Authors: Douglas Preston
“And you’re sure he didn’t find anything?”
“That’s what he always said. The mountains of southern Honduras were uninhabited.”
She nodded, her eyes looking ahead at the empty desert.
“So what are you going to do?” Tom finally asked.
“I’m going to Honduras.”
“All by yourself?”
“Why not?”
Tom said nothing. What she did was her business.
“Did your father ever get in trouble for looting tombs?”
“The FBI investigated him on and off over the years. Nothing stuck. Father was too smart. I remember once when the agents raided our house and seized some jade figurines my father had just brought back from Mexico. I was ten at the time, and it scared the hell out of me, the agents pounding on the door before dawn. But they couldn’t prove anything and had to return all the stuff.”
Sally shook her head. “People like your father are a menace to archaeology.”
“I’m not sure I see a big difference between what my father did and what archaeologists do.”
“There’s a big difference,” said Sally. “Looters wreck a site. They remove things from their context. A dear friend of Professor Clyve was beaten in Mexico while trying to stop some local villagers from looting a temple.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but you can’t blame starving people for trying to feed their children—and taking exception to some norteamericano coming down and telling them what to do.”
Sally set her lip, and Tom could see she was angry. The car hummed along the shimmering asphalt. Tom cranked up the A/C. He would be glad when this was over. He didn’t need a complication like Sally Colorado in his life.
Sally shook her heavy gold hair back from her head, unleashing a faint scent of perfume and shampoo. “There’s something still bothering me. I just can’t get it out of my head.”
“What’s that?”
“Barnaby and Fenton. Doesn’t it seem strange to you that right after they investigate your father’s so-called robbery they come up dead? There’s something about the timing of their ‘accident’ that I don’t like.”
Tom shook his head. “Sally, it’s just one of those coincidences.”
“It doesn’t feel right to me.”
“I know the Ski Basin Road, Sally. Nun’s Corner is a hellacious curve. They aren’t the first ones to get killed there.”
“What were they doing on the Ski Basin Road? Ski season’s over.”
Tom sighed. “If you’re so worried, why don’t you call that policeman, Hernandez, and find out?”
“I will.” Sally slipped her cell phone out of her bag and dialed. Tom listened while she was transferred half a dozen times, from one slack receptionist to the next, until she finally reached Hernandez.
“This is Sally Colorado,” she said. “You remember us?”
Pause.
“I wanted to ask you a question about Barnaby and Fenton’s death.”
Another pause.
“Why did they go up there to the ski basin?”
A very long wait. Tom found himself trying to listen, although he felt it was a waste of time.
“Yes, it was tragic,” Sally said. “And where were they about to go on this fishing trip?”
A final silence.
“Thanks.”
Sally slowly shut the phone and looked at Tom. Tom felt a knot in his stomach; her face had gone pale.
“They went up to the ski basin to check on a report of vandalism. Turned out to be phony. Their brakes failed on the way down. They tried to slow themselves down by banking off the guard rails, but the road was just too steep. When they reached Nun’s Corner they were going close to ninety.”
“Jesus.”
“There wasn’t much left of the car after the four-hundred-foot drop and explosion. No foul play is suspected. It was especially tragic, coming as it did the day before Barnaby and Fenton were about to go on the tarpon-fishing trip of a lifetime.”
Tom swallowed and asked the question he didn’t want to ask. “Where?”
“Honduras. A place called Laguna de Brus.”
Tom slowed, checked his rearview mirror, and with a screech of tires, manipulating both the brakes and the gas, pulled a one-eighty.
“Are you crazy? What are you doing?”
“Going to the nearest airport.”
“Why?”
“Because someone who would kill police officers could sure as hell kill my two brothers.”
“You think someone found out about the hidden inheritance?”
“Absolutely.” He accelerated toward the vanishing point on the horizon. “Looks like we’re going to Honduras. Together.”
13
Philip Broadbent shifted his position, trying to get comfortable in the bottom of the dugout, arranging some of the softer bundles of gear for the fourth or fifth time to form a chair of sorts. The boat slid upriver between two silent walls of green vegetation, the engine humming, the prow cutting the smooth black water. It was like traveling through a hot green cave, echoing with the unholy screeches, hoots, and whistles of jungle animals. The mosquitoes formed a permanent whining cloud around their boat, trailing behind. The air was dense, muggy, sticky. It was like breathing mosquito soup.
Philip removed the pipe from his pocket, reamed out the dottle, rapped it on the side of the boat, and refilled it from the Dunhill can he had stored in one of the pockets of his Barbour safari khakis. He took his time lighting it, then blew a stream of smoke into the mosquito cloud, watching it cut a clear area in the whining mass, which instantly closed up as the smoke drifted away. The Mosquito Coast had lived up to its name, and even the deet that Philip slathered on his skin and clothes provided less than adequate protection. On top of that it was oily and smelled frightful, and it was probably leaching into his bloodstream and poisoning him to boot.
He muttered a curse and took another hit off the pipe. Father and his ridiculous tests.
He adjusted himself, unable to get comfortable. Hauser, carrying a Discman, came back from the prow of the dugout and eased himself down next to him. He smelled of cologne instead of bug juice, and he looked as cool and fresh as Philip felt hot and sticky. He removed the earphones to speak.
“Gonz has been picking up traces of Max’s passage all day. We’ll learn more when we get to Pito Solo tomorrow.”
“How can they follow a trace on a river?”
Hauser smiled. “It’s an art, Philip. A cut vine here, a landing place there, the mark of a barge pole on a submerged sandbar. The river is so sluggish that marks on the bottom persist for weeks.”
Philip sucked irritably on his pipe. He would endure this one last torture of his father’s and then he would be free. Free, finally, to live the life he wanted to live without that old bugger interfering, criticizing, doling out niggardly parcels of money like Scrooge. He loved his father and at one level felt bad about his cancer and his death, but that didn’t change his feelings about this scheme. His father had done many asinine things in his life, but this took the cake. It was vintage Maxwell Broadbent, this parting beau geste.
He smoked and watched the four soldiers in the front of the boat gambling with a greasy pack of cards. The other boat with its complement of eight soldiers was fifty yards ahead of them, laying a foul trail of blue exhaust over the water. Gonz, the lead “tracker,” lay on his belly in the prow, staring down into the dark water, occasionally dipping a finger into the water to taste it.
Suddenly a shout went up from one of the soldiers in the front of their dugout. He had stood up and was pointing excitedly at something swimming in the water. Hauser winked at Philip and leapt to his feet, withdrawing the machete he kept strapped to his waist, and scrambled to the bow. The boat angled toward the swimming animal while Hauser positioned himself, legs apart, in the prow. As the boat drew alongside the now desperately swimming animal he leaned over and, with a sudden movement, slashed into the water with his machete, then reached down and pulled out an animal that looked like a two-foot-long rat. It had almost been decapitated by the blow, its head hanging by a flap of skin. It gave one convulsive jerk and then went still.
Philip watched with a vague sense of horror as Hauser tossed the dead animal toward him. It landed with a thud on the bottom, the head jouncing free, rolling to a stop at Philip’s feet, mouth open, yellow rat’s teeth gleaming, blood still draining out.
Hauser rinsed the machete in the river, stuck it back in his belt, and walked back to Philip, stepping over the dead animal. He grinned. “Ever eaten agouti?”
“No, and I’m not sure I care to begin.”
“Skinned, gutted, split, and roasted over the coals—it was one of Maxwell’s favorites. Tastes a bit like chicken.”
Philip said nothing. That’s what Hauser claimed about all the revolting bush meat they had been forced to eat—tastes like chicken.
“Oh!” said Hauser, looking at Philip’s shirt. “I beg your pardon.”
Philip glanced down. A single drop of fresh blood had struck his shirt and was now soaking into the material. Philip wiped at it, which only spread it. “I’d appreciate it if you were a little more careful when tossing around decapitated animals,” he said, dipping his handkerchief into the water and giving the spot a scrubbing.
“It’s so difficult to keep one’s hygiene in the jungle,” Hauser said.
Philip scrubbed a little more and then gave up. He wished Hauser would leave him in peace. The man was starting to give him the creeps.
Hauser slid a couple of CDs out of his pocket. “And now, to stave off the ever encroaching savagery surrounding us, would you care to hear some Bach, or some Beethoven?”
14
Tom Broadbent wallowed on an overstuffed sofa-chair in the “executive suite” in the Sheraton Royale de San Pedro Sula, examining a map of the country. Maxwell had flown with all his cargo to the town of Brus Laguna on the Mosquito Coast, at the mouth of the Rio Patuca. And then he had disappeared. They said he had gone upriver, which was the only route into the vast, mountainous, and wild interior of southern Honduras.
He followed the wandering blue line of the river on the map with his finger, through swamps and hills and high plateaus until it vanished in a web of tributaries pouring out of a rugged line of parallel mountain ranges. The map showed no roads or towns; it was truly a lost world.
Tom had discovered they were at least a week behind Philip and almost two weeks behind Vernon. He was deeply worried about his brothers. It took balls to kill two police officers, and do it so quickly and successfully. The killer was clearly a professional. His two brothers were surely next on the killer’s list.
Sally, wrapped in a towel, came out of the bath humming to herself and crossed their sitting room, her glossy wet hair spilling down her back. Tom followed her with his eyes as she disappeared into her bedroom. She was even taller than Sarah ...
He stepped down hard on that thought.
In ten minutes she was back out, dressed in lightweight khakis, a long-sleeved shirt, a canvas hat with mosquito netting rolled down around her face, and a pair of heavy gloves, all bought during a shopping expedition that morning.
“How do I look?” she asked, turning around.
“Like you’re in purdah.”
She rolled up the mosquito netting and took off the hat.
“That’s better.”
She tossed the hat and gloves on the bed. “I have to admit I’m very curious about this father of yours. He must’ve been a real eccentric.”
“He was.”
“What was he like? If you don’t mind me asking.”
Tom sighed. “When he walked into a room, every head turned. He radiated something—authority, power, assurance. I’m not sure what. People were awed by him, even if they had no idea who he was.”
“I know the type.”
“Wherever he went, whatever he did, journalists chased him around. There were sometimes paparazzi waiting outside the gate to our house. I mean, here we were going to school and the damn paparazzi are chasing us down the Old Santa Fe Trail like we’re Princess Diana or something. It was ridiculous.”
“What a burden for you.”
“It wasn’t always a burden. At times it was even fun. Father’s marriages were always big news, a time for head shaking and tongue clucking. He married extremely beautiful women no one had ever seen before—no models or actresses for him. My mother, before he met her, was a dental receptionist. He loved the attention. Once in a while, just for fun, he’d take a swing at some paparazzo and have to pay damages. He was proud of himself. He was like Onassis, larger than life.”
“What happened to your mother?”
“She died when I was four. Some rare and sudden form of meningitis. She was the only one of his wives he didn’t divorce—didn’t have enough time, I guess.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I hardly remember her, except, well, as feelings. Warm and loving, that sort of thing.”
She shook her head. “I still don’t get it. How could your father do this to his sons?”
Tom stared down at the map. “Everything he did and everything he owned had to be extraordinary. That applied to us, too. But we didn’t turn out like he wanted. Running off and burying himself with his money was his last gasp, trying to force us to do something that would ring down through history. Something that would make him proud.” He laughed bitterly. “If the press ever got wind of this, it would be incredible. Gigantic. A half-billion-dollar treasure, buried in a hidden tomb somewhere in Honduras. The whole world would be down here looking for it.”