Donald Westlake - High Adventure

It is the jungle, as at home, but a wonderfully empty jungle, with miles and miles of unclaimed territory in which to scratch out a piece of land and start to live again. No armed masked men rove at night. The only military aircraft is the occasional British Harrier jet, gone almost before it arrives, flashing along the border to remind the Guatemalans of the futility of their dreams.

The refugees arrive, fearful, ignorant, almost without hope. They begin their settlements, hiding as best they can from the world, and in a week or six months or a year they are found and the Belizean government sends its emissary to them; a social worker, perhaps, or an unarmed policeman, or a medical officer. They are told they have been accepted as immigrants; there are no formalities and they shall not be returned to hell. So long as they live on their piece of land, and use it, it is theirs. So long as they mind their own business, they will be left alone. The government is not their enemy, and is not at war with them. It asks only that they send their children to school: “We want to make good Belizeans of them.”

The Indians don’t entirely understand, nor entirely believe. They build their huts out of the materials available in the jungle, they work their fields, and they keep one eye over their shoulder. But nothing happens. And slowly, over the course of years, they come to realize the truth:

The war is over.

Innocent hardly tasted his food at all, and barely glanced at the beautiful sea. Lunching on lobster at the Chateau Caribbean, just up the bayfront from the Fort George, he had smilingly but firmly refused offers to join friends at this or that table, preferring his own gloomy company. Two Belikin beers had not restored him, nor had the sounds of happiness and good fellowship all around him. (At a nearby table, businessman Emory King, an American-born Belizean citizen, was explaining to his group, “How do you wind up with a small fortune in Belize? You start with a large fortune.”)

Valerie Greene. He simply could not get her out of his mind. This morning, doing his usual laps in the pool, it had occurred to him that Valerie had never seen his house, had never swum in his pool, and the thought had so dispirited him he’d stopped swimming at once, breaking his morning ritual for the first time in memory, trailing away unhappily to the house to get dressed.

Which was all, of course, ridiculous. None of his women had seen his house, nor swum in his pool. Take a girlfriend to that wife, those four daughters? Not a chance.

And yet, however absurd the idea might be, it still had the power to deflate him. Every thought of Valerie had the power to deflate him, in fact, rob him of happiness and contentment. And the strange thing was, as time went by his thoughts and memories were less and less about sex and more and more about her. Her smile, her naiveté, her simple worldliness, her passion for honesty and truth. In his mind, she was becoming a saint.

He avoided the word that would describe his condition. He could acknowledge — to himself — that he was grieving for her, but not even to himself could he face the reason why.

“Innocent St. Michael?”

Innocent looked up from his untouched lobster and unassuaged melancholy to see a white man looming over his table, extending a hand with a card in it. A very white man, ashen as a barracuda’s belly; just off the plane from the snowy north, no doubt. “Yes?” Innocent said, wanting nothing more than for the man to cease to exist; or at the very least, to go away.

But he wouldn’t; waggling his fingers, he said, “My card.”

Come along, Innocent, he told himself, you’re still alive. Here’s a man with a card. Here’s a North American with money in his pockets, probably looking for a little investment, some land to buy or a business to associate himself with, a man wanting to wind up with a small fortune in Belize. Take an interest, Innocent.

He took the man’s card, though not really with very much interest. The card told him the man was named Hiram Farley and he was associated with a magazine in New York City called Trend. Had Innocent managed to drum up any interest, it would now evaporate: “Reporter, eh?”

“Editor,” Hiram Farley said, and uninvited pulled out the chair to Innocent’s right. Seating himself, stacking his forearms on Innocent’s table, he said, “Mister St. Michael, how familiar are you with your nation’s Antiquities Law of 1972?”

Innocent raised an eyebrow. “The act says the Mayan ruins within Belize belong to the nation of Belize,” he said, “along with any and all contents, all others to keep bloody hands off. Is that familiar enough for you?”

“Good,” Hiram Farley said. “Fine. And since that law was passed, back in 1972, that’s been the finish of the trade in smuggled Mayan artifacts, is that right?”

“That’s called irony,” Innocent told him. “What you just did there.” Despite himself, he was becoming involved with this fellow.

Hiram Farley smiled. “Occupational hazard,” he explained. “Such a good cheap weapon, irony.” Then he switched to a keen look, saying, “Mister St. Michael, some time ago I became aware of a scheme to smuggle pre-Columbian artifacts out of Belize and into the United States.”

“Which you promptly reported to the officials of both nations,” Innocent suggested.

“Irony; that’s good. Mister St. Michael, I had no proof, only a vague rumor. Hoping to get solid documentary evidence, both to turn over to the authorities and to present in an exclusive story in my magazine—”

“Ah, yes, of course.”

“It isn’t only charity that begins at home, Mister St. Michael.”

“I don’t know much about charity, Mister Farley,” Innocent said. “Tell me what you’ve done.”

“I encouraged two friends of mine to come down here and pursue the suggestion of becoming engaged in the smuggling operation. Antique dealers from New York.”

By God: Witcher and Feldspan! Innocent became so delighted with this revelation that absolutely nothing showed on his face. So this was the reason for the taping!

And if Innocent hadn’t stepped in to remove those tapes, Kirby and his smuggling operation would right now be plastered all over the pages of Trend magazine!

And Valerie? Would she be alive or dead?

No; Trend would not have come out in time to save her.

Kirby... Kirby... Kirby would already have killed her, in any event.

Hiram Farley continued, while Innocent’s thoughts went racing. Farley explained about the tape recordings, their being stolen at the airport, and went on, “My friends — they’re not the sort for intrigues like this, certainly not for anything dangerous — they’ve made it clear they don’t have the heart to go on with the investigation, particularly if those tapes are now in the hands of the smugglers, as they almost certainly are.”

Innocent’s mind was full of thoughts of Valerie and Kirby, but he managed to follow Hiram Farley well enough to say, “So now you’ll do it yourself?”

“Mister St. Michael, I still want that story for Trend. And I imagine you would like to help save your patrimony from the thieves and smugglers.”

“But of course, Mister Farley,” Innocent said, thinking, Is this fellow a pansy-boy, too, like his friends? Yes. More subtle about it, not noticeable at all if you aren’t looking for it, but yes. On the other hand, shrewder than his friends, tougher. Not an easy fellow to take advantage of.

Farley was saying, “Mister St. Michael, I’ll level with you. After my friends threw in the towel, I looked around, asked around, trying to find somebody else with a connection in Belize. Do you remember a man named Rodemeyer? William Rodemeyer?”