turned, expecting to see a bird or a mongoose fluttering or scampering
in the woods.
There was nothing.
He turned back to the lapping water beneath him, when suddenly there was
an explosion of sound-sustained, hollowlike, a dissonant cacophony of
wind. And then it stopped.
Whitehall had gripped the rock and stared into the forest.
At nothing, aware only that he was afflicted with a terrible pain in his
temples.
But Charles was a scholar, and a scholar was a skeptic.
He had concluded that, somewhere in the forest, an enormous unseen tree
had collapsed from the natural weight of ages. In its death fall, the
tons of ripping, scraping wood against wood within the huge trunk had
caused the phenomenon.
And none was convinced.
As Whitehall told his story, McAuliff watched him. He did not think
Charles believed it himself. Things not explicable had occurred, and
they were all-if nothing elsescientists of the physical. The
explainable. Perhaps they all took comfort in Whitehall’s theory of
sonics. Alexander thought so; they could not dwell on it. There was
work to do.
Divided objectives.
Alison thought she had found something, and with Floyd’s and Lawrence’s
help she made a series of deep bores arcing the beaches and coral
jetties. Her samplings showed that there were strata of soft lignite
interspersed throughout the limestone beds on the ocean floor.
Geologically it was easily explained: hundreds of thousands of years
ago, volcanic disturbances swallowed whole landmasses of wood and pulp.
Regardless of explanations, however, if there were plans to sink pilings
for piers’ or even extended docks, the construction firms were going to
have to add to their base supports.
Alison’s concentrations were a relief to McAuliff. She was absorbed,
and so complained less about his restrictions, and, more important, he
was able to observe Floyd and Lawrence as they went about the business
of watching over her. The two guerrillas were extremely thorough. And
gracefully subtle. Whenever Alison wandered along the beach or up into
the shore grass, one or both had her flanked or preceded- or followed.
They were like stalking panthers prepared to spring, yet they did not in
their tracking call attention to themselves. They seemed to become
natural appendages, always carrying something-binoculars, sampling
boxes, clipboards, whatever was handy-to divert any zeroing in on their
real function.
And during the nights, McAuliff found a protective bonus he had neither
asked for nor expected: Floyd and Lawrence alternated patrols around the
lawns and in the corridors of the Bengal Court motel. Alex discovered
this on the night of the eighth day, when he got up at four in the
morning to get himself a plastic bucket of ice from the machine down the
hall. He wanted ice water.
As he turned the corner into the outside alcove where the machine was
situated, he was suddenly aware of a figure behind the latticework that
fronted the lawn. The figure had moved quickly; there had been no sound
of footsteps.
McAuliff rapidly scooped the cubes into the small bucket, closed the
metal door, and walked back around the corner into the hallway. The
instant he was out of sight, he silently placed the ice at his feet and
pressed his back against the wall’s edge.
There was movement.
McAuliff whipped around the corner, with every intention of hurling
himself at whoever came into view. His fists were clenched, his spring
accurate; he lunged into the figure of Lawrence. It was too late to
regain his footing.
“Eh, mon!” cried the Jamaican softly as he recoiled and fell back under
Alex’s weight. Both men rolled out of the alcove onto the lawn.
“Christ”‘ whispered McAuliff, next to Lawrence on the ground. “What the
hell are you doing here?”
Lawrence smiled in the darkness; he shook his hand, which had been
pinned by Alex under his back. “You’re a big fella, mon! You pretty
quick, too.”
“I was pretty damn excited. What are you doing out here?”
Lawrence explained briefly, apologetically. He and Floyd had made an
arrangement with the night watchman, an old fisherman who prowled around
at night with a shotgun neither guerrilla believed he knew how to use.
Barak Moore had ordered them to stand evening patrols; they would have
done so whether commanded to or not, said Lawrence.
“When do you sleep?”
:’Sleep good, mon,” replied Lawrence. “We take turns alla time.”
Alex returned to his room. Alison sat up- in bed when he closed the
door.
“Is everything all right?” she asked apprehensively.
“Better than I expected. We’ve got our own miniature army. We’re
fine.”
On the afternoon of the ninth day, McAuliff and Tucker reached the
Martha Brae River. The geodometer charts and transit photographs were
seated hermetically and stored in the cool vaults of the equipment
truck. Peter Jensen gave his summary of the coastal ore and mineral
deposits; his wife, Ruth, had found traces of plant fossils embedded in
the coral, but her findings were of little value, and James Ferguson,
covering double duty in soil and flora, presented his unstartling
analyses. Only Alison’s discovery of the lignite strata was unexpected.
All reports were to be driven into Ocho Rios for duplication. McAuliff
said he would do this himself, it had been a difficult nine days, and
the tenth was a day off. Those who wanted to go into Ochee could come
with him; the others could go to Montego or laze around the Bengal
Cour’t beach, as they preferred. The survey would resume on the morning
of the eleventh day.
They made their respective plans on the riverbank, with the inevitable
picnic lunches put up by the motel. Only Charles Whitehall, who had
done little but lie around the beach, knew precisely what he wanted to
do, and he could not state it publicly. He spoke to Alex alone.
“I really must see Piersall’s papers. Quite honestly, McAuliff, it’s
been driving me crazy.”
“We wait for Moore. We agreed to that.”
“When? For heaven’s sake, when will he show up? It will be ten days
tomorrow; he said ten days.”
“There were no guarantees. I’m as anxious as you.
There’s an oilcloth packet buried somewhere on his property, remember?”
“I haven’t forgotten for an instant.”
Separation of concentrations; divided objectives.
Hammond.
Charles Whitehall was as concerned academically as he was
conspiratorially. Perhaps more so, thought Alex. The black scholar’s
curiosity was rooted in a lifetime of research.
The Jensens remained at Bengal Court. Ferguson requested an advance
from McAuliff and hired a taxi to drive him into Montego Bay. McAuliff,
Sam Tucker, and Alison Booth drove the truck to Ocho Rios. Charles
Whitehall followed in an old station wagon with Floyd and Lawrence; the
guerrillas insisted that the arrangements be thus.
Barak Moore lay in the tall grass, binoculars to his eyes. It was
sundown; rays of orange and yellow lights filtered through the green
trees above him and bounced off the white stone of Walter Piersall’s
house, four hundred yards away.
Through the grass he saw the figures of the Trelawny Parish police
circling the house, checking the windows and the doors; they would leave
at least one man on watch. As usual.
The police had finished the day’s investigation, the longest
investigation, thought Barak, in the history of the parish. They had
been at it nearly two weeks. Teams of civilians had come up from
Kingston: men in pressed clothes, which meant they were more than
police.
They would find nothing, of that Barak Moore was certain.
If Walter Piersall had accurately described his caches.
And Barak could not wait any longer. It would be a simple matter to
retrieve the oilcloth packet-he was within a hundred and fifty yards of
it at the moment-but it was not that simple. He needed Charles
Whitehall’s total cooperation-more than Whitehall realized-and that
meant he had to get inside Piersall’s house and bring out the rest of
Piersall’s legacy. The anthropologist’s papers.
The papers. They were cemented in the wall of an old, unused cistern in
Piersall’s basement.
Walter Piersall had carefully removed several cistern blocks, dug
recesses in the earth beyond, and replaced the stones. It was in one of
these recesses that he had buried his studies of the Halidon.
Charles Whitehall would not help unless he saw those papers. Barak
needed Charley-mon’s help.
The Trelawny police got into their vehicles; a single uniformed guard
waved as the patrol cars started down the road.
He, Barak, the people’s revolutionary, had to work with Whitehall, the
political criminal. Their own war-perhaps a civil war-would come later,
as it had in so many developing lands.
First, there was the white man. And his money and his companies and his
unending thirst for the sweat of the black man. That was first, very
much first, mon!
Barak’s thoughts had caused him to stare blindly into the binoculars.
The guard was nowhere in sight now. Moore scanned the area, refocusing
the Zeiss Ikon lenses as he covered the sides and the sloping back lawn