Gatt, from Pat's description, was lethal. Maybe he wouldn't shoot anyone just to make bets on which way he'd fall, but lie might if there was a dollar profit in it. I began to feel queasy at the thought of going up against him, but I knew I couldn't turn back now.
Pat's assessment of Halstead was quite interesting, too, and I wondered how much Katherine knew about her husband. I think she loved him -- in fact, I was sure of it. No woman in her right mind would tolerate such a man otherwise, but maybe I was prejudiced. At any rate, she consistently took his side in any argument he had with Fallon, The very picture of a faithful wife. I went to sleep thinking about her.
Six
We went to Camp One in Fallon's flying office -- a Lear executive jet. Pat Harris didn't come with us -- his job was to keep tabs on Gatt -- so there were just four passengers, Fallon, the Halsteads and myself. Fallon and Halstead engaged in another of their interminable professional discussions, and Katherine Halstead read a magazine. Halstead had done a bit of manoeuvring when we entered the plane and Katherine was sitting on the other side of him and as far from me as it was possible to get. I couldn't talk to her without shouting across a technical argument so I turned my attention to the ground.
Quintana Roo, seen from .the air, looked like a piece of mouldy cheese. The solid vegetative cover was broken only .occasionally by a clearing which showed as a dirty whitish-grey among the virulent green of the trees. I did not see a single water-course, no rivers and not even a stream, and I began to appreciate Halstead's point of view about the difficulties of archeological exploration in the tropics.
At one point Fallon broke off his discussion to speak with the pilot on the intercom, and the plane wheeled slowly and began to descend. He turned to me and said, 'We'll have a look at Camp Two.'
Even from a thousand feet the forest looked solid enough to walk on without touching ground. There could have been a city the size of London under that sea of green and you'd never see it. I reminded myself not to be so bloody cocky in the future about things I knew nothing about. Halstead might be a faker, if what Pat Harris said was true, but a faker, of all people, must have a knowledge of his field. He had been right when he had said that this was going to be a tough job.
Camp Two came and went before I had a chance to get a good look at it, but the plane banked and turned and we orbited the site, standing on one wingtip. There wasn't much to see: just another clearing with half a dozen prefabricated huts and some minuscule figures which waved their arms. The jet couldn't land there, but that wasn't the intention. We straightened on course and rose higher, heading for the coast and Camp One.
About twenty minutes and eighty miles later we were over the sea and curving back over the white surf and gleaming beaches to touch down at the airstrip at Camp One. The jet bumped a bit in the coastal turbulence but put down gently and rolled to a stop at the further end of the strip, then wheeled and taxied to a halt in front of a hangar. As I left the plane the heat, after the air-conditioned comfort of the flight, was like the sudden blow of a hammer.
Fallon didn't seem to notice the heat at all. Years of puttering about in this part of the world had already dried the juices from him and he had been thoroughly conditioned. He set off at a brisk walk along the strip, followed by Halstead, who also didn't seem to mind. Katherine and I followed along more slowly and, by the time we got to the hut into which Fallon had disappeared she was looking definitely wilted and I felt a bit brown around the edges myself.
'My God!' I said. 'Is it always like this?'
Halstead turned and gave me a smile which had all the elements of a sneer. 'You've been spoiled by Mexico City,' he said. The altitude up there takes the edge off. It's not really hot here on the coast. Wait until we get to Camp Two.' His tone implied that I'd feel bloody sorry for myself.
It was cooler in the hut and there was the persistent throb of an air-conditioning unit. Fallon introduced us to a big, burly man. 'This is Joe Rudetsky; he's the boss of Camp One.'
Rudetsky stuck out a meaty hand. 'Glad to meet you, Mr. Wheale,' he boomed.
I later found out how Fallon had managed to organize the whole operation so quickly. He had merely appropriated the logistics unit from one of his oil exploration teams. Those boys were used to operating in rough country and under tropical conditions, and this job was very little different from a score of others they had done in North Africa, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. When I explored the camp I admired the sheer efficiency of it all. They certainly knew how to make themselves comfortable -- even to ice-cold Coca-Cola.
