River of Ruin (6 page)

“Hold on a second,” Harry said, “I forgot to mail your bills a few weeks ago and the bank’s appraisers are here to sell your furniture. They said I could have your big-screen TV for a hundred bucks.”

“Sometimes I think that when you lost your leg, you also lost whatever sense of humor you might have had.” Harry’s left leg was gone below the knee. He told people that it was the result of an accident during his years in the merchant marine. Only Mercer and a handful of others knew the truth.

“Everyone knows the funny bone’s in your elbow,” Harry snorted. “Hey, I thought you were coming home for a few days. I had this whole thing set up for when you got here. I hired this knockout stripper to dress like a cop. We were going to be waiting for you with me in handcuffs on a charge of cat burglary.”

“I got stuck in Utah and flew straight on to Paris. Sorry to frustrate your plans.”

Harry gave a lecherous chuckle. “I wouldn’t exactly use the word frustrate. Before she left, the stripper gave me the handcuffs in appreciation.”

Mercer didn’t doubt Harry’s story, or at least part of it. It was something the octogenarian would pull. The idea of the stringy old man and his sagging pectorals and small potbelly with some hot stripper was an ugly picture that he quickly purged from his mind. “That was pity, my friend. She gave you the handcuffs out of pity.”

“Don’t get snippy with me just because you haven’t been laid for a few months.”

“And you haven’t since they put fins on cars.”

Harry allowed him that final shot. “So are you coming home?”

“No. In fact, I want you out of my place for a few days.” Mercer explained what he’d been through in the past hours. “I mailed the journal to Tiny at the bar, but just in case these Chinese, or whoever the hell they are, figure out who I am and send people to the house, I don’t think you should be there.”

“Screw that. You think I want to give up your three-story town house for my one-bedroom apartment so you can read some old book? Give them the damned journal.”

“I knew you’d understand. You going to Tiny’s tonight?”

“No, Doobie Lapointe is covering the bar. Tiny, me, John Pigeon and Rick Halak are going to a Georgetown basketball game.”

“Tell Paul”—Tiny’s real name was Paul Gordon, and the nickname certainly fit the former jockey—“about the book that’s coming. Have him put it someplace safe. I may need him to send it to me when I get to Panama.”

“You got it.” Harry’s tone matched the gravity he heard in Mercer’s voice. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, don’t steal my booze when you go home.”

“Sorry, Mercer.” Harry raised his voice as if the clear connection had suddenly become static-filled. “You’re breaking up. Did you say you wanted me to take your booze? Okay. I’ll guard it with my liver, I mean life.”

“I’ll call you in a couple of days.”

“Hello? Hello? Come in, Tokyo. I can’t hear you. Hello?”

Mercer never doubted that Harry could lift his spirits following his sewer swim. He was still chuckling when he dialed his third call, the one he feared making. His smile faded when he began to comprehend what Maria was saying, even if she didn’t understand the significance.

“Gary hasn’t answered his radio for hours,” she said over the sound of Latin pop music blaring from a stereo. “You know he never buys new equipment. It’s probably broken again.”

“Are you sure?” Mercer managed to keep concern from his voice. He didn’t believe that Gary was coincidentally out of reach at the same time three trained gunmen tried to steal the journal he needed to conclude his treasure hunt.

“
Sí
. Tomorrow he will fix it again and call. He always does.”

“Can you keep trying for me? I will call again just before my flight.”

“Well, sometimes it takes a day or two to fix. But I will try.”

Mercer finished off the second of three vodka gimlets that room service had brought up and started on the last. A couple more might dull the thoughts churning in his mind, but he wasn’t looking for release. He wanted answers. He assumed the mystery bidder at Jean-Paul’s auction had sent the assassins. They in turn had hired a street thief to steal the case in order to insulate themselves from the crime. But who had shot the kid just a few paces from his escape car? He doubted Jean-Paul knew. Camille had said he’d been forced to give the journal to Mercer. By whom?

Whatever was at stake, Mercer was sure the answers weren’t what he was expecting. He still didn’t believe that Gary Barber had found buried treasure. There was something else hidden in the jungle that people seemed more than willing to kill for, something on the banks of a tributary of the Rio Tuira that Gary had named the River of Ruin.

The boat’s outboard engine emitted a throaty growl that made conversation all but impossible unless the speaker’s lips were to the listener’s ear. Hovering above the V of the boat’s wake was a noxious cloud of blue smoke as the old Johnson engine burned through quarts of oil. Mercer sat in the bow of the open craft. The wind generated by their movement dried the heavy sweat that stuck his hastily purchased bush shirt to his chest. At his feet was a cheap duffel filled with spare clothes and other essentials. Behind him were local guides he’d hired in El Real, the closest town with an airstrip to where Gary was working.

Maria Barber was also in the boat, sitting between Mercer and the natives, her vacant gaze fixed in space as the impenetrable jungle scrolled by. She was not what Mercer had expected. Maria no longer resembled the sad waif in the picture Gary had shown him. In the years since it had been taken, she’d replaced the suffering in her eyes with a sophisticated demeanor more befitting a native of Miami or New York than the barrios of Panama City. Her skin color and features showed heavy European influence, still considered an honor badge in Central America, and glowed with health. Despite the rough surroundings, makeup accented her full mouth and drew special attention to her dark eyes. She was dressed in bush clothes that cost twice what Mercer had spent on his. The khaki was only a shade darker than her face and still showed the creases of newness.

Mercer had met her in David, a town near the Costa Rican border. Circumstances demanded he sacrifice comfort for speed getting to Panama from France, so he’d reshuffled his route to shave off fifteen hours, flying on airlines he’d never heard of and replacing an overnight layover in Martinique with three hasty hours of sleep in Mexico City’s Benito Juarez Airport. She’d stepped off the private plane Mercer had chartered for her from Panama City as if born to such travel, wearing a simple silk dress, a string of pearls, and flashy earrings. His call from a pay phone in David had given her just an hour to get from her apartment to where the charter plane waited and it appeared he’d caught her getting ready for an elegant morning rendezvous. Mercer noticed the distinctive smell of Obsession perfume when they’d shaken hands. Her nails were beautifully manicured and painted a slick red.

Even after he told her about the attempt to steal the Lepinay diary, she hadn’t seemed concerned over her husband’s continued silence, now stretching past twenty-four hours. Normally, Mercer would have made allowances for Gary’s lack of sophisticated communications gear—he didn’t have the expense accounts Mercer enjoyed when he prospected for some multinational mining company—yet the connection to the journal was so clear that Maria should have shown some anxiety. Considering the changes he saw in her, it was obvious that she was no longer the young girl grateful to Gary for rescuing her from the slums. It was also possible that these changes had effectively nullified their marriage. For all his faults, Gary was an honest worker who enjoyed a simpler way of life. Mercer couldn’t imagine the woman before him spending more than a few hours away from the comforts of a big city.

Mercer recalled that Maria was Gary’s third wife and that the others had left because the women had wrongly assumed Gary would eventually give up his rough lifestyle. He imagined this marriage heading in the same direction.

Maria had wanted to wait in David and try to reach Gary again, but Mercer felt time pressing in on him and insisted they immediately take off for the Darien Province. He barely gave her enough time to freshen up in the airport before the charter plane was in the air and headed toward El Real.

In the riverside town of three thousand people, he’d asked her to hire the boat and guides since his Spanish was nonexistent. The locals knew of Gary and the owner of the boat had set a reasonable price as long as his three cousins—and their M-16s—came along. Most of the narco-guerrilla activity had been far to the north, near the Atlantic coast, but no one took chances with the Colombians.

El Real was an hour and a half behind them now as they continued to motor deeper into the jungle. The sun was high up in the sky, flashing off the river where it found breaks in the canopy. The water was as black as tea, stained dark by tannins leached from fallen leaves. Only occasionally could they get a look at the banks of the river, sandy shoals and spots where a gentle curve had eroded small ledges. Mostly, though, their view was obscured by the jungle, a riot of intertwined plants, trees, vines and creepers that cut off everything but a ribbon of sky directly above them. The entire color palate was blue sky, black water, and green, a million shades from deepest emerald to mildest mint. And then there would be jeweled flashes. The central Darien Province was one of the premier spots for bird watching on the planet and the jungle sparkled with feathers in a dazzling variety of colors. This deep into the hinterland, only an occasional bird would flutter away from the sound of their passing boat.

The boatman eased back on the throttle and the bow settled into the water. The wake slapped against the shores. A quick conversation fired between the dark-skinned mestizos.

“What’s going on?” Mercer asked Maria Barber. The low burbling of the engine was a relief after its choking roar.

“We are getting closer to what Gary called the River of Ruin. The waters here are unpredictable. They don’t want to run the boat into a shoal.”

Mercer studied the water. Brown stains wended their way down on the lazy current. This tributary was being fed by another, muddier stream. Conversation over, the boat again picked up its pace, though much slower than before.

It was amazing, Mercer thought. Less than two days before he was in a city of millions and now the six of them in the boat were the only people for miles. Because his job took him to the remotest corners of the globe, the isolation didn’t bother him. The same couldn’t be said for Maria. She looked miserable.

“You don’t seem too comfortable out here,” he said.

She gave him a slow glance. “No.” She went on after a pause. “When I first meet Gary, we would explore together. It was fun for a little while.”

“But not anymore?” Mercer prompted.

“Gary has money. He doesn’t need to live in the jungle like an animal. We have an apartment in Panama City, a nice one. A car. I am happier there.”

“You knew that this is what Gary did with his time, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I knew.” She reapplied a glossy coat of lipstick without use of a mirror. “I just didn’t think it would go on for so long. Why would a rich
norteamericano
want to live in conditions worse than I had when I was a child? I couldn’t take it.”

The next logical question was if she still loved Gary, but Mercer decided that not only wasn’t it his business, he honestly didn’t care. Maria had wanted out of the slums and got it and Gary had a pretty wife years younger than him for when he came out of the jungle. Love, he realized, had nothing to do with it. He guessed the lunch date he’d interrupted with his call from David hadn’t been with some girlfriends. Mercer was glad he’d be out of here in less than a week.

“Do you know what Gary wanted me to see?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. There is a dead volcano at the head of the River of Ruin. It has a lake in its center that feeds the river from over a tall waterfall. He had been looking up there recently. Maybe he found something. I don’t know.”

The river valley they’d been traversing had been shallow but soon began to grow steeper, with high hills of thick jungle that hemmed in on the water. The ribbon of sky hadn’t shrunk, yet somehow looked farther away. The river seemed more claustrophobic and the humidity level shot up brutally.

“We are close,” Maria called.

The river branched, the spill from the smaller fork completely brown, like the discharge from an industrial outlet. Mercer saw that a number of trees had lost their upstream foliage, as if a storm had raged here recently. The muddy tributary was partially blocked by a set of small rapids, nothing the boat couldn’t negotiate, but they struck Mercer as odd. The boulders in the stream were the first rock he’d seen since leaving El Real. Then he saw partial stone walls on each bank. The artificial breastworks ran from the valley’s flanks right to the water’s edge. They were ancient, worn and near collapse. Sections of the walls had been recently cleaned of vegetation and dirt, exposed to the daylight for the first time in centuries.

The boat swung into the right branch of the river, powering through the short stretch of cataracts. This part of the river was even narrower than before, darker and more ominous.

“Those rocks back there made a ten-foot-high waterfall,” Maria said. “They dammed off this whole river until Gary cleared them away. He thinks that the stones were quarried from someplace else and set there so no one could travel farther up this valley by boat. We’re on the River of Ruin now.”

“Who laid them?” Mercer noted that the valley floor didn’t appear to be as thickly covered with jungle. This area had been underwater until just a short time ago—back-flooded by the ancient dam.

“Gary believes it was the Incas who robbed the Spanish mule trains of gold and jewels and created what is called the Twice-Stolen Treasure. It was those stones that convinced him the treasure was close by. That is why he called it the River of Ruin, for the ruins of a dam he had discovered.”