“What can a doctor do about this?”
“If I were to guess, I’d say a chemical peel to remove the outer layer of skin that’s been dyed and leave nice new skin uncovered. But I’m not a doctor. He is. His name is Leighton. Whatever happens, I want you in Guatemala City by Thursday. And I want your friend Ruiz so you understand what people say to you.”
“All right,” he said. “We’ll be there. Thanks for your help.”
“It’s not a favor, Russell. I need somebody reliable to be here to keep the Fargos from ruining this opportunity for me. This is going to be the most important project of my life, and these people are malicious. No matter how graciously I’ve treated them, both at their house and my own, or how generous my offer, they’ve decided to be my enemies. I need you to make them aware of what a bad idea that was.”
Chapter 21
Sam and Remi could not tell how much influence Sarah Allersby might have with the authorities in Guatemala, but they decided she was unlikely to have anyone watching Belize for their arrival. They flew into Punta Gorda on a private jet and took a bus down the coast to Livingston, then paid a fisherman to take them upstream on the Río Dulce to Lago de Izabal, across the border in Guatemala. A visitor could enter any of the four countries of the region and deal with customs officials only once, then pass freely to the others.
They hired a second boat to take them the length of the lake. It was a vast expanse of blue-gray under a layer of clouds, and in the distance, beyond the shore, there was a wall of blue mountains. The trip was beautiful, and standing on the deck of the boat was a relief after so many miles on the road.
Sam and Remi were better prepared for their trip into the high country of central Guatemala. They had enlisted in advance the cooperation of like-minded officials: Amy Costa at the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City, and Commander Rueda of the Guatemalan national police. If the Fargos were to find any evidence that Sarah Allersby was violating the laws of the country regarding the transporting of antiquities, or had possession of the codex from the Mexican volcano, Rueda would arrest her. If necessary, he would fly in a squad of rangers to a remote area to do it.
Sam had spoken to Amy Costa on a conference call. “He agreed to that? What caused the change of heart?”
“It’s always hard to know,” said Amy Costa. “We ask for cooperation and we always hope to get it. This time we will.”
After Sam and Remi hung up, Remi rolled her eyes. “You really didn’t notice?”
“Apparently not. Notice what?”
“She walked us past about thirty offices full of old married cops and went right into the office of this handsome guy about her age who couldn’t keep his big brown eyes off her.”
“You’re saying our State Department official is fraternizing with a Guatemalan cop?”
“No, I’m saying she’s every bit as smart as she looks.”
Now they were back in Guatemala, and both of their satellite phones were programmed with the embassy number and the office of Commander Rueda. The lake was thirty-one miles long and sixteen miles wide, and as they reached the end at El Estor, Sam and Remi both felt good. Sometimes covering thirty miles in the highlands could take several days of hard climbing.
At El Estor, they hired a small boat to take them up the Polochic River, which fed the lake from the west side. It was one hundred fifty miles long, a winding, narrow stream bordered by jungle that came all the way down to the water like a green wall. It was navigable upstream as far as the town of Panzós, with an unpaved road to take them on from there.
As they moved up into the heart of the region, the forest was deeper and thicker, and the few settlements they saw seemed random, like places where people’s gasoline or enthusiasm had run out and they had decided to build shelters and stay.
Once again, Sam and Remi had come armed. They still had their Guatemalan carry permits, and Selma had arranged to have four semiautomatic pistols purchased and waiting for them in Punta Gorda. As they had on their first trip, they carried one each in their packs and the others in bellybands under their shirts. They brought considerably more nine-millimeter ammunition, including ten loaded magazines each.
Now that they were in central Guatemala, whatever they had brought in their packs would have to do. There was no going back to pick up one more item. The closest place where Selma could have anything delivered was far away in Guatemala City. When Sam and Remi reached the end of the navigable section of the river at Panzós, they saw a loaded coffee truck parked along the dirt road above the river and pointed west. They asked their boatman to serve as interpreter to ask the driver for a ride, and learned that he was the boatman’s friend. They arranged to pay him a few Quetzales in exchange for a ride to the end of the road.
The ride lasted for two days. Their host had an iPod, with all of his favorite songs on it, and a cable that connected the iPod to the truck’s radio speakers. His playlist began with songs in Spanish and then a few in English, and soon the three of them were singing loudly in whichever language came up as they bounced along the rough, rutted road westward through the forest.
At midday on the second day, they pulled into a depot where their dirt road met a larger dirt road. Trucks from other parts of the region were there unloading their coffee sacks onto a conveyor to be weighed, counted, and reloaded onto tractor-trailer trucks that drove on along the larger road. They bid an affectionate good-bye to the driver, who would soon get his turn at the scale, get paid, and go home.
When they walked off to the west, they checked their position on the GPS screens on their satellite phones. They were within twenty miles of their first-choice destination. They walked the rest of the day, heading straight for it. In the late afternoon, they crossed a game trail, and that made walking easier, although the trail angled a bit north of their destination. The vegetation was thick, and the tops of the trees stood over the trail like a line of umbrellas. There was little breeze, but the shade kept them from suffering under the sun.
They checked their position frequently and continued on the game trail. As they moved farther from the road and closer to the place they were looking for, they walked in near silence. When they needed to talk, they would stop to rest on a fallen log or a low, twisted limb, put their heads close, and whisper. They listened to the calls of birds and the screeches of the troops of howler monkeys passing overhead, trying to discern whether they’d been disturbed by human beings somewhere up ahead.
Sam and Remi had trekked through wilderness together many times, so they were comfortable moving through the Guatemalan highlands. The rhythms of the forest immediately became their rhythms. They got up as the sun was beginning to restore colors to the world, but it would not be above the horizon for another hour. They ate simply and broke camp so they could get in three or four hours of hiking before the day grew hot. They stopped when the sun was beginning to sink so they could select a site and set up their camp while they could still see. They used each opportunity to replenish their water supply by boiling and treating springwater or the water from streams. Their fires were small, made in shallow pits that Sam dug. If the wood was damp enough to smoke, they would go without the fire and eat preserved food from packets.
On the morning of the third day, the Global Positioning System on their satellite phones showed that they were close to the ruined city. They used Remi’s phone to call Selma in San Diego.
“Good morning,” said Selma. “How is it going so far?”
“We’re getting very close, so we’re calling now and then expect to be texting for a while to maintain silence,” Remi said.
“Have you seen anyone yet?”