East of Suez (18 page)

“What? Oh!
The Wizard of Oz
. It took me a moment. My memory is in a shambles, Father. I was in an accident a few months ago and what’s left of my memory isn’t worth the rent.”

“I haven’t noticed any disability. Did you ever read Waugh?”

“I can hardly read at all now. And I don’t know any Chinese writers.”

“
Waugh
Chinese? I suppose it
sounds
Chinese, doesn’t it? He wouldn’t have liked that. I meant Evelyn Waugh, the English writer.”

“Oh,
Brideshead Revisited
. I saw it on television and read one or two of his funny books. My girlfriend at home has them. Why?”

“I just wondered.” His eyes were following the trim lines of a woman’s figure as she worked her way through the busy unrelenting traffic.

“Watching
Brideshead
made me feel very Jewish and un-English. I don’t remember Dickens doing that to me.”

“That’s funny, because he makes me feel as though I’m not Roman Catholic enough. Rather than have him in my confessional, I’d rather like to be on the bench when he’s in the dock. I have an urge to judge him. Know what I mean?” I must have looked vapid just then. “No matter.”

“I wish I knew him better.”

“Tell me, Ben, in your pursuit of athlete’s foot and cramp, did you encounter the young woman I was telling you about? Fiona Calaghan?”

“I met her on dry land. We talked, made a date to see each other again, and she stood me up. I
did
see her friend Beverley Taylor, though. Underwater, I mean. She’s as attractive as Fiona, but lacks her confidence. She was on the reef with me.”

“I know the girl. She’s not much more than a girl, surely? Very well-spoken. I forget where she comes from.”

“She told me, but you know about my bad memory.”

“What a pair of informative old codgers we are, Cooperman!”

“Are they bitter rivals, the women, or was I seeing the theatrical bickering of friends? I haven’t seen them together yet, Father.”

“I dare say they’d die for one another, but they put on a warlike front.”

“They mentioned a woman who lives here: Victoria Something. I have yet to meet her on the waterfront or on the reef.”

“And you won’t meet her at all. She’s gone ahead, as they say. Poor girl. I knew her quite well when she and her young husband first arrived.”

“What happened to her?”

“Another unfortunate accident out on the reef. She got herself tangled in some nasty weeds and couldn’t cut herself free before her air tank ran out. Terrible way to die.”

“And her husband?”

“Steve, his name was. No, it was Jake! He left here and has never been traced. One suspects the tainted hand of the authorities. But don’t say I told you.”

“A load of bad luck for one poor family.”

“It was indeed. The Canadian consul came over to try to make some sense of it, but he left after talking to a few policemen and friends. I sometimes wonder what they’re good for. They seem to be incapable of getting under the skin of a tomato. Oh, well.” The priest puffed out his cheeks and let the air escape with an audible sound. I put it down to a sign of mental process. “My friend,” he said at length, “I’m having some friends to dinner tonight. I wonder if you’d be free to join us? I apologize for the scant notice, but there you are. You’re not the only one with a fragile memory. I’m an incompetent. No, I’m not! I’m
hungry
. Setting final examinations makes me hungry.”

“I’m always free, Father; I’m on holiday, and I got your invitation at my hotel.” Were we competing to see which of us had the poorer memory?

“By the mass, the sun is melting my brains! I’ll forget the
Credo
next.” The priest and I fumbled for the check. I lost. Soon we were sitting in another of his hideaway places slurping cold soup. I shocked myself each time I lifted my spoon. It had a fish and yam base. We didn’t talk right away, but after the soup we got back into it.

“Tonight, should I come round to the manse, or whatever you call it?”

“I call it the fadders’ fort, you remember? But the college I’m staying in is not equipped for proper company. I was thinking of a very good restaurant, where the owner owes me a few favors. Nine o’clock. The dining room honors that fascinating figure of the past, Raffles.”

“Who was Raffles? Did he discover this place? I keep running into his name.”

“Dear boy, Raffles came here on his way to Singapore; Lieutenant-governor of Bengkulu, around 1820. Now every place he visited has a Raffles Hotel or Raffles Bar. There’s a bar near the gate, the big gate, where you can buy Raffles Whiskey. I don’t recommend it.”

“Was he—?”

“Don’t interrupt me while I’m giving instructions, dear boy, or you’ll miss the dinner. Raffles is to be found in a hotel on Ex-Macmahon Avenue: The Hôtel de Nancy. Did you get that?” I scribbled down the information, thinking that I already had it somewhere. I repeated the name under my breath while writing. Then I had a thought:

“Macmahon! At least
he
wasn’t French.”

“He’d run you through if he heard you say that. He was a marshal of France. He became president, tried a coup, but got out before anyone noticed.”

“Well! At least I’m certain that my memory’s not to blame this time. I’m sure I never knew that.”

“Knowing your problem, Ben, you must make sure I don’t take advantage of you one day. I like having my little jokes. Perhaps I can tell you all the stories I can’t tell around here anymore. I can empty a room with some of them. Do you think you might come tonight?”

“I’ll be glad to. I’m on a vacation and I don’t know a soul in this town.” The old priest moved off, leaving me and our empty plates, and an obscure smell of marijuana.

Twenty minutes later, I was staring at a metal box in a curtained alcove in the basement of the Inland and International Bank. The place was smaller than its name, but it was doing a brisk business when I came in. I was whisked away below stairs. Here, inside a steel enclosure, I was given my box. The key I provided opened one of the two locks on the box. The second lock was opened by the bank’s key.

Inside I found some legal papers: a lease on the waterfront property, the lease on the apartment I’d tossed yesterday, a sandwich wrapper, half a Crispy-Crunch chocolate bar, and a familiar-looking tin of loose tea, fitted with a tight metal lid. I don’t know what I had expected to find when I opened the long metal lid of the bank box, but it wasn’t tea. I had to laugh at the letdown. It was like dipping into a gold mine and coming up with chopped liver. It wasn’t what I’d expected. Still, finding things out of place was always intriguing. Mystery stories doted on it. And, back at the apartment, hadn’t I found loose tea in a duffel bag? If tea was dumped there,
what
was in the tin now? I didn’t even hold my breath as I tugged off the lid.

Tea!
Loose and smelling of wet hay. What did I expect, ballroom dancers, the Spanish Inquisition, tinkling chimes?

Thinking of the tea spilled out in the duffel bag, I poured the tea out into the box. I think there was a modicum of malice in the act. If you won’t play by the rules, then take that! There was something mixed in with the dark leaves. Something bright and hard. Something that made prisms under the light. I shook the contents, rattled them, made them dance for me. It took a moment to register.

Diamonds!

Diamonds!
They had to be diamonds. Who would make such a fuss about rhinestones?
Now
I was out of breath.
Now
I needed to sit down.

FOURTEEN

I TOOK A SHOWER
as soon as I got back to my hotel. I needed to clear my head; I had to be able to think straight. I’d left the jackpot where I’d found it, apart from one stone I’d pocketed to get checked by a jeweler. Although I was pretty sure what he’d tell me, I was just doing my job, covering all the exits.

Even after a cold finish to my cold shower, I still felt I needed a nap. I needed time. I needed to think. I needed a way in which to tone down the pressure. I tried to assess where I stood: I had come across what looked like many thousands of dollars’ worth of diamonds. They belonged to my client. Whether the diamonds came from whatever was going on at the reef, I had no way of knowing with any certainty. Should I catch the next plane home with the loot or what? How? In a suitcase with a false bottom? And where was Jake? I still hadn’t discovered what had happened to him. There was still much to do.

On the good side was the fact that I hadn’t yet blown my cover. A few people may have been suspicious, but nobody
knew
for sure what I was up to. While I had been lucky so far, I hadn’t expected to turn up this loot at all, nor had I imagined that I would hit pay dirt so quickly. It was a fortune I was sitting on and no mistake, but who else knew that such a fortune existed? I’d found the key in Vicky’s apartment, which must mean it was hers or Jake’s. News of the existence of such a treasure was not widely known or the flat would have been searched before I came along. I didn’t have to look with suspicion on everybody I had met quite yet. Later? I’d think about later, later.

I tried to recall exactly what Vicki had told me about the offshore operation. My mind contained fragments of what she said. In trying to bring back into focus what she told me, I began to forget the items that I thought were fixed in my head. I began to work it out on my fingers, like a schoolboy with a problem in mathematics.

If drugs were coming to Takot and money was leaving, or maybe the other way around, then there had to be at least two groups involved. One got the drugs and took them out to the reef from the harbor here in a midnight speedboat running without lights or on a diving boat like the one I’d been on. Another group, offshore, picked up the drugs and left the cash, unless the payoff was being made in gemstones. How did the two sides communicate? Maybe they used the phone, maybe they were in touch through their computers. Maybe there was another system. I thought of the calendar in the kitchen at Vicky’s apartment where no pencil jottings, no underlined or circled dates stood out. Someone involved in taking out tourists to dive the reef, I could understand, needed a calendar with good tidal information. And the moon phases? They were an extra, nothing to worry about.

Nothing to worry about!
What was I saying? What was the name of those police? The Bim-bams, Yuk-yuks, the Tucktucks? No! The Tam-tams. They sounded like that bunch from Haiti. If I was found with the diamonds, and the diamonds were traced to drugs, I could be looking at a long term in a prison I didn’t even want to think about. Some of these countries down here were touchy about things we don’t worry about back home. Wasn’t there a place where they take spitting on the street as a major crime? And chewing gum? And others were touchy about drugs. I didn’t want to lose my head, literally
lose my head
, over a missing persons case. How could that be good for business?

I stewed about that for some minutes. I could feel that nap getting closer. Since coming out of the hospital, I took a lot of naps. They refreshed me. They also gave me an excuse for running away from my problems. Problems like the sort I was facing could lead to a lot of naps if I wasn’t careful. The nub of my problems sometimes jumped at me from a nap, and sometimes naps were simply naps. But, however tempted I was, I could see that alertness and sobriety were my friends. Sleep was the enemy. A nap couldn’t save me from what ailed me this time. I tried to work my way through it. As usual, the practical side of things came to my rescue: deal with the mess on your plate. The rocks are in the bank. They’re not even in your name. Go back to the drugs-for-money arrangements; they’ll calm you down. Figure out who did what to whom. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be good at?

How did each side know when the time was ripe for another exchange? Maybe they made an exchange on the first or last of the month, but that would be a pattern the cops might quickly catch on to. Maybe the fifteenth of the month. That could work. Let’s suppose that they made the exchange then. But it could be any arbitrary date. Don’t let the details hobble you. It wouldn’t need extra personnel, especially if there was any degree of trust. But just for safety’s sake, an exchange of dope and cash or gems would require an alert team on each side. They had to be trained scuba divers, because the exchange would likely have been made underwater. The boats might be quite far apart; perhaps one, the onshore boat, might be anchored or tied up to the same float I’d just visited. The other boat could lie off almost anywhere within swimming distance.

I had no idea what sort of shore patrol Takot mounted or even whether there was some kind of coast guard. A half-alert coast guard should spot lights offshore. If lights offshore formed a pattern once a month, somebody would be sure to get wise. Maybe they doused the glim. Working around that reef without lights sounded dangerous to me. I hadn’t noticed whether there was a buoy or light out there. What did Father What’s-his-name tell me? I’d have to check on that. The wreck of the
James O’Reilly
might have a light or a marker of some sort. I wasn’t even sure that a light could be seen from shore. The reef was a few miles north of the town and a few miles offshore. It could be that no lights could be seen, even if there was a lookout on shore directly opposite the reef.