by Bob Nailor
Edson remembered the Vera Cruz, Paulo, and his new interest on their way to Manaus. His warning to the arrogant UWF group. He didn’t recall seeing any of the foreigners on the launch. “I told them not to mess in things they knew nothing about,” Edson mumbled.
“Who?”
“The UFW expedition to the geoglyphs.” Edson slugged down a couple of swallows of the cold beer. “Ana, the leader, thought she could handle anything the forest threw her way.”
“She and Henry Ford. They all think that, right up to the day they leave bleeding from every orifice.”
“When I was a boy, we lived on a small farm,” Edson began. “We had two dogs. A huge female German Shepherd and a smaller male mongrel; he was as black as the night. The Shepherd ran the place and the mongrel hated it. My father told me not to, but I let the black one sleep under my bed. One morning, I woke up and went outside to piss. My sandals were right in front of the door, ripped to shreds. The Shepherd lay in the dirt a few meters away, staring away from the house. When I came back from the outhouse, my father was waiting next to the sandals. He told me it was a warning. I just laughed. That night, I let the black one sleep under my bed again. The next day, I found him lying in the yard. When I called, he came to me dragging his rear legs. The Shepherd had broken the mongrel’s back. We had to sacrifice him. The sandals were a warning. My father lectured me that it was my fault. I had broken their rules and violated the pack’s hierarchy.” Edson paused to drain his beer. “We found my men at the entrance to the town at the boat launch. Father Bora was laid out on the door to the rectory. Maybe all of this is a warning. To leave alone what should remain hidden.” Edson’s face was serious, yet thinly veiled with a dose of fear.
“We had dogs, too,” Fábio said. “I had a little sausage mutt. The smartest little thing you’ve ever seen. She ran the place. My father brought home a female Fila, one of the big ones. It was the size of a pony. The two fought for control from the first minute. It wasn’t two days before the Fila walked up to us with the little one in her mouth, dead, and limp as a piece of spaghetti. Neck broken clean. She lay in front of us with the little one in her mouth and stared straight ahead. When we tried to get it out of her mouth, she’d let out a growl straight from Hell.”
“What did your father do?” Edson asked.
“He went into the house and came back plugging ammo into his old .38 revolver. He shot the Fila in the head and burned her body. Then he buried the little sausage dog in the yard with a tiny cross.” The doctor stood to leave. “Look, I’m going to sleep. Then I’m going fishing. When I get back, we need to work up a plan.” He narrowed his look at Edson. “Or, more people are going to die.” He was out the door as fast as he had arrived.
“One thing, Doctor Fábio.” Edson stood at the door, a light breeze swirling near him. “Next time? Leave some of the good stuff for me.” Fábio reached back and handed him a closed cigarette box with a faint dusting of white powder on one side. “I don’t smoke,” Edson said.
“Neither do I,” replied the doctor and shoved the box under Edson’s armpit, turned, and stumbled toward home.
Edson was up early and charged off to radio his Marine colleagues. The cigarette box helped. They pulled in with a fast patrol boat while the town was still in bed. Only the fishermen chattered on the docks as they delivered their nightly catch to the stalls in the market.
Edson saw Fábio’s usual spot to tie up his fishing boat was empty. Like most men, he enjoyed the river, both on its surface and at his dinner table. Unlike the others, however, his boat was the right one for handling the Acre River. It had only a few inches of draft and was equipped with both sonar and radar. Depending on the season and the weather, the Acre could change almost overnight. Sand bars, invisible to the eye, sprung up with the rush of tropical rains. Submerged logs popped holes in the old wooden boats like a pencil in a balloon. When Fábio went out, he was as safe as anyone in the Amazon.
The Navy craft was state-of-the-art. Twin Scania diesels pushed it up to fifty knots, if necessary. The rivers that fed the Amazon drained from four countries that supplied most of the world with the cocoa. Nothing could outrun this boat.
They let the engines rumble upstream as the sun slipped up over the horizon. The vegetation crept to the water, trees casting long shadows over its flow. They saw Fábio’s craft anchored in the darkness, among the giant water lilies known as Victoria Regis. He was fishing for tambaqui, fifty pounds of succulent meat. Edson served the ribs like a French rack of lamb. They cut the engines to say hello.
Fábio was deep in the Victoria Regis which made it impossible for the naval craft to pull alongside. The birds were just beginning to dip in for their breakfasts. Dragonflies the size of a man’s palm zipped between the broad, green pads, alighting here and there.
“Doctor,” Edson called out. “Any luck this morning?” The craft was quiet. On a closer look, he couldn’t see an anchor.
“Hand me a line,” Edson called to the Marines. It took him three tries to lasso a cleat on the deck. Together, they pulled the boat out of the vegetation.
On the deck flopped a sixty-pound fish with a hook in its mouth. Next to the rod, tossed on the deck, were a pair of flip flops, a wallet, and Fábio’s glasses. There was no sign of the doctor.
“Something’s wrong,” Edson snapped. “Fábio couldn’t find his dick in a whore house without his glasses.” Edson grabbed the wallet. ID, credit cards and cash were all in place.
“Look,” called one of the Marines. A flurry of activity in the water a dozen meters away had caught his attention. They cut their engines and drifted toward the swirling surface. A school of piranhas was feeding. Edson found himself suddenly sprouting goosebumps. He grabbed a hook from the gunwale and fished for the school’s breakfast.
The bones that had once been Fábio’s hand broke the surface of the water first, followed by a shredded arm. The piranhas kept up their attack until his corpse was in the boat, some jumping after his stripped legs as they slipped out of the river. The identification would have to be dental.
“Merde,” Edson moaned. “No one knew the river better than Fábio. No one was safer.”
“And no one is deader,” the Marine captain replied as they shoveled the mess into a rubber body bag. They watched the youngest of the Marines pull away in Fábio’s boat; the fish and the body bag, lying quietly on the decks.
“Where are you going?” Edson asked when the captain turned back toward the city.
“To Boca,” he replied.
“Not so fast,” Edson said, his eyes fixed upstream in the direction of the geoglyphs. “We’ve got one more stop first.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
EL DORADO
Ana stumbled along behind a woman who was at least as old as her mother. She considered herself to be in good shape, but could barely keep up with the old woman’s punishing pace. The flickering torchlight blinded her in the darkness, causing her to trip every few minutes. Hmm, The Long Walk, she thought. Just how long is long?
“Where the hell are they taking us?” Nancy whined somewhere behind her. “Are we going to hike all night?”
“Hush,” Neville mumbled.
Nancy’s questions rushed through Ana’s mind as well. Itotia hadn’t even hinted at where they were going. For all she knew, they could be hiking in a circle just a few feet inside the jungle from the embankment, but she knew better. Everything inside the embanked area had been torched, even now she knew the flames had died down with only a few logs burning to smoke the area. One consolation, Ana thought, the fire drove the bugs back into the forest.
Suddenly, the ground sloped downward and Ana could see a light ahead. The terrain seemed different than anything they had seen. Beyond the shadows dancing in the torchlight, she could make out something white. Now, she wanted to walk faster, to get to whatever the destination was. Ana wondered how long they had walked. She looked at her watch but couldn’t make out the face in the darkness surrounding her. P
lus, she had to be ever watchful for a back-snapping leaf or branch from the woman ahead of her. After the third slap attack by a large leaf, Ana learned to hold a hand up near her face to keep from getting hit when the woman ahead of her let a branch snap back. She thought perhaps it was an induction, but realized she wasn’t a participant in the ceremony, only a watcher. The jungle growth broke and Ana saw clearly what lay before them. White walls flickered in the roaring bonfires and towers capped with glittering gold gleamed in the moonlight. It took her breath away.
“My God!” Nancy said. “How can this exist and nobody sees it?” She moved to stand up beside Ana. “Do you see what I am looking at?”
A fist of terror clawed at Ana’s gut. “If there is a lake inside,” she murmured, “then this is where our dream took place.”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Aaron whispered and crossed himself. “Are we dreaming again? Is this a group hallucination?”
“I’ve got to get a shot of this,” Wayne said. He held his cell phone up and snapped a shot. In an instant, the device was gone and only a whistle of the arrow passing through the air could prove it had ever existed. “Holy shit!” Wayne screamed. “That was close.” He stood there rubbing his fingers together where feathers had whizzed through
“Their accuracy is phenomenal,” Neville whispered, pointing to a tree fifty feet away. “It appears your phone is securely impaled over there.” At the foot of the expanse of white wall blazed a bonfire, smaller than from the previous ritual one. A dozen natives, as white as their queen, stood awaiting their arrival, tall and proud in the dancing flames. To one side, next to her gleaming litter, stood Itotia with her four male attendants kneeled behind her, their heads bowed. To her other side stood the night’s initiates, Tinga and Janiza, facing away from the fire.
The old woman led Ana and her group to their spot around the fire. For long minutes they stood silently while pairs of glowing red eyes watched their every move, intense and angry in the darkness.
“The Long Walk is finished,” Itotia said. Their heads snapped in her direction to see her men again filing toward them with ceremonial gourds.
Ana could smell the scent of the ayahuasca-like liquid as they approached, more pungent and powerful than before. She trembled as her server stopped before her. This time she took the bowl eagerly, thinking only of the oneness she longed to share with the tall, white women waiting around the fire. She tilted her head back to let the familiar fluid tumble down her welcoming throat. She closed her eyes as the aroma of berries rushed into her head. She breathed in the scent even more deeply and her head began to swim in color and sensation.
In the back of her mind, Ana heard distant drums begin their primal ritual cadence. The natives around the fire began a low chant in words even she did not understand. When she opened her eyes, she saw them moving together in a sensual rhythm, their hips writhing together in the rhythm of fertility. The sky, still studded with stars, glittered like huge diamonds. In place of the endless black expanse of space, deep greens and blues flooded her being with awareness and unity with everyone around her. The five stars of the Southern Cross glowed in pulsing yellow, seemingly swimming in the sea of color. She watched her team through groggy, half-open eyes. Nancy’s eyes were closed, but her body swayed with the beat of drums about them. Aaron stood ten feet away, and he, too, was staring out toward the flames and the circle of unclad women with an unmistakably male grin on his face.
Tinga or Janiza stood with Itotia, tall and proud, but their eyes stared out into the dark of the forest beyond the fire. The two young women seemed not even to see the celebration in front of them.
Ana spotted Neville. He sat with Moema huddled close within his arm. There was a slight indication of fear in her eyes. Ana wondered if she was properly reading Moema; maybe it wasn’t fear, but wonder. Ana shrugged and let the thought drift to nothingness.
Aaron walked slowly to Ana’s side. “What do you think? Are those the towers you saw in your visions?” He nodded to the building in the distance.
“They are, but when I saw them, they were inside something else, like a cave of some sort.”
Aaron leaned over to Ana. “Me, too.” He gazed at the white-walled structures. “How do you hide something of this size? I realize this is the Amazon jungle, but still...white? And I’m taking a wild guess here, I think those roofs are covered in gold.”
They stood together in silence, watching the sinuous dance. Once more, native men were absent, except for Itotia’s attendants.
Itotia raised her hands silently. The women immediately stopped their movement and turned their full attention to her.
Aaron leaned over to Ana. “I wonder what kind whoop-de-doo they throw when a young man passes into manhood and becomes a warrior?” He smiled. “That would have to be one hell of a bar mitzvah.”
Itotia stopped and turned to glare at Aaron. She held his gaze, burning the sensation into his very being. He hung his head and stared at the dirt beneath his feet. Itotia once more stared into the darkness.
“Tonight, Tinga and Janiza become women,” she said in Portuguese. “They will celebrate the most ancient of all customs, the joining of a man and woman together. Ejup awaits to share their joy, and tonight, he has a special addition.” Itotia paused, gazed knowingly at Ana then looked at the two young women. “Let us proceed to the celebration of the Eye of Knowledge. Your chosen await your return in preparation for the feast.” Both young women remained motionless and continued to stare into the darkness beyond the fire’s light.
Chosen, Ana thought then gazed at Aaron, her eyes searching his face for the answer she didn’t have. Why did she look at me when she announced the special addition? Am I to become part of the tribe tonight?
“Ejup beckons,” Itotia said, turned, and lead the two women toward the castle.
“Sounds like we’re going to have another meal,” Aaron said. “Any idea what an Ejup is?”
“Will you be quiet!” Ana whispered quickly realizing the moment she’d sought had passed. “I thought you’d learned your lesson earlier. Now hush.”
“Just look at that,” Aaron continued, his face enlivened with drug-induced silliness. “How can such a thing exist here? Look at the baroque details.” He stumbled in the darkness and clumsily fell to one knee. “Drat!” he snapped and stood again, now well behind everyone else. His gaze stayed fixed on the gleaming white structures and he continued to mumble. “Some of those designs are pre-Inca. It’s so lavish.”
“Be quiet,” Ana commanded.
“Ow!” Aaron cried and reached for the spot on his neck where something had penetrated his skin. A small barb projected from his neck, just above the collar. He staggered and collapsed to the side of the path.
Ana continued with the others, relieved Aaron had finally shut up.
Chapter Twenty-Six
A MEETING IN MECHELEN
Gianni Rossi sighed impatiently in the back seat of the Mercedes as its four high-speed Michelins roared over the cobblestones, their growl disturbing the late morning calm of Mechelen, the picturesque Flemish village nestled in the countryside between Brussels and Antwerp. The Renaissance streets and sidewalks were paved right up to the walls of the buildings lining the narrow street, leaving weeds without a crack to grow. The limousine made the drive from the Brussels airport in less time than the Gulfstream had spent circling in the morning air traffic. He was fed up with airplanes for the foreseeable future.
The Belgian city of Mechelen had had her moment of fame in the late fifteenth century when Margaret of Austria chose the village for her capital. She’d built a tasteful Renaissance palace to raise her ten-year-old nephew who would grow to become Charles the Fifth, Emperor. As she laid out the foundation, an envoy from Pope Pius the Third slipped her architect a note requesting a small portion of the building. The simple structure was to be constructed to the envoy’s exacting specifications. She agreed with a simple nod of her head. She never entered the space, nor even knew the
details of its function. When young Charles asked what went on inside, she simply answered, “Important things, child.”
The ornately carved wooden door bore the inscription “1446” above the lintel. It wasn’t close to being the oldest in the neighborhood. When the driver opened the rear door of the Mercedes, Rossi could see that two more S-Class limousines bearing consular corps license plates were already parked on the street barely wide enough for a horse and buggy.
Rossi stretched his legs in the freezing drizzle. It had been years since he’d last visited the ivy-encrusted mini-fortress. He was about to pull the ancient bell-ringer when the entry opened. A cleric wearing a full cassock stood by the door, barefoot in the bone-chilling air. “Ah, Signore Rossi, the others are waiting,” he said in a strong Irish accent. The belt and trim were a deep burgundy, darker than blood.
The foyer was stone from the floor to the ceiling. Ancient beams bearing the tool marks of medieval craftsmen spanned the long, Spartan space between the entry and a staircase, again of stone. As the four-inch-thick door shut behind him, the priest fit a timber hewn from the same wood into hand-forged iron brackets on the rear of the door. A battle tank would have to demolish the entire wall to gain entry.
They ascended the round staircase in a slight trot, a bit too quick for Rossi’s taste. He lost track of the number of floors they passed after the fifth floor. Finally, they burst onto the last landing where a massive round table dominated the nearly square room. It seemed even older than the hand-hewn timbers supporting the parquet floor on which it rested. In the exact center of the table was inlaid the Greek letter “tau” in bronze, that dull-golden earthy color of ancient bells and cannon.