The Tarantula Stone. Philip Caveney

don’t mind if I do!’

      Austin was pleasantly shocked. He had expected a string of unintelligible Portuguese for a reply, but this was clearly a fellow American. In an instant, the old man was perched on the stool opposite and the two were shaking hands with the kind of warmth only employed by compatriots in a distant land.

      ‘Mark Austin, Washington DC.’

      ‘Martin Taggart, somewhere in Wyoming. I forget where.’ The old man’s eyes twinkled but there was, Austin thought, an unmistakable trace of sadness in them. His voice was slow, gruff, laconic. Somehow it seemed to speak of wide experience.

      ‘Well then, Mr Taggart …’

      ‘Martin. All my friends call me Martin.’

      ‘Martin then! What’ll it be?’

      ‘Oh, I’ll have just whatever you’re drinking.’

      Austin ordered a bottle of cachaça – the local raw white rum – and another glass. He took out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to the old man. Taggart shook his head.

      ‘No thanks. I gave those things up a long time ago. Never went back to them. No sir …’

      Austin shrugged, put the cigarettes away. The cachaça arrived and the two men drank together in silence for a while.

      ‘So, what brings a feller like you to Rio?’ asked Taggart at last. ‘More importantly, what brings him to a piss-hole bar like this one?’

      Austin considered the question for a moment. He’d had a couple of drinks so he thought: what the hell, come right out with it.

      ‘Adventure,’ he said.

      Taggart raised his eyebrows. ‘Come again?’

      ‘Adventure. I’m looking for adventure. You see, I’m a writer and adventure is my thing. I write the stories as fiction, but I like to base them on real-life happenings. I’ve done my last four novels that way and it seems to work for me, so …’

      ‘A writer, huh?’ Taggart sipped his drink. ‘That pay well?’

      Austin grinned. ‘I don’t do so bad,’ he replied. ‘Say, maybe you read my last one, Children of the Kalahari? I think it was published here.’

      Taggart shook his head. ‘No, I don’t believe I did.’ He shrugged. ‘But then I don’t read much, these days. Adventure, huh? Well, I’m afraid you won’t find much of that in Rio de Janeiro, my friend. Not any more, anyway.’

      Austin topped up Taggart’s glass. ‘Been here a long time?’ he inquired.

      ‘Oh yeah, hell of a long time. Since before the war. Seen some changes around here, I can tell you.’

      Austin nodded. ‘Well, I’m going up-jungle tomorrow. The Rio das Mortes. Maybe I’ll find something there.’

      Something suspiciously like recognition dawned in the old man’s eyes. ‘The das Mortes? Yeah … well, even that’s changed, you know. The Indians been killed off or pushed out of their territory. Hell, there’s even a damned ferry on the das Mortes these days, any two-bit tourist can go and have himself a look. None of that kind of business when I was there.’

      ‘You were there? When?’

      ‘Oh. Long ways back. Bad story. You wouldn’t be interested.’ Taggart shook his head. There was something evasive in his manner, something that fired Austin’s curiosity. It had been a casual incident very much like this one that had given him the basis for his bestselling book, Hour of the Wolf. These old-timers had their stories and the world tended to forget about them. Still, Austin was an old hand at wheedling out what people didn’t like to discuss. He fed the old man a ready stream of cachaça and gradually Taggart’s reluctant tongue was loosened.

      He produced a yellowed scrap of paper from his shirt pocket. It was folded but Austin could see that it was inscribed with various pencilled lines and figures.

      ‘Looks like a map,’ he observed.

      ‘It is,’ replied Taggart, his voice slightly slurred with drink. ‘Sort of a map, anyway. Place on the river. That’s where the tarantula stone …’

      ‘The what?’

      Taggart sighed, shook his head. ‘Hell, it’s a long story. You don’t want to be burdened with it.’ He made as if to put the scrap of paper back into his pocket but Austin stayed his hand.

      ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘The day’s free, I’ve got nothing special to do and we’ve a bottle of cachaça to drink. I’d like to hear the story. Speak away, I’m listening.’

      Taggart sighed again but then he shrugged. ‘Well, let me see now. It all started back in ’forty-six … well, earlier than that, I suppose. But to get it straight, I’ll begin at that point and backtrack a little. Yes, ’forty-six. The war just over with. That was one hell of a year …’

Chapter 1

      Even in the relative cool of the airport lounge, Martin Taggart could not stop sweating. Directly above his head, a large electric fan clicked rhythmically round, beating the humid air into some kind of restless motion; but the perspiration still trickled from his armpits, making dark stains against the fabric of his khaki shirt. It oozed in a viscous stream down the gully of his spine, glued his collar to the back of his neck and made the soft leather pouch that hung round it stick like an island against the tanned flesh of his chest.

      For perhaps the hundredth time that morning, Martin’s right hand came up to touch the pouch, his fingers probing the round hard shape that nestled in there. The diamond seemed bigger every time he touched it. It was the size of a chicken’s egg and Martin could only begin to guess at its true value. It would make him rich, that was for sure … provided he could get away with it.

      He glanced nervously around the lounge, momentarily afraid that somebody might be reading his thoughts, but the motley assortment of passengers were, just like him, waiting impatiently for their flight to Belém. Out on the brilliantly sunlit concrete of the runway, the plane already stood like a great silver queen bee, attended by the restless assembly of gasoline trucks and maintenance men; but glancing at his watch, Martin could see that there were still twenty-five minutes to wait. It would be the longest twenty-five minutes of his lifetime. He fumbled in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. Extracting one from the damp packet, he struck a match with visibly unsteady hands and inhaled deeply. Then he leaned back in his seat, let the smoke out in a thin stream and watched as it rose for a short distance in a straight column and then went berserk as it was caught in the rush of air from the fan.

      He had not wanted to think too much about Caine, because he was nervous enough as it was. But sitting there in the crowded lounge he couldn’t help letting his thoughts drift back to the very beginning, the chain of events that had brought him to where he was now.

      He had never had what might be called a steady job, because he had never much liked working. It was a fact that he acknowledged but not something that bothered him overmuch. As a youth, he’d travelled a great deal, taking work when he needed it and wherever he could get it. He had been born in Wyoming and, as far as he knew, his family still lived there; but he’d left home at the age of seventeen and never gone back to visit. More by accident than design, he had gravitated southwards and had spent most of his years in the territory of New Mexico, driving trucks for local contractors and doing the odd spot of manual work whenever his finances got dangerously low. He lived in cheap hotels and rented rooms, slept rough when he needed to and had no ambitions beyond staying alive. He was in his late twenties when two things happened to change all that.

      Firstly, it became apparent that America would soon be entering the Second World War; and around the same time, Martin came across an article in the local newspaper that described the recent boom in diamond prospecting in Brazil.