of Piersall’s house. It was a comfortable white man’s home, thought
Barak.
It was on top of a hill, the entrance road a long climb from George’s
Valley to the west and the Martha Brae to the east. Mango trees, palms,
hibiscus, and orchids lined the entrance and surrounded the
one-and-a-half-storied white stone structure. The house was long, most
of the wide spacious rooms on the first floor. There was black iron
grillwork everywhere, across the windows and over the door entrances.
The only glass was in the second-floor bedrooms; all the windows had
teak shutters.
The rear of High Hill, as the house was called, was the most striking.
To the east of the old pasture of high grass, where Barak lay, the
gently sloping back lawn had been carved out of the forests and the
fields, seeded with a Caribbean fescue that was as smooth as a golf
course; the rocks, painted a shiny white, gave the appearance of
whitecaps in a green sea.
In the center of the area was a medium-sized pool, installed by
Piersall, with blue and white tiles that reflected the sun as sharply as
the blue-green water in it. Around the pool and spreading out over the
grass were tables and chairs-white wrought iron-Aelicate in appearance,
sturdy in design.
The guard came into view again, and Moore caught his breath, as much in
astonishment as in anger. The guard was playing with a dog, a
vicious-looking Doberman. There had been no dogs before. It was a bad
thing, thought Barak … yet, perhaps, not so bad. The presence of the
dog probably meant that this policeman would stay alone at his post
longer than the normal time span. It was a police custom to leave dogs
with men for two reasons: because the district they patrolled was
dangerous, or because the men would remain for a relatively long time at
their watches.
Dogs served several purposes: they were alarms, they protected, and they
helped pass the hours.
The guard threw a stick; the Doberman raced beyond the pool, nearly
crashing into a wrought-iron table, and snatched it up in his mouth.
Before the dog could bring it back the policeman threw another stick,
bewildering the Doberman, who dropped the first retrieval and went after
the second.
He is a stupid man, thought Barak, watching the laughing guard. He did
not know animals, and a man who did not know animals was a man who could
be trapped.
He would be trapped tonight.
It was a clear night. The Jamaican moon-three-quarters of it-shone
brightly between the high banks of the river. They had poled a stolen
bamboo raft down the rushing waters of the Martha Brae until they had
reached the point of shortest distance to the house in Carrick Foyle.
They maneuvered the raft into a pitch-black recess and pulled it out of
the water, hiding it under cascading umbrellas of full-leaved mangroves
and maiden palms.
They were the raiding party: Barak, Alex, Floyd, and Whitehall. Sam
Tucker and Lawrence had stayed at Bengal Court to protect Alison.
They crept up the slope through the dense, ensnaring foliage. The slope
was steep, the traveling slow and painfully difficult. The distance to
the High Hill property was no more than a mile-perhaps a mile and a
quarter but it took the four of them nearly an hour to reach it.
Charles Whitehall thought the route was foolish. If there was one guard
and one dog, why not drive to the road below the winding, half-mile
entrance and simply walk up to the outer gates?
Barak’s reasoning held more sophistication than Whitehall would have
conceded to the Trelawny police. Moore thought it possible that the
parish authorities had set up electronic tripwires along the entrance
drive. Barak knew that such instruments had been in use in Montego Bay,
Kingston, and Port Antonio hotels for months. They could not take the
chance of setting one off.
Breathing heavily, they stood at the southern border of Piersall’s
sloping lawn and looked up at the house called High Hill. The moon’s
illumination on the white stone made the house stand out like an
alabaster monument, still, peaceful, graceful, and solid. Light spilled
out of the teak shutters in two areas of the house: the downstairs back
room opening onto the lawn and the center bedroom on the second floor.
All else was in darkness.
Except the underwater spotlights in the pool. A slight breeze caused
ripples on the water; the bluish light danced from underneath.
“We must draw him out,” said Barak. “Him and the dog, mon.”
“Why? What’s the point?” asked McAuliff, the sweat from the climb
rolling down into his eyes. “He’s one, we’re four.”
“Moore is right,” answered Charles Whitehall. “If there are electronic
devices outside, then certainly he has the equivalent within.”
“He would have a police radio, at any rate, mon,” interjected Floyd. “I
know those doors; by the time we broke one down, he would have
time–easy to reach others.”
“It’s a half hour from Falmouth; the police are in Falmouth,” pressed
Alex. “We’d be in and out by then.”
“Not so, mon,” argued Barak. “It will take us a while to select and pry
loose the cistern stones. We’ll dig up the oilcloth packet first.
Come!”
Barak Moore led them around the edge of wooded property, to the opposite
side, into the old grazing field. He shielded the glass of his
flashlight with his fingers and raced to a cluster of breadfruit trees
at the northern end of the rock-strewn pasture. He crouched at the
trunk of the farthest tree; the others did the same. Barak spoke
whispered.
“Talk quietly. These hill winds carry voices. The packet is buried in
the earth forty-four paces to the right of the fourth large rock on a
northwest diagonal from this tree.”
“He was a man who knew Jamaica,” said Whitehall softly.
“How do you’ mean?” McAuliff saw the grim smile on the scholar’s face in
the moonlight.
“The Arawak symbols for a warrior’s death march were in units of four,
always to the right of the setting sun.”
“That’s not very comforting,” said Alex.
“Like your American Indians,” replied Whitehall, “the Arawaks were not
comforted by the white man.”
“Neither were the Africans, Charley-mon.” Barak locked eyes with
Whitehall in the moonlight. “Sometimes I think you forget that.” He
addressed McAuliff and Floyd. “Follow me. In a line.”
They ran in crouched positions through the tall grass behind the. black
revolutionary, each man slapping a large prominent rock as he came upon
it. One, two, three, four.
At the fourth rock, roughly a hundred and fifty yards from the base of
the breadfruit tree, they knelt around the stone.
Barak cupped his flashlight and shone it on the top. There was a
chiseled marking, barely visible. Whitehall bent over it.
“Your Dr. Piersall had a progressive imagination; progressive in the
historical sense. He’s jumped from Arawak to Coromantee. See?”
Whitehall traced his index finger over the marking under the beam of the
flashlight and continued softly. “This twisted crescent is an Ashanti
moon the Coromantees used to leave a trail for members of the tribe
perhaps two or three days behind in a hunt. The chips on the convex
side of the crescent determine the direction: one-to the left; two-to
the right. Their replacement on the rim shows the angle. Here: two
chips, dead center; therefore, directly to the right of the stone facing
the base of the crescent.” Whitehall gestured with his right hand
northeast.
“As Piersall instructed.” Barak nodded his head: he did not bother to
conceal his pique at Charley-mon’s explanation. Yet there was respect
in that pique, thought McAuliff, as he watched Moore begin pacing off
the forty-four steps.
Piersall had disguised the spot chosen for burial. There was a thicket
of mollusk ferns spreading out in a free-form spray within the paced-off
area of the grass. They had been rerooted expertly; it was illogical to
assume any sort of diggin had taken place there in years.
Floyd took a knapsack shovel from his belt, unfolded the stem, and began
removing the earth. Charles Whitehall bent down on his knees and joined
the revolutionary, clawing at the dirt with his bare hands.
The rectangular box was deep in the ground. Had not the instructions
been so precise, the digging might have stopped before reaching it. The
depth was over three feet. Whitehall suspected it was exactly four feet
when deposited. The Arawak unit of four.
The instant Floyd’s small shovel struck the metal casing, Whitehall
lashed his right hand down, snatched the box out of the earth, and
fingered the edges, trying to pry it apart. It was not possible, and
Whitehall realized it within seconds.
He had used this type of receptacle perhaps a thousand times: It was a
hermetically sealed archive case whose soft, rubberized edges created a
vacuum within. It had two locks, one at each end, with separate keys;