For a brief moment I couldn't believe what he was saying, then I jumped to my feet, kicking away my chair.
'Bolted? Where? What the hell are you saying?'
He gulped, then steadied himself.
'Nick just phoned. Timoteo and your wife took off for the Cypress swamp! You've got to help me find them !'
He charged down the steps, bawling for Carlo as he pounded across the sand to the Volkswagen.
Carlo appeared around the back of the house, running flat footed, his brutish face bewildered.
Raimundo came to a skidding stop by the car and looked back at me.
'Come on !' he yelled. 'Come on !'
By the time I reached the car, Carlo was in the back seat and Raimundo had the car on the move. As I slammed the door shut, he took off, skidding over the sand, then he raced the car down the narrow road so we heaved and banged over the bumps while he wrestled with the wheel.
We finally reached the highway. None of us could speak while we had rushed down the sandy lane. It was as much as we could do to hold ourselves in our seats.
As the smooth tarmac of the highway slid under the wheels, I said, 'How did they get away?'
'Timoteo went berserk when he saw your wife had lost her hair,' Raimundo said savagely. flattened Nick. He tried to get her to the highway but the other guards headed him off.
They bolted into the Cypress swamp. The guards followed them as far as it was safe, then they turned back, but they have them bottled up. We have to go in there and get them out.'
As a back-drop to the swank villas along the beach, the Cypress swamp was a twenty-thousand acre jungle, waiting to be reclaimed. When I had first come to Paradise City, I had optimistically gone into the swamp after wild duck. I had found it a jungle of cypress trees and red, white and black mangroves, their roots like elephant tusks. Grey Spanish moss, duckweed and bladderwort, festooning the trees, offered hiding places for snakes, giant spiders and scorpions. The swamp was interlaced with narrow canals of stagnant water covered with white lilies and a breeding place for mosquitoes. Step wrong and you could sink to your death in evil-smelling slime. It was a hell of a place to get lost in.
Nick Lewis had a flat-bottomed boat which he had turned over to me. I had used it once to navigate the canals, but after being practically eaten alive by mosquitoes, and seeing a crocodile that, luckily for me, was too lazy and well fed to charge the boat, I had quit. I had laid up the boat and given up the idea of shooting wild duck.
The thought of Lucy being in this hell hole with a numbskull like Timoteo sent a rush of blood to my head.
'We've got to find them !' Raimundo was shouting. 'If Savanto hears of this, none of us will live !'
'That's fine . . . the saviour of peasants,' I said. 'Are you putting me on or do you mean it?'
'I mean it !'
His set face and the panic in his eyes told me he did mean it.
It took us less than a quarter of an hour to reach the villa I had seen from Nancy's boat. We tore down the dirt road and came to a tyre screaming stop at the front entrance.
Nick, in his yellow-and-red Hawaiian shirt, was waiting for us. The side of his jaw was swollen and he looked like a man facing sudden death. He burst into a stream of frantic Spanish as Raimundo tumbled out of the car. I got out and Carlo followed me, his brutish face glistening with sweat. As I couldn't understand what Nick was bawling about, I moved away and stood waiting in the shade.
Raimundo cut Nick short and came over to me.
'Have you ever been in the swamp, soldier?' he asked.
'No.'
It was a lie I felt sure would pay off.
'They're in there and they can't get out. Three of our boys are guarding the exits. We'll join up with them and flush them out.'
It took us some ten minutes, walking fast in the broiling sun to reach the edge of the swamp. There was a narrow path that led into the swamp, and here we found the man in the white ducks, waiting. After talking to him in Spanish, Raimundo told me it was along this path that Timoteo and Lucy had entered the swamp.
'This is your kind of territory, soldier,' he went on. 'You lead the way in.'
I knew what was ahead. The path went into the swamp for something like a quarter of a mile, then it petered out. From then on it was bog, jungle, canals and mosquitoes.
I started down the path with Raimundo close on my heels. Behind him came Nick, Carlo and the man in the white ducks. It was steamy hot in there and the smell of decay, stagnant water and rotting vegetation increased as we penetrated further into the jungle.
I had spent three years in similar jungles. My eyes were trained to see things which the men following me were blind to. A broken branch, a smudge on the mud-packed path, disturbed leaves told me this was the way they had come.
Finally, we reached the end of the path. We stood in a group, looking at the dense jungle ahead of us, divided by a ten-foot-wide canal with its beautiful floating lilies.
'We'll split up here,' I said. Two men to the left : two to the right. I'll go straight ahead.'
Raimundo shook his head.
