The Mayan Conspiracy (52 page)

“Honestly,” McCarter said, “I could see this place influencing many of the Mayan legends. The evil beings of the underworld: the Xibalbans, the wooden people, Seven Macaw and Zipacna. We tend to think linearly in the Western world, one answer for one question. But in many older cultures, things were not as black and white. Oral tradition meant constant changes to the story. Groups intermingled, often borrowing from one another and repeating themselves with different variations. From the same base come different versions of the truth.”

Danielle looked his way. “I can understand that. I came here looking for the source of those crystals, thinking they were part of some machine, a creation from a more advanced time. They were parts to us, really—like spark plugs or fuel injectors—and we wanted the whole engine. But to the Chollokwan they were sacred objects that could help bring the rain. Relics from the original Black Rain. And who’s to say they’re wrong? We returned them to the tribe and the rains came. Two versions of the truth, both correct in the eyes of the respective beholders.”

McCarter listened and nodded, then looked over to Hawker, who had been quiet since they had left the clearing. McCarter wondered what Hawker was thinking. While his own mind tended to concentrate on what they could figure out, he’d noticed that Hawker tended to focus on things more remote than the question at hand.

“Any thoughts?”

Hawker smiled, as if he’d been caught at something. “It just makes me wonder,” he said. “I’ve been on a few journeys in my life. Seven days across unpaved desert in a truck, two months on a freighter that seemed to find one storm after another. I wouldn’t have made those without something important to do on the other end. But this, traveling through time. It had to be horrendous. Why even try it? And why go back to such a primitive era when you did? It didn’t seem to work out all that great for them.”

Susan offered an answer. “Maybe the process is not very precise. Maybe they didn’t mean to go that far back.”

Danielle seemed to agree. “An experiment of some kind,” she said. “Like Columbus trying to find a new route to India. Sometimes you get lost and bump into things, places you never meant to go.”

“Maybe,” Hawker said, looking away, “but it feels like there should be something more.”

McCarter found himself silently agreeing, though what that something might have been he couldn’t guess. In some ways, what they’d found was enough for him. It seemed as if they’d discovered one source of what would go on to become the Mayan religion, a religion that eventually took root on another continent, growing into the greatest civilization of the preindustrial Americas, flourishing for a thousand years before collapsing back into a less ostentatious but more personal set of beliefs. All unbeknownst to its earliest members, who still existed: the Chollokwan tribe of the Amazon.

The journey downriver continued slowly, the dark waters of the Negro bringing them back to Manaus. As
they grew closer, the lush banks of the river widened, and they began to notice huge plumes of smoke at various points on the horizon.

The smoke came from the plantations lining the river. With the rainy season finally at hand, the plantation keepers were burning off the standing foliage to prepare the ground for crops: the slash and burn that marked the beginning of each planting season. Seeing this, McCarter had one more thought.

“We expected the rains to kill the Zipacna, like the canteen water did to the grub. But the air of today is filled with pollution, including sulfur from coal and other sources. It may not be like acid that can strip paint, but it’s far more acidic than the rain of three thousand years ago.”

“You think that’s why the Zipacna didn’t die from it so quickly,” Hawker guessed.

McCarter nodded, then turned back toward the smoke. “These fires create a little pollution,” he said. “But all across America, Europe and Asia, coal-fired power plants are pumping billions of tons of sulfur into the air. Not to mention carbon and other poisons.” He looked at Danielle; in some ways he now understood her quest. “Seems like we’re making a world more fit for other life than for our own.”

Several hours later, they reached the outskirts of Manaus, a sight most of them never thought they would see again.

During this last leg of the journey, Danielle found
herself drawn to the prow of the barge. They were almost home, and she’d begun to wonder what awaited them there. An hour from their arrival, the captain of the vessel came to find her. “You are Americans?”

Danielle nodded.

“Yes, well, someone is looking for you,” the captain told her. “They fear you are lost.”

“Who?” she asked, suspiciously.

“On the docks,” the captain said. “Another American. He radioed us. Looking for a lost group, with a pretty, dark-haired woman named Danielle. That’s you, no?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I guess that’s me. Do you know who this other American is?”

The captain shook his head. “A friend of yours,” he said, excited, as the bearer of good news should be. “He say they look for you everywhere, checking every boat that comes back from upriver. That’s an amigo, then. For sure.”

Hawker came up as the captain walked away. “What was that all about?”

She looked at him unenthusiastically. “We have an
amigo
waiting for us on the docks.”

Hawker’s brow wrinkled. “I thought we were all out of amigos.”

She nodded. “We are.”

An hour later they approached a crowded wooden dock, quite near the spot where Hawker and Danielle had been shot at. After some deft maneuvering around smaller boats, the barge had come close enough for
Danielle to see three men standing among the locals who crowded the dock. Two wore dark sunglasses and seemed to be armed; the third wore an open-collared linen shirt, with his arm in a sling. She recognized him instantly. “Arnold!”

He smiled at her from the dock. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he told her.

The boat touched the dock and Danielle jumped off. She hugged him carefully. “I was told you’d been killed.”

“Yes, well. As I’ve said before: never confuse the official version of reality with the truth.”

“What happened?” she asked, looking at his arm.

“Fractured it when I fell, the only thing twenty-four layers of Kevlar couldn’t prevent.”

Moore explained how Gibbs had betrayed him and how he’d survived the bullet and the fall, only to shatter his arm on the bridge’s caisson and nearly freeze to death clinging to the pylon underneath it. He hadn’t suspected Gibbs’ actions, but believing he was meeting the men who’d killed Blundin, he wasn’t taking any chances.

Danielle relayed the short version of events while the others began to come ashore.

Susan Briggs came first, with the two surviving German shepherds on their leashes at her side. Behind them McCarter helped Brazos hobble onto the dock, and finally Hawker emerged, dragging a disoriented William Devers, whom Danielle had sedated as they approached Manaus to prevent him from escape. Last out was Eric.

Moore’s guards moved toward him, but Hawker stopped them. “This man goes free.”

“He’s coming with us,” Moore said. “He has information.”

Hawker pointed to Devers. “You’ll have to get it from him.”

“He won’t have what I’m looking for,” Moore said. Hawker stood his ground. “Then you’ll have to guess at it.”

Moore exhaled loudly and the two men stared at each other. But Hawker would not move aside; if not for the man’s accuracy with the Barrett rifle, Hawker would have been dead.

“Let him go,” Danielle said, firmly. “It wouldn’t be right. Not after everything that went down out there.”

Moore huffed in exasperation. “Very well,” he said, smiling and seeming to approve of the change he sensed in her. He turned to the mercenary. “You’re free to go, young man. You’ve been given a gift today—your life back—use it wisely.”

The blond-haired man looked at Moore and Danielle and then Hawker. He seemed unsure. “Get out of here,” Hawker said. “Go back home, if you can.”

With halting steps, the former mercenary began to walk down the dock, glancing backward several times, before disappearing into the crowd.

Moore turned to Hawker again. “Speaking of going home,” he said, “I understand that a deal has been made. And though the expedition has failed, you seem to have held up your end of the bargain. This is not unappreciated. However, in our current situation, we appear to have lost any ability to reciprocate. Our director of operations has disappeared and is under investigation for a wide range of crimes, including embezzlement,
forgery and murder. Young Ms. Laidlaw here is listed as missing and is considered to be a suspect as well. And I … well, officially I’m dead.”

Moore shook his head softly. “Be that as it may, we are in your debt, and if we don’t end up in prison ourselves, we will do what we can for you.”

Hawker knew the situation. He turned to Danielle. “You could always stay here,” he said. “I know a certain nightclub owner who might be willing to hire you on.”

She smiled at him; it was tempting. “Maybe next time,” she said. “I have some things I have to straighten out first.”

THREE MONTHS AFTER
leaving the Amazon, Professor Michael McCarter waited in the warmly lit corridors of the Harry Hopkins Federal Building. The hallway exuded a quiet charm, its walls covered with cherry-stained wood, its railing and handles made of polished brass from the glamorous, stylistic decade of the 1920s. Surrounded by that ambience, McCarter lingered, having just finished giving some testimony in front of a hastily convened Senate committee.

The senators on the panel had questioned him politely and directly for the better part of four hours. But in a style that he found welcome at first—and strange later on—they avoided pressing him for any type of significant detail. Only in the later stages of the hearing did it occur to him that they were being deliberate: they didn’t want complete disclosure.

At the hearing’s conclusion McCarter was sworn to secrecy under the Espionage Prevention Act of 1949, thanked deeply for his service and dismissed. Since then he’d remained in the foyer, reading his newspaper and waiting patiently for another of the participants to finish testifying.

As the five o’clock hour approached, the doors to the conference room opened, spilling bright light into the hall. The participants came walking out. Among them he spotted Danielle.

Danielle had been the last to testify and had gained her own unique perspective on the events. To her great surprise the senators did not consider the actions of the NRI to be all that egregious, even though they violated American, international and Brazilian laws in at least fifteen different ways.

One senator even commended Danielle for being so bold in the name of her country. As it turned out, the only real problem for the committee was Stuart Gibbs and his private pursuit of the technology. That had quickly become the focus of debate, and in his absence the blame fell heavily upon him—as it should have. As both she and Arnold Moore had been unaware of Gibbs’ illegal actions, they were exculpated—even lauded, in part.

Now, with the hearings winding down and the transcripts in the midst of being sealed, the rumors had begun to fly. It appeared that the NRI would survive, and it was privately expected that Arnold Moore would be promoted to the director’s position, though nothing had been put in writing just yet.

Danielle shook her head.
Only in Washington
.

A voice called out to her and she looked over to see McCarter. She smiled. “What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?”

“Who says I’m a nice guy?” he asked, laughing at the private joke.

“I do,” she insisted.

“They told me I could speak with you after you got out, as long as we didn’t discuss the specifics of our testimony.” He glanced toward the hearing room, its doors being closed. “Are you finished in there? Or do you have to come back?”

“We’re done,” she said. “This is the last of the hearings. And from the look of things, we seem to have held our own.”

McCarter looked around nervously, appearing uncomfortable speaking in the halls of power. “Can I walk you out?”

He offered his arm in the fashion of a gentleman and she accepted. Together they walked across the polished floor to the large foyer. A uniformed guard opened the outside door to the muted sound of softly falling rain. In late April, a mild spring storm had settled over the northeast, the third front to move through since they’d arrived home.

As they stepped under the well-lit porte cochere, a taxi came swishing down the curved driveway, lights blazing, wipers flipping back and forth. It stopped and a passenger got out and dashed inside the building.

“More rain,” she noted, gazing at the drizzle and fog.

“I don’t think I’ll ever complain about it again,” he said.

She smiled. “Neither will I.”

McCarter looked at her in a kindly way. “I was wondering if you’d heard from Hawker.”

Her smile faded. She hadn’t. “Not a word, I’m afraid. No one has.”

“Any chance they’ll let him come home?”

“I’m not done fighting with them yet,” she said. “But
they’re attempting to save the organization by the looks of things, and they seem unwilling to make it harder on themselves by trying to deal with Hawker’s reputation.”