visit the airport.

  When Feldspan returned, he was paler but somehow better. “I’m sorry,” he said.