The Vivero Letter

'I don't know,' I said. 'It depends on whether we can talk to Gatt. If I can point out that he hasn't a hope in hell of getting the stuff, then he might be amenable to a deal. I can't see him killing six or seven people for nothing -- not unless he's a crazy-mad killer, and I don't think he's that'

'Not getting what he wants might send him crazy-mad..'

'Yes,' I said thoughtfully. 'Hell be bloody annoyed. Hell need careful handling.'

'If we get out of this,' she said, 'I'm going to divorce Paul. I can't live with him now. I'll get a Mexican divorce -- it will be valid anywhere because we were married in Mexico.' I thought about that for a bit, then said, 'I'll look you up. Would you mind that?'

'No, Jemmy; I wouldn't mind.' She sighed. 'Perhaps we can begin again with a fresh start.'

'Fresh starts don't come so easily,' I said somberly. Well never forget any of this, Katherine -- never!' I prepared to put on my mask. 'Come on; Joe will be wondering what has gone wrong.'

We swam out of the cave and began the long job of transferring the treasure from the basket which Rudetsky had lowered into the cave. Basket after basket of the damned stuff came down, and it took us a long time, but finally it was all put away. We bad been under for two hours but had never gone below sixty-five feet so the decompression time was just under an hour. Joe lowered the hose which dangled alongside the shot line and we coupled the two valves at the end to the demand valves on our scuba gear. During the hour it took us to go up he fed us air- from the big bottles on the raft instead of using the air compressor which would have made too much noise.

When we finally reached the surface, he asked, 'Everything okay?'

'Everything is fine,' I answered, and swore as I stubbed my toe on an air bottle. 'Look, Joe: tip all these bottles over the side. Gatt might start to get ideas -- he might even be a diver himself. He wont be able to do a damned thing without air bottles.'

We rolled the bottles over the side and they splashed into the cenote and sank. When we got ashore I was very tired but there was still much to do. Smith and Fowler had done their best to armour the hut, but it was a poor best although no fault of theirs. We just hadn't the material.

'Where's Fallon?' I asked.

'I think he's in his own hut.'

I went to look for Fallon and found him sitting morosely at his desk. He turned as I closed the door. 'Jemmy!' he said despairingly. 'What a mess! What a godawful mess!'

'What you need is a drink,' I said, and took the bottle and a couple of glasses from the shelf. I poured out a couple of stiff tots and pushed a glass into his hand. 'You're not to blame.'

'Of course I am,' he said curtly. I didn't take Gatt seriously enough. But who would have thought this Spanish Main stuff could happen in the twentieth century?'

'As you said yourself, Quintana Roo isn't precisely the centre of the civilized world.' I sipped the whisky and felt me warmth in my throat. 'It's not out of the eighteenth century yet.'

'I sent a message out with the boys who left,' he said. 'Letters to the authorities in Mexico City about what we've found here.' He suddenly looked alarmed. 'You don't think Gatt will have done anything about them, do you?'

I considered that one, and said at last, 'No, I shouldn't think so. It would be difficult for him to interfere with them all and it might tip off the authorities that something is wrong.'

'I should have done it sooner,' said Fallon broodingly. The Department of Antiquities is goddamn keen on inspection: this place will be swarming with officials once the news gets out.' He offered me a twisted smile. 'That's why I didn't notify them earlier; I wanted the place to myself for a while. What a damned fool I was!'

I didn't spare him. 'You had plenty of warnings from Pat Harris. Why the hell didn't you act on them?'

'I was selfish,' he said. He looked me straight in the eye. 'Just plain, selfish. I wanted to stay while I could -- while I had time. There's so little time, Jemmy.'

I drank some whisky. 'You'll be back next season.'

He shook his head. 'No, I won't. I'll never be back here. Someone else will take over -- some younger man. It could have been Paul if he hadn't been so reckless and impatient.'

I put down my glass. 'What are you getting at?'

He gave me a haggard grin. 'I'll be dead in three months, Jemmy. They told' me not long before we left Mexico City -- they gave me six months.' He leaned back in his chair. They didn't want me to come here -- the doctors, you know. But I did, and I'm glad I did. But I'll go back to Mexico City now and go into a hospital to die.'

'What is it?'

'The old enemy,' said Fallon. 'Cancer!'

The word dropped as heavy as lead into the quiet hut and there was nothing I could say. This was the reason he had been so preoccupied, why he had driven so hard to get the job done, and why he had stuck to one purpose without deflection. He had wanted to do this last excavation before he died and he had achieved his purpose.