Death in the Caribbean, page 18
The road crossed the summit through a cutting. The inshore bank was wooded, the bank on the coastal side of the road here was a great slab of exposed rock. We got out of the car and climbed the rock. From the top there was a superb view over the inlet. We could see the huge archway that was the entrance to the Chacarima caves, the gunboat, looking like a toy boat, anchored in the bay. My watch had a sweep second-hand, and this was the hand to look at now. There was only seconds to go.
‘He’ll be pulling his switches now,’ I said. ‘Ruth seems to have been right.’
But was she? Even as the words left my lips we were conscious of a low, sickening rumble. The rock on which we stood remained quite firm, the trees on the ridge moved gently in the breeze. But something was happening to the massive headland that towered over the Chacarima caves. Rocks were tumbling down the sheer cliffs, the whole central mass of the headland seemed to be caving in. The low rumble changed to a tremendous roar and a huge plume of white water soared into the sky. It was as if the great waterfall inside the caves had suddenly been reversed, to be hurled upwards instead of cascading into its ravine. We must have been a good three miles away, but we were drenched with spray from it. Like heavy rain, the spray blotted out all vision.
‘My God, the reciprocal effect!’ Ruth said. ‘I told you it could sometimes happen. They’ve brought the whole headland tumbling down on themselves!’
The spray lasted only for a minute or so. When it cleared we could see what appeared to be an enormous crater where the top of the headland had been. The archway making the sea entrance to the caves was shattered, and the channel was now open to the sky. There were some heavy waves breaking on the beach, but the gunboat was still there, and there didn’t seem to be any particular damage to the foreshore.
‘Nothing more can happen now,’ Ruth said. ‘The whole of that cave system must have been unstable, and a reciprocal shock wave, coming back from the stable structure of the ridge, sent it crashing. I wonder why there wasn’t a tidal wave in the inlet?’
‘The cave system we used from the other side of the headland may have acted as a safety valve,’ I said. ‘There may be tremendous damage in that other bay. As nobody seems to live there perhaps it doesn’t matter much.’
XI
BACK TO LONDON
WE DIDN’T GET back to Fort James until nearly ten o’clock, and Major-General Ezra invited Ruth and me to stay at his house. The alternative was the hotel, and we were both too tired to want to deal with any more people, even hotel receptionists.
Ezra ordered a meal for us, but couldn’t stay to eat with us, for he had to rush off to a meeting of the Provisional Government. He did find time to have a drink with us beforehand.
‘I can’t hope to thank either of you adequately,’ he said. ‘You will be heroes in our history books.’
‘If I’m still your military adviser I’d like to offer a bit more advice,’ I told him. ‘You will have to produce a very much edited story for public consumption. So far only you and a few of your Staff officers know anything about what was really going on in those caves. The late Prime Minister is known to have been there. You can say that the caves contained a powerful build-up of weapons for the purpose of overthrowing the Nuevan State, and that Li Cook had gone there to meet agents for the recruitment of foreign mercenaries to establish him in power. By good Army intelligence you got wind of this, cornered Li Cook in the caves, and forestalled the landing of any foreign troops. The explosion is best left suitably vague. The caves were full of arms and explosives, and something can easily have gone off. The local Caribs won’t believe a word of this. They’ll put it down to the just anger of the Carima river, and in a way that’s a tenable point of view. Let it pass into folklore. You don’t have to say anything about it yourself; it will come about naturally, and it will do you no harm if people feel that Nueva’s great river came to the rescue of the Nuevan people at a critical moment. The less said about Ruth and me the better. Praise old Edward Caval – he’s a Chacarima man, he’s almost a Nuevan legend himself, and it’s entirely fitting that he should have got wind of what was happening in his caves, and warned you. Give a few hints of this to your Press and radio journalists, and leave them to it. That should take care of your home front.
‘On the diplomatic front you’re going to have trouble, but with any luck you can turn the situation to Nueva’s advantage. You can’t ignore what you know about the caves, and while I myself doubt if artificial earthquakes have any future the mere rumour of someone’s possessing the power to create them is enough to upset the world. If you play your cards properly it will turn out that you’ve done civilisation a very good turn. If you continue to trust me, I can probably help you here. I can see that the right people in England and America know all about it, and what a horrible conspiracy was nipped in the bud by your prompt action. I’d suggest that you invite a combined British-American Scientific Mission to come to Nueva for some quite general purpose – say to investigate the possibilities of getting large-scale hydro-electric power from the Chacarima region. In reality they can investigate what’s left of the caves, and work out whether there is anything at all in the artificial earthquake process. You can’t do this yourselves. Somebody’s going to do it, and if you get off to a good British-American start, perhaps bringing in the French and Germans too, you’ll have a key place in the diplomatic scheme of things. But you must move quickly, and very quietly. Shout about Nuevan patriotism and the saving of Nueva – you’ve got a good deal to shout about – but keep artificial earthquakes under your hat.’
He didn’t reply directly. ‘There used to be a saying in this part of the world, “Word of an Englishman” – you used it when you wanted to stress that a promise was going to be kept,’ he said. ‘Perhaps there was something in it. Now I really must go.’
*
Ezra had a good cook and she’d turned out a nice meal for us – some kind of local fish, served with sweet potato and lightly toasted cassava bread. But neither of us was in the least hungry. We tried to eat for politeness’s sake, but we felt a devastating sense of after-climax, of complete emotional exhaustion.
‘I wish we were back on our old boat,’ Ruth said
‘So do I. Why not? We can hire a car to take us to Partika, and I expect the dinghy’s still there. Do you realise that it was only this morning that we left it? There’s nothing to keep us here tonight. Let’s go.’
‘Oh Peter, if only we could! But after that lecture you gave the Major-General! He may come back in the small hours and want to know this, that and the other. God knows what’s going to happen tomorrow. I haven’t got any clothes – being with you always seems to leave me without any clothes! I can’t undress properly, and I don’t know if I can go to sleep, but at least I’ve got a room where I can try. The best thing is for us both to see if we can get some sleep.’ She got up from the table and kissed me.
After she’d gone I helped myself to another glass of Ezra’s rum, but I drank only half of it. Somehow I didn’t even want a drink. I’d had only a few catnap’s of sleep since leaving the Oyster Rocks, and more than anything else I needed sleep, though like Ruth I wasn’t at all sure if I could go to sleep. Ruth was right, though, the best thing to do was to try.
I had no pyjamas either, and apart from taking off my shoes, I didn’t bother to undress. I was wrong about not being able to go to sleep, for I think I must have dropped off as soon as I lay down on the bed. I was dragged back from an exquisite oblivion of sleep by somebody shaking my shoulder.
I woke reluctantly, but I must have had the best part of five hours’ sleep for it was four a.m. There were two men in my room, Ezra and another man. Ezra was the man who was shaking my shoulder.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Colonel, but there is news that is both sad and important. This is Mr Gomez Santorini, the leading lawyer in Fort James. He will explain.’
Not having to dress, I just sat on the bed. Mr Santorini spoke in a precise lawyer’s voice. ‘With great regret I have to inform you that Mr Edward Caval died in hospital about an hour ago,’ he said. ‘His condition deteriorated, it was decided that there must be an immediate operation, and he did not survive the operation.
‘I have further to inform you that shortly after his admission to hospital yesterday Mr Caval sent for me and instructed me to draw up a will. I acted on his instructions, and the will was duly signed and witnessed yesterday afternoon. It is a short, concise document. After legacies of six months’ pay to everyone in his employ, and making provision for the payment of pensions for life to all his personal servants, Mr Caval has left all the rest of his estate in equal shares to you and a Mrs Ruth Caval. What is more immediately important, he has appointed you his sole executors. It is a very large estate, and there are many necessary decisions to be taken. That is why I have felt it my duty to come to you at once. Major-General Ezra tells me that Mrs Ruth Caval is also staying here.’
‘As far as I know she is asleep,’ I said. ‘She is dog-tired and I don’t think we need disturb her yet. What do you want me to do?’ I found it hard to take in what he was saying.
Ezra helped with one rather sombre bit of information. ‘In the tropics,’ he said, ‘it is customary – indeed, it is proper – to hold funerals quickly. I should like to arrange a State funeral for Mr Caval this afternoon, and it is for the executors to approve this, and to decide where he is to be buried.’
‘There is a small Anglican church near the factory at Chacarima,’ said Mr Santorini. ‘It is served by one of the canons at Fort James cathedral. In the churchyard at Chacarima many of Mr Caval’s forbears are buried. If I may make a suggestion it would seem fitting for Mr Caval to be interred there. If you approve, I will get in touch with the priest concerned and arrange for the interment after the State service in the cathedral.’
‘I shall be most grateful if you will – I’m sure Ruth would agree. What are the other matters?’
‘There are many matters of a business nature – Mr Caval had large interests throughout Nueva, as well as substantial investments abroad. I have long looked after the legal side of his affairs, and his agent in Fort James has seen to the day-to-day running of his business concerns. I should explain that the Caval Estate Office is a considerable business in itself, employing some fifty people. It is necessary for the agent and myself to know if you and Mrs Ruth Caval wish us to continue. We shall, of course, be happy to do so, but we need the authority of the executors.’
I told him that as far as I was concerned I should be only too thankful for him to go ahead, and that I hadn’t the least doubt about Ruth’s agreement. The lawyer gave a little bow. ‘That is a most generous expression of confidence,’ he said. ‘I shall prepare a short letter of instructions for myself and the agent, and bring it to you later in the morning for you and Mrs Ruth Caval to sign. I need trouble you no more for the present. May I repeat my sincere condolences in the sad death of Mr Edward Caval, and ask you to convey them to Mrs Ruth Caval when it is convenient for her to be disturbed?’
I assured him that all should be done as he wished, and Ezra took him away. He came back in about five minutes with a jug of marvellously smelling coffee.
‘Well, I’ve had quite an eventful night, but you can read all about it in the papers,’ he said. ‘Things have gone extremely well. Li Cook was feared and not greatly liked, and people have been rushing to Government House all night to swear allegiance to the Provisional Government. We seem to be extraordinarily popular. I think perhaps we have opened a new and happier chapter of Nuevan history. On the matters you talked about last night – I think you will approve of our policy. I’ll discuss this later, and I’d like you to meet my colleagues in the Provisional Government. You will find them intelligent, and very well disposed to you.
‘Now may I congratulate you on becoming, in a propertied sense, at any rate, our leading citizen?’
‘With Ruth,’ I said.
‘With your Ruth, of course. I think it is wonderfully appropriate.’
‘You can always nationalise the lot.’
‘I suppose so. But I think it unlikely, Nueva owes you a considerable debt, you know.’
‘Political debts don’t count for much.’
‘Political debts . . . well, maybe . . . it’s a harsh world. But personal debts are another matter. And ours, Colonel, has been a very personal relationship.’
*
‘What are you going to do, Peter?’ asked Sir Edmund Pusey.
‘I don’t know. When you sent me to Nueva you said that you were sending me on holiday. It didn’t turn out quite like that.’
‘No . . . There must be relatively few people who return from a holiday in the Caribbean with vastly more money than they started with. How much is it, Peter?’
‘Again I don’t know. The accountants and the lawyers are still working on it, and as far as I can see most of them will have a job to their retirement. It’s an awful lot of money. The Nuevan estates and businesses, in so far as they can be valued, are worth several millions, and investments in Britain, the United States, and Switzerland come to several millions more.’ My mind went back to that morning, now some six months ago, when I’d told Ruth of our startling joint inheritance. Poor Ruth. The thinking of a lifetime of pinching and scraping her way through college, of rebuilding her life after the collapse of her marriage, was too much for her to take it in. I’d suggested that she should come to England for a bit – she had never been in England. ‘Oh Peter,’ she said, ‘that would be lovely! But I don’t see how I could possibly afford it. I’ve got to buy another lot of clothes, I’ve got to get back to my job . . .’ It took a little time to assure her that the Caval Estate, now half hers, could probably finance a trip to England, and a new wardrobe.
We had flown to England two days later. Partly this was enforced by the need for me to get back to report to Pusey, partly I felt it imperative to get Ruth into wholly new surroundings. I’d had long sessions with Ezra and his colleagues before we left. They accepted my suggestions, and although I had no official status were content to leave things to my judgment. These discussions took up most of the time, but there were two things I managed to do. I couldn’t leave our old Duchess stranded at Partika – the roadstead in which she was anchored would not be safe in all weathers, and she was important to the economy of Naurataka. So I sent a car to collect her skipper and a crew from Naurataka, to sail her home. And Ezra and I fitted in a trip by helicopter over the Chacarima Inlet.
The inlet itself seemed virtually unchanged, but the headland over the caves, and the bay where we had anchored our old Duchess were transformed. The caves were gone, having become a steep-sided fjord, making a new mouth for the Carima River. My guess that the secondary cave system by which we had entered for our night journey underground had acted as a sort of safety valve in the chaos of destruction had been more or less right. There was now an impressive waterfall cascading down the cliff into the sea. A monstrous wave must have swept the bay, for the bush that had come down to the water’s edge had been flattened and swept away for half a mile inland.
True to its tradition, the Carima River gave up no dead – no bodies were ever found. Ezra made no attempt to search the fjord where the caves had been, for that work now needed skilled divers. He put the whole area under Army guard while I went back to London for technical help. Sir Edmund was in his element here – he knew precisely what to do, and who to go to, in both London and Washington, and a team of experts was rapidly assembled. They found the wreckage of the freighter, but with no bodies on board, and they found the remains of dynamos and various bits of what had been sophisticated electrical and radio equipment. The work of assessing it all was still going on.
A minesweeper, lent by the U.S. Navy, had been dispatched to sweep the area where the yacht had been blown up. She found two other mines. They were rudimentary affairs, made up of several forty-gallon oil drums, packed with high explosive in watertight wrappings, and lashed together. They had detonators which could have been fired by radio-control, but no effort seemed to have been made to prevent the mines from being set off by physical impact –carelessness, or the arrogance that comes from over-confidence, on someone’s part. Rudimentary as they were, the mines were of devastating explosive power. The three of them would certainly have made a grand waterspout. One had been demonstrably enough to smash a 600-ton yacht to smithereens. The existence of the mines was not publicly disclosed.
The yacht herself had been chartered quite openly by a party of Chinese businessmen for a holiday trip from Jamaica to the islands. The Chinese Government rather pointedly expressed surprise at the apparent incompetence of American navigation, but otherwise took no interest in the matter. The body of the Chinese man picked up by the gunboat was never identified. He was buried in the big cemetery at Fort James. So was Nicolas Caval. There appeared to be no relatives to attend the funeral, and the Nuevan taxpayer paid.
The rest was speculation. We could never know why the young physicist had been killed – Ruth’s guess that he was too honest for Charles’s purposes was as good as any. What were Charles’s purposes? To triumph after three centuries by getting hold of Edward Caval’s lands? Nicolas Caval was apparently bankrupt. Li Cook, who was an astute businessman, had been lending him money long before Nueva’s independence, and held a mortgage on all his remaining property. Why Li Cook had not foreclosed remains a mystery. Presumably he felt that Nicolas Caval might be useful to him, and possibly Nicolas had argued that the best way for Li Cook to get paid was to ensure that Edward Caval’s fortune should go to Nicolas. That, indeed, may have been the sordid beginning of the whole scheme, Li Cook’s wider ambitions being awakened when he realised the international political importance of Charles’s alleged invention.
My part in Li Cook’s scheming was now obvious. The presence of a British officer in Nueva would give him an admirable excuse for discovering a plot for foreign intervention to justify his seizure of personal power. The real political dispute in Nueva over the development of tourism suited him splendidly. If I had been killed with Edward Caval when Chacarima House was destroyed, doubtless I should have been found responsible for causing the explosion. The murder of the young physicist and our discovery of the body forced his hand. He still didn’t do badly –my arrest on a charge of plotting with the CIA while ostensibly on a British military mission to Nueva served two purposes at once, to whip up anti-British and anti-Amercian feelings to justify his own actions, and to get me out of the way. He must have been put out when my escape was reported to him. But not put out enough to change his own plans – or perhaps they had gone too far to be changed. Presumably he thought that I couldn’t do much harm wandering in the Nuevan bush, or that the bush would soon dispose of me anyway . . .
