“You were attacked?” Christa asked.
“The cat was after Jairo, actually,” Conroy said. “He was a foot shorter than me, easier prey. The jaguar leaped out of a tree. We didn’t see it coming, but the animal must have been stalking us. I pushed Jairo out of the way and, before I could think, I had two hundred pounds of hungry cat on my back. I was lucky that I was just a boy.”
“Lucky?” Daniel echoed, finally intrigued enough to shift his attention from the letter.
“The jaguar, as I’m sure you know, kills by crushing the upper vertebrae in its jaws, or by clamping its jaws on the back of its prey’s head and piercing the brain with its canines.” Conroy bent his head forward and pointed to the back of his neck to demonstrate. He smiled. “I fancied myself a bit like Doctor Livingstone,” he said. “I’d never venture into the jungle without wearing my metal pith helmet. The cat took one bite and ran off.” He rubbed his shoulder again. “Did get a bit of a scratch on my shoulders from its claws. It serves as my barometer, always aches when a storm is coming. Brute of one on its way now.”
“You saved Jairo’s life,” said Christa.
“And he saved mine,” said Conroy. “He bound my wound with healing herbs and a pressure bandage of leaves. And he half-carried me back to my parents.”
“But you remembered enough to draw a map,” Daniel prompted, pointing at the letter, “to this Oculto Canyon.”
“I drew it in hospital, when I was recovering. I tried to remember landmarks, but finding landmarks in the jungle is like finding trees in a forest. There are many of them, but few are unique. Still, I had a good sense of direction and distance. I did find our way home to the mission, after all.” He handed the map to Christa.
“A Map of the Forbidden Territory,” Christa read the heading.
“I apologize for the B-Movie title,” he said. “A child’s imagination trapped in a hospital room finds its escape with his memories of the outside world. When I couldn’t adventure out there,” he tapped his temple, “I adventured in here.”
Christa held the map beneath the flat light of the overhead fluorescent panel. Drawn on parchment stationary bearing the hospital’s letterhead, the map was deftly, if whimsically, illustrated. It featured a patch of green labeled the Forgotten Forest, a snake of blue that depicted the Tequendama River. The most distinctive feature was an outcropping of rock towering above the tree canopy that resembled the wings of a giant bird of prey. The words from Salvatierra’s letter leaped out at her. He had written that the temple was in a clearing lorded over by a rock outcropping he named Demon’s Wings.
“This temple,” she said, “the one your Muisca friend feared. You think this may be the pyramid temple that Salvatierra referred to in his letter. It must be completely overgrown. Complete cities can be lost under centuries of forest growth. Hiram Bingham didn’t discover the lost city of the Incas, Machu Picchu, until 1911, even though it was a thriving mountaintop city in the 15th century. Even with your map, it would be near impossible to find the Oculto Canyon.”
“Jairo told me that the oral history claims that Demon’s Wings can only be seen from this bend in the river.” He pointed to the river bend on his map. “But we could not see it. Only the very top of the granite shows above the tree canopy. Most of the time even that is obscured by the low clouds. Botanists call these upper altitudes the cloud forest. Indeed, that is how the plants get their moisture.”
“Still, this map could be the key to finding the temple,” said Christa.
“Hold on,” Daniel said, his eyes on the letter. “The temple, that’s where Salvatierra buried the Breastplate.” He raised his eyes. They were glossed over, as if he’d been drugged. And maybe he had.
“Alvaro Contreras realized that the temple defended the entrance to the Oculto Canyon,” said Christa, “and the antidote plant.”
“Brilliant,” said Conroy. “It was easy for the conquistadors to bring death to the New World, but to bring life, now that would place them truly in the realm of a god. The death that Contreras brought was not a new disease. In was not infested, but ingested. He had created a poison elixir, with only one cure, a rare plant that would only grow under unique conditions, conditions that he alone controlled.”
“Like a hidden canyon,” said Christa. “A specific microcosm.”
“Salvatierra didn’t write anything about poisonous plants,” said Daniel, shaking the letter. “We should focus on what he tells us about these gemstones.”
“The Breastplate is only a means to an end,” Christa said. “That’s all its history has ever been. Alvaro Contreras dammed the river flowing through the temple. Why?”
“To control it,” said Conroy.
“And defend it,” said Christa. “The temple was remote, but he wasn’t the first European to venture through that area. A conquistador named Quesada was searching for El Dorado near there. It was in 1569, just seventeen years before Salvatierra wrote that letter. Quesada sets out with 500 mounted soldiers, 1500 natives and hundreds of horses, cattle and pigs. He returns with four natives, 18 horses and twenty-five Spaniards. I’d bet one of them was Alvaro Contreras.”
“Alvaro survives the ill-fated expedition,” said Conroy. “He has found his El Dorado, the temple where he will create a new empire, using an indefensible weapon.”
“A bio-weapon,” Christa said, “the poison.”
“But why go back,” asked Daniel, “to a place where most of the men died?”
“Because some of them lived,” said Christa. “The history is sketchy, but the men were starving. They ate a native plant and grew deathly ill. That must have been the belladonna. The legend says that the only cure was a river of life hidden deep in the mountains.”
“The river that flows through the temple,” said Conroy.
“Alvaro Contreras dams the river. He has sole control of the antidote,” said Christa. “He is on the threshold of his new world order, but one man stops him.”
“Salvatierra,” Daniel chipped in. “A priest.”
Christa nodded. “Alvaro is brought back to Spain in chains, but he’s not about to give up easily.”
“Alvaro is executed,” said Conroy, “but not before he passes his story on to his family.”
“And the rest, unfortunately, isn’t history,” said Christa. “It’s happening, now. Baltasar Contreras is picking up where his ancestor, Alvaro, left off. And this time that poison won’t wipe out whole villages. He aims to wipe out entire cities.”
CHAPTER 35
Jared Sadler had booked a modest suite in the Waldorf, much to the disgruntlement of his young wife, Zoe, who had now tried on and rejected three different frocks for her shopping trip to Neiman Marcus to buy yet another “perfect” dress for the event tonight. Our role tonight is that of a humble servant, he had told her. Speak for yourself, she had laughed. He had to admit, she was lovely when she laughed. And he would make her happy, if he could craft this afternoon’s encounter as expertly as he crafted jewelry.
Jared sat in the Queen Anne wing chair by the faux hearth and watched her through the partially open door to the bedroom. It seemed she had settled on the skin tight red affair that cost a large amount of money for a small amount of fabric. She turned sideways to the full-length mirror and pressed her hand atop her tummy, assessing it. Still flat.
Although stiff with stress, he craned his neck to watch her shimmy into the bathroom and fluff her dyed blond hair in the mirror. Their suite was peppered with a plethora of gilt-framed mirrors that reflected the reproduction mahogany furnishings and paintings of European landscapes that contrived to lend the air of old world respect. He tried in vain to avoid seeing the most heinous fake of all, his own visage.
“Darling?” Zoe called, pausing to apply the ruby red lipstick that matched the hue of her dress. “You did call the bank to increase the credit limit on the card, didn’t you? The coat I bought at Harrods for this trip maxed us out.”
“Yes, Zoe,” he answered, although it st
ill rankled him that the fake lynx had cost more than real. She had explained patiently that she wanted people to know she could afford real fur, but was rich enough not to wear it. The convolution of this deception was absurd. He recognized that keenly, for he was about to perpetrate one of the most odious deceptions in history. Zoe, at least, was true to her false morals.
“I couldn’t very well wear that raggedy wool thing,” Zoe said, adjusting her rouge. “It wouldn’t do for the wife of the Crown Jeweler.”
He felt mocked by the title. If Alba were here, she’d be ashamed. If only she had survived the cancer, she would have carried her royal bearing in her actions, not her dress, in her rare encounters with the royal family. She would have seen his appointment as Crown Jeweler as a humbling honor, not a bragging right. But she wouldn’t have wanted it. She was quite content in their flat on Portobello. The disease stole that life from them. When he buried her on that bleak November day, he threw down upon her coffin like so many roses his belief in love, in life, in the God that Alba prayed to futilely each day of her painful illness.
He was plummeting down the deep, dark well of a meaningless existence, when Zoe had grabbed him with both arms. He knew, even then, that their introduction and relationship had been artfully arranged. He wasn’t a fool. A woman like Zoe wouldn’t have given him a second look if not for Contreras’s puppetry. He found he didn’t care, like a drunk who could not forgo poison as long as it was served on the rocks.
Zoe floated back into the bedroom. She fished a pair of stockings from the drawer and bunched up the silky legs in her fingers as expertly as Vladimir Horowitz playing Traumerai on the piano. “Will you be seeing Baltasar before the ceremony tonight?” she asked.
Jared wondered if she already knew the answer, but he suspected that Baltasar had severed his strings on her. She had served her purpose. “I’m sure his day is too busy for the likes of me,” he said. Another lie. He hardly knew how to tell the truth anymore.
She pointed her toe, slipped it into the foot of the stocking. “You’re always selling yourself short,” she said. He watched the silk caress her ankle. “You’re the one who was commissioned to create the Lux et Veritas sword.” The curve of her knee. “Quite an arrow in your quiver.” The white of her thigh.
“I’d like to put my arrow in your quiver,” he said. He never would have said that to Alba.
Zoe giggled. “Baltasar is a good man,” she pressed.
His randiness suddenly rankled. “You don’t know him like I do.”
“Baltasar believes in you, always has,” she said.
He had been even more completely seduced by Contreras than Zoe. The wooing had begun when Alba was still alive. When Baltasar Contreras had contacted him some seven years earlier, Jared thought the man was a bit daft. Yes, Jared’s nouveau renaissance jewelry designs had caught the attention of some of the lesser royals at the time, but this plump, arrogant man told him that he would one day become the Queen’s personal jeweler and, subsequently, the Crown Jeweler. Of course, Jared maintained a polite decorum with the man. He was the billionaire heir to a pharmaceutical corporation, America’s brand of royalty. Most importantly, Alba was starting to get sick. He needed the money.
Shortly after they met, Contreras had custom ordered a set of seven golden rings, each inlaid with a unique gemstone, a ruby, golden topaz, Emerald, Turquoise, sapphire, diamond and jacinth. The inner band of each he wanted engraved with an Abraxas, a mythological being with the head of a lion, the body of a man holding a whip in one hand and a shield in the other and serpents as legs. Jared had told him it really wasn’t his specialty, but the pay he offered was too handsome to turn down. Jared should have known then, with the symbol of the Abraxas, which figured in the teachings of the Gnostics, that Baltasar Contreras had more in mind than simple adornments, but the money blinded him. Contreras was paying for client confidentiality, he said, and wanted no one to know of their transactions. Jared agreed.
Zoe poked her naked toes into the other leg of the stocking. “And he’s very generous,” she said.
“He gets what he pays for,” he muttered. Contreras continued to order sets of these rings over the years, paying in person, with cash. More valuable than the cash were Contreras’s social connections. It seemed the man knew everyone worth knowing and could manipulate them as expertly as Degas could clay. Under Contreras’s tutelage, Jared rose to Her Majesty the Queen’s personal jeweler. Jared grew to respect his patron’s prophetic judgment and value his friendship. Despite Alba’s distrust of the man, Contreras paid for his personal physician to treat her when traditional therapies proved futile. Contreras, too, had lost a loved one, his mother, many years ago. He seemed genuinely heartbroken when Alba passed. After the funeral, Contreras tried to comfort Jared, convince him that he would one day see his beloved Alba again. Jared wondered how such a brilliant man could be so naive.
Gradually, as if unraveling an ancient sacred scroll, Contreras revealed his true purpose. His life’s goal was to complete his family’s mission to find and recreate the Biblical Breastplate of Aaron, a direct link with God. He assumed that Jared was, as a gemologist, familiar with the Breastplate and its twelve legendary stones, which, like the Ark of the Covenant, had been lost to the ages thousands of years ago.
Jared knew it was coming. He just hadn’t wanted to believe it. After all, he was one of the Circle of Seven. It was his sworn obligation to keep this very event from taking place. That had not helped to save his beloved Alba. So why not help the one man who had the wherewithal, determination and faith to unearth and recreate the legendary Breastplate? It would be proof that God did exist, that Alba was basking in a glorious everlasting life. He found himself lusting after the knowledge, the possibility of seeing his one true love again. In fact, he owed it to her.
Jared, on occasion, had scoffed at Alba for believing in the grand words of evangelists, but he found himself enthralled with Baltasar’s plan. With the Breastplate, Contreras would build a new empire, succeed where Britain had failed. He had a multi-national force already in place. He had lost his mother to terrorists, an evil that was elusive and perpetual, immune to traditional defenses. The Breastplate would rally the masses. Some lives would be lost, but humanity saved. And peace would allow for a higher quality of life, more resources diverted to finding cures to sicknesses like the cancer that stole away his beloved Alba.
From there, it was just one small step into treason. He had been so beguiled that he hardly considered it a sin. Part of him felt that he deserved the fortune that Baltasar had promised him. Indeed, he felt the thrill of victory, the pride of accomplishment when he had actually pulled off what would go down in the history books as the crime of the century. Not even when he was committing this heinous act did it strike him as wrong. But now that the thrill of the battle was over, he realized what he had lost.
Zoe was choosing shoes now, rubbing a spot off the toe of the high, strappy ones. “You have to admit, it was nice of him to send up that champagne. Dom Perignon, very classy.”
Jared hadn’t been sure whether the champagne was for the two of them, or his upcoming meeting with Contreras. He was relieved, and surprised, when Zoe didn’t insist on imbibing it. She hadn’t wanted to impair her shopping judgment, he supposed, although he could certainly use a drink.
He looked down at his hands. His slender, nimble fingers were his stock and trade, like a surgeon. He could craft the finest detail, one that nobody but he and the bearer of his creation might be privy to, but that’s why he stood apart. Now, these fingers were responsible for the care and restoration of Britain’s crown jewels, but they tingled with the numbness of a traitor. He stood and walked closer to the fireplace. He forced himself to look into the gilt mirror over the mantel. He tried to command his trembling fingers to tighten the knot in his ascot and straighten the stray, gray hairs that refused to stay orderly. They did not obey.
Jared moved stiffly to the window. He peered down from his seventeenth floor
aerie at the people scurrying along Park Avenue. A fight had broken out between two men, one in a suit and the other in tattered jeans. A small group stood and watched. Others barely glanced at the action before moving along, cell phones at their ears.
Zoe came to the sitting room threshold and opened the door wide, posing jauntily. “How do I look?”
Jared smiled, but was overcome with dread. “You’re my little vixen,” he offered. Their pet phrase rang hollow. He had, indeed, made a deal with the devil, Baltasar Contreras. He wanted to be reassured of the veracity of everlasting life. He grew to realize that reassurance would only mean he would spend eternity in hell for what he had done. And that he’d be meeting that end soon. He had been a fool to think Contreras would simply pay him and let him go. He sat heavily in the Queen Anne wing chair by the hearth.
She padded over to him and alighted on his lap. “What’s wrong? You and Baltasar used to be best of friends. He’s made you what you are today.”
That was precisely why Jared had to betray him. It was his only hope for redemption. At best, it would mean shame. At worst, death. Everlasting damnation loomed on the near horizon. It terrified him more than both of those outcomes. He wrapped his arm around her impossibly small waist, willing his hands to stop trembling. “You’d look just as lovely in a jumper and jeans at a cottage in the Cotswolds.”
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