Heaven Is High (21 page)

This was the east side of the building, she decided, and she visualized the many orchids on the railings, hanging from the ceiling, on the floor of the verandah. She began to make a sketch of this end of the building, the verandah, and the driveway. She was in the first room around the corner of the verandah.

First, get out of sight of the guard. Go around the corner to the side with the steps. Go straight out that way, far enough to be out of the light from the verandah. Although the many orchids would help conceal anyone moving on the lawn, she wouldn't count on it. Out of the light, turn left to intercept the driveway. Follow it to the gravel road, and keep on it to the paved road. Turn right.

She stared at the sketch, shook her head, again thinking of the jungle, the warnings she had heard, her own sense of fear of it, then very slowly she nodded. She'd be damned if she'd simply sit all night and wait for them to come and manhandle her to a waterfall and toss her over. She would take her chances with the jungle first.

19

Eight o'clock. She was staring at her watch as if it were an alien artifact, she realized, and turned the face inward in order to make looking at it a conscious effort, not the compulsive reflex it had become. She considered taking it off, but that would be worse than knowing what time it was. Every hour on the hour, she decided, she had to exercise, walk, do knee bends, do something. The bed was tempting, but she didn't dare stretch out for fear she might fall into a deep sleep. She was very tired after a night when she had slept little, had awakened before daylight.

She should add a footnote to her previous account, she thought then, and was grateful that there was something she could do. She took the notebook and Eliot to the bathroom and added a few lines: “Later, if and when the guard goes to sleep, I plan to leave this room and try to make my way through the jungle to Belmopan and get help there.” She signed and dated the additions.

Trying to read was futile. She could not concentrate on the words, even though a few lines seemed to leap out at her. When she came to “In the end is my beginning,” she snapped the book shut and returned it and the notebook to her purse. She imagined carrying a purse through the jungle, then undid the shoulder strap, let it out full length, and put it over her head to let the purse hang down her back where it could not slip off, leaving both hands free. That was better.

At nine she heard conversation on the verandah and watched her guard and another man change places. Dinnertime, she guessed. The new guard had a bottle of beer and in a minute she smelled marijuana again.

Ten o'clock, changing of the guard, with the original guard returning to take the chaise. She hoped he had eaten a very large meal, one big enough to make him lethargic and drowsy, make him fall asleep. And she knew she was getting lethargic. She did knee bends, then splashed water on her face and arms again. As much as she wanted a shower, she was unwilling to undress and use it. She had no control over who might enter her room or when.

At eleven thirty she heard her guard's chaise make a scraping noise. She peeped out to see him walking back and forth. She took it as a good sign. He was trying to stay awake, exactly the way she had been keeping herself awake and relatively alert, through movement.

At twelve thirty the guard smoked another joint. She watched him stand by the chaise, no longer walking back and forth, and she watched him settle back down. He seemed to be having trouble getting comfortable, kept shifting, moving his legs, half turning over, grunting a little. At one o'clock, he stopped moving and gave a deep sigh.

Ten minutes later he began to snore. She looked at her watch. She would wait twenty minutes to let him fall into a deep sleep. It was a long twenty minutes, but her lethargy was gone, she was wide-awake, adrenaline charged. Without a sound, she retrieved the chair leg from under the sheet, slung her purse strap around her neck, and went to the screened door to start easing it open a little at a time, praying it would not make enough noise to rouse him. He continued to snore.

She slipped from the room and carefully eased the screen closed behind her, then, keeping close to the wall of the house, she made her way to the corner, around it, and down ten feet farther. She stopped there to peer both ways. No one was in sight and the dim light on the verandah was the only light. From where she stood, she could see the orchids on the verandah floor at the opposite edge. She would have to move at least one, get under the rail, and return the potted orchid. She didn't dare try to go the long way to the steps that led straight to the driveway. Someone might be out of sight on the verandah farther down, or wakeful in one of the rooms facing the verandah, and she would be in full view that way. Her new pale blouse would be a giveaway. She drew in her breath and crossed the verandah, then stopped moving again. When there was no outcry, she lifted a potted orchid and held it as she ducked and went under the rail, careful to avoid dislodging the orchid on it. On the ground, she replaced the orchid she had moved and hurried away from the verandah, away from the house, away from the light. It was too pale to extend very far out onto the grass.

Although it was not as dark as the gravel road would be, she still could not see the driveway when she turned left and began to walk toward where she knew it had to be. She held the chair leg out as a blind person might do, to avoid stumbling over a bush or running into a palm tree, now and then testing the ground ahead with it, feeling for the paved driveway.

When her stick make a tapping sound she stopped moving, listened, moved ahead again. She had come to the driveway. Now she used the stick to keep herself on the driveway, trailing it alongside the grass. The driveway gave way to gravel and she paused again, this time trying to see anything at all in front of her. It was like looking at a solid black curtain.

She had been aware of noises, the rustle of palm fronds in a slight breeze, scurrying sounds, the flap of wings, a loud bird cry, but as she started to walk on the gravel, into the jungle, the sounds faded and the silence was more ominous than even the flapping of wings that had made her shudder with the thought of bats. She felt that the jungle was holding its breath. And there was no longer even a slight breeze.

Keep the gravel underfoot, she told herself, and the jungle on the right. She held the chair leg out to her right until she felt the resistance of foliage, and she could feel the gravel through the soles of her sandals. She did not want to blunder into the jungle, risk falling over vines or feel the leaves of strange plants on her face and arms, risk breaking into and through a spiderweb. She moved ahead slowly, cautiously. The odor she associated with the jungle grew stronger, a smell of decaying matter, of soil, the fecundity of growth smothering other rampant growth, the perfume, sometimes sickeningly sweet, of blooms.… And she began to hear sounds she had not heard before, as if things unseen were moving abreast of her, keeping pace, measuring her.

Stop it!
she ordered herself. She moved the chair leg, swept the air with it, took a step to her right, and again felt the resistance of foliage. She moved ahead.

She didn't know, and couldn't know, what time it was, how long she had been walking on the gravel that seemed to stretch endlessly. Jungle on the right, gravel underfoot, and ignore the noises, the smells. Ignore everything except the gravel underfoot and the jungle to the right. The gravel was bruising her feet through the thin sandals. Ignore that, too, she ordered herself, and tried to follow the order, but the bottoms of her feet hurt, and a blister had formed under one of the straps. She realized she was not feeling the jungle and stopped again, swept the air, stepped right, and swept empty air once more. She became afraid that she had crossed the narrow road and now the possibility was that she could blunder into the jungle on that side. She swept the chair leg to her left and was relieved when it encountered nothing. She bit her lip when it occurred to her that she could have turned around, that she might be heading back toward the finca. Denying that, she rubbed her eyes, shook her head hard, moved again to her right, and swept the air again. She took another step to the right and felt the foliage.

It would take too long, she thought in despair. They would come in their black car, find her on the gravel road and throw her in the back again, return to the finca, and on to the waterfall. Even as the thought lodged in her mind, she rejected it. No! If she saw even a glimmer of light from behind, she would plunge into the jungle foliage, out of sight. They would not find her on this gravel driveway. She walked faster and suddenly she brushed against leaves, and jerked back with gasp.

You're doing okay, she told herself. Making progress. Don't try to run, slow and steady, but keep moving. Gravel underfoot, jungle on the right, straight ahead. Keep moving. She moved ahead.

She heard a new sound, the crunch of gravel, and she froze. Something was on the road in front of her, coming her way. She raised the chair leg and didn't move while her heart pounded alarmingly. Whatever was on the gravel road would surely hear that drumbeat. When the crunching sound didn't repeat for what seemed a long time, she felt the jungle on her right, the gravel underfoot, and she took a step, another. It, whatever it was, must have gone into the jungle, she hoped, prayed. She moved forward.

Suddenly someone sprang on her, grabbed her from behind, grabbed her arm holding the chair leg, and clamped a hand over her mouth. “Don't make a sound,” he whispered against her ear.

She struggled to swing the chair leg, to twist away, to bring her leg up to kick, but he held her fast. “We're getting out of here,” he whispered again. “Not a sound.”

She felt relief swamp her and she would have fallen if not for his grasp of her arm, his body behind her, and his hand on her mouth pressing her hard against him.

“David!”

“Shh. Come on.” He moved his hand and released her arm, then took her by the hand and hurried her along the gravel road without another word.

He was moving as if in daylight, not quite running but close to it, and it was hard for her to keep up.

“We're here,” he said a few minutes later. She could see nothing, but he held her hand out to feel metal. He led her around it, opened what had to be a car door, and guided her inside. She sank into the seat.

In a second she heard the other door open and close and felt his presence in the car. He didn't start it immediately, and she wanted to cry out, to urge him to drive, get them away from here before anyone noticed she had escaped. She heard a groan from the backseat but didn't have a chance to ask anything. The sudden sound of the howler monkeys very close by made any question or answer impossible. David started the engine under the cover of the screams and howls and she realized he had turned on a tape recorder. The howls were repeated, more distantly, then repeated again.

Without turning on the headlights, he drove slowly ahead into impenetrable blackness, turned onto the paved road. After a short distance, he switched on the headlights, and in the dashboard lights she saw him remove night goggles. Another groan came from the backseat.

“Who's back there?” Barbara asked this time.

“Robert. In a few minutes I'll stop on the highway and use your stick to splinter his arm. It's broken.”

“Philip, the boy who drove me, is back there at the finca,” she said. “He's injured, too.”

“He's dead,” David said flatly. “His body is in the Jeep. Did you kill your guard?”

“No. I knew I'd have just one chance, and I didn't think that chair leg would do it. He's sleeping.”

“Let's hope he stays asleep.”

“David, how did you know? Who sent you? What's going on?”

“Not now,” he said curtly. He was keeping an eye on the rearview mirror and driving too fast for the narrow road.

“Santos knows where Anaia is,” Barbara said. “She has to be warned, if they haven't already gotten to her.”

“I lied,” Robert said in a weak voice.

When David made the turn onto the Western Highway, Robert groaned again. David drove faster, heading toward Belize City. There was inky black on both sides of the road, no other traffic, their headlights like a path opening before them. Barbara was aware that he was keeping an eye on the rearview mirror.

“I'll stop long enough for you to get over behind the wheel, and bring that stick with you. I'm going to get in back with Robert to attend to that arm. When I do, just keep driving until I tell you to stop again,” David said. Shortly after that, he slowed, then stopped.

“Now,” he said. “Make it fast.” He stepped out of the car and pulled off a long-sleeved black shirt as she clambered over the seat to get behind the wheel. She saw the glint of a knife. He was cutting his shirt into strips. As soon as he was in the backseat and said, “Go,” she engaged the gears and drove.

She passed the chair leg back to him when he told her to do so, and moments later Robert screamed, then fell silent. She clenched her jaw tighter and concentrated on following the pools of light on the road ahead. Not long after that David said, “Pull over, don't turn off the engine, just set the hand brake, and get back to the passenger seat.”

It took less than a minute to make the switch, and David was driving.

“Is he … is he alive?”

“Passed out. That arm was agony every time it shifted.”

“How badly hurt is he?” she asked in a low voice.

“Don't know. Broken arm, beaten, possible internal injuries.”

She closed her eyes hard and her hand moved involuntarily to her cheek.
He
would have watched, would have enjoyed seeing Robert being beaten, his arm broken.… The car sped up even more and, when she looked again at David, he was holding the steering wheel with both hands, watching the road and alternately the rearview mirror. She twisted around and saw headlights in the distance. They raced forward. The other lights kept pace. The jungle became tunnel walls as he sped past, faster and faster. Behind them the lights did not vary.