High Adventure

by Donald E. Westlake

  And just as the Colonel held Vernon’s fate and future in the palm of his hand, so did the skinny black man, Vernon’s partner in murder. He had disappeared without a word, without a word except for a circular trail of Land Rover parts around Punta Gorda. Presumably he had fled the country; certainly, the police were looking for him. Could it be (astonishing idea) that he too had been unequal to murder, had been unhinged by it, driven to flight? If so, and if he were found, he would surely spill the whole story, starting with Vernon’s name.

  “Too many things,” Vernon muttered, thrashing through the undergrowth, the moisture of his face part sweat and part dew and part tears. The wet fronds slapped at him, the ground was soggy and treacherous beneath his feet, and he could never entirely hide from the sun.

  The Daimler wasn’t yet there. Good; it gave Vernon a chance to get control of himself, calm down, dry his dripping face on his shirttail. He walked back and forth in the clearing, in and out of sunlight, commanding himself to be at peace. The Colonel would not betray him, because he was still too useful. The skinny black man would not be found and would not return. Be calm, he told himself, be tranquil, be at rest.

  How he longed to be at rest.

  The Daimler came slowly through the jungle, like a whale, like a black puddle. Vernon stood to the side of the dirt track as the Daimler approached, sunlight winking at him from its glass and chrome. The big machine stopped beside him, its passenger compartment window slid smoothly down, and the Colonel appeared in the dark rectangle, leaning forward, eyes hidden by large dark sunglasses. Behind him the feral woman sat reading a French magazine: Elle. Vernon, inadequately protected behind his own sunglasses, blinked and blinked.

  The Colonel extended a ringed hand out the window, holding a white envelope. “This is for you,” he said.

  Vernon took the envelope. It was softly thick with currency, a lot of currency. What does he want from me? Why did things always have to move so inexorably from the theoretical to the real?

  The Colonel had something else for him; a single sheet of paper. Vernon took it, and saw it was a Xerox of a part of one of the maps he’d given the Colonel the last time, a map showing recent refugee settlements. One of these was now circled in red. As he frowned at this map, wondering what it meant, the Colonel said, “On Friday, the day after tomorrow, a group of British journalists will be in Belice.”

  “Journalists?” Vernon reluctantly looked up from the map. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “They are coming,” the Colonel said. “One of the things they will do in Belice is visit a refugee village, on Friday afternoon.” Pointing at the map in Vernon’s hands, he said, “You will see to it that is the village they visit.”

  “But—Journalists? That has nothing to do with my department, I don’t—”

  “You have a driver? Your confederate?”

  Shocked that the Colonel knew so much about him, Vernon stammered, “He’s—he’s gone. Ran away a week ago. No-nobody knows why.”

  “Someone else then,” the Colonel said, dismissing the problem with a flick of his fingers. The woman turned a page of her magazine; this time, she had no interest in Vernon at all. The Colonel, delegating authority, said, “You’ll arrange it. The journalists go to that village.”

  “I don’t know if I can—”

  “It is necessary,” the Colonel said. He confronted Vernon, impassive behind his dark glasses, waiting for another objection, prepared to slap it down. It is necessary; that was all his creature needed to know.

  I will not think about why the Colonel wants all these things, Vernon told himself, his plans are foolishness and vain, nothing can happen, nothing can change. “I—I’ll try,” he said miserably.

  “That village,” the Colonel said, and the window smoothly rolled up, ending the conversation.

  Bewildered, bedeviled, hopelessly entangled, Vernon stood and watched the Daimler drive away, returning the Colonel to his world of certainties. Rest. Tranquility. What was going to happen? Would it never end? What terrible fate was he fashioning for himself?

  Nearby, in bright sun, a large parrot on a branch looked at Vernon, spread his wings, and laughed.

  8

  NORTH GUATEMALA: ME TAUGHT RON

  The Indians of the Central American forests are peasants, farmers who scratch a living and a life from the rich jungle soil. Their ancestors have lived on that soil and been buried in that soil for 2,000 years. They have endured famine and flood, disease and wild animals, fire and enemy tribes; but whatever has happened, the passive Indians have always stayed with the land.

  Today, the Indians want no more and no less than what they have always had; a piece of land in the jungles, small interrelated communities, and to be left alone. But today Central America is a part of the great world, and in the great world no one is left alone. The Indians cannot fight the death squads armed with submachine guns and the soldiers armed with helicopters. They can expect no mercy from the Ladinos who call them “animals with names.” Almost unbelievably, driven beyond endurance, the Indians are leaving their land.

  Refugees. After thousands of years, they have become refugees. The Miskito Indians have been in almost constant harried motion through Honduras and Nicaragua for the last three or four years, chivvied and persecuted by “civilized” men, driven to distraction. More truly civilized men and women in private religious groups have been helping Salvadoran and Guatemalan peasants relocate in Canada, and what on Earth shall they think of Canada? And some, in tribal and family groups of 10 or 20 or 50, thousands of them by now, have made the terrible, long, dangerous overland journey to the border of Belize, and across it … to heaven.

  It is the jungle, as at home, but a wonderfully empty jungle, with miles and miles of unclaimed territory in which to scratch out a piece of land and start to live again. No armed masked men rove at night. The only military aircraft is the occasional British Harrier jet, gone almost before it arrives, flashing along the border to remind the Guatemalans of the futility of their dreams.

  The refugees arrive, fearful, ignorant, almost without hope. They begin their settlements, hiding as best they can from the world, and in a week or six months or a year they are found and the Belizean government sends its emissary to them; a social worker, perhaps, or an unarmed policeman, or a medical officer. They are told they have been accepted as immigrants; there are no formalities and they shall not be returned to hell. So long as they live on their piece of land, and use it, it is theirs. So long as they mind their own business, they will be left alone. The government is not their enemy, and is not at war with them. It asks only that they send their children to school: “We want to make good Belizeans of them.”

  The Indians don’t entirely understand, nor entirely believe. They build their huts out of the materials available in the jungle, they work their fields, and they keep one eye over their shoulder. But nothing happens. And slowly, over the course of years, they come to realize the truth:

  The war is over.

  9

  A SMALL FORTUNE

  Innocent hardly tasted his food at all, and barely glanced at the beautiful sea. Lunching on lobster at the Chateau Caribbean, just up the bayfront from the Fort George, he had smilingly but firmly refused offers to join friends at this or that table, preferring his own gloomy company. Two Belikin beers had not restored him, nor had the sounds of happiness and good fellowship all around him. (At a nearby table, businessman Emory King, an American-born Belizean citizen, was explaining to his group, “How do you wind up with a small fortune in Belize? You start with a large fortune.”)

  Valerie Greene. He simply could not get her out of his mind. This morning, doing his usual laps in the pool, it had occurred to him that Valerie had never seen his house, had never swum in his pool, and the thought had so dispirited him he’d stopped swimming at once, breaking his morning ritual for the first time in memory, trailing away unhappily to the house to get dressed.

  Which was all, of course,
ridiculous. None of his women had seen his house, nor swum in his pool. Take a girlfriend to that wife, those four daughters? Not a chance.

  And yet, however absurd the idea might be, it still had the power to deflate him. Every thought of Valerie had the power to deflate him, in fact, rob him of happiness and contentment. And the strange thing was, as time went by his thoughts and memories were less and less about sex and more and more about her. Her smile, her naivete, her simple worldliness, her passion for honesty and truth. In his mind, she was becoming a saint.

  He avoided the word that would describe his condition. He could acknowledge—to himself—that he was grieving for her, but not even to himself could he face the reason why.

  “Innocent St. Michael?”

  Innocent looked up from his untouched lobster and unassuaged melancholy to see a white man looming over his table, extending a hand with a card in it. A very white man, ashen as a barracuda’s belly; just off the plane from the snowy north, no doubt. “Yes?” Innocent said, wanting nothing more than for the man to cease to exist; or at the very least, to go away.

  But he wouldn’t; waggling his fingers, he said, “My card.”

  Come along, Innocent, he told himself, you’re still alive. Here’s a man with a card. Here’s a North American with money in his pockets, probably looking for a little investment, some land to buy or a business to associate himself with, a man wanting to wind up with a small fortune in Belize. Take an interest, Innocent.

  He took the man’s card, though not really with very much interest. The card told him the man was named Hiram Farley and he was associated with a magazine in New York City called Trend. Had Innocent managed to drum up any interest, it would now evaporate: “Reporter, eh?”

  “Editor,” Hiram Farley said, and uninvited pulled out the chair to Innocent’s right. Seating himself, stacking his forearms on Innocent’s table, he said, “Mister St. Michael, how familiar are you with your nation’s Antiquities Law of 1972?”

  Innocent raised an eyebrow. “The act says the Mayan ruins within Belize belong to the nation of Belize,” he said, “along with any and all contents, all others to keep bloody hands off. Is that familiar enough for you?”

  “Good,” Hiram Farley said. “Fine. And since that law was passed, back in 1972, that’s been the finish of the trade in smuggled Mayan artifacts, is that right?”

  “That’s called irony,” Innocent told him. “What you just did there.” Despite himself, he was becoming involved with this fellow.

  Hiram Farley smiled. “Occupational hazard,” he explained. “Such a good cheap weapon, irony.” Then he switched to a keen look, saying, “Mister St. Michael, some time ago I became aware of a scheme to smuggle pre-Columbian artifacts out of Belize and into the United States.”

  “Which you promptly reported to the officials of both nations,” Innocent suggested.

  “Irony; that’s good. Mister St. Michael, I had no proof, only a vague rumor. Hoping to get solid documentary evidence, both to turn over to the authorities and to present in an exclusive story in my magazine—”

  “Ah, yes, of course.”

  “It isn’t only charity that begins at home, Mister St. Michael.”

  “I don’t know much about charity, Mister Farley,” Innocent said. “Tell me what you’ve done.”

  “I encouraged two friends of mine to come down here and pursue the suggestion of becoming engaged in the smuggling operation. Antique dealers from New York.”

  By God: Witcher and Feldspan! Innocent became so delighted with this revelation that absolutely nothing showed on his face. So this was the reason for the taping!

  And if Innocent hadn’t stepped in to remove those tapes, Kirby and his smuggling operation would right now be plastered all over the pages of Trend magazine!

  And Valerie? Would she be alive or dead?

  No; Trend would not have come out in time to save her.

  Kirby … Kirby … Kirby would already have killed her, in any event.

  Hiram Farley continued, while Innocent’s thoughts went racing. Farley explained about the tape recordings, their being stolen at the airport, and went on, “My friends—they’re not the sort for intrigues like this, certainly not for anything dangerous—they’ve made it clear they don’t have the heart to go on with the investigation, particularly if those tapes are now in the hands of the smugglers, as they almost certainly are.”

  Innocent’s mind was full of thoughts of Valerie and Kirby, but he managed to follow Hiram Farley well enough to say, “So now you’ll do it yourself?”

  “Mister St. Michael, I still want that story for Trend. And I imagine you would like to help save your patrimony from the thieves and smugglers.”

  “But of course, Mister Farley,” Innocent said, thinking, Is this fellow a pansy-boy, too, like his friends? Yes. More subtle about it, not noticeable at all if you aren’t looking for it, but yes. On the other hand, shrewder than his friends, tougher. Not an easy fellow to take advantage of.

  Farley was saying, “Mister St. Michael, I’ll level with you. After my friends threw in the towel, I looked around, asked around, trying to find somebody else with a connection in Belize. Do you remember a man named Rodemeyer? William Rodemeyer?”

  The name rang a distant bell, no more. Innocent frowned, saying, “I’m not sure …”

  “This would be several years ago. You sold him a piece of land in Ladyville.”

  Ladyville was the little community next to the International Airport. Its future was in fact quite promising for commericial properties, should Belize ever become a considerably larger and more bustling nation than it now was. Innocent had owned different parcels out there over the years …

  Rodemeyer! It came back to him now, the man with the odd name. “The magazine man!”

  “That’s right,” Farley said. “He wanted to found a weekly business magazine for the English-speaking Caribbean basin.”

  “Yes, I remember that man,” Innocent said. “He wanted land out by the airport, to build offices and his own printing operation out there, distribute by air through the Caribbean. Very ambitious project.”

  “Too ambitious, as it turned out,” Farley said.

  “Bigger circus than this come to Belize,” Innocent told himself.

  Beg pardon?”

  “Nothing. Seems to me that man went bust.”

  “Yes, he was undercapitalized.”

  “That’s the big trouble in the Caribbean,” Innocent agreed, nodding like a statesman.

  “He’s back in New York now, Rodemeyer is,” Farley said. “Working for Barron’s.”

  “Aristocrats pay pretty good, I hear,” Innocent said.

  “I understand he sold the land back to you before he left, for rather less than he’d paid for it.”

  “Very depressed real estate market, just at that moment,” Innocent murmured.

  “Yes,” agreed Farley. “The point is, Bill Rodemeyer told me he met several people in Belize, but you were the one I should see. He said you were the shrewdest, toughest con man he ever met in his life, but you were important in the government, and if there was something in it for you I could probably get you to work with me on this smuggling story.”

  “I have never had anything but the nicest remarks to make about Mister Rodemeyer,” Innocent said, putting on a faintly insulted air.

  Farley laughed. “And why not? You made a pretty penny off him.” Becoming more serious, he said, “I’ll let you personally break the story in Belize, and I’ll feature you prominently in the write-up in Trend. We give each other an exclusive. My information plus your local contacts, and we expose these smugglers together.”

  By now, Innocent’s mind was functioning simultaneously on two completely different levels. On the surface, operating out of long practice and engrained habit, he listened to Hiram Farley, heard his ideas, decided how to play this latest fish on his line. But underneath, his mind was full to overflowing with thoughts of Valerie Greene. And where the two though
tstreams converged was at Kirby Galway.

  Kirby the smuggler. And Kirby the murderer.

  “So you want to expose these smugglers in your magazine,” he said. “You want to catch them in the act, you mean, with photographs and all.”

  “That would be best,” Farley agreed. “I can handle all that part of it myself. What I need from you, if you think it’s a good idea, is help on the ground.”

  “To catch the smugglers,” Innocent said, brooding. To catch Kirby the smuggler; yes, that would be a good thing, with this man Farley along to get the evidence that would stick. But what about Kirby the murderer?

  Farley said, “Do we have a deal, Mister St. Michael?”

  “Let me think about this, Mister Farley,” Innocent said. Kirby the murderer is up to me, he thought. Inexorably he was sliding toward a decision that was very unlike him, very out of character. And yet, there it was. And still he hung back from it.

  Tomorrow, he promised himself. Tomorrow I’ll choose; Farley or Kirby. “I’ll get in touch with you by tomorrow afternoon, Mister Farley,” he said, “at the Fort George.”

  Farley was surprised. “How do you know I’m staying at the Fort George?”

  Innocent laughed, though his mind was full of Kirby the murderer. “Every American I do business with is at the Fort George, Mister Farley,” he said.

  10

  TOTAL RECOIL

  “Seven,” said Kirby.

  “Fourteen for two,” said Manny.

  Kirby grinned, and laid down a third seven. “Twenty-one for six,” he said, and moved his back peg forward six spaces on the cribbage board. Only then did he look up to see every tooth gap in Manny’s head gleaming at him; the man smiled like a tunnel entrance. “No,” said Kirby.

  “Yes,” said Manny, and gently placed the fourth seven on the table. “Twenty-eight for twelve.” He leaned forward to study the board. “And the game.”