Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (40 page)

  
 
          
“It
will be along here,”
Vernon
said, the van moving slowly as he watched the right-hand verge. The
jungle was deep and green and moist, tumbled and piled up high on the right.
Behind him, the journalists started gathering their paraphernalia.

 
          
“Yes,
there it is.”

 
          
Vernon
braked to a stop, then turned the van very
slowly off the road and onto an up-tilted patch of eroded rutted ground,
cleared barely as wide as the vehicle, with stones and dirt and roots under its
wheels. Engine roaring, the van struggled up the slope, branches and vines
scraping both sides.
Vernon
clutched hard to the steering wheel, as boulders tried to deflect the
wheels and drive him into tree trunks or ditches. Even at two or three miles an
hour, the van jounced so badly that everybody in it had to hold on.

 
          
Too
narrow; too steep; impossible.
Vernon
stopped the van, switched off the engine.
In the sudden humming silence, he said, “We have to walk from here.”

 
          
“Hold
on, chum,” Scottie called. “The idea was, this place is
accessible.”

 
          
“It’s
just up ahead there,”
Vernon
said, pointing out the windshield. “We just walk up to it.”

 
          
“Accessible
by vehicle, old son.”

 
          
“Not
past here.”

           
Tom, the American photojournalism
leaned forward to look past Vernon’s shoulder, saying, “A Land Rover would make
it.”

 
          
“Too
many of us for a Land Rover.”
Vernon
’s eyelids were fluttering, he was aware of
black-and-white pinwheels at the extreme edges of his peripheral vision.

 
          
Scottie,
all jollity gone, called, “There’s no villages easier to get to than this?”

 
          
“Oh,
come along, Scottie,” Morgan Lassiter said. “Work some of that lard off your
gut.” And she slid open the van door to climb out.

 
          
That
did it. With a woman to lead the way, the men all sheepishly followed, climbing
down out of the van, pushing past the leaves and branches, hanging their canvas
bags of equipment on their shoulders.

 
          
“This
way,”
Vernon
said. His legs were trembling, his knees
were jelly, but none of it showed. “This way,” he said. Soon it will be over.
“This way.” He started up the hill.

  
 
          
Why
am I doing this? Kirby wondered. Of all the brainless things I have ever done
in my life, this has to rank right up there among the best of them. Buying
Innocent’s land, for instance; this could conceivably be even dumber than that.

 
          
In
the first place, there’s no reason on Earth for this stunt to work.

 
          
In
the second place, the woman I’m helping, this Valerie Greene riding along with
me on this rescue mission, is the primary cause of all my recent trouble, and
is someone I dislike so intensely I’m amazed I’m not at this moment shoving her
out of the plane.

 
          
In
the third place, whether the stunt works or not, the end result of trying it
must be that the temple scam is blown permanently and forever. Innocent already
knows too much about it, Valerie Greene is going to figure things out any
minute now, and even the people on the
ground
are likely to catch on, once the fun is over.

 
          
In
the fourth place, some of those people on the ground have machine guns and
could possibly even shoot Cynthia out of the sky.

 
          
In
the fifth place, it isn’t my fight.

 
          
Valerie,
busily tying knots, said, “I really appreciate this, Mr. Galway. I don’t know
how to thank you.”

 
          
“It’s
nothing,” Kirby said.

  
 
          
The
Quiche Indians of western
Guatemala
are not among the tribes who speak some
variant of Kekchi. It was in a different language entirely—mixed with some
Spanish—that the people welcomed the Gurruh soldiers, smiling at them, nodding,
gesturing for them to sit a moment, offering them water.

 
          
The
Gurruh looked around, not seeming to know what to do. They talked to one
another in their-incomprehensible tongue, they smiled rather meaninglessly at
the people, and they wandered around the outsides of the three huts, gazing at
things. One of them picked up the female piglet and held it high with one hand
around its neck, the piglet squeaking and its pink hoofs thrashing the air as
the Gurruh said something to the other soldiers and laughed. Then he put the
piglet down again.

 
          
There
was some strangeness about these Gurruh, all the people sensed it. They weren’t
like the first two groups, they didn’t exude the same air of self-sufficiency
and disinterested amiability. One of them went into a hut uninvited, picked up
an orange without asking, and came out eating it.

 
          
A
young man of the village, an Alpuche, had been looking toward the trail that
led down to the road. “Someone else is coming,” he said.

  
 
          
“Can
you circle just once more!” Valerie Greene asked. She was tying nooses now.

 
          
Kirby,
a bit annoyed, banked Cynthia hard and made a gliding swooping turn over the
tumbled land below. “You’re the one says it’s urgent. ”

 
          
“I
just want to be sure.” Noose in hand, she peered down at that disorderly maze
of greens and browns. “Yes! There’s the stream where I— That’s the stream from
this morning. See it?”

 
          
Kirby
rolled Cynthia over and came back, while Valerie clung open-mouthed to her
seat. “Got it,” he said. “Due north from there they said?”

 
          
“One—”
Silence.

 
 
          
 
Kirby looked over and saw her distress.
“Sorry,” he said, and turned Cynthia right side up. “One hour north,” he said.
“On foot.”

           
“Yes,” Valerie said.

 
          
The
false Gurkhas saw the people looking toward the trail up from the road, and
unlimbered their
Sterling
submachine guns. The villagers, already
sensing something wrong about these soldiers, now drew back, wide-eyed, and
everybody in the small clearing grew silent, except the female piglet, still
squealing and shrilling about the indignity that had been done her.

 
          
High
above, the sky was clear and blue. Thick brush and great trees surrounded the
clearing, arching high overhead, and smaller trees had been left to stand
beside the huts for shade. Except in the very center, where steady sunlight
shone on their plantings, the settlement was dappled with rays reaching through
the trees, angling down to touch with creamy light this person, that hut, that
finger resting gently on a trigger. At the narrow end of the clearing, a patch
of hotter, brighter light backed by fuzzy greens and yellows showed the top of
the trail up from the road.

 
          
An
Espejo girl, eight years old, picked up the piglet and cradled it in her arms.
Her thudding heartbeat calmed the piglet, which grew quiet.

           
A straggling group of eight people,
hot and sweaty and sun-dazzled, appeared at the end of the silent clearing and
came slowly in, looking around themselves.