The Vivero Letter

She gave me a wry and lop-sided smile. 'As well as might be expected,' she said gently. 'After a public brawl with my husband.' She looked down at the table. 'He's changed so much.'

'Hell change a lot more if he causes trouble,' I said. 'And not in a way he likes. His credit's run out, Katherine, and you can't do anything more for him. You can't be a barrier between him and the rest of the world any more.'

'I know,' she said somberly.

There was a shout from outside the hut and I spun around to the doorway. A single shot sounded in the distance, to be followed by a fusillade of rifle fire, a ragged pattering of shots. I left the hut at a dead run and made for the outskirts of the camp, to be waved down by Rudetsky who was sheltering behind a hut.

I went forward at a crouch and joined him. 'What the hell's going on?'

'Halstead made a break for it,' he said, breathing heavily. 'He ran for the forest and we tried to follow him. Then they opened up on us.'

'What about Halstead? Did they fire on him?'

'I reckon he's dead,' said Rudetsky. 'I saw him go down as be reached the trees.'

There was a muffled sound from behind and I turned to see Katherine. 'Get back to the hut,' I said angrily. 'It's dangerous here.'

Two big tears squeezed from beneath her eyelids and rolled down her cheek as she turned away, and there was a dispirited droop to her shoulders.

I waited there at the edge of the camp for a long time but nothing happened; no more shots nor even the sound or sight of a living thing. Just the livid green of the forest beyond the cleared ground of the city of Uaxuanoc.

III

Everything we did was under observation -- that I knew. So I had a problem. We could take all the valuables down to the Denote quite openly and sink them, or we could be underhand about it and do it in secret. On balance, I thought that secrecy was the best bet because if we did it openly Gatt might get worried and jump us immediately with the job only begun. There was nothing to stop him.

That meant that all the packages Fallon had made up had to be broken open and the contents smuggled down piece by piece to my hut next to the cenote. Probably it would have been best to have just dumped the stuff as I had first suggested, but it seemed a pity to do that when the cave was available, so we used the cave. That meant going down there while Rudetsky lowered the loot, and that was something better left for after nightfall when prying eyes would be blinded.

For the rest of the daylight hours we contrived to give the camp an appearance of normality. There was a fair amount of coming and going between the huts and gradually all the precious objects were accumulated on the floor of my hut, where Rudetsky filled up the metal baskets we had used for bringing them from the bottom of the cenote in the first place.

Also on the agenda was the fortification of the hut, another task that would have to wait until after darkness fell, but Smith and Fowler wandered about the camp, unobtrusively selecting materials for the job and piling them in places where they could be got at easily at night. Those few hours seemed to stretch out indefinitely, but at last the sun set in a red haze that looked like dried blood.

We got busy. Smith and Fowler brought in their baulks of timber which were to be used to make the hut a bit more bullet-proof and began to hammer them in position. Rudetsky had organized some big air bottles and we hauled the raft into the side and loaded them aboard. It was tricky work because they were heavy and we were working in the dark. We also loaded all the treasure on board the raft, then Katherine and I went down.

The cave was just as we had left it and the air was good. I rose up inside, switched on the internal light I had installed and switched off my own light. There was a broad ledge above.

water-level on which the loot could be stored, and I sat on ft and helped Katherine from the water. 'There's plenty of room to stash the stuff here,' I said.

She nodded without much interest, and said, 'I'm sorry Paul caused all this trouble, Jemmy. You warned me, but I was stupid about it.'

'What made you change your mind?'

She hesitated. 'I started to think -- at last. I began to ask myself questions about Paul. It was something you said that started it. You asked me what it was I had for Paul -- love or loyalty. You called it misplaced loyalty. It didn't take me long to find the answer. The trouble is that Paul hasn't -- wasn't -- always like this. Do you think he's dead?'

'I don't know; I wasn't there when it happened. Rudetsky thinks he is. But he may have survived. What will you do if he has?'

She laughed tremulously. 'What a question to ask at a time like this! Do you think that what we're doing here will do any good?' She waved her hand at the damp walls of the cave. 'Getting rid of what Gatt wants?'