Bagley, Desmond - The Vivero Letter Read online

  The morning after we arrived they were at it hammer and tongs. 'I think old Vivero was a damned liar,' said Halstead.

  'Of course he was,' said Fallon crossly. 'But that's not the point at issue here. He says he was taken to Chichen Itza , . .'

  'And I say he couldn't have been. The New Empire had fallen apart long before that—Chichen Itza was abandoned when Hunac Ceel drove out the Itzas. It was a dead city.'

  Fallon made an impatient noise. 'Don't look at it from your viewpoint; see it as Vivero saw it. Here was an averagely ignorant Spanish soldier without the benefit of the hindsight we have. He says he was taken to Chichen Itza—he actually names it, and Chichen Itza is only one of two names he gives in the manuscript. He didn't give a damn whether you think Chichen Itza was occupied—he was taken there and he said so.' He stopped short. 'Of course, if you are right, it mean? that the Vivero letter is a modern fake, and we're all up the creek.'

  'I don't think it's a fake,' said Halstead. 'I just think that Vivero was a congenital liar.'

  'I don't think it's a fake, either.' said Fallon. 'I had it authenticated.' He crossed the room and pulled open a drawer 'Here's the report on it.'

  He gave it to Halstead, who scanned through it and dropped it on the table. I picked it up and found a lot of tables and graphs, but the meat was on the last page under the heading Conclusions. 'The document appears to be authentic as to period, being early sixteenth-century Spanish. The condition is poor—the parchment being of poor quality and, perhaps, of faulty manufacture originally. A radio-carbon dating test gives a date of 1534 A.D. with an error of plus or minus fifteen years. The ink shows certain peculiarities of composition but is undoubtedly of the same period as the parchment as demonstrated by radio-carbon testing. An exhaustive linguistic analysis displays no deviation from the norm of the sixteenth century Spanish language. While we refrain from judgement on the content of this document there is no sign from the internal evidence of the manuscript that the document is other than it purports to be.'

  I thought of Vivero curing his own animal skins and making his own ink—it all fitted in. Katherine Halstead stretched out her hand and I gave her the report, then turned my attention back to the argument.

  'I think you're wrong, Paul,' Fallon was saying. 'Chichen Itza was never wholly abandoned until much later. It was a religious centre even after the Spaniards arrived. What about the assassination of Ah Dzun Kiu?—that was in 1536, no less than nine years after Vivero was captured.'

  'Who the devil was he?' I asked.

  'The chief of the Tutal Kiu. He organized a pilgrimage to Chichen Itza to appease the gods; all the pilgrims were massacred by Nachi Cocom. his arch-enemy. But all that is immaterial—what matters is that we know when it happened, and that it's consistent with Vivero's claim to have been taken to Chichen Itza—a claim which Paul disputes.'

  'All right, I grant you that one,' said Halstead. 'But there's a lot more about the letter that doesn't add up.'

  I left them to their argument and walked over to the window. In the distance light reflected blindingly from the water of a swimming pool. I glanced at Katherine Halstead. I'm no good at this sort of logic chopping,' I said. 'It's beyond me.'

  'It's over my head, too,' she admitted. 'I'm not an archeologist: I only know what I've picked up from Paul by a sort of osmosis.'

  I looked across at the swimming pool again—it looked very inviting. 'What about a swim?' I suggested. 'I have some gear I want to test, and I'd like some company.'

  She brightened. 'That's a good idea. I'll meet you out there in ten minutes.'

  I went up to my room and changed into trunks, then unpacked my scuba gear and took it down to the pool. I had brought it with me because I thought there might be a chance of getting in some swimming in the Caribbean somewhere along the line and I wasn't going to pass up that chance. I had only swum in clear water once before, in the Mediterranean.

  Mrs. Halstead was already at the pool, looking very fetching in a one-piece suit. I dumped the steel bottles and the harness by the side of the pool and walked over to where she was sitting. A flunkey in white coat appeared from nowhere and said something fast and staccato in Spanish, and I shrugged helplessly and appealed to her. 'What's he saying?'

  She laughed. 'He wants to know if we'd like something to drink.'

  That's not a bad idea. Something long and cold with alcohol in it.'

  'Ill join you.' She rattled away in Spanish at the servant who went away. Then she said. 'I haven't thanked you for what you've done for Paul, Mr. Wheale. Everything has happened so quickly—I really haven't had time to think.'

  There's nothing to thank me for,' I said. 'He just got his due.' I refrained from saying that the real reason I had brought Halstead into it was to keep him close where I could watch him. I wasn't too happy about husband Paul; he was too free with his accusations and his temper was trigger-quick. Somebody had been with Niscemi when Bob had been killed and though it couldn't have been Halstead that didn't mean he had nothing to do with it. I smiled pleasantly at his wife. 'Nothing to it,' I said.

  'I think it was very generous—considering the way he behaved.' She looked at me steadily. 'Don't take any notice of him if he becomes bad-tempered again. He's had . . . had disappointments. This is his big chance and it plays on his nerves.'

  'Don't worry,' I said soothingly. Privately I was certain that if Halstead became unpleasant he would get a quick bust on the moot. If I didn't sock him then Fallon would, old as he was. It would be better if I did it, being neutral, then this silly expedition would be in less danger of breaking up.

  The drinks arrived—a whitish concoction in tall frosted glasses with ice tinkling like silver bells. I don't know what it was but it tasted cool and soothing. Mrs. Halstead looked pensive. She sipped from her glass, then said tentatively, 'When do you think you will leave for Yucatan?'

  'Don't ask me. It depends on the experts up there.' I jerked my head towards the house. 'We still don't know where we're going yet.'

  'Do yon think the trays have a riddle—and that we can solve it?'

  'They have—and we will,' I said economically. I didn't tell her I thought I had the solution already. There was an awful lot I wasn't telling Mrs. Halstead—or anybody else.

  She said, 'What do you think Fallon's attitude would be if I suggested going with you to Yucatan?'

  I laughed. 'He'd blow his top. You wouldn't have a chance.'

  She leaned forward and said seriously, 'It might be better if I went. I'm afraid for Paul.'

  'Meaning what?'

  She made a fluttery gesture with her hand. 'I'm not the catty kind of woman who makes derogatory statements about her own husband to other men,' she said. 'But Paul is not an ordinary man. There is a lot of violence in him which he can't control—alone. If I'm with him I can talk to him; make him see things in a different way. I wouldn't be a drag on you—I've been on field trips before.'

  She talked as though Halstead were some kind of a lunatic needing a nurse around him all the time. I began to wonder about the relationship between these two; some marriages are awfully funny arrangements.

  She said, 'Fallon would agree if you put it to him. You could make him.'

  I grimaced. 'I've already twisted his arm once. I don't think I could do it again. Fallon isn't the man who likes to be pushed around.' I took another pull at the drink and felt the coolness at the back of my throat. 'Ill think about it,' I said finally.

  But I knew then that I'd put the proposition to Fallon—and make him like it. There was something about Katherine Hal-stead that got at me, something I hadn't felt about a woman for many years. Whatever it was, I'd better keep it bottled up, this was no time for playing around with a married woman —especially one married to a man like Paul Halstead.

  'Let's see what the water's like,' I suggested, and got up and walked to the edge of the pool.

  She followed me. 'What have you brought that for?' she asked, indicating the scuba gear.

>   I told her, then said, 'I haven't used it for quite some time so I thought I'd check it. Have you done any scuba diving?'

  'Lots of times,' she said. 'I spent a summer in the Bahamas once, and spent nearly every day in the water. It's great fun.'

  I agreed and settled down to checking the valves. I found that everything was working and put on the harness. As I was swilling the mask out with water she dived into the pool cleanly, surfaced and splashed at me. 'Come in,' she called.

  'Don't tell me—the water's fine.' I sat on the edge of the pool and flopped in—you don't dive with bottles on your back. As usual, I found it difficult to get into the correct rhythm of breathing; it's something that requires practice and I was short of that. Because the demand valve is higher in the water than the lungs there is a difference of pressure to be overcome which is awkward at first. Then you have to breathe so as to be economical of air and that is a knack some divers never find. But pretty soon I had got it and was breathing in the irregular rhythm which feels, at first, so unnatural.

  I swam around at the bottom of the pool and made a mental note to change the belt weights. I had put on a little flesh since the last time I wore the harness and it made a difference to flotation. Above, I could see Katherine Halstead's sun-tanned limbs and I shot upwards with a kick of the flippers and grabbed her ankles. As I pulled her under I saw the air dribbling evenly from her mouth in a regular line of bubbles rising to the surface. If I had surprised her it certainly didn't show; she had had sense enough not to gasp the air from her lungs.

  She jack-knifed suddenly and her hands were on my air pipe. With a sudden twitch she pulled the mouthpiece away and I swallowed water and let go of her ankles. I rose to the surface gasping and treading water to find her laughing at me. I spluttered a bit and said, 'Where did you learn that trick?'

  The beach-bums in the Bahamas play rough,' she said, 'A girl learns to look after herself.' 'I'm going down again,' I said. 'I'm out of practise.' 'There'll be another drink waiting when you come out,' she said.

  I dropped to the bottom of the pool again and went through my little repertoire of tricks—taking the mouthpiece out and letting the pipe fill with water and then clearing it, taking the mask off and, finally, taking off the whole harness and climbing into it again. This wasn't just a silly game; at one time or another I'd had to do every one of those things at a time when it would have been positively dangerous not to have been able to do them. Water at any depth is not man's natural element and the man who survives is the man who can get himself out of trouble.

  I had been down about fifteen minutes when I heard a noise. I looked up and saw a splashing so I popped to the surface to see what was going on. Mrs. Halstead had been smacking the water with the palm of her hand, and Fallon stood behind her. I climbed out, and he said, 'My tray has arrived—now we can compare them.'

  I shucked off the harness and dropped the weight belt. 'I'll be up as soon as I've dried off.'

  He regarded the scuba gear curiously. 'Can you use that— at depth?'

  'It depends on what depth,' I said cautiously. 'The deepest I've been is a little over a hundred and twenty feet.'

  'That would probably be enough,' he said. 'You might come in useful after all, Wheale; we might have to explore a cenote.' He dismissed the subject abruptly. 'Be as quick as you can.'

  Near the pool was a long cabin which proved to be change-rooms. I showered and dried off, put on a terry-towelling gown and went up to the house. As I walked in through the French windows Fallon was saying '. . . thought it was in the vine leaves so I gave it to a cryptographer. It could be the number of veins on a leaf or the angle of the leaves to the stem or any combination of such things. Well, the guy did a run-through and put the results through a computer and came up with nothing.'

  It was an ingenious idea and completely wrong. I joined the group around the table and looked down at the two trays. Fallon said, 'Now we've got two trays, so we'll have to go through the whole thing again. Vivero might have alternated his message between them.'

  I said casually, 'What trays?'

  Halstead jerked up his head and Fallon turned and looked at me blankly. 'Why, these two here.'

  I looked at the table. 'I don't see any trays.'

  Fallon looked baffled and began to gobble. 'Are . . . are you nuts? What the hell do you think these are? Flying saucers?'

  Halstead looked at me irefully. 'Let's not have any games,' he said. 'Murville called this one a tray, Juan de Vivero called that one a tray, and so did Goosan in his letter to Herrick.'

  'I don't give a damn about that,' I said frankly. 'If everyone calls a submarine an aeroplane, it still can't fly. Old Vivero didn't call them trays and he made them. He didn't say, "Here, boys, I'm sending you a couple of nice trays." Let's see what he did say. Where's the transcription?'

  There was a glint in Fallon's eye as he held out the sheaf of papers which were never far from him. 'You'd better make this good.'

  I nipped the sheets over to the last page. 'He said, "I send you gifts made in that marvellous manner which my father learned of that stranger from the East." He also said, "Let the scales of enmity fall from your eyes and look upon these gifts with proper vision." Doesn't that mean anything to you?'

  'Not much,' said Halstead.

  'These are mirrors,' I said calmly. 'And just because everyone has been using them as trays doesn't alter the fact.'

  Halstead made a sound of irritation, but Fallon bent and examined them. I said. 'The bottom of that "tray" isn't copper—it's speculum metal—a reflective surface and it's slightly convex; I've measured it.'

  'You could be right at that,' said Fallon. 'So they're mirrors! Where does that get us?'

  'Take a closer look,' I advised.

  Fallon picked up one of the mirrors and Halstead took the other. After a while Halstead said, 'I don't see anything except the reflection of my own face.'

  I don't do much better,' said Fallon. 'And it's not a good reflective surface, either.'

  'What do you expect of a metal mirror that's had things dumped on it for the last four hundred years? But it's a neat trick, and I only came upon it by accident. Have you got a projection screen?'

  Fallon smiled. 'Better than that—I have a projection theatre'.

  He would have! Nothing small about millionaire Fallon. He led us into a part of the house where I had never been, and into a miniature cinema containing about twenty seats. 'I find this handy for giving informal lectures,' he said.

  I looked around. 'Where's the slide projector?'

  'In the projection room—back there.'

  'I'll want it out here,' I said.

  He looked at me speculatively, and shrugged. 'Okay, IT] have it brought in.'

  There was a pause of about ten minutes while a couple of his servants brought in the projector and set it on a table in the middle of the room, acting under my instructions. Fallon looked interested; Halstead looked bored; Mrs. Halstead looked beautiful. I winked at her. 'We're going to have a fine show,' I said. 'Will you hold this mirror, Mrs. Halstead?'

  I puttered around with the projector. 'I'm using this as a very powerful spotlight,' I said. 'And I'm going to bounce light off the mirror and on to that screen up there. Tell me what you see.'

  I switched on the projector light and there was a sharp intake of breath from Fallon, while Halstead lost his boredom in a hurry and practically snapped to attention. I turned and looked at the pattern on the screen. 'What do you think it is?' I asked. 'It's a bit vague, but I mink it's a map.'

  Fallon said, 'What the hell! How does it . . .? Oh, never mind. Can you rotate that thing a bit, Mrs. Halstead?'

  The luminous pattern on the screen twisted and flowed, then steadied in a new orientation. Fallon clicked his tongue. 'I think you're right—it is a map. If that indentation on the bottom right is Chetumal Bay—and it's the right shape—then above it we have the bays of Espiritu Santo and Ascension. That makes it the west coast of the Yucatan Peninsula.'<
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  Halstead said, 'What's that circle in the middle?'

  'Well come to that in a minute,' I said, and switched off the light. Fallon bent down and looked at the mirror still held by Mrs. Halstead and shook his head incredulously. He looked at me enquiringly, and I said, 'I came across this bit of trickery by chance. I was taking photographs of my tray—or mirror—and I was a bit ham-handed; I touched the shutter button by accident and the flash went off. When I developed the picture I found that I'd got a bit of the mirror in the frame but most of the picture was an area of wall. The light from the flash had bounced off the mirror and there was something bloody funny about its reflection on the wall, so I went into it a bit deeper.'

  Halstead took the mirror from his wife. 'This is impossible. How can a reflection from a plane surface show a selectively variable pattern?' He held up the mirror and moved it before his eyes. 'There's nothing here that shows.'