the Source (2008)

by Cordy, Michael

  Hackett parked by the boat, and when Ross opened the car door the air was a good five to ten degrees warmer and more humid than it had been in the mountains. He got out and stretched his legs. Looking at the immaculate boat, he understood for the first time what 'shipshape' meant. Brass letters spelt out the name Discovery on the blindingly white hull, and when they boarded every surface was polished brass or varnished teak.

  'What a lovely boat,' said Sister Chantal.

  Hackett beamed with pride. 'The Discovery's a custom-built seventy-footer, powered by two hundred-and-fifty horsepower Detroit diesels.'

  'How many berths?' said Ross.

  'Six cabins.'

  Ross breathed a sigh of relief. Everyone would have their own space.

  A small, wiry man with smiling brown eyes, honeyed skin and thick black hair stepped from the engine room. His white T-shirt and blue jeans were as spotless as the boat.

  Hackett introduced him as Juarez. 'The irony is that I left England to come to the jungle and seek out ancient ruins, whereas Juarez comes from the jungle and wants to visit the great cities of Europe and North America. He hates ruins, regards them as dead places. Nevertheless, he helps me with the boat and acts as our guide. He speaks fluent English, Spanish and Quechua and knows the Amazon - river and jungle - as well as anyone. He's also a damn good cook.' Hackett pointed down one of the side aisles. 'Follow me. I'll show you to your cabins.'

  As Hackett took them round the boat, no one noticed a tall man in a Panama walk past the Discovery. Twice. The second time he came so close to the edge of the dock that when he bent to tie his laces, he could easily have touched the hull.

  Each tiny cabin was as neat and clean as Ross had expected, and had an adjoining shower room. A neat pile of equipment and supplies was laid out on each bed, including a tightly rolled hammock and mosquito net, with cans of full-strength insect repellent. 'Use it liberally,' said Hackett, 'even in your cabin. Before we leave the boat and go into the jungle Juarez will explain how to use the hammock and the mosquito net to stop yourself being eaten alive.'

  'This boat looks expensive. How often is it chartered?' Ross asked, when Hackett had shown the others to their rooms.

  'Not often enough. I survive by renting it to the oil companies and occasionally the pharmaceutical giants. It seems everyone's looking for treasure in the Amazon, whether it's gold, oil or the next cure for cancer.' He pointed to a chest on the deck. 'That's full of tennis balls and baseball caps with company logos on them. Tennis balls are all the rage with the kids around these parts and the oil companies give them out as freebies. It's good PR, apparently. Alascon Oil's red ones are the current craze.'

  Ross groaned inwardly at the thought of Underwood and Kovacs.

  'I'll leave you to freshen up,' said Hackett. 'Yurimaguas is one of the gateways to the jungle. If my reading of the next directions is correct we'll follow the Rio Huallaga through Lagunas, then join the Rio Maranon and head east. Eventually we'll join the main river, the Amazonas, which will take us into the heart of the jungle.'

  Hackett left and Ross slumped on to his bed. He reached into his wallet for a photograph taken on his honeymoon: Lauren smiling in the glow of a Hawaiian sunset. She had a flower in her hair and looked tanned and well. He wondered if he would ever see her smile again. The rumble of the boat's powerful diesel engines interrupted his thoughts. He got up and looked out of the porthole. As the brown river water churned below him, the faded, raffish charm of Yurimaguas receded into the distance and the river snaked into the heart of the largest jungle on earth.

  As Ross gazed down the winding waterway, he felt his quest had truly begun.

  Bazin watched the Discovery leave Yurimaguas, then checked his handheld computer screen, which showed a map of north-east Peru. When he activated the GPS transmitter he'd attached to the boat's hull, a beeping dot appeared on the screen, moving out of Yurimaguas. He adjusted his Panama, then turned to the others in the dinghy.

  'I like the girl with the red hair,' said the one who had been oiling his gun in the Land Cruiser.

  Bazin glared at him. 'Forget her. You know what you have to do. I can't allow any of you to make a mistake. Understand?'

  Raul laughed. 'You worry too much.'

  Bazin suspected he wasn't worrying enough. He gunned the powerful outboard and the boat sped off in the wake of the Discovery.

  Chapter 31.

  A bullet hitting the human head makes a particular sound. Once heard, it is never forgotten. The next morning, after a fitful sleep, Ross heard it for the first time - more than once.

  The incident happened some hours after the Discovery had passed Lagunas, where the deserted Rio Maranon was half a mile wide. He was reading Falcon's notebook, mentally ticking off the landmarks they'd passed and counting the ones that remained, when he heard Juarez call to Hackett. Ross followed Juarez's pointing finger and saw a dinghy floating near the riverbank with three men on board. Two were waving while the third held up a broken paddle and gestured to the outboard.

  'We help them?' said Juarez.

  'Of course,' said Hackett. 'If we can't fix their outboard, we'll tow them upriver to the nearest town.'

  The Discovery pulled up alongside the dinghy and one of the passengers, a larger man wearing a white Panama hat, held up a bottle in his left hand. ' Usted ha conseguido agua potable? Have you any water?'

  Hackett pushed the ladder over the side while Juarez threw them a line to secure their dinghy to the Discovery. Despite the heat, the men wore coats when they climbed aboard. Ross assumed they contained their valuables but soon realized he had been wrong.

  Very wrong.

  The man with the Panama pulled a pistol from his jacket with his left hand and pointed its oily black muzzle at Hackett. The other two were levelling larger semi-automatics at the passengers on deck. Panama counted each of them, as though he knew how many should be on board. 'I want you to raise your hands and stand in a line.' He turned to Ross and Sister Chantal. 'Which of you has the book?'

  'What book?' said Sister Chantal.

  Panama shook his head wearily. 'The notebook with the directions.'

  How did he know about Falcon's book? Ross glanced at Hackett and saw, from the shock on his face, that he knew nothing of this. One of the men, with acne-scarred skin and small beady eyes, touched Zeb's red hair. 'I like her,' he said.

  'I told you, forget the girl. We want the notebook,' said Panama.

  'Don't give them anything,' said Zeb. 'Pizza Face doesn't scare me.'

  'Shut up, Zeb,' said Ross.

  Hackett stepped closer to her. 'Steady on. Let's keep calm.'

  Ross turned to Sister Chantal. 'Give it to him,' he said. He was on this quest to save Lauren's life, not to risk anyone else's.

  Sister Chantal gazed calmly at the man in the Panama. 'No.'

  'Give him the book,' Ross said again.

  'No.'

  Pizza Face laughed and reached for Zeb's left breast. Zeb recoiled and Hackett shoved him away. 'Take your hands off her,' he said.

  Pizza Face twisted round and struck Hackett across the head with his gun, sending the Englishman sprawling to the floor, blood pouring from his temple, glasses clattering across the deck. As Zeb knelt to help him, Pizza Face took aim at him. 'I kill him,' he spat.

  'Wait,' said the third man, wiping his forehead while keeping his gun trained on Juarez.

  'Give him the goddamned book,' Ross shouted at Sister Chantal.

  'They'll kill us anyway,' she said, with glacial calm. 'I will not make it easy for them.'

  'Killing you is easy,' said Panama, raising his left hand and pointing his weapon at her forehead. 'Let me show you.'

  *

  As soon as he heard the Discovery's engines, the man cutting his way through the thick jungle sheathed his machete and rushed to the riverbank. He took cover when he saw the men from the dinghy climb on board the boat and pull out their weapons. He watched for a moment, considering his options, then raised his rifl
e, nestled the butt in his shoulder and took aim.

  He waited for as long as he could, reluctant to intervene, until the man in the Panama levelled his pistol at the old lady's forehead.

  He knew then that he had to act.

  He slowed his breathing, checked his aim and squeezed the trigger.

  As Ross watched Panama's finger whiten on the trigger, he knew the man would shoot Sister Chantal, and some futile impulse made him lunge forward to stop him.

  His face was a kiss away from Panama's when the shot rang out, sending brilliantly coloured parrots flying from the trees. When the bullet struck its target it sounded like nothing Ross had heard before. Movies sometimes used the metaphor of a bullet exploding a watermelon, but this sounded crisper, sharper: the shattering of brittle bone as the bullet entered and left the skull, counterpointing the explosive impact on soft tissue and brain. Despite the hot, humid air, the expelled blood and flesh felt warm on his face.

  In his horror he turned to Sister Chantal and couldn't understand why she was still standing. Why she was unharmed. Then he realized that Panama had been shot. The force had thrown him to the deck, where he lay dead, his white hat and head merged into a bloody pulp that pooled, red and sticky, on the polished wood.

  A second shot rang out and Pizza Face fell backwards into the river, a large hole in his forehead, surprise on his face. A third shot collapsed the last man, like a marionette with cut strings. He toppled overboard.

  In the eerie silence that followed, Ross and the others stared at each other. Then Ross saw a figure on the nearby riverbank, waving a rifle. 'Hola,' the man shouted. 'You okay?'

  Ross looked at Hackett, who nodded, while Zeb picked up his glasses, then dabbed at his wound. Sister Chantal smiled serenely at their saviour. 'God certainly moves in mysterious ways,' she said.

  'Can I come aboard?' the man asked.

  Juarez rushed to the wheelhouse and retrieved a rifle and a black pistol.

  'Bit late for those now,' said Hackett.

  Juarez put away the rifle but kept the pistol close to hand as he steered the Discovery to the bank. The man boarded, carrying his rifle over his shoulder and a large rucksack. He was tall and athletic with a handsome, world-weary face and sad eyes, his olive skin burnished by the sun. He didn't seem fazed to have dispatched three men. Waving away their thanks, he approached Hackett as if he was an old friend. 'Senor Nigel Hackett.'

  When Hackett rose to his feet he resembled a provincial bank manager beside the swashbuckling stranger. 'Have we met?'

  The man raised an eyebrow. 'Osvaldo Mendoza. I also have a boat that ferries tourists down the river. We met once in Lagunas.'

  'Of course,' said Hackett. Ross almost smiled. It would be impolite and unBritish to snub the man who had just saved your life. Hackett extended his hand and Mendoza shook it. 'I don't know how we can repay you for coming to our assistance.'

  'You can give me a lift to Iquitos, my friend. My boat is not as grand - or as memorable - as yours. That's why I'm here. It sank, and I was waiting to flag down the ferry to Iquitos when I saw your difficulty.' He gestured to the body still on board. 'Bandits don't usually operate so far from the drug fields of the Huallaga valley. What did they want?'

  Hackett turned to Sister Chantal. 'Why didn't you give them the notebook? They would have killed us if Senor Mendoza hadn't turned up.'

  'As I said before, they would have killed us anyway,' she said.

  Mendoza grimaced. 'I fear she's right, senor. Those men don't let you live to complain to the police. What notebook did they want? It must be valuable.'

  'It contains directions,' said Hackett, glaring at the nun.

  'Directions?'

  Hackett turned to Ross. 'How the hell did they even know about it? You told me no one else did.'

  No one else should have known about the notebook, thought Ross. But one other person knew of Falcon's garden. Torino. The priest could have seen the book when he'd met Sister Chantal at Ross's house, then put two and two together. Ross found it hard to believe that a senior officer of the Church would hire murderous bandits to steal it but there seemed no other explanation. 'Perhaps one other person knows what we're looking for, but he can't find it without the notebook.'

  'You mean--' started Sister Chantal. Ross flashed her a look and she stopped. Now was not the time to explain to Hackett and the others why a senior Catholic priest was involved.

  'So we've got serious competition?' said Hackett.

  'We had serious competition,' said Ross. 'With those men dead, there's no way he can follow us into the jungle.'

  'What about the police?' said Zeb.

  'What about them?' said Mendoza, quietly.

  All eyes turned to him.

  'She means the bodies,' said Ross.

  Mendoza bent down to the remaining body on the deck and rolled it into the river. A red stain marked where it had lain. 'What bodies?' He pointed to three large crocodiles moving through the water. The other two had already disappeared. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and passed it to Ross. 'Wipe your face.' Ross did so and Mendoza looked him in the eye. 'I killed three men to help you. The police here are not as they are in America. They'll ask us a lot of questions - questions I don't need, questions you don't need. They'll take your book of directions and keep it. If you're in a hurry, senor, and want to find what you seek before your rival, don't involve the police. You understand?'

  'I'm afraid I agree with him, Ross,' said Hackett. 'The police won't do us any favours.'

  Ross looked at the women, who stared blankly at him, ashen-faced, eyes wide with shock, then at the churning river where a crocodile was already pulling the last body under the murky water. He had always had his doubts about this quest but now the stakes were even higher.

  Mendoza's eyes met his. 'Where you're going you need a man who knows how to use a gun. When I left the army my boat was my future, but now it's gone. I have no insurance, no prospects. Give me a share of whatever you seek and I'll come with you.'

  'You don't even know what we're looking for.'

  'It must be valuable.'

  Ross tried to judge the man standing before him. Mendoza had saved their lives and proved himself a powerful ally, but he might also make a dangerous enemy. He turned to the others. Zeb and Juarez nodded uncertainly. Sister Chantal lowered her eyes and said nothing. 'Nigel, you're the captain. It's your boat. What do you think?' Hackett hesitated. 'Now's not the time to be polite,' Ross pressed. 'Senor Mendoza says you've met him before. Have you?'

  Hackett grimaced. 'I don't know. I've got an appalling memory for faces, but he has no reason to lie and we might easily have met. I've certainly been to Lagunas a number of times and met many river-runners. Anyway, I'd say Senor Mendoza's earned his passage.'

  'That's settled, then. Now let's get the hell out of here.'

  Chapter 32.

  The Sacred Heart Hospital, Bridgeport, Connecticut

  Ross and Lauren Kelly's unborn baby was now five months into its development, over halfway through the pregnancy. Its length from crown to rump was more than seven inches, its weight about ten and a half ounces. Though its rapid growth rate had slowed, the baby's organs were maturing and developing.

  Yesterday her grandchild's progress had filled Diana Wharton with hope. Now she sat in the dark beside her daughter's bed, drifting into and out of sleep. She had intended to leave at midnight but had changed her mind: she preferred to be with Lauren than alone in her bed at home.

  Something snapped her awake. Disoriented, she peered round the darkened room, silent except for the rhythmic beat of the instruments. According to the luminous clock on the wall it was almost three in the morning. As her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom she did a double-take, unable to believe what she was seeing: Lauren's eyes were open.

  Diana Wharton jumped up and bent close to her daughter. For a second she allowed herself to believe a miracle had happened - the miracle she had been praying for every day and every night. But La
uren's eyes were closed. It had been an illusion, a trick of the light, a cruel dream.

  Tears streaming down her cheeks, knowing she would not sleep again that night, Diana stroked her daughter's face.

  Chapter 33.

  Iquitos

  The remote capital of the Department of Lareto is unique. Linked to the outside world only by air and river, Iquitos is the world's only large city totally surrounded by jungle and unreachable by road.

  Founded as a Jesuit mission in the 1750s, a century after Falcon had written the Voynich, Iquitos had to fend off constant attacks from Indian tribes who didn't wish to be converted. The tiny settlement survived and grew slowly until by the 1870s it had 1,500 inhabitants. Then came the great rubber boom and the population increased sixteen-fold. While the barons became fabulously rich, the rubber tappers, mainly local Indians, suffered virtual enslavement. During the Second World War the rubber market collapsed. Then, in the 1960s, a second boom revitalized the area, this time in oil. Iquitos was now a thriving frontier town, violent but prosperous, attracting oilmen, adventurers and tourists alike.

  When the Discovery pulled alongside the other boats in Puerto Masusa, a couple of kilometres north of the city centre, Ross saw the influence of oil everywhere. Small children ran around in grubby oil-company T-shirts playing with logo-stamped tennis balls. A huge poster by the docks depicted a lush, idyllic jungle scene, complete with bright parrots, flowers and a cooling spring - not an ugly oil rig, pipeline or sump in sight. Beneath it was a discreet oil-company logo and the tag line Ayudamos Peru a utilizar susrecursos naturales. Helping Peru use its natural resources.