“Get out of here!” Hel growled, not because he was uncomfortable with nudity, but because Le Cagot’s tease would go flat if he didn’t seem to rise to the bait.
“He shouts to hide his delight at seeing me again, Hana. It’s an old trick. Mother in Heaven, you have fine nipples! Are you sure there isn’t a bit of Basque in that genetic stew of yours? Hey, Niko, when do we see if there is light and air at the other end of Le Cagot’s Cave? Everything is in readiness. The air tank is down, the wet suit. Everything.”
“I’m ready to go up today.”
“When today?”
“In a couple of hours. Get out.”
“Good. That gives me time to visit your Portuguese maid. All right, I’m off. You two will have to resign yourselves to getting on without my company.” He slammed the door behind him, swirling the scant steam that remained in the room.
After they had made love and taken breakfast, Hana began her packing. She had derided to go to Paris because in late August that city would be relatively empty of vacationing bourgeois Parisians.
Hel puttered for a time in his garden, which had roughened somewhat in his absence. It was there Pierre found him.
“Oh, M’sieur, the weather signs are all confused.”
“Is that so?”
“It is so. It has rained for two days, and now neither the Eastwind nor the Northwind have dominance, and you know what that means.”
“I’m confident you will tell me.”
“It will be dangerous in the mountains, M’sieur. This is the season of the whiteout.”
“You’re sure of that?”
Pierre tapped the tip of his rubicund drunkard’s nose with his forefinger, signifying that there were things only the Basque knew for certain, and weather was but one of them.
Hel took some consolation in Pierre’s assurance. At least they would not have to contend with a whiteout.
The Volvo rolled into the village square of Larrau, where they would pick up the Basque lads who operated the pedal winch. They parked near the widow’s bar, and one of the children playing pala against the church wall ran over and did Hel the service of bashing the hood of the car with a stick, as he had seen the man do so often. Hel thanked him, and followed Le Cagot to the bar.
“Why are you bringing your makila along, Beñat?” He hadn’t noticed before that Le Cagot was carrying his ancient Basque sword/cane under his arm.
“I promised myself that I would carry it until I discover which of my people informed on that poor little girl. Then, by the Baby-Killing Balls of Herod, I shall ventilate his chest with it. Come, let’s take a little glass with the widow. I shall give her the pleasure of laying my palm upon her ass.”
The Basque lads who had been awaiting them since morning now joined them over a glass, talking eagerly about the chances of M’sieur Hel being able to swim the underground river to the daylight. Once that air-to-air exploration had been made, the cave system would be officially discovered, and they would be free to go down into the hole themselves and, what is more, to talk about it later.
The widow twice pushed Le Cagot’s hand away; then, her virtue clearly demonstrated, she allowed it to remain on her ample bottom as she stood beside the table, keeping his glass full.
The door to the W.C. in back opened, and Father Xavier entered the low-ceilinged bar, his eyes bright with fortifying wine and the ecstasy of fanaticism. “So?” he said to the young Basque lads. “Now you sit with this outlander and his lecherous friend? Drinking their wine and listening to their lies?”
“You must have drunk deep of His blood this morning, Father Esteka!” Le Cagot said. “You’ve swallowed a bit of courage.”
Father Xavier snarled something under his breath and slumped down in a chair at the most distant table.
“Holà,” Le Cagot pursued. “If your courage is so great, why don’t you come up the mountain with us, eh? We are going to descend into a bottomless pit from which there is no exit. It will be a foretaste of hell for you—get you used to it!”
“Let him be,” Hel muttered. “Let’s go and leave the silly bastard to pickle in his own hate.”
“God’s eyes are everywhere!” the priest snarled, glaring at Hel. “His wrath is inescapable!”
“Shut your mouth, convent girl,” Le Cagot said, “or I shall put this makila where it will inconvenience the Bishop!
Hel put a restraining hand on Le Cagot’s arm; they finished off their wine and left.
Gouffre Porte-de-Larrau
Hel squatted on the flat slab that edged their base camp beside the rubble cone, his helmet light turned off to save the batteries, listening over the field telephone to Le Cagot’s stream of babble, invective, and song as he descended on the cable, constantly bullying and amusing the Basque lads operating the pedal winch above. Le Cagot was taking a breather, braced up in the bottom of the corkscrew before allowing himself to be lowered into the void of Le Cagot’s Cave, down into the waterfall, where he would have to hang, twisting on the line, while the lads locked up and replaced the cable drum.
After ordering them to be quick about the job and not leave him hanging there, dangling like Christ on the tree, or he would come back up and do them exquisite bodily damage, he said, “All right, Niko, I’m coming down!”
“That’s the only way gravity works,” Hel commented, as he looked up for the first glimpse of Le Cagot’s helmet light emerging through the mist of the waterfall.
A few meters below the opening into the principal cave, the descent stopped, and the Basque boy on the phones announced that they were changing drums.
“Get on with it!” Le Cagot ordered. “This cold shower is abusing my manhood!”
Hel was considering the task of carrying the heavy air tank all the way to the Wine Cellar at the end of the system, glad that he could rely on Le Cagot’s bull strength, when a muffled shout came over the earphones. Then a sharp report. His first reaction was that something had snapped. A cable? The tripod? His body instinctively tightened in kinesthetic sympathy for Le Cagot. There were two more crisp reports. Gunfire!
Then silence.
Hel could see Le Cagot’s helmet lamp, blurred through the mist of the waterfall, winking on and off as he turned slowly on the end of the cable.
“What in hell is going on?” Le Cagot asked over the phones.
“I don’t know.”
A voice came over the telephone, thin and distant “I warned you to stay out of this, Mr. Hel.”
“Diamond?” Hel asked, unnecessarily.
“That is correct. The merchant. The one who would not dare meet you face to face.”
“You call this face to face?”
“It’s close enough.”
Le Cagot’s voice was tight with the strain on his chest and diaphragm from hanging in the harness. “What is going on?”
“Diamond?” Hel was forcing himself to remain calm. “What happened to the boys at the winch?”
“They’re dead.”
“I see. Listen. It’s me you want, and I’m at the bottom of the shaft. I’m not the one hanging from the cable. It is my friend. I can instruct you how to lower him.”
“Why on earth should I do that?”
From the background, Hel heard Darryl Starr’s voice. “That’s the son of a bitch that took my piece. Let him hang there, turning slowly in the wind, the mammy-jammer!”
There was the sound of a childish giggle—the PLO scab they called Haman.
“What makes you think I involved myself in your business?” Hel asked, his voice conversational, although he was frantically playing for time to think.
“The Mother Company keeps sources close to our friends in England—just to confirm their allegiance. I believe you met our Miss Biffen, the young model?”
“If I get out of here, Diamond…”
“Save your breath, Hel. I happen to know that is a ‘bottomless pit from which there is no exit.’”