“And then they fell in love,” put in Dolores Montez, beaming at the romantic turn the story had taken.
“Sí,” Montez nodded. “He was older than she by a considerable number of years but still very dashing in his uniform, according to the story. El General had stopped at my family’s plantation to let his men and horses rest after their long ride from the Rio Grande, but he was determined to go farther south, through the mountains into Guatemala. When he and Hortensio’s daughter fell in love, she begged him to stay, but he would not. He said there was a great treasure he sought in the jungles, and that if he found it he would be able to return to his homeland and rebuild the Confederacy.” Montez’s shoulders rose and fell in an eloquent shrug. “So, since El General would not stay, the girl was determined to go with him. They were married, and El General made a gift to Hortensio of his battle flag. He said that was all he had to give in return for the hand of the girl.”
“Just one flag?” Gabriel asked. “There weren’t two?”
Looking puzzled, Montez shook his head. “One flag is all I ever heard about, Señor Hunt. And the story is quite popular in my family. I think if there had been a second flag, I would have heard about it.” A look of understanding appeared on his face. “Ah! It is this second flag you and Dr. Almanzar search for, is it not?”
Gabriel and Cierra exchanged a glance, and then both of them nodded. If Montez wanted to think that, it was fine with them. He didn’t have to know that they already had the second flag.
“I wish I could be of more help,” Montez went on.
“Do you know where exactly in Guatemala the general was headed?” Gabriel asked.
“No. Just somewhere over the mountains.”
“Did he have a map, or…” Gabriel’s voice trailed off as Montez shook his head.
“I do not know. All that was left was the flag, señor, and it was sold by Enrique Montez when hard times had befallen the family for a time.”
Señora Montez leaned forward and said, “What about the photo, Jorge?”
“Photo?” Gabriel and Cierra echoed at the same time.
“Ah, sí,” Montez said. “One of the Americans had a camera. A primitive thing, but it took photographs. I have seen pictures from your American Civil War, taken by the man Brady?”
“Matthew Brady, yes,” Gabriel said. “This photographer who was with General Fargo took pictures?”
“One picture. Of the wedding party. Something for Hortensio and his wife to remember their daughter by, you understand, since she was leaving with El General and they knew she might never return.” Montez shook his head solemnly. “And of course, she never did. No one ever saw her again after she rode off with her new husband and his men.”
“Do you still have this photograph?” Cierra asked.
“It is a family heirloom.” Montez pushed his chair back from the table. “I’ll get it.”
Gabriel had no idea if the photograph would be of any help, but it couldn’t hurt to take a look at it. Montez went somewhere else in the house and returned to the breakfast room a few minutes later carrying a large, framed photograph. The ornately carved wooden frame looked old, very old. Probably almost as old as the photograph itself, taken more than a hundred and forty years ago.
Carefully, Montez placed the photograph on the table, pushing aside some of the breakfast dishes to clear a space for it. Gabriel and Cierra stood up and moved around the table to get a better look at the picture. Both of them leaned forward to study it.
The photograph had been taken in front of a large plantation house. Dozens of people were crowded onto the long porch that ran from one end of the house to the other, including Confederate soldiers in patched uniforms and whatever other castoffs they could find, and workers from the plantation. In the center of the picture, on the steps leading up to the porch, were gathered the members of the wedding party itself: Hortensio Montez, a stocky man with long, fierce mustaches; his severe-looking wife; a number of other family members; a couple of Confederate officers, the general’s best man and groomsman, no doubt; and finally the happy couple, his hand clasped in hers, General Granville Fordham Fargo and the beautiful young woman whom he had rescued from the claws of the tigre.
Gabriel suddenly felt like he had been punched hard in the gut.
He recognized General Fargo from the portrait he had seen in the book Stephen Krakowski had shown him at the Olustee battlefield. Fargo looked a little older and more worn-down in this photo, but losing a war would do that to a man. And in this picture he was smiling, as well he might considering that he had his arm around his lovely young bride as she beamed up at him.
The problem was, Gabriel recognized the bride, too.
“Mariella,” he said.
“Sí, that was her name,” Montez said, nodding his head. “Mariella Montez. She was Hortensio’s youngest daughter.”
You don’t understand, Gabriel wanted to say. I saw this woman three nights ago in New York City.
“What happened in there?” Cierra asked as they were driving away a short time later. “You seemed like something bothered you a little when you looked at that old photograph.”
“If I only seemed a little bothered, then I did a pretty good job of concealing my reaction.” Gabriel took a deep breath. “That was Mariella Montez in the picture.”
“Yes, I know,” Cierra said, nodding. “She had the same name as the woman who brought the flag to New York. It’s not that unusual a name, Mariella. Assuming it even was her real name—perhaps the woman in New York merely chose the name as an alias for purposes of meeting with your brother.”
“I’m not talking about her name,” Gabriel said. “I’m saying it was her. The same woman in the picture. She’s the one I saw at the Metropolitan Museum.”
Now Cierra looked over at him like he was losing his mind. “But that’s—”
“Impossible, I know. But it’s true, impossible or not.”
“Gabriel…you can’t mean that. I suppose the woman in New York could have been a descendant of the one in the picture. Perhaps the great-great-great-granddaughter of General Fargo and the original Mariella Montez.”
“And looked exactly the same? Not almost the same—exactly?”
“Can you say that with certainty based on a small photograph and a memory of seeing her for just a few minutes several days ago? Maybe the resemblance is not as great as you—”
“Trust me,” Gabriel said. “I never forget a face.”
“But you can’t seriously expect me to believe that she was the same woman. You can’t believe it yourself. What would that even mean? Do you know how old she would be if that were true?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said.
“And you said the woman in New York appeared to be, what, twenty-one, twenty-two?”
“About that,” Gabriel confirmed.
“So you see? It simply can’t be like you think.”
“It can’t be,” he said. “But it is.”
Nine years ago, Gabriel would have been less inclined to believe the impossible. But that was before the cruise ship carrying his parents on a millennial speaking tour of the Mediterranean had turned up empty, no one on board but three slaughtered members of the crew. All the passengers, three hundred of them, vanished, into thin air. It was before his discovery of the tomb of the Mugalik Emperor, in whose airless depths he had encountered a living man, or in any event a speaking one, who had held him at sword-point for two days and two nights before crumbling to dust when Gabriel tricked him into stepping out into the sun. It was before the events of Christmas 2004, on the Millau Viaduct at midnight, when Giuliana Rivoli leaped naked from the highest mast—a height greater than the summit of the Eiffel Tower—and somehow, impossibly, was found unconscious but unharmed the next morning at its base. Impossible, Gabriel had repeatedly found, was often just shorthand for I don’t know how. There were lots of things he didn’t know. That didn’t mean they were impossible.