She felt a flare of temper.
“I’m perfectly capable of reading a map.”
He crossed his legs. “Doesn’t matter how good you are at reading it if the map’s out-of-date.”
“The map wasn’t out-of-date,” she scoffed.
Adam shrugged. “Things change pretty fast around here.”
“I was in the British Library. I hardly think they’re going to stock out-of-date maps.”
Adam chuckled derisively. Ellie felt a rush of nationalist indignation.
“The British Library is the foremost—”
“For the love of—Can I just see the damned map?” Adam burst out. “I’ve spent an awful lot of time out here. I might know a thing or two more about the ground we’re covering than the British Library.”
Ellie shot him a glare but closed her mouth. He was right, of course. It was men like Adam who had made the map she’d studied in the library’s atlas. How could that bound and printed book reflect everything out there, when new discoveries were being made all the time?
If she withheld the rest of the map now, Adam would think it was out of spite or suspicion, not logic. And he’d be right.
Swallowing her fear, Ellie reached into the pocket of Mr. Tibbord’s jacket and pulled out the other half of the map. She offered it to him without a word.
He went to the crate, removing the tin cylinder and unscrewing the cap. He shook out the first half of the map along with his own hand-drawn version. Laying them out, he crouched down over them, considering. He shook his head, chuckling.
“What’s so funny?” Ellie demanded. She half tossed a bowl of beans onto the deck beside him, then sat down with her own on the opposite side.
“I think we’re going the wrong way,” he said evenly.
“What?” She stopped with her spoon halfway to her mouth.
Adam pointed. “See this?”
His finger tapped a series of strange markings that ran alongside the curving line that led to one of the map’s other landmarks, an arch labeled, Bridge hollowed by the hand of God.
“I think these are cataracts.”
“You mean rapids?”
Adam shuffled the yellowed page aside, revealing the newer map.
“See this?” He pointed to a curving blue line.
“Is that another river?” Ellie asked, looking.
“Tributary of the Belize,” Adam replied. “Some logging scouts reported it. Said this whole stretch was taken up with rapids.”
“The Belize? That’s the river that passes through the center of the city.”
“Yup,” Adam confirmed, leaning back with his beans.
“But this branch of it wasn’t on the other maps,” she protested weakly.
“Probably because they only found it last season.”
She studied the route and felt her stomach sink.
“You’re sure that’s the same river?”
He answered her with a raised eyebrow as he lifted a spoonful of beans, and Ellie admitted defeat.
“We should have taken the Belize,” she said.
“Mmm-hmm,” he replied around a mouthful of dinner.
“It would have brought us…”
“Within two or three days’ hike. If the map is accurate.”
Ellie sat back, repressing the urge to curse. She didn’t want to give Adam the satisfaction. She closed her eyes.
“Should we go back?”
He shook his head. “We’re too far along now. But it does mean that we don’t have to find that pillar to know where we’re going. We could follow the river up another fifteen miles or so, then cut overland until we hit the tributary. But if we don’t find it,” he added pointedly, “you might seriously want to consider whether it’s worth it.”
“Worth it?”
“I can’t be sure how many miles we’ll have to bushwhack to get to that tributary. Could be five. Could be twenty. We’re talking up to a week of hard travel through uncharted jungle. And like I said, the rains could start any day, which is going to make getting back a hell of a lot more complicated. You’ve got to ask yourself whether the risk is justified, if this whole thing could turn out to be a wild-goose chase.”
Her dismay must have been visible. Adam’s features softened.
“We could come back, you know. Wait out the rains, then hit it again. Put a small survey team together. If this city of yours exists, it’s been sitting out there for centuries. It’s not going anywhere.”
It wasn’t an option, but how could she make that clear without admitting the danger that might be waiting for her back in Belize City?
She felt the trap closing around her, Adam’s doubt and common sense on one side, Jacobs on the other. If only she’d let him see the whole map to begin with. They would have been at the rapids by now, could have been looking up at the stone arch that would prove the abbot’s map correct just as surely as his damnable black pillar.
An urge rose up to crawl into her hammock and let sleep wash away the rather unpleasant feeling of being wrong.
Not wrong, she corrected herself fiercely. She had done what she had to in order to protect herself. She couldn’t have known for certain that Adam would be true to his word. She was a woman traveling alone, and the world she moved through—whether here or in London, as she had learned long ago—was a hostile one. It was better to watch her back than get caught with her defenses down.
Adam picked up the two halves of the map, rolling them up together. He leaned over, frowning.
“What’s this?”
Ellie glanced back and saw him looking down at a scrap of paper that had lain unseen under the map. She recognized it instantly as the telegram she had taken from Dawson’s desk.
Alarm shot through her. She had all but forgotten about her little piece of evidence, tucked away with her half of the map. She sought for a convincing explanation for its presence, but the one her worn-out brain offered was painfully feeble.
“Oh—that’s nothing. Just a scrap of paper I picked up at the hotel desk. I don’t know how it got rolled up with the map.”
She smiled in what she hoped desperately was a disarming manner.
“At the hotel desk,” Adam echoed skeptically. “Pretty strange coincidence that you’d just happen to find this there.”
“I don’t see why. Anyone receiving a telegram at the hotel would get it at the desk. They must have left it behind after it was read. I used it to make a few notes.”
“Notes about Tulan Zuyua?”
Adam glanced from her to the telegram, and Ellie was painfully aware of how suspicious it must look. He must be able to see that the message was written in some sort of code. She only hoped that her excuse would make him think the penciled words were, in fact, just scribbled notes, and not a translation.
If he started to doubt her story, what else might he start to question? Her assumed widowhood? Her name? Who those men were, chasing her through the hotel? She realized that she had constructed a fragile edifice, one that could very easily be brought crumbling down—and then what? What would he do with her if he learned that she’d been lying to him this entire time?
There was only one line of defense she could think of that might just distract him from the mystery of the paper’s existence and get him talking about something else. Though it galled her, she decided to admit ignorance.
“I remember seeing the name in one of my books. I wrote it down to remind myself to look it up later. I’m afraid I don’t have the foggiest idea what it means.”
She saw his expression shift. Doubt was forgotten in favor of the chance to enlighten Ellie on the finer points of Mayan folklore.
“You’ve heard of the Popol Vuh?”
“Popol Vuh…” The words had a rich, exotic sound on her tongue. “No. What is it?”
“The Mayan books might have been lost in the Inquisition, but what they couldn’t write down, they could still talk about. The myths, the old stories—they survived, for a while. Some of them la
sted long enough that a Dominican priest with the intelligence to realize what was on the verge of being lost was able to write down a Spanish translation. The Popol Vuh.”
“So—Tulan Zuyua?”
“It’s part of the Mayan creation myth. The Popol Vuh describes it as a city on a mountain, a place they also called Seven Caves. The Mayans went there on some sort of pilgrimage because they wanted the people who lived there to give them gods.”
“Give them gods?” Ellie echoed.
Adam shrugged.
“That’s the story. Apparently the people of Tulan Zuyua could hand them out like sweets at a birthday party.”
“So they were gods themselves, then?”
“Perhaps. The Popol Vuh isn’t exactly clear on the subject. It’s a myth, after all.” He leaned back, stretching his legs out before him. “It’s funny, actually. The Aztecs have a similar story. They even use the same name for the place—Seven Caves. It’s where they say their people began. The rest is a sort of Garden of Eden scenario—paradise turned sour. They eventually fled to set up cities of their own outside its influence.”
“So the Mayans and the Aztecs shared the same creation story?”
“No. The creation myths are totally different.”
“But they both involve a city called Seven Caves.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
Ellie absorbed this, her mind humming with potential implications. Candidate for Tulan Zuyua. Why had Dawson’s telegram contained the name of this obscure piece of Mayan mythology? Tulan Zuyua had never been mentioned during the lectures she’d attended on Mesoamerican history at the university; nor had the Popol Vuh. And those courses had been taught by an expert in the field. Not someone as expert as Adam Bates, of course, but still a tenured professor with a laundry list of books and journal articles to his name.
Yet someone had connected her White City with that obscure piece of mythology—and another, she reminded herself. The Smoking Mirror, the mythical object Adam said the symbol on the idol of her medallion resembled.
The city and the medallion. References to pieces of Mayan and Aztec folklore only a handful of people in the world would recognize.
Someone had sent them to Dawson. Someone with a purpose, one they disguised with code, hiding it from casual eyes, yet sent from the Westminster telegram office. The combination was as bewildering as it was unsettling.
The message had to have come from Dawson’s employer. Not a colleague or a research assistant. Ellie was sure of it.
But that meant that Dawson’s employer knew both Foreign Office codes and more about Mayan history than anyone Ellie had ever met… except for the man sitting across from her.
The reasons others would be interested in her map should have been obvious: Gold. Treasure. A wealth of priceless artifacts that would be quickly swallowed by a black market hungry for antiquities. The telegram didn’t reference any of those things. It was as specific as it was obscure.
Why would Dawson’s employer care about the Smoking Mirror?
She pushed the thought aside. There would be time to worry about it later. First she needed to disarm any suspicion Adam might still be harboring about the origins of the telegram.
“I knew I must have remembered it for a reason,” she said cheerfully. “I suppose I hardly need a library with you around.”
She reached out for the telegram, but Adam paused, looking up at her meaningfully.
“Anything else you’d like to tell me?”
Ellie forced a smile. “Fine. I admit it. Your knowledge of Central American history is remarkable.” She extended her hand for the telegram, the smile plastered firmly on her face.
After only the briefest hesitation, he handed it over. Ellie tucked it back into her pocket and inwardly cursed herself for having been so careless with it before. The flash of doubt she’d seen in Adam’s eyes had frightened her.
Why wouldn’t it? If he realized she’d been hiding the truth from him, he might abandon the search and head back to the city. Why would he want to maintain a partnership with someone who kept feeding him lies?
That wasn’t all of it, though. Her fear of how he might react went beyond losing her guide to the interior. The notion of how he might look at her if he discovered the truth made her feel ill.
She would fix it, she determined. Just as soon as she had the chance.
She prayed she would know what that “chance” might look like.
The next day’s journey should have been easier. With Adam’s knowledge of their ultimate route in mind, Ellie was no longer dependent on the movements of the compass for success. But instead of relaxing and taking in the wild beauty of the world they moved through, she kept her eyes glued to the needle. Finding the mysterious pillar described on the map would prove to him that the trail they followed was genuine and put to rest any more arguments about whether she had led them both on a “wild-goose chase.”
As they traveled, the landscape around them transformed. From even plains, the ground rose up into steep-sided hills wearing thick coats of vivid green. The banks of the river grew harder, replacing silt with smooth-worn stones, and at certain bends in the stream, Ellie looked up to see towering peaks appear through gaps, looking startlingly close. By midday, she knew they had truly entered the mountains.
The first few sets of rapids they encountered were small, and Adam was able to skillfully pilot the launch up and over into calmer waters. But finally, late into the afternoon, they rounded a bend to see the river end in a wall of hissing water pouring from a shelf of rock ten feet over their heads.
“Looks like the end of the line,” Adam called to her over the rush of the falls. He cut the throttle and the boat’s momentum quickly dropped, countered by the force of the rushing water. They drifted forward slowly, and Ellie could feel the cool mist on her skin. She rose, moving to where Adam stood by the tiller, his eyes closed as he tilted his face toward the spray of water. He smiled, relishing the feeling of it. He looked down at her.
“Anything?”
“I could have missed it,” she said, glancing down at the compass. She snapped it shut and handed it to him. “The river forked several times over the last few miles. Maybe it’s on one of the other branches.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can get us there. We’ll backtrack until we can find a safe place to hide the boat, then head north.” He looked down at her. “If you still want to do this.”
She glared back.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Adam was unmoved.
“That it’s going to be a hard walk from here, and it’s entirely possible we won’t find anything at the end of it.”
“Is that what you think? That there’s nothing there?”
“I’m admitting that it’s a possibility,” he countered. “But I’ve followed plenty of false leads before. I’m used to disappointment. I just don’t want you to—”
“You think this is a false lead,” she cut in coldly.
“Come on, princess—you have to admit that’s what it’s looking like at the moment.”
“Don’t call me that,” Ellie said, gritting her teeth.
“What do you want me to call you?”
“How about my—” She stopped, catching herself with a wince. He didn’t know her name, of course. And the notion of demanding he call her by a false one was something less than comfortable. She shook it off. “How about you just put me ashore, and then you can take yourself back to the city.”
The boat had turned with the current as they argued, the stern now soaked with the spray of the cascade. Adam had to raise his voice to be heard over the noise of the water.
“What?”
“I don’t want you to waste any more of your time,” she snapped at him.
“For the love of—You’re not wasting my time,” he shouted back. “Besides, you wouldn’t last ten minutes out there on your own.”
“If you think I’m going to let you come with me out of some b
ackward sense of chivalry—”
She was cut short as he grabbed hold of her shoulders and threw her down with him onto the deck. Behind them, a huge piece of debris tipped over the falls and smashed down onto the stern. Ellie heard wood splinter and lifted her head to see a heavy, waterlogged limb tilt, then drag itself under the boat with a loud cracking sound.
“Are you all right?” Adam demanded.
“I’m fine.”
He looked her over as though not entirely trusting her word, then rose to his feet and went to survey the damage. Several boards at the top of the transom had been cracked, but the breach was still well above the waterline. Adam reached over the side into the river, exploring with his hands. Then he sat up, shaking off the water.
“Hull feels fine,” he announced. “Can’t say the same for the rudder.”
“What do you mean? What’s happened to it?”
“It’s not there anymore,” he replied. He sat down and stretched out his legs.
“Can you fix it?”
“Nothing left to fix. I’ll have to build a new one.”
“So what do we do?”
“Go wherever the river decides to take us,” he replied. He reached into a bag near his feet and pulled out a ripe piece of fruit. He took a bite and sat back, chewing casually. He held it toward her. “Want some?”
“So we just… sit here,” she said, ignoring the fruit.
“The current will bring us up on the banks eventually. Once I can tie her up, I’ll be able to see how bad the damage is and figure some way to rig things back together.”
“And how long will that take?”
“Who knows? We’re just along for the ride.”
Underneath them, the boat had turned, pushed by the current to head back downriver. Ellie fought a wave of frustration and moved to the bow, wanting to get some distance from Adam before she grabbed the piece of fruit out of his hand and threw it at his head. Then she went still, staring out over the water ahead of them.
“We’re going the wrong way,” she said.
“The river only goes one way.”
“No, I mean—this isn’t the same river. We’ve taken some kind of branch.” She pointed, watching as the spit of land that divided the two streams slipped past them.
The Smoke Hunter Page 17