The Astronomer

by Charmaine Pauls

  “I’ve never seen you like this, Fraya.”

  “Let me know when I leave. I’ll get my things together.”

  He reached out, but pulled back again. “Talk to Tracy, if you can’t talk to me.” His brow was furrowed. “I’ll see to it that you get there as soon as possible.”

  A couple of hours later Fraya handed her contract to Tracy. Tracy took the papers slowly, scrutinizing her friend’s face. Her eyes went over the details and then she looked up quickly.

  “You’ve nominated Emilio as your baby’s next of kin.”

  “It’s compulsory to appoint someone in the case of an emergency.”

  “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

  “I can’t talk about it, Tracy.”

  “He has a right to know, Fraya.”

  “Look, it’s more complicated than that. Just trust me.”

  “Okay.” Her expression softened. “I’m really sorry, Fraya.”

  “Me too. I know I can rely on Ben’s discretion. Promise me you won’t say anything to anyone, not even because you believe you’ll be doing me a favor.”

  “Alright. I’ll respect your decision. If you say you have a good reason, who am I to question you?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Will you be alright?”

  “I have to be.” Her hand went to her belly. “We have to be.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Two years later

  Fraya handed Olivia to the child minder at the crèche and kissed her daughter.

  “Be a good girl, Olivia,” Fraya said, ruffling her golden curls.

  She gave the petite little girl with her daddy’s blue eyes a longing look. After one year of enrolling her at the crèche, it was still hard for Fraya to leave her baby every morning, even for a few hours. But today was extra hard. This was the first time she was going to be separated from Olivia for more than a working day.

  “Don’t worry, Dr. Riber,” Jenny said, her expression sympathetic, “we’ll take good care of her.” The caregiver hugged Olivia. “Before you know Olivia, your mommy will be back.”

  Fraya left a bag with clothes, toys and nappies on the chair in the entrance. “You’ll call me, if anything...?”

  “Nothing will happen. It’s only for two days.” Jenny opened the door to the playroom to deposit Olivia on a foam rubber puzzle carpet.

  Fraya followed and hovered in the door. “But if she gets sick, or if she cries, or if she can’t go to sleep–”

  Jenny laid a hand on Fraya’s shoulder. “Olivia is one of the easiest babies we’ve ever had. I’m used to children. I have three of my own.”

  Fraya smiled. “I know. It’s not that I don’t trust you–”

  “But it’s hard. I do understand. Now go. Focus on your job and don’t worry for one second.”

  Fraya looked to where Olivia had crawled over to a toddler near her own age, inspecting the building blocks he was playing with.

  “I don’t know what I would have done without you, Jenny,” she said softly.

  Jenny chuckled. “Off you go.” She waved Fraya toward the exit with her hands. “Look at her, she’s happy.”

  With a last look at her daughter, Fraya left the building and crossed the street to get into her car. Her bag lay in the back. She pressed the ignition button with mixed feelings. There was no doubt in her mind that Jenny would take good care of Olivia. Everyone at the crèche doted on her little girl and they had been especially kind to Fraya, granting her an extra hour here and there when she was running late. Jenny and she had built a special relationship during the difficult past year. As a single mom, having lost her mate young to a heart attack, Jenny understood Fraya’s position too well. This is why Jenny had agreed to take care of Olivia at her own home for the two nights that Fraya was due to be out of town.

  Glancing one last time at the building where her daughter was kept warm, safe and happy, Fraya turned the car onto the road and took the familiar route to her office. She had a strange feeling about the upcoming trip, which she had written off to her nervousness for having to be separated from her baby girl for the first time. She should have been ecstatic. Her ultimate dream was finally going to be realized. Yet, she couldn’t succumb to enthusiasm. Part of the reason was due to the fact that her goals had long since changed. Nothing was more important to her than her child. But another part could be contributed to Andrews. This journey was his initiative, based on her theories and findings. She simply didn’t look forward to spending time traveling with him again.

  She recalled their conversation, when he had shared the news with her.

  “We can’t find the site,” he had said three days ago, leaning against the wall of her office. “There must be something wrong with your coordinates.”

  She had doubted that very much. It had taken her the better part of the year to figure out the mystery of the lost pyramid. Her measurements had been accurate. For months she had slogged over the data, working one hundred years backwards and forwards from the date of the other world sites, but the star constellations from that era didn’t point to anything on a geographical map. After she had put Olivia to bed at night, she had spent countless hours poring over the simulations of how the skies had appeared during that epoch with the help of specially designed computer programs, but the answer kept eluding her. Until she sat in the cathedral on the square in Cusco, staring at the Inca paintings of the star maps. It was Christmas. She had gone with Olivia to see the traditional Inca parade and when the sun had gotten too hot, she had escaped into the cool stone chamber to sit on the bench facing the wall with the star paintings. Then it had struck her. The ancient civilizations who inhabited what was now known as Zone 78, hadn’t used the stars to draw their constellations like in the rest of the world. Their constellations were mapped by the dark spaces in between the stars. She had jumped up, startling Olivia, to stare at the fox and the llama, black paintings outlined by stars. Suddenly everything was clear. She had been using the wrong map all along. Instead of looking at the stars, she had to look at the spaces between the stars.

  It had taken her only two weeks to draw up a new geographical reference and it made complete sense. She had felt elated, overjoyed as she presented her new finding to Welser. Of course she had always known that Andrews would be the one the head out the expedition, since she had made it clear after the birth of Olivia that she wouldn’t be available for field work. It didn’t mean she had to like it. But that was the price she had agreed to pay for being granted the time and funds to work on the project.

  Naturally, it came as a shock to see Andrews standing in her office, telling her she was wrong. If she had failed, the plug on the project would be pulled. They both knew it.

  “How big a radius did you explore?” she had asked.

  “Seventy miles.”

  “It could have been evened, or buried, overgrown with jungle.”

  “Our infrared and infrasound equipment would have detected something.”

  That was true. She knew it. She had nothing to say to that argument, nothing more to suggest. It was if he had waited for her to register the fact before he continued carefully, “That is why you need to come with us.”

  “What?”

  “You need to make a trip out there with the team. I need you to look at the geographical area and see if your simulation could be off with a couple of degrees.”

  “But I’ve studied the topical maps and it made sense.”

  “You’ve found the Atacama site.”

  They had argued for another few minutes, her bringing up excuses, him counteracting them, until he had dealt his trump card.

  “If we don’t crack this, I’m on the next plane back to Santiago and so are you.”

  She couldn’t go back there, risk running into Emilio. After more than two years it still hurt so much. He had read the reaction on her face correctly and had triumphed in her weakness. Now she was on her way to the office to meet Stix and Tanson, heading out to Ollantaytambo by
plane and from there to Machu Picchu by road, where Andrews and his caravan was waiting.

  She touched the photo of Olivia she had placed on top of her files on the passenger seat fondly. The past twenty-three months had been hard. It was difficult to set herself up from scratch. All through her pregnancy she had wished Emilio could have been a part of it. Her new job didn’t earn many points. Astronomers were not the best-paid workers in the world. There was a monthly deposit from Emilio, extravagantly generous, but she never touched it. Every last point he had sent was put into a trust fund for Olivia. It just didn’t feel right for her to use his points. Yet, she didn’t attempt to return his generous provision, knowing that in doing so, she risked having to communicate with him. Instead, she decided that she had no right to it. But it would help her daughter one day. Olivia wouldn’t need to suffer. She wouldn’t know needing. And the saddest thing for Fraya was that Olivia wouldn’t know her father. But like in her job, and in everything else, there was always a price to pay. This was the price she had paid for little Antonio. Her thoughts turned to the little boy and his daddy. She hoped they were happy. She couldn’t bear to think about Suzanne and Emilio, maybe together now.

  * * * *

  Andrews came out of the tent and watched the dust trail until the Jeep XO came to a stop near the campsite. Panagakos jumped from the vehicle and made his way toward Andrews, acknowledging him with a slight nod.

  Smit watched, waiting in the flanks. Andrews motioned at him and went back into the tent. When Panagakos and Smit had followed, he closed the flap.

  “Is she on her way?” Andrews said, fishing a bottle of water from a cool box and throwing it to Panagakos.

  “She is. But she’s not alone.”

  Andrews watched him carefully. “Who’s with her?”

  “Stix and Tanson.”

  Smit looked nervous. “That wasn’t part of the plan.”

  Panagakos shrugged. “They decided to send her off with a fucking protection party, what the hell do I know?”

  Andrews rubbed his chin. “When are they scheduled to arrive in Ollantaytambo?”

  “Three o’clock,” Panagakos said.

  “They’ll get a car at the zone station. It will take them two hours to get here. We’ll intercept them an hour from here. The road is quiet, there are no villages in site.”

  Smit had started pacing the narrow space. He stopped when Andrews said ‘intercept’. “What are you saying?”

  Andrews said, “We’re going to grab her, make it seem like she’s been kidnapped.”

  “And Stix and Tanson?” Panagakos said, his face scrunched, pulling his pockmarks tight.

  “We let them go. They can take word back to the office. We’ll go disguised as tribesmen.”

  “She was just supposed to come here, alone,” Smit insisted. “It would have just been easier if we could have claimed she had died in some accident, like we had planned.”

  Andrews thought for a while. “In fact, this is perfect.”

  “How?” Smit said.

  “We go as tribesmen and pin the blame on the old chief.”

  “But he’ll deny it.”

  “Yes, he will. But it will be difficult to explain why she had been pierced with a hundred arrows when they find her body. Arrows from his tribe.”

  “Yes...” Panagakos said slowly. “That’s ingenious. That would make him look guilty, without a doubt.”

  “And it saves us from having to get rid of the body,” Smit said, looking less pale.

  “We have two hours,” Andrews said. “Get ready.”

  * * * *

  Stix drove while Fraya navigated. Tanson sat in the backseat.

  Fraya felt Tanson’s hand on her shoulder. “Relax. You’re as tight as a string. This is your moment.”

  She shot him a grateful smile in the rearview mirror. “It’s Andrews’s moment.”

  He chuckled. “We all know who made the find.”

  “Shit!” Stix slammed on the breaks.

  Fraya saw the trunk that lay over the road and screamed. It had been hidden from view by the ditch and they had seen it too late. Stix turned the wheel, opting to go around it, veering off the side of the road. Fraya knew the vehicle could handle it, but the front wheel hit a deep hole and just before she was severely thrown forward by the force of the sudden stop, her seatbelt digging into her chest, she could have sworn she had heard the tire pop.

  The Jeep XO lay askew, the wheel on her side spinning uselessly.

  “You okay, Doctor Riber?” Stix said, unfastening his safety belt.

  She rubbed her brow. “I’m fine.”

  Stix turned. “Tanson?”

  “All okay back here.”

  Stix tried his door. “My side is stuck.” He leaned over Fraya and wrestled her door open.

  “Can you get out?”

  Fraya looked at the muddy soil beneath the vehicle. “Yes.” She freed herself from her safety belt too, and jumped. Stix scurried after her, wrenching open the backdoor for Tanson.

  “Fuck,” Tanson said. He looked at the damage with his hands on his hips.

  “No cell phone reception,” Fraya said, holding her wrist pad up in the air.

  “Didn’t see that one coming,” Stix said. He pulled his hand through his hair. “Can we get it out?”

  “We can use that damn stump that we hit to lift the Jeep level to the ground,” Tanson suggested.

  A noise attracted Fraya’s attention. “Look! There’s a car coming. I’ll go and wave them down.”

  “Good idea,” Stix said. “We could do with another hand or two, otherwise we’re pretty much fucked. If our plan doesn’t work, at the very least, they can make a phone call for us back in Ollantaytambo.”

  Fraya jogged to the side of the road. She had removed her red scarf and was waving it in the air. The car slowed down. When the backdoor opened Fraya ran toward it.

  “We have a problem with–”

  Before she could get another word out, a man jumped from the backseat, threw his arm around her waist and forced her into the car. Her screams alarmed Stix and Tanson. Fraya could see Tanson throw down the crowbar he had taken from the back of the Jeep, running toward the car, but they were already speeding away by the time he reached the road. Pain ripped through her as one of the men gripped both the identity chips in her ear and tore them from her flesh. As the skin and cartilage split open, heat rushed through her body and turned into agony. She clasped her hand over the wound. Blood poured over her fingers and onto her face.

  Chapter Forty

  Emilio was calculating the costs for a new hotel development when his secretary’s voice came over the communication system.

  “Mr. Larraín, there’s a Mrs. López on the line from the Peruvian Social Services.”

  Emilio frowned. He was on a tight deadline and had made it clear he didn’t want to be disturbed. He pondered the reason for the call. It was probably a request for a donation of land or a building.

  “Take a message,” he said shortly.

  His secretary’s voice was apologetic. “I tried, but she said it was a personal matter, important.”

  “Fine,” he said without hiding his irritation. He pushed the button to direct the call to his private line. “Larraín here. How can I help you Mrs. López?”

  “Mr. Emilio Larraín?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Larraín, I’m calling about Olivia, Dr. Fraya Riber’s daughter.”

  Emilio’s hand stilled on the electronic pen of his ePad. Fraya had a daughter? When he didn’t reply, the voice continued, “You are Olivia’s next of kin. We have to make arrangements–”

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  “We have to make arrangements for you to collect Olivia.”

  Emilio felt the blood draining from his face. “Has something happened to Fraya?”

  There was a short hesitation. “You haven’t been informed? Inspector Tuanama was supposed to notify you.”

  Emilio’s hand sh
ook as he quickly scanned through the messages on his electronic system. Indeed, there was a message from an Inspector Tuanama, and two from Ben Saunders. He hadn’t checked his messages since he had come out of the board meeting that morning.

  “What happened?” he said in a thunderous voice.

  “Mr. Larraín, I thought you knew. It’s not my place to diverge the information. My job is to take care of Olivia.”

  “Take care of Olivia?”

  “As her next of kin, we have to discuss your plan for collecting her.”

  None of it made sense. Something had happened to Fraya? His heart went cold. Fraya had a daughter? Did she meet someone else? Naturally, as her official mate, he would be the legal guardian of any children she happened to have, even if it was with another man.

  “I’ll call you back in a minute,” he said.

  “But–”

  He cut the line and pressed the dial button for Tuanama. When the Inspector picked up, the man sounded relieved. “Mr. Larraín, I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”

  “What happened to Fraya?” he said, worry and impatience making him sound rude.

  “There has been a kidnapping.”

  Emilio’s blood froze in his veins. He swallowed hard. “When?” is all he managed to get out.

  “Yesterday.”

  “Tell me everything.”

  “There’s unfortunately not much to tell. She was on her way to an archeological expedition with two colleagues and was taken on the way by local tribesmen. It seemed that their vehicle was ambushed just outside of Ollantaytambo, on the way to Machu Picchu. My team is doing everything they can to track the abductors, but there are no traces.”

  “What about tracking her identity chip?”

  “There’s no signal. It seems like the chip has been destroyed.”

  Emilio felt murderous. “And you only call to tell me this today?”

  “We’ve only found out ourselves today. Her two male colleagues followed the trail for as far as they could, and then ventured back to the main road where they walked for a few hours until nightfall before they came across a vehicle and hitched a ride back into town. They called from there. As you may know, there is very little cell phone reception in the area.”