by Alex Scarrow
The rebel leader stirred from his reverie. ‘You are British. The girl is American. You have much monetary value to us. We will make a contact and demand a ransom for you both.’ Alvarez smiled. ‘Your governments will pay because it is bad for the news at home, hmm?’
‘So, what? You’re keeping us here until they pay?’
He nodded slowly. ‘This is our most secret camp. We must remain here.’ He sighed. ‘Though, sometimes, I would rather not be here.’
Those eyes seemed to be glazing over again, looking past Adam into the darkness. The hands grew restless once more, turning the gun over and over in his lap.
‘Why?’ asked Adam. ‘Tell me why not?’
Alvarez looked directly at him. ‘Because there are ghosts here.’
‘Ghosts?’
Alvarez nodded slowly again. ‘Ghosts of the ancient ones.’
‘I think he’s completely mad.’
Maddy shuffled round on her buttocks to try to face Adam, not easy given they were both tied, hands behind their backs, to the very same wooden post.
She spoke over her shoulder. ‘Because he believes in ghosts?’
‘That, and he’s really … I dunno, edgy. No, that’s not the right word. He just seems unstable, on the edge, like he’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown.’
‘That doesn’t sound good.’
‘He’s grabbed us for ransom money. Right. But no kidding, I get the feeling if we even look at him funny, or the idea just pops into his head, he might just whip out his gun and –’
‘I get it, thanks.’
The shack where they were being held was dark. Outside, through gaps in the slatted wood, they could see night had fallen. A single floodlight on a tripod, powered by a sputtering generator beside it, illuminated the camp with a harsh unremitting glare. They could hear the men, gathered nearby, chatting, laughing, the clack of dominoes or dice. A radio was playing the Rolling Stones.
‘They will come for us, won’t they?’
‘Of course,’ she replied. Tonight, she suspected. They’ll come under the cover of darkness. Right? They almost certainly were somewhere out there in the jungle, looking down on the camp in the clearing and planning their raid, right now. They had to be. Surely.
‘Don’t get too comfortable there,’ she added with a forced smile. ‘They’ll be here any moment now. I promise.’
Chapter 25
1994, the rebel camp, Nicaraguan jungle
They were roused by the door to their shack being wrenched open. Maddy jerked awake with a mucus-thick squawk.
Morning sunlight flooded in over the shoulders of someone standing in the doorway.
‘Liam?’ she uttered hopefully.
The figure came inside, squatted down between them and untied them both from the wooden pole. The man stank of stale sweat and cigarettes. Another rebel was lurking outside the shack, gun levelled at them.
Hands untied, the first one stood up and backed out of the doorway. ‘Up! You get up! You come outside. Use toilet!’
‘About time,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m bursting.’ Wearily, both Adam and Maddy got to their feet and shaded their eyes as they stepped through the low doorway and emerged outside.
A dazzlingly bright, sunny morning.
‘What was it you said? “Don’t get too comfortable”,’ Adam whispered to her, ‘“they’ll be here any moment now.”’
‘All right. So I was wrong,’ she muttered in reply.
One of the rebels shoved the butt of his gun into her ribs, hard. ‘You no talking!’
She yelped with pain, then, winded by the blow, she dropped to her knees. Their guard hesitated for a second, watching her struggling for breath, long drawn wheezing gasps, and whimpering pitifully as she tried to get some air into her lungs.
‘Get up!’ he shouted, raising his gun to hit her again.
‘Christ!’ Adam snapped. ‘Go easy on her!’ The guard turned and glared at him. ‘Can’t you see? She can’t get her breath!’
He hunkered down beside her. Her glasses had come off and were on the ground. ‘Maddy, you OK?’ He grabbed them, wiped mud off the lenses and put them on her pale face.
She nodded. ‘Just caught me … by … surprise. I’m OK.’ She licked dry lips and pulled in another rattling, wheezy breath, then finally nodded at him that she was all right. ‘Don’t provoke him, Adam … I’m fine.’
‘You get up!’ shouted the guard.
‘OK! OK! Gimme a second!’
Adam helped her to her feet. Wobbly for a moment, she found her balance. ‘I’m OK now.’ She looked warily at the guard, little more than skin, bones and olive-coloured rags. And a scar running down one side of his face and disappearing into the bristles of his beard. ‘Better let go of me, Adam, before Scarface here loses it again.’
‘You’re OK? You can walk?’
She looked at him. ‘I need a pee. I’ll walk anywhere!’
Scarface led the way across the camp, now stirring to life as sunlight pierced the steaming jungle canopy with diagonal shards of light that angled down through the leaves and the ground with dappled smudges of light and shade.
‘Here!’ the rebel said. They were standing beside a sheet of corrugated iron, propped up between two oil drums: an improvised shoulder-high screen. Nothing more. Before it were several buckets, two of them full, another half full.
‘This is it?’ she whispered.
Adam went first. Peeing into the bucket as he surveyed the camp over the screen. There were about a dozen makeshift tents, shacks, lean-tos. The chassis of a rusting jeep. Beneath an awning guns were stockpiled. Many of them looked old, Vietnam War-era weaponry, and quite probably – with all the moisture in the air – corroded beyond use.
He finished his business as he noticed their toilet visit was starting to attract attention. Heads turning their way. Several of the men clambered off their hammocks and craned their necks to get a better look.
‘You go now!’ said Scarface to Maddy.
She looked helplessly at him. ‘I can’t go right here!’ She looked at the men, now edging their way to get a peek round the side of the screen. ‘I can’t go with everyone staring at me!’
Scarface’s eyes widened. He glared at her. His hand reached for a knife tucked into his belt. ‘You go now, or I cut you!’
‘Jesus,’ Adam hissed at him. ‘Let her have some privacy!’
Scarface just grinned and pushed her roughly towards the buckets. Maddy positioned herself beside one slowly, closed her eyes, her cheeks mottled pink with shame and misery. Several tears spilled down as she began to unbutton her jeans.
Adam shook his head angrily, pulled off his shirt and stepped towards her. He held it round her shoulders, the length of the shirt covering her as she squatted and went.
Scarface laughed and shook his head at the quaint act of old-school chivalry. Some of the men, who’d edged closer to get a look, lost interest now and turned away, going back to the things they’d been doing.
Finished, finally, she pulled her jeans up and nodded at Adam that she was good.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered as he put his shirt back on.
‘Now, you … back!’ Scarface barked at them.
‘Hey? What about some food?’ asked Adam.
Maddy nudged him. ‘Don’t push your luck with him.’
Scarface shoved Adam forward roughly. ‘Food later! Now, go!’
As they walked back to their shack she noticed two things. Firstly, the tents, lean-tos and shacks seemed to have been built up against supporting boulders of lichen-covered stone. But not boulders, as such; they were rounded and weather-worn but still clearly, once upon a time, they’d been sculpted stone. And there, on the large one beside the rusting jeep chassis, she thought she could make out the slightest dented impression of a carved design of some sort.
The other thing she noticed was a distant long, flat-topped ridge of rock poking out of the jungle canopy and looking down on them. A mile, maybe two miles a
way. Hard to judge, in fact. The shame of moments ago, of her enforced public performance, was forgotten for now.
Maddy bumped his arm lightly. ‘Adam!’ she whispered. ‘Is that …?’
In front of her, she saw the back of his head nod quickly.
He’s seen it too. She looked up at the distant ridge. The front of it seemed almost sheer, a cliff-face. My God, this is the place!
Scarface led them back inside their hut, had them both sit down with their backs to the pole and once again he tied their hands behind them and attached them to it. ‘Food, soon,’ was all he grunted at them before he left the shack and closed the door on them.
‘This is exactly where we camped, two years ago,’ said Adam quietly. ‘These are those Mayan-era ruins I told you about.’
‘And that ridge?’
She felt his shoulder move against hers as he nodded. ‘Yup, that’s the one I climbed. The cave’s right up there.’
Goddammit! We’re so frikkin’ close!
Chapter 26
1994, outside the rebel camp, Nicaraguan jungle
The trail led them most of the way there. But it was the smell of burning wood that helped them zero in on the rebels’ camp.
They’d been observing the cluster of tents and lean-tos from a gently sloping hillside overlooking the clearing for the last five minutes.
‘It’s hard to say,’ Liam said after a while. ‘I’ve counted about thirty of them down there, so. There could be more. What do you reckon, Bob?’
‘I have identified thirty-six individuals,’ he replied. ‘It is possible there are more.’
Billy chewed agitatedly on the stem of his pipe. ‘We are just three men. We have only one gun.’
‘I know, I know.’ Liam nodded. ‘Those aren’t such great odds. But, well … Bob here, he’s worth an army on his own.’
Billy glanced at the support unit. ‘He is big, strong man, yes. But he is not like the hero, Superman. He can die.’
Liam was tempted to tell Billy something about Bob: that he was virtually the meat-and-bone equivalent of a Sherman tank. Almost. But Billy was quite right – a well-judged or lucky head shot could bring him down just as easily as anyone else.
‘If you and me can draw some of their fire, Billy – provide a distraction, create some confusion down there – then he’ll have a fair chance, so he will.’
Bob nodded. ‘This is correct. I can sustain significant damage and still be fully functional.’
Billy splayed his empty hands. ‘What are we distract with?’
A fair point. Between them they had a gun, a pair of hunting knives and a lot of good intentions. Not a great deal to work with.
Liam reluctantly reminded himself that he, also, was made like Bob. All right, he was no rumbling tank, he was slight in build and no stronger than anyone else his size, but he knew he could, possibly, take a bullet or two and survive where a normal human wouldn’t.
Billy pulled the pipe out of his mouth. ‘If we know which tent you friend are in …?’
Liam nodded and finished Billy’s thought. ‘Bob will have a better chance.’ A much better chance of surviving the cumulative wounding than if he was having to poke his nose into each and every tent looking for them while gunfire rained down on him.
A rather stupid idea was beginning to form in his head. But only because of what he knew about himself. Knew, now, what damage he could take and survive. The Liam of old, the Liam who thought he was merely an ordinary young man – human, not engineered – would quite rightly have told him this was up there with some of his stupidest plans.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said.
Adam could hear her breathing. Was she asleep?
‘Maddy? You awake?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You’ve said this once or twice already …’
‘Said what?’
‘That we meet again, when I’m older. That we worked together.’
He felt her shoulder shift as she nodded.
‘So?’ he asked.
‘So … what?’
‘So, what am I like in seven years’ time?’
‘Different. Very different.’
He twisted to look at her over his shoulder. ‘You can’t just say that. Tell me more.’
Maddy shrugged, the rope bonds creaking as she shifted. ‘Well … for a start you smartened up one helluva lot. You’re all expensive designer suits and stuff.’
He snorted at that. ‘Yeah, right. Me in a suit.’
‘Seriously. You were working in corporate IT security in the World Trade Center. By the look of your swish Manhattan apartment, I guess you were making a lot of money out of it.’
‘And what work did we do together? How did I help you?’
She was a long time replying. Adam suspected she was deliberating on how much she could let herself reveal. ‘You helped us figure out how to decode the Holy Grail.’
‘And then?’
‘Then we had to say goodbye.’ She paused. ‘I had to let you go back to work.’
‘You didn’t come back to me any time earlier and correct history? Make it so I’d never meet you in the first place?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
He felt her shoulders shift again but she said nothing.
‘C’mon, why not?’
‘Can we just leave it at that, Adam? The less I tell you, the better.’
‘Time contamination?’
‘Yeah. That’s it. Trust me … it’s simpler if I don’t tell you any more.’
‘I have a right to know.’
‘If I tell you your future, you’ll make different choices, Adam. That’s inevitable. If you make different choices, then that has a knock-on effect on other things. You might not turn up in 2001. We might not get your help with those documents …’
‘The Holy Grail? The Voynich?’
‘Yes. So things could be totally different now. Totally different.’
‘Would that be so bad?’
She didn’t answer that.
‘And when we finished our work together … you just let me go?’
‘Yes.’
‘Trusted me not to tell the world about what I knew? About you lot? About time travel?’
She was silent for a while before finally answering. ‘Yes … I trusted you not to talk.’
Liam stepped out warily from the edge of the jungle and into the camp’s clearing.
Brass it out, Liam. Remember, loud and cheerful … and ever so slightly mad.
He cupped hands around his mouth and hooted at the top of his voice. ‘Hoy! Hellooo there! You big fellas with yer big guns! I’m over here!’
His voice echoed around the camp, bouncing off the jungle perimeter and back at him. ‘Yoo-hoooo!’
He intended to give the impression of some sort of jungle madness. At the moment, though, he was vaguely aware he was coming across as merely idiotic. He decided to stagger and fall to his knees for added effect. Kneeling in the rain-wet mud, he clasped his hands together and looked up at the sky. ‘Hallelujah! God be praised! I’m saaaaaved!! Civilization! At last!’
He saw men looking his way curiously. Putting down the things they’d been holding and reaching for their guns. Several of them emerged from beneath the cool shade of their awnings and approached him warily. The nearest of them drew up before Liam, a gun in his hands but not pointed threateningly. Not yet. ‘Who are you?’
‘Reverend O’Connor. Liam O’Connor.’
Other rebels joined the first, gathered in front of him and eyed him curiously. One of them stepped forward and squatted down in front of him. He wore a US army forage cap.
‘You are American? I think? Is this right?’
‘Irish,’ Liam replied with a broad smile. ‘The Right Honourable Reverend Liam O’Connor at yer service.’ He offered a hand.
The man wearing the cap returned the smile but not the gesture. ‘You are lost, friend?’
‘Aye, I am that! And hungry and
thirsty, so I am. Would you have something to drink on you, sir?’
He offered Liam his hip flask of water and Liam made a show of gulping it down.
‘And you are alone, my lost friend?’
The flask was handed back. ‘Aye. I came down the Coco River with a guide to set up my mission with the Zambus. We left the river and headed inland to look for the remotest wildest tribe we could find, to bring the word of God to ’em!’ Liam shook his head sadly. ‘But alas, despite my prayers, my guide fell sick and died on me, so he did!’ Liam allowed his shoulders to shake with grief.
‘I’ve been wandering these jungles for weeks, so I have. In circles no doubt. Praying for a miracle!’ He reached for one of the man’s cool limp hands, grasped it and mashed a kiss on to the back of it. ‘And, by God, here you are! My miracle!’
The man’s smile broadened. ‘My men will, of course, look after you.’
He stood up, turned and issued some orders to his men, then began to stride back to his tent.
‘What do you think’s going on out there?’ Maddy wriggled to see through the slats better.
‘Sounded English, I think. I’m sure I heard a word or two of English being shouted out there.’
They heard the men outside jeering and laughing. Something was amusing them. Maddy adjusted her position slightly and managed to see through a gap. The men were gathered in a loose cluster around something … or someone. Then she heard a loud crack, unmistakably the sound of fist on skin, followed by a howl of pain.
‘Jesus, they’re beating someone up out there!’
And again, another crack and another howl, followed by a plea for mercy. She saw one of the men emerge from the crowd, sweating and laughing. Another stepped in and the beating resumed.
‘My God, they’re animals!’ The beating and the cries seemed to last an eternity, but probably only went on for five minutes. Eventually the gathered men seemed to lose interest and began to disperse.
Maddy shuffled on her bum, back against the wooden post again. ‘Animals,’ she hissed. ‘What is it with men?’
‘Hey … we’re not all bad.’
She dipped her head against his shoulder for a second. ‘I know.’