Panacea

by F. Paul Wilson

  “You must arrange for an act of faith.”

  “Leviticus?”

  “Leviticus. And then I want you to stay around. Bradsher will send you pictures of someone who needs watching. She’s looking for the panacea as well. And since she’s half Mayan, she may be able to ferret out some things you missed.”

  Laura Fanning had forensic skills, whereas Miguel and his hired goon had none. Maybe it was a good thing Simon had failed. The doctor could prove useful here. Perhaps she could sort this out.

  Miguel looked offended. “I doubt that, but if she does?”

  “Give her time to learn what she can, then confiscate whatever she finds and bring it to my hotel.”

  “What if she resists?”

  “Obtain what she knows by any means necessary. And whether she resists or not, I want her and her companion to disappear. Forever. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Good. Now drive us back to the helicopter.”

  He could not come away empty-handed here. According to his last report from NSA, phone and text chatter about “miracle cures” had dried up in the New York metro area. Obviously the panaceans has passed the word and were lying low. This village held the only lead right now.

  But if it didn’t pan out, what next? He’d worked so hard to get Pickens on board and had finally succeeded. He had his own project-specific black fund … but for what? With the panacean network gone to ground and silent, what was his next move?

  And did it matter? He rubbed his temples. The headache was constant now. A tumor for sure. Would he even be around much longer to chase the panacea?

  He sensed that the cult would not remain dormant long. Their goal in life was to dispense their infernal concoction. They’d be back at it soon. And Nelson would be ready for them.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and massaged his scalp. He prayed he’d live long enough.

  2

  The rental company was called Top Car, one of three near Chetumal International Airport. A shuttle van had picked them up at the terminal.

  “I imagine your Spanish is pretty good,” Hayden said as they stepped off the shuttle into the midday heat and humidity of coastal Quintana Roo.

  “You imagine correctly.” And French and Yucatec too. But she didn’t want to brag.

  They’d hardly spoken during the entire trip. On the leg from JFK to Cancún, they’d both been in first class but across the aisle from each other. She’d watched Hayden chow down on mimosas and the steak-and-omelet breakfast. Nerves about the flight and the uncertainty about what would follow had killed her appetite. The only thing he’d said to her was, “You gonna eat that?” when he saw that she’d barely touched her food. She’d gladly handed it across.

  Conversation on the noisy Cessna flight from Cancún to Chetumal had been possible only through headsets, and neither of them bothered.

  “Maybe you should handle the rental counter then,” he said. “Reservation’s all set. And could you inquire about a package for me?”

  “Package of what?”

  “Some stuff I had sent down yesterday.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Stuff I didn’t want to take on the plane.”

  She could tell she’d get no more information out of him, so she let it go.

  As she started toward the counter, she pointed to the jumble of duffels and backpacks they’d brought along. “Watch those while I see what’s what.”

  He saluted her, then pulled a fistful of clear plastic strips from the pocket of the lightweight khaki safari jacket he wore.

  “What are those?”

  “Zip ties. Thousand and one uses.”

  He began looping them through the handles of their luggage.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Need to use the little boys’ room. This’ll keep anyone from walking off with one of our bags.”

  “How?”

  “Because he’ll have to carry them all at once, and that ain’t gonna happen.”

  As he disappeared into the men’s room, Laura stepped up to the counter. She went through the rental process, keeping an eye on the luggage. A couple of passing men slowed to give the zip-tied bags a curious look, but kept moving.

  Noon now. She realized this was the perfect time to check her voice mail. Phil had had all morning to hear from his ex-SEAL friend. She checked the signal: four bars.

  First she called home again. She’d checked in from Cancún and now Steven would want to hear that she’d survived the trip to Chetumal in what he’d called a “puddle jumper.” After assuring him that all was going smoothly, she dialed her voice mail.

  One call. Phil’s voice: “Hope all’s well. My guy in Montauk can’t find any record of an ex-SEAL named Hayden on any of the teams in the last twenty-five years. He didn’t see any point in going back past that because you said he was fortyish. But he’s gonna dig a little deeper, just to make sure he didn’t miss anything. That’s H-A-Y-D-E-N, right? Like that actress? I’ll get back to you as soon as I hear something more.”

  Laura chewed her lip as she put her phone away. Had Hayden lied about the SEAL thing? Stahlman seemed to have such high regard for him. Hard to believe he hadn’t checked up on him. If he was lying about that, what else was he lying about?

  Hayden came out of the men’s room—wiping his hands on a paper towel, she noted with approval—then began to snip the ties with a little tool. When finished, he stood guard.

  And yes, they had a package for Señor Hayden. The woman behind the counter put a cardboard box on the counter. Laura hefted it. Heavier than it looked.

  She handed Rick the box then grabbed the handle on her duffel—which immediately snapped its connection.

  “Damn!”

  This duffel had been her constant companion on all her trips down here, so she hadn’t even considered replacing it. She guessed the wear and tear had finally got to it.

  But Rick was suddenly there with one of his zip ties.

  “Never fear.” He looped it here and he looped it there, then pulled it tight and snipped off the excess tail. “That should hold it.” He waved the tail at her. “Thousand and one uses.”

  “You’ve made me a believer,” she said.

  His zip-tie nerdiness, although she couldn’t call it endearing, did make him seem a little more human.

  Ten minutes later they had the luggage stashed in the back of a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon and were ready to roll. Having checked cellular maps for Mexico before she left, she’d added a satellite phone to the rental package. Coverage had vastly improved since her last trip, but the southern interior sections of Quintana Roo and Campeche—where they were headed—remained woefully blank. Despite an international calling plan, her cell would be useless there.

  “I’ll drive,” she said. “You navigate.”

  He frowned. “I’d figured it the other way around.”

  “I’ve driven through this interior before, and you haven’t.”

  Since the divorce she’d gotten used to driving herself everywhere and preferred to have the wheel when she was on the road. A control issue, she guessed.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I haven’t been tossing back mimosas.”

  “Only a couple. And that was hours ago. Besides, I’ve got a very efficient liver.”

  “You’ve also got the coordinates. Where’s our first stop?”

  He pulled out his phone, tapped the screen a few times and said, “Somewhere about forty-fifty miles southwest of a place called José María Morelos, wherever that is.”

  Laura started the Jeep. “Been there.”

  “Where? This José María Morelos?”

  “Yep. And that area of the interior as well.”

  “Back in your bioprospecting days?”

  “Exactly. We’ll head north on 307, then take 293.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” He cranked up the AC. “What about lunch?”

  After two omelets and two steaks?

&
nbsp; “I’ve got protein bars.”

  “Good enough. Let’s roll.”

  Laura found her way to Route 307 where she hit the accelerator and got them moving along the worn, four-lane blacktop.

  “Know what’s missing from the map?” Hayden said, staring at his phone. “Rivers.”

  Very observant, she thought. Most people wouldn’t notice. Or was he just trying to make conversation? He’d barely acknowledged her presence since boarding at JFK. Now that they were side by side, one-on-one, he decided to get chummy?

  Lighten up, she told herself. We’re stuck together for two weeks, might as well make the best of it. She’d give him a little geography lesson.

  “That’s because there aren’t any in Yucatán or Quintana Roo. Rivers need changes in elevation—hills and valleys—so they can flow. Look around you: flat as the proverbial pancake. The whole peninsula is like this. It’s all limestone. The rain percolates through it. With no runoff into the ocean, the Carib is crystal clear around here.”

  “Flat all right,” he said, gazing out the window. “If you woke me up and told me we were driving through bayou country in Louisiana, I wouldn’t argue.”

  “Never been there but I’ll take your word for it.” She pointed to their right where utility poles and scrawny, scraggly trees flashed by. “You can’t see it, but Laguna Bacalar is over there, just past the trees—a huge crystal-clear lake fed by underground streams.”

  He put down the phone. “How’s it feel to be back home?”

  Yeah, definitely getting chummy. Was he probing her? She should be probing him.

  “This isn’t home. The U.S. is home. Salt Lake City, Utah, to be exact.”

  “Thought Stahlman said you were Mayan.”

  “Half Mayan—on my mother’s side. My father is Caucasian.”

  “Must have wound up with a lot of his genes, because you don’t look Mexican. Not with those eyes.”

  “This is my mother’s homeland. And if she were here you’d have caught yourself an earful for that remark about looking ‘Mexican.’”

  He made a face. “Is this where I get called a racist or something?”

  Looking like she did and growing up in SLC, she knew racism firsthand, and this wasn’t it.

  “Not at all. But you’d hear all about Mexico being nothing more than a political construct and the Maya being a people.”

  “The ones who built those pyramids, right? Visited Chichen Itza once. Talk about steep steps.”

  She couldn’t resist: “An ex-SEAL who’s afraid of heights?”

  “Rather HALO jump than do those steps. You must have been up there at some time or another.”

  “They’re closed off now, but yeah.”

  And yes, the steps to the top were scary steep. Not so bad going up, but coming down …

  “Well, then you know: one missed step and you’re wasting away in quadriplegiaville.” He lifted the box that had been held for him and started pulling at the tape that sealed it. “So you’re half Mayan. What’s the rest of you?”

  She didn’t want to be talking about herself, but about him. How to turn the subject?

  “English. A Mormon missionary named Jared Fanning came through the jungle preaching his faith. He and my mother fell in love and that was that. How about you? Where do you come from?”

  He didn’t seem to hear. “Got the blue eyes from him, I take it.”

  “Him and the Spaniard in the woodpile.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s what my mother used to say. The conquistadors were big on raping the natives. My father is blue-eyed and my mother is brown-eyed, but she must carry a blue-eye gene. Since brown is dominant, the blue recessive was never expressed in her family. But apparently I caught her recessive. Match that blue allele with my father’s and you have a brown-skinned, blue-eyed girl: me.”

  “You mentioned growing up in Utah, and by your reaction to my A.M. libations, I take it you’re a Mormon.”

  How are we still talking about me?

  “Was. Raised LDS but I never bought into it.”

  The older she’d got, the harder she’d found it to believe. The Church was filled with good, decent, hardworking people, but its origin was simply too hard to swallow. Her mother had converted before the marriage in Salt Lake City, but Laura was pretty sure she hadn’t fully invested either. When her mother would take her on trips down here to visit her maternal grandparents, she’d become a different person in her own land—more relaxed, more fun.

  “What are you?” she said before he could ask another question.

  He smiled. “Devout agnostic. So if you’re not Mormon, what are you now? A teetotaling Baptist?”

  “Undecided.” She glanced at him. “Tell me, Mister Hayden, does that add or detract from my status of being ‘too perfect’ a match for this assignment?”

  “Call me Rick. Stahlman insists on the ‘Mister’ formality, but I don’t see him all that often. Two weeks straight of ‘Mister Hayden’ from you will wear me out.”

  She thought: Your chopped-up sentences and dropped pronouns and articles are already wearing me out.

  “Okay, Rick.” She wasn’t crazy about it—especially since it appeared he’d lied on his résumé—but she could see his point. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

  “Can’t see how your beliefs matter. What gets me is that here we are right where you did your bioprospecting. What is that, anyway?”

  He had the box open now and was uncoiling bubble wrap from what looked like—

  “Is that a gun?”

  “Nope. It’s a glazed Krispy Kreme.”

  Okay. She deserved that. Dumb question.

  “What caliber?”

  He held it up. Big, boxy, with a black matte finish. “Glock .45.”

  She’d seen plenty of .45-caliber wounds on her autopsy table. Few victims survived a center-of-mass hit from that size bullet.

  “How did you manage to ship that here?”

  “If you know who to ask and can afford the fee—which Stahlman paid—it’s easy. Bought it from a guy who runs a sports shop in the city. Took care of everything.”

  He ejected the empty magazine and began loading it from a box of shells that had accompanied the weapon. Its label read Federal Hydra-Shok® JHP.

  “Hollow points?”

  He nodded. “You’ve seen what they do once they get inside, I assume.”

  “Not pretty. Who are you planning on shooting?”

  “No plans of shooting anyone at all. Hope to keep it that way. But you know what they say: A gun is like a parachute; if you really need one and don’t have one, you’ll never need one again.”

  “A lot of firepower there.”

  “Yeah, well, if it comes down to using it … I don’t like to have to shoot somebody twice.”

  The remark sparked an instant flare of annoyance. “Wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”

  He gave a derisive snort. “Why the chip on your shoulder?”

  Did she have a chip? The SEAL lie, maybe. Get over it, Laura.

  “It just sounded so high-handed.” She lowered her voice to mimic him. “‘I don’t like to have to shoot somebody twice.’”

  He barked a laugh. “Okay, I can see how you could take it wrong. I meant that not putting your target down with the first shot means that he has a chance to fire back and put you down. I’ll phrase it better the next time.”

  She caught the snarky edge but let it slide.

  “It’s okay. I’ll be fine.”

  “That’s what I’m here to guarantee.” He looked around as he continued loading the magazine. His fingers seemed to know what to do and were acting on their own. “Lots of empty land. Forget Louisiana. This could be Indiana or Illinois—without the cornfields.”

  “The government develops the coast of Quintana Roo, but ignores the interior. None of the money they make at all those resorts—and they make a ton—filters to the natives.”

  “Your people.”

&nbs
p; “Yes. My people. Maya. We were here first. Then the Spaniards came.”

  “You’re getting all grumpy again. I can tell.”

  “Well, why not? This was their land. They deserve a piece of the pie.”

  “Deserve?” He snorted again. “‘Deserve’ is something people make up in their heads. Like ‘fair.’ There is no ‘fair,’ only what people agree is fair and can enforce. People don’t get what they deserve, they only get what’s coming to them.”

  This was interesting. Not in a good way—she hated the sentiment—but it offered a peek past his bluff, soldier-of-fortune façade.

  “Hey, the Maya are good, decent, peace-loving people—”

  “And ‘good, decent, peace-loving people’ tend to get just what’s coming to them.”

  “Oh? And what would that be?”

  “You see that roadkill we just passed? That’s what’s coming to good, decent, peace-loving people.”

  She remembered whizzing by a lump of brown fur on the shoulder and felt herself getting steamed.

  “Nice view of the world, Mister Hayden.”

  “An eyes-open view. I didn’t make it that way. And just because I see it doesn’t mean I like it. The people in power make the rules. But look around: Do you see your good, decent, peace-loving people in power? No. Why not? Because they don’t run for office. Or if they do, they lack that core of ruthlessness necessary to win.” He glanced at her. “You strike me as a good person. Would you run for office?”

  The question took her by surprise, as did the “good person” remark. Yesterday he’d called her “good people.” Sincere? Or just stroking her?

  “I-I’ve never even considered it.”

  “I rest my case. You’d rather be bioprospecting. Which I still don’t understand.”

  Okay. She was glad to get off this topic—whatever it was.

  “It involves lots of terms—ethnobotanist is a favorite—but it comes down to investigating how native peoples use local plants and such to make medicines. Some of those folk medicines really work, and there are firms out there that want to develop them into commercial products and make lots of money.”