Mr. Tucker. Government interference is often most unwarranted. I only
meant that I hope Mr. McAuliff is successful. When he asked for the
petrol map, he should have mentioned where he was going. I might have
helped him.”
“Well . . .” drawled Sam conspiratorially, “he was probably
embarrassed, if you know what I mean. I wouldn’t mention it; he’d be
mad as hell at me.”
“Of course.”
“And thanks for the cake tonight. That’s really very nice of you, son.”
“Not at all, sir.”
The good-byes were rapid, more so on the clerk’s part.
Sam replaced the telephone and walked back out onto the terrace.
Lawrence turned from peering over the wall and sat on the flagstone
deck, his back against the sea wall, his body hidden from the beach.
“Mrs. Booth and Jimbo-mon are out of water,” said the black
revolutionary. “They are in chairs again.”
“Latham called. The runners will be here this afternoon…. And I
talked with the front desk. Let’s see if our information gets
transmitted properly.” Tucker lowered himself on the chair slowly and
reached for the binoculars on the table. He picked up the newspaper and
held it next to the binoculars as he focused on the swimming-pool patio
fronting the central beach of Bengal Court.
Within ten seconds he saw the figure of a man dressed in a coat and tie
come out of the rear entrance of the pool, past a group of wooden,
padded sun chairs, nodding to guests, chatting with several. He reached
the stone steps leading to the sand and stood there several moments,
surveying the beach. Then he started down the steps and across the
white, soft sand. He walked diagonally to the right, to the row of
sunfish sailboats.
Sam watched as the clerk approached the diggerpoliceman in the sloppy
baseball cap and the cocoruru peddler. The -cocoruru man saw him
coming, picked up the handles of his wheelbarrow, and rolled it on the
hard sand near the water to get away. The digger-policeman stayed where
he was and acknowledged the clerk.
The magnified features in the glass conveyed all that was necessary to
Sam Tucker. The policeman’s features contorted with irritation. The
man was apparently lamenting his waste of time and effort, commodities
not easily expended on such a hot day.
The clerk turned and started back across the sand toward the patio. The
digger-policeman began walking west, near the water’s edge. His gait
was swifter now; gone was the stooped posture indigenous to a scavenger
of the beach.
He wasn’t much of an undercover man, thought Sam Tucker as he watched
the man’s progress toward the woods of Bengal Court’s west property. On
his way to his shoes and the egress to the shore road, he never once
looked down at the sand for tourist leave-behinds.
McAuliff stood looking over Charles Whitehall’s left shoulder as the
black scholar ridged the flame of the acetylene torch across the seamed
edge of the archive case. The hot point of flame bordered no more than
an eighth of an inch behind the seam, at the end of the case.
The top edge of the archive case cracked. Charles extinguished the
flame quickly and thrust the end of the case under the faucet in the
sink. The thin stream of water sizzled into vapor as it touched the hot
steel. Whitehall removed his tinted goggles, picked up a miniature
hammer, and tapped the steaming end.
It fell off, cracking and sizzling, into the metal sink.
Within the case could be seen the oilcloth of a packet. His hands
trembling slightly, Charles Whitehall pulled it out.
He got off the stool, carrying the rolled-up oilcloth to a deserted,
area of the bench, and untied the nylon laces. He unwound the packet
until it was flat, unzipped the inner lining, and withdrew two sheets of
single-spaced typing. As he reached for the bench lamp, he looked at
McAuliff.
Alex was fascinated by what he saw. Whitehall’s eyes shone with a
strange intensity. It was a fever. A messianic fever. A kind of
victory rooted in the absolute.
A fanatic’s victory, thought McAuliff.
Without speaking, Whitehall began to read. As he finished the first
page, he slid it across the bench to Alex.
The word “Halidon” was in reality three words-or sounds-from the African
Ashanti, so corrupted by later phonetics as to be hardly traceable.
(Here Piersall included hieroglyphs that were meaningless to Alex.) The
root word, again a hieroglyph, was in the sound leedaw, translated to
convey the picture of a hollowed-out piece of wood that could be held in
the hand. The leedaw was a primitive instrument of sound, a means of
communication over distances in the jungles and hills. The pitch of its
wail was controlled by the breath of the blower and the placement of his
hand over slits carved through the surface-the basic principle of the
woodwind.
The historical parallel had been obvious to Walter Piersall. Whereas
the Maroon tribes, living in settlements, used an abeng-a type of bugle
made from the horns of cattleto signal their warriors or spread the
alarm of an approaching white enemy, the followers of Acquaba were
nomadic and could not rely on animal products with any certainty. They
returned to the African custom of utilizing the most prolific material
of their surroundings: wood.
Once having established the root symbol as the primitive horn, it
remained for Piersall to specify the modification of the accompanying
sounds. He went back to the Ashanti Coromanteen studies to extract
compatible noun roots. He found the final syllable, or sound, first. It
was in the hieroglyph depicting a deep river current, or undertow, that
periled man or animal in the water. Its sonic equivalent was a
bass-toned wail or cry. The phonetic spelling was nwa.
The pieces of the primitive puzzle were nearly joined.
The initial sound was the symbol hayee, the Coromanteen word meaning the
council of their tribal gods.
Hayee-leedaw-nwa.
The low cry of a jungle horn signifying a peril, a supplication to the’
council of the gods.
Acquaba’s code. The hidden key that would admit an outsider into the
primitive tribal sect.
Primitive and not primitive at all.
Halidon. Hollydawn. A wailing instrument whose cry was carried by the
wind to the gods.
This, then, was Dr. Walter Piersall’s last gift to his island
sanctuary. The means to reach, enlist, and release a powerful force for
the good of Jamaica. To convince “it” to accept its responsibility.
There remained only to determine which of the isolated communities in
the Cock Pit mountains was the Halidon.
Which would respond to the code of the Acquaba?
Finally, the basic skepticism of the scholar inserted itself into
Piersall’s document. He did not question the existence of the Halidon;
what he did speculate on was its rumored wealth and commitment. Were
these more myth than current fact? Had the myth grown out of proportion
to the conceivably diminished resources?
The answer was in the Cock Pit.
McAuliff finished the second page and looked over at Charles Whitehall.
The black fascist had walked from the workbench to the small window
overlooking the Drax Hall fields. Without turning, he spoke quietly, as
though he knew Alex was staring at him, expecting him to speak.
“Now we know what must be done. But we must proceed cautiously, sure of
every step. A wrong move on our part and the cry of the. Halidon will
vanish with the wind.”
The Caravel prop plane descended on its western approach to the small
Boscobel airfield in OraT cabessa. The motors reseed in short bursts to
counteract the harsh wind and rain of the sudden downpour, forcing the
aircraft to enter the strip cleanly. It taxied to the far end, turned
awkwardly, and rolled back toward the small, onelever concrete passenger
terminal.
Two Jamaican porters ran through the low gates to the aircraft, both
holding umbrellas. Together they pushed the metal step unit to the side
of the plane, under the door; the man on the left then knocked rapidly
on the fuselage.
The door was slapped open by a large white man who immediately stepped
out, waving aside the offer of the two umbrellas. He jumped from the
top level to the ground and looked around in the rain.
His right hand was in his jacket pocket.
He turned up to the aircraft door and nodded. A second large white man
disembarked and ran across the muddy space toward the concrete terminal.
His right hand, too, was in his pocket. He entered the building,
glanced around, and proceeded out of the exit to the parking area.
Sixty seconds later the gate by the luggage depot was swung open by the
second man and a Mercedes 660 limousine drove through toward the
Caravel, its wheels spinning frequently in the drenched earth.
The two Jamaicans remained by the step unit, their umbrellas waiting.
The Mercedes pulled alongside the plane, and the tiny, ancient figure of