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–2′
“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 … gold, 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’7–the minister smiled—-n”Colonial SerA . ce. 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.
“Not a bad premise, is it?” asked Daniel confidently, again rapidly.
“No,” answered McAuliff. “And not particularly original, either.”
“I disagree,” said the minister. “The thoughts may have a hundred
precedents, but the practice is almost unheard of… Tribes, as they
develop self-sufficiency, tend to graduate to the point where they are
anxious to impose themselves on as many other tribes as possible. From
the pharaohs to Caesar; from the Empire-several empires, Holy Roman,
British, et cetera-to Adolf Hitler; from Stalin to your own
conglomeratized government of selfrighteous proselytizers. Beware the
pious believers, McAuliff. They were all pious in their fashions. Too
many are still.”
“But you’re not.” Alex looked over at the enormous leaded glass and the
rushing, plummeting water beyond.
“You just decide who is … and act accordingly. Free to ‘do battle,
as you call it.”
“You think that is a contradiction of purpose?”
“You’re damned right I do. When ‘doing battle’ includes killing people
… because they don’t conform to your idea of what’s acceptable.”
“Whom have we killed?”
Alex shifted his gaze from the waterfall to Daniel. “I can start with
last night. Two carriers on the survey who were probably picking up a
few dollars from British Intelligence; for what? Keeping their eyes
open? Reporting what we had for dinner? Who came to see us? Your
runner, the one I called Marcus, said they were agents; he killed them.
And a fat pig named Garvey, who was a pretty low-level, uniformed
liaison and, I grant you, smelled bad. But I think a fatal accident on
the road to Port Maria was a bit drastic.”
McAuliff paused for a moment and leaned forward in the chair. “You
massacred an entire survey team-every member-and for all you know, they
were hired by Dunstone the same way I was: just looking for work. Now,
maybe you can justify all those killings, but neither you nor anyone
else can justify the death of Walter Piersall…. Yes, Mr. High and
Mighty Minister, I think you’re pretty violently pious yourself” Daniel
had sat down in the chair behind the hatch table during Alex’s angry
narrative. He now pushed his foot against the floor, sending the chair
gently to his right, toward the huge window. “Over a hundred years ago,
this office was the entire building. One of my early predecessors had
it placed here. He insisted that the minister’s room4 chamber, it was
called then-overlook this section of our waterfall. He claimed the
constant movement and the muffled sound forced a man to concentrate,
blocked out small considerations…. That long-forgotten rebel proved
right. I never cease to wonder at the different bursts of shapes and
patterns. And while wondering, the mind really concentrates.”
“Is that your way of telling me those who were killed were … small
considerations?”
Daniel pushed the chair back in place and faced McAuliff. “No, Doctor.
I was trying to think of a way to convince you. I shall tell you the
truth, but I am-not sure you will believe it. Our runners, our
guides–our infiltrators, if you will-are trained to use effect wherever
possible. Fear, McAuliff, is an extraordinary weapon. A nonviolent
weapon; not that we are necessarily nonviolent…. Your carriers are
not dead. They were taken prisoner, blindfolded, led to the outskirts
of Weston Favel, and released. They were not hurt, but they were
frightened severely. They will not work for MI-5 or MI-6 again. Garvey
is dead, but we did not kill him. Your Mr. Garvey sold anything he
could get his hands on, including women, especially young girls. He was
shot on the road to Port Maria by a distraught father, the motive
obvious. We simply took the credit….
You say we massacred the Dunstone survey. Reverse that, Doctor. Three
of the four white men tried to massacre our scouting party. They killed
six of our young men after asking them into the camp for conference.”
“One of those … white men was a British agent.”
“So Malcolm tells us.”
“I don’t believe a trained Intelligence man would kill
indiscriminately.”
“Malcolm agrees with you. But the facts are there. An Intelligence
agent is a man first. In the sudden pitch of battle, a man takes sides.