Shadow of the Jaguar

by Steven Savile

  They had their memories, and he had his, and even when they were of each other they were different. Cutter hadn’t lived through many of the experiences they thought they shared between them. It was a peculiar thing to think about: a wrinkle in time.

  He needed to think about something else. Time to throw himself into his work.

  They had resources now, he reminded himself. The ARC was a long way from his disorganised academic haven shunted away on the far corner of the university campus. They had money at their disposal, and they even had access to the strings that needed to be pulled.

  He could probably have left them to their own devices, said something like: “Suit up and be ready for the morning,” and they would have been. But he preferred to be on top of things, even if it was akin to teaching his grandmother to suck eggs — an expression that had never made that much sense to him.

  “I feel like I just stepped through the looking glass,” Cutter began, peering beyond them at his reflection in the glass door. “Now I’m trying to believe in five impossible things before breakfast, and I think my head is going to explode.”

  “Six,” Connor corrected.

  “What?”

  “It’s six impossible things.”

  “Right. And that’s meant to help prevent my head from exploding?” Cutter scratched at the stubble on his cheek to hide his slight grin. “Okay, so let’s review the situation from our end.” He turned to Stephen. “Was Nando Estevez in your seminar group?”

  Stephen shook his head. “The name doesn’t ring any bells. Sorry.”

  “Ah, well, Nando is an old student of mine. He contacted me last night to report something potentially very exciting. He’s a ranger in an eco-reserve in Peru. Part of his job is to study the behavioural patterns of the 100-plus endangered species that can be found within the rainforest. Recently, he’s noticed a lot of strange activity, including tracks he doesn’t recognise, and bones that are out of time. Reading between the lines I think he suspects they are from a supposedly extinct creature. By themselves they prove nothing, though they do raise a lot of questions, and coupled with some peculiar migratory patterns he has observed in the species, I think it means a prehistoric creature has been introduced into the ecosystem. Perhaps more than one. This could be our first solid evidence of an anomaly outside of the British Isles.”

  He paused, and allowed that to sink in for a moment. Connor, of course, was the first to speak up.

  “Do you know what that means?” he said breathlessly, as his mind raced to catch up with all of the possibilities. This was a conspiracy theorist’s dream... and nightmare. “It doesn’t have to be the only one, does it? I mean, there could be anomalies all over the world. Everywhere.”

  The implications of it hung there, just waiting to be voiced. It was Abby who spoke up next.

  “Oh, God,” she said, shaking her head. “What does it mean? If anomalies could begin opening everywhere, the past and the future breaking through, is time itself coming undone? Life’s supposed to be a straight line, from birth to death, not twisting and turning across the millennia.”

  Then her specialty kicked in.

  “How can we survive if bacteria from the Permian are suddenly let loose, and we’re not there to contain it? We have no vaccines. No resistance. Look at bird flu. What if it’s not natural? What if it appeared just because a bird in Eastern Europe fed on some Jurassic faeces? Look how it’s spread, what it’s done to livestock...”

  She sat back and muttered, “Oh, God.”

  All of this had occurred to Cutter, and more. The threat to humanity didn’t have to come from the past, either. Seeing Abby’s troubled face, he chose not to voice his fears.

  “You think something has come through, then? Some sort of predator?” Stephen asked, bringing them back, ironically, to the present.

  “I don’t know,” Cutter admitted. “But that would be the logical con-clusion. The rainforest ecosystem is a finely balanced mechanism. Sudden changes are uncommon, and when they do occur it’s almost always because something has unsettled the balance. A new predator is the logical extrapolation of the facts.”

  Stephen nodded.

  “It’s hardly new, though, surely?” Connor said. “What about El Chupacabra? South American territories are rife with stories of mysterious predators and mystical devil dogs going back centuries. Iconographically, even their gods are based upon incredible monsters. Take Quetzalcóatl, the bird serpent.”

  “True,” Cutter said. “There might still be unidentified species in the region.”

  “Any ideas what we’re looking for?” Jenny asked.

  “Could be anything, literally. We’ve got all of history to contend with. Predators were common on the South American pampas.” He stopped, wary of letting them get carried away with endless supposition.

  “So, this morning I was told in no uncertain terms an investigation was out of the question, and this afternoon we’re packing our bags for Peru. As much as I hate the political ramifications of what Lester is asking us to do, this is a pretty unique chance for us to see what’s out there. Let’s not waste the opportunity.

  “With that in mind, we’re going to need to make some pretty serious preparations in a very short period of time. I’m going to contact Nando and arrange for a welcoming committee, once we reach the reserve. Connor, I want you to sort out the technical side of things, go to the stores, work out what we’re likely to need to do this properly.

  “Abby can you handle the practicalities: tents, dry bags, first aid supplies, salt pills?

  “Jenny, if this is meant to be a legitimate expedition, we’re going to need transport both to get there and once we’re on the ground — and it has to be of the non-military variety. Let’s distance ourselves as far as possible from anything official. Get onto the airlines, find out the nearest airport, arrange the hire of an All Terrain Vehicle. I’m sure there are a stack of permits we’ll need to have in place before we touch down.”

  “Already onto it,” she said briskly.

  “Great. Stephen, we’re going to need supplies in situ: food, water, dietary supplements. We’re not going to be in a position to wander into the nearest supermarket once we land, and certainly not once we’re in the wild. We’re going to need maps too. I don’t want to leave anything to chance.”

  “Maps? Maps? We don’t need no stinking maps,” Connor said, doing a fairly miserable Bogart impression. “We’ve got the GPS trackers, satellite hook-ups, pin-point accuracy. All the mod cons for us, Prof. None of this splashing around in the mud trying to read soggy paper.”

  “Right, and they’re all well and good, but how exactly do you plan on charging them up on day two? We’re going to have to do it the old fashioned way, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t suppose...” Connor paused, looking around the room hopefully. “You know... What about guns?”

  “What about them? Should we plan on smuggling them across international boundaries? Last time I looked ‘gunrunner’ wasn’t in the job description.”

  “We could use diplomatic pouches,” Connor offered.

  “Do you really think I’m going to let you run around in the jungle with an AK47?” Cutter asked. And his face made it clear that it wasn’t really a question.

  Connor shrugged. “Worth a try.”

  “Who knows, one day I might weaken,” Cutter said. “But I wouldn’t bank on it.”

  Alejandro Inatuzi was a simple man. His life consisted of simple things. The simplest of which was the dream of going home to sleep. The Médico Clinica Cuzco operated on a three-shift system — at least in theory. He had worked eighteen hours straight, with three more to go, and needed a cigarette if he was going to make it through.

  He snuck out, nodding as he passed the ward sister who was hunched over patient charts working out doses of medication for the night shift. Pills of all colours were laid out in white paper drinking cups, waiting to be taken through to the wards. She smiled up at him as he walked by her
desk. Her deep brown eyes were manna from heaven. There was beauty, he mused, the young, pretty kind that was brushed on with makeup, and then there was real beauty, the lines of the face, the curves of the body, ample and rounded, of a proper woman. Sister Maya Vennasque was a proper woman in every sense of the word. She had the kind of beauty that would have made painters weep and plead for the chance to immortalise her.

  Hell, Alejandro wanted to paint her, and there wasn’t an artistic bone in his body.

  He mimed smoking a cigarette and she shook her head. So he shrugged a kind of rueful can’t blame a guy for trying shrug, and pressed the button for the elevator.

  The corridors exuded that ever-present ammonia and antiseptic smell. The floor tiles were scuffed and worn, any kind of lustre long since trodden into submission by countless feet over the course of too many years to remember.

  The elevator arrived, and he went outside for his smoke. Alejandro rolled his own licorice-paper cigarettes, adding a little smoothing extra to the tobacco in order to wake him up during the interminably long shifts. He savoured the smoke as it filled his lungs, finished cigarette, then wandered back up to finish the chores on his duty roster. He had six rooms left to visit before he could go home.

  Maya smiled her heart-stopping smile as the elevator doors opened up again.

  “No rest for the wicked,” he said, leaning up against the desk, “and no use pretending I’m not the wickedest.”

  “Alejandro Inatuzi, what would your wife say if she knew you spent your nights flirting with another woman?”

  “She’d threaten to cut bits off of me, I am sure,” he replied, grinning. “So let’s keep it our secret.”

  “You’re incorrigible,” Maya chuckled.

  “I try to be.”

  “Take these in to the Englishman would you?” she said. “He needs to take three on the hour.” She handed him one of the small pill cups.

  He wandered back toward his steel cart, which was still up against the wall where he had left it an hour ago. That was one thing about the night shift, generally it was calm — at least once it was past three a.m., that is. That was one of the curiosities he’d discovered working in the hospital — more people died at three in the morning than at any other time of day. They joked about the Death Hour, but they all believed it. ‘El Diablo’s Time’, they called it.

  He checked his watch. It was five minutes to four. Five more minutes, then he was home free. He laughed quietly at himself and started whistling as he walked.

  The Englishman was in the last room off the corridor, sharing it with Paco, an emphysemic who hadn’t said a word since he lay down in bed, six weeks earlier. Paco had been brought into the hospital to die, left there by a grandson who had no wish to care for the old man. Sometimes people disappointed Alejandro; there was honour in caring for your elders. It went back to tribal times; the men gave their lives for the tribe, and when they could no longer hunt or fish or fight, they were cared for by the beloved they had spent their lives feeding and protecting.

  This new generation, with their flat-screens and their fast cars, left a lot to be desired when it came to humanity. With that thought, he turned to enter the darkened room.

  There was a man standing over the Englishman’s bed.

  It took Alejandro a moment to realise that he didn’t recognise him.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. A superstitious part of his brain began screaming that he had walked in upon El Diablo, come to claim the Englishman for himself. Inwardly, he cursed himself for a fool.

  The man turned to face him, but said nothing.

  For a moment it seemed as though he had no face. There was no shape to it; no features, no colour. Alarmed, Alejandro reached for the switch and turned on the overhead lights.

  The stranger was wearing a mask, and he held a needle gun, which he had stabbed into the morphine dispenser. Alejandro watched as he depress-ed the trigger again and again and again, administering dose after dose.

  “Get away from him!” the orderly cried in alarm.

  The stranger let the dispenser drop and stepped away from the window-side bed. The saline drip was shot through with a ribbon of red: blood, Alejandro realised sickly.

  Still the stranger said nothing. He reached behind his back for something as he walked slowly toward the door. His hand came back holding a snub-nosed revolver.

  Alejandro threw up his hands, pleading, “Don’t shoot me. Please. I did not see anything. The Englishman died in his sleep. It happens. Please, do not shoot me. I have a wife and three boys. Please.”

  The stranger came close enough that the foul stench of his breath was sucked back into Alejandro’s lungs as he swallowed air.

  He didn’t pull the trigger. Instead he raised his hand and hammered the hilt of the gun into the side of Alejandro’s skull with a sickening crunch of bone. The orderly fell, sprawling out across the freshly disinfected floor. He could see his own face reflected in the white tiles, and the blood-red rose that seemed to flower at his temple.

  The stranger stepped over him, his footsteps echoing hollowly in the antiseptic quiet of the ward.

  Alejandro did not dare move until the steps had faded to nothing. Only then did he struggle back to his feet. He stumbled across to the Englishman’s bed and pulled back the blankets. He wrenched the needle out of the patient’s arm, cutting off the supply of whatever drug the stranger had administered.

  The flesh had already turned bruise-purple around the central line. Poison? There were a hundred lethal drugs in the supply cabinets, and no way of knowing the toxicology of what was in the Englishman’s blood without testing the bag from the drip itself.

  The rhythmic beep of the heart monitor beside the bed faltered, and stopped.

  Alejandro hit the alarm.

  A minute later the crash team came running.

  The call came in a little before six in the evening.

  “Lester,” he said, answering the phone himself. As the voice spoke on the other end, however, he sat up straight in his chair.

  Cameron Bairstow was talking.

  Sir Charles’ man had made it through the wall of protection ringing the hospital by posing as a hospital orderly.

  “We’ve had word.” Sir Charles’ aristocratic burr was stretched painfully thin by a mix of grief and the muted telephone line. “It is Cameron they found, and Jaime is dead.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Lester replied, surprising himself because he actually managed to sound as though a part of him meant it.

  “I don’t want your sorrow, Lester, I want you to bring my boy home. That is all that matters to me.”

  “I understand, but surely Cameron is safe now, and at the risk of being insensitive, there’s nothing we can do for Jaime. There is no longer the need for our little charade. And I’m sure the Foreign Office can assist with the arrangements...”

  The silence on the line was long and drawn out, the rasp of breathing the only hint that Sir Charles was still there. Finally, he spoke.

  “Cam is far from safe. There was an attempt on his life tonight. He was drugged in his bed, Lester. Someone broke into the hospital and tried to kill him while he slept. God only knows why. I won’t lose him, Lester. I have instructed my man to post armed guards at his bedside twenty-four seven, until your people arrive to collect him. It is only by the grace of God that he is not dead, twice over.” Again there was silence, and then he spoke again.

  “Listen to me, and listen to me well. I have lost one son. I will not lose another, Lester. I do not trust these people.”

  And despite that shocking truth, there was something in the way Sir Charles spoke that hinted there was still more to this than he was telling.

  That rankled.

  “I would very much like to contact your man,” Lester remarked, fastening onto the old man’s evasiveness. He wasn’t about to let this go. If there was one thing he hated, it was people hiding things from him. “There are questions I need to ask, for my tea
m, and no disrespect, but it would be best to hear from him, rather than through your filter.”

  “Are you suggesting that I would lie?”

  “Not at all, sir, not at all. You have nothing to hide, I’m certain, so why should I think you are being anything other than 100 per cent truthful? I understand you are concerned that any indiscretion might make your son’s situation worse — loose tongues cost lives, and all that — but I assure you my team will act with the utmost tact. We will bring him home, but we really need to talk to your man to assess the situation properly. We have questions that need answering. Fools blunder in, Sir Charles, and none of us like to think of ourselves as fools, do we?”

  “Very well.” Sir Charles said. “I am trusting you with my boy’s life, Lester. Don’t let me down.” Then he gave him the com-sat co-ordinates, call signal, a list of contact times, and the frequency that would allow Lester to reach his man on the ground.

  “A simple telephone number would have sufficed,” Lester said dryly.

  This time the silence on the line was absolute. Sir Charles had broken the connection, leaving Lester holding the phone.

  He sat back in his chair as he worried over what hadn’t been said. It was far more telling than what had. Lester cracked the bones of his knuckles, one at a time.

  Sir Charles wanted his son back, there was no denying that, but he wanted it done quietly, with the minimum of fuss, because for whatever reason he didn’t want Cameron’s story splashed across the front pages.

  Was he just protecting his son? There was nothing untoward in that, if he was. No sinister purpose. Cameron had almost certainly witnessed his brother’s killing, and that someone had attempted to murder him before he could talk added a sense of urgency to the situation. That intrigued Lester, he had to admit. But then murder was often fascinating.

  So what was it, an eye for an eye? Had Jaime’s killers come looking for Cam to finish the job? If so, what had he seen that could possibly frighten them into murder in such a public place?