"He's done this sort of thing before," McKie said to Michael. "He's got a pretty good idea what's down there."
Michael, who knew, took a deep breath. The crane started up. Everyone waited for the surfacing.
After a minute or so, the pale blue water swirled and clouded. A lubricant can hit the surface. One of the hands on the barge began to shout in Creole. Michael thought he could make out a shadow on the deeper side of the reef line. He shielded his eyes from the declining sun.
Then some kind of creature raced to the surface only a few feet from his boat. It was a huge unwieldy thing, crazily shaped but certainly, Michael thought, alive. It had antennae, claws, spines, a tail. And it was surrounded by fish, fish of such variety and in such uncountable numbers that anyone arguing that the fish were gone, that the reef was barren and lifeless, would stand refuted. Tangs and butterfly fish and wrasses. And there were shrimp adhering to the main body of the creature, hanging on.
Then it hit the surface, and Michael thought that the size of it was the strangest thing. Nothing that lived on the bottom, nothing he could think of, was of such a size. Nothing went surrounded by fish in such a way, in the mandibles of shrimp, wrapped in some kind of rainbow jelly.
The surface did not at first hold it down. Whatever it was showed most of its length to the breathing world, then spun. In their boats, the barge hands and the blancs and the others watched it spin across the top of the water. The thing bounced along the surface as though it were trying to escape a predator, zigzagging, darting this way and that. It made a noise that was like the farting of a hundred exhausted penny balloons.
On the barge, one of the deck hands called out in Creole and everyone turned to him. He called a second time, repeating the same word. The man at the wheel of Michael's boat took off his gold-braided cap.
"What is it?" the diplomat asked.
"It's a floater," said Mr. Wallace.
Then Michael realized that the rainbow jelly was oil slick, that the fish and other creatures were eating the creature. He caught a fraction of a second's whiff of foul breeze. It had a kind of face, Michael saw, a head and body. Both were beyond imagining. They bounced like enormous corks in the sandy water over the reef. They were the remains of the pilot, of whose posthumous existence Michael thought he had seen enough. He turned away. Then he noticed that even hardboiled Mr. Wallace had found another quarter on which to cast his cop's gaze. The islanders crossed themselves — and Michael too — in recognition that Guinée awaited plenty of those who served the trade. Fishermen and emigrants, smugglers and divers, pilots and contrabandists and policemen, all might find their way to Guinee one day, at the bottom of the trench at the bottom of the world. Even for Miss McKie, who was just passing through for the world's information, especially for Miss McKie, Guinee yawned. Even Miss McKie uttered a prayer.
20
WHEN WHAT HAD BEEN the pilot was decently encased and removed to the Mennonite Hospital, Vice Consul Wallace led everyone back to the hotel. He was eager to get in touch with Colonel Junot of the new National Defense Forces.
"There is going to be a police investigation," he explained to everyone. "We'd appreciate it if folks would make themselves available to the authorities."
The consul, Scofield, seemed mainly interested in his ride back to the capital.
"Where's Colonel Junot?" Michael asked Liz McKie. From the inshore patio of the hotel, he had just caught sight of the young man Lara had sent him in the morning.
"I have no idea," she said. "Contrary to what everybody thinks, Colonel Junot and I are not joined at the hip."
Michael stood up. The consul and vice consul, who appeared to have little to say to each other, were observing him from another table.
"I'm off," Michael said.
"What?" McKie said. "Where?"
"Maybe I'll get some sleep."
The American consul came over and greeted Liz McKie facetiously. She treated him in the same spirit.
"I'm sure you'll want to get back to the capital by daylight, Consul. Better see that the police give you an escort.
"Since the coup," she explained to Michael, "there are burning roadblocks. They call 'em 'Père Lebrun,' and they're what 'necklaces' are in South Africa. You can ask old Van Dreele. Some of the locals aren't too impressed by diplomatic plates. Some of them don't care for the good old Stars and Stripes."
"I was going to ask you about that," the consul said. "I thought you might have seen Colonel Junot."
McKie sighed. Shortly a car was provided for the consul.
"Are you a friend of Lara Purcell?" he asked Michael as he left.
"Yes," Michael said, without much thinking about it.
"Give her my very best," Consul Scofield said. "Tell her she's missed. She's the most fascinating person on the island."
"I'll tell her."
On the way upstairs, Michael signaled to the boy from the lodge that he was coming, and went into his room. Before he could slide the lock, McKie pushed her way in and was standing next to him.
"Oh my God," she said, "you're going after her."
He began wearily to deny it.
"Bullshit. You went down to the plane. Did you get everything?" She had no need of an answer. "That chip — that's from her, right? You're going back to her."
Michael began to throw a few things in his shoulder bag.
"You don't get it, do you, Professor? These Colombian militia types are without mercy. They kill everyone. Do you think they'll clear out of here and let you live? Do you think that smart bitch will give you a break? Even if they let her live?"
"I don't know about the Colombians. They're buying the hotel. Maybe they'll see reason."
She stood in the doorway and put a hand against the door to block his way.
"Reason!" She screamed the foolish word at him. "Why can you not see the deep shit you're in? Wallace will get you. He'll work you into an indictment of this whole business."
"You've told me about the stick," Michael said, zipping the bag. "Tell me about the carrot."
She seemed to calm down a little.
"The carrot, Michael? The carrot is you give everything you have about this operation and its political connections. Not to mention its academic connections. I get you off this rock. We get you lawyers. We get you immunity." She paused, out of offers, trying to think of treasures untold beyond immunity. "Didn't you see that pilot?" she asked. "Don't you think death is kind of ugly?"
"What are you, Liz, a philosopher?"
She stepped aside.
"You're so nuts," she said. "My story is a public service."
Outside, the boy from the lodge was still waiting for him.
21
THEY WENT ALONG the road in one of the hotel's old four-wheel-drive sightseeing vehicles. The thing was in grave disrepair but serviceable. Finally the boy, whose name was Christian, drove them down a dogleg. At the end of it they got out and started walking in the direction of the ocean.
Stunted pine, mahogany and schefflera grew around them; in spite of the fresh runoffs the soil was dry. When they had gone something like a mile over the trail they came to a gate with razor wire, framed by tall walnut trees. There was hardly any breeze.
Men in camouflage fatigues approached them. Michael saw that they were not islanders but lean mestizos, apparently the Colombians of whom he had been hearing so much. They looked in his shoulder bag; one looked at his passport.