Thief (41 page)

“No!” Santos screamed. “What questions? What questions? I'll answer, but don't hurt her. Don't hurt any more of them!”

Dokken didn't pull the trigger, but glared over at her, with the scratches on his face already oozing blood. “How old are they? No bullshit. How old?”

Up on the cliffs, the monkeys began to howl again.

*   *   *

Monarch's shout back at the monkeys had momentarily shocked them mute. A dozen bolted immediately, and he saw them retreating, some dropping through the branches, and others using loose vines like rappelling ropes. The rest of the troop clung to their positions, no longer howling, but chattering and snapping their teeth at the thief.

Monarch's attention was still on those retreating monkeys as the first of them reached the rim some forty feet below. Then he felt his left hand start to tingle and come back to life. If could get even thirty percent of use from it, he thought he could get down as well.

Using his mouth, he got hold of the butt of the Ka-Bar and began sawing at the plastic cuffs. Dokken's blade was razor sharp and quickly severed Monarch's restraints. He could feel his left arm on fire up near the shoulder, and he realized it was dislocated. But nothing felt broken.

Slowly, Monarch rolled over on his back, heard vines grind and pop against the tree trunks and each other. The tangle shuddered, and he thought for sure it was going to give way. Instead, the knots of it seemed to tighten as he rolled to his belly, biting his lip against the pain in his shoulder.

The thief rolled to his back and then belly a second time, and felt cracking beneath him. He got his fingers wrapped into the vines a split second before a section of the tangle broke free, and he swung down into space. His left side slammed so hard against the tree trunk his shoulder relocated.

Monarch cried out in agony at the same time two gunshots went off down in the canyon, and the monkeys remaining in the canopy went ballistic.

*   *   *

“Fuck is that?” Dokken demanded, stepping away from Kiki, who lay dazed.

“Howler monkeys,” Santos said.

Dokken grimaced, shouted, “How old are the cavemen?”

“Old,” the scientist said. “Insanely old.”

“You know what makes them live so long?”

Santos did not reply. She couldn't. Not now.

Dokken pointed his pistol at Kiki, and then over at Fal-até, who still held Augus, rocking the dead tribal elder and sobbing in grief. “Tell me or both these bitches get it.”

The scientist believed if she did tell him she was going to die, that all of them were going to die, so again she said nothing.

Rousseau came out of the forest, hands up, crying, “Don't shoot! I think it's the plants they eat that lets them live so long!”

“I think it's the water,” Carson said, following his colleague.

“I think it's the smoke they use on the full moons,” Les Cailles said.

Graciella emerged last, and said, “Or that liquor they drink.”

“Which one is true, Dr. Santos?” Dokken demanded.

The other expedition members stared at her, and Santos hesitated, believing even more deeply that if she told the truth, she was dead, that they were all dead.

The scientist stammered, “I don't—”

Fal-até began to screech, not in grief, but in anger. The old shaman woman set Augus's body on the ground, snatched up his spear, and rushed toward the waterfall.

It was only then that Santos saw that the huge white guy was standing by the cliff wall at the back edge of the sacred pool, the shotgun at his side. The second guy was chipping at the wall with a hammer and chisel. The third was in the pool up to his thighs. He wore a snorkeling mask and had his face pressed to the surface of the water.

Dokken raised his pistol, swung it after the old woman, meaning to shoot her in the back. Santos sprang out, knocked his arm, sending his shot wild. The big white guy spun around. Before the Moon God's wife could throw the spear, he pulled the trigger on the shotgun. Fal-até was fifteen yards from him. But the shot threw her backward. She went down, dropping the spear. On the ground, she writhed in agony.

*   *   *

Monarch jumped the last few feet off the tree and landed in a squat. His left shoulder still felt like there were coals smoldering inside it, but the joint was fairly functional and would probably stay fairly functional as long as he kept it moving.

A third shot echoed up out of the canyon.

Why are they shooting? Monarch thought anxiously as he scrambled toward the canyon rim, about thirty-five yards away. He slipped up to a tree, looked over and saw Rousseau, Carson, and their assistants standing in a tight, shaken bunch with two of Dokken's boys holding guns on them.

A few yards away, he could see two bodies and knew that Naspec and Augus were dead. Kiki was close by, injured, but moving. Monarch was completely appalled. Dokken had opened up on essentially unarmed people. Then again, Dokken had done it before.

The thief heard Santos sobbing, and got closer to the edge, seeing the scientist on her knees by the fallen form of the shaman woman. Unwilling to process the grief and guilt that flooded through him, he hardened into combat mode, and his whole world narrowed and got purposeful.

Dokken was behind Santos. With the odd acoustics in the canyon, Monarch heard his every word.

“Didn't have to be like this, Doc,” Dokken said. “All I'm looking for is the truth. So do I shoot another Fred and Wilma, or do you tell me what makes them live so long?”

The scientist slumped, “I swear to God, I don't know why they live so long.”

“Wrong answer!”

“No, wait! I don't know why, but I think I know how they live so long.”

The mercenary squinted at her. “How?”

“It's in their genes. It's like they were programmed for longevity.”

“What about their genes?” Dokken pressed.

Sniffling, hiccupping, wiping away her tears, the scientist got unsteadily to her feet and faced him. In a trembling voice, she said, “Do you know what a telomere is?”

“No.”

“They're specialized proteins that form caps at the ends of chromosomes, which contain our DNA,” she said. “Every time a cell divides via mitosis, the telomeres lose some of their thickness and length, ever so slightly. Many scientists, myself included, believe that aging is a result of the slow decay of telomeres. So when I got their DNA samples, I decided to look at the caps first. And it was just right there, so obvious.

“Their genetic caps are thicker and harder than any I have seen before,” Santos went on. “The Ayafal children exhibit the thickest caps, of course, but even the oldest person here has stronger genetic protection than their counterparts twenty years younger in the outer world.”

“Why?”

“I told you I don't—”

“But you gotta have a theory,” he said. “You scientists all have theories. Does the water make the caps stronger? The plants?”

Santos hesitated, said, “It's just my working hypothesis.”

“Spit it out.”

“There have been studies done where scientists have added an enzyme/protein called telomerase to chromosomes and they've seen some reversal in telomere degeneration,” she said. “I can only speculate that, well, maybe there's something like telomerase in the water or soil and therefore the plants here.”

“Why here?” Dokken pressed.

“I don't know, maybe from the asteroid. But like I said, the evidence of their genetic hardiness is explicit. The rest is just mystery and conjecture.”

Dokken didn't seem to like her answer, but he seemed to accept it because he turned away and yelled at his men, “Watch them. I got a call to—”

There was a cry of joy from the man in the sacred pool. He was holding up a piece of something bright and shiny. “Correa! I've got palladium!

The big slab of a man pivoted. “For sure?”

“Definitely.”

“It's here, too, in the wall,” the other geologist said. “Huge veins of it. I'll bet if you chip away all the charred limestone, we'll have platinum, too. Asteroid had to have been rich with both.”

Correa gazed all around in greed and wonder, and then pulled out a satellite phone from his pocket. “I've got to make a call.”

“Me too,” Dokken said. “Timbo, anyone moves. Kill them.”

Timbo grunted.

Dokken walked into the jungle near the base of the cliff where Monarch could not see him. But he could hear Dokken breaking branches as he struggled to get out of earshot of the clearing. The thief paralleled him along the cliff rim, listening for his movement and then quietly matching them until they were both about seventy-five yards from their prior positions.

Again, because of the odd acoustics, Monarch heard beeping and then Dokken clearly say, “Your thief problem is a thing of the past, and I have the goddamned fountain of youth in hand, and a lot more. It's your call what I do now.”

 

55

IN BEAU ARSENAULT'S UPSTAIRS
office at Twelve Oaks, his security chief listened to a burn phone, and gave the tycoon the thumbs-up.

“Hold on,” Billy Saunders said, hit mute. “My plan B has eliminated Monarch and gotten hold of whatever it is making those cavemen live so long.”

The billionaire walked quickly to his office door, closed it, and locked it, understanding that his initial reaction to this news was mixed. He was pleased that Saunders's plan B had found the secret to the primitive people's longevity, but Arsenault was also pissed that the thief was dead. In his fantasies, he'd been on hand for Monarch's ultimate demise.

“He's sure he's dead?” Arsenault asked.

Saunders posed the question, hit mute again, and said, “He says he's sure.”

“How much did you promise him?” Arsenault said.

“Just what you authorized,” Saunders said. “Six million.”

“I damn well need solid proof before I make that kind of payout.”

“Of course,” his security chief said. “That goes without saying.”

“He has no idea who I am?”

“He has no idea who I really am, so yes.”

“Put him on speaker. I want to hear this.”

Saunders did, said, “Are you still there, Mr. D?”

Though his voice sounded as if it were echoing in from outer space, Dokken said, “That's affirmative.”

“Can you send us a photo of the thief, dead?”

“A photo of the thief, dead? I dunno I—”

“We need a photo or we don't pay out.”

“That's bullshit. You've got my word.”

Arsenault shook his head.

Saunders said, “Send a photo.”

Dokken cleared his throat, said, “It's a pain in the ass, but I'll find the corpse and take a picture. Anything else?”

“What makes them live so long?”

“Their genetics, and this place,” Dokken said, and then explained Santos's theory that the asteroid may have infused the canyon with telomerase. He finished, saying, “And you should know there's another party interested in this place for a whole other reason.”

“We know,” Saunders said. “We formed an alliance with them days ago.”

“Nice of you to tell me you'd agreed to cooperate.”

“It was a last-minute development. What's their interest in that canyon?”

“Palladium. Shitload of it. Maybe platinum, too.”

So that's what Barbosa was after,
Arsenault thought. The mining scum had been evasive about his exact reasons for wanting to find the Canyon of the Moon.

Platinum and palladium.

Arsenault had investments in mines around the world. He knew both precious metals were rare, and in high demand these days. But the really substantial platinum and palladium finds had all been in Africa, Asia, and North America. Up to now, there had never been a mineable discovery of either metal in Central or South America.

He scribbled, “Was it found in copper ore?”

Saunders relayed the question.

“Not that I know of,” Dokken said. “They think it came in on a huge asteroid that hit a limestone ridge here a couple of million years ago. The whole interior of the canyon is black, but you scratch away the charred surface and you see bright shiny metals.”

The billionaire chewed the inside of his lip. Both palladium and platinum were hard to tarnish. It took incredible heat to blacken them, two, three thousand degrees or more. He supposed an asteroid coming into the atmosphere and then crashing into a ridge would generate enough heat to scorch even such lustrous metals.

But how big was the deposit?

He couldn't know that now, and neither could Barbosa. Setting the mining opportunities aside for the moment, he turned his strategic mind to the allegedly long years lived by the savages, and thought: Maybe it's the water. Maybe it's the exotic plant life. Hell, maybe it is the asteroid. The only thing for sure is the genetic proof Santos claims to have.

Several questions popped into his head. He scribbled again and handed the note to Saunders. His security chief said, “How many people are in the tribe?”

“I dunno,” Dokken said. “Fifty? A hundred?”

Arsenault wrote a third time and handed the note over.

“Does the presence of the tribe help or hinder future mining activities?”

After a pause, Dokken said, “Gotta hinder them. This is a restricted zone. No one's supposed to be in here.”

Arsenault hesitated, but then his brain went into overdrive and he saw his best long-term move, which was both plain and ruthless. When it came right down to it, bringing the secrets of a Stone Age tribe's longevity to the masses was like marketing a shirt or dress with more durable fabric. Both were money losers. Mining palladium and platinum with Barbosa, however, looked like a massive winner.

Plain. Ruthless.

With a set jaw, the billionaire made a decision, scribbled the note and gave it to Saunders. His security chief read the words, stared up at Arsenault as if he'd never imagined his boss having this kind of dimension, and mouthed: “Are you sure?”