Donald Westlake - High Adventure

“I didn’t go run and hide in the woods like some people.”

They discussed this further, bristling a bit, each accusing the other of being more superstitious, more prey to fears connected with the old Mayan gods and devils, while Valerie lay silent and unmoving, taking little pleasure in the irony: They had been afraid of her.

Then at last they got back to it, one of them saying, “So what do we do about the woman?”

“She thinks we’re Gurkhas, taking her back to camp. So she’ll come along, no trouble. When we get to the village, we gag her, wait till the people come out from the city. When we shoot the villagers, we shoot her, too.”

“What about the people from the city?”

“We kill the driver. We wound one white man, it doesn’t matter which one.”

“Why don’t we kill them all?”

“Because they’re the people who write the stories.” (There is no word for reporter in Kekchi.) “When they go home, they’ll write all about how the Gurkhas killed all the people in the village.”

“Then we go back across the border?”

“And the Colonel gives us our money.”

Valerie continued to lie there, feigning sleep, while the false Gurkhas continued to talk. They discussed for some time whether to rape her, finally deciding not to do so yet but wait till they got to the village and then play it by ear. (The idioms are somewhat different in Kekchi.) Then one of them said something about how they should get started soon, the village was a good hour’s hike north of here, and Valerie decided it was time to wake up. She made a moaning sound, stretched, rolled over, sat up, looked around wide-eyed at the group of men seated and standing all about her, and said, “Oh, my gosh!”

They looked at her. One of them said, in Kekchi, “Smile at her. Show her we’re friendly.”

A cluster of ghastly smiles were beamed her way. Valerie smiled back and said, “You rescued me!” Her performance was based on Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz”.

They nodded and smiled. Apparently, none of them spoke English.

With some difficulty, Valerie struggled to her feet. The dozen men watched her, smiles still pasted on their faces. Looking around, she said, “Where can I wash up?”

“What does she want?”

“Food, maybe.”

Valerie made hand-washing gestures and face-washing gestures.

“She wants the stream.”

“She wants to piss and wash her face.”

Three or four of them pointed past some trees at the edge of the clearing.

“Oh, thanks,” Valerie said, her own ghastly smile still firmly in place, and turned away.

“I say we definitely rape her.”

“Not before we get to the village.”

Valerie paused at the first trees to look back, smiling and wagging her finger. “Don’t peek now,” she said.

Vernon couldn’t eat. He pushed the fruit around in the bowl and looked gloomily at the coffee, while over at another table the seven journalists wolfed down everything in sight, Scottie going so far as to pretend to bite the waitress’s arm. She offered him a professional smile, refilled his coffee cup, and came over to ask Vernon if everything was all right.

“Fine,” Vernon said.

Vernon was at a small table to one side of the large dining room at the Fort George, with the ravenous correspondents in front of him and the view of the timeless sea beneath a timeless sun off to his right. (The black freighter still stood at anchor in the offing, the paperwork on its eventual auction suffering the usual timeless bureaucratic delay.)

What is going to happen in the village?

I didn’t ask that question, Vernon told himself. I don’t want to know the answer. I only want to survive to the other end of the tightrope. I don’t want to know what links together the Colonel’s various demands of me.

Refugee settlements.

Photos of Gurkhas.

The refugees flee Guatemala, flee the Colonel and the government he serves. They become lost to the Colonel, protected by borders, by international law, by the British, by the wandering Gurkha patrols. The refugees come to trust the Gurkhas, short dark men who come from so far away but who look so like themselves. British intelligence in this part of the world is excellent, mostly because the refugees and the other Indians will tell things to the Gurkhas that they won’t tell any normal Brit. (When, in 1979, Guatemala started a secret road westward through the jungle into southern Belize, it was the Indians who told the Gurkhas, and the Gurkhas who advanced through the jungle and stopped the road.) Faith and trust in the Gurkhas emboldens the refugees, protects the refugees, swells the tide of refugees, and at the same time increases the embarrassment and frustration of the government the Colonel serves.

The journalists at last had finished their breakfasts, were rising. Vernon put a piece of papaya in his mouth, but couldn’t chew it. The fruit was cool at first, but warmed slowly in his mouth.

The correspondents streamed by, talking at one another. The American photojournalist named Tom stopped to say, “Give us ten minutes and we’ll be ready.”

“Mm,” Vernon said, nodding his head with the papaya in it.

“Your vehicle’s out front?”

“Mm.” More nodding.

“See you there.”

“Mm.”

Scottie went by with the extra man, the editor from Trend named Hiram Farley. Scottie was saying, “Tell me now, Hiram, old son, we’ve known each other all these many hours, what do you think of me, eh? Eh?”

Farley, with a judicious expression, said, “I would describe you as tiresomely witty.”

“By God, that’s succinct! Don’t pay by the word over on Trend, I’ll bet!” Scottie said, and clapped Farley on the back with a sound like a gunshot. Vernon blinked, and swallowed his papaya.

The letter read:

Hiram,

You’ve gone away, you bad boy, without telling us a thing, and now we have this very interesting cable from Kirby Galway, which we’ve enclosed. Well, of course we cabled him right back that the answer is yes, and we’re on our way to sunny Flo at this very mo, with cassettes. And this time, believe us, nothing will go wrong. We may even get some actual Mayan treasures for you to photograph, wouldn’t you like that? We’ll be home by Monday, so call us as soon as you return from wherever you’ve gadded, and we’ll certainly have good news for the old newshound.

Love and kisses,

“A very dry Tanqueray Gibson on the rocks, please,” Gerry said.

“Gerry,” Alan said warningly.

“Just one, ” Gerry said.

The stewardess said, “I think the only gin we have is Gordon’s.”

“Oh, well,” Gerry said. “All right, I suppose.”

“So that’s one martini,” the stewardess said.

“Gibson.”

“The onions didn’t come aboard this trip.”

“Oh, well. All right, I suppose.” Sadly, Gerry turned away and gazed out at cloudtops; they looked dirty.

“Sir?” the stew said, turning her acrylic attention on Alan, in the middle seat.

“The same,” Alan said. “Whatever it was.”

With a thin smile, the stew turned to the curator from Duluth, Whitman Lemuel, in the aisle seat: “Sir?”

“A Bloody Mary.”

The stew beamed her appreciation at a man who understood airline drinking, and turned away. Shortly she turned back, the tray tables were lowered to a position just above knees, drinks were exchanged for cash, and they were left in peace, each in his own narrow pocket in the egg carton flying them Floridaward.