by JC Ryan
In response, Digger turned and went back through the narrow hole in the rubble. Rex followed, pushing aside stones and dirt to make a wider passage.
When there was no longer any light from the cave-ins, Rex wished he had a flashlight, but all he had was his smartphone. Using the flashlight function on it would eat up the battery fast, so he belly-crawled a few more yards in the dark.
Suddenly, dog-breath assaulted his nose. “Digger,” Rex said. “How much farther?”
Digger’s answering ‘woof’ was deafening in the confined space. Rex felt himself wince. Then the air cleared of Digger’s last meal and was only dusty again. Rex crawled forward.
In only three or four more yards, it began to get lighter again, and then suddenly Rex was out of the tunnel. He found himself in the ceremonial room, the artifacts within arms reach if he stood up.
Reverently, he picked up one of the statues. He was just about to carry it toward the windows from where he’d been looking in before, when he heard Flo’s voice.
“Ray! Ray, are you here?”
He moved cautiously to the window slots and looked out. Flo, Barry, and Alexandro were outside, standing in a small circle and facing each other. He couldn’t see any weapons, and the Markses seemed puzzled, not angry. Alexandro had a neutral expression on his face. He had to make a decision quickly, remain quiet and stay in hiding or tell them he was there. Honesty is the best policy, he decided.
“In here!” Rex called.
Flo’s head turned quickly, and he caught her eye. “What are you doing in there, and how’d you get in?” she asked.
“Digger found a way in, and I followed him.” He hoped his response was enough for them to not insist on knowing why he was there.
“Oh my goodness! Was that safe?”
“Probably not.” He grinned. “I’m glad you’re here. If it caves in on me while I’m trying to get out, at least there’ll be someone to rescue me.”
Flo assumed a scolding expression. “Don’t even joke about that. What’s that in your hand?”
“Oh. It’s one of the artifacts we were looking at yesterday. I was just about to see if it’s solid gold, or what.”
“Well, is it?”
“I’m not sure. I’d just picked it up when you called. It’s pretty heavy though.”
By then, both men had wandered over to see what Rex and Flo were talking about. Alexandro didn’t look pleased that Rex had the artifact in his hands. Barry looked excited.
Flo asked the others, “Is there any way to determine if that’s gold?”
“It’s gold,” Alexandro stated flatly.
Rex frowned and stared at him, but Barry was already saying something.
“Gold is soft. You could probably dent it with a coin if you have one on you. Or scratch it with a pocketknife.”
Rex reached into his pocket and took out his Swiss Army pocketknife. He turned the statue upside down and scratched the bottom of it, even as Alexandro shouted angrily.
“Stop! Do not deface the artwork of our ancestors! Our gods live in them.”
But Rex ignored him and saw a dark gray streak where the knife had scraped. He scraped a bit more from beside the first streak. More of the dark gray appeared. He held it to the light.
“What is that?” Flo said.
Barry stepped up for a closer look. “It looks like iron,” he said. He turned to ask Alexandro what he thought, but all he saw was the man’s backside as he was running away from the ruin.
“What the hell?”
Rex couldn’t see what was happening. The slot was narrow, and the walls thick, so he could only see directly in front of him. “What’s happening?”
“Alexandro’s running off,” Barry shouted.
“Shit. I was afraid of that… And now we know.”
“Know what?” Flo asked.
“I’m afraid what we have here are some fake artifacts, a site salted with them to con you into parting with your money. I’m sorry.”
Flo sat down abruptly, her legs refusing to support her. She landed heavily on the ground with a grunt. Rex pushed forward, pressing his face as far into the slot as he could to try to see if she was all right. She’d dropped from his view as if she’d been felled by an axe.
“Barry? Is she okay?”
Barry stood stunned. He didn’t react to Flo’s collapse or Rex’s question.
“Barry! Heads up, man. We’ve got to go after Alexandro, because I think he’s in on it. And we’ve got to get the authorities up here. Make sure Flo’s okay, while I get out of here.”
Barry nodded absently, still staring after Alexandro’s vanishing form.
Rex left the other fake artifacts where they were but kept hold of the one he’d scraped as he retraced his steps through the tunnel. At times, he had to push it in front of him and use both hands to pull himself back through the fallen rubble from the cave-ins. He couldn’t help but wonder where Alexandro had gone.
He was out within a few minutes, carrying the fake artifact. Flo looked at it with disdain. “That’s just gold-colored paint,” she said.
“I’m afraid you’re right. Just realistic enough for you to see it from a distance and believe it was real.”
“But this whole set-up must have cost a fortune!” she said. “What did they gain?”
“Well, fifty-thousand from you that we know of. They’ve probably done it more than once,” Rex said.
“I gave that little bastard fifty-thousand dollars!” Barry hissed. His face, which was red from anger, suddenly lost all color and he bent over, clutching his chest.
“Barry!” Flo screamed, she struggled to stand. Rex dropped the artifact and extended a hand to help her up while at the same time trying to support Barry with his other arm. As soon as Flo was on her feet, Rex eased Barry down and patted his pockets.
“Where are those nitro pills?” Before Barry answered, he felt the prescription bottle in a pocket and pulled them out. He twisted off the cap and poured a pill into his palm, then pushed it into Barry’s waiting mouth, under his tongue.
Moments later, the pain lost its grip on Barry’s chest and he wheezed, “We have to go after Alexandro.”
“You’re not going anywhere for right now,” Rex answered. “And I’m not leaving Flo alone, with you out of commission. Don’t worry, we’ll catch him later.”
Digger let out a short bark on cue.
Rex had left that morning before the Ministry offices were open, but now he felt he couldn’t wait to get back to the satphone to call them, if he had a signal. He pulled out his smartphone and looked. Three bars. It would have to be enough.
***
HOURS LATER, HE ushered Flo and Barry into their guest house and saw Barry settled to rest before he went to Alexandro’s house. He suspected there’d be no one home, and he was right.
Rex could imagine several very bad scenarios coming down the pike, but it was useless to try to defend against them all. He’d been told the Ministry would send someone to investigate, but it would be several days before the agent got there. Their resources were stretched thin. However, Rex thought both the Markses should rest after three days of the strenuous climb to the ruins and then the shock they’d received.
And he wanted to investigate the extent of the scam. Was the whole village involved? Was the illness of the children real, or was it part of the scam? He wanted to talk to Pidro whose grandchild he’d met. He could at least do that while they waited for the authorities to arrive. Meanwhile, if Alexandro showed his face again, Rex would capture him and hold him until the Ministry’s agent arrived.
It was too bad about the Markses money. But if Junior wasn’t a master criminal who knew how to cover his digital tracks, Rex could track him down, with Rehka’s help.
Before he went to find Pidro, he contacted her again and told her he’d try to get a photo to her if the Markses had one. He wanted her to apply facial recognition software to the problem.
“I want this guy, and I want him badly
. Do everything you can to find out everything about him and track him down for me, okay?”
“I will get on it right away. Take care of yourself, Ruan.”
Fourteen
HAVING SET THE investigation into Roper in motion, Rex returned to his sleeping bag for a few hours of deeper sleep. After breakfast, he set about getting answers to some of the questions he’d asked himself throughout the night.
The people of the village didn’t give off deceptive vibes. He thought most of them could be taken at face value. However, the old man, Pidro, who’d approached him with a warning about Alexandro was different. Not that he appeared to be deceptive, but obviously he had a secret and didn’t trust Rex with the truth, yet. What that truth was, Rex intended to find out immediately.
Because he’d promised Pidro, he hadn’t said anything about the sick child to the Markses. Making an excuse that he wanted to continue his research, he left the Markses and went to speak to Pidro again.
He found the same group of old men who told him the tales a few days before, sitting on their benches in the sun. He caught Pidro’s eye. With a subtle head gesture, he indicated the man should follow him for a private conversation again. Then he went to the same place up the mountainside and waited. As he’d hoped, Pidro joined him half an hour later, explaining that he didn’t want to make the others suspicious by following immediately. That gave Rex the opening he needed.
“Is everyone in the village deceiving us about sick children and the pact you mentioned?” he asked. He wished he didn’t have to be so blunt, but he felt there was little time to get to the bottom of it. If the whole village was criminally involved, it might be better to retreat and wait for the Ministry agent elsewhere, especially considering Alexandro’s disappearance. No villager had remarked on it yet, but when they realized he was missing, what would they do?
Pidro’s shoulders slumped. “We chose the wrong leader. I will tell you.”
Rex patiently listened to the history of Alexandro’s rise to power in the village. It seemed the position of Inka Mallku was not hereditary, as he had assumed, but came about when a person from their village proved himself worthy to be the leader in response to a threat.
In Alexandro’s case, the threat was the children’s illness. Alexandro had been on a sojourn away from the village for a long time, and shortly after he returned, the first child became more ill than usual from the bite of a sand fly. Normally, the bites caused no real harm, no more than the itching of a mosquito bite. But this one festered, from the description of the wound. After listening carefully and asking a few questions, Rex recognized it from his field medicine training as Leishmaniasis.
The condition was caused by protozoa deposited in the wound from an infected sand fly. Instead of healing as a bite from an uninfected fly normally did, the wound harbored the protozoa until it became a parasite, which formed a boil. Left untreated, it could cause disfiguring ulcers or morph into a more serious condition that could attack internal organs and eventually lead to death. Rex knew there was a treatment for it – intravenous injections of an anti-parasitic medication. In fact, the condition was well-known to medical personnel throughout South America. But this village didn’t have a doctor – only a relatively ignorant leader who’d set himself up as priest and shaman and now deserted his people.
From what Rex could gather, Alexandro’s solution had been to have the families of the children give them water from a sacred spring to drink, and bathe them in the same water. The spring was far away, but those of the village men who worked in the mines were tasked with bringing the water back with them, since the spring was near the mines.
When Pidro fell silent, Rex prompted him.
“And that didn’t make them better?”
“No,” said Pidro. “That’s the problem. It has made them worse. But what are we to do? Our children die with or without the sacred water. The only comfort the children get is from the cool water in which they bathe while their skin is eaten away by the demons.”
“What demons?” Rex asked.
“The demons who are angry with the village.”
“And who told you demons were angry with the village?” Rex asked, already knowing what the answer was going to be.
“Alexandro told us.”
Pidro went on to give his opinion that the demons were angry because they had accepted Alexandro as their Inka Mallku. “He no longer follows the old ways. Now he says his medicine isn’t strong enough, and we must bring in a doctor from the modern world. But it is because he no longer makes sacrifices to the gods, and he talks to the demons through a modern idol he brought back with him. He should not have left the village. And we should not have chosen him after he returned.”
Rex thanked Pidro. There were still missing pieces to the puzzle, but he was beginning to see part of the picture. Somehow, the local sand flies had become infected with the Leishmaniasis protozoa. The adults were probably immune to the bites from prolonged exposure, leaving the flies to feast on the tender skin and blood of the children, whose immature immune systems were more vulnerable.
What was still perplexing though was the role of the spring water. From what he’d gathered from Pidro, it was only after the sacred water treatment began that the children’s condition deteriorated.
Thinking about the ‘modern idol’ Pidro spoke about, Rex remembered the ancient CB radio in Alexandro’s hut. That was probably the ‘idol’ the old man mentioned, through which Alexandro communicated with demons. And Rex had a good idea just who those demons were.
One goes by the name of Junior Roper. But I’m sure there are more demons with CB radios out there.
Well, he could do something about Alexandro’s demon-talking device. Before he called Rehka to ask her to investigate what might cause spring water to make Leishmaniasis more lethal, he surreptitiously entered Alexandro’s hut. His first thought was to just destroy the CB and leave the pieces there, then he thought about taking it, but on second thought he carefully pried apart the casing and detached a few wires inside. The device was crude by modern standards, but he’d bet dollars to donuts Alexandro wouldn’t know how to repair it, anyway.
After that, he contacted Rehka and requested more research. Until he heard back from her, he wouldn’t mention the children to the Markses. Barry was already on the verge of apoplexy because of his suspicions that Alexandro was in cahoots with Junior. Confirming it would do no good, and revealing the extent of Alexandro’s harmful activities could excite him even more. Rex didn’t know through how many crises Barry’s supply of nitroglycerine tablets would last.
***
REX SPENT THE afternoon trying to determine how many children were sick, without betraying Pidro’s confidence. It saddened him to think that this village, which had probably existed for centuries with no more strife than occasional familial squabbles, was now filled with suspicion and distrust. All because of the greed of one unscrupulous man. How many children had died already because of his incompetence?
If the original illness had been left untreated, no sacred water, would there have been a better outcome? Rex couldn’t help but connect the dots between the water and the deterioration of the children’s conditions and deaths. Was it possible that there was something in the water which Alexandro was not aware of? Could he be a victim of his own hubris? That didn’t absolve him of responsibility for the problems, but it explained his motives, if Rex’s musings were correct.
He also had some follow-up questions for his original informant. He’d been thinking about the fact that he knew this illness and what could be done about it. He wanted to know why Alexandro would want it kept secret. Was it possible that he knew the treatment he’d prescribed was less than innocent? If so, why keep it a secret? Maybe he was worried it would mar his reputation and standing in the community.
But Pidro was nowhere to be found.
Instead of spending more time looking for him, Rex assumed he’d gone on some errand or perhaps didn’t want to be f
ound. So, Rex turned his mind to figuring out how to finagle information out of the other villagers without revealing what he already knew.
He decided Digger would be part of the solution. The villagers had universally exhibited affection for the big black dog. In the past few days, from time to time, Rex had been forced to bellow a command through the village to lure Digger out of the dwellings where children and sometimes adults had lured him in with morsels of food. It didn’t take Digger long to learn this bad habit. It was a dangerous one that Rex had to make him unlearn before some evil-minded person fed him poison.
However, for now, Rex was glad of it, because he could command Digger to go and scout, and then he could pretend to look for his dog, get himself invited in, and perhaps see the sick children for himself. He reasoned that those who didn’t invite him into their homes as everyone else did were hiding something inside—more than likely a sick child.
The ruse wouldn’t work if he made a systematic search, one house after another. He’d have to spread it over the next few days, pretending he was interested in other things between visits, and always acting casual about it.
Before beginning, he took Digger outside the village, ostensibly for a long run. However, the purpose was to sit him down and have a heart-to-heart talk with him.
“Digger, I want you to be as entertaining as you can, so I can get into the houses. When you scout, don’t be a military dog – be a friendly dog looking for a handout and children to play with.”
Digger’s ears went forward when Rex said ‘scout’, but he seemed to understand they were having a conversation rather than Rex giving him a command.
It was not as if Rex didn’t know Digger wouldn’t understand what he was saying, but over the time they had been buddies he’d been surprised at how many times it seemed as if Digger did in fact follow every word he said during these mission briefing sessions. Of course, there was also the factor that when Rex audibly verbalized his ideas it helped him to hear himself and adjust what sounded unworkable when he heard it for the first time.
Over the next three days, with Digger’s help, he managed to get into most of the houses in the village, marking the ones where he hadn’t been invited in or Digger had been turned out unceremoniously. No one commented on Digger’s behavior, but the villagers gave Rex an idea of how they viewed the activity in their laughter, their welcome of the dog and him, and the apologetic looks he got when they shooed Digger out. He discovered only three more houses he thought harbored illness. He’d been able to confirm none of them, because those were the places where he wasn’t invited in. There could be other reasons besides sick kids, but he couldn’t guess what. However, Pidro would probably be able to tell him if he could get hold of him.
