The Promised One (7 page)

Eventually she fell asleep and dreamed of the tropical paradise where her jaguars roamed and ruled.

Lucy was bleary-eyed after her late-night reading and received a gentle scolding from her grandmother when she appeared late for breakfast.

‘What will your mother say to me when you go back looking worse?’ she said. ‘You’re meant to be here to get your strength back, not to stay up half the night reading Grandpa’s animal books.’

Lucy promised to have an early night that evening and then persuaded Grandpa to give her a lift to the dolphinarium so she would be in time to feed the animals.

‘Greetings, O Promised One,’
said Jonathan after she had finished helping Catherine and Steve and settled down to talk to him.
‘The Great Ones have told me many things while the Brilliant One slept beneath the Great Salt. From the marsupihops in the Great Southern Land there is nothing new to report but there is news from the junglefangs, news of great concern to all that live near the mighty river of the West. Some wicked Tailless Ones have captured many of their kin and are keeping
them in one place. There are more of them there than have ever been gathered together before; they are treated very badly and they fear greatly what is to become of them.’

Lucy couldn’t imagine why somebody should be collecting large numbers of jaguars, but the animals clearly believed that something sinister was going on and she trusted their instincts.

‘I will make a plan to help,’
she told Jonathan,
‘but I need to know exactly where the junglefangs are held.’

‘My kin have already told me this,’
said the dolphin,
‘but the way in which we understand these things is very different to your own and I know not how best to make it clear to you.’
He then told her many things, to help her identify the campsite, all of which she wrote down. They included the colour of the water in the river, the islands and forks in the river, natural features in the landscape and, of major importance as it turned out, information that the birds had provided concerning the exact time the sun rose at the campsite. This was expressed in terms of other places north and south where the sun rose at the same time. One of these was a great city near the shore of the Salt of the Many Islands which Lucy was sure Grandpa would recognize from its description.

‘We know not how the fledgiquills are aware of these things,’
the dolphin had said,
‘but just as I can feel from the water upon my body whither I go and whence I come in the Great Salt, the fledgiquills know deep in their bones about the Brilliant One and its ways.’

Soon Grandma and Grandpa came to collect her for the
last time and she thanked Catherine and Steve and all the dolphins for their help as she said goodbye.

At home, over tea, Lucy told her grandparents about her discussions with Jonathan that day and they were astonished by the apparent scale of the jaguar operation described by the dolphins. Grandpa became very interested when Lucy produced her notes relating to the location of the campsite where the animals were being kept and sat at the table and started to pore over them while Lucy went off to start packing for home.

‘Got it!’ Grandpa suddenly exclaimed in great excitement later that evening. He had been busy for hours with maps and reference books and had twice disappeared to his study to look things up on the internet.

‘Got what?’ asked Lucy.

‘I think I know where the jaguar camp must be,’ he explained. Lucy was delighted.

‘That’s brilliant! Where is it? How did you work it out?’ She went round and stood behind him, looking over his shoulder at the map spread out before him
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. Her notes from the dolphinarium were scattered around the map.

‘It’s a bit like solving a special puzzle,’ said Grandpa. ‘The key information was from the birds. They said that sunrise occurs at the camp at the same time as it does in a great city on the coastline of the sea of many islands. What the birds are telling us is effectively the time zone or longitude on which the camp is situated.’ He pointed to the vertical lines of longitude on the map before him. ‘As you can see, the lines of longitude crossing the Amazon basin also cross
the Pacific coastlines of Peru and Chile, the Caribbean in the north, and the North Atlantic in the north-east. Now the interesting bit is the mention of islands. Out of the three oceans I’ve mentioned, which do you think is the “Salt of the Many Islands”?’ Lucy looked at the map.

‘Wow!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’d never really looked properly at this part of the world before. It must be the Caribbean Sea. There are dozens and dozens of islands. No wonder the pirates liked it so much for hiding treasure.’

‘Exactly,’ smiled Grandpa. ‘And from the description the birds gave of the city, I think it must be …’ He pointed to a city
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on the coast then picked up a ruler and laid it vertically on the map with one edge passing through the city he had mentioned. With a pencil he drew a line along the ruler down through the entire Amazon basin.

‘Now,’ he continued, ‘the sun rises at the same time everywhere along this line and the camp we know to be situated on a river, so it has to be where one of the tributaries of the Amazon crosses this line.’

Lucy was fascinated. She leant forward to pore over the map, pushing the ruler away so she could see better. Then she frowned.

‘But there are lots of places where that’s true,’ she said rather disappointedly.

‘Ah yes, but don’t forget all these wonderful notes you made,’ said Grandpa looking over the sheets scattered around the table. Finding the one he wanted, he showed it
to Lucy. ‘The most important clue to start with is here,’ he pointed, ‘where Jonathan says that, as a dolphin swims up the Amazon, it comes to a great confluence of two rivers where the river is black.’ He turned to the map and pointed to a city called Manaus; Lucy saw that two rivers joined there to become one great river.

‘That confluence is here,’ he continued, ‘and the dolphin is explicit that the camp lies up the black river. That’s the one coming down from the north-west.’ He traced the river with his finger.

‘It’s called the Rio Negro which is Spanish for “black river”. The river looks black because of optical effects produced by a special pigment in it derived from decomposed plant material. As you can see from our pencil line, we’ve now narrowed down considerably the number of possible sites for your jaguar camp – it can only be on one of the tributaries of the Rio Negro. Using these other notes,’ he picked up more sheets off the table, ‘which give details of islands and vegetation and various other clues, I think the camp is here.’ He planted his forefinger firmly on a spot where his pencil line crossed a tiny blue line representing a tributary of the river they had been focusing on. ‘I’ve looked up this area in my various books and on the internet and can find nothing about it. It’s incredibly remote and, as far as anyone knows, remains unexplored. Heaven only knows what anyone is doing with captive jaguars out there, but whatever it is they are obviously very keen that nobody finds out. There can be few better places on earth to hide something.’ He replaced
his right forefinger with his left, on the same spot, pulled a pad towards him and picked up the pencil again. ‘While we’ve got it pinned down let’s note the map reference so we won’t ever have to go through all the clues again.’ He wrote down the exact location of the spot in degrees of latitude and longitude and gave the pad to Lucy. ‘There it is. That’s your spot.’ Lucy glanced from the numbers on the pad in her hand to the map on the table in wonderment.

‘It’s amazing, isn’t it? A dolphin tells me a few details about a place in the middle of the largest jungle on earth and now we know exactly where it is.’ She paused and turned and a furrow appeared in her brow.

‘What do you think I should do next? Who should I tell, and what do I say?’

Grandpa thought for a moment.

‘The camp is in Brazil,’ he said eventually, ‘so ultimately any action will be taken by the Brazilian authorities, but it might be easier for you to ring the Foreign Office in London. The one thing that will guarantee their attention is the fact that you can give them an exact map reference. They’ll have to check on that site – the information is so specific – and we
know
they’ll find something.’

‘But they’re bound to ask how I heard about this in the first place,’ said Lucy. ‘I obviously can’t tell them I can talk to animals, and it’s going to seem pretty odd that I should know about this place when I live in a London suburb.’

‘That’s simple,’ broke in Grandma who had been following the conversation with quiet interest. Lucy and
Grandpa both turned to look at her.

‘You say that you have a penfriend who lives in an Amazonian village and that she – or he – has told you about rumours they have heard about this place, far upriver in the jungle, but they are frightened and have made you promise not to reveal who they are or where they live.’

‘That’s brilliant, Grandma!’ said Lucy, ‘It’s foolproof!’

‘Well,’ said Grandpa, ‘there’s your plan of action worked out; all that remains is for you to go and do it – but first –’ he stopped and Lucy looked in alarm at his stern expression. Then he grinned. ‘Remember your promise to Grandma this morning. It’s time you were in bed, or your mum’ll be after us.’

Lucy kissed them both good night and went to bed, excited at the thought that, at last, she was really going to do something to help her animals.

T
wo months earlier, just before Lucy’s accident, her father was starting in his new job in South America. After spending a few days at Ecocidal Timber Company’s headquarters in Rio, Richard flew to the company’s river office in Macapá and he was now sitting chatting to the branch manager, José Verdade, and his wife Francesca, who had invited Richard to stay at their home before he began work in the jungle. José told Richard how he had come to work for ETC.

‘I was born in Brazil and even as a boy I was interested in our forests and knew how important they were for the environment. As a young man I was determined to try to prevent their destruction so I studied forestry at university then joined the company because it claimed to obtain timber in a sustainable fashion. I felt I could help preserve the forest by working with such a company.’ José then asked how Richard had joined the company.

‘I’m really a botanist,’ Richard replied, ‘and I’ve never worked for a commercial company before. I was a university senior lecturer until three months ago when my department closed down because of government cuts. The
very next day I saw, by chance, an advertisement in the paper for a biologist to work with ETC to help discover types of tree that might produce brand-new medicines to cure cancer and other diseases. I was offered the job and here I am, ready to fly to your most remote logging site tomorrow. I have to confess I wasn’t that keen on Sawyer – Chopper I think you all call him – the boss in Rio, but meeting you and Francesca has reassured me and I’m getting really excited.’

They chatted for a little longer but soon Richard began to yawn and Francesca suggested that he should have an early night. Richard needed no further prompting: he was still suffering from the effects of jet-lag and, remembering that it was now 4 a.m. in London, he collapsed gratefully into his comfortable bed.

After Richard had retired José and Francesca continued to talk, now reverting to Portuguese, their native language. They were discussing a problem that had bothered José greatly during the last few weeks. He had joined the company in the belief that he could help with forest conservation, but had soon discovered that his company was just as bad as any other in terms of its destructive behaviour towards the environment. He had also found out that ETC was using the timber business as a cover for drug smuggling and illegal gold mining. He had consulted Francesca who had cautioned him not to do anything hasty and not to allow anyone to know of his suspicions.

‘Drugs mean death,’ she had said, ‘and not just to those who take them, but to anyone who crosses the dealers.’

José knew she was right and they had decided to wait a little and hope that in some way the wrongdoings of the company might be exposed without José putting himself or his family at risk.

The next day Richard said goodbye to Francesca and José and boarded the little company plane that would take him to the furthest company site, which was to be his base for the next few months while he searched for unknown trees and plants. As they took off from Macapá the plane turned and rose above the mouth of the mighty river. The pilot saw Richard gazing down in wonder and smiled.

‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘The river mouth we are flying over is just one of many mouths forming an enormous delta which is nearly three hundred kilometres wide. The river drains the Amazon basin which is an area bigger than the whole of Western Europe. It pours so much mud and silt into the sea that it changes the colour of the ocean for three hundred kilometres!’ Richard could see the giant muddy stain of the river spreading in the sea out to the horizon.

The journey was one of a thousand miles across the Amazon basin and after a while the plane landed at a small airfield where they could refuel and take the opportunity to rest and have a meal. Richard had noticed several times on the journey that they had passed over areas of reduced visibility and now, as they sat outdoors in a local village restaurant, the air, at first hazy, became dark with smoke and a fine ash settled on their food and clothes.

‘They’re burning the forest,’ said the pilot, as if in answer
to Richard’s unspoken query. ‘It’s the quickest and cheapest way of clearing the ground and it goes on all the time. Often I can’t land because an airport is closed by the smoke, especially when I go further south to places like Port Velho, Imperatriz and Cuiabá. The burning is a double whammy in terms of global warming and climate change. It not only removes valuable forest but the act of burning releases millions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. The scale at which this is going on is almost unimaginable – the scientists think that every minute of every hour, day and night, an area of forest equivalent to seven or eight football fields is being destroyed by burning and clearing. Just think how much has gone since we have been sitting here!’

Richard was depressed by the pilot’s words and became more determined than ever to use his new job to try to correct things: little did he suspect that the company he worked for was one of the worst offenders and that it would be his daughter, not himself, who would eventually start to reverse the destructive process.

Eventually they reached the camp that would be Richard’s base for the next few months. As the pilot expertly guided the plane on to the narrow airstrip that had been cleared in the forest he suddenly swore and wrenched at the controls. Richard heard a skidding noise and felt a clunk under the plane, but soon they came safely to a stop. The pilot sighed in relief, then turned to Richard with a nervous grin.

‘Some fool left a log on the strip – could have finished
us, but we’re OK!’

The next day Richard was very excited. He was, at last, going to start on the real scientific work he had come to do, and after spending the morning on final preparations, he set off in the plane with the company pilot. Soon they were flying over the most remote jungle on earth. The green canopy stretched, apparently endlessly, to every horizon, broken only by the glistening ribbon of an Amazon tributary whose meandering path the pilot was using to guide him ever further into the interior. After a while the pilot pointed down at the river which was now shrunk to a thread as they neared its source.

‘This is the furthest I’ve ever been,’ he shouted over the noise of the engine. ‘It’s unknown territory from now on, so keep your eyes strained for your fancy trees.’ He handed Richard a pair of powerful binoculars and flew lower, just above the treetops, to give Richard a better view. If he could see an area with unknown and promising tree species he would note its position on his global positioning system receiver, and return later with a canoe and an overland expedition to obtain his specimens.

Suddenly the pilot tapped Richard on the knee and pointed to the fuel gauge.

‘We were OK until a few minutes ago but it’s suddenly gone down. A fuel line must have been damaged by that wretched log I hit on landing last night. We don’t have enough juice to make it back to camp. I’m heading for those hills on the horizon; it looks as though there’s a more open area just before them where I may be able to make a
go at a landing.’

Without further warning, and when they were still at least a couple of miles from the hills, the engine cut out and the little plane glided swiftly into the canopy. Richard braced himself as the trunks of enormous trees loomed ahead and as the plane passed between two forest giants there was a sickening crunch and the scream of ripping metal as both the wings tore off. The remaining fuselage hurtled down towards the forest floor, miraculously avoiding any further major trees and then crashed through smaller trees and shrubs to the ground, finally skidding to a stop with a violent jolt in the dense undergrowth.

Richard was unconscious for no more than a few seconds but as he came to he felt as if he had been asleep for much longer. As he regained his faculties he realized he had a bad headache. Blood was trickling into his eye, and touching his forehead he could feel a large bump where he must have crashed into the instrument panel. Gradually the events immediately prior to the crash came flooding back into his memory. He turned to speak to the pilot but as soon as he saw the unnatural angle at which his neck was lying he knew that he was dead. He sat and thought about his situation. The radio was smashed beyond recognition and the GPS receiver had disappeared in the tangled wreck of the cockpit floor. The plane had penetrated the forest canopy and come to rest several hundred yards from its
point of entry through the thick roof of leaves and branches. He knew it would be completely invisible from the air.

The more he thought about his situation the more he realized that the normal rule of survival, to stay at the crash site until help arrived, probably did not apply in this case. He decided his best chance was to try to reach the high plateau that the pilot had been aiming for, with the intention of reaching a rocky area free of trees where he might light a beacon in the hope that the smoke might attract the attention of any search plane. As he was a nonsmoker he went through the pilot’s pockets to see if he had any matches or a lighter. It was a horrible feeling invading the privacy of the dead man’s clothing but he forced himself to do so; in the event his search was fruitless. He looked around the shattered cockpit, then cursed himself for his stupidity. The entire cockpit floor was covered in shards of glass from the broken instrument panel. Using one of these he could easily make fire by focusing the rays of the sun. He collected some suitable fragments and put them in his pocket. He thought briefly of struggling to extract the pilot and bury him but immediately realized that the task was beyond him. The pilot was a big man and he was inextricably trapped in the wreckage. He gently closed the dead man’s eyes and removed a gold identity bracelet from his wrist which was inscribed with his name: ‘Domingos Icares’. He also took his wedding ring with the vague thought that he ought to try to give the man’s family some personal mementoes should he ever reach
civilization again. He arranged two struts from the broken hatch in the shape of a cross on the man’s chest, said a brief prayer of committal, and then felt he could do no more.

Turning to the matter of his own survival, he twisted round and managed to pull his rucksack out from behind his seat. He kept his compass and Swiss army knife but then emptied the bag of its remaining contents – all his scientific reference books and other items representing unnecessary weight. He replaced these with two bottles of water from a holder on the inside of the plane door, some emergency flares and as many tools as he could fit into the bag from an emergency kit bolted to the nearby bulkhead. Getting out of the plane was no problem for most of the cockpit canopy had been ripped off. As he began to clamber out, however, the thought struck him that it was already late afternoon and that soon he would be in the jungle at night. Uninviting as the prospect was of spending the night next to a corpse, he knew that it would be sensible to stay in the relative safety of the plane and then set out for the plateau at first light. His head was, in any case, already pounding from the brief physical exertion he had just undertaken and he knew that it would be wise for him to rest before embarking on what would inevitably be a gruelling expedition. He pulled back the remnants of the cockpit cover to give as much protection as possible, then leant back to sit out what he knew would be a long and scary night.

As darkness fell the sounds of creatures of the day diminished and all kinds of new noises began. On several
occasions he froze in fear as he heard claws scratching at the fuselage and the paws of unknown creatures scampering across the plane. On one occasion a large animal, taken unawares by an object lying on its favourite night path, bumped into the plane and actually shifted its position slightly in the undergrowth. The night was punctuated with the growls and hisses of the hunters and the screams and squawks of the hunted. Eventually Richard fell into a fitful sleep, fearful of the challenge ahead of him and wondering if he would ever see his family again.

He woke to the sound of a repeated, melodious, bell-like chime. At first he thought it was an early caller at the front door at home, ringing the bell while the family were still asleep. As he came to he quickly remembered where he was, however, and found himself face to face with a monkey peering through one of the cracks in the perspex cockpit cover. Richard jumped in fright and the startled monkey fled into the trees.

The bell-chime started again and now Richard could see that it came not from a postman with a parcel, but from a pure white bird the size of a jay, sitting on a nearby branch. As Richard pushed the broken canopy back the bell-bird flew off, and a little later he heard the characteristic ‘
dong-dong
’ of its call from further away. Then there came a sound that chilled him to the marrow. A moaning sound came from somewhere above him; it grew louder and louder and became a howling that seemed to make the entire jungle pulsate with shattering noise. Terrified,
Richard pulled the canopy over him again and, as the noise began to diminish, he peeped up into the treetops. There was a rustling in the highest branches and then a troop of brownish-black monkeys suddenly appeared, leaping from tree to tree. They stopped, nearer to Richard, and then he saw the largest individual sit back on a branch, open his mouth wide and restart the dreadful noise. He was joined by all the others until once again the jungle was deafened by their howling and shrieking.

Relieved to find the authors of the noise were howler monkeys and nothing worse, Richard started to make preparations to leave. Amidst all the excitement since first waking Richard had gradually become aware of an
intermittent buzzing noise in the cockpit and he turned to see that large flies were already settling on the pilot’s face. It was definitely time to go. He picked up his rucksack, clambered down to the ground, checked his compass and set off into the jungle.

The journey was a nightmare. The canopy above shut out most of the sun so he travelled in a kind of gloom broken here and there by dappled sunlight trying to penetrate the dense foliage. The effect was similar to the interior of a cathedral, partially lit by sunlight streaming through stained-glass windows. The ground cover in this undisturbed forest was thinner than he had imagined it would be, but his progress was obstructed by tangles of immense roots and fallen branches. As he walked and scrambled through the forest the exposed parts of his body became covered in scratches and he soon had a livid rash on one arm which stung worse than a dozen stinging nettles where he had brushed against some poisonous plant.