The Tarantula Stone. Philip Caveney

hand. I take it you have no money?’

      Martin shrugged. ‘About five cruzeiros,’ he replied.

      ‘Five cruzeiros!’ Caine leaned back in his chair and cackled gleefully. ‘Well, you aren’t quite destitute, but you’re not far away! Let me see now, you will need to buy yourself the necessary equipment, you will need your fare up to the garimpo – the diamond field – and you will need a gun. I think ten thousand cruzeiros will suffice.’ He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a thick wad of money. With the slow relish of a man who loved the feel of paper, he counted out the agreed sum. Then he indicated to Martin that he should take it.

      ‘What’s the catch first?’ Martin inquired tonelessly.

      ‘The catch.’ Caine feigned wide-eyed innocence for a moment. ‘The catch, Mr Taggart? Did you hear that, Agnello? Paco, did you hear? Such a suspicious nature this young fellow has. Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear he didn’t trust us!’ He fixed Martin with a calculating look. ‘The “catch”, Mr Taggart, is a simple enough idea and one that, I can assure you, you will find the same wherever you inquire around Rio. Of anything and everything that you find at the garimpo, I take fifty per cent.’

      Martin returned the gaze calmly. ‘Fifty per cent, huh? That’s a little steep, isn’t it?’

      Caine shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is, by some standards. But you see, by lending you the necessary money I’m running the risk of your never finding a thing.’

      ‘Some risk,’ muttered Martin.

      ‘I’m afraid that’s the way things work here. Without money for equipment, I don’t see how you can become a garimpeiro at all. Perhaps you may find a friendly backer who will loan you the money you require with no strings attached; but, somehow, I seriously doubt that. If you’d rather forget the whole thing …’ He made as if to put the money back in the drawer, but Martin stepped quickly forward and put his hand down on top of Caine’s wrist. It was an unwise move. The two pistoleiros on either side of the fat man went for their guns. In an instant, Martin found himself looking down two barrels aimed straight into his face. He backed quickly away, his hands in the air.

      ‘Hey, hold it, hold it! I was only going to say that I accept the terms …’

      There was a long and terrible silence. Martin’s body crawled as he imagined the terrible impact of those unseen bullets. But then Caine spoke, his voice like warm oil. ‘You must forgive my boys, Mr Taggart. They tend to be a little overprotective sometimes. You see, I pay them a great deal of money to keep my interests uppermost in their minds. They can be very excitable. You wouldn’t believe the trouble it can cause.’ He waved the guns away with a delicate motion of his fat hands and the pistols were grudgingly returned to their holsters. Then he indicated that Martin should pick up the thin wad of money from the desk. ‘Spend it wisely,’ he advised as Martin slipped the cash into his pocket. ‘Here is a list of the equipment you will need. Go to the address at the top of the page and you will receive a special discount. Also, here are a set of instructions about how to get to the garimpo. The rest, Mr Taggart, is up to you. I wish you luck.’

      Caine returned to his papers, seeming to have dismissed Martin completely.

      ‘Is that it?’ demanded Martin incredulously.

      Caine glanced up in surprise. ‘Was there anything else?’ he inquired.

      ‘Well, uh … that’s for you to say. I figured there’d be some papers to sign … some kind of a contract.’

      Caine chuckled, seemingly amused by the notion. ‘Oh, we have no need of any contract, Mr Taggart. That’s not the way things are done in Rio.’

      ‘Yeah, but … supposing I do strike it rich out there. I mean, what’s to stop me from just taking off with whatever I find?’

      Now it was the turn of the two pistoleiros to laugh. They leaned back their heads and guffawed unpleasantly, revealing teeth that were riddled with dark metal fillings.

      Caine gave a slow, expressive shrug. ‘Nothing at all, Mr Taggart. Nothing at all. In fact, many others have tried the same thing in the past. There’s a big graveyard out on the edge of the city. You’ll find every one of them there. In fact, why don’t you pay the place a visit before you leave for the garimpo. I’m sure you’d find it most interesting.’

      Martin glanced from Caine to the two laughing pistoleiros. He studied their ill-fitting suits for a moment, with particular reference to the strange bulges beneath their left arms. He nodded slowly.

      ‘Just remember one thing,’ added Caine, beaming up at him. ‘I know everything that happens at the garimpo. You may think it’s a long way from there to this office desk but, believe me, my friend, distance does not matter when a fellow has as long a reach as I have. Once again, I wish you luck.’

      Martin said nothing more. He turned and made his way out of the room, closely escorted by Agnello. They retraced their steps down the evil-smelling staircase.

      Stepping out from the gloom of the hallway, he was momentarily dazzled by the harsh sunlight in the street. The old man was waiting, his little black eyes glittering greedily. ‘The fifty cruzeiros, senhor …’

      ‘Sure, sure, here …’ Martin peeled off fifty from the wad and pressed it into the old man’s skinny hand. He stood gazing at it for a moment, as though he could scarcely believe his luck. Then he glanced quickly round to ensure that nobody else had witnessed his good fortune. He grinned and scuttled abruptly away, diving headlong into the nearest alleyway. Martin was left alone in sun-baked silence. He tipped his hat back on his head a little and reached for his cigarettes.

      He had come to Rio to become a garimpeiro and now he had the money to enable him to do it; but he didn’t like the set-up one bit. Caine had been too confident of himself to be making idle threats. There was little doubt that those who had tried to cheat the patron really were out in the graveyard he had mentioned. Martin was going to have to keep his nose clean from now on.

      That afternoon, he purchased the equipment he required – a pick and shovel, several round pans with wire mesh bases for sifting rubble, a good pistol and some spare ammunition, a knife and as many packs of cigarettes as he could conveniently carry. All these things could be purchased up at the garimpo, the storeholders told him, but would cost very much more. The following morning, before dawn, he took a train through the jungle to Garimpo Máculo. It was a three-hour ride through dank, humid forest and the interior of the train was like a Turkish bath. It was packed with hopeful prospectors of every nationality, each, like Martin, sent out by a patron. For the most part they were a tough, hard-bitten bunch of men, most of them running away from something – the police, the war, or just their own poverty. There was no friendliness between any of them. They began the journey as they meant to continue, as rivals.

      One thick-set bearded Englishman asked loudly if anybody could tell him what maculo meant. A Portuguese on the other side of the compartment shouted back in slow, heavily accented tones that maculo was the Portuguese word for the diarrhoea caused by dysentery and that the camp was named after it because the disease was rife there. But this was the only conversation of the journey. Martin was relieved when the train finally came to a stop and the passengers spilled out onto a muddy deserted halt in the middle of the jungle. From here, it was only a short trek across open scrubland to the garimpo.

      Martin’s expectations of the place had never been very high and yet he was unprepared for what he saw; a great ugly gash in the surface of a wide stretch of red rock which not so long before had been covered with dense jungle; and, within the gash, countless numbers of man-made pits, each with a single occupant grubbing his way frantically deeper with pick and shovel. There were hundreds of men working here, tough, scowling, sunburnt men dressed in rags who greeted the arrival of the newcomers with nothing more than a sidelong sneer. Round the edges of the garimpo were the living quarters, a description that was little more than a bad joke when applied to the tumble-down, ramshackle collection of squalid huts, lean-tos and canvas