Donald Westlake - High Adventure

“I don’t think Miss Greene can be discouraged,” Vernon said. “She showed me the area where she expects to find the temple, and I had to tell her the problems.”

“Problems?” Even this St. Michael reacted to with an undercurrent of waggish humor. Valerie was surprised to realize the man was — despite all the obvious differences — reminding her of Orson Welles in “The Third Man.” She half-expected him to call her Holly.

“Well, here, sir,” Vernon was saying, pointing to the topographical map again, “you know this piece of land, you’ll see the difficulty right away.”

“I do?” St. Michael strode over to the map, he and Vernon consulted for a few seconds, and then St. Michael thumped his finger against the map, saying, “Here, you mean?”

“Right there, yes, sir.”

“I see.” St. Michael brooded at the map, suddenly very thoughtful. Valerie took a step closer.

Vernon said, “I did explain about the drainage problem, the underground fault—”

“Yes, yes, Vernon, of course,” St. Michael said, still thoughtful, still brooding at the map. But then, his good humor regained, he smiled roguishly at Vernon, saying, “But the Mayans had minds of their own, didn’t they? No telling what the buggers might do.”

“But, sir,” Vernon protested, pointing at the map, “no one could possibly—”

“Abandoned their own cities,” St. Michael said, overriding his assistant, plowing blandly on, “going off into the jungles for no rhyme or reason.” Turning to Valerie, he said, “Isn’t that right, Miss Greene?”

“That’s the great unsolved mystery of the Mayan civilization,” Valerie agreed.

“Exactly,” St. Michael said. To Vernon he said, “Disease didn’t get them. Not war, not famine. They were healthy, civilized, doing very well for themselves, then one day, up they got and marched off into the jungle, and a thousand years later most of them still haven’t come back. Just walked right out of their cities.”

“Not all at once, though,” Valerie pointed out. “It happened in different places at different times, over hundreds of years.”

“But sooner or later,” St. Michael prompted.

“Oh, yes,” she agreed. “Eventually, they turned their backs on their entire civilization.”

“You see?” St. Michael opened his arms in triumph, smiling at his assistant. “If those people would leave a city for no good reason, who’s to say where they wouldn’t build one?”

Vernon was clearly not entirely convinced by this logic, but an assistant knows when to retire and leave the field to his number one. “You might be right, sir,” he said, with only the slightest visible reluctance.

“Or I could be wrong,” St. Michael cheerfully replied. “I expect Miss Greene will soon be able to tell us.” He smiled again at the map, thinking about something or other, then turned to Valerie, saying, “I do know that piece of land, though not well. I know its owner.”

“Oh, yes?”

“He’s a compatriot of yours, named Kirby Galway.”

The name meant nothing to Valerie. She said, “Would he object to my going out there?”

“Now, why would he? As a matter of fact, Miss Greene,” he said, moving away from the map at last, coming over to stand just a bit too close to Valerie, looking for a quick instant at her breasts before gazing her frankly and openly in the eye, “as a matter of fact, it’s possible we could be of help to one another.”

Valerie thought, Why does he make me nervous? She said, “Of course, if I can.”

“I’ve been interested for some time,” St. Michael said, “in what Kirby Galway plans to do with that land. In my position here, you can see I would be.”

“Ye-ess.”

“But also because of my position,” St. Michael said, shrugging slightly, smiling at himself, “I can’t really ask him the Question Direct. He might be afraid of government interference, red tape, that sort of thing. I don’t want to pester people, I want development of our Belizean land. My department wants it. This is just a... personal curiosity. Do you see what I mean?”

“I think so,” Valerie said.

“You could go in there,” St. Michael said, “no official connection, no interest in anything but Mayan ruins, and when you came back, you could tell me what else you. saw.”

“Do you mean,” Valerie (who read the newspapers) said, “marijuana?”

St. Michael seemed honestly startled, then amused. “Oh, Miss Greene, not at all! Oh, no, the conditions there would be completely wrong.”

“As I said,” Vernon put in quietly.

“No, I’ll tell you what I have in mind.” St. Michael reached out to lightly touch her forearm. “Nothing criminal, nothing like that at all. Miss Greene — Valerie, is it?”

“Yes.”

“May I call you Valerie? And you must call me Innocent.”

What an idea. Valerie stared at him, speechless.

“We have here in Belmopan,” Innocent St. Michael said, squeezing her arm gently, “just one excellent restaurant, called the Bullfrog. Not up to New York standards, but very nice. Please permit me to treat you to lunch at the Bullfrog, where I will tell you exactly how I hope you will be able to help me.”

In the background, Vernon looked knowing. In the foreground, Valerie felt confused. “Thank you very much,” she heard herself saying. “That sounds nice.”

From the air, Kirby could see the wheel marks of yesterday’s landing; scuffed paler streaks through the grass and clover of the field. And here he was, about to make a second set of the same stripes. Another irritation; somehow, all those lines would have to be obliterated by tomorrow.

He flew on, up and over the hill — from the air, his temple wasn’t visible at all — and buzzed the Indian village in the cleft beyond, to let the boys know he wanted to see them. Bare-assed kids between the low brown huts waved at him as he circled overhead. He waggled his wings in reply, then flew back to the field and landed.

He had already walked partway up the cleared temple side — about at the spot where Witcher and Feldspan had yesterday discovered the jaguar carving — when the group appeared above him, rising up onto the flattened temple top. They were half a dozen short, chunky men in rope-soled shoes or barefoot, wearing old work pants and home-dyed shirts. Four carried machetes loosely at their sides. They had the flat, blunt, enigmatic faces of Maya Indians, and they waited in silence for Kirby to climb the rest of the way to the top.

“Well, Tommy,” Kirby said, when he reached the top. “Hiya, guys. Let me catch my breath.”

Tommy, whose shirt was several shades of green, said, “Something wrong, Kimosabe?” His joke.

“Nothing we can’t handle,” Kirby told him. “Not us guys.”

Luz — red shirt, badly tom — said to Tommy, “He means us guys.”

Kirby grinned and looked out over his mousetrap. It was better, and the world was beating a path to his door. His temple door.

This is where he’d been standing, just under two years ago, when he’d first met Tommy and the others, and when their unusual alliance had begun. Of course, the top hadn’t been cleared then; there was no temple.

Kirby stood panting atop the low scrubby hill in hot sunshine and gazed out in disgust over his land. His land. “Innocent St. Michael,” he muttered, looking out over the blasted heath and his blasted hopes. He had never felt so low.

In the six weeks he had owned it, this land had undergone a ghastly transformation, like a vampire left out in the sun. The grassy field down there on which he had first landed was now a cracked dry moonscape, pale tan, as lined and creased as W. H. Auden’s face. Even the corpses of the grass so recently growing there had dried to ash and blown away.