The Cry of the Halidon (27 page)

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 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 white-caps 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—delicate 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.

I
t 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 digging 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; once the keys were inserted and turned, air was allowed in, and after a period of minutes the box could be forced open. It was the sort of repository used in the most heavily endowed libraries to house old manuscripts, manuscripts that were studied by scholars no more than once every five years or so and thus preserved with great care. The name “archive case” was well suited for documents in archives for a millennium.

“Give me the keys!” whispered Charles urgently to Barak.

“I have no keys, mon. Piersall said nothing about keys.”

“Damn!”

“Keep quiet!” ordered McAuliff.

“Push that dirt back,” said Moore to Floyd. “So it is not obvious, mon. Push back the ferns.”

Floyd did as he was told; McAuliff helped him. Whitehall stared at the rectangular box in his hands; he was furious.

“He was paranoid!” whispered the scholar, turning to Barak. “You said it was a packet. An oilcloth packet! Not this. This will take a blowtorch to open!”

“Charley’s got a point,” said Alex, shoveling in dirt with his hands, realizing that he had just called Whitehall
“Charley.” “Why did he go to this trouble? Why didn’t he just put the box with the rest of the papers in the cistern?”

“You ask questions I cannot answer, mon. He was very concerned, that’s all I can tell you.”

The dirt was back in the hole. Floyd smoothed out the surface and pushed the roots of the mollusk ferns into the soft earth. “That will do, I think, mon,” he said, folding the stem of the shovel and replacing it in his belt.

“How are we going to get inside?” asked McAuliff. “Or get the guard outside?”

“I have thought of this for several hours,” replied Barak. “Wild pigs, I think.”

“Very
good
, mon!” interrupted Floyd.

“In the pool?” added Whitehall knowingly.

“Yes.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Alex watched the faces of the three black men in the moonlight.

Barak answered. “In the Cock Pit there are many wild pigs. They are vicious and troublesome. We are perhaps ten miles from the Cock Pit’s borders. It is not unusual for pigs to stray this far. Floyd and I will imitate the sounds. You and Charley-mon throw rocks into the pool.”

“What about the dog?” asked Whitehall. “You’d better shoot it.”

“No shooting, mon! Gunfire would be heard for miles. I will take care of the dog.” Moore withdrew a small anesthetizing dart gun from his pocket. “Our arsenal contains many of these. Come.”

Five minutes later McAuliff thought he was part of some demonic children’s charade. Barak and Floyd had crept to the edge of the tall grass bordering the elegant lawn. On the assumption that the Doberman would head directly to the first human smell, Alex and Whitehall were in parallel positions ten feet to the right of the revolutionaries, a pile of stones between them. They were to throw the rocks as accurately as possible into the lighted pool sixty feet away at the first sounds emanating from Moore and his comrade.

It began.

The shrieks intruded on the stillness of the night with terrible authenticity. They were the bellows of panicked beasts, shrill and somehow horrible.

“Eeewahhee … gnnrahha, nggrahhaaa … eeaww, eeaww … eeeowahhee
 …”

McAuliff and Whitehall lobbed rocks into the pool; the splashes were interspersed with the monstrous shrieks. A weird cacophony filled the air.

The shutters from the first floor were thrown open. The guard could be seen behind the grillwork, a rifle in his hand.

Suddenly a stone hit Alex’s cheek. The blow was gentle, not stunning. He whipped his head toward the direction of the throw. Floyd was waving his arm in the tall grass, commanding McAuliff to stop hurling the rocks. Alex grabbed Whitehall’s hand. They stopped.