by Aaron Elkins
In most respects they were like anybody else’s feet; a bit broader across the sole perhaps, and more callused, but not all that different, generally speaking. But the big toes were another thing entirely, twice the size of normal big toes — three inches long, at least, and proportionately thick. Moreover, they were splayed outward at an incredible angle, very nearly a right angle, from the rest of the toes. This was a deformity not unknown in the modern world. Hallux varus it was called, and you saw it once in a while, usually as the result of a botched operation for bunions, although it could also show up as a congenital deformity. Three-million-year-old footprints in Africa showed that it was nothing new in the human condition. But to see three sets of them at once… !
Clearly, the huge, muscular, near-prehensile appendages would permit their owners to easily clasp two-or-three-inch-thick branches between their toes and give them a far more secure grip on branches that were larger. “Real tree climbers,” in Vargas’s words, these people were what the old explorers called “arboreal dwellers,” thinking that they pretty much lived in the trees. Whether the condition was genetic in these cases, or rather the result of behavioral adaptation, was unknown then and unknown now. There had been argument, in fact, among the learned professors of the nineteenth century, as to whether they were humans at all, or some kind of tree apes. Well, they were indisputably human, all right, and here they were, alive and well, in the middle of the Amazon, in the twenty-first century!
For a very little while, his extreme gratification at seeing them for himself and his similarly extreme regret at not having a camera with him were his uppermost thoughts, but others soon enough intruded. Where were they going, and why? How would they possibly get back? Would they be permitted to come back? But within an hour — it seemed like five, but the sun had barely moved and wasn’t yet directly overhead — even those concerns about the future had been driven from his mind by the present, by the nightmarish immediacy of the trek itself. The jungle they were slogging through — the Indians so effortlessly, so sweatlessly, the two white men stumbling and cursing at the thorns and bugs — was nothing like what they’d been in during the last two days. This was not Scofield’s “awe-inspiring” virgin rain forest, but second- or third-growth, scrabbly and wretched in the extreme, not mature enough yet to have created its own high, protective canopy. It was all thorns, mud, brambles, ankle-grabbing ground vines, mosquitoes, and terribly persistent clouds of vicious, biting, black flies. And except for the occasional blessed patch of shade from a quick-growing ceiba tree or banana bush, all of it in the roasting, shriveling heat of the sun.
Once they had to cross a small, fast-running green river on a “bridge” consisting of a section of an old, rotting tree trunk, twenty feet long and slimy with algae. The first Arimagua trotted easily across — those toes were prehensile, a marveling Gideon observed; he could see how they clutched the curving, slippery surface and pushed off from it — and turned, beckoning with his shotgun. A motion from Split-nose’s gun encouraged Vargas onto the log, on which he managed two wavering steps before losing his balance and tipping over, arms swinging, to plunge backside first into the river, which was fortunately only about four feet deep.
The rest of his crossing was accomplished in the water alongside the log, with a muttering Vargas holding on to it for balance, to the indescribable mirth of the three Indians, who were clutching their sides with laughter. There was nothing particularly mean about it, it seemed to Gideon; nothing contemptuous or cruel. They just plain found it absolutely hilarious. Vargas, still grumbling, climbed onto the opposite shore and shook himself like a dog.
Gideon’s turn. The Indians looked at him with the obvious anticipation of more good fun. Well, I’m going to disappoint you, he vowed. I am not going to fall in. But in his heart he knew he would. And did, although he managed four whole steps before it happened. Only whereas Vargas had keeled over in a slow, relatively stately manner, like a toppling tree, Gideon’s feet went out from under him on the slick log, setting them into a frantic pedaling while he fought to keep his balance. It was like something out of a Charlie Chaplin movie, and the Arimaguas were convulsed even before he hit the water, flat on his back and hard. Like Vargas, he had to go the rest of the way up to his armpits in the river, with the remaining two Indians jogging easily across the log to beat him to the other side, still chuckling.
“If I had toes like yours, I could do it too,” he griped up at them in English, bringing more gales of merriment, so artless and happy that they even forced a smile from Gideon. Well, anyway, it’s cooled me off, he thought.
But a few minutes later, all five of them were wriggling and slapping at themselves like a whole crowd of Charlie Chaplins that had blundered into a hornet’s nest, and nobody was laughing. They had apparently disturbed a colony of fire ants, and with astonishing speed thousands of the ferocious, minuscule insects had charged out of their mound a few yards away. These were tiny creatures, half the size of the fire ants of the American South, and their sting, Gideon quickly learned, was more itch than pain, but itch of a truly excruciating intensity. Back to the river they ran to plunge in and get rid of the things.
“Don’t worry,” a grimacing, panting Vargas told him as they vigorously scrubbed themselves. “The itch, it doesn’t last long if you don’t have too many bites.”
“No talk,” growled Split-nose, who had never let go of his gun, and whose cool good humor had been severely strained by the ants. “Vamonos.” Let’s go.
In what Gideon estimated was another hour’s tough trekking they reached a second, larger river and turned left along it. They were back in virgin jungle here, with a welcome green canopy overhead to shield them from the sun. There was even a recognizable path, with no brambles to tear at their bloodied legs (the Indians’ legs showed plenty of old scars, but not a single fresh wound), and the Arimaguas speeded up the pace. With the increase in humidity, Vargas’s glasses immediately steamed up so much that he had to take them off.
After a while they came to a squalid riverside settlement of tarpaper, tin-roofed shacks, ugly, concrete-block houses, and mud streets “paved” with planks here and there over the worst of the potholes. An occasional swaybacked, dejected horse stood tethered to a wooden post, its head hanging. The few surly, furtive, unshaven men they passed didn’t bother to look twice at them. Apparently, there was nothing unusual about the sight of two filthy, bloody white men being practically frog-marched down the street by a gang of gun-toting Arimaguas.
At the riverfront there was a small, primitive pier, and at the head of it was a wooden shanty, a jungle cantina, into which Vargas and Gideon were marched. Inside there was a plank counter, behind which were a few crooked shelves holding bottles, cans, and glasses, an ancient refrigerator with a clanking old generator, and an even more ancient woman, milky-eyed and toothless, chewing on her gums, who watched them come with no sign of interest. The Arimaguas immediately went to her, asked for and got Inca Kolas, and retreated with them to a wall, at the base of which they squatted, their shotguns propped upright between their knees. Gideon and Vargas were left standing in the middle of the room.
There were three rectangular, battered, extremely dirty tables — stains, crumbs, empty, toppled beer bottles, used glasses — with five or six old cane chairs around each. The nearer tables were unoccupied. At the farthest one sat four decidedly rough-looking men, the sole occupants of the bar other than the old lady. All of them were smoking cigarettes. Two of the three had rifles leaning up against the table at their sides. Another had a revolver in a shoulder holster, and the fourth appeared to be unarmed. The table held three brown bottles of beer, a clear, half-empty bottle of what looked like aguardiente — there was no label — a crumpled blue pack of cigarettes, and four stubby, thick-bottomed tumblers. All the place needed to look like the bandido’s hideaway to end all bandido’s hideaways were some cartridge belts slung over the chair backs.
Three of the men raised their heads to look spec
ulatively — amusedly? — at the newcomers. The fourth didn’t turn, remaining as he sat partially facing away from them — purposely facing away, it seemed — very relaxed in his tipped-back chair, one hand loosely hanging, a cigarette between his fingers, and the other hand apparently tapping his knee under the table, slowly, appraisingly, as if he were considering the pros and cons of some difficult issue.
The boss, Gideon knew instantly.
This was confirmed when, with a tip of his head, he sent the other three to another table, taking their guns and their beers with them. They sat down, also watching. The boss man simply continued his contemplative smoking and knee tapping. He had yet to look at the newcomers, let alone acknowledge their presence.
Thirty seconds of this — of standing there filthy and parched and edgy and uncertain, waiting for who knew what — was enough to snap Vargas’s fragile self-restraint.
He stepped forward. “Señor—”
“Shut up,” the man said offhandedly in Spanish, and now he turned fully toward them, ground out his cigarette on the tabletop, dropped the butt on the floor, and brought his hand up from under the table. In it was a lovingly polished stainless steel knife that he laid in front of him with care, aligning it so that it was at a right angle to the table’s edge. But this was no ordinary knife, this was a Rambo knife, a Crocodile Dundee knife, a foot long, with an olive-drab handle and a broad, heavy, faintly scimitar-shaped blade, saw-toothed on top, that curved upward to a vicious hooked point. Gideon had seen a knife like this before. He even knew what it was called: a Krug Assegai combat knife. It had been used in the most horrific homicide that it had ever been his misfortune on which to consult.
We’re going to be killed, he knew with sudden, cold certainty. We’ve been brought here to be murdered. Murdered and carved up, not even necessarily in that order.
The man was watching from under lowered lids to see their reaction to the weapon, and he must have loved Vargas’s. The captain’s eyes bugged out, his mouth popped open and then closed with a click as his teeth snapped together, and he took a stuttering step back.
Gideon was determined to provide no similar satisfaction. Swallowing down the seeming ball of cotton that had suddenly clogged his throat and crossing his arms to make sure his hands didn’t tremble, he said in Spanish: “We could use some water.”
“Oh, they could use some water,” the man said, grinning, and there was some low chuckling from the other table. “Sure. Why not?” He called out a command to the old woman. As with so many other people in this part of the world, his teeth were in wretched condition, some of them nothing more than yellow nubbins barely protruding from his gums.
“Señor, I don’t know what this is about…” Vargas said pitiably, practically wringing his hands. If he’d had a forelock, he would have been tugging on it. “But I assure you, there has been a misunderstanding of some—”
“I told you once to shut up,” he was told. “I’ll deal with you later. Right now, I want to talk to the professor.”
That came as a shock to Gideon. How did he know I was a professor? That meant he had been brought there not by pure accident, not because he’d happened to be with Vargas at the wrong time in the wrong place, but on purpose, because he was who he was. But how does he know me? What the hell was going on here?
“I am called Guapo,” the man said, speaking directly to Gideon.
Guapo. It meant handsome, but if this Guapo had ever been handsome, it had been a long time back. A fleshy, beetle-browed man, he was cut from the same cloth as Colonel Malagga: gross-featured, brutal, thuggish, with the high, thick shoulders of a bull buffalo, no neck to speak of, and small, mean, piggish eyes. A lush, silky, jet-black mustache (the only conceivable basis of the “guapo” nickname) drooped over the sides of his mouth, Pancho Villa style. Like the other men Gideon had seen in this settlement, he hadn’t shaved for three or four days. He wore jeans, sandals, and a dirty, white soccer jersey with Alianza Lima on the chest. The belly-ballooned front of the jersey was smeared with finger marks where he’d wiped his hands on it.
“So, you heard of me?” Guapo prompted. He had a serious drinker’s voice, husked and whispery, from deep in his throat.
“No, I never heard of you.” Gideon’s own voice, he was glad to hear, remained steady, although his breath was a little short. He was looking about him as inconspicuously as he could, with his mind working at top speed. What were the ways out? Forget the way they’d come in. There were three white men and three Indians with guns between him and the door. But in the wooden wall right behind Guapo were two large, windowless openings. Could he get by the man and his knife and through one of them before someone with a rifle could get a bead on him? No, not if he made a run for it around the table. But what if he acted with enough suddenness, at a moment of inattentiveness, launching himself right onto the tabletop, kicking or swatting Guapo over in his chair and vaulting over him through the opening… maybe even grabbing the knife on the way, if he could? But what about poor Vargas? What about—
The corners of Guapo’s mouth turned down. “No, he never heard of me,” he said sarcastically, and unpleasant laughter came from the three men at the other table.
“Sit down, Professor.” With his foot, Guapo kicked out one of the chairs. Gideon took it, angling it slightly and moving it back a little to give himself room for a better shot at the opening.
“I’ll go and sit over there,” Vargas offered, indicating the one unoccupied table. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“No, you’ll sit here. I want you to see what happens to him. I want you to have a real good view, so you’ll remember.”
It didn’t seem possible for Gideon’s stomach to sink any lower than it already had, but it did. Guapo didn’t intend to kill them, he intended to kill him. He noticed that Guapo’s fingers lay loosely on the knife, but he wasn’t actually holding it. If he were to move his hand or turn to look away, even for an instant…
The woman shuffled over with a bottle of mineral water and two cloudy glasses. She was blind, Gideon realized from the way she touched the table before setting them down. Guapo himself poured for them with the expansive, benevolent air of a host providing for his guests — first moving the knife out of their immediate reach and keeping his hand on it — and Gideon and Vargas each gulped down a glass of the closest thing to nectar Gideon had ever tasted.
“More?” Guapo asked hospitably and was answered by two vigorous nods. The second glasses were emptied as fast as the first and once again eagerly held out. Strange. Minutes from probable death — an unimaginably unpleasant death — and yet one could take so much grateful pleasure from a glass of cold water.
When Gideon had put down his glass again without signaling for another, Guapo said something to him that he didn’t understand. Something about the river and the Adelita. Gideon asked him to repeat it.
He said it again and Gideon still couldn’t make it out. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”
Guapo was suddenly furious. He slammed the table with a heavy hand (Vargas actually jumped out of his chair; Gideon managed — just — to stay in his), grabbed the monstrous knife, and waved its point at Gideon’s eyes. “Don’t play dumb with me, you bastard! I know you speak Spanish.”
“I speak some Spanish, yes.”
“You speak perfect Spanish.”
No, I don’t, Gideon thought, his stomach moving up just a little toward its normal location. Vargas was right. It was some kind of misunderstanding. They had him confused with someone else. Talking their way out of this might still be a possibility.
“Look,” he said evenly, reasonably, “I don’t know who you think I am, but—”
Guapo got up, leaned on his hands — on the knuckles of the one holding the knife — and loomed aggressively over him. Gideon smelled whiskey, cheese, cigarettes, sweat. “You’re telling me you’re not the professor?”
“I’m a professor, but I’m obviously not the one you think I am.” And now a sudden burst
of reckless but welcome righteous anger surged in him. He jumped up too, so he was nose to nose with Guapo. (Vargas, sitting between them, skidded back, out of the likely range of the knife.) “Why don’t you tell me who the hell you think I am? This is…” He sought the word for outrageous, but had to settle for terrible, the same in Spanish as it was in English. “You send your Indians to… to… you…” But his Spanish wasn’t good enough and he was reduced to waving his arms and sputtering: “Mud… thorns… mosquitoes… threats…”
His language difficulties had more effect than his protestations. For the first time, Guapo’s heavy, cruel face showed some doubt. He sat slowly down again, peering hard at Gideon.
“So who are you then?”
“Look…” Gideon zipped open the fanny pack he wore near his belt buckle, in which he kept his passport, airplane tickets, and money (and for the moment, a miscellaneous collection of fresh cranial fragments), then fumbled through a wad of damp nuevos soles and ten- and twenty-dollar bills to pull out the passport, its familiar blue cover somehow reassuring, as if he were at an airport and simply showing it could get him out of whatever this mess was. He opened it to the identification pages and pushed it across the table to Guapo. “See? Gideon Oliver, that’s me.” He tapped his photograph.
Guapo peered sulkily at it. “And how do I know it’s not fake? Why should I think you’re not trying to fool me?”
“Fool you? How could I know I was going to see you? How could I possibly know your Indians would come and get us?”
“My Indians, my damn Indians!” Guapo exploded, jumping out of his chair. He flung the passport at Gideon’s face. “Luis!” he called, and the man with the revolver came to sit at the table in his place. A snake-necked, fox-faced, crazy-eyed man with an inch of burning cigarette dangling from his lower lip, he was missing the thumb and first finger of his right hand. But with his other thumb, he steadily clicked the revolver’s hammer back, eased it forward, clicked it back, eased it forward… all the while keeping it pointed at the center of Gideon’s chest. Gideon did his best not to think about it, but his eyes kept returning to the moving thumb.