chips, dead centre; therefore, directly to the right of the stone facing the base of the crescent.' Whitehall gestured with his right hand northeast.
'As Piersall instructed.' Barak nodded his head; he did not bother to conceal his pique at Charley-mon's explanation. Yet there was respect in that pique, thought McAuliff, as he watched Moore begin pacing off the forty-four steps.
Piersall had disguised the spot chosen for burial. There was a thicket of mollusk ferns spreading out in a free-form spray within the paced-off area of the grass. They had been rerooted expertly; it was illogical to assume any sort of digging had taken place there in years.
Floyd took a knapsack shovel from his belt, unfolded the stem, and began removing the earth. Charles Whitehall bent down on his knees and joined the revolutionary, clawing at the dirt with his bare hands.
The rectangular black box was deep in the ground. Had not the instructions been so precise, the digging might have stopped-before reaching it. The depth was over three feet. Whitehall suspected it was exactly four feet when deposited. The Arawak unit of four.
The instant Floyd's small shovel struck the metal casing, Whitehall lashed his right hand down, snatched the box out of the earth, and fingered the edges, trying to pry it apart. It was not possible and Whitehall realized it within seconds. He had used this type of receptacle perhaps a thousand times: It was a hermetically sealed archive case whose soft, rubberized edges created a vacuum within. It had two locks, one at each end, with separate keys; once the keys were inserted and turned, air was allowed in, and after a period of minutes the box could be forced open. It was the sort of repository used in the most heavily endowed libraries to house old manuscripts, manuscripts that were studied by scholars no more than once every five years or so and thus preserved with great care. The name 'archive case' was well suited for documents in archives for a millennium.
'Give me the keys!' whispered Charles urgently to Barak.
'I have no keys, mon. Piersall said nothing about keys.'
'Damn'
'Keep quiet!' ordered McAuliff.
'Put that dirt back,' said Moore to Floyd. 'So it is not so obvious, mon. Push back the ferns.'
Floyd did as he was told; McAuliff helped him. Whitehall stared at the rectangular box in his hands; he was furious.
'He was paranoid!' whispered the scholar, turning to Barak. 'You said it was a packet. An oilcloth packet! Not this. This will take a blowtorch to open!'
'Charley's got a point,' said Alex, shovelling in dirt with his hands, realizing that he had just called Whitehall 'Charley.'
'Why did he go to this trouble? Why didn't he just put the box with the rest of the papers in the cistern?'
'You ask questions I cannot answer, mon. He was very concerned, that's all I can tell you.'
The dirt was back in the hole. Floyd smoothed out the surface and pushed the roots of the mollusk ferns into the soft earth. That will do, I think, mon,' he said, folding the stem of the shovel and replacing it in his belt.
'How are we going to get inside?' asked McAuliff. 'Or get the guard outside?'
'I have thought of this for several hours,' replied Barak. 'Wild pigs, I think.'
'Very good, mon!' interrupted Floyd.
'In the pool?' added Whitehall knowingly.
'Yes.'
'What the hell are you talking about?' Alex watched the faces of the three blacks in the moonlight.
Barak answered. 'In the Cock Pit there are many wild pigs. They are vicious and troublesome. We are perhaps ten miles from the Cock Pit's borders. It is not unusual for pigs to stray this far... Floyd and I will imitate the sounds. You and Charley-mon throw rocks into the pool.'
'What about the dog?' asked Whitehall. 'You'd better shoot it.'
'No shooting, mon! Gunfire would be heard for miles. I will take care of the dog.' Moore withdrew a small anaesthetizing dart gun from his pocket. 'Our arsenal contains many of these. Come.'
Five minutes later McAuliff thought he was part of some demonic children's charade. Barak and Floyd had crept to the edge of the tall grass bordering the elegant lawn. On the assumption that the Doberman would head directly to the first human smell, Alex and Whitehall were in parallel positions ten feet to the right of the revolutionaries, a pile of stones between them. They were to throw the rocks as accurately as possible into the lighted pool sixty feet away at the first sounds emanating from Moore and