by David Gilman
The woman was shredding leaves, removing their stems and veins and then crumbling what was left into the pan.
Flint eased Max’s shirt off his shoulder and slipped the blade beneath the dressing, teasing it from the skin. He could see it was still tender as the boy’s muscles rippled in discomfort, but Max made no sound.
“So you think you’re some kind of tough kid coming out here, do you?”
“No,” Max said. “I’m just trying to find out what happened to my mum.”
“Aha,” Flint said. He nodded to the woman, who shook the pan, letting the seeds and pieces of leaf roast more evenly. “You know about the jungle? You ever been in a rain forest before?”
“I’ve been in the wilderness,” Max said defensively.
“Wilderness is one thing; this place is more dangerous. It’s not just wild animals, snakes, spiders and crocodiles that’ll kill you; there are plants that’ll get into your bloodstream and paralyze you, leaving you suffocating to death on the jungle floor. Then just about everything that crawls or slithers will come for you-that’s if the ants don’t get you first. There’d be nothing left of you after a couple of days. So, more foolhardy than brave, more dumb than intelligent. You kids have no sense. Like stepping into the lion’s den and not seeing the lion.”
“I told you why I came here. It’s just that I hadn’t planned on doing it this way,” Max said, desperately wanting to find out what Flint knew about his mother but realizing he had to learn patience with this bizarre character.
“Your scumbag friend said you fixed his wound-said you got the infection out of him. You know about traditional healing, how to fix yourself in the jungle when you get sick or hurt?”
Max wondered where in the camp Xavier was being kept. They must have him locked up somewhere in one of these huts.
“No, not really,” Max said. “I just learned a few things from my dad; he was a scientist and explorer as well, like my mum.”
“Aha,” Flint said.
“Please tell me about her. Why were you enemies? Did you hurt her?”
“No. Not me, young fella. But maybe we talk later. First things first. You want to get fixed, don’t you?”
Max’s impatience irritated him more than the sore itching of the wound in his shoulder, but he had to play this man’s game, no matter how long it took. Be patient, be patient, he kept telling himself. He nodded, obeying his own instincts.
Flint gestured to the woman at the fire. “Fixing-up stuff. It’s for your wound. Basil, clover, marigold and amaranth leaves. She’s making up a couple of days’ worth for you.”
“She cooks it?” asked Max.
“You shred everything into a dry pan and keep stirring it till the parts of the plant are nearly burning. They’ve got to turn very dark. You cook it, you release the minerals. You unlock the healing ingredients from the leaves’ ash,” Flint said. The woman took the pan off the embers. She turned to a piece of white cotton where cooked leaves were cooling, then crumbled them until only powder was left. Flint reached out, took the cotton and carefully sprinkled the powder on Max’s wound. From one of his side pockets he pulled a small roll of tape that could have been used for anything, from tying off frayed rope to strapping up an injured arm. Max felt the warmth of the cotton on his skin as Flint taped it into place.
Max smiled at the woman. “Thank you,” he said.
She smiled back and carried on preparing more plants. Flint was on his feet, walking away as if uninterested in spending any more time with Max.
Max knew that despite the help he was being given, there might still be an underlying threat from this man. He needed to be careful, but he also needed information, foremost being finding out what had happened to Xavier.
“Where is he?” Max called after Flint, knowing full well he would know what he meant.
Flint turned. “Why do you care what happens to him? If I had known what he was, I’d have let him rot at the bottom of the river, and the crocodiles could have taken him when they smelled his stinking carcass. You have other things to think about, Max Gordon. You should forget him now. He’ll turn his back on you the first chance he gets.”
“I don’t believe that,” Max said. “I told you-he’s my friend. And he was trying to change. He wanted to get out of all of that. He’s not all bad.”
“ ‘The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones; so let it be with Caesar.’ ”
“Hey, I’ve done Shakespeare at school. I know bits and pieces of it-maybe not as much as you-so you can quote that stuff all you like. It makes no difference to me. Just tell me where he is,” Max said angrily, wanting to show that he was not completely subservient. They had already turned round the corner of one of the buildings, and no sooner had Max spoken than he saw a bamboo cage built in the shade of a huge tree. And inside was Xavier, shackled by his ankle to an iron stake in the ground. There was evidence that he’d been fed, as well as a gourd that held water.
“Max! You OK? Don’ trust these people! Look what they done to me! This guy is crazy-he should be locked up.”
Flint kicked the cage. “No call haligetta lang mout till you done cross di riva,” he said in a deliberate rolling accent that Max had little chance of understanding.
“Xavier?” Max said.
“He’s Creole, mixed race. It’s patois. He said not to call the alligator long mouth until you get across the river-he’s just telling me that I shouldn’t insult him while he still got me in a cage. Well, I won’t be here forever, and when my people find out, then we see how many teeth he’ll have left in his big mouth.”
“Shut up, Xavier. You’re just making matters worse,” Max said.
Flint had walked away, leaving the two boys together, knowing that Max had no chance of releasing his friend. Xavier spat on the palm of his hand and reached out his arm through the cage. “I told you we were partners,” Xavier said.
Max took his hand. “He saved our lives, Xavier. Don’t forget that. We owe him.”
“You owe him if you want. Me, I just wanna get outta here.”
“Well, if you learn to shut up once in a while and think before you say anything, then you might have a chance.” Max turned to go after Flint. “Leave it to me. I’ll sort something out. Don’t go away.”
“I was gonna go for a walk and pick some flowers. OK, I’ll stay. You talk, I sit, then we run.” Max was already farther away. “And, hey, find a map. We gonna need a map to get outta here. A big map. Yeah? You can do it. You just ask one of your angels.”
The Angel Killer himself swept low across the treetops, shattering the stillness of the jungle in his voracious hunt for Max Gordon. Now that the weather had cleared, the turbulent river had settled to a more docile state, allowing him to put men on the ground. Three helicopters had been deployed with four men in each, and they had rappelled into the jungle in a triangular search pattern with the waterfall as its baseline.
Riga had spent two days scouring the river and decided that Max must have taken one of the forks that splintered away from the main stream. Broken fingers of water clawed into the dense rain forest, and each of those small rivers had offshoots of its own. At first he had been doubtful that Max would have chosen the river that ended in the seventy-meter waterfall, as the thundering gorge could be seen from where the river escaped from the main stream. Then he realized that the storm and the low cloud would have obscured that fatal plunge. He had positioned four of the men at the bottom of the gorge where the water churned through massive boulders and then softened to a more manageable flowing river. It was they who had found splintered wood, a couple of pieces of which were tied together by creepers and a twinelike binding made out of stripped palm leaves. There was no doubt that it was the remains of the raft, especially once a white leather seat cushion was found wedged between two boulders at the base of the falls. He had concentrated all the men, flanking both sides of the falls, to search for any bodies washed up farther inland. So far nothing h
ad been found. He sent another group of men to search every small island and inlet that the broken forest allowed. If by any chance Max had survived, and Riga was beginning to think it highly unlikely, then the boy could not be far from the river.
He knew there were remote settlements deep in the forest, some of them depending on local fishing and hunting to survive, but as he examined the maps, he could see that no one on foot, or swimming for that matter, could have reached them. If by an outside chance fishermen had been in that area, an ordinary boat would not have been able to negotiate the river on the day of the storm. No boat, no rescue. Logically-if he was alive-Max Gordon had to be within no more than a kilometer of any of these river offshoots.
The manpower that was now being employed made little sense to Riga, but Cazamind had insisted that no effort be spared to ensure that Max Gordon was indeed dead. In fact, Cazamind had insisted that if his body was found, it must be brought to him personally. Riga could taste the paranoia that came from the twisted psyche of the Swiss mastermind. He was beginning to think of him as a demented cuckoo-clock maker and imagined that when the small door opened and a cuckoo appeared, it would be a horrendous caricature representing the suppressed demon in the man’s soul. Riga had no such conflict within himself. All he wanted was a clean kill and to be done with this job.
Irritation crawled across his skin like prickly heat. Max Gordon was beginning to represent failure. He hoped the boy was down there beneath the jungle canopy, because then he would be found, and Riga could finish the job himself.
The helicopters had not included Orsino Flint’s hamlet in their search pattern; it was too far north and west, and there was no chance that Max Gordon could have reached there. Had they known about Flint’s fan-powered boat, they would have swooped like vampire bats and savaged everyone.
“They’re still looking for you,” Flint told Max. “They haven’t stopped, so you must have upset somebody in a big way, or you have something they want. Which is it? You know something you shouldn’t?”
“Boats or helicopters?” Max asked.
“Helicopters, three of them, far away from here, but we know about them. You live out here all these years, you know when a bird falls out of a tree. They want you bad. Why?”
Now it was Max’s turn to hold back. As much as he wanted to squeeze information out of Mr. Orsino Flint, he needed to know more about who the man was and why the avowed enemy of his mother had sheltered him.
“Have you seen those helicopters before?” Max asked him. “Are they military or police, something to do with the government?”
“You think the government is chasing you?” He studied Max’s face for a moment. He could see how the boy’s eyes might shine with laughter if the occasion was right, but he also recognized an almost detached, cold determination in them that he had once seen in Helen Gordon’s eyes.
“Over several years, half a dozen ecologists have been murdered in Central America, mostly by people with illegal logging interests. Some of the do-gooders ran into drug smugglers, or so it is thought, and their bodies have never been found. The kind of work your mother and father were doing here attracted some bad people who did not want their activities exposed.”
Max felt that squirming in his stomach, a sign of fear, a sudden anxiety that was a forewarning of bad news. “My father? You knew my dad was here? With my mum?”
“Everyone knew about Tom and Helen Gordon. They were a pain in the ass. Saving the rain forest is one thing; telling people how they should or shouldn’t live is another. What gave them the right to stop people making money as best they could-poor people, people who lived on and farmed the land the best they could? And what do I fish out of the river? Their brat! And bringing trouble with him. Is that some kind of genetic disease in your family? Causing trouble? I’d have left you to drown if I’d known who you were.”
“I don’t think you would have. You’re not like that. You said you weren’t responsible for my mum’s death, and I believe you, but you know something, don’t you? Do you know what happened to her? How she really died?” Max grabbed Flint’s arm unthinkingly and felt the skin tighten on his shoulder wound. Flint easily squeezed and twisted Max’s wrists to release their grip.
“ ‘Do all men kill the things they do not love? Hates any man that thing he would not kill?’ ” Flint made a small dramatic gesture, acting a role that Max was beginning to find very irritating.
“I reckon you need a television out here. What’s the problem? Just one Complete Works of Shakespeare, is that all you’ve got on the shelf? Get a life! No one talks like that. It’s the twenty-first century-or hadn’t you noticed?”
Flint took a step back from the verbal onslaught. Some of the women stopped what they were doing in the background and turned to watch. Max noticed they were smiling. Obviously no one had challenged Orsino Flint, plant thief and pretend pirate, like this before.
Flint seemed duly chastened. He nodded and walked away. Max ground his teeth in frustration and, after a moment, strode after him. “Look, Flint, all I want is to find the truth behind my mother’s death. Help me. Why did you hate my mother? What did she ever do to you?”
Flint stopped at the top of the track that led down to the river and gazed at the flowing water for a few seconds before answering. “My father was Tyrone Hickey Flint. An outcast from Ireland. The greatest exponent of the Bard there ever was. He trod every termite-ridden board from Patagonia to the Mexican border for nearly fifty years. Not once was his name put up in lights. Not once. He craved the fame of recognition, but he ended up going from village to jungle town to share his love of Shakespeare for a meal and a bed. And my mother, a Creole woman, went with him. Never complaining, fetching and carrying, making him feel like a great man. I could never be my father’s son-but I could be my mother’s. He beat the words into me, and she lovingly taught me every flower and plant in the jungle. I’m the greatest plant thief there is, and your mother found out about me and destroyed my life. Now I survive on a fraction of the money I used to get-I’m too notorious to do business with. Your mother and her tree-hugging friends saw to that.”
“Then do you know how she died?”
“No. But I think I know where.”
18
Sayid watched Keegan skirt the building. Heavy steel doors barred his way, but then he made his way down the ramp to where the van had taken Maguire’s body. There was a keypad there, and Sayid watched as Keegan, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that no one was around, swiped a card and then stepped back as the door moved upward. Keegan ducked under quickly when it was only a meter off the ground, and then Sayid saw it roll back down to its original position. He quickly fingered the keys to select another CCTV camera from the dozen or so others on his screen. By the way the man acted, inspecting the building first and then finding a way in, Sayid realized that this man had to be from MI5 and that they were responding to the surveillance files that had been sent to them.
Sayid manipulated the lens of the camera inside the first area. No natural light found its way into the tomblike building. Sayid watched as the man turned on a small but powerful torch, searching the walls for a light switch. That was going to be very helpful to Sayid, but he thought that maybe it wasn’t a great idea for the man himself. How did the man know that the torch was not going to set off a light-sensitive alarm? Maybe he was inexperienced. Or scared. Did MI5 people get scared? Sayid felt nervous enough being a fly on the wall as the camera lens tracked the man down the corridor.
All the walls inside the building seemed to be made of brushed stainless steel or thick opaque glass, and Keegan edged along warily, hands moving across the walls, trying to find a doorway or an opening of any kind, because where there were frames within the glass, there seemed to be no handles to indicate that a door or entrance of any description could be there.
There was an uncanny silence in the corridor and a chill that reminded Keegan of a mortuary. It was not his imagination-even the walls felt cold.
There was an elevator at the end of the corridor. He pressed the button and the doors opened; there were only two floors to choose from. First floor and work up? Second floor and work down? He pressed the first-floor button, noticed that his breathing had become more ragged, more fearful, but could not deny the thrill of danger that squirmed in his stomach. The doors closed on him.
He would never see daylight again.
Sayid was as edgy as Keegan. He watched a dozen cameras on-screen, but they all seemed to be focused on corridors, empty and cold-looking, bare and unwelcoming. He could see the MI5 man standing in the lift, gazing up at the camera lens-right at him. Sayid suddenly felt a tremor in his hands as he manipulated the camera. It was as if the man knew he was there, but then he glanced back down. Obviously this camera was behind a panel and not directly in view.
It was like being a ghost, standing right next to someone, almost able to touch them, going with them on their journey but being invisible. Sayid thought he seemed very young to be a spy and looked to be in his early twenties. As if he had not been out of university for long. He looked cool. Jeans, shirt hanging loosely, black jacket and canvas trainers. His hair was chopped in a modern style. Just an ordinary-looking bloke you wouldn’t glance at twice in the street. Exactly what a spy should be, Sayid reasoned.
The lift doors opened.
The low-lit area Keegan had stepped into was ultramodern. A number of small screens were strategically located along the wall, evenly spaced, as if there were rooms behind those thick, dull panels. Fingerprints were required to access whatever lay behind these opaque glass screens. As he stood at the end of the corridor and gazed along it, he realized it was wide enough for him to reach out both arms and almost touch the walls on each side. Wide enough for what? A hospital trolley maybe? A full-sized wheeled bed? Was this some kind of private hospital or clinic? It smelled like it.
