River of Death. Alistair MacLean
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weed-covered walls leaned in at crazy angles, the door was badly warped and the single window had hardly an unbroken pane of glass left in it. Hamilton, not without some difficulty, managed to wrench open the creaking door and passed inside.
He located and lit a guttering oil lamp which gave off light and smoke in about equal proportions. From what little could be seen from the fitful yellow illumination, the interior of the hut was a faithful complement of the exterior. The hut was very sparsely furnished with the bare essentials for existence—a dilapidated bed, a couple of bent-wood chairs in no better condition than the bed, a warped deal table with two drawers, some shelving and a cooker with some traces of the original black enamel showing under the almost total covering of brown rust. On the face of it, Hamilton didn’t care too much for the sybaritic life.
He sat wearily on the bed which, predictably, sagged and creaked in an alarmingly disconcerting fashion. He reached under the bed, came up with a bottle of some undetermined liquid, drank deeply from the neck and set the bottle down somewhat unsteadily on the table.
Hamilton was not unobserved. A figure had appeared just outside the window and was peering inside from a prudent distance, a probably unnecessary precaution. It is more difficult to see from a lighted area to a darkened one than the other way round and the windows were so filthy that it was difficult to see through them anyway. The watcher’s face was indistinct, but the identity of the man not hard to guess: Serrano was probably the only man in Romono who wore a suit, far less an off-white one. Serrano was smiling, a smile composed of an odd mixture of amusement, satisfaction and contempt.
Hamilton extracted two leather pouches from the torn remains of his buttoned pockets and poured the contents of one of them into the palm of his hand, staring in rapt admiration at the handful of rough-cut diamonds which he let trickle onto the table. With an unsteady hand he fortified himself with another drink then opened the other pouch and emptied the contents onto the table. They were coins, glittering golden coins; all told there must have been at least fifty of them.
Gold, it is said, has attracted men from the beginning of recorded time. It unquestionably attracted Serrano. Seemingly oblivious of the possibility of discovery, he had moved closer to the window, so close, indeed, that a keen-eyed and observant person inside the hut might well have seen the pale blur of his face. But Hamilton was being neither keen-eyed nor observant: he just stared in apparent fascination at the treasure before him. So did Serrano. The amusement and contempt had disappeared from his expression, the unblinking eyes seemed huge in his face and his tongue licked his lips almost continuously.
Hamilton took a camera from his rucksack, removed a cassette of exposed film, examined it closely for a moment and, in doing so, dislodged two diamonds which fell and rolled under the table, apparently unobserved. He put the cassette on a shelf beside some other cassettes and cheap camera equipment then turned his attention to the coins again. He picked one up and examined it carefully, almost as if seeing it for the first time.
The coin, indisputably gold, did not appear to be of any South American origin—the likeness of the engraved head was unmistakably of classical Greek or Latin origin. He looked at the obverse side: the characters, clear and unblemished, were unmistakably Greek. Hamilton sighed, lowered some more of the rapidly diminishing contents of the bottle, returned the coins to the pouch, paused as if in thought, shook some coins into his hand, put them in a trouser pocket, put the pouch into one of his buttoned shirt pockets, returned the diamonds to their pouch and his other buttoned pocket, had a last drink, turned out the oil lamp and left. He made no attempt to lock the door for the sufficient reason that, even with the door as fully closed as it would go, there was still a two-inch gap between the key bolt and door jamb. Although it was by now almost dark he did not appear to require any light to see where he was going: within a minute he vanished into the shanty-town maze of corrugated iron and tar-paper shacks which formed the salubrious suburbs of Romono.
Serrano waited a prudent five minutes, then entered, a small flashlight in his hand. He lit the oil lamp, placing it on a shelf where it could not be seen directly from the outside then, using his flashlight, located the fallen diamonds under the table and placed them on the tabletop. He crossed to the shelves, took the cassette which Hamilton had placed there, replaced it with another from the pile of cassettes and had just put the cassette on the table beside the diamonds when he became suddenly and uncomfortably conscious of the fact that he was not alone. He whirled around and found himself staring into the muzzle of a gun expertly and unwaveringly held in Hiller’s hand.
‘Well, well,’ Hiller said genially. ‘A collector, I see. Your name?’
‘Serrano.’ Serrano didn’t look any too happy. ‘Why are you pointing that gun at me?’
‘Calling cards you can’t get in Romono, so I use this instead. Are you carrying a gun, Serrano?’
‘No.’
‘If you are and I find it I’m going to kill you.’ Hiller was still geniality itself. ‘Are you carrying a gun, Serrano?’
Serrano reached slowly for an inside pocket. Hiller said: ‘The classic way, of course, my friend. Finger and thumb on the gun barrel then gently on the table.’
Serrano carefully, as directed, produced a small snubnosed automatic and laid it on the table. Hiller advanced and pocketed it, along with the diamonds and the cassette.
‘You’ve been following me all day,’ Hiller said consideringly. ‘For hours before we boarded that plane. And I saw you the previous day and the day before that. In fact, I’ve seen you quite a few times in the past weeks. You really should get yourself another suit, Serrano, a shadower in a white suit is no shadower at all.’ His tone changed in a fashion that Serrano clearly didn’t care much for. ‘Why are you following me, Serrano?’
‘It’s not you I’m after,’ Serrano said. ‘We’re both interested in the same man.’
Hiller lifted his gun a perceptible inch. If he’d lifted it only one millimetre it would have carried sufficient significance for Serrano who was in an increasingly apprehensive state of mind. ‘I’m not sure,’ Hiller said, ‘that I like being followed around.’
‘Jesus!’ Serrano’s apprehension had become very marked indeed. ‘You’d kill a man for a thing like that?’
‘What are vermin to me?’ Hiller said carelessly. ‘But you can stop knocking your knees together. I’ve no intention of killing you—at least, not yet. I wouldn’t kill a man just for following me around. But I wouldn’t draw the line at shattering a kneecap so that you couldn’t totter around after me for a few months to come.’
‘I won’t talk to anyone,’ Serrano said fervently. ‘I swear to God I won’t.’
‘Aha! That’s interesting. If you were going to talk who would you talk to, Serrano?’
‘Nobody. Nobody. Who would I talk to? That was just a manner of speaking.’
‘Was it now? But if you were to talk, what would you tell them?’
‘What could I tell them? All I know—well, I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure—is that Hamilton is into something big. Gold, diamonds, something like that—he’s found a cache somewhere. I know that you’re on his track, Mr Hiller. That’s why I am following you.’
‘You know my name. How come?’
‘You’re a pretty important man around these parts, Mr Hiller.’ Serrano was trying to be ingratiating but he wasn’t very good at it. A sudden thought appeared to occur to him for he brightened and said: ‘Seeing we’re both after the same man, Mr Hiller, we could be partners.’
‘Partners!’
‘I can help you, Mr Hiller.’ Serrano was eagerness itself but whether from the prospect of partnership or the understandable desire not to be crippled by Hiller it was difficult to say. ‘I can help you. I swear I can.’
‘A terrified rat will swear to anything.’
‘I can prove what I say.’