The Last Mayan (The Alan Graham Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “Look,” he said and lifted the lid. I looked into the box and saw a translucent stone lying atop a sheaf of yellowed pages.

  “I saw her in the zaztun,” he said. “They have not done anything to her yet.”

  “Don Jildo, thank you for everything you’ve done. But I can’t leave her there.”

  “She’s your woman.”

  “Yes.”

  He sighed. “When don Juan came here my uncle looked into it and saw the thing that was eating his soul. He saw that don Juan was not the man whom it was prophesied would bring freedom, because don Juan had this sickness in his spirit.”

  I waited for him to go on, impatient. All I could think about was that Pepper was being held.

  “I learned what my uncle had to teach. Long ago the cross ceased to speak. But I have his book and his zaztun. And when I looked into the zaztun I saw another man coming.”

  “Another man?”

  “Yes. And I thought, Perhaps he will be the one. My nephew and I will help him.”

  So that’s why I’d been saved …

  “But then I looked into the zaztun.”

  I waited, but he didn’t say anything else, just closed the box and replaced it on the table.

  “What did you see?” I asked finally.

  “Nothing. The zaztun was dark.”

  “What does that mean?”

  The old man sighed. “It means that the evil wind inside that man will never go away. It means that the people near that man will be caught up by it and they will suffer, too.”

  It wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

  “There’s nothing that man can do?” I asked, my head swimming. Had he put something in the water I’d drunk?

  “Mixbah,” the h-men said. “Nothing.”

  When I awoke it was daylight. There was no sign of the old man and Santos was seated beside my hammock.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “You’re awake,” he said simply. “Good.”

  I blinked in the sunlight. “Where is he?”

  “Who?”

  “Don Jildo. Your grandfather.”

  Santos frowned slightly and then picked up his gourd and offered it to me.

  “Drink.”

  “I don’t want to.” I shifted in the hammock, aware of a dull pain in my midsection. “Santos, where is this hut? Are we close to the site where they’re holding la doctoral”

  “It is ten kilometers north,” he said. “This is a part of the old poblado I told you about. It used to be a village, but the fever drove the people away. Now no one lives here. This hut is used by hunters and sometimes chicleros.”

  “But your grandfather …” I twisted my head to look at the wooden table. The little cross was there, with its embroidered huipil, and so were the votive candles, but the metal box was gone.

  “Your grandfather stayed with me all night. He treated my wound. We talked.”

  Santos nodded. “Good. Now we must help la doctora.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  Santos rubbed a hand across his grizzled jaw and I saw that his eyes were red from lack of sleep.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you seen her?” I asked.

  Santos nodded. “Last night, late, I got into their camp. It was wet and the guards were staying inside one of the old buildings. They have her inside a stone temple. She’s all right.”

  “How long has it been since the ambush?”

  “Two days. You’ve been here one whole day.”

  “You and your grandfather brought me here. I remember some of that.”

  “The rain saved you. Because of the rain they didn’t want to come out and search for you. It has rained for two days.”

  Two days. “And la señorita O’Toole?”

  He shrugged. “Quien sabe? They have been looking along the trail we used to come here, because they didn’t find your body. They may have killed her. I don’t know because I knew that the only way to save you was to take you in the other direction, south. I knew about this house and that they didn’t know it was here.”

  I felt an emptiness. It was too much to expect that Minnie could have made it.

  “What happened, Santos? All I remember is that we stopped and then you went ahead and never came back.”

  “Sí. After I went forward I saw a body by the path. I decided to go a little farther to see what was happening, to see if the men who killed him were still in the area. I crept into the site and that was when I saw the bandidos. I heard some of them talking about the man they had killed.” Santos frowned. “One of the cabrones was laughing about how the man had begged for his life and then had begged for them to just kill him. Hijo de puta, don Alan, these are bad men. Then one of them said something about the jefe, the chief, and how this time he was coming himself to oversee the transfer. I think they were talking about drugs. I looked around, to go back, but some of them had come out behind me from a side trail and there was no way to return, so I decided to go forward and try to see where the drugs were being held.”

  “And did you?”

  “Como no? There’s a stone building, on the south side of the main plaza. They have guards with ametralladoras, submachine guns, guarding it. That has to be where the drogas are.”

  “And the boss?”

  He shook his head. “They said he was coming in an avioneta, a little airplane.”

  “That means they have a landing strip. Did you see it?”

  “No. I was going to look for it, but I heard shots back along the trail. It was almost dark then and I had no light except matches and I couldn’t afford to make a torch to go looking for you. I thought you had all been killed until I saw them coming back with la doctora.”

  “She wasn’t hurt?”

  “No, señor. But she was angry. She was telling them what was going to happen to them, but they just laughed and said she should worry about what was going to happen to her now that her friends were dead and she was in their hands. After that the anger seemed to go out of her, like nothing mattered anymore.”

  “Bastards,” I swore.

  “Some of the men wanted to kill her right there, and there was an argument, but the one in charge—I heard them call him Jorge—said that she was worth more as a hostage. Then some of the men wanted to use her, you know …”

  I felt sickish.

  “But this Jorge said there was time for that later, and that anyway nothing should be done without the permission of the boss, and the boss would be there soon.”

  “Did he say who this boss was?”

  “No.”

  But he didn’t have to because I already knew: don Chucho, the man who ran all the drugs in this part of the world.

  “Santos, do you know if they have a radio?”

  “Just a small one that played tunes, but not a two-way.”

  “Interesting,” I said. When I saw that he didn’t understand, I tried to explain. “A radio transmission can be picked up by satellites. In the United States they can listen to what’s being said, figure out where the radio is.”

  “Mare,” Santos swore. “They can?”

  “Yes. Look, did you see any tents or temporary buildings?”

  “Nada. They were using the old buildings entirely. They had barely cut any brush from the plaza area, just enough to be able to walk from one place to the other.”

  It confirmed what I thought. Chucho was taking no chances with satellite surveillance. The same satellites that could pick off a radio transmission or see tents and clearings could pick out an airstrip in the jungle. So if Chucho was so cautious, how was he hiding the landing strip?

  “I stayed in their camp all night,” Santos went on. “Only when it was raining the next afternoon was I able to sneak out.”

  “But how did your grandfather know? How did you find him?”

  He ignored my question.

  “I brought you here because it was the only place I knew would be safe. Then I went back to the bandido camp. I have been there
all night, listening to them. I came back here when it got light because there isn’t any more time.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “I heard them say the airplane is coming. It would have come last night except for the rain. When it leaves they are going to put la doctora on it. Then, somewhere over the water …”

  He didn’t have to say more.

  I pulled myself upright in the hammock. Oddly, my headache seemed to have dulled somewhat.

  “But you can’t walk ten kilometers,” Santos said.

  “Help me up.” I put out my arm and he took it, hoisting me to my feet. For an instant I tottered, then grabbed the main rafter for support.

  “Your grandfather—” I began, but Santos was already shaking his head.

  “It will be hard for you to walk that far. And once we get there …”

  “We’ve got to get her loose and sneak her out,” I said simply. “You have to get us back into the camp.”

  “Sí,” he said finally. “There is no choice.”

  “Where’s your grandfather?” I asked. “I know it’s a long way, but we need someone to go for the soldiers.”

  “He’s not here,” Santos said simply. “Don Alan, it is time to go.”

  I nodded. He was right. He handed me a gourd. “Water. And I have some pozole.”

  “Good.” I wasn’t fond of the corn dough that Mayan farmers dissolved in their water as a noon meal while working, but it would have to do.

  I followed him into the early daylight and froze in surprise.

  I was staring at a village of huts, ghosts wreathed by the mist, and as I stared around me, saw the caved-in roofs, the missing thatch, the yawning doors, I realized that ghosts were exactly what they were.

  “But these houses are all deserted,” I said.

  “I told you: The people died a long time ago and the rest left. It was the fever. Nobody lives here now.”

  “Nobody?”

  “Nadie,” he said in Spanish. “No one.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  We reached Lubaanah at just after five in the afternoon, approaching from the south along a trail I didn’t recognize. The trek had been endurable only because I knew that it had to be made, and after a while I felt like an automaton looking down from outside myself, even during our frequent rest halts.

  Two hours along, my dizziness had worsened and I found myself lurching for branches to grab. Santos cut a sapling and I used it as a cane, leaning ever more heavily on it as we went.

  The first man, who’d come, long ago, was a god. He’d lived among the people, fought their battles, died, and been enshrined as the first of his lineage. The people thought he would return one day.

  John Dance Williams, a blond foreigner, had appeared from across the sea and at first it had been thought he was the god returned. But he had brought with him his own destruction, a sickness that no medicine or magic would cure. Don Eleut had recognized this sickness and knew that Williams was not the man.

  Then, years after don Eleut’s death, when even his nephew had grown old, another man appeared and hope flickered once more. But this man brought an inner darkness so profound that it threatened to suck in the people around him.

  I remembered what had happened with Felicia. I don’t know when it came to me precisely, because it emerged, like the birth of a monster, over the course of that walk, and perhaps that was why I was unconscious of the physical pain. The pain of memory was greater.

  When we halted that afternoon and Santos told me we were only a kilometer from our destination, I wondered if anything I could do would make a difference.

  Maybe, I thought, we were trapped in cycles of Mayan time. Maybe it was all ordained and nothing I or anyone else could do was capable of altering what would happen, because it had all happened before and would happen again until the last age of the world.

  I heard the radio, tinny and distant, and Santos pointed to show that he heard it, too.

  “When it is a little darker we’ll sneak in close,” he said. “I know a way they don’t guard.”

  I nodded. We would do what we could, but there was no power that could change what was already set.

  “In Katun 8 Ahau the Itzá were always driven from their homes,” I said.

  Santos frowned. “What?”

  “It’s a prophesy from the old books. Katun 8 Ahau was the unlucky period for the Itzá Maya, the ones who built Chichen Itzá. Every two hundred fifty-six years, when this twenty-year period came, something bad happened to them.”

  Santos handed me his gourd. “Drink,” he said.

  “Every Mayan group had its own lucky and unlucky twenty-year period,” I said. “Good events and bad events repeated themselves. Maybe this is our unlucky katun.”

  “Don Alan, you have a fever.”

  “Right.” I touched my face and my hand came away hot. “Can we get to where they’re keeping her without being seen?”

  “Ojalá! I hope so.”

  I sank back against the tree trunk, shutting my eyes against the dizziness, but that only made the spinning increase.

  When I opened my eyes again, Santos was shaking me gently and it was dark around us.

  “It’s time,” he said.

  I roused myself, but his hand stayed me.

  “Perhaps I should go in, try to get her out and bring her here,” he whispered.

  But I shook my head. “No. I have to go.”

  “Don Alan, you’re weak.”

  He was telling me, in his indirect way, that I would be more of a hindrance than a help. And maybe, if I’d been thinking rationally, I would have agreed.

  “I’m going,” I said and he turned away, resigned.

  I followed him toward the sound of the radio, fronds and vines brushing my face as we crept, hunched over, through the forest.

  Pepper, are you still alive?

  Santos stopped suddenly and I blundered against him.

  “Mira,” he whispered. “Ahead.”

  It was a light, barely visible through the cover.

  He put his mouth against my ear, cupping his hand. “Espérame,” he ordered. “Wait. I’ll see where the guards are.”

  And then he was gone.

  I sank onto the ground, eyes fixed on the light. It blinked once as something crossed my line of sight and then remained steady. A mosquito landed on my cheek and I felt the sting as it drilled into my skin.

  An inner darkness, I thought. The unlucky katun. I knew what had happened with Felicia and maybe it was going to happen again.

  But Felicia was still alive. So maybe …

  My dreaming was shattered by a yell.

  I held my breath, expecting a shot or a scream, but there was nothing, just the same music, rising and fading in the sultry night. Someone laughed and I let some of the air out of my lungs.

  I detected the odor of meat frying and wondered where they had the fire. Probably, I decided, it was inside one of the ruined buildings, where infrared satellite photos wouldn’t spot it.

  But the activity of men on the ground and the heat inside the buildings could be picked up by heat sensors. And the radio receiver could be detected by the special sensors in NSA spy satellites.

  Except that there was no way to show what it all meant. People in the jungle playing a radio could be a chicle camp, or naturalists doing a biological survey.

  Only aerial photos that showed armed men and a nearby landing strip would be definitive. Or some radio transmission that could be decoded. But don Chucho was too wily for any of that.

  How the hell were we supposed to get Pepper back?

  Bushes rustled in front of me and my muscles tensed. Then I heard my name whispered: “Don Alan, donde estás?”

  Santos was coming back.

  I felt his breath on my face and his hand touched me to reassure himself that I was there.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes. Did you see her?”

  “No. She’s inside one of the buildings.
There are two guards outside. I couldn’t get past them.”

  “Are you sure she’s in there?”

  “She was when I saw her before.”

  “Then we have to get past the guards.”

  Silence, except for the distant radio.

  “Sí,” Santos said at last. “You’re right. But not yet.”

  “When, then? We can’t just—”

  His hand touched my arm again, reassuring me.

  “Some of the men are drinking. They’re talking about when they get out of here, the women they’ll have, the money they’re going to get from their boss. The more they drink, the more careless they’ll get. Me intiendes?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I understand.”

  He broke out the pozole, mixed it with water in the gourd cup he carried, and handed the cup to me. I drank, forcing down the thick gruel.

  “Santos, your grandfather looked into his zaztun.”

  The other man chuckled nervously. “There is no such thing as a zaztun. It is only a piece of stone.”

  “He said there was something dark—”

  “Don Alan, no te preocupas. Don’t bother yourself with such things. You’re sick.”

  “Yes.”

  I closed my eyes again and a second later he nudged me.

  “It’s time.”

  “But—”

  “You’ve been asleep. It’s late. Listen.”

  I lifted my head and was aware of a distant thrumming sound: a generator, probably run by car batteries.

  “We must go now because they said the airplane will be here at midnight.”

  I forced my eyes down to the glowing face of my watch: It was almost eleven. He was right. Back at the cabaña, I’d heard the plane going over around midnight. If they kept to schedule, that meant we had an hour, no more. And, with no way to recharge the batteries, they’d only start the generator that powered their lighting system when the time for meeting the plane was at hand.

  “It will take us almost an hour to get where she is,” Santos explained. “We have to go very slowly, crawl like the jaguar. And when we reach the place where the guards are we must spring out quickly. We must get the doctora away and hide her in the forest.”