by Gabriel Hunt
Gabriel turned his attention back to Escalante. “And the rest of your men?”
The bandit leader’s face became grim. “Perhaps some of them on the other side of the river got away. I do not know. But of the ones on this side, we are all that is left.”
“I’m sorry, Paco,” Gabriel said, and meant it. The men had been bandits, had probably been responsible for a great deal of death and suffering over the years. But he wouldn’t be here without their help, and neither would Cierra or Mariella.
“When you live a life such as ours,” Escalante said, “you don’t expect to die in bed with your great-grandchildren around you. At least we accounted for quite a few of them, too. Unfortunately, there were just too many. And they had those devil guns.”
“They have more than one machine gun?”
Escalante nodded. “There was one mounted on each of the three trucks.”
“Podnemovitch came armed for bear.”
“Podnemovitch?” Escalante repeated with a frown.
“The big, broken-nosed son of a bitch who’s in charge of that bunch. Tell me he was one of the ones you took down.”
Escalante shook his head as Cierra and Mariella began climbing down the vines from the top of the bluff. “He lives,” Escalante said. “But he is not the man in charge. I saw him taking orders from another man. Tall, lean, gray hair.”
“Esparza’s with him,” Cierra said as she reached the ground beside them. “I saw him, too, Gabriel.”
“Really? Esparza himself?” Gabriel said. “I wouldn’t have expected him to come down here. It’s pretty far from the world of mansions and cocktail parties.”
“That tells us how important this is to him,” Cierra said.
“Of course it’s important,” Mariella said. “I assure you it’s the most important secret in the world. Any man would come in person to see it. Any man.”
Gabriel ached to find out more about this important secret, starting with just what it was, but with Podnemovitch and the rest of Esparza’s men searching both sides of the river for them, there was no time to stand around and talk. Instead the five of them began working their way through the jungle away from the stream. When they reached a jutting shoulder of the mountain that formed the eastern side of the canyon, Mariella took the lead.
“I know every trail and hiding place in these mountains,” she said. “We must reach Cuchatlán before Esparza and his men, so that we can warn my people.”
It took what was left of the morning to reach a safe place where they could briefly rest. Mariella led them to a pass high on the mountain and then down the far side into an even narrower canyon. Empty stomachs began to remind them that it had been a long time since any of them had eaten. They had taken the two rifles carried by Podnemovitch’s men with them and had several weapons of their own, but they couldn’t risk any shots to bring down game because of the noise. A swift throw of Tomás’s machete caught a brightly plumaged bird in mid flight, though. In a matter of minutes he had dressed out the bird and had it roasting on a sharpened stick over a small fire.
There wasn’t much meat to the bird and it didn’t taste particularly good, but Gabriel ate hungrily anyway as he hunkered on his heels along with the others. In this wild setting, they might well have been members of some prehistoric tribe…except for the rifles and pistols, of course. He and Cierra had cell phones, too, for all the good they did. No signal reached into these remote mountains, and Gabriel’s phone probably hadn’t survived its dunking in the Black River. He didn’t bother digging it out to check.
And though they couldn’t pause long enough for an indepth discussion, they were able to speak briefly, in a hushed undertone in case their pursuers were in earshot.
Mariella said, “Esparza and his men won’t be able to travel much farther by road. They’ll have to abandon their trucks and go ahead on foot, like us. But we’re a smaller group. We can move faster and reach Cuchatlán before they do.”
“That’s the third time you’ve mentioned this place,” Gabriel said. “What is it?”
“The birthplace of the Mayan Empire,” Mariella said.
Cierra frowned at her. “Mayan?” She shook her head. “That’s impossible. There are no signs of Mayan civilization in this area.”
Mariella just smiled, as if she knew better. She got to her feet and said, “We must go.”
Cierra gave Gabriel an exasperated look. He shrugged. It was doubtful that they could force Mariella to talk until she was ready, and anyway, they had to keep moving if they wanted to get where they were going before Esparza and his men.
It took the rest of the day to reach the next pass through the mountains. Mariella led them along a narrow ledge that twisted along the heights. They came to an overhang that formed a cave like recess in the face, and she said, “We can camp here tonight. No one will be able to see a fire if we build one here.”
“What will we do for food and water?” Cierra asked.
Mariella gave her a slightly superior look. “Why do you think I chose this place? My people use it sometimes when they’re hunting.”
She went to the back of the cave and returned with a couple of canteens and something wrapped in a piece of hide. She unwrapped the bundle to reveal strips of jerked meat that she passed around. Gabriel wasn’t sure what sort of meat it was—monkey, he suspected—but under the circumstances he wasn’t complaining. It tasted all right when he washed it down with the water from one of the canteens.
In the fading light, he studied the canteen and frowned. The letters CSA were stamped into it. He looked up at Mariella and asked, “Confederate States Army?”
“That’s right.”
“This is a museum piece. A century old. It might even be valuable.”
“It is valuable. It holds water when you are thirsty. How much more valuable can a thing be?” She moved off to tend the fire. The altitude wasn’t high enough here for the temperature to get very cold at night, but there would be a definite chill in the air before morning.
“Now,” Gabriel said as the five of them sat at last, resting their aching legs, “I think it’s time that you tell us what this is all about, Señorita Montez.”
Mariella hesitated a moment before answering but finally nodded and said, “You deserve to know, Señor Hunt. All of you do. As I mentioned earlier, Esparza is after the greatest secret ever discovered.”
“Which is…?” Gabriel said.
“The secret of eternal life,” she said simply.
Gabriel thought of the Ponce de Leon signs in St. Augustine. “You mean like the Fountain of Youth?”
“Exactly,” Mariella said with a smile. “Only in our language we call it the Well of Eternity.”
After a couple of seconds of looming silence, Cierra said, “Oh, come on! You can’t be serious.”
Mariella’s face flushed with anger. Gabriel said, “Let’s hear her out.”
“Thank you, Señor Hunt,” Mariella said with a frosty glance toward Cierra. “I knew I could trust you to keep an open mind, considering some of the expeditions the Hunt Foundation has been involved in.”
“I’m not saying I believe you,” Gabriel said. “Not yet. But I want to hear what you have to say.”
“Very well. Not far from here, in our valley, lie the ruins of the Mayan city Cuchatlán. It was from here that the Maya began to spread out three thousand years ago and establish their empire.”
“The Mayan empire,” Cierra said, “was located in Chiapas and the Yucatan. I spent a year conductingresearch in the ruins of Chichén Itzá. The jungle swallowed it up after it was abandoned, and it was lost until about a hundred and eighty years ago, but in its time it was the center of the Mayan empire.”
Mariella nodded. “It was—in its time. But Cuchatlán was the center of the empire long before Chichén Itzá. And the jungle swallowed it as well. But even covered by the jungle, its great secret was still there, a well fed by an underground stream that rises from springs in the mountains. Whoever dr
inks the water from the Well of Eternity…lives forever.”
“You’re going to have to give us more of an explanation than that,” Gabriel said.
Mariella smiled and nodded. “Many centuries ago, Mayan explorers left this land to venture out into the Gulf of Mexico, taking barrels of the water from the Well of Eternity with them to sustain them as they started a colony in what is now Florida. They had a wanderlust, a desire to explore; some say it was inspired by visitors who had traveled across the seas and stayed to make their home with the Maya.
“Only a small amount of the water is needed to reap its benefits. Once a year the Maya of Cuchatlán would hold a ritual, a religious ceremony, passing around a cup from which each adult drank, from the oldest to the youngest. A few sips are enough to restore youth and vigor for the coming year. The explorers were able to take enough of the water with them to keep them young and healthy for centuries.”
Cierra looked like she wanted to call the story hogwash, but Gabriel made a patting-the-air gesture in her direction and she remained quiet.
“To store the water they brought with them,” Mariella went on, “when they reached Florida and found a place where they wanted to settle, they built a rock-lined pool, and before filling it they etched a map to their home on the pool’s bottom.”
“The Fountain of Youth,” Gabriel said.
“Some called it that, when rumors spread. The Maya never did.”
“And what happened to this…pool?” Cierra said, unable to hold her tongue any longer. “Or are you saying there are still ancient Maya living in Florida today? Perhaps in one of that state’s famous retirement communities?”
“No,” Mariella said. “There are no Maya living there any longer. The water was enough for centuries—but not forever, and eventually it ran out. That’s what they’d put the map there for, to remind them how to return and get more. But none of the expeditions they sent ever came back—perhaps because there was no longer a city here for them to return to. And without a new supply of the water, the Mayan colonists resumed aging normally. In time they died. But their bloodlines continued, in the local Indians with whom they had intermarried. And the rumors continued, of the Fountain of Youth, even after there was no more fountain and no more youth to be had. Ponce de Leon heard of it and came to the New World seeking it, only to find it gone. But the legend remained, and some people have sought the truth of it ever since.”
“Like General Fargo?” Gabriel said.
“Yes. Perhaps you know that he was a professor of natural science before the war. He discovered the pool built by the Mayan colonists while he and his cavalry regiment were serving in Florida. He heard the legends from an old, old Indian living near the site, who’d heard them from his own grandfather, who’d heard them from his. He explained that the markings on the rocks were supposed to be a map—a map leading to the true Fountain of Youth, though of course he called it the Well of Eternity. Granville made a rough copy of the map, hiding it within the drawing on the flag, and made plans to find Cuchatlán after the war.”
Mariella sounded a little sorrowful as she went on, “As it happens, artillery fire during the battle of Olustee destroyed the pool, so the map copied onto the flag was the only one still in existence. That flag is the one I brought to New York. We wanted to give it and a sample of the water from the Well to the Hunt Foundation.”
“Why us?” Gabriel asked.
“We are not so isolated as you might think—we make a point of gathering news of the outside world. And we thought your foundation would understand what he had discovered and would be able to convey the secret responsibly to the outside world.”
Cierra looked like someone who had finally taken all she could stand. “ ‘We thought’!” she burst out. “ ‘We wanted’! You and ‘Granville’! You speak of General Fargo as if he were still alive!”
“But he is,” Mariella said. “He is my husband.”
Silence descended on the group.
“I knew it,” Gabriel said. “You’re the woman in the picture.”
“Picture?”
“A photograph of your wedding party that your great-great-great nephew—hell, there’d be more greats than that, but you get the idea…a photo he showed us in Villahermosa. You were standing on the steps of your father’s plantation house with the general, and all your family and his men were gathered around you.”
A wistful smile curved Mariella’s lips. “I remember that day so well. It was a good day, a happy day, even though I knew I would be leaving my family forever. I’m glad the photograph has survived for all these years and my family has not forgotten me. It will sound foolish to you, I’m sure,” she continued, “but it feels like it could have been yesterday, or last year. Rather than a century or more.”
Escalante and Tomás wore blank expressions. They had been listening to Mariella’s story, too, and clearly didn’t know what to make of it, but also weren’t inclined to get in between the two women.
Cierra looked back and forth between Gabriel and Mariella and said, “You’re both insane.”
“What’s so insane about it?” Gabriel said. “When people came from Europe to America at the turn of the last century, their lifespans increased, and their children’s even more. Why? Diet, among other reasons. Surely you’re not doubting that there are things you can swallow that make you healthier or live longer—I’m sure you’ve visited a pharmacy or two in your day.”
“Longer, sure. But not centuries.”
“Why not? There’s research going on right now into extending human lifespan—mitochondrial research, telomeric research, and don’t ask me what any of that means because I don’t know, but I do know we’ve funded some of it and Michael’s convinced it’s not quackery. Not all of it anyway.”
“That’s sophisticated genetic engineering,” Cierra said stubbornly, “not drinking water from a well.”
“Sometimes,” Escalante said, clearing his throat first, “the oldest ways turn out to be the best.”
“No. No—I will not accept a fairy tale about people living hundreds of years!”
“All right,” Gabriel said. “You don’t have to. All you have to accept is that other people have accepted it—starting with Mariella here and ending with Esparza out there somewhere in the jungle with his machine guns. Even if it’s all myth and no substance, there are men willing to kill over it. Men who have killed over it. Men who have tried to kill us.”
That silenced Cierra’s objections.
Gabriel turned back to Mariella. “So you’re saying that this Well of Eternity was the great secret beyond the mountains that General Fargo was looking for, the one he thought would help him restore the Confederacy. And I imagine it would have. Face it, if he possessed the secret of eternal youth, he could have gotten the backing of any nation on Earth. And you’re saying he did possess it. So why didn’t he carry out the rest of his plan?”
“It took us months to find the Well. They were not easy months, and they opened his eyes to a great many things. When we got here, he’d begun having second thoughts, and after he’d stayed a while…his plans changed. He no longer wanted to reignite a war. He no longer wanted hatred to divide his homeland.” She smiled. “And as he likes to say, he was selfish. He had found paradise, and he had no desire to leave.”
“Then why send you to New York now?”
“Word had somehow gotten out; rumors were starting to spread once more. We’d had more than one persis tent explorer come close to discovering us—more in the past two years than in the prior twenty. These were people who would have stolen the secret for themselves; people who would have destroyed everything we had built. We could fight off one, two, perhaps more—but eventually would come the one we couldn’t fight, and then what would become of the Well?
“Granville believes that the answer is not more secrecy but, at long last, openness. That the scientists in your employ could have the water analyzed to see if it might be possible to determine what gives it it
s remarkable powers. If it could be duplicated, then the Hunt Foundation could perhaps administer a program to make the water available to all nations—and could also protect the source, so that our life in Cuchatlán could continue undisturbed. I was to give the sample of the water to your brother for that reason; I brought the flag with me to help convince him of the truth of my story.”
“Michael can be a skeptical little rascal, all right,” Gabriel said with a smile.
“Perhaps he’s simply not as gullible as his brother?” Cierra suggested.
Gabriel didn’t take offense at her tone. She was a scientist, after all. And she hadn’t seen some of the things he had.
Gabriel tugged at his earlobe as he thought about what Mariella had told them. After a moment he said, “Why did Esparza send Podnemovitch and his men to stop you from handing over the water and the flag to Michael? How did he even find out all this in the first place?”
A pained look passed over Mariella’s face. “The people of Cuchatlán were betrayed,” she said. “One of our representatives who went into the outside world to gather news decided to try to make himself rich by selling our secret. He found out that Esparza has fundedresearch into prolonging human life—perhaps you and he have even funded some of the same undertakings. And this man, Hector, thought that Esparza would be a likely buyer. Unfortunately for Hector, he did not know how truly ruthless Esparza is.”
“He told Esparza the whole story?”
Mariella shook her head. “Not at first. He realized that if he told Esparza everything he knew, Esparza would have no reason to keep him alive. Hector only told him enough to pique his interest—and then fled south and hid. Esparza sent one group of men to search for him while another investigated the partial story he had been told.”
“That must’ve been when he and Podnemovitch went to Florida,” Gabriel said.
Mariella continued, “Unfortunately, one of the things Hector had told Esparza was that Granville planned to send me to New York with the water sample and the flag. I reached New York before Esparza’s men could stop me, but Podnemovitch followed my trail and as you know he made it to the Museum in time to intercept me.”