The Vivero Letter

'Plausible, but bloody improbable,' I said.

'Is it? Jack Gatt is no dumb bunny,' said Harris earnestly. 'He's highly intelligent and educated enough to see a profit in things that would be right over any other hood's head. If there's any dough in this Gatt will be after it.'

I thought of the golden gutters of the roofs of Uaxuanoc and of the king's palace plated with gold within and without. I thought of the mountain of gold and the burning sign of gold which Vivero had described. Harris could very well be right.

He said, 'I think that Halstead and Mr. Fallon have been trailed wherever they've been. I think that Niscemi was one of the trailers, which is why he was on the spot when your golden tray was discovered. He tipped off Gatt, and Gatt flew across and made your brother an offer for it. I've investigated his movements at the time and it all checks out. When your brother turned him down flat he told Niscemi to get the tray the hard way. That wasn't something that would worry Jack Gatt, but he made damned sure that he wasn't even in the country when the job was pulled. And then Niscemi -- and whoever else was with him -- bungled it, and he got himself killed.'

And Gatt was the man whom that simple Devonshire farmer, Hannaford, had liked so much. I said, 'How can we get at the bastard?'

This is all theoretical,' said Harris. 'It wouldn't stand up in a law court.'

'Maybe it's too theoretical,' I said. 'Maybe it didn't happen like that at all.'

Harris smiled thinly, and said, 'Gatt has this house under observation right now -- and Halstead's house in the city. I can show you the guys who are watching you.'

I came to attention at that and looked at Fallon, who nodded. 'Harris is having the observers watched.'

That put a different complexion on things. I said, 'Are they Gatt's men?'

Harris frowned. 'Now that's hard to say. Let's say that someone in Mexico is doing Gatt a favour -- the Organization works like that; they swap favours all the time.'

Fallon said, 'I'll have to do something about Gatt.'

Harris asked curiously, 'Such as?'

'I swing a lot of weight,' said Fallon. 'A hundred million dollars' worth.' He smiled confidently. 'I'll just lean on him.'

Harris looked alarmed. 'I wouldn't do that -- not to Jack Gatt. You might be able to work that way with an ordinary business competitor, but not with him. He doesn't like pressure.'

'What could he do about it?' asked Fallon contemptuously.

'He could put you out of business -- permanently. A bullet carries more weight than a hundred million dollars, Mr. Fallon.'

Fallon suddenly looked shrunken. For the first time he had run into a situation in which his wealth didn't count, where he couldn't buy what he wanted. I had given him a slight dose of the same medicine but that was nothing to the shock handed him by Harris. Fallon wasn't a bad old stick but he'd had money for so long that he tended to handle it with a casual ruthlessness -- a club to get what he wanted. And now he had come up against a man even more ruthless who didn't give a damn for Fallen's only weapon. It seemed to take the pith out of him.

I felt sorry for him and, more out of pity man anything else, I made conversation with Harris in order to give him time to pull himself together. 'I think it's time you were told what's at stake here,' I said. 'Then you might be able to guess what Gatt will do about it. But it's a long story.'

'I don't know that I want to know,' said Harris wryly. 'If it's big enough to get Jack Gatt out of Detroit it must be dynamite.'

'Is he out of Detroit?'

'He's not only out of Detroit -- he's in Mexico City.' Harris spread his hands. 'He says he's here for the Olympic Games -- what else?' he said cynically.

Five

As I dressed next morning I reflected on the strange turns a man's life can take. Four weeks previously I had been a London accountant -- one of the bowler hat brigade -- and now I was in exotic Mexico and preparing to take a jump into even more exotic territory. From what I could gather from Fallon the mysteriously named Quintana Roo was something of a hell hole. And why was I going to Quintana Roo? To hunt for a lost city, for God's sake! If, four weeks before, anyone had offered that as a serious prediction I would have considered him a candidate for the booby-hatch.

I knotted my tie and looked consideringly at the man facing me in the mirror: Jemmy Wheale, New Elizabethan, adventurer at large -- have gun, will travel. The thought made me smile, and the man in the mirror smiled back at me derisively. I didn't have a gun and I doubted whether I could use one effectively, anyway. I suppose a James Bond type would have unpacked his portable helicopter and taken off after Jack Gatt long ago, bringing back his scalp and a couple of his choicest blondes. Hell, I didn't even look like Sean Connery.