Baron came forward, stumbling on the stones, forgetting his count. His suitcases banged the sides of his legs, hitting the raw places where they’d been hitting all afternoon, but he hardly noticed.
In a way, he was astonished. In a way, he hadn’t actually expected ever to see another human being again.
He was so excited he made the mistake first of speaking English: ‘Hello! Where am I, where the hell’s a road?’
The other man was just as startled as Baron. He leaped to his feet, half-stumbled as he backed away. He was an old man in grey and white clothing, clean but very ragged. He had the deeply lined face of an Indian, and his eyes showed the whites in his surprise and fear.
Baron realized the mistake with the English and leaped to another tongue. ‘Wo ist die autobahn? Haben sie’
No, no, that was wrong, too, that was German. In his confusion and haste, backing away from English, he had switched automatically to his native tongue.
Spanish, that was what he wanted, Spanish, but for just a second there was none of it in his head. He floundered, then the Spanish word for road came to him camino and the rest of the language followed.
So now he said, in Spanish, ‘I beg your pardon, I did not mean to startle you. I have been walking, looking for the road.’
‘Road? You want the road?’ The old man spoke a dialect full of clicks and gutturals, so Baron could barely understand him.
Baron nodded. ‘Yes. I want to continue my journey.’
The old man waved his hand. ‘This is the road,’ he said.
Baron looked. There was almost no light left, but now he could make out the ruts, the hump in the middle, the swath across this land cleared of stones and pebbles. This was the road, he was standing on the road, the old man had been sitting beside the road.
He said, ‘Where does this road go?’
The old man pointed south. ‘Aldama,’ he said. He pointed north. ‘Soto la Marina.’ .
Neither name meant anything to Baron. He said, ‘Which way leads to a bigger road, with automobiles and trucks?’
The old man pointed north again, towards Soto la Marina. ‘At the village,’ he said, ‘you must take the road west. To Casas. To Petaqueno. To Ciudad Victoria, which is a great city.’
Ciudad Victoria. That was the first name Baron knew. He said. ‘How far is that, Ciudad Victoria?’
‘From the village, perhaps more than one hundred kilometres.’
One hundred kilometres. Sixty miles, a little more. Baron said, ‘No cars before there?’
‘Sometimes at Casas. Or Petaqueno, very often.’
‘And how far to your village, to Soto la Marina?’
The old man shrugged. ‘Five kilometres.’
Three miles. ‘Is there somewhere I could sleep there tonight?’ Because another three miles was the most Baron could walk without sleep and food and water.
The old man said, ‘In my house, near the village. I am going home now, come with me.’
‘Good.’
They started walking along the dimly seen track, and the old man said, ‘The suitcases are heavy?’
‘No. Not too heavy.’
‘They have valuable things inside them?’
Baron turned to look at him. Was this old fool thinking of robbing him? But he was too old, too frail, there couldn’t be anything to fear from him. Baron said, ‘Just some clothing and things like that. Nothing valuable.’
‘Perhaps an electric razor,’ said the old man.
‘No.’
The old man was a moron. He did plan to rob Baron tonight, while Baron slept, but he was too stupid to keep his mouth shut and so he’d given the game away.
The only thing to do was take care of the old man as soon as they got to his house, hut, hovel, whatever he lived in. Knock him out, tie him up, so Baron would be able to sleep unworriedly all night.
They walked the rest of the way in silence, each full of his own thoughts, and the last of the evening’s light faded away, leaving a world so dark Baron had only the sound of the old man’s sandals to keep him from straying off the road. He couldn’t see a thing and couldn’t understand how the old man could see. Although it probably wasn’t seeing after all but simply knowing the road for all of his life.
Ahead of them, the smallest of lights flickered, an anaemic yellow. The old man said, ‘My house.’
As they got closer, Baron saw that the light was a candle inside a small dirt hut. The window through which the light gleamed was simply a square hole in the thick dirt wall, with neither frame nor glass.
‘A poor place,’ the old man said, apologizing.
‘No matter,’ Baron said, and it was true. What did it matter where he slept tonight? Tomorrow night he would sleep in the Mexico City Hilton.
The door was made of various grey pieces of wood haphazardly nailed together, the final result hung from cloth hinges embedded in the wall on the left side. The old man pushed this door open cautiously, as though it had fallen apart more than once before, and motioned to Baron to precede him. ‘My house,’ he said again.
Baron went in.
The old man came after him, crowding him in the doorway, saying, ‘I wish you to meet my son.’
The man rising from the wooden table in the middle of the room was not old, not frail, not small. He was huge, and he was smiling beneath his moustache.
Behind Baron, the old man was saying, ‘This gentleman has many valuable things in his suitcase
‘
Baron turned for the doorway, but it was too late.
9
EARLY morning sunlight tugged at Grofield’s eyelids, urging him awake. Reluctantly, mistrustfully, he allowed his eyes to open, he allowed his mind to begin to question where he was.
The boat. He remembered.
What time was it? What day was it? Not yet midnight when he’d left the island, and he could vaguely remember sunlight as he’d lain on the open unmattressed bed, and he could remember even more vaguely crawling from that bed in darkness onto the far more comfortable carpeting of the floor, and now there was sunlight again, and he was still lying on the floor, and he couldn’t begin to work out how much time had passed or what day it was supposed to be.
Or where Baron was. Where was Baron?
He moved, tentatively, and was pleased to find that nearly everything worked fine. Everything but the left arm. That didn’t want to work at all. It felt like the Tin Woodman’s left arm, in need of oiling.
He wondered about himself, how sick or healthy he was, how weak or strong. He kept testing, trying this and venturing that, and the first thing he knew he was on his feet. He felt shaky, a little dizzy, and hungrier than he could ever remember being, but he was on his feet.
He could even walk, if he was careful. Being careful, he moved around the open bed and over to the kitchen area of the cabin, and there he found some food and drink. He ate three cans of soup, cold and undiluted, spooning the stuff straight out of the can, mixing it with crackers and spoonfuls of cheese spread and long swallows of whisky. He sat in the chair by the formica counter and ate everything in reach, and when he was done he felt as though he might survive.
He was feeling good enough now to begin to think, to try to figure out what had happened. The boat was grounded, in close to shore. He was obviously the only one aboard her, so it figured Baron had gone ashore and taken off with the suitcases full of loot. What he couldn’t figure was why Baron had never bothered to look for him, why he’d left this loose string untied behind him.
In any case, the situation was bad. He’d been unconscious at least one day and night, making it probably Monday and maybe even Tuesday. The island had been demolished according to plan, but the plan had been demolished too. Parker and Salsa and Ross were all dead, Baron had the money and the diamonds, and Grofield was stuck God knew where with a bullet in his back.