The Embedding
Page 3
“Neither of these, obviously. My pilot stays with his machine to look after it.” The Captain spoke to his men quickly, they grinned broken greedy grins and the Negro let Jorge past.
“So you're wondering to what you owe this interruption of your useful work? For which we Brazilians are truly indebted to yourself, need I say, and to your companions in all these filthy jungle holes. Uncivilized here — such a far cry from Rio or Sao Paulo?”
“Fact is, I came direct from Santarem — never saw those cities.”
“That's a shame. Let's hope you have a chance to spend some of your bounty in our fine cities and enjoy real Brazilian hospitality after this vile jungle. It's wonderful that you are flooding it, Mr Faith. Minerals, civilization, the new wealth—”
Was this character and his two thugs planning to roll him for his wad of dollars and cruzeiros? It hardly seemed to merit a special helicopter trip. Yet Charlie recalled that business of customs clearance for essential technical equipment at Santarem, when officials had rolled the whole outfit to the tune of several grand under the guise of customs fees. He hoped it wasn't his turn.
Jorge reappeared with bottle and tumblers, slopped a few fingers of spirit into them and handed them round.
The Captain accepted the brandy from Jorge and sniffed it with a gesture of connoisseurship wasted on that particular juice. The Negro and Ratface drained theirs straight down then wandered about the room rifling through papers and looking into drawers and cupboards while the Captain talked.
“My name is Flores de Oliviera Paixao, Mr Faith. Captain in the Security Police. The Negro is Olimpio, the other one Orlando. Please remember their names, you may see a lot of them and need to ask their help.”
Olimpio glanced round and grinned at the mention of his name, but Orlando just carried on rummaging through Charlie's things with quick furtive scrabbles of his free hand. Whenever the halfcaste's bayonet caught the light, Charlie felt a cold squirming sensation in his guts that stopped him arguing about the cavalier way they were treating his room. His mind wandered back to the Nam and the same species of bayoneted rifle in his own hands as he rooted through a jungle hut. The blade had bathed in the guts of a dark-skinned rat of a youth very like Orlando, who went for Charlie with a knife thinking he was saving his sister. Ah, but the sister — cowering in a corner with big doe eyes, tiny cone-shaped breasts pushing at her shirt, the long black pigtails of a schoolgirl. Likely as not she'd never been near a school. She was beautiful. Orlando scrabbled vaguely and stupidly through Charlie's equipment like a ghost of that thin boy, who had somehow seized the American soldier's weapon from his hands in that hut a decade ago and lived on to threaten Charlie with it now, instead of dying.
“Mr Faith?”
Was it his imagination, or was the rain easing up? The outline of one of the slumbering bulldozers waiting on the cement apron outside was sharpening. Soon bulldozers and graders and rubber-rollers and tampers could all be floated downstream to Santarem; and he could be flown out of this hole . . .
“Yes, Captain?”
“You may he aware that not everyone in our fine cities is quite so hospitable to Americans nor so concerned with the values of civilization. There are alien beings loose in our society. You know who I mean?”
“I guess I do. The Reds. The Urban Guerrillas.”
“How should that affect us?” Jorge asked nervously. “That's a thousand kilometres away from here, beyond the jungle. Terrorists operate along the coastal strip and in the cities—”
“How much you know, Almeida!”
Jorge emptied his own brandy and shrugged.
“It's common knowledge.”
The Captain nodded.
“These people loot and assassinate and kidnap for ransom and plant bombs that kill and maim innocent people — under the banner of socialism. Of caring for the common man. How do they care about people by planting bombs in crowded shops? But that's the Communist ideal — to break down civilization in blood and disorder. Then step in with the vain promise of a better world. You'll understand this, Mr Faith — I hear you're a Vietnam veteran? Happily Communists haven't done so well lately. They cannot kidnap ambassadors so easily. Their leaders are in prison. Their exploits no longer claim world interest. Failed men is what they are. But vicious in failure, like rats in a trap. It is the acts they plan in their despair that bring me here, Mr Faith.”
Paixao took a thin cigar from an inside pocket, inspected it doubtfully before slipping it between his teeth. Ratface hurried to his side with a flickering lighter.
“Reliable information is in our hands that in their rage and despair, and to buy themselves some of the notoriety they hanker after, the terrorists intend attacking these wonderful dams. But we're not sure exactly which dams, or when, or how, Mr Faith. Our informants weren't sure. Or I assure you they would have told. Ilha das Flores prison is persuasive that way.”
The rain was certainly slackening off — but its ringers still tapped out a rhythm on Charlie's skull.
“Yeah, I can believe they would have told,” sweated Charlie.
It wasn't so much the hints of torture which Paixao dropped with such a contemplative smile, as the spook boy with the bright bayonet that worried him, however.
“Some terrorists are certainly coming to harm the Project. But how? By damaging the lockgates at Santarem while some foreign-flag vessel is passing through? By killing some American engineers? I doubt they will try to kidnap anyone. Santarem isn't the town to hide out in. Nor the jungle either — this isn't the Sierra Maestra in Cuba. Those city men can't hope to hide with the labourers or rubber tappers along the rivers. Too stupid and venal, those. Someone would betray. Nor do you melt away into the interior of the jungle without killing yourself — unless you happen to be an Indian, and I hear they're so primitive they eat soil for supper. Indians want nothing to do with our urban terrorists. Maybe they put a few poison arrows in the backs of our road-builders — but for their own private reasons, to be left alone to eat dirt, not be inoculated with the filth of Mao or Marx.”
“I heard that gangs have been attacking towns up north. What d'you call 'em — flagelados?”
Charlie was aware that the Captain might find the remark annoying — he intended it to be. The man's smoothly bullying tone irritated him.
Paixao nodded curtly. He blew out a cloud of smoke.
“Beaten Ones, yes. They attack villages for food with some degree of gang structure. That's in the north-east.”
“Maybe these Beaten Ones have been organizing politically? I recollect your government didn't realize for a whole damn year you had any urban guerrilla problem. You thought they were just gangsters. Ain't I right?”
“Because they behaved like gangsters. Still do. Except that no gangster would indulge in such senseless violence. However, Amazonia is not the north-east, Mr Faith. There are no gangs here the guerrillas can infiltrate. Consider the size of the area. The lack of roads. Impenetrability of the jungle. Terrorists can't operate in this region without giving themselves away. Paradoxical, in view of the size, but there it is. We must assume they're ready to sacrifice themselves. But doing what? Murdering someone like yourself? You're vulnerable so we're here to protect you, you see. Is your dam as vulnerable as you are, in your professional opinion?”
Charlie glanced uncomfortably at Jorge. ‘His’ dam. The Brazilian stared back at him expressionlessly, tapping his finger on his empty glass slowly.
“It ain't my dam, Captain. I'm just here till the floods have been and gone. It's Jorge's kingdom then.”
“You call this a kingdom? You must be joking. I've seen the miserable hovels clustering like flies round your construction camp.”
You interfering, contemptuous bastard. Relations were touchy enough with Jorge already.
“There ain't no lock gates to damage,” he said hastily. “A hovercraft ramp is all we've got here. Just a strip of concrete. Nothing could hurt the dam itself short of a nuclear explosion—”
“Even a large dynamite bang wouldn't do much damage. The soil would absorb the blast. This is a broad earth-fill type of dam, not one of your thin concrete jobs. The danger's not from sabotage but from nature. If the dam was ever overtopped by floodwater, spillage would cut right through it then. Or s'posing the water level suddenly sank on the lake side — that's the pressure face — the saturated earth below the seepage line might slide before it got a chance to drain. That won't happen, we've got good seepage control. The whole of the lake face is covered with strong plastic sheeting—”
“I saw it from the air. Pretty.”
“Then the base of the dam is concreted using the local gravel, and there's a rock filter on the downstream side for seepage to drain away—”
“Couldn't an explosion tear holes in your plastic, Mr Faith?”
“Wouldn't matter if it did. I tell you, it'd take one helluva punch to burst this baby open.”
“Then it must be you they are coming here to kill. But not to worry, Mr Faith. Have faith. We shall scour the waterways till we catch our prey. They'll have to come by water, you know.”
“Mind you, it is a kinda critical time for the dam right now, floodwise—”
“Better the death of your dam than your own death, Mr Faith? I appreciate your feelings. Don't worry — we shall be your guardian angels. Yours too, Almeida, since we have to keep you alive as inheritor of the kingdom. How many courtiers will you have, I wonder?”
“There's a staff of ten,” Charlie said quickly, “and their families. They're already living here—”
“Have you a family too, Almeida? No? Then I guess there'll be consolations for the flesh down in the village?”
Maybe it was Paixao's technique to anger people deliberately to test their political loyalties? That seemed like an overgenerous assessment to Charlie's mind. Jorge, without taking time out to ask himself why the Captain might be acting the way he did — cunning or nasty-mindedness — blurted:
“I don't have to take these insults. I trained two years in Lisbon as a civil engineer—”
“Why didn't you build this dam yourself then?” shrugged Paixao. “Presumably they trained you to—”
Jorge turned his back on Paixao, stared out of the window rigidly.
Some more of the dam was visible now. The plastic-covered face cut a shocking orange slash through the dull green landscape. Along it, pairs of jaribu storks stood side by side like stiff husbands and wives on a promenade.
“Why, with all due respect to Mr Faith, the yanqui overseer?”
“Let me explain, damn it,” Charlie shouted, furious. “Jorge's perfectly well qualified and skilled. It's just that Portugal's mountainous terrain made them concentrate on high arch dams — not this sort of long low earth dam we happen to have more experience with in the States. And it was our Hudson Institute drew up the blueprint for this scheme way back in the late Sixties. That's why I'm here. Not because Jorge is no good. He's damned good. Knows a damned sight more than me about some things. Like dam models. Who d'you think made those there?”
Paixao dropped his cigar butt on the floor and crushed it out thoughtfully.
“Supposing that this dam did burst, what effect would there be downstream?”
“In that unlikely event — let me emphasize how unlikely it is — I guess the millions of tons of water in the lake would just have to flood downstream as far as the next dam in line.”
“If that dam bursts?”
“Supposing the impossible, Captain! It's about as likely as a visit from outer space.”
“No sweat then, Mr Faith. It must be you the terrorists are after.”
• • •
“I'm sorry, Jorge, truly,” said Charlie humbly, when the three men had gone.
“Charlie, sometimes I think the cure is worse than the disease. Terrorists there may be, but—” He shrugged emphatically.
“I know what you mean, pal.”
That blazing hut in the Nam. Smoke hovering over it in the dusk. A man with a bayonet fighting a boy with a knife. So confident that there wasn't any need to pull the trigger even. And a doe-eyed girl staring on sick with fear. . . .
“Do I know what you mean! Jorge, let's take ourselves out on the dam and clear our heads.”
Tapping fingers had fallen silent at last.
“We'll go down to the cafe tonight, huh? Hell, but we two people have nothing to quarrel about!”
A bitter smile was all Charlie got from Jorge, though they walked out on to the dam together, while the last of the rain drifted down gentle as mist. They heard the chatter of the Huey Slick echoing off the water. It seemed not to be flying away in a straight line, but circling.
• • •
Soon, Charlie realized there were two distinct sounds. The noise of the helicopter and the puttering of an outboard motor across the tree-infested lake.
The two sounds coincided for a while, then the helicopter passed out of earshot as the boat moved closer.
Presently it came in sight from behind the drowning trees — a twenty-foot shallow draught boat with an awning rigged up to shelter the two white cotton-robed figures in it. One of these raised an arm in salute.
“I guess they're coming from a safe direction, those ones. Ain't nothing but jungle and Indians for a couple hundred miles that way.”
Jorge looked slyly at Charlie. “You think so?” He gave a soft chuckle. Charlie slapped him on the shoulder with a show of playfulness that seemed phoney to him as soon as he'd done it.
“Hey Jorge, quit trying to scare me will you? I can recognize them all right. It's those two priests.”
The boat reached the point where the ramp entered the water. The two figures climbed out and beached it on the concrete, then started up the long slope.
“Heinz and Pomar, wasn't it? One was full of beans. The other guy had cheeks like ripe apples . . .”
“What a spectacle!” Father Heinz cried as he came in earshot. “An orange banner across the world like on the flag of Brazil itself. I tell you, it's like a great festival flag in these dingy forests. Something almost miraculous. A sash of honour. A perpetual sunrise flooding the landscape.”
The priest puffed from the effort of scaling the slope, but his native garrulity overcame the need for oxygen.
“Believe me, Mr Faith, seeing this appearing through the rain like a great frontier between savagery and civilization, it was a welcoming home indeed!”
“Oh, you remembered my name?” grunted Charlie as the men shook hands.
The priests looked white and thin and tired from their stay in the jungle. The beans had fallen out of Heinz, the red was drained away from Pomar's cheeks. Charlie reckoned it must be two or three months since he saw them setting off.
They weren't quite home yet. ‘Home’ was ten kilometres further downstream — the complex of concrete-floored tin-roofed huts, the kitchens and dispensary, church and school, made ready to receive whatever exodus of Indians there might be from the drowning jungle.
To date, the resettlement camp only held about a third of the number that had been predicted from aerial surveys of the thousands of square kilometres being flooded. The planes had dropped bags of fish hooks and knives and pictures of the Safe Village and the Great Orange Dam, with photographs of the faces of contact men like Heinz and Pomar.
Charlie was about to say something else — ask how they'd got on — when he heard a jeep engine further out on the dam.
He squinted at the distant rainmist, saw the jeep speeding along the freeboard towards them, still a couple of kilometres away.
Charlie recognized it for one of their own jeeps. Still, the sight had him worried briefly — stuck out on the limb of the dam like this.
“It's just Chrysostomo,” Jorge explained sweetly. “I sent him along this morning.”
“Yeah, good. But you know I ain't so jumpy as all that about the impending arrival of my killers that I can
't recognize one of our own vehicles! Hell, these terrorists seem pretty much like a myth now that our friend has flown off. He's his own worst terrorist.”
Jorge grinned and walked off to meet the jeep.
“What's this then, Senhor Faith?” bubbled Heinz. “Did I hear you say terrorists?”
“It's nothing — just a scare. A Security Police Captain flew in a bit ago. Why don't you two people come indoors and have a drink? And I'll see about getting your boat over the ramp then.”
“So that's who it was. A helicopter flew over us. We waved. I saw them take photographs.”
He took them indoors, poured a generous shot of brandy for himself, then emptied the remains into the same tumblers as Orlando and Olimpio had used.
Priests reminded him of army chaplains. A sour memory. But he wanted a drink. And he tried to keep his own rule banning solitary drinking during daylight hours.
• • •
“Somebody wants to blow up the dam,” he shrugged phlegmatically. “Or kill the yanqui who built it.”
“How terrible,” exclaimed Heinz. “Your work is a blessing. How can people not see this? After the gloom and ignorance of the jungle savages—”
Pomar, the younger priest, did quietly recall the occasion when the Archbishop of Sao Paulo had ordered notices pinned to the church doors throughout his archdiocese denouncing the torturing of priests and lay workers by the security police. Maybe guerrillas, although misguided men and atheists—
But Heinz recollected something that rankled more.
“We met a Frenchman living with one of the jungle tribes. He aroused my suspicions, Mr Faith. This man was in a kind of despair. He compared the behaviour of the natives in Africa, who fight the Portuguese government with Chinese weapons, with the impotence of the savages here to do anything, as though he regretted it. I say maybe he was a terrorist.”
Charlie shook his head; he remembered the foxy-featured Frenchman passing over the dam during the latter stages of construction.
“No, he was some kinda anthropologist. He came this way. A bit of a hostile tyke. But not a terrorist for my money. Some halfcaste brought a letter of his a few weeks back addressed to England to be put on the plane—”