The Valley of the Ancients

by David Alric

  ‘Time to leave,’ called Julian briskly. ‘Let’s get the entire menagerie aboard and we’ll make the most of this perfect weather while it lasts.’ Lucy said goodbye to the caymans and then rode back in style on her unusual mount, Queenie now sitting behind her and Clare and Clive hurrying to keep up with the tapir as it trotted back to the plane. On a nod from Lucy the big monkeys scrambled into the back of the plane on top of all the equipment; then the explorers got in, Michelle glued to Lucy’s shoulder. Julian started up the engine and they all felt a thrill of excitement at the thought that at last, after months of planning, they would soon be in the ‘lost world’ of the crater.

  Little did they suspect that, before the day was out, their happy group would be split up and they would be facing the greatest challenge of their lives.

  4

  A Miscellany of Miscreants

  Six months before the dinosaur hunters set off on their expedition to the Amazon a meeting took place in a jail near Rio de Janeiro; a meeting that was destined to change all their lives. It is a curious fact that the origins of the most profound events are often to be found in the most trivial of circumstances, and in this case the course of history depended on the fact that on a particular day, early in January, the jail was full to capacity and a cell that was usually reserved for one man had to accommodate two.

  On that day Alf ‘Chopper’ Sawyer lay on his hard narrow bunk with his hands behind his head and stared up disconsolately at the filthy ceiling. Flies buzzed in and out of the tiny barred window of his cell, attracted by the all-pervading stench of the inside of the jail and, in particular, the massive, recumbent and unwashed lump of humanity lying there.

  Things, Chopper thought to himself, had come to a pretty pass. He had been the director of a large timber company which, under the guise of legitimate operations, had made enormous profits from illegal mining and drug peddling. With his extravagant wife Nandita, he had lived an opulent lifestyle and moved in Rio’s highest social circles – a man respected and feared by all who knew him. And now … his thoughts wandered back to that dreadful day, just over a year ago, when some wretched girl had somehow drawn him into a police trap.

  It had been New Year’s Day – the day he should have made millions of pounds from the largest drug deal in his entire criminal career. Instead, his brother Sam had disappeared – almost certainly eaten by crocodiles, the police had informed him with barely concealed satisfaction; his site manager Pollard had been blown to pieces; and he and the two remaining members of his gang, tiny Bert Shortshanks and the massive ‘Crack’ Barker, had been charged with kidnap and drug peddling. Because of the gravity of the case it had been dealt with in the highest court in the land and Chopper and associates had been stripped of their illegal assets and then sent to this dreadful prison, one of the largest in the country and notorious for the violence and depravity of its inmates.

  Chopper had realized from his first day in the place that he was in a situation where it was a question of the survival of the fittest and that, if his life wasn’t going to be sheer hell for the next ten years, he had to establish his place in the prison pecking order from day one. He had quickly learnt that there were two or three gang leaders who virtually ruled the institution. They controlled the supplies of drugs and alcohol within the prison and punished any who failed to cooperate with the utmost brutality, bribing the prison officers to turn a blind eye to their activities. Never one for half measures, and frightened of nobody, Chopper had picked arguments with the most feared and formidable of these felons and beaten him to a pulp. Slow to learn from example, two other gang leaders had formed a temporary alliance with each other and cornered Chopper in the latrines. They only narrowly escaped with their lives: one had to have a cistern removed from his head by the fire brigade who found as they cut it off that the toilet chain had gone through one of his cheeks and out of his mouth; the other suffered a particularly unpleasant form of acute water intoxication after being forced to drink a massive but unknown quantity of toilet water. As Barker had later remarked to Shortshanks: ‘I knew Chopper had finally settled in when they started building an extension to the prison hospital.’

  Chopper’s thoughts now turned once again to the police raid on his jungle camp. His younger brothers Sid and Fred, identical twins, had also been arrested in the police operation but had only been charged with the lesser offences of illegally trapping and mistreating wild animals. They had spent three months in a small local prison and on their release had visited Chopper in jail and told him they were off to Africa to ‘start up a new business’. He had little doubt that soon the big cats of Africa would be suffering a fate similar to that which his vile brothers had already inflicted on Asian tigers and Amazonian jaguars.

  He decided that his troubles had really started when a young schoolgirl, who had turned out to be the daughter of a treacherous employee, had started to poke her nose into the twins’ jaguar business. Chopper had kidnapped her but, by an amazing sequence of unfortunate events which he still couldn’t fathom, she had eventually destroyed his camp and his business deals, and cost him his freedom. Chopper wasn’t a superstitious man, but he couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that there was something almost supernatural about the way the girl had frustrated his plans at every turn. If he ever laid hands on her again …

  His musings on his misfortunes were rudely interrupted as his cell door opened with a clang and a new prisoner was pushed into the cell. James Bigglesworth, known universally by his nickname Biggles, was small and apprehensive and as his eyes fell on his future cell-mate his apprehension turned to frank terror. Chopper was never a prospect to gladden a man’s heart and the sight of him lying there, unshaven, scarred, malodorous and morose, with his massive frame bulging over the side of the narrow prison bed, would have intimidated the most hardened of criminals. This was Biggles’s first time in jail and as he sat on the other bed and contemplated his awful situation he felt physically sick with fear.

  The guard turned to Chopper. He spoke in English; everybody spoke in English to Chopper. He had no patience with ‘foreign lingos’ as he called all other languages, and those who ignored this soon lived to regret it.

  ‘Ze guv’nor want see you – now.’

  Chopper sullenly heaved himself up and put his sandals on. He gave a contemptuous glance at Biggles, who stammered out his name by way of introducing himself. Chopper nodded curtly in response and then left with the guard. The door slammed shut behind them, leaving Biggles to his tormented thoughts.

  Soon Chopper passed into the carpeted luxury of the governor’s quarters and was ushered into his office. He stood in front of the governor’s desk with the guard behind him. Just in case he didn’t know where he was there was a gleaming brass nameplate on the desk mounted on a polished hardwood stand:

  CONSTANTE SUBORNOS

  GOVERNOR AND GENERAL DIRECTOR

  ‘I don’t share my cell with anyone,’ said Chopper, before the governor could speak. As the undisputed ‘king’ of the prison Chopper now led a reasonably trouble-free life, unmolested by the other prisoners and given favours by the governor and the guards who knew he could exert a controlling influence over the other inmates and keep trouble to a minimum.

  ‘I know, I’m sorry,’ said the governor. ‘The prison’s full. We’ll move him as soon as possible. We’ll step up your secret booze and fags allowance in the meantime.’ He paused briefly for thought and then continued. ‘I wanted to see you because there have been rumours about a possible riot. The ringleaders seem to be a couple of unsavoury characters called Barker and Shortshanks. See what you can do, will you?’

  ‘I’ll sort them out tonight,’ said Chopper. ‘No problem. I presume it will be under the usual terms of our … ahem …’ he glanced back at the guard who was gazing aimlessly into space, clearly not following the conversation, and Chopper continued, ‘… arrangement.’

  ‘Of course,’ said the governor with a wink.

  ‘And Boggles,
or whatever he’s called, gets shifted as soon as possible,’ added Chopper.

  ‘Understood,’ said the governor.

  They were both happy. The governor had averted a riot and when Chopper returned to his cell from the exercise yard the next day a package of drugs would have mysteriously appeared under his bed. These he could sell, convert into bribes, or use to pay the informers and lackeys he had working for him throughout the massive prison. What the governor didn’t know was that Chopper was in league with Barker and Shortshanks. On arrival in jail they had decided that for many reasons it would be better if no one knew they were associated, and the arrangement had proved to be extremely useful. The present case was a perfect example: at Chopper’s suggestion Barker and Shortshanks had spread false rumours about a possible riot, making sure through informants that news of it reached the ears of the prison authorities. Chopper had been summoned to try to suppress it, and the three of them would now end up splitting the governor’s bounty.

  Back in the cell Biggles lay quivering on his bed. He couldn’t believe how stupid he had been, as his thoughts ran over the events that had led up to his present dreadful situation. He was a pilot who had formerly worked for one of the large airlines but he had wanted to be his own boss, so had gone into business with a partner called Algy. They had rented a private airstrip near his home in Fonte Boa where they had two small planes, a hangar and a workshop. For several years they had run a successful charter business undertaking flights for logging companies but Biggles had eventually been unable to resist the temptation of making an easy living by smuggling drugs from various neighbouring countries. One of his last ‘straight’ jobs before turning to drugs had been for a logging company called the Ecocidal Timber Company. The job had involved flying to a remote crater deep in the Amazon jungle to rescue two scientists who had been trapped there for several months.

  The crater and surrounding area were unmapped, but he had been given very specific instructions about its location by a third scientist who had managed to escape and reach a camp owned by the logging company. He had found the crater without too much difficulty and, after experiencing serious and unusual turbulence while crossing the rim, had landed on a strip cleared, apparently, by the scientists.

  After the scientists had climbed aboard the four-seater aircraft, he had decided that he should stabilize the plane by having an even distribution of weight. He was terrified of encountering further turbulence as he undertook the tricky flight out of the crater. Apologizing to his new companions for the delay he had gathered a large bag of rocks, equivalent in weight to another person, and put it in the empty co-pilot’s seat next to him.

  His precautions were fully vindicated for they had narrowly escaped hitting the lip of the crater as the little plane was thrown about by gusts of rising air currents, but they had eventually reached calmer air and had then flown over the rainforest to the pilot’s home airfield. It was dark as they landed and, after his passengers had thanked him and disembarked from the plane he had hauled out the bag of rocks and tipped it into the grass by the side of the runway. The scientists had been picked up by a company plane the next day and, for the next few weeks, he had thought no more about the trip.

  Shortly after this job Biggles had been approached by a drugs cartel and offered a monthly salary more than three times what he earned from his charter work with the logging companies. The drug dealers had recently lost a plane in a police operation and were anxious to resume their cross-border smuggling activities as soon as possible. Since all their activities took place in the remote border country between Colombia and Brazil, Biggles’s jungle-flying experience was invaluable so, in addition to the inflated salary, they offered him a generous percentage on each successful drug delivery. The temptation had proved irresistible and for several weeks Biggles had undertaken a series of lucrative flights across the border. One evening when landing at dusk he had noticed an eerie glow coming from the grass, which, at first, he thought must be due to glow-worms. As he walked away, however, the glow abruptly ceased. Intrigued, he walked back and the glow reappeared. On close inspection he found that it came from the pile of rocks he had used as ballast when rescuing the two scientists. The glow intensified as he approached the rocks but disappeared again as soon as he was more than a few feet away. This phenomenon made him both apprehensive and curious. He was fearful that the rocks might be radioactive, though he wasn’t sure if this made things glow in the dark; whatever the cause, however, it seemed likely that the rocks might be valuable – his mind ran on to the possibility of having discovered an open seam of uranium, unknown to the rest of the world. It was odd that the two scientists he had picked up had made no mention of funny glowing rocks, but then he remembered that they had said that they never ventured out after dusk.

  He put a small rock fragment in an old biscuit tin and hid the remainder under a nearby fallen tree.

  The next day he had phoned his local university about the rocks but they had suggested he contact one of the leading universities in the country, near Rio de Janeiro, where there was a specialist geology department. Not wishing to trust his sample to the post, or to anybody else, he had made the long trip to Rio, left his plane in a bay at the airport, and given the sample to a young geologist who had been extremely interested in the whole story. Now, four dreadful weeks later, he was here in jail. The airport authority in Rio had identified his plane from a police surveillance video of a drugs delivery. When he had returned to the aircraft he had been arrested. The evidence against him had been overwhelming – there were still some drugs in the plane – and he had been sentenced to five years in prison.

  He had been appalled at the severity of his sentence; it had been his misfortune that the government was having a crackdown on drug dealing, but only now, shut in this awful cell awaiting the return of his fearsome cell-mate, had the true horror of his predicament come home to him.

  His dismal reverie came to an abrupt end as the door swung open and Chopper entered. Much to Biggles’s relief he seemed in a better mood after his talk with the governor and even shook hands with Biggles as he introduced himself. As it happened, Chopper and Biggles got on quite well together, despite the pilot’s initial forebodings. Biggles was an intelligent and interesting man and Chopper actually found it a pleasant change to have a companion in the cell. A few days later when, at the governor’s behest, a guard came to shift Biggles into a different cell, Chopper requested that he stayed.

  Biggles woke up one day with a severe attack of vomiting. It was so bad that he was admitted to the prison sick bay and while he was there he read in the newspapers of the death in London of a Russian spy from radiation poisoning. His blood ran cold as he read of the man’s initial symptoms – identical to his own – and realized that, with all the turmoil of being arrested and imprisoned, he had not been able to find out about the nature of his rock samples. He mentioned this fact to the prison doctor, who had just finished examining him, whereupon the doctor turned a little pale and hurried away. After washing his hands several times and changing all his clothes and shoes, he then rang the university with Biggles’s details and enquired about the rock analysis.

  The doctor returned within minutes to tell Biggles that there had been no evidence of radioactivity in the rocks and that the cause of his problem was, almost certainly, the state of the prison kitchens. He was visibly relieved as he gave Biggles the news and the pilot was touched by the doctor’s concern for his welfare. As he said to Chopper the next day, ‘It’s good to know that there are still some completely unselfish people about.’

  Biggles was one of the few literate individuals in the institution and, as he also spoke fluent Portuguese, he began to help many of the inmates to read and reply to the letters they received from their families and lawyers. Over the weeks, as Chopper observed his cell-mate handling the queries of dozens of prisoners, it dawned on him that information could be gleaned from these sources that might be put to very good use in the future, and
a curious, mutually convenient relationship began to develop between the two men. Biggles was a small and timid individual and, as his friend and cell-mate, Chopper protected him from the predations of some of the more malignant prisoners – in that jail there were some truly awful individuals. In return for this protection, the pilot allowed Chopper to read the letters that came through his hands, translating them as necessary.

  The correspondence between the villains in jail and their outside contacts revealed an astonishing amount of significant information. Although individual letters contained little in the way of detail, the information built up over a prolonged period of time and pieced together from sequences of letters to and from the same prisoner gave Chopper details of crooked lawyers, corrupt policemen, criminals who were associates of the prison inmates but still at large, and fences, who handled and disposed of stolen goods. Even better were the names and addresses of relatives of the inmates, for in many cases these families knew the whereabouts of caches of stolen goods. Chopper, with an eye to the future, kept detailed notes on all these characters and planned to have a very busy time when released from jail. Not only would he have considerable scope for the blackmail of various lawyers and police officers, but he intended to pay courtesy visits to the families of several of his ‘old friends’ in jail. He had little doubt that his powers of physical persuasion would yield the location of more than one hidden hoard of stolen goods that would never be subsequently enjoyed by its unrightful owner in jail.

  One morning, about three months after Biggles had arrived, a prison warder told Chopper that he had a visitor. Chopper racked his brains to think who it might be. His wife, Nandita, had not been heard of since his arrest. His villa had been appropriated by the authorities under new anti-drug dealing laws but Nandita had apparently disappeared only hours before the police had appeared, taking with her almost every removable object of value in the house.