Donald Westlake - High Adventure

“It’s only pre-Columbian stuff they care about,” Kirby assured them. “As for the marijuana trade, the British and the Americans make a little trouble if they can, but locally nobody gives a damn. It brings in a lot of U.S. cash, it’s all on a small-time basis and a lot cleaner and less violent than Colombia or Bolivia with their cocaine industries, and it makes a good back-up crop for the sugar farmers up around Orange Walk. I’ve flown a lot of bales of pot out of this country, and nobody’s ever looked at me twice. In fact, after lunch I have to see a fellow about that side of it.”

Witcher and Feldspan both looked agog. Leaning forward, speaking much more confidentially than when they’d been discussing the smuggling of valuable Mayan artifacts, Feldspan said, “You mean a dealer?”

“A middleman,” Kirby told him. “An American, he’s coming in on the plane this afternoon.” Then, as though afraid he’d said too much, he too leaned forward and dropped his voice, saying, “Listen, this is a very bad man up north. If he thought I was talking about him, we’d all be in trouble.”

“We wouldn’t breathe a word,” Witcher breathed.

“If you see me with him,” Kirby said, “just pretend you don’t know me.”

“Absolutely,” said Witcher, nodding solemnly, a co-conspirator.

“Okay,” Kirby said. “Here’s my little stunt. I get in my plane, I fill it up with bales of pot, everybody knows what I’m doing, nobody gives a damn, off I go to Florida.” Leaning forward, winking, he said, “Now, what if there’s Mayan antiques inside the bales?”

“When we get back to Belize City,” the cassette with Kirby’s voice told the other cassette, “I will blow your head right off your shoulders.” Then it giggled with Feldspan’s voice, and its red light clicked off. The skinny black man yawned, stretched, walked away from the window, and punched the buttons to rewind both cassettes.

“Brilliant!” breathed Feldspan.

Kirby smiled, nodding, appreciating their appreciation.

“I’m stealing wheelbarrows,” Witcher said.

“Exactly,” Kirby said.

Feldspan said, “The Purloined Letter. The Trojan Horse.”

“I never said I was original,” Kirby said, getting a trifle nettled.

Witcher said, “And when you get to Florida, out they come!”

“Right,” said Kirby. “Now, that brings up another question. When I reach the other end, will it be you two meeting me, or somebody else?”

“In Florida, you mean?” They looked at one another, and Witcher said, “I think we have to do it ourselves.”

“Yes,” said Feldspan. “You just let us know where and when.”

“Okay,” Kirby said. “Then I won’t deal with anybody else. In fact, I won’t even get out of the plane unless I see one of you guys.”

“I suppose you have to be very careful,” Feldspan said. “In your business.”

“Careful is my middle name,” Kirby told him.

The skinny black man put the talking cassette player back where he’d found it, pocketed the listening cassette player, and let himself quietly out of Witcher and Feldspan’s room.

Whitman Lemuel obediently fastened his seatbelt, then pressed his right temple to the cool lucite window and looked down past the wing at Belize. Far away to the west were lavendar mountains, blurry and faded, blending and tumbling into greener hills, smoothing down toward a pale band of beach on which a white foam line ran and spread and vanished and ran again. Blue-green water, as clear and gleaming as new stained glass, spread out from the shore, the color deepening into blue, then breaking at a broad white irregular gash running parallel to the coast, a few hundred yards off shore; the barrier reef, second longest in the world, running for 175 miles north and south, separating the Belizean coast from the Caribbean deeps.

Ahead, where a blue scribble of river cut through the greenery to the coast, a clustered, cluttered, colorful town had grown. The harbor was full of small boats, and a black freighter stood off shore.

Lemuel’s eyes moved away from the town, back toward the jumbled greenness of the nearer mountains. Somewhere in there was Kirby Galway’s temple. He stared, unaware of the lucite’s vibration against his brow.

The stewardess distributed landing cards to be filled out, and Lemuel wrote, without hesitation, “teacher” and “vacation.” He had been a teacher in the past, and technically his current job with the museum could also be described that way. Knowing the Belizean government’s parochial attitude concerning antiquities, he saw no reason to call attention to himself by putting down his actual job title, and he certainly wouldn’t describe his true reason for being here: “to save irreplaceable Mayan artifacts.”

The Mayan sites, except for the few largest, were not being properly cared for. Much had already been lost forever, and much more would soon be gone. Even if Third-World governments like that in Belize had the will to save what had not yet been destroyed, they would never have the money or knowledge or resources for the job. Frequently, as well, in these parts of the world, there was corruption among the very officials charged with the task of preservation.

Governments like Belize’s should welcome men like Whitman Lemuel, scholars, historians, restorers, men selflessly devoted to preserving the best of the past, in carefully controlled environments with prescribed public access, allowing the people of today to experience for themselves the mystery and wonder of the long-ago. It was only ignorance and naivete, combined with backward peoples’ inevitable jealousy of the better-educated and the better-off, that made it necessary for Whitman Lemuel, who knew himself to be a decent and honorable and law-abiding and well-educated and intelligent and reasonable man, to sneak into Belize as though he were a thief, as though he were planning to do something wrong.

Take this fellow Kirby Galway. On the surface a plausible chap, an American, but underneath the glib exterior what was the fellow but a smooth thug? It had been a very fortunate accident that Lemuel had met him again, that second time, and they’d had their little talk, very fortunate indeed, because there was no question in Lemuel’s mind that Galway would be prepared to sell the objects from his temple to anybody, just anybody. Galway was the sort of person the Belizean government ought to concentrate on, not honest scholars like Whitman Lemuel.

But if he was to be honest about it — and Whitman Lemuel was rigidly honest — he had to admit there were Americans too who completely misunderstood the situation, as though scholars like himself were here for profit , as though they were somehow stealing something that belonged to someone else rather than preserving the past — which belongs to all mankind — to be handed on, selflessly, properly catalogued and annotated, to generations yet unborn. He remembered with particular distaste that tall young woman who had interrupted his first conversation with Galway, squawking words like “despoliation.” Such individuals, unhampered by facts, took on moral positions just for the good feeling that comes from being holier-than-thou.

Outside the window, the turning Earth approached, red roofs stood out among the colors of the town, individual trees waved to him, and in a sudden rush and jolt the plane was on the ground, hurtling past the tiny airport building, reluctantly slowing, then turning, coming back.

Lemuel was among the few passengers getting off. He always felt a little nervous when he entered a basically primitive country; who knew what ideas these people might get in their heads? Shuffling slowly through Customs & Immigration, he kept craning his neck, looking for Galway, but didn’t see him. His bow tie constricted his neck in this unaccustomed heat, but he wouldn’t remove it. All clothing is a uniform, and Lemuel’s uniform made clear his status: American, college-educated, nonviolent, intellectual. Nevertheless, he was ordered to open both his suitcases, and the black Customs inspector fingered his Brut aftershave as though he would simply confiscate it. In the end, he merely made an annoying long scrawl of white chalk on each suitcase lid, and sent Lemuel on his way.