“Units of four …” McAuliff spoke as much to himself as to Malcolm as he stared down at the unbelievably cruel density of jungle beneath. “The Odyssey of death.”
“We’re neither that Spartan nor Arawak,” said Malcolm, laughing softly. “The children do not realize it, but there are others with them.… Come.”
The two Halidonites turned and started toward the opposite ledge of the plateau. Alex took a last look at the Maze of Acquaba and joined them.
At the eastern edge, the contradictory effect was immediate.
Below was a valley no more than a half a mile in length, perhaps a mile wide, in the center of which was a quiet lake. The valley itself was enclosed by hills that were the first inclines of the mountains beyond. On the north side were mountain streams converging into a high waterfall that cascaded down into a relatively wide, defined avenue of water.
On the far side of the lake were fields—pastures, for there were cattle grazing lazily. Cows, goats, a few burros, and several horses. This area had been cleared and seeded—generations ago, thought Alex.
On the near side of the lake, below them, were thatched huts, protected by tall ceiba trees. At first glance, there seemed to be seventy or eighty such dwellings. They were barely visible because of the trees and arcing vines and dense tropical foliage that filled whatever spaces might have been empty with the bright colors of the Caribbean. A community roofed by nature, thought Alex.
Then he pictured the sight from the air. Not as he was seeing it, on a vertical-diagonal, but from above, from a plane. The village—and it was a village—would look like any number of isolated hill communities with thatched roofs and nearby grazing fields. But the difference was in the surrounding mountains. The plateau was an indentation formed at high altitude. This section of the Flagstaff range was filled with harsh updrafts and uncontrollable wind variants; jets would remain at a twelve-thousand-foot minimum, light aircraft would avoid direct overhead. The first would have no place to land, the second would undoubtedly crash if it attempted to do so.
The community was protected by natural phenomena above it and by a tortuous passage on the ground that could never be defined on a map.
“Not very prepossessing, it is?” Malcolm stood next to McAuliff. A stream of children were running down a bordered path toward the lake, their shouts carried on the wind. Natives could be seen walking around the huts; larger groups strolled by the avenue of water that flowed from the waterfall.
“It’s all … very neat.” It was the only word McAuliff could think of at the moment.
“Yes,” replied the Halidonite. “It’s orderly. Come, let’s go down. There is a man waiting for you.”
The runner-guide led them down the rocky slope. Five minutes later the three of them were on the western level of the thatched community. From above Alex had not fully realized the height of the trees that were on all sides of the primitive dwellings. Thick vines sloped and twisted, immense ferns sprayed out of the ground and from within dark recesses of the underbrush.
Had the view from the plateau above been fifty feet high, thought McAuliff, none of what he had seen would have been visible.
Roofed by nature.
The guide started across a path that seemed to intersect a cluster of huts within the junglelike area.
The inhabitants were dressed, like most Jamaican hill people, in a variety of soft, loose clothing, but there was something different that McAuliff could not at first discern. There was a profusion of rolled-up khaki trousers and dark-colored skirts and white cotton shirts and printed blouses—all normal, all seen throughout the island. Seen really in all outback areas—Africa, Australia, New Zealand—where the natives had taken what they could—stolen what they could—of the white invaders’ protective comforts. Nothing unusual … but something was very different, and Alex was damned if he could pinpoint that difference.
And then he did so. At the same instant that he realized there was something else he had been observing. Books.
A few—three of four or five, perhaps—of the dozens of natives within this jungle community were carrying books. Carrying books under their arms and in their hands.
And the clothing was clean. It was as simple as that. There were stains of wetness, of sweat, obviously, and the dirt of field work and the mud of the lake, but there was a cleanliness, a neatness, that was not usual in the hill or outback communities. Africa, Australia, New Guinea, or Jacksonville, Florida.
It was a normal sight to see clothing worn by natives in varying stages of disrepair—torn, ripped, even shredded. But the garments worn by these hill people were whole, untorn, unripped.
Not castoffs, not ill-fitting stolen property.
The Tribe of Acquaba was deep within a jungle primeval but it was not—like so many of the isolated hill people—a worn-out race of poverty-stricken primitives scratching a bare subsistence from the land.
Along the paths and around the dwellings Alex could see strong black bodies and clear black eyes, the elements of balanced diets and sharp intelligence.
“We shall go directly to Daniel,” said Malcolm to the guide. “You are relieved now. And thank you.”
The guide turned right, down a dirt path that seemed to be tunneled under a dense web of thick jungle vines. He was removing his pistol belt, unbuttoning his field jacket. The commando was home, reflected McAuliff. He could take off his costume—so purposely ragged.
Malcolm gestured, interrupting Alex’s thought. The path on which they had been walking under an umbrella of macca-fats and ceibas veered left into a clearing of matted spider grass. This open area extended beyond the conduit of rushing water that shot out from the base of the high waterfall streaming down the mountain. On the other side of the wide, banked gully the ground sloped toward a barricade of rock; beyond were the grazing fields that swung right, bordering the eastern shore of the lake.
In the huge pasture, men could be seen walking with staffs toward the clusters of livestock. It was late afternoon, the heat of the sun was lessening. It was time to shelter the cattle for the night, thought McAuliff.
He had been absently following Malcolm, more concerned with observing everything he could of the strange, isolated village, when he realized where the Halidonite was leading them.
Toward the base of the mountain and the waterfall.
They reached the edge of the lake-feeding channel and turned left. Alex saw that the conduit of water was deeper than it appeared from a distance. The banks were about eight feet in height; the definition he had seen from the plateau was a result of carefully placed rocks, embedded in the earth of the embankments. This natural phenomenon had been controlled by man, like the seeded fields, generations ago.
There were three crossings of wooden planks with waist-high railings, each buttressed into the sides of the embankments, where there were stone steps … placed many decades ago. The miniature bridges were spaced about fifty yards apart
Then McAuliff saw it; barely saw it, as it was concealed behind a profusion of tall trees, immense giant fern, and hundreds of flowering vines at the base of the mountain.
It was a wooden structure. A large cabinlike dwelling whose base straddled the channel, the water rushing out from under the huge pilings that supported the hidden edifice. On each side of the pilings were steps—again in stone, again placed generations ago—that led up to a wide catwalk fronting the building. In the center of the planked catwalk was a door. It was closed.
From any distance—certainly from the air—the building was completely concealed.
Its length was perhaps thirty feet, its width impossible to determine, as it seemed to disappear into the jungle and the crashing waterfall.
As they approached the stone steps, McAuliff saw something else, which so startled him that he had to stop and stare.
On the west side of the building, emerging from within and scaling upward into the tangling mass of foliage, were thick black cables.
Malcolm turned and smiled
at Alex’s astonishment. “Our contact with the outside, McAuliff. Radio signals that are piped into telephone trunk lines throughout the island. Not unlike cellular phones, but generally much clearer than the usual telephone service. All untraceable, of course. Now let us see Daniel.”
“Who is Daniel?”
“He is our Minister of Council. He is an elective office. Except that his term is not guided by the calendar.”
“Who elects him?”
The Halidonite’s smile faded somewhat. “The council.”
“Who elects it?”
“The tribe.”
“Sounds like regular politics.”
“Not exactly,” said Malcolm enigmatically. “Come. Daniel’s waiting.”
The Halidonite opened the door, and McAuliff walked into a large high-ceilinged room with windows all around the upper wall. The sounds of the waterfall could be heard; these were mingled with the myriad noises of the jungle outside.
There were wooden chairs—chairs fashioned by hand, not machinery. In the center of the back wall, in front of a second, very large, thick door was a table, at which sat a black girl in her late twenties. On her “desk” were papers, and at her left was a word processor on a white computer table. The incongruity of such equipment in such a place caused Alex to stare.
And then he swallowed as he saw a telephone—a sophisticated, push-button console—on a stand to the girl’s right.
“This is Jeanine, Dr. McAuliff. She works for Daniel.”
The girl stood, her smile brief and tenuous. She acknowledged Alex with a hesitant nod; her eyes were concerned as she spoke to Malcolm. “Was the trip all right?”
“Since I brought back our guest, I cannot say it was wildly successful.”
“Yes,” replied Jeanine, her expression of concern now turned to fear. “Daniel wants to see you right away. This way … Dr. McAuliff.”
The girl crossed to the door and rapped twice. Without waiting for a reply, she twisted the knob and opened it. Malcolm came alongside Alex and gestured him inside. McAuliff walked hesitantly through the door frame and into the office of the Halidon’s Minister of Council.
The room was large, with a single, enormous leaded-glass window taking up most of the rear wall. The view was both strange and awesome. Twenty feet beyond the glass was the midsection of the waterfall; it took up the entire area; there was nothing but endless tons of crashing water, its sound muted but discernible. In front of the window was a long, thick hatch table, its dark wood glistening. Behind it stood the man named Daniel, Minister of Council.
He was a Jamaican with sharp Afro-European features, slightly more than medium height and quite slender. His shoulders were broad, however; his body tapered like that of a long-distance runner. He was in his early forties, perhaps. It was difficult to tell: his face had lean youth, but his eyes were not young.
He smiled—briefly, cordially, but not enthusiastically—at McAuliff and came around the table, his hand extended.
As he did so, Alex saw that Daniel wore white casual slacks and a dark blue shirt open at the neck. Around his throat was a white silk kerchief, held together by a gold ring. It was a kind of uniform, thought Alex. As Malcolm’s robes were a uniform.
“Welcome, Doctor. I will not ask you about your trip. I have made it too many times myself. It’s a bitch.”
Daniel shook McAuliff’s hand. “It’s a bitch,” said Alex warily.
The minister abruptly turned to Malcolm. “What’s the report? I can’t think of any reason to give it privately. Or is there?”
“No … Piersall’s documents are valid. They’re sealed, and McAuliff has them ready to fly out from a location within a twenty-five-mile radius of the Martha Brae base camp. Even he doesn’t know where. We have three days, Daniel.”
The minister stared at the priest figure. Then he walked slowly back to his chair behind the hatch table without speaking. He stood immobile, his hands on the surface of the wood, and looked up at Alex.
“So by the brilliant persistence of an expatriate island fanatic we face … castration. Exposure renders us impotent, you know, Dr. McAuliff. We will be plundered. Stripped of our possessions. And the responsibility is yours … you. A geologist in the employ of Dunstone, Limited. And a most unlikely recruit in the service of British Intelligence.” Daniel looked over at Malcolm. “Leave us alone, please. And be ready to start out for Montego.”
“When?”
“That will depend on our visitor. He will be accompanying you.”
“I will?”
“Yes, Dr. McAuliff. If you are alive.”
28
There is but a single threat one human being can make against another that must be listened to. That threat is obviously the taking of life.” Daniel had walked to the enormous window framing the cascading, unending columns of water. “In the absence of overriding ideological issues, usually associated with religion or national causes, I think you will agree.”
“And because I’m not motivated religiously or nationally, you expect the threat to succeed.” McAuliff remained standing in front of the long, glistening hatch table. He had not been offered a chair.
“Yes,” replied the Halidon’s Minister of Council, turning from the window. “I am sure it has been said to you before that Jamaica’s concerns are not your concerns.”
“It’s … ‘not my war’ is the way it was phrased.”
“Who said that to you? Charles Whitehall or Barak Moore?”
“Barak Moore is dead,” said Alex.
The minister was obviously surprised. His reaction, however, was a brief moment of thoughtful silence. Then he spoke quietly. “I am sorry. His was a necessary check to Whitehall’s thrust. His faction has no one else, really. Someone will have to be brought up to take his place.…” Daniel walked to the table, reached down for a pencil, and wrote a note on a small pad. He tore off the page and put it to the side.
McAuliff saw without difficulty the words the minister had written. They were: “Replace Barak Moore.” In this day of astonishments, the implication of the message was not inconsiderable.
“Just like that?” asked Alex, nodding his head in the direction of the page of notepaper.
“It will not be simple, if that is what you mean,” replied Daniel. “Sit down, Dr. McAuliff. I think it is time you understood. Before we go further …”
Alexander Tarquin McAuliff, geologist, with a company on 38th Street in New York City, United States of America, sat down in a native-made chair in an office room high in the inaccessible mountains of the Flagstaff range, deep within the core of the impenetrable Cock Pit country on the island of Jamaica, and listened to a man called Daniel, Minister of Council for a covert sect with the name Halidon.
He could not think any longer. He could only listen.
Daniel covered the initial groundwork rapidly. He asked Alex if he had read Walter Piersall’s papers. McAuliff nodded.
The minister then proceeded to confirm the accuracy of Piersall’s studies by tracing the Tribe of Acquaba from its beginnings in the Maroon wars in the early eighteenth century.
“Acquaba was something of a mystic, but essentially a simple man. A Christ figure without the charity or extremes of mercy associated with the Jesus beliefs. After all, his forebears were born to the violence of the Coromanteen jungles. But his ethics were sound.”
“What is the source of your wealth?” asked Alex, his faculties returning. “If there is wealth. And a source.”
“Gold,” replied Daniel simply.
“Where?”
“In the ground. On our lands.”
“There is no gold in Jamaica.”
“You are a geologist. You know better than that. There are traces of crystalline deposit in scores of minerals throughout the island—”
“Infinitesimal,” broke in McAuliff. “Minute, and so impacted with worthless ores as to make any attempt at separation prohibitive. More expensive than the product.”
“But … gol
d, nevertheless.”
“Worthless.”
Daniel smiled. “How do you think the crystalline traces became impacted? I might even ask you—theoretically, if you like—how the island of Jamaica came to be.”
“As any isolated landmass in the oceans. Geologic upheavals—” Alex stopped. The theory was beyond imagination, made awesome because of its simplicity. A section of a vein of gold, millions upon millions of years ago, exploding out of the layers of earth beneath the sea, impacting deposits through the mass that was disgorged out of the waters. “My God … there’s a vein.…”
“There is no point in pursuing this,” said Daniel. “For centuries the colonial law of Jamaica spelled out an absolute: all precious metals discovered on the island were the possession of the Crown. It was the primary reason no one searched.”
“Fowler,” said McAuliff softly. “Jeremy Fowler …”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The Crown Recorder in Kingston. More than a hundred years ago …”
Daniel paused. “Yes. In 1883, to be exact. So that was Piersall’s fragment.” The minister of the Halidon wrote on another page of notepaper. “It will be removed.”
“This Fowler,” said Alex softly. “Did he know?”
Daniel looked up from the paper, tearing it off the pad as he did so. “No. He believed he was carrying out the wishes of a dissident faction of Maroons conspiring with a group of north-coast landowners. The object was to destroy the records of a tribal treaty so thousands of acres could be cleared for plantations. It was what he was told and what he was paid for.”
“The family in England still believes it.”
“Why not? It was”—the minister smiled—“Colonial Service. Shall we return to more currently applicable questions? You see, Dr. McAuliff, we want you to understand. Thoroughly.”
“Go ahead.”
According to Daniel, the Halidon had no ambitions for political power. It never had such ambitions; it remained outside the body politic, accepting the historical view that order emerges out of the chaos of different, even conflicting ideologies. Ideas were greater monuments than cathedrals, and a people must have free access to them. That was the lesson of Acquaba. Freedom of mobility, freedom of thought … freedom to do battle, if need be. The religion of the Halidon was essentially humanist, its jungle gods symbols of continuously struggling forces battling for the mortals’ freedom. Freedom to survive in the world in the manner agreed upon within the tribe, without imposing that manner on the other tribes.