East is East

Still, for all that, the ride wasn’t half bad. The breeze kept the mosquitoes off his swollen ears and dried the sweat at his temples, and the swamp seemed a little less threatening now that he was actually out on it. Nothing crept into his waders to bite, sting and gouge him, no snakes dropped from the trees and the only alligator he saw was the size of a woman’s purse. He was surprised too that there was open water—quite a bit of it. If he squinted his eyes behind the prescription sunglasses with the clear plastic frames he could almost imagine he was a boy again, out on Lake Casitas with his dad and mom and brother Holger.

Another surprise was the dock at Billy’s Island. There was actually a dock there, nothing much more than two posts sunk into the murk and a grid of weathered boards, but a dock nonetheless. And beyond the dock, terra firma. Or almost. He began to feel a bit overdressed in his waders and life jacket—he’d pictured something out of The African Queen,

up to his waist in quicksand and slime, but this was just plain old ordinary dirt. Or mud. A little spongy maybe but nothing that would have ruined his day if he’d been dressed in jeans, T-shirt and hiking boots.

Roy Dotson led the way, closely shadowed by Turco, who stepped lightly, tense and alert and hulking under the weight of his pack. Abercorn brought up the rear, loping along with his big gangling strides, ducking away from the squadrons of insects that converged on his every step and fanned out to anticipate the next. They were following a crude trail to the far side of the island, where, according to Roy Dotson, Saxby had set up his fishing camp the previous morning. (“Pygmy fish,” Turco had snorted when Dotson told them the story. “You ask me, it’s a cover is what it is.”)

They walked in single file for a quarter of an hour under a canopy of slash pine that cut the sunlight to a muted dapple. The air was heavy here, so thick it was like another medium, and the heat had them running sweat till they were as drenched as if they’d swum the whole way from the tourist center. Salt pills, Abercorn thought, and he cursed himself for having forgotten them. He was wondering what happened to you when you ran out of salt in your system—you collapsed, didn’t you, something to do with electrolytes, or was that batteries?—when Turco took hold of Roy Dotson’s arm and the three of them halted. “What?” Dotson said. “What is it?”

Turco tightened his grip. “The camp,” he breathed. Somewhere a bird began to cry out, hard and urgent, as if some unseen hand were plucking it alive. Roy Dotson started to say something but Turco cut him off with a hiss. “Shhhh!” he said, and his eyes had gone cold. “Stay here, both of you. I’m going in alone.”

Abercorn saw nothing but tree trunks and leaves. The waders were a sweat box, the life vest constricted his lungs. He sucked in a breath and coughed out insects.

“Shhhh!”

“Lewis—” Abercorn warned, meaning to point out that this was not the Ho Chi Minh Trail, appearances to the contrary, and that Saxby was not an armed and treacherous communist guerrilla but a decent guy who loved fish and Ruth Dershowitz, not to mention an American citizen with inalienable rights, and who probably wasn’t involved in all this anyway, or at least not too deeply, but Turco gave him a look of such uncompromising fury that he gave it up. This was what Turco was paid for, this was what he was doing here—there was no stopping him now. Abercorn exchanged a look with Roy Dotson as Turco shrugged out of his pack and darted off silently through the undergrowth. Though he still saw nothing—no camp, no tent, no sign whatever of civilization—Abercorn fumbled for his tape recorder and notepad, feeling the excitement rise in him despite himself. Maybe Lewis was right after all, maybe the Nip was

hiding out there with Saxby and they could throw the cuffs on him, pack it up and get out of this shithole for good.

Roy Dotson didn’t think so. His mouth was drawn tight and an angry crease had appeared between his eyebrows. “The guy’s crazy,” he said in a terse whisper. “Like I told you, Sax was as shocked as I was to see that man there in the trunk of the car.” Abercorn didn’t respond. He’d fixed his eye on the tangle of growth into which Turco had disappeared, and now he started forward, moving as stealthily as could be expected from a six-foot-five-inch albino in a pair of hip waders. Roy Dotson shrugged and fell into step behind him.

Nothing moved. The forest was still, locked in the grip of the heat. The bird cried out again, terrible, lonely, hurt in some deep essential place. Abercorn kept his eyes on a conjunction of branches up ahead, the waders grunting and squelching beneath his sweat-soaked feet. He stepped over the stump of a felled tree, and then another. Mosquitoes settled on his arms, his face, the backs of his hands, and he didn’t bother to swat them away.