by John Koloen
And then his phone rang. Carolyn McKenzie was calling. He stared at his phone in puzzlement. He hadn’t spoken with her since he’d left the company. This can’t be good, he thought.
“Hello, Carolyn,” he said with forced heartiness. “How are you?”
“Oh, Dr. Duncan, I’m a wreck. Cody was supposed to call me yesterday. He was supposed to be on his way back home. Something’s gone wrong and the company won’t talk to me. I don’t know what to do.”
“You tried to call Cody?”
“Like a million times. I know there’s no cellphone service where he went but we had everything planned so that he’d call me as soon as he got someplace with a signal and that was supposed to be two days ago and still nothing. I even called his satellite phone, which he told me never to do, and got nothing. I’m so scared. I told him it was a bad idea to go but he’s so stubborn.”
It didn’t take long for Duncan’s frame of reference to pivot from airline bookings to concern for his friend and former assistant. He’d had doubts about the young man’s expedition but could understand why Boyd agreed to do it. In a similar circumstance, he might have done the same. Who knows but if it weren’t for his girlfriend’s millions that he might have been tempted to have taken on the assignment, especially if it meant getting a big payout from Biodynamism? McKenzie didn’t care about the money. She liked the idea of paying off her husband’s student loans and having a down payment on a house, but she was now filled with guilt for having acquiesced to his plans.
Not a warm and fuzzy guy, Duncan was uncertain what to say at first. He heard the anguish in her voice. The regret. And it made him uncomfortable. It was not how he would have reacted. Certainly, he would have responded emotionally at the outset, but within minutes he would have started to find a solution to the problem. But thanks to Maggie’s influence, he was becoming more sensitive to the feelings of others and accepted the fact that not everyone was as rational as he was, though he believed the world would be a better place if more people were. As a scientist, he followed the evidence wherever it led. It was a process that defined his personality, made him seem coldhearted to some but was the basis for whatever success he had achieved in his life and former profession.
“So, what do you want me to do?” he said abruptly, hoping to refocus McKenzie on something more helpful than self-recriminations.
“I want you to find Cody. I want you to bring him home.”
56
Duncan wasn’t sure whether he’d done the right thing. He wasn’t certain whether he was trying to put her off. Or would he really wait two more days just so she could exhaust all of her options and he could return to America with a clear conscience? It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help. He did. He just couldn’t see how he was qualified to do so. He wasn’t an adventurer. He’d faced death twice and he didn’t want to tempt fate a third time. However, he was the world’s leading authority on Reptilus blaberus and was perhaps the only person who understood their group dynamics and behaviors. He’d watch them hunt in the lab. He saw how they worked in groups. He’d made detailed notes about their social structure.
Despite his reservations, he was certain that, were the situation reversed, Boyd would do whatever he could to help. However, he shouldn’t even be in Brazil. He’d expected at most a three-day stay, not the nearly monthlong ordeal that it had become. And now that he was free to leave, his past reached out to pull him back. Why didn’t he just tell her no? Why was that so hard? Posing the questions in this way, he realized he had no choice. Aside from Maggie, he could think of no one other than Boyd that he valued more. He’d stood with him through the worst of times, risked his life without complaint or expectation of reward, all in the name of personal loyalty. There was no escaping it—he was duty-bound to help his friend and he knew he couldn’t hide from it.
At the same time, he dreaded calling Maggie. What could he say to appease her longing for him? As much as Carolyn wanted his help, Maggie wanted him to return to Chicago. They’d talked often during his exile in Brazil. He couldn’t count the number of times he promised to return at the first opportunity, and here it was, and he struggled over what he could tell her that wouldn’t sound like a lie or a betrayal. He couldn’t think of a way to sugarcoat it. He couldn’t think of a way to make it sound that she was more important to him than a former assistant. Framed in those terms, his actions would speak louder than his words.
He’d arranged to call her as soon as he knew his flight itinerary. And if he didn’t call her, she would call him and she wouldn’t wait all day. All he could do now was to delay the inevitable as he extended his hotel stay and hoped that Carolyn was able to contact her husband.
57
Duncan didn’t answer the first time Maggie called. Listening to her voicemail only made things worse. Focusing mostly on his problems, he hadn’t realized how his absence had affected her. Now that he was supposed to be headed home, now that the ordeal seemed to be over, there was such joy in her voice that returning her call seemed cruel. But there was no escaping it. Either he told her the truth, risking everything, or lie to her about what he had told McKenzie, extending his stay by two days, after which he expected to be on his way and he could put everything behind him with Maggie never knowing what he’d done.
So he sat in his room rehearsing excuses, every one of which he discarded as improbable. He couldn’t use money as an excuse, not with a wealthy girlfriend. Besides, the excuse needed to last two days. If only he hadn’t called her immediately after receiving his passport. That set everything in motion. There was nothing else to hold him back, except perhaps if his wallet had been stolen. He would have to file a report and wait for a temporary credit card to be issued. This was plausible. Muggings and robberies were common in Manaus. But it was the kind of lie that could fall apart with a few simple questions. While Maggie might accept it, George Hamel would be suspicious.
And what if Carolyn didn’t find the support from the company that she hoped for? Another plausible lie was to feign food poisoning. That would be worth a couple of days. But it all hinged on Carolyn. It just seemed that by lying now he’d only be setting himself to fabricate a bigger lie or finally admit to his lover that he’d lied to her and couldn’t be trusted.
No, he owed Maggie the truth no matter the consequences. He tried to gain control of the conversation from the start, hoping to ease gently into the unpleasantness he dreaded. But she wasn’t laboring under a cloud of ambiguity. It was all good.
“What’s your flight number?” she asked out of the gate.
“I’m still looking,” he said, lamely.
“What?”
He sighed. The jig was up before it started.
“I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just say it. Cody Boyd is in trouble and I may have to help him.”
The connection filled with static. Had she hung up?
“I don’t understand,” she said at length, her voice losing its warmth.
“I don’t know what to say. He’s lost in the wilderness. I told you he was down here looking for Reptilus, didn’t I?”
“You mentioned something about it, yes,” she said coldly.
“Good. Well, he didn’t show up for a rendezvous and, well, I feel obligated. You know what I mean?”
Maggie didn’t respond immediately. Things had changed so quickly and unexpectedly that she needed a moment to collect her thoughts.
“I’m not sure if I know what you mean,” she said. “I don’t understand why you have to be involved.”
“He’s my friend, maybe my only true friend, besides you,” Duncan said. “He risked his life for me.”
“And so you have to risk your life for him?”
“Yes. No. I mean, that’s not it. I’m not planning to risk my life. I can’t just walk away from him, any more than I could just walk away from you. I wish I could explain it better.”
“I wish you could, too,” she said. “But it isn’t the job of the people who sent him
there to find him? You’re not even involved. Why you and not them?”
Duncan leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling as if he would find the answer to her question there.
“They might. That’s what his wife is trying to find out, but she’s had a hard time getting through to them. I told you what assholes they are,” he said, adding quickly, “for lack of a better word.”
He knew she despised vulgarities but he couldn’t help himself. The more he talked, the more impassioned he became. At a certain point he couldn’t tell whether he was trying to convince her or himself.
“Why two days?”
“That’s what she said she needed. I don’t know. I didn’t ask why.”
“This is just not working out the way I thought it would,” she said, dejectedly. “The way you said it would. This is really depressing to me. I understand how you feel about Cody, but—”
“Look, honey, I might not have to do anything. Carolyn knows she’s got two days and that’s it because I’m leaving after that. I’m hoping the company will do the right thing. And if it makes you happy, I’ll buy a ticket today. I’ll email my itinerary.”
“Okay,” she said, unconvinced. “I’ll feel a lot better when you get on that plane.”
“Me too. Nothing would make me happier.”
58
Nothing had gone the way Boyd had planned. He didn’t trust Braga, and finding evidence of the Reptilus colony, instead of instilling confidence in his companions, had had the opposite effect. After finding the remains of the miner it was no large leap to see themselves in his place. What Cooper and Harden knew of the insects in the wild came from Duncan’s somewhat overwrought book. It was obvious that Braga didn’t want them around and he was armed and they weren’t. Harden had updated his risk-reward calculations. The body and Braga changed everything for him. And he had Cooper’s ear. Fear had overcome their enthusiasm and as he lay awake in the tent Boyd thought about what he could say that would change Harden’s mind. Dismissing his fear was pointless. He could in fact be right. What might work was to fight one emotion with another, see if greed would overwhelm his fear. If all else failed and Harden indeed was prepared to leave in the morning, Boyd would offer each of his companions extra money to remain. But to avoid revealing that the money would come from his quarter-million, he’d fake a satellite call, make it seem that the company offered the money. He realized his deception would last only until they returned to the States but by then it wouldn’t matter. He’d pay them and still have plenty for himself. He hated being so devious mostly because he knew how Carolyn would react if she found out about it. But that was about the future. The money was about now.
Coming up with a plan that at least on the surface made sense was a relief. He hadn’t thought it farther out than the next morning but it was enough to relieve his anxiety so that he could sleep. He was exhausted. The expedition had caught up with him. Sleepless nights, fretful days, the humidity and heat took their toll and finally, because he thought he had things covered, he allowed himself to crash.
It probably didn’t matter that he’d found a path to deep sleep. There was nothing he could have done had he been wide awake. There were only three of them in the tent. It was dark and they were surrounded by men carrying machetes who treated them roughly, pulling them out of the tent by their ankles.
“Cale-se, cale-se,” the men shouted repeatedly, though it seemed they were the ones making most of the noise. Disoriented by the stroboscopically bobbing headlamps and fatigue, the Americans put up little resistance.
“What are they saying?” Harden said, his wrists bound behind his back with a zip tie.
“Shut up,” Boyd whispered.
“Don’t tell me to shut up,” Harden said indignantly.
“That’s what they’re saying. Shut up.”
“Oh.”
Boyd had yet to fully awake as he and the others stumbled in the darkness toward an uncertain fate.
“Why are they doing this?” Cooper whispered.
“They’re gonna kill us,” Harden angrily whispered to Boyd. “I knew it. We shoulda got out yesterday. I blame you for talking us out of it.”
Boyd refrained from defending himself. How could he have known? Suspicions weren’t facts. Just because Harden had doubts didn’t mean he was right though, in this case, it turned out he was.
59
Josias heard the miners approach and stealthily lowered himself from his hammock, hiding in the bush, watching the beams of light as they clustered around the tent. He’d thought about intervening but there were too many of them armed, like him, with machetes. Their voices were angry and he understood the threats they made in Portuguese even if the Americans didn’t. So he watched as the prisoners were led away, following them from a distance, risking exposure in the sand and gravel riverbed, a mere shadow in the enveloping darkness, and then finding a perch among the trees on the edge of the riverbed facing the campsite, which was seemingly lit by every kerosene lamp and headlamp and flashlight within fifty miles, the miners all awake and surrounding the Americans sitting cross-legged in the sand while their boss, Fernando Braga, approached, patting his holstered sidearm and barking orders that Boyd parsed to the extent of his fluency, nodding in agreement when Cooper whispered, “We’re shit out of luck.”
“Why are they doing this?” Harden asked, his eyes darting with every movement by the captors.
“I don’t know,” Boyd said, trying to frame the question in Portuguese so that he could ask it. But his brain wasn’t cooperating. He couldn’t calm himself, the situation being so unexpected that he was still grappling with what had happened. What had he said, what had they done to deserve this?
“Why are you doing this?” he said uncertainly in Portuguese. It was a simple sentence but he wasn’t certain the words had come out in the right order.
“Say it louder,” Cooper said when Braga didn’t respond.
One of the miners directed a threatening gesture with his machete at Boyd. The captives recoiled as if the threat had been aimed at each of them.
Octavio Grimaldi, the cook, spoke with Braga and approached the Americans, gesturing with his arms for the miners to give the captives breathing room. They looked at Braga, who nodded his approval. Grimaldi squatted so that he was at eye level with the captives, who squinted against the lights shining in their faces. He said something to the miners and they directed their lights at the ground.
“That’s better, don’t you think?” he said.
“Why are you doing this?” Harden blurted. “What have we done?”
“Senhor Braga thinks you were sent here to disrupt our mining operation. He thinks you are trying to scare the men with your insetos and he wants to know if you are working for the government or a rival.”
Harden beat Boyd to the punch.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said furiously. “We didn’t know you were here until we got here.”
“Well, that’s what you say,” the cook said as he rose and stepped away to confer with Braga.
It didn’t take a degree in Portuguese to translate Braga’s stony expression.
60
No one who knew him would accuse Duncan of being a patient man. After several weeks in Manaus, he’d taken in all the sights he wanted to see, had spent too much time in the hotel bar and now was forced to extend his frustration two more days before he would finally be free to leave and never return.
Almost immediately, he bought a ticket to Chicago, choosing a flight that included eighteen hours of layovers and two stops. It wasn’t the quickest route but it was one of the earliest and it had the advantage of arriving at mid-day. He did it as a matter of faith and to demonstrate his intentions so that Maggie would have little reason to doubt him.
“Loving it,” Maggie texted in response.
The more he thought about his conversation with Carolyn, the more he wanted to call her. Questions kept popping up, questions he hadn’t thought of asking when they
talked, such as why she expected the company to be more forthcoming when it had already slammed the door on her. How was she going to do that? Go to the media? Post something online? Was that even a good idea knowing that Biodynamism wouldn’t hesitate to defy international law if it was in their interest to do so? The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to know until it got to the point that he phoned her. The call went to voicemail. The mailbox was full so he couldn’t leave a message, which irritated him to no end, though it was something he was guilty of as well. During his final years in academia it was Cody Boyd who monitored Duncan’s voicemail when the professor couldn’t be bothered with it, which was most of the time.
He didn’t want to appear desperate so he waited several hours before calling again only to achieve the same result. A third try in the evening ended with him bouncing the phone off his bed in such a way that it slammed into the headboard, which he immediately regretted. Grateful that the phone hadn’t been damaged, he self-medicated in the hotel bar until he’d reached the point that he knew what would come next if he continued. He had just enough sobriety left to make it to his room and stumble into his bed where he spent a dreamless night in his street clothes, waking with a headache and slight case of nausea or indigestion, he couldn’t tell which.
Disappointed that she hadn’t returned his calls—surely she would have seen that he called even though he wasn’t able to leave a message—he couldn’t think of any reason why she would be treating him this way. After all, it was she who needed his help, not the other way around. Either she was ignoring him or something else was going on. His concern for Cody was fading into the background, supplanted by his suspicions about what Carolyn was up to.