The Aztec Heresy (14 page)

He was now in that part of the process where he was relatively sure he had all the pieces, with at least the outer edges of the picture being formed. Other pieces were also merging and only needed to be put together. He dipped his last piece of waffle in his little dish of whipped cream and popped it into his mouth, following the morsel with a sip of aromatic coffee. He gestured to the waiter. It was time for dessert.

The Esterhazy appeared, a multilayered torte with hazelnut filling. Max carved off a small teasing bite and let it melt in the center of his tongue, assembling his facts and staring blankly into space.

First, Harrison Noble, a mediocre treasure hunter whoring his way through the Caribbean, requests information about Angel Guzman, clearly at the direction of his pharmaceutical billionaire papa. Thus, a link between Guzman the
cocainista
and Father Noble.

Second, Fiona Ryan and Lord William Pilgrim, much more high-profile treasure seekers doing research in the Archives of the Indies in Seville, are observed being followed by a man known to be affiliated with Cardinal Enrico Rossi and his latter-day Inquisition,
Cavallo Nero,
the Black Knights. Thus, a link between Ryan, Pilgrim, and Cardinal Rossi.

Third, the same treasure-seeking couple are also observed at an antiquarian bookstore in Paris shortly before its owner was murdered by Rossi’s operative, and finally Ryan and Pilgrim are killed while diving off Bimini, while the elder Noble was playing golf only a few miles farther south on Cat Cay. Thus, an indistinct and tenuous but very real link between Guzman the drug lord, Noble the pharmaceutical king, and Lord Pilgrim and his girlfriend is established.

The last piece of the puzzle had only been received the night before. One of his well-oiled sources within the CIA had informed him that the Cuban Desk was reporting that Arkady Tomas Cruz, the regime’s only known submarine captain, supposedly attached to the Marina de Guerra Revolucionaria, the Revolutionary Navy, as an advisor, was seen boarding an Air Canada flight for Toronto, Canada. The only reason for a Cuban military officer to go to Canada was at the behest of the Military Intelligence Headquarters at the embassy in Ottawa, and presumably that was where this Arkady Cruz individual was going. Kessler had never heard of Cruz, but for many years there had been a persistent although unsubstantiated rumor about the ‘‘Lost Cuban Submarine’’ hidden in the belly of an old freighter, like something from an old James Bond movie. It had always sounded absurd to him, but now Kessler wasn’t so sure.

After the drug scandal that led to the execution of Générale Arnaldo Ochoa of the army in 1989, it wasn’t hard to make a connection between Angel Guzman’s cocaine and heroin army and the Cuban military. Suddenly, using an old submarine for transport wasn’t such a stretch of the imagination. It was an intuitive leap to make a connection between Cruz and all the rest of it, but the accuracy of those leaps was what had made Max Kessler a success. He picked up the last crumbs of the pastry with his fork, mashing them delicately before sliding the fork between his lips. He took a sip of coffee and nodded to himself. There was only one conclusion: It looked very much as though there was going to be a rumble in the jungle.

14

At the end of the fifteenth century, Cabo Catoche was at the end of the world; in fact, beyond it. A few years later a Spanish galleon was shipwrecked there, and a few years after that a ship finally anchored there on purpose, the expedition headed by one Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, with a mandate from the governor of Cuba to find slaves for the local sugarcane plantations.

Not surprisingly the locals didn’t take too kindly to enslavement and fought back, but their slings, bows, and padded cotton armor were no match for Spanish muskets, cross-bows, and swords. Spaniards one, Mayans zero, including the pillaging of some gold and copper idols plundered from their temple by the Spanish Brother González, a Dominican, and effectively the Inquisition’s ‘‘political officer’’ on the voyage, fully capable of deeming any natives or even Spaniards heretics, and ordering them tied to the stake and burned. A lot of clout for a supposedly humble friar.

Cabo, or Cape, Catoche is the Spanish transliteration of the Mayan word
catoc,
which simply means ‘‘our houses,’’ or ‘‘our place.’’ It is located on the northernmost tip of the Yucatán Peninsula approximately thirty-three miles north of the resort town of Cancún. Most of the area, once the Mayan province of Ecab, has been totally uninhabited for the past five hundred years and is virtually inaccessible by road or air. In the mid-1990s it was designated as a nature preserve, although some efforts, all of which have failed, have been made to develop the coastal area. The closest place is the nearly abandoned village of Taxmal, a few ragged thatch-roofed huts that was all that remained of a once thriving market town on the edge of the jungle east of Kantunilkin and north of Leona Vicario.

It had taken Finn Ryan almost a month to get there, the speed of light by Mexican bureaucratic standards. The fact that her father and mother had been well-known archaeologists in the Yucatán speeded things up a little, and so did her own background. The media coverage she’d received from her previous exploits recovering stolen Nazi art and her recent adventures in the South China Sea didn’t hurt either. She and Billy spent two weeks in Miami equipping themselves for a jungle expedition, then crossed the Gulf of Mexico and dropped anchor in the old port town of Progreso.

They left Run-Run McSeveney to his own happily obscure devices on board the
Hispaniola
along with Briney Hanson, and hired a truck to take them and their equipment into the nearby city of Merida, the capital of Yucatán province. They spent another week in Merida at the local Hilton, organizing last-minute permits, then headed off in several rented Toyota Land Cruisers on the overland trip to Taxmal.

There they had arranged to meet their so-called archaeological consultant and their escort. The archaeological consultant was usually an official from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, which, from Finn’s experience, meant a quasi-cop attached to the expedition to make sure that the gringos weren’t tomb robbers out to discover a hoard of pre-Columbian art to smuggle back to the voracious buyers in New York and L.A.

The escort usually consisted of at least a couple of members of the Mexican army. They were inevitably irritating, but considering the past history of Americans and other outsiders stealing their cultural patrimony, the safeguards were reasonable enough. The armed guards could actually come in handy if they ran into trouble in the jungle—banditos and druggies of one kind or another were an inevitable part of doing archaeological business in Mexico these days, especially when you went off the beaten track the way they were about to.

‘‘So, where is this Dr. Garza we’re supposed to meet?’’ Eli Santoro asked, standing by the lead Land Cruiser and looking around at what passed for the main square of the village. Dr. Ruben Filiberto Garza was the consultant attached to the expedition by the National Institute and he was nowhere to be seen. A yellow dog padded across the dusty square and disappeared behind a small house covered in faded pink adobe. The windows of the house were like blind, black holes and the front door was wide open. At the far side of the square the narrow dirt road they had driven into town on faded into the dark jungle canopy beyond.

‘‘He’s not here,’’ said Guido Derlagen, looking around.

‘‘Nobody is,’’ said Billy Pilgrim. From the distance came an echoing, hammering sound followed by something that sounded like a human shriek of pain.

‘‘Dear God,’’ whispered Guido, a look of horror twitching across his face at the sudden tortured sound. ‘‘Someone is being murdered, I think.’’

‘‘Golden-fronted woodpecker—
Melanerpes aurifrons,
’’ said Finn. ‘‘The scream was from a great-tailed grackle—
Quiscalus mexicanus
.’’

‘‘Really?’’ Billy grinned, looking at his friend.

‘‘Really,’’ answered Finn. ‘‘I spent entire summers in these jungles when I was a kid. Mom was quite the bird-watcher. I hated them.’’

‘‘Then why learn their songs and Latin names?’’

‘‘Had to do something after my Barbies got eaten by the kinkajous and my
Wonder Woman
comics came down with terminal mildew.’’ Finn shrugged. ‘‘It was osmosis, I guess. You learn about things without even knowing you’re learning. Or wanting to.’’

‘‘Zwarte Peiten,’’ said Guido.

‘‘Who?’’ Eli Santoro asked.

‘‘Black Pete, Sinter Klaas’s helper. He is from Spain. If you are in Zwarte Peiten’s logbook you are sent to Spain and disappear like the Lost Boys in your Peter Pan story. Very politically incorrect in Holland these days. Now he is called Groen Peiten, Blauw Peiten, Oraje Peiten, even Paars Peiten, anything but Black Pete. It is very sad.’’

‘‘What in God’s name are you talking about?’’ Billy asked, staring.

‘‘My father is a retired professor of languages from the University of Leiden,’’ explained the Dutchman. ‘‘He has written entire books on the whole concept of the Zwarte Peiten. Ruined Christmas for me, I can tell you. It is the same as Finn’s birds. I know more about Zwarte Peiten than I ever wanted to.’’ The tall, shaved-headed man sighed. ‘‘All I really wanted was a few cookies and candies in my wooden shoe.’’ Off in the jungle,
Quiscalus mexicanus
screamed again.

‘‘That still doesn’t answer the question,’’ said Eli. ‘‘Where’s the tour guide and his buddies?’’

‘‘We can’t leave without him,’’ said Finn, the irritation rising in her voice. ‘‘They’d revoke our permits in a flash.’’

In the distance there was the whickering sound of an approaching helicopter. Squinting, Billy shaded his eyes with one hand and looked up into the sunlit sky. The thumping of the rotors heightened.

‘‘I think our tour guide is about to make his entrance,’’ murmured Billy. The chopper came in from behind them, a huge thundering insect in jungle camouflage and marked with the triangular red, white, and green roundel of the Mexican air force. It was an old-fashioned UH-1 Iroquois, the ubiquitous Huey, a relic of the sixties and still one of the most potent symbols of the Vietnam War.

The big blunt-nosed machine dropped down into the empty square, tearing patches of thatch from the roofs of the empty huts and rattling the few remaining shutters on the windows as its rotors slowed. Dust blew outward in a blinding whirlwind that raged and eddied while the sliding door in the side of the helicopter slammed back on its runners even before the machine set down. Half a dozen men poured out, all of them armed, all in jungle fatigues, all with machetes on their belts and all wearing floppy boonie hats and wrap-around sunglasses. Each man carried a huge pack on his back and gripped a heavy camouflaged equipment bag in his left hand.

The last man stepped down. He was older than the others, bareheaded with iron gray hair. He was wearing a bright yellow nylon jacket, faintly military-looking cargo pants, and hiking boots. All the men ducked under the rotors and headed toward Finn and the others. The helicopter waited until they were well away, then angled up into the sky with a roar and headed back the way it had come.

The six men in uniform ranged up into a single line and the man in the yellow jacket stepped forward. He had hard, dark, and intelligent eyes and a face the color of old mahogany, pocked and marked like the surface of the moon. It looked as though someone had dragged him behind a moving vehicle face-first along a gravel road. He had a hooked nose and thin lips. When he smiled his teeth gleamed whitely out of the horror of his face.

‘‘My name is Professor Ruben Filiberto Garza,’’ he said. ‘‘I am your archaeological consultant. ’’ His English was perfect and almost without accent. ‘‘These men are from the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales del Alto Mando, the Airborne Special Forces.’’ His smile broadened without the faintest hint of humor. Garza stared at Finn as though she was naked. ‘‘Think of them as your Navy SEALs, but without the water.’’ He made the slightest attempt at a bow. ‘‘You are Miss Ryan, I presume.’’

Finn nodded, trying to keep herself from staring too hard at the ruin of the man’s face. ‘‘That’s right,’’ she said.

Garza looked at Billy. ‘‘That would make you Mr. Pilgrim then.’’

‘‘It’s Lord Pilgrim actually, Dr. Garza,’’ said Billy mildly. ‘‘Baron of Neath, Earl of Pendennis, Duke of Kernow and all the rest of it, but I don’t stand on ceremony about such things. Just call me William, if you like.’’ He stepped forward with his hand extended. Garza stared at it as though he was being offered a poisonous snake.

Finn fought off a smile. Watching Billy put people in their place was a treat sometimes.

‘‘I understand you have some familiarity with this part of the world, Miss Ryan,’’ said Garza, ignoring Billy and concentrating on Finn.

She nodded.

The half dozen soldiers behind Garza unlimbered their machetes from their canvas scabbards and waited, their expressions blank behind their sunglasses.

‘‘You will be aware then that we have a number of poisonous snakes in the region, including terciopelo, the fer-de-lance?’’

‘‘
Bothrops asper,
’’ answered Finn promptly. ‘‘The pit viper.’’ She smiled. ‘‘The females are the more dangerous of the species, and the larger, growing up to four feet or so. I’ve seen a few. Their venom causes immediate necrosis, like flesh-eating disease. The other one to watch out for is
Crotalus durissus,
the cascabel, or South American rattlesnake. I’ve seen a few of those as well. If we were closer to the coast I might worry about the coral snake, but we’re not in their normal range here.’’

‘‘Why doesn’t she ever mention this sort of thing before we start out on these wild-goose chases?’’ whispered Billy to Guido.

‘‘We might also run into the Mexican beaded lizard
Heloderma horridum,
’’ added Finn. ‘‘They can kill you too. Not to mention scorpions, black widows, African killer bees, and agua mala. Jungles are scary places, Dr. Garza. I’m aware of that fact.’’