BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2)

by Fernando Gamboa

  “Híjole!” said Cassandra snapping her fingers. “I knew the name was familiar! It’s a study on the Tzotzil people of the south of Mexico. I read it in college.”

  “I’ll wait till the movie comes out,” I said.

  The professor put the book back in its place and continued.

  “To make a long story short, three months ago she went to a remote and little explored area of the Amazon, with a small group of scientists financed by the University of Vienna. They were to study the indigenous tribe of the Menkragnoti.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Valeria is an experienced anthropologist, she has spent long periods in remote areas before. When she didn’t make the programmed satellite call, and neither did her colleagues, nor any other call… the alarms went off.”

  “And couldn’t it simply be that they lost the phone or that it wasn’t working?” Cassie said.

  Eduardo Castillo leaned on the back of his chair and looked at us gravely.

  “That was twenty-three days ago. They should’ve found another means to make contact if that were the case. Valeria is a woman of resources.”

  “You mean to say she’s disappeared?”

  He lowered his head. “The last communication was almost a month ago, as I said,” he confirmed. “Nobody has heard from them since.”

  “And what about the police?” Cassandra asked. “What did the Brazilian police have to say? Are they looking for them?”

  “They say it’s too extensive and remote an area. They don’t have either the staff or the budget to start a search operation.”

  “But surely there must be someone there you can ask to investigate?” I insisted. “I don’t know, maybe the Embassy? The Red Cross…?”

  The professor shook his head slowly.

  “No one. There is absolutely no one to turn to.”

  He looked beaten, and if I had not known him so well, I would have said he was on the verge of tears.

  It saddened me to see him in that state. “I’m so sorry, Doc. I’m really sorry.” I looked for approval in Cassie’s eyes and added, “If there’s anything we can do…”

  He raised his head then and stared at me with firm determination in his blue eyes.

  “Come with me.”

  “Sure, where?” I said.

  Without taking his eyes off me, he pointed at the map on the wall behind him.

  “To the Amazon, Ulysses. To find her.”

  4

  “Can you repeat that?” I said after a few stunned seconds, sure I had heard wrong.

  He took a step forward and leaned on the table, looking at each of us in turn.

  “I’m going to the Amazon to look for Valeria,” he said emphasizing every word. “And I’d like… No, I need you to come with me.”

  Cassandra raised her hand. “Excuse me,” she said, “but I’m afraid you don’t realize what you’re saying.”

  The professor sat down heavily.

  “If I don’t go, nobody else will. And I know I’ll have more of a chance if you come with me.”

  “It wouldn’t make any difference even if you took the marines!” argued Cassandra, patiently. “The Amazon is huge. It would be like walking all over Spain looking for a coin you’ve dropped.” She spread her arms and made as if to search on the floor.

  “I know it won’t be easy,” he admitted calmly. “That’s why I need your help. You know the jungle well.”

  “Wait a second, Doc. It is true that Cassie and I have been in some jungles, but never in Amazonia. I know for a fact that Central American or Asian jungles are just gardens compared to it. Besides, Cassie is right, we’re talking about a territory covered by nearly a billion acres of impenetrable rainforest. You could lose a whole country in there and never find—”

  “I didn’t say she was lost,” the professor interrupted me, “I said she had disappeared.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “The difference is that she might know where she is, and as we know where she was one month ago, the area we have to search is considerably reduced.”

  “But, still…”

  “Look, Ulysses, I know it sounds crazy.” He paused to take a deep breath. “It sounds crazy even to me. But I want to… I must go looking for her.”

  The three of us remained silent for a long minute, overwhelmed by a sense of unreality. And I also had the weird feeling that something didn’t fit, that there was still one key piece missing in that puzzle.

  Finally, Cassie spoke. She looked straight at the professor. “What I don’t fully understand is your sense of responsibility toward this woman. If an ex-boyfriend of mine, who never wanted to see me again, went missing, I honestly don’t think I’d cross half the globe to go looking for him.”

  “It’s a relief to know that,” I muttered.

  She did not look at me, just acknowledged my comment with a painful kick in my shin.

  “It’s true,” said the professor lost in thought. “But she is the most important person in the world to me. Dr. Renner and I… well, she…”

  “What?” I said impatiently.

  He looked up, and said shyly,

  “Valeria is my daughter.”

  Cassandra and I were speechless. We had no idea that the professor had ever been in a serious relationship. Everybody had taken it for granted that he had lived only for his work as professor of Medieval History. The fact that he had a secret daughter he had never ever talked about… It was unbelievable.

  Several minutes later I was still too stunned to put my thoughts into words. I felt as if my own mother had just told me that I was the son of the Holy Spirit.

  “Bu… but how?” I finally stammered.

  The professor grinned, amused by our evident puzzlement.

  “Well, you know…” He shrugged. “Did anybody ever tell you about the bees and the flowers?”

  “Don’t try to be funny. Why didn’t you ever talk about her?”

  He scratched his head again, even more uncomfortable than before.

  “I met Lorraine Renner, her mother, when I was studying at college toward the end of the seventies.” His gaze wandered to the ceiling as he remembered some incident thirty years back. “She was a real beauty and very intelligent, but she had the character of a Tasmanian devil which made the college playboys look for easier prey. But one day, we met at a college party. We drank a lot and got friendly. I offered to drive her home… and well, nine months later, Valeria was born.”

  “The offspring of one night of passion?” Cassandra said.

  The professor lowered his gaze and sighed.

  “Something like that, although her mother and grandparents didn’t see it the same way. No matter how hard I tried they never let me see her.”

  “You couldn’t meet your daughter?” Cassandra was astonished.

  “Not until she turned eighteen,” he said sadly. “And by then I was only a stranger. From the moment Lorraine became pregnant, I offered her marriage, or to give the child my name and to take responsibility for any expenses necessary. But she always rejected me saying that a mistake didn’t get corrected by making an even bigger one… She simply gave the girl her own surname and made sure she never knew about me.”

  My old friend spread his hands on the table and lost himself in his memories.

  I patted his shoulder affectionately. “I’m so sorry, Doc,” I said. “And you haven’t seen her since?”

  “Valeria? Yes, I saw her about two years ago… at her mother’s funeral.”

  He put his hand in his shirt pocket, took out a photograph, and showed it to Cassie.

  “This was taken at the funeral. It’s the only one where we’re together.”

  “She’s very pretty,” she observed, “and she has your eyes.”

  Full of curiosity, I reached for the photo. The professor was shown on the left, wearing a black suit and tie. On the right, also in black, stood a woman in her thirties, almost four inches taller than my friend and as Cassandra had pointed out, extremely a
ttractive. She had fair skin with freckles and long straight black hair which framed her firm, determined features. She also had a wide jaw and high cheekbones underlining a sad smile, an upturned nose, and remarkably bright blue eyes that stared fixedly at the camera.

  “She clearly takes after her mother,” I said as I returned the photo.

  Cassandra leaned toward him and took his hand. “I’m so sorry, Professor. It’s a really sad story.”

  With red eyes, Eduardo looked at both of us.

  “You see now why I must go looking for her?”

  We were all lost in silence for a good while. Professor Castillo had his mind somewhere in the Amazon. I was looking at the professor without really knowing what to make of all this. I felt Cassie’s glance on me. She knew even before I spoke what I was going to say.

  “Okay, Doc,” I said in resignation. “There’s nothing holding me here so, if you think I can be of any help, I’ll co—”

  “I’m coming,” Cassandra chimed in.

  “Thank you,” the professor mumbled, with a look of pride and gratitude. “Thank you both. I knew I could count on you.”

  “But what about your work?” I turned to Cassie in surprise. “Didn’t you say you were in the middle of a dig in Cadiz?

  “My work is none of your business,” she snapped. “Besides, all the things we’ve brought out of the sea bed will have to be classified in the next few months and other people can do that perfectly well.”

  The professor stood up with a satisfied look on his face.

  “Then we agree,” he said. He put his hands together and smiled with hope in his eyes for the first time. “We’re going to the Amazon.”

  “We should get together again tomorrow, to organize the logistics,” I suggested. “Then I think we could start in about a week.”

  The professor cleared his throat with exaggeration and scrutinized us over his glasses.

  “In fact,” he said in a low voice, “I was thinking of leaving a little earlier.”

  “Earlier? How much earlier?” I asked warily.

  Eduardo Castillo looked at his watch and said, nonchalantly:

  “Our flight leaves tomorrow at seven a.m. so I guess we have about… nine hours left.”

  Cassie raised her eyebrows in amazement.

  “But, how…?” She looked at both of us. “We only just told you we’d—”

  He winked at her and smiled impishly.

  “I bought the tickets yesterday. I was absolutely sure that you’d both say you’d come.”

  5

  Exactly twenty-seven hours after having coffee at the professor’s, we came out the door of a Varig Airbus and walked down the steps onto the tarmac.

  We had left Barcelona in cold weather with a leaden sky that promised rain. We were still not very clear about why we were here, walking toward a low cream-colored building over which AEROPORTO DE SANTAREM could be read in big golden letters. The air we breathed was dense and humid, charged with smells of rainforest, river, and kerosene. The sun hung over the green line of trees like a giant amber traffic light, signaling caution without us taking any notice.

  During the short walk to the terminal, I helped the professor to maintain his dignity, trying to keep him as perpendicular to the ground as possible, just as if I were taking a friend home after a binge.

  He stumbled all the way, still under the influence of the generous dose of anti-anxiety pills he took every time he had to fly.

  I put my arm under his shoulders. “Come on, Doc, wake up. I’m not carrying you all the way to the hotel.”

  “Poor thing,” puffed Cassandra, who was walking ahead of us with our three carry-on pieces of luggage. “He’s still under the effect of the pills. Give him some time.”

  “More? I’ve already given him four Red Bulls to drink! He should be all strung up.”

  She stopped in front of me, shocked. “You did what?”

  “What did you want me to do? Check him into a rehab clinic?”

  “You dope! You could’ve given him a heart attack with all that caffeine.”

  “Oh, come on! You’re exaggerating.”

  Just then, the professor raised his head and looked at us over the rim of his glasses.

  “Are we there yet?” he said with a shaky voice and glazed eyes.

  Cassandra left the bags on the ground and came over. “Welcome to Brazil, Professor. How do you feel?”

  Blinking with difficulty, Professor Castillo looked back at the plane we had just left. Then he looked at the blue sky over our heads, and finally at his own hands which he opened and closed a couple of times as if he had just discovered them.

  “Fine… I think,” he articulated with difficulty. “But why am I shaking?”

  The drive through the outer rim of Santarem was not nice. On the other side of the taxi window we saw an extension of huts, most of which were little more than four cardboard walls with roofs made out of plastic bags and pieces of canvas.

  Those constructions spread as far as the eye could see, separated by dirt alleys which in the rainy season would turn into rivers of mud and garbage. Every once in a while, fleeting shadows with indigenous features peeked out at us as we drove through: dirty-faced seminaked children, mothers loaded with baskets, and men sitting idly under a tree, collecting empty beer cans.

  In about twenty minutes and already in the whitewashed, fashionable center of town, we stopped at the Brazil Grande Hotel. We left our bags in our rooms and agreed to meet an hour later for dinner. I found that I had a double room all to myself, with a king size bed by the window. I threw myself on it even before the door closed behind me.

  After a brief rest, I had a good shower and put on my best Hawaiian shirt. At seven in the evening, I went downstairs to meet my friends at the dining room, as agreed.

  They were already there when I arrived, and as his endearing politeness dictated, the professor got up from his chair to greet me.

  I tried to keep a straight face as I looked him up and down.

  “Evening, Doc. Why on earth are you dressed like an African explorer? Is Livingstone lost again?”

  He looked down at his khaki clothes.

  “These are clothes for the tropics,” he said, straightening his shirt. “The best they had in the shop.”

  “You look as if you were setting out on a safari in Kenya.”

  “Well,”—he grinned and pointed a finger at me—“not everybody has your good taste in clothes… By the way, I got a call from the reception desk. The maracas player with the orchestra wants you to give him his shirt back.”

  Cassandra watched our bantering with amused impartiality. Finally, we sat down for dinner and soon a stiff waiter came to take our orders. While dinner was coming, we filled in the gaps of all the information still missing concerning that trip.

  The meeting at the professor’s apartment had finished abruptly since I had had to rush home to pack. During the flight, my old friend had been so drugged that he would not have been able to tell me his phone number. So, all we knew was what he had related in his living room the day before. Sitting at the restaurant of that hotel less than three blocks away from the Amazon River, I could think of a few questions to ask.

  “Doc,” I said as I poured myself some water, “do you know how many people were in the expedition with your daughter?”

  He scratched his chin before answering, “As I remember, they were six or seven in all: an archeologist, an anthropologist, a doctor, a guide, and two or three assistants.”

  “And I guess nobody has heard from them either?”

  “You guess right.”

  “Okay… and has anybody bothered to go looking for them? Apart from us, of course”

  The professor shifted in his chair. I think he was annoyed by the question.

  Finally he nodded. “Yes… In fact, the University that financed them is organizing a rescue expedition. But, as they admitted, it may take them several weeks to prepare and we don’t have… Valeria may not h
ave that long.”

  “Of course,” said Cassie. “But I have a question. Don’t you think that to organize an expedition to such a remote location, with only seven people and one cell phone to connect them to the outside world, was a bit... I don’t know—”

  “Hasty is the word,” Professor Castillo corroborated. “I found out that they had to leave with not much more than the clothes they had on. They couldn’t plan either the logistics or the security.”

  “Why so much hurry?” I asked.

  Leaning back in his chair, he rubbed his face with his hands. He looked very tired. Then he took off his tortoise shell glasses and put them on the table. “There’s something I haven’t told you yet…

  The region we’re headed to, the territory of the Menkragnoti people, is going to disappear in a few weeks.”

  6

  Cassandra and I were stunned at this new revelation.

  “Can you… say that again?” I thought maybe I hadn’t heard correctly.

  “I said,” he repeated leaning forward, “that in a few weeks all that land is going to disappear.”

  “I don’t follow,” Cassandra said. “What do you mean? How can a whole region disappear?”

  By way of explanation, the professor opened a manila folder we hadn’t noticed he had beside him. He cleared a spot on the table and spread out a map of the Amazon basin, on a scale of 1:500,000.

  “This here,” he said, going over a big area of land, “is the Menkragnoti territory. About four hundred and forty-five miles south of Santarem, which is the nearest city, and about one thousand sixty-three miles west of Salvador de Bahia and the Atlantic coast. This is an expanse of extensive virgin rainforest which looks small on an Amazon scale but which could hold all of Austria. Completely isolated, with no way of communication and practically unexplored.” He looked up and added, “Once in there, we can’t expect support nor help from the outside if we come across trouble. It will be just us and the Menkragnoti.”