The Vivero Letter

It was very thin and flimsy looking. The design was of a warrior holding a spear and a shield .with other figures bearing odd shaped objects. Fallon said, 'That probably started out as a nugget found in a mountain stream a long way from Yucatan. The Mayas beat it flat into its present shape and incised that design with stone tools.'

I said, 'What about the mountain of gold? Was that another of Vivero's lies? Couldn't there have been a mine?'

'Not a chance,' said Fallon decisively. The geology is dead against it. The Yucatan Peninsula is a limestone cap -- not auriferous at all No other metals, for that matter -- that's why the Mayas never got out of the Stone Age, smart though they were.'

I sighed. 'All right, I accept it. No gold.'

'Which brings us back to Gatt,' said Fallon. 'What the hell is he after?'

'Gold,' I said.

'But I've just fold you there is no gold,' said Fallon exasperatedly;

'So you did,' I said. 'And you convinced me. You convinced Harris, too.' I swung round to face Harris. 'Before you heard this explanation did you believe there was gold in Yucatan?'

'I thought that was what this was all about,' he said. 'Buried treasure in ruined cities.'

'There you are,' I said. 'What makes you mink Gatt believes any different? He may be an educated man, but he's no archeological expert. I'm not an illiterate myself, and I believed in buried treasure. I didn't have the technical knowledge to know Vivero was lying, so why should Gatt? Of course he's after the gold. He has the same mentality as the Conquistadores -- just another gangster unwilling to sweat for his money.'

Fallon looked surprised. 'Of course. I hadn't allowed for the lay mind. He must be told the truth.'

Harris wore a crooked smile. 'Do you mink he'd believe you?' he asked sardonically. 'Not after reading the Vivero letter, he wouldn't. Hell, I can still see that king's palace all shiny in the sun, even though I know it's not true. You'd have a whale of a job convincing Gatt.'

Then he must be a stupid man,' said Fallon.

'No, Gatt's not stupid,' said Harris. 'He just believes that men who spend as much time as you have on this thing, men who are willing to spend time in the jungle looking for something, are looking for something very valuable. Gatt doesn't believe that scientific knowledge is particularly valuable, so it must be dough. He just measures you by his own standards, that's all.'

'Heaven forbid!' said Fallon fervently.

'You're going to have trouble with Jack,' said Harris. 'He doesn't give up easily.' He nodded to the prints on the table. 'Where did you have those made?'

'I have an interest in an engineering company in Tampico. I had the use of a metallurgical X-ray outfit.'

'I'd better check up on that,' said Harris. 'Gatt might get on to it.'

'But I've got me negatives here.'

Harris looked at him pityingly. 'What makes you think those are the only negatives? I doubt if they'd get it right first time -- they'd give you the best of a series. I want to see what has happened to the others and have them destroyed before Gatt starts spreading palm-oil among your ill-paid technicians.' Harris was a professional and never gave up. He had a total disbelief in the goodness of human nature.

II

Fallon's way of organizing an archeological expedition was to treat it like a military operation -- something on the same scale as the landing on Omaha Beach, This was no penurious egghead scratching along on a foundation grant and stretching every dollar to cover the work of two. Fallon was a multimillionaire with a bee in his bonnet and he could, and did, spend money as though he had a personal pipeline to Fort Knox. The money he spent to find Uaxuanoc would have been enough to build the damn place.

His first idea was to go in by sea, but the coast of Quintana Roo is cluttered up with islands and uncharted shoals and he saw the difficulties looming ahead so he abandoned the idea. He wasn't troubled about it; he merely chartered a small fleet of air freighters and flew his supplies in. To do this he had to send in a construction crew to build an airstrip at the head of Ascension Bay. This eventually became his base camp.

As soon as the airstrip was usable he sent in a photographic reconnaissance aircraft which operated from the base and which did an aerial survey, not only of the area in which Uaxuanoc was suspected to be. but of the entire provinces of Quintana Roo and Yucatan. This seemed a bit extravagant so I asked him why he did it. His answer was simple: he was co-operating with the Mexican Government in return for certain favours -- it seemed that the cartographic department of the State Survey was very short on information about those areas and Fallon had agreed to supply a photo-mosaic.

'The only person who ever took aerial photographs of Quintana Roo was Lindbergh.' he said. 'And that was a long time ago. It will all come in very useful professionally.'