Donald Westlake - High Adventure

But all skepticism had vanished once Lemuel’s foot, in poking into the hillside in search of purchase, had dislodged the whistle. Brushing dirt away, turning it around and around, even trying to blow through it, Lemuel had to know that what he was holding was the real thing.

Real, but not particularly valuable. There were certainly hundreds, possibly thousands of similar whistles legally for sale among antique dealers and curio shops around the world, most of them priced at less than $200. The one Lemuel was turning this way and that way in his hands had most recently sold for $160 U.S.

But value here wasn’t the point. This small artifact was real , it was honest-to-God one thousand and two hundred years old, the lips of priests had encircled that blowhole, the hands of real-life ancient Mayans had held that whistle just as Lemuel was holding it right now. The whistle was legit, and Lemuel had to know it.

He did. “A whistle,” he repeated. “Late Classical Period, I would say, prior to 900 AD.”

“You know a lot more about it than I do,” Kirby assured him.

Lemuel held the whistle up so the little priest faced Kirby, arms spread wide, like an infant recognizing its father. “This would have been used in religious ceremonies,” he explained, and then frowned past Kirby, saying, “What’s that?”

Kirby turned. They were just high enough so they could look over the intervening jungle at the meadow — visibly drier today, by the way — where the plane waited and where now a coiling column of brown dust spread out and away from behind an approaching vehicle. “Hey, wait a minute,” Kirby said.

Lemuel’s nervousness had shot back into existence, and in full flower. Stepping back a pace, his eyes getting rounder and rounder behind his round glasses, he looked from Kirby to the oncoming car and back to Kirby, saying, “What is this? What’s going on here?”

“I don’t know,” Kirby said, “but I’ll damn well find out.” This remote place didn’t get visitors. Below, the vehicle had paused at his plane, but had not stopped, and now came rapidly on, bounding and bumping over the rough dry land, moving at an angle that would take it around to the easier slope, the one Kirby and the Indians used but which he never showed the customers. “You wait here,” Kirby said. “This is my land, goddamit.”

Lemuel’s one sartorial concession to a trek in the wilderness had been to wear Adidas sneakers with his usual gray slacks and pale blue shirt and light cotton sports jacket. Till now, his garb had merely made him look slightly foolish but, with fright blotching his face and agitating his limbs, he looked exactly like the victim in some sadistic tale of a city man strayed among brutes; possibly by Paul Bowles. Staring fixedly at the machete held loosely in Kirby’s right hand, “I demand to know what’s going on,” he cried, spoiling the effect when his voice broke on the word demand.

“So do I,” Kirby told him. He knew nothing about that onrushing car except it was none of his doing and was therefore trouble. “Wait here,” he repeated. “Play with the goddam whistle while I get rid of — whoever they are.”

He hated having to take the easier path in full view of the client, but there was no choice if he were to stop the interlopers before they actually reached the base of the temple. Running diagonally down the hill, around to the right side, he kept catching glimpses of the car between vines and tree branches, and be God-damned if it wasn’t the peach-colored Land Rover from the hotel this morning! That, or one exactly like it.

This morning’s Land Rover had had government licence plates.

“Hell and damn,” Kirby muttered, running harder. Innocent has something to do with this, he told himself, but he was moving too fast to think about the question.

A knot of vines was in his way. He swung the machete with both hands, teeth gritted, wishing it were Innocent’s neck. The vines fell away, grudging him a foot or two at every swipe, until all at once the hole was open, the Land Rover was dead ahead, and Kirby hurtled out and down onto the barren flat, waving the machete over his head and yelling, “Stop! Stop!”

The Land Rover veered. There were two people in it, the driver black and male, the passenger white and female. They were the people he’d seen at the hotel this morning. He saw them, the driver blank-faced and the woman yelling something, as the Land Rover angled around him, not even slackening speed.

What were they up to? Kirby turned, panting, the machete sagging at his side, and saw the Land Rover’s brake lights go on as it suddenly jolted to a stop. The woman was waving her arms, now yelling at her companion. The back-up lights flashed as the Land Rover came sluing and sliding backward, slamming to a stop beside Kirby, where the woman glared at him through her large sunglasses from under her floppy-brimmed hat and yelled, “Who are you? ”

“Who am I? Lady, what the hell are you—”

“There’s a temple here!” she cried, astonishingly, horribly. Kirby gaped as she clambered out of the Land Rover, some sort of map or chart flapping in her left hand. Behind her, the driver sat immobile, taking no part.

“Oh, no, there isn’t,” Kirby said. “No, no. No way.”

“But there is! There must be!” Waving the map at him, she insisted, “It’s all worked out! All I have to do—” She started around him, headed for the slope.

“Wait! Wait!” Kirby ran to get in front, to stop her. “You can’t just— You can’t— This is trespassing!”

“I have authority from the Belizean government!” She stood even taller than her normal six feet when she said this, and her eyes flashed.

Innocent. Has to be Innocent. Damn, damn, damn the man, what was he up to and why ? Kirby said, “This is private land, this is my land and you can’t—”

But now she bent almost double, looking upward past Kirby’s right elbow, whipping off her hat so she could see better. “There!” she cried.

Oh, God. Kirby reluctantly turned, also crouching a bit, and right there, through the hole he’d just this minute himself cut through the vines, was framed the top fraction of the temple. Steps, stela, flattened platform at the top. It was like a picture from a textbook. “No,” Kirby said.

“The temple,” breathed this miserable pest of a woman, and Lemuel appeared in the opening, carrying the whistle.

Shit. Kirby came around again to stand close in front of the woman, trying to block her vision, praying Lemuel would have the sense to stay away. “Cut this out now,” he insisted. “This is my land, this is private property, you can’t just barge—”

“I know you,” she said, staring at him, and all of a sudden he knew her, too. Oh, this is impossible, he thought, this is unfair, this is beyond anything. This pain in the ass can’t queer my pitch with Lemuel twice.

Yes. Lemuel did not have the sense to keep out of it, because here he came, carrying the goddam whistle, looking frightened and suspicious and determined and fatuous, saying, “Galway, I have to know what’s going on here, I have a reputation to—”

“You!” cried the woman. The pest. Valerie Greene; the name returned unbidden to Kirby’s mind. Valerie Greene, twice in one lifetime.

Lemuel also recognized her, if belatedly. His jaw dropped. “Oh, no,” he said.

She saw the whistle in his hand. She pointed at it, rising up taller than ever, seven feet tall maybe, eight feet, nine. “DESPOLIATION!” she cried.

Now everybody acted at once. Valerie Greene thundered into her historical-preservation speech, Kirby yelled uselessly for everybody to shut up and go away, and Lemuel backtracked, flinging the whistle away backhanded, like a small boy caught smoking. “I won’t— This isn’t—” Lemuel sputtered, “I can’t— Kirby, you have to—” And he turned and ran pell-mell toward the plane.