And that was about the way it would work, if Goldrims did come back, Leaphorn thought.
He would be fairly easy to handle by two men even with the shotgun. But he didn’t think Goldrims would be coming back.
Lets quit kidding each other, Leaphorn said. Your friend is taking the ransom and running.
And you’re supposed to wait around for some more broadcasts, and then you’ll run. And when you run, you’re blowing this place up.
Tull said nothing.
How bad did I hit you?
You missed, Tull said.
You’re lying. I hit you and you’ve been losing blood. And that’s another reason you’re not going to get out of here unless we make a deal. I can keep you in here, and you can keep me in here. Its a Mexican standoff, and we cant afford a standoff because your boss has a bomb set to go. Leaphorn paused, thinking about where he had found the bomb and the circumstances. He didn’t tell you about the bomb, did he?
Screw you, Tull said.
No, Leaphorn thought, he didn’t tell you about the radio setup and the bomb in the room with the sacred paintings. Tull’s tracks hadn’t shown up there, and six sticks of dynamite had been missing when Leaphorn had first found the cache. Probably that bomb had been set up separately. This was a Buffalo Society operation, but part of it, Leaphorn was increasingly certain, might be a very private affair of Goldrims himself.
I’m going to play a tape recording for you, Leaphorn said. He took the recorder from under his shirt and adjusted it. Haven’t heard it myself yet, so we can listen to it together.
It was fastened to a Hallicrafters radio transceiver way back in a side room. There was this radio, with a timer set to turn it on to broadcasting, and let it warm up and then turn on this tape recorder. And after the tape ran, the timer was set to detonate some dynamite in a sack there. You ready for it?
There was silence. Seconds ticked away.
Okay, Tull said. Lets hear it. If it exists.
Leaphorn pushed the on button. Goldrims’s voice boomed out again.
. . . have seen policemen in the territory you agreed would be kept clear of police. You have broken your promise. The Buffalo Society never breaks a promise. Remember this in the future. Remember and learn. We promised that if police came into this corner of the Navajo Nation, the hostages would die. They will now die, and we warriors of the Buffalo Society will die with them. You will find our bodies in our sacred cavern, the mouth of which opens into the San Juan River arm of Lake Powell less than a mile below the present lake-level mouth of the river, approximately twenty-three miles east by northeast of Short Mountain, and exactly at north latitude 36, 11, 17, and west longitude 110,29,3.
To those of the Buffalo Society who seized these white hostages, know that we three warriors kept our honor and our promise. To the white man, come to this cave and recover the bodies of three of your adults and eleven of your young. They died to avenge the deaths of three of our adults and eleven children in the Olds Prairie Murders. With them will be bodies of three warriors of the Buffalo Society: Jackie Noni of the Potawatomi Nation, and John Tull, of the Seminole, and myself, whom the white men call Hoski, or James Tso, a warrior of the Navajo Nation. May our memories live in the glory of the Buffalo Society.
The clear, resonant voice of Goldrims stopped and there was only the faint hiss of the blank tape winding into the take-up reel. Leaphorn pushed the off button and rewound the tape. He felt numb. His logic had told him that Goldrims might kill the hostages to eliminate witnesses, but now he realized that he hadn’t really believed it. The impact of hearing Goldrims’s pleasant, unemotional voice declare this mass murder/mass suicide was stunning. And in that split second, he also became aware that the name of Father Benjamin Tso was missing from the catalog of the dead. He confronted the implications of that gap in the roster. It meant that Goldrims had planned even better than Leaphorn had guessed.
You want to hear it again? Leaphorn shouted. From the beginning this time.
Tull said nothing. Leaphorn pushed the on button. You were warned, the tape began. But our people have seen policemen in the territory . . . When the recorder reached the list of bodies, Leaphorn stopped it. I want you to notice, he shouted to Tull, there’s a name missing from this list. Notice its the name of your buddy’s brother. I want you to think about that.
Leaphorn thought of it himself. Bits of the puzzle fell into place. He knew now who had written the letter summoning Father Benjamin Tso to his grandfathers hogan. Goldrims had written it himself. He felt a chill admiration for the mind that had conceived such a plan. Hoski had realized he could not escape from the manhunt. It would be massive and inexorable. So he had devised a way to abort it. What the dynamite left of his brother, as Hoski had arranged it, would be found with the shattered radio and identified as Hoskis body. Everyone would thus be accounted for. There would be no one left to hunt. As he realized this, Leaphorn also realized that his own problem had been multiplied. Goldrims would have to respond to Tull’s radioed call for help. He couldn’t risk having Leaphorn, or anyone who had seen Father Tso, escape from the cave. Hoski would have to come back.
Leaphorn pushed the play button again, ran the tape, pushed stop, pushed rewind. He was awed by it. Perfect. Flawless. Impeccable. It left nothing to chance. The big score for James Tso would not just be the ransom. The big score would be a new life, free from surveillance, free from hiding. There would be no reason to question the identity of the body. Hoski had never been arrested or fingerprinted. And no one knew the priest was here. No one, that is, who would remain alive. And there was a family resemblance.
Hey, Tull, Leaphorn yelled. Have you counted the bodies? There’s Jackie, and all those Boy Scouts, and the woman, and one of the Tso brothers, and you. You’re there on the list of dead, Tull. But your friend Hoski is going to be alive and well. And wealthy, too.
Tull said nothing.
Goddamn it, Tull, Leaphorn shouted. Think! He’s screwing you. He’s screwing the Buffalo Society. Kelongy wont see a dollar of that ransom. Hoskis going to disappear with it.
Leaphorn listened and heard nothing but the echoes of his own voice dying in the cave.
He hoped Tull was thinking. Hoski would disappear. And someday a man with another name and another identity would appear in Washington, and contact a woman named Rosemary Rita Oliveras. And somewhere, wherever he was hiding, a madman named Kelongy would wonder what went wrong with his crazy scheme and perhaps he would mourn his brilliant lieutenant. But there was no time to think of that now. Leaphorn glanced at his wrist watch. It was 2:47 A.M. In an hour and thirteen minutes it would be time to broadcast the answers that would keep the law at bay for another two hours. What had been Hoskis timing? He had called the helicopter to deliver the ransom at 4 A.M. Probably he would have picked up the money about two-thirty. When was the Hallicrafters set timed to broadcast its tape, and to detonate its bomb? Since Hoski would want to make sure that broadcast was recorded, he’d probably time it at one of the regular two-hour broadcasts.
But how soon? Leaphorn tried to concentrate, to shut out the throbbing of his hip, the aching fatigue, the damp, mushroom smell of this watery part of the cave. It would be soon. Hoski would need very little running time. An hour or two of darkness would be enough to get well clear of the cave and its neighborhood. Because there’d be no search once that tape was aired. There would only be a great flocking of everybody to find this point on the map the smoking mouth of a cave. There would be chaos. The hunted would have been found. Hoski/Goldrims, safely outside the circle of confusion, would simply walk away. Leaphorn was suddenly confident he understood the timing of Hoskis plan.
Tull, Leaphorn shouted. Cant you see the son-of-a-bitch set you up? Use your head.