Effigy (42 page)

When he was certain the coast was clear, Peet leaped out of the van and one by one drug the officers between two parked cars and bound them together with their own handcuffs. He stripped the half-naked officer of his balaclava mask and spun around. With set determination, he slammed the van’s back doors shut and marched around the vehicle, nearly toppling the little boy watching him with the same stunned expression.

“Don’t you have any parents?” Peet asked irritably as he opened the driver side door and slid in behind the wheel.

The boy merely stood there, as though waiting for an answer. Peet started the engine but the boy still didn’t move.

“Yes,” Peet barked through the open window. “I’m an archaeologist.”

With that, he pulled the black mask over his face, slammed the transmission into gear and backed out of the parking lot, white knuckles and all.

Portal To The Underworld

“Why haven’t you brought the suspects in for questioning?”

The accusatory tone to Escaban’s voice caused Agent Armando Diego to bristle. He should have known better than to call Escaban. The regional director had a way of complicating his plans.

“The others are still out there,” Diego explained. “I want to bring them all in at once.”

“I don’t care. I want the two you have brought in now!”

“If we leave now, we’ll lose the other three.”

The light chime of a cell phone powering up caught Diego’s attention. He turned around to find his officers rummaging through the possessions they’d confiscated from their suspects. While one officer fidgeted with the old man’s cell phone, another was digging through the pockets of the woman’s light jacket, coming up with little more than a wad of unused Kleenex and a tube of Chap Stick. But it was the rookie picking through the old man’s wallet who interested Diego. He stepped in for a closer look, Escaban’s anxious voice still pouring into his ear.

“I’m ordering you to bring your suspects in immediately.”

Diego groaned inwardly, his grip tightening around the phone. He had no intentions of driving all the way back to the
Federal District
let alone turning his suspects over to a light-heart like Escaban. He needed to divert the conversation back to his original purposes for calling in the first place.

“You set us on the wrong pyramid,” Diego said, secretly hoping Escaban would forget the fact that it was he who’d followed Derek Riesling and his gang to
Teotihuacan
in the first place. He fingered the rim of the old man’s sissy-looking straw hat.

“What are you talking about?”

“Pyramid B is located in
Tula
, not
Teotihuacan
.”

The rookie withdrew what appeared to be several hundred dollars in traveler’s checks from the wallet. The young man smiled when he found another hundred dollars worth of tightly folded American twenties in another pocket. Diego snatched the money and shoved it in his pocket, cutting off the rookie’s protest with a scowl.

Meanwhile, Escaban hadn’t missed a beat. “Are you telling me you’ve arrested the wrong people?”

“Negative.”

Diego could feel the pulse in his palm beat against the receiver. Leave it to Escaban to turn the blame right back around on him.

“
Agente Diego
,” the officer with the cell phone whispered as he stepped toward him. Diego held up a hand and turned back to Escaban’s question.

“We have the right people,” he said through gritted teeth. “They may have planted the bomb earlier. Maybe they went to
Teotihuacan
to throw us off their trail.”

“That sounds weak,” Escaban mumbled.

“
Agente Diego
.” This time the officer held the cell phone out to him. A brief text message glowed on the display.

“This was sent by the old man shortly after the arrest,” the officer explained.

Diego took the cell phone and read the message. There was only one word on the display. TULA.

“Are you listening to me, Diego?”

The edge in Escaban’s voice snapped him back to their conversation. “I’m sorry, Director. Can you repeat that?”

Escaban’s temper was rising through his voice. “I’m diverting the bomb squad to
Tula
. I want you there pronto.”

“And the suspects?”

“We need more evidence linking them to Pyramid B if we’re going to keep them in custody.”

Diego glanced back at the cell phone in his hand. He read the text message one more time.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got that handled.”

* * * *

John had just succumbed to an uncomfortable doze when the cellar door flew open and crashed into the cracked adobe wall. He was startled awake and bolted upright, or as upright as his reflexes could manage with his arms tied behind his back. The bare light bulb clicked on and, blinking beneath the glare, John noticed Eva pulling herself upright against a blood-spattered wall.

“I see we’re not the first to enjoy these fine accommodations,” he said sourly as two officers marched in and pulled him to his feet.

“
Quiete
,” a third officer barked as Eva was brought to stand beside him.

That’s when that sinister looking agent in charge entered the room. John’s wallet lay open in his hands, his driver’s license flipped out of its pocket.

“John R. Friedman,” Diego read aloud. “From
1221 Lincoln Place
,
Salt Lake City
,
Utah
.” He looked up, his cold eyes boring into John’s. “What brings you to
Mexico
,
Se
ñ
or Americano
?”

John held his tongue, not entirely sure how he was supposed to respond. His professor’s will was intent on holding the agent’s stare, but Diego hardly had a student’s pliability and John’s nerve played out. He turned away to a crack in the farmhouse foundation, and when he did, the agent’s fist smashed across his chin. Were it not for the two men holding him, John thought the stunning blow would have sent him flying across the room. As it was, he managed to maintain his feet, his watering eyes blinking from the sting, half disorientated by the glasses still clinging to his face by a single earpiece.

“He’s here for my father!” Eva blurted. There was a whimper in her voice.

As John tried unsuccessfully to shoulder his glasses back into position, Diego turned on Eva. “Who is this John R. Friedman to you?” he asked. “This is not the young man you were with at the morgue.”

Eva stiffened. “John is…” She took a deep breath, desperation filling her eyes. “John was a friend of my father’s.”

“A friend,” Diego repeated doubtfully. “And was your
padre
planting bombs in pyramids too?”

This time Eva remained silent. John still fidgeted his glasses with his shoulder. The room fell quiet except for the thumping of the agent’s boots pacing back across the floor. They shuffled to a halt in front of John again.

“Well, since I cannot ask
Se
ñ
or
Gaspar about it, I come back to you, John R. Friedman.” He reached up and righted John’s glasses, and they stared at each other once again. “I’ll ask only this once. Where did you hide the bomb?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” John insisted, bracing for another blow.

“I think you do!” Diego threw the wallet. It hit John’s chest and dropped to his feet in a spray of passport and identification cards. The wallet appeared to have been stripped of everything else.

Diego spun on his heel and took something from the officer behind him. He performed a snappy about-face holding John’s cell phone in his hand. He lifted the phone for John’s inspection. The screen was lit up with his last text message glowing on the display.

“How do you explain this?” the agent asked. “What interest do you have in
Tula
? Could it be the bomb you hid in Pyramid B?”

“I don’t—”

John saw the blow coming this time. Diego’s balled fist, and the speed with which he flung it, landed squarely on the chin again, not as hard as the first, unless John had already grown numb to the abuse. At the very least, the blow hadn’t unseated his glasses this time.

“Are you not working with the Equinox Killer?” Agent Diego asked. “Where did you plant that bomb?”

John tasted blood in his mouth and a quick inspection with his tongue verified a loose molar. One more blow and he feared he’d be gumming bread and water for the rest of his life.

“The sooner you cooperate, the easier I make this for you,” Diego said, calmly withdrawing his baton and tapping it in the palm of his hand.

“Please,” John said. “I know nothing about a bomb.”

He would have expected to hear the movement of air as the baton whipped through it, but instead he heard nothing until the cold weapon slammed into his abdomen, and it was the sound of his own air escaping his lungs that caught his attention. His knees went limp, and this time the officers let him fall to the dirt floor, his mouth gasping for a breath that his lungs refused to take.

Eva was screaming for the beating to stop but the agent was already committed to the rhythms of his rage. The baton landed across John’s left shoulder, but the pain was trivial to the ache in his lungs—those vital organs that had somehow forgotten how to breathe.

John’s face felt hot with the rush of blood as he stared at the flecks of dirt coating the floor. He would groan, but there was no air left in his lungs to usher such sounds. His chest seared with pain. Saliva and blood trickled from the corners of his mouth.

Another blow glanced off his arm already twisted behind his back. John knew the collapse was coming, but not before Diego’s boot uppercut his belly. The blow lifted him off his knees and flung him onto his side. Had there been pain that followed John didn’t notice, for lying there on the cold, hard floor his lungs finally opened and the sweet rush of air flooded his chest once again.

“Please stop!” Eva was screaming, on the verge of tears. “I can tell you where it is!”

This time, Diego did stop. To John’s relief, the agent turned back to Eva, giving him the moment to inhale, then exhale.

Inhale, exhale.

Nothing before had ever felt so good as simply breathing.

Diego was standing close to Eva now, his breath rustling the loose strands of raven hair falling around her face. “You can tell me what?” he asked, his baton still drumming in his hands.

“The bomb,” she said.

“Eva, no!”
John gasped. Lord only knew what they’d do to her should they catch her in a lie.

Eva maintained her resolve. Her eyes never faltered from the agent’s intimidating stare. Her voice had lost its tremble.

“I know where the bomb is.”