Matos chuckled. “Julio, you are even more devious than I imagined.”
“Well, don’t thank me yet, Eduardo. This is still your mess you’ve gotten us into, so I want you to go to the dig site with the American doctors and oversee their intervention.”
Matos sobered immediately. “But, Julio, I am not a physician. I am an archaeologist. How can I be of any assistance to the Americans?”
“It was archaeologists you picked that opened up this tomb and started all of this, so I think it is perfectly reasonable for me to send an archaeologist down to the site with the Americans to assist them if further excavation is necessary.”
“But, the infection…” Matos said.
“I am sure the Americans will take all necessary precautions to protect you from harm, Eduardo. Now, you call Dr. Sullivan back and suggest to her that perhaps she should accompany you and the doctors from the CDC down to the site.”
“What reason should I give her?” Matos asked.
“Oh, tell her she will need to identify the bodies so that we may be sure all of the American archaeologists died on-site. After all, the bodies will have to be destroyed there and not returned to America for burial in order to contain the infection.”
“All right, but call me back with the arrangements for transport of the Americans to the site. It will have to be by helicopter as the site is very remote.”
“I will call you back as soon as I’ve discussed the matter with the CDC.”
After he hung up, Matos sat thinking for a moment and then he cursed. “Bastardo!” He knew Cardenez had just set him up. If he somehow succumbed to the plague, then Cardenez would be able to blame the entire fiasco on him, and he would be dead and unable to refute any of the charges. Cardenez was a devious bastard, but Matos still had a few tricks up his sleeve. He would make sure that no matter what happened to him, Cardenez would not escape without his share of the blame.
Chapter 2
Dr. Mason Williams jerked awake at the shrill tone of his phone ringing on his bedside table. He cursed under his breath when he glanced at the clock and saw that it was two o’clock in the morning.
He rolled over and fumbled with the receiver for a moment before finally bringing it to his ear. “Yeah?” he rasped.
“Dr. Williams?” a heavily accented voice asked.
“Uh-huh,” Mason mumbled through a yawn.
“This is Dr. Julio Cardenez, Director of Public Health Services of Mexico.”
Mason knew Julio reasonably well. As Director of Public Health Services in Mexico, Julio had worked with him on the huge earthquake in Mexico City a few years ago, trying to prevent an outbreak of cholera after the area’s sewer system had been destroyed. The man was a self-important martinet, but Williams had managed to work with him reasonably well, as long as he’d been willing to give Cardenez all of the credit for the lives saved.
He sat up on the side of his bed and slipped his feet into his house shoes. Cardenez wouldn’t be calling a CDC doc unless it was a genuine emergency. Williams hoped there hadn’t been another earthquake.
“I’m sorry, Julio,” Mason said as he walked toward the kitchen to make a quick cup of coffee. “It’s early here and I’m not fully awake yet.”
“No need to apologize, Señor Williams. I’m sorry for calling at such an ungracious hour, but we have an extreme situation that I fear may need the expertise of you and your excellent group of physicians.”
Mason placed a K-cup of Green Mountain Dark Magic coffee in his Keurig machine and punched the brew button. He had a feeling he was going to need every bit of the mega-caffeine in the extra-bold blend.
In seconds he was gulping the coffee while simultaneously readying a pad and pen for notes. “Go on, Julio.”
In his stilted English, Cardenez began spelling out the problem. “A few months ago, one of our archaeologists recommended I approve an expedition from the archaeology department of the University of Texas to a dig in a remote area west and south of Mexico City. After the usual bureaucratic delays, the expedition finally embarked about three weeks ago.”
Mason sighed, hoping he wasn’t being called in to deal with an outbreak of food or water poisoning so common in tourists who traveled to the interior of Mexico. “Excuse me, Julio, but just how does this involve the CDC?”
Cardenez bristled. Who does this Americano think he is to interrupt a man of my importance? he thought. “I would think, Dr. Williams,” Cardenez spit out with more than a little sarcasm, “that your CDC would appreciate being consulted when over thirty American students and professors have contracted some mysterious illness, which, if the reports I just received are to be believed, has killed them all in a matter of days.”
“What?” Mason gasped, almost choking on his coffee. “What kind of illness…?”
“Let me save us both some time, Dr. Williams,” Cardenez said. “Here are the names and phone numbers of the two people who reported this incident to me just moments ago. Perhaps you should get the details of the illness and the location of the outbreak from them.”
Mason belatedly realized his mistake in antagonizing this man. Mexico and its health officials were sensitive to the point of paranoia about having to ask for American assistance in the best of circumstances, and this had all the earmarks of being a real clusterfuck, he thought, wondering just what the Americans had gotten themselves into. “I apologize if I seemed rude, Dr. Cardenez,” Mason said, laying it on thick. “As I said, I’ve just woken up and I’m not at my best until after at least two cups of coffee.”
Cardenez’s voice softened a bit. “I understand, Doctor.” He recited Dr. Matos’s and Dr. Sullivan’s names and phone numbers and then added, “While you are consulting with them, I will begin to make arrangements for you and your team to obtain the necessary permits and transportation to proceed to the area in question as soon as you are ready.”
“Thank you again, Dr. Cardenez. I’ll call them both right away.”
Mason stuck another K-cup in the coffee machine and dialed Eduardo Matos’s phone number while his cup filled with the aromatic brew.
After Matos told him briefly what Lauren Sullivan had said and then described the location of the dig as being in a dense jungle setting near an ancient village named Tlateloco, Mason began to question him more closely about what he’d been told.
“They were bleeding from the nose and mouth?” he asked, all trace of sleepiness gone from his voice.
“Hemorrhaging, according to what was reported to me by the archaeologist’s associate who talked to him on the site by telephone as he was dying.”
Dr. Matos hesitated, “Dr. Williams, I am not a man who is easily alarmed, but according to what I’ve just been told by Dr. Sullivan, there may be as many as thirty deaths in Tlateloco, all with a very sudden onset of fever, vomiting, and hemorrhage. They are all American archaeologists or students working at an Aztec village in the jungle, a new discovery thought to be the tomb of Montezuma.”
Matos hesitated, cleared his throat, and said, “Lauren Sullivan said that Dr. Charles Adams, the leader of the dig, called her as he was dying and asked her to make the call to me and to tell me of the tragedy.”
“Why did he ask her to call you, instead of medical personnel?”
“I believe he told her the situation was too dire and it was too late for medical intervention… in fact, he made it rather clear that he did not want anyone else to come to the site but that he thought that it should simply be burned to prevent further spread of the illness and further loss of life.”
Matos mentally crossed his fingers, hoping this American doctor would follow Adams’s advice and he would not have to risk his life flying into the hellhole Tlateloco had become.