The tribe of Acquaba.
Walter Piersall had gone back into the Jamaican archives and found the brief allusion in the records pertaining to the Maroon Wars.
On January 2, 1739, a descendant of the Coromanteen tribal chieftains, one Acquaba, led his followers into the mountains. The tribe of Acquaba would not be a party to the Cudjoe treaty with the British, insofar as said treaty called upon the Africans to recapture slaves for the white garrisons.…
There was the name of an obscure army officer who had supplied the information to His Majesty’s Recorder in Spanish Town, the colony’s capital.
Middlejohn, Robt. Maj. W.I. Reg. 641.
What made the name of “Middlejohn, Robt.” significant was Piersall’s discovery of the following.
His Majesty’s Recorder. Spanish Town. February 9, 1739. [Docm’ts. recalled. Middlejohn. W. I. Reg. 641.]
And …
His Majesty’s Recorder. Spanish Town. April 20, 1739. [Docm’ts. recalled. R. M. W. I. Reg. 641.]
Robert Middlejohn. Major. West Indian Regiment 641, in the Year of Our Lord 1739, had been significant to someone.
Who?
Why?
It took Walter Piersall weeks at the Institute to find the next clue. A second name.
But not in the eighteenth century; instead, 144 years later, in the year 1883.
Fowler, Jeremy. Clerk. Foreign Service.
One Jeremy Fowler had removed several documents from the archives in the new capital of Kingston on the instructions of Her Majesty’s Foreign Office, June 7, 1883. Victoria Regina.
The colonial documents in question were labeled simply “Middlejohn papers.” 1739.
Walter Piersall speculated. Was it possible that the Middlejohn papers continued to speak of the Tribe of Acquaba, as the first document had done? Was the retention of that first document in the archives an oversight? An omission committed by one Jeremy Fowler on June 7, 1883?
Piersall had flown to London and used his academic credentials to gain access to the Foreign Office’s West Indian records. Since he was dealing in matters of research over a hundred years old, F.O. had no objections. The archivists were most helpful.
And there were no transferred documents from Kingston in the year 1883.
Jeremy Fowler, clerk of the Foreign Service, had stolen the Middlejohn papers!
If there was a related answer, Walter Piersall now had two specifics to go on: the name Fowler and the year 1883 in the colony of Jamaica.
Since he was in London, he traced the descendants of Jeremy Fowler. It was not a difficult task.
The Fowlers—sons and uncles—were proprietors of their own brokerage house on the London Exchange. The patriarch was Gordon Fowler, Esquire, great-great-grandson of Jeremy Fowler, clerk, Foreign Service, colony of Jamaica.
Walter Piersall interviewed old Fowler on the premise that he was researching the last two decades of Victoria’s rule in Jamaica; the Fowler name was prominent. Flattered, the old gentleman gave him access to all papers, albums, and documents relative to Jeremy Fowler.
These materials told a not unfamiliar story of the times, a young man of “middle breeding” entering the Colonial Service, spending a number of years in a distant outpost, only to return to England far richer than when he left.
Sufficiently rich to be able to buy heavily into the Exchange during the last decade of the nineteenth century. A propitious time; the source of the current Fowler wealth.
One part of the answer.
Jeremy Fowler had made his connection in the Colonial Service.
Walter Piersall had returned to Jamaica to look for the second part.
He studied, day by day, week by week, the recorded history of Jamaica for the year 1883. It was laborious.
And then he found it. May 25, 1883.
A disappearance that was not given much attention insofar as small groups of Englishmen—hunting parties—were constantly getting lost in the Blue Mountains and tropic jungles, usually to be found by scouting parties of blacks led by other Englishmen.
As this lone man had been found.
Her Majesty’s Recorder, Jeremy Fowler.
Not a clerk, but the official Crown Recorder.
Which was why his absence justified the space in the papers. The Crown Recorder was not insignificant. Not landed gentry, of course, but a person of substance.
The ancient newspaper accounts were short, imprecise, and strange.
A Mr. Fowler had last been observed in his government office on the evening of May 25, a Saturday. He did not return on Monday and was not seen for the rest of the workweek. Nor had his quarters been slept in.
Six days later, Mr. Fowler turned up in the garrison of Fleetcourse, south of the impenetrable Cock Pit, escorted by several Maroon “Negroes.” He had gone on horseback … alone … for a Sunday ride. His horse had bolted him; he had gotten lost and wandered for days until found by the Maroons.
It was illogical. In those years, Walter Piersall knew, men did not ride alone into such territories. And if one did, a man who was sufficiently intelligent to be Her Majesty’s Recorder would certainly know enough to take a left angle from the sun and reach the south coast in a matter of hours, at best a day.
And one week later Jeremy Fowler stole the Middlejohn papers from the archives. The documents concerning a sect led by a Coromanteen chieftain named Acquaba … that had disappeared into the mountains 144 years before.
And six months later he left the Foreign—Colonial—Service and returned to England a very, very wealthy man.
He had discovered the Tribe of Acquaba.
It was the only logical answer. And if that were so, there was a second, logical speculation: Was the Tribe of Acquaba … the Halidon?
Piersall was convinced it was. He needed only current proof.
Proof that there was substance to the whispers of the incredibly wealthy sect high in the Cock Pit mountains. An isolated community that sent its members out into the world, into Kingston, to exert influence.
Piersall tested five men in the Kingston government, all in positions of trust, all with obscure backgrounds. Did any of them belong to the Halidon?
He went to each, telling each that he alone was the recipient of his startling information: the Tribe of Acquaba.
The Halidon.
Three of the five were fascinated but bewildered. They did not understand.
Two of the five disappeared.
Disappeared in the sense of being removed from Kingston. Piersall was told one man had retired suddenly to an island in the Martinique chain. The other was transferred out of Jamaica to a remote post.
Piersall had his current proof.
The Halidon was the Tribe of the Acquaba.
It existed.
If he needed further confirmation, final proof, the growing harassment against him was it. The harassment now included the selected rifling and theft of his files and untraceable university inquiries into his current academic studies. Someone beyond the Kingston government was concentrating on him. The acts were not those of concerned bureaucrats.
The Tribe of Acquaba … Halidon.
What was left was to reach the leaders. A staggeringly difficult thing to do. For throughout the Cock Pit there were scores of insulated sects who kept to themselves; most of them poverty-stricken, scraping an existence off the land. The Halidon would not proclaim its self-sufficiency; which one was it?
The anthropologist returned once again to the volumes of African minutiae, specifically seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Coromanteen. The key had to be there.
Piersall had found the key; he had not footnoted its source.
Each tribe, each offshoot of a tribe, had a single sound applicable to it only. A whistle, a slap, a word. This symbol was known only within the highest tribal councils, understood by only a few, who communicated it to their out-tribal counterparts.
The symbol, the sound, the word … was ‘Halidon.’
Its meaning.
/> It took him nearly a month of sleepless days and nights, using logarithmic charts of phonetics, hieroglyphs, and African symbols of daily survival.
When he was finished, he was satisfied. He had broken the ancient code.
It was too dangerous to include it in this summary. For in the event of his death—or murder—this summary might fall into the wrong hands. Therefore, there was a second archive case containing the secret.
The second without the first was meaningless.
Instructions were left with one man. To be acted upon in the event he was no longer capable of doing so himself.
Charles Whitehall turned over the last page. His face and neck were drenched with sweat. Yet it was cool in the shack. Two partially opened windows in the south wall let in the breezes from the hills of Drax Hall, but they could not put out the nervous fires of his anxiety.
Truths had been learned. A greater, overwhelming truth was yet to be revealed.
That it would be now, he was certain.
The scholar and the patriot were one again.
The Praetorian of Jamaica would enlist the Halidon.
20
James Ferguson, at the fashionable bar in Montego Bay, was exhilarated. It was the feeling he had when momentous things happened in the lens of a microscope and he knew he was the first observer—or, at least, the first witness who recognized a causal effect for what it was.
Like the baracoa fiber.
He was capable of great imagination when studying the shapes and densities of microscopic particles. A giant manipulating a hundred million infinitesimal subjects. It was a form of control.
He had control now. Over a man who did not know what it was like to have to protest too loudly over the inconsequential because no one paid attention; to be forever down to his last few quid in the bank because none paid him the value of his work.
All that was changing. He could think about a great many things that were preposterous fantasies only yesterday: his own laboratories with the most expensive equipment—electronic, computerized, data-banked; throwing away the little budget pads that told him whom he had last borrowed from.
A Maserati. He would buy a Maserati. Arthur Craft had one, why shouldn’t he?
Arthur Craft was paying for it.
Ferguson looked at his watch—his too inexpensive Timex—and signaled the bartender to total his bill.
When the bartender did not come over in thirty seconds, Ferguson reached for the tab in front of him and turned it over. It was simple enough to add: a dollar and fifty cents, twice.
James Ferguson then did what he had never done in his life. He took out a five-dollar bill, crumpled it up in his hand, got off the bar stool, and threw the wadded bill toward the cash register several yards in front of him. The bill bounced off the bottles on the lighted shelf and arced to the floor.
He started for the entrance.
There was machismo in his gesture; that was the word, that was the feeling.
In twenty minutes, he would meet the emissary from Craft the Younger. Down off Harbour Street, near Parish Wharf, on Pier Six. The man would be obsequious—he had no choice—and give him an envelope containing three thousand dollars.
Three thousand dollars.
In a single envelope; not saved in bits and pieces over months of budgeting, nor with the tentacles of Inland Revenue or debtors past, reaching out to cut it in half. It was his to do with as he pleased. To squander, to throw away on silly things, to pay a girl to get undressed and undress him and do things to him that were fantasies … only yesterday.
He had borrowed—taken a salary advance, actually—from McAuliff. Two hundred dollars. There was no reason to repay it. Not now. He would simply tell McAuliff … Alex; from now on it would be Alex, or perhaps Lex—very informal, very sure … to deduct the silly money from his paycheck. All at once, if he felt like it. It was inconsequential; it didn’t really matter.
And it certainly didn’t, thought Ferguson.
Every month Arthur Craft would give him an envelope. The agreed-upon amount was three thousand dollars in each envelope, but that was subject to change. Related to cost of living, as it were. Increased as his appetites and comforts increased. Just the beginning.
Ferguson crossed St. James Square and proceeded toward the waterfront. It was a warm night, with no breeze, and humid. Fat clouds, flying low and threatening rain, blocked the moon; the antiquated streetlamps threw a subdued light in counterpoint to the gaudy neons of white and orange that announced the diversions of Montego Bay night life.
Ferguson reached Harbour Street and turned left. He stopped under a streetlamp and checked his watch again. It was ten minutes past midnight; Craft had specified 12:15. In five minutes, he would have three thousand dollars.
Pier Six was directly ahead on his right, across the street. There was no ship in the dock, no activity within the huge loading area beyond the high linked fence; only a large naked bulb inside a wire casing that lit up the sign:
PIER SIX
MONTEGO LINES
He was to stand under the lamp, in front of the sign, and wait for a man to drive up in a Triumph sportscar. The man would ask him for identification. Ferguson would show him his passport and the man would give him the envelope.
So simple. The entire transaction would take less than thirty seconds. And change his life.
Craft had been stunned; speechless, actually, until he had found his voice and screamed a torrent of abuse … until, again, he realized the futility of his position. Craft the Younger had gone too far. He had broken laws and would be an object of scorn and embarrassment. James Ferguson could tell a story of airport meetings and luggage and telephone calls and industrial espionage … and promises.
Such promises.
But his silence could be purchased. Craft could buy his confidence for a first payment of three thousand dollars. If Craft did not care to do so, Ferguson was sure the Kingston authorities would display avid interest in the details of his story.
No, he had not spoken to anyone yet. But things had been written down. (Lies Craft could not trace, of course.) That did not mean he was incapable of finding the spoken words; such capability was very much within his province … as the first payment was within Craft’s province. One canceled the other: which would it be?
And so it was.
Ferguson crossed Harbour Street and approached the wire-encased light and the sign. A block and a half away, crowds of tourists swelled into the street, a one-way flow toward the huge passenger terminal and the gangplanks of a cruise ship. Taxis emerged out of side streets and alleys from the center of Montego Bay, blowing their horns anxiously, haltingly making their way to the dock. Three bass-toned whistles filled the air, vibrating the night, signifying that the ship was giving a warning: all passengers were to be on board.
He heard the Triumph before he saw it. There was the gunning of an engine from the darkness of a narrow side street diagonally across from Pier Six. The shiny, red, low-slung sportscar sped out of the dark recess and coasted to a stop in front of Ferguson. The driver was another Craft employee, one he recognized from a year ago. He did not recall the man’s name; only that he was a quick, physical person, given to arrogance. He would not be arrogant now.
He wasn’t. He smiled in the open car and gestured Ferguson to come over. “Hello, Fergy! It’s been a long time.”
Ferguson hated the nickname “Fergy”; it had dogged him for most of his life. Just when he had come to think it was part of a schoolboy past, someone—always someone unpleasant, he reflected—used it. He felt like correcting the man, reminding him of his messenger status, but he did not. He simply ignored the greeting.
“Since you recognize me, I assume there’s no need to show you my identification,” said James, approaching the Triumph.
“Christ, no! How’ve you been?”
“Well, thank you. Do you have the envelope? I’m in a hurry.”
“Sure. Sure, I do, Fergy.… Hey, you’re a pi
stol, buddy! Our friend is pissing rocks! He’s half out of his skull, you know what I mean?”
“I know what you mean. HQ should be. The envelope, please.”
“Sure.” The driver reached into his jacket and withdrew an envelope. He then leaned over and handed it to Ferguson. “You’re supposed to count it. If it’s all there, just give me back the envelope … make any kind of mark on it you like. Oh, here’s a pen.” The man opened the glove compartment and took out a ballpoint pen and held it up for Ferguson.
“That’s not necessary. He wouldn’t try to cheat me.”
“Hey, come on, Fergy! It’s my ass that’ll be in a sling! Count it, mark it; what’s the difference?”
Ferguson opened the bulky envelope. The denominations were all fives, tens, and twenties. He had not asked for small denominations; it was convenient, though, he had to admit that. Less suspicious than hundreds or fifties.
He started counting the bills.
Twice Craft’s man interrupted him with insignificant questions, causing James to lose his count. He had to start over again both times.
When he had finished, the driver suddenly handed him a wrapped package. “Oh, because our friend wants to show there’s no bad feeling—he’s a sport, you know what I mean?—he sent you one of those new Yashica thirty-five millimeters. He remembered you’re crazy about photography.”
Ferguson saw the Yashica label on top of the package. A seven-hundred-dollar instrument! One of the very best! Craft the Younger was indeed a frightened man. “Thank … Arthur for me. But tell him this isn’t deductible from any future payments.”
“Oh, I’ll tell him.… Now, I’m going to tell you something, Fergy baby. You’re on fuckin’ Candid Camera.” The driver spoke quietly.
“What are you talking about?”
“Right behind you, Fergy baby.”
Ferguson whipped around toward the high linked fence and the deserted area beyond. There were two men in the shadows of a doorway. They came out slowly, perhaps thirty yards away from him. And one of the men carried a camcorder. “What have you done?”
“Just a little insurance, Fergy baby. Our friend is contract-conscious, you know what I mean? Infrared tape, babe. I think you know what that is. And you just gave a terrific performance counting out money and taking Christ knows what from a guy who hasn’t been seen in public north of Caracas for over six months. You see, our friend flew me out of Rio just to get my picture taken … with you.”
The Cry of the Halidon Page 24
