The Eden Project (Peter Zachary Adventure) Page 4

  Raul touched his ear. “Not yet, Dr. Khang.”

  “She must not make outside contact.”

  He frowned. “I understand. It will be handled.”

  “You must hurry. She may be too far ahead of you.”

  He didn’t bother to answer. He heard the distant rumble of the Rio Negro and knew he was close. As he ran, he recalculated the distance in his head and relaxed. If nothing else, Eden had taught him patience. “GPS topo.”

  An image popped up on his goggles, a three-dimensional view from above of where he was.

  “Zoom out.”

  The view widened to show a larger area. He panned the image into the jungle and noticed another figure. The person was moving quickly through the trees, nearly as fast as he was.

  The girl.

  His pulse quickened. The sound of the river grew louder, rising in intensity next to him. He concentrated on the muscles in his legs and willed them to move faster. Time was running out.

  He rounded a fallen log, and the lone figure came into view fifty feet ahead of him, crashing through the branches. Did she know they were behind her? Raul saw on his overhead map that the forest stopped ahead of the target and opened into a clearing. Strange. He hadn’t seen that on the maps.

  Then he realized what it was. It wasn’t a clearing at all. The river ahead of him fell over the edge of the jungle floor and cascaded into the valley below.

  It was a waterfall.

  Either the girl didn’t know she was coming to a cliff or she was planning to learn how to fly. Either way, the chase was about to end.

  He raised his weapon, aimed at the girl’s back, and fired twice.

  The figure stumbled and plunged over the cliff.

  Raul and his men trotted to the edge of the cliff and looked down. Over three hundred feet to the bottom. Mist and spray covered the surface of the water. Below, swift water churned over jagged rocks. There was no way she could survive.

  But Khang wouldn’t be satisfied with less than a body on his desk. So Raul sighed and began looking for a way to climb down.

  He had to be sure.

  Chapter 5

  Maybe they’ll be back.

  Alex Forsythe stood on the bow of the small boat. It was late morning, but a thick mist still covered the water, hiding its surface altogether. Blond hair whipped in the wind behind her. She took a deep breath of the freshest air on the planet. It was rich and warm and clean. Her emerald-green eyes scanned the scenery through her SeaSpecs sunglasses, the jungle moving past her in a blur of green.

  “Slow down, Bruno!” Alex called over her shoulder, making a lowering motion with her hand. “We’re getting close.”

  Bruno, a skinny Peruvian, already had his hand on the throttle. He nodded like he understood, and an instant later the noise from the two-stroke engine quieted and the boat slowed to a crawl. The muddy water of the Amazon River churned darkly behind them.

  Maybe this was all a bad dream. Maybe she’d hop off the boat and find they’d been there all along.

  There were two other people in the boat besides Alex and Bruno. The first was Tom Mullins, an ex-cop and a forensic specialist. He was in his mid-forties, gaunt and spindly. He was sitting closest to Bruno, fidgeting with a video camera that had an external LCD screen attached to it. A thermal imaging apparatus, he’d called it. Supposedly it was able to pick up heat signatures, even ones that were buried as deep as six feet. Alex knew why he’d brought it along, and she tried to brush the thought aside.

  Sitting beside Tom was Rachel Butler, whom Alex had already decided she didn’t like. Rachel was the director of South American anthropology for the Smithsonian Institute. But this was no social call, and maybe that was why Alex didn’t like her. That, and the fact that it hadn’t taken ten minutes in the boat for her to prove that she was as arrogant as she was dogmatic.

  Rachel was a plain-looking girl in her late twenties whose forehead was perpetually crinkled and whose wire-rimmed glasses exaggerated her buggy eyes. Presently, she was hunched over the keyboard of a small notebook computer and was pecking at the aluminum buttons, her stubby nails clicking on the keys. Her leg bobbed up and down in a nervous tic as she sat, making her computer shake as she typed.

  A black plastic case sat on the running boards between Rachel and Tom. Alex had been told it contained electronic equipment and the latest in surveillance and forensic gadgetry. It represented the Smithsonian’s last attempt to locate the tribe it had raised five million dollars to preserve.

  The Mek Indians. Alex’s lost tribe.

  “Dr. Forsythe,” Rachel said, “are you sure this—”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Alex said. She pointed to an indistinct stretch of shore where the water met the earth. “This is it.”

  Of course this was it. How could she forget it? Every week for nearly a year she’d taken a boat from Iquitos this way on her journey to the village.

  She was surprised how she felt, coming back now. A mix of anticipation and fear. It wasn’t her fault the tribe had vanished. Was it?

  The boat’s motor gurgled and moaned under the captain’s command.

  As the boat slowed, Rachel looked up from her typing with a scowl. Alex looked away but could still feel the woman’s eyes burning a hole in the back of her head.

  “When, exactly was the last time you saw them?” Rachel asked.

  “I already told you. A month, maybe six weeks.”

  “Well, which is it? Four weeks or six? Six or eight? Don’t you keep records of y—”

  “July twelfth,” Alex said.

  “So, it’s been six weeks?” Rachel said, pecking again.

  Alex didn’t answer.

  “Why didn’t you call us sooner?” Rachel asked. “You realize that the Institute has spent millions of dollars to protect this tribe. We’ve already invested big money to promote them. We’ve been working on a cover story in the Smithsonian and a cable miniseries. They are the most primitive culture we’ve ever encountered.” Rachel took a long, exaggerated breath. “We’ve sunk a lot of time and money on this, Dr. Forsythe. To have it all go up in smoke on your watch is . . . unfortunate, to say the least.”

  Alex could feel the blood in her veins boiling. “You see, that’s the problem.”

  “What?”

  “All you want to do is exploit these people to sell magazines and TV commercials.”

  Rachel looked up, stunned by Alex’s response. “What? No, I’m a—”

  “Well, I’ve got news for you . . . they’re not animals, they’re people.”

  Rachel sat with her mouth open.

  “Let me tell you what happens,” Alex said. “You barge in here with your stupid video cameras and Western diseases. The next thing you know, Christian missionaries have found the tribe and are trying to convert them. A year later, their heritage is lost and they end up wearing Gap jeans and walking around with freaking iPods stuck to their ears.” She took a breath. “You know what? I don’t want your stupid cover story. I just want to help the Mek fight off people like you.”

  Silence.

  Alex shifted again, replaying Rachel’s words. A cover story? Really?

  Such a thing would make her career. She shook her head as the boat drifted toward the bank. Rachel was ten years younger than Alex and had spent the past decade in a fancy office instead of in the field, but Alex had to answer to her? And now Alex’s career rested with this pale-skinned coed who could see to it that Alex never worked for the Institute again. Incredible.

  “Can I quote you on that?” Rachel said sarcastically.

  When Alex was balanced again, she spoke. “I did everything I could, Dr. Butler. As you well know if you have read my report. When the Mek disappeared, I reasoned they would show up again soon. Or perhaps they would not. This has been a nomadic tribe, as I’m sure you know. Their history is replete with wholesale moves, which is why they have remained a lost tribe for so long. Perhaps,” she said, with a resigned breath, “they have simply moved on.”
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  Bruno maneuvered the boat precariously toward the riverbank. Just before the bow of the craft hit the bank, an inlet appeared out of the mist. The boat slid in and continued up the tributary.

  Rachel laid her hands on the keyboard with the click of stubby fingernails. “I know you presume to have ‘discovered’ this supposedly lost tribe, Dr. Forsythe, but I happen to know you are only the latest in a long line of people who have known of them over the centuries.”

  Alex felt the blood pressure hit the base of her neck like a Coke bottle about to blow. “That,” she said through clenched teeth, “is a bald-faced lie. Listen to me, ‘Doctor’ Butler, until a few years ago, no one even knew the Mek existed. After an incident with loggers, they were displaced to a small camp. A Peruvian missionary, a priest, was the first one to contact them and realize they were a separate tribe.” She shook her head. “When I came to the tribe, the priest had already learned some of their language and had taught them enough about Christianity to convert at least half the tribe. In my opinion, that was the beginning of the end for them.”

  Rachel’s head bobbed with an I-told-you-so little shake. “So, really, it is that priest, not you, who discovered the Mek.”

  “This is correct, Dr. Butler, and is what I have reported in all my papers and communication. I have never sought to claim that I . . .” Alex stopped herself and paused for another centering breath.

  “Look,” she said, “along with Father Javier, I helped the Mek settle near a small village about ten miles up the river from Iquitos. To the village I’m leading you to now. At that point Father Javier went back to Cusco, after having lived with the Mek for three months. I then lived with them there for three years, on and off. I learned their language and their customs. I was their chief student, but also their teacher. Even their doctor of sorts, in collaboration with their medicine man. Until they vanished, that is.”

  “Until they were murdered, you mean,” Tom said. He’d been watching the women spar the whole time, but until now he hadn’t appeared to have cared one way or the other.

  “Murdered?” Alex said.

  Even Rachel appeared shocked. “Mr. Mullins, I hardly think—”

  “Look, ladies,” Tom said condescendingly, “either they left or they were killed or they were taken. Those are your options. Nobody just vanishes.”

  Alex stared blankly at the passing shore. “There’s no evidence of a mass murder. We don’t . . .” She blinked away tears. “We don’t know what happened.”

  “Not yet,” Tom said, tapping the thermal-imaging apparatus in his lap.

  “So, Mr. Butler,” Rachel said, turning on the vinyl seat, “what do you think happened to them?”

  “Like I said, you got only three options: dead, left, or taken.” He shrugged. “I’m guessing left. Could have done that for any number of reasons. Maybe they ran out of food and decided to go deeper into the forest. Maybe they were scared by loggers or another tribe. All these Indian types are spooked out by”—he waved his fingers—“ghosts of the jungle.” Another shrug. “Maybe they got scared by something they saw and just ran for the hills.”

  “Something they saw?” Rachel asked. “Like what?”

  “Don’t ask me.” He pointed at Alex. “She’s your expert.”

  Alex nodded. “He could be right. I don’t know. The Mek are deeply religious.”

  “And?” Tom said.

  “Maybe they saw a wild animal or encountered a disease. The tribe’s shaman could have had some kind of vision and warned them of impending danger, something that kept them from even packing up.”

  “Shaman,” Tom said with sarcasm in his tone. “You mean ‘witch doctor’?”

  “No,” Alex said, trying not to sneer. “A shaman.”

  “Hey, I’m a Methodist,” Tom said, raising his hands as if to surrender. “I don’t know much about religion besides what happens on Sundays. When it comes to the occult, I’m out of my league. But in my time on the force I’ve seen some pretty weird s—”—he corrected himself—“stuff.”

  “Shamanism has nothing to do with the occult,” Alex said, taking a deep breath. “The Mek religion is peaceful and honoring, and their villages are safer than any city in America. Like I said before, they could just as easily have packed up and moved back into the jungle.”

  Tom cleared his throat. “Like I said.”

  Alex disguised her rolling eyes by looking up at the canopy under which they were passing. The tributary was much narrower than the main channel. Alex guessed it was forty feet across and maybe five feet deep. Sunken logs and lilies were scattered across the slower moving water. It was nearly nine in the morning, and the sun was higher now, heating up the jungle with each passing minute.

  “According to your report,” Rachel said, “they left everything behind—tools, clothing, and even food. Come on, Dr. Forsythe, not even nomadic tribes do that.”

  It was true. Alex turned away, frustrated, refocusing on the shore.

  The smell of earth and river mixed with the aroma of morning. Alex had always liked how the Amazon smells at dawn, but not this morning. Today it made her nauseated. The boat slowed, and a pair of black caimans slipped into the water, grinning at Alex through gnarled white teeth. She shifted as the boat came to a stop along the bank.

  This was the right spot. She’d jumped from boat to land right here more times than she could count, usually to the sound of glad shouts from children of the village. She could even trace out the path her boots had cut in the riverbank by going up and down it so many times. Strange that that should remain when everything else was gone.

  Just up the bank was a wide clearing in the forest, right up against the river. There were huts arranged in semicircles. Nothing stirred in the village. No people, no animals. It had a cold, empty feeling about it, like a graveyard. It had been only a month since the Mek had disappeared, but already the jungle was beginning to reclaim the space. Vines spread over the walls and thatch of the huts. In another six months there would be little sign that a village had ever been here.

  For a moment, the boat just padded lightly against the bank. No one spoke. A fluttering sound, like cards being shuffled, seemed to bounce across the trees. Alex tensed and turned to the others.

  “What was that?” Rachel asked.

  “Ghosts,” Bruno said.

  Tom Mullins laughed. Alex figured it was more to make himself feel better than anything else.

  “Seriously,” Rachel said.

  “Oh, he’s serious,” Alex said. “Indians believe when someone dies his ghost remains to occupy the land that’s left behind. This was the land of the Mek. Bruno’s saying that if the Mek died, they’re here now, guarding what’s rightfully theirs.”

  The shuffling sound echoed again.

  Tom stood and hefted the black bag of equipment over the side of the boat. It landed with a soft thud on the wet grass. “That’s a bunch of bull. Come on, time’s wasting. All I care about is figuring out what happened and getting back to the Institute.” He awkwardly lifted his leg over the edge of the boat and skipped over the side, landing on the grassy bank.

  Rachel secured her computer in her bag and followed Tom. “Come on, let’s get going.”

  Reluctantly, as if stepping on someone’s grave, Alex slid out of the boat and into the village of her lost tribe.

  * * *

  Four hours later Alex was kneeling near what had been the fire pit, watching Tom sweep the thermal device over the area. She dug listlessly in the ash with a small trowel.

  They had spent most of the morning laying out a grid of the camp, stretching bright orange twine across the dirt from the forest to the river so that it formed small one-foot squares. It was painstaking work, but Alex knew that it was the best way to thoroughly search the area and accurately document any finds. So far they hadn’t found anything besides the normal bric-a-brac of Mek daily life: pots, tools, fishing lines.

  Rachel had spent most of the past four hours complaining about how the
jungle was too hot and too dirty. She had finally taken up residence inside one of the huts, out of the sun. She had her laptop open and was taking notes when she wasn’t cursing about the bugs and the heat. Bruno was asleep in the boat.

  Alex used her trowel and dug in a neat little square, the size of one of the orange grids. She had to concentrate not to upset the twine under her knees and boots. The process was second nature to her, like brushing her teeth. The earth here was loamy and easy to penetrate. She dumped the soft earth, full of earthworms, into a neighboring square. And then she hit something.

  Her heart instantly beat faster.