Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (15 page)

 
          
He
that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.

           
Proverbs,
XXVIII, l

 
          
At
Georgeville, 15 miles west of
Belmopan
and 12 miles before the Guatemalan border,
the
Western
Highway
crosses two tiny roads. The northbound road winds just a few miles into
the scrub before it stops at the hamlet of Spanish Lookout—the English-speaking
people of Belize have anticipated trouble from the Spanish-speaking nation to
their west for a long long time—while the southern road climbs steadily into
the Maya Mountains, toward the Vaca Plateau, twisting and turning past San
Antonio and Hidden Valley Falls and on past the small airfield and forest
station at Augustin. For mile after mile the road continues on, chopped out of
a pine and mahogany forest, over gorges and around the shoulders of mountains,
ending at last at Millionario, 19 miles south of the
Western Highway
as the crow flies, more than twice that by
road.

           
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 w^as 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 the 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.