by Alex Archer
“A polícia. Eu vou chamar a polícia para você.” Duarte went to a black, rotary wall-mounted phone.
“The police will be a start,” Annja said to Roux. “We’ll see if Mr. Cruz will let us spend the night. I need to crash a few hours, talk him into taking us into the city tomorrow. He said it isn’t far. I’ll make arrangements to pay him something. I’ll have it wired later. And I’ve got to rent a helicopter.” She dropped her chin in her hands. “With no money, no ID, no passport, I have to get back to the village.” She was talking to herself, continuing to ramble as her voice fell to a whisper.
Duarte scowled and held the receiver away from his mouth. “Estou na espera.”
His son was hovering and translated his words into English. “My father says he is on hold.”
Roux took another helping of the boiled chuchu and liberally sprinkled salt and pepper on it. Annja watched him eat and turned back to the laptop, finding Duarte’s email program and dropping a quick note to Doug to let him know she was all right.
“This is delicious,” Roux told the boy. “I don’t know what it is, but—”
“Vegetables. My father, he raises buffalo for the money, but he is a vegetarian. We grow a lot of chuchu for ourselves.” The boy shrugged. “Go figure, eh?” He came close to the table. “He’ll give you a ride into town in the morning. You two can sleep in my sister’s room. She is away at school. And you do not need to pay us. We are just happy to help you.”
Duarte spoke into the receiver. “Ah...finalmente alguém para conversar.” Obviously someone had answered, and he started talking anxiously. Annja picked out the word pharmaceuticals, and understood assassinato—murder. Then he was put on hold again, apparently transferred, and he repeated the conversation.
Roux reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out three stones. “We’ll pay you and your father, Herberto.”
Annja mentally chastised herself for not asking the teen’s name.
Roux set the emeralds on the table. “They’re uncut, and though I don’t know the value of such, I suspect by their size and their variety that they ought to be enough to buy you a new computer and a better truck. You told me on the way here that yours is in bad shape.”
“On its last wheel, you might say.” The boy smiled warmly. “Thank you, Mr. Roux. Thank you ever so much.”
“Herberto, do you have a shower I might avail myself of?” Roux asked.
“Sim,” Herberto answered, gesturing for Roux to come with him. “And I will find you something else to wear.” Roux plopped one more emerald on the table.
Annja stared at the gems, wondering when Roux had gotten them. Inside the mine, probably picked them off the floor. Pieces of rock, beautiful certainly, valuable, undeniably. But the lives Dillon took because of them were worth far more. Dillon would answer for what he’d done.
Chapter 37
When Annja was driven to get something done, time crawled and nothing was adequate.
The ride to the city in Duarte’s rusting pickup was rocky and took too long, though she held her tongue the entire ride and effusively thanked the farmer for his kindness and generosity. And while Breves was a large city as far as the island of Marajó was concerned, it wasn’t quite large enough to suit her needs. Tourism was big business here, but that didn’t include a place to rent a helicopter, or a store to buy a satellite phone so she could talk to Doug and Wallace.
“I need to talk to Doug, not just an email,” she told Roux. She wanted to know whether Wallace and the others had come through the malady that struck days ago and had made it back to New York. “Maybe Marsha’s still in the hospital in Belém?”
Annja had to think of her priorities. Yes, she could spend her time finding out about Marsha—a situation Annja could do nothing about, or she could pursue Dillon, something she definitely could do something about. So that’s what she settled on.
The boats available were smaller than she’d hoped and lacked large motors—she wanted to get back to the Dslala village quickly. Her heart raced due to her frustration, and she anxiously cast her eyes across the river to Belém, where there might be a helicopter available, and perhaps faster boats.
“There is the notion of a bird in the hand,” Roux said.
He looked much better this morning, well groomed and dressed as she’d never seen him—faded olive trousers that were about four inches too short and a blue and red plaid work shirt. He looked like a retired farmer. But she looked no better—save that she was no longer blue. The die had washed off during her long spell in the underwater tributary.
Appearance didn’t matter, though, not while there was Dillon to deal with. She’d stopped in the police station right away, found an English-speaking officer and related much the same information Duarte had in his phone call the previous night. The officer confirmed that several agencies in Brazil had been notified and that likely that the authorities were either already at the site or on their way.
That helped mollify her, but like everything else this morning, it wasn’t enough. Annja was obsessed with seeing this for herself. Besides, there was the matter of reclaiming her passport and duffel.
“The bird in the hand,” Roux repeated.
She got in the boat he’d arranged, a small weather-beaten tug. She discarded the notion of looking for faster transportation across the river in Belém, as that might end up eating more time and for no better results.
“The bird in the hand doesn’t have a name painted on its side,” Annja said, as she settled in and started waving away the clouds of insects. She was surprised Roux continued to accompany her. She was safe, she was going to fly back to New York after this business was done, and he seemed miserable with all the insects and his ill-fitting clothes. Too, if he had any more of those emeralds, he could cash them in somewhere and fly back to Paris in the first-class section that he so coveted. He’d spent a walnut-sized emerald arranging for this boat, food and bottled water. Did the boatman—Jorges Inacio—have the savvy to turn that emerald into a far better boat when this little trip was over?
The hours melted, three days actually, as her recollection of the tributary to reach the unnamed village was not perfect. Inacio had to do a little searching and backtracking.
Eventually, the shore began to look familiar to her. Annja stood in shock; the scent of burned bodies hit her as if she’d run into a concrete wall. Wisps of smoke twisted up from the ruins of the Dslala village.
Inacio spoke low and rapidly in Portuguese and steered toward the shore, cutting back on the engine then stopping it as the nose ran aground. He canted the motor up so the propeller would not become stuck in the mire.
Roux was the first over the side, grabbing the rope and looping it around a tree hanging low over the river.
Inacio continued to talk, crossed himself, and kissed a small silver crucifix that dangled from a cord around his neck.
Annja got out, the water swirling around her boots and seeping in through cuts in the leather. A few feet away a small turtle poked its head up; it looked like the one from her dream.
The bodies had been stacked like chopped wood where the central cook fire had been. They still smoldered. No smoke came from the huts that had also burned. The closest ones had burned down to the ground.
Annja helped Inacio out of the boat, and she watched as he tested the rope Roux had tied, making certain it was secure. He continued to talk in a hushed tone. He was praying. The rest of his words were drowned out by a pair of howler monkeys erupting in full voice and scaring a flock of sun conures.
Numb, she walked toward the pile of bodies, almost three dozen of them, adults and children. Annja stretched out her hands, feeling a hint of warmth. They’d been burned yesterday, possibly as long as two days ago.
Behind her, Roux and Inacio talked and sifted through the wreckage of the closest hut. Annja walked
toward one hut farther away, where D’jok and his family had lived. The blackened reeds were cold, and when she picked up some they felt damp and crumbled in her fingers. This fire had happened first; no smoke came from it or any of the other destroyed huts, no hot spots. How long ago? How long had she been in the river? She’d not asked the date or looked for a calendar in Duarte’s farmhouse. She’d not thought to ask the police at the station in Breves. Then, days and dates really hadn’t mattered.
How long ago had she been in Dillon’s emerald mine?
She nudged the pieces of the hut around with her boot, seeing her blackened satellite phone and the buckles from her duffel and Marsha’s camera bag. She stooped and picked up the charred video camera. All the footage Marsha had taken—gone. But the loss was inconsequential.
Her lungs stung from the tragic scents and her eyes watered.
Dillon’s men had done this—that was the only answer. And the rains had put the fires out. Why? Why kill these beautiful people and destroy their homes? What threat could they have posed...could the children have posed...that warranted this?
She pulled in a deep breath, the acrid air festering in her throat and stoking her ire.
Annja went from hut to hut, purposefully staying away from Roux and Inacio, wanting some time alone. While Dillon had no doubt burned this place and killed—or had ordered the killings—he hadn’t gotten all of them. She knew this because she knew he wouldn’t have had the decency to build a pyre for them. They’d have been left for the big cats and the caiman. There’d been roughly seventy people in this community, and half of them were no more. Half must have escaped. Maybe they’d burned their kinsmen.
Had they then gotten to safety?
“Annja!” Roux pointed toward a trail. “This way.” He started down it without waiting for her.
Inacio crossed himself again and followed.
She took another look at the smoldering pile of bodies, and then went after them.
The shaman’s hut was intact, and D’jok, as black as ink, stood outside it. He’d been dipped in huito.
“I waited for you, Annja Creed,” he said. “I dreamed that you would come back.”
“Tell me what happened,” she said. Annja knew what had happened, that Dillon’s men had come here. But she wanted every last horrible detail for the record.
D’jok held up his hand and spread his fingers. “Five days ago,” he began. “The men came with anger and guns and fire.” The Dslala had sent a band of tribesmen to the pharma camp in search of Edgar and Moons and a few of their own who had not returned. It had been a confrontation with awful repercussions.
“Some of those men died,” D’jok said. “But more of ours. So many guns.”
“Were you there? Did you—” A scarlet macaw screeched and swooped low, took another pass and flew toward the river. A monkey howled long and loud, and it was quickly answered.
“I ran, Annja Creed. I lived.” D’jok’s face looked like it was carved from a piece of rock, no muscles twitching, eyes like marbles and unblinking. “My family did not. The men came with anger and so many guns and fire. Like hunters circling a caiman they circled us, yelling their angry words. I begged them, Annja Creed, to save the children. I told them we were sorry and would leave them alone, that we would leave this place forever.”
“Everyone,” Roux ventured. “Did they kill everyone here?”
D’jok shook his head; his face remained implacable. “They did not. They did not follow the ones who ran into the river. I ran into the river. They burned our homes, Annja Creed. And they left us in the river.” He paused and watched a small orange parrot on a thin branch overhead. “They left us in the river because their guns were empty. So very angry to use all the bullets. So very, very angry to kill children.”
Inacio shook his head and kissed his crucifix. He shuffled back toward the burned village.
“How many survived?” Annja feared the river and its creatures almost as much as gunfire.
D’jok’s expression finally broke and tears welled in the corners of his eyes. “Nine, Annja Creed. Only nine, and me. All gone into the forest now. Gone to find a new place.”
“Will you follow them?”
“No. This is my home. I dreamed that I should stay here. I dreamed that you would come back, Annja Creed. I dreamed that I should tell you about the angry men.”
He’d been the one to gather the bodies and burn them, Annja realized, not wanting the caiman or scavengers to get them. He would have to burn them again and again to reduce them to something manageable. Joan of Arc had been burned three times; the French authorities had not wanted anything left to be buried.
“That must have been five days ago.” Annja’s words were hoarse; her mouth was desert dry. “Did anyone come to go after Dillon?”
He shrugged. “There have been helicopters, Annja Creed. So maybe yes. I will not go back to that evil place. But I dreamed that you would.”
“You dreamed correctly, D’jok.” She turned to Roux. “Would you—”
“Help him with the bodies? They need to be burned again.”
“Please.”
He nodded. “Unfortunately I know how bodies burn, Annja. Yes, I will help him.”
“Talk Inacio—”
“—into keeping the boat here. I’ll do that, too.”
She watched the orange bird and listened to the wind tease the leaves. Then she started off through the forest in the direction of Dillon’s camp.
“And we will wait for you,” Roux said.
Chapter 38
Annja took the path that Edgar and Moons had forged. It was late afternoon, and even at her best speed she wouldn’t reach Dillon’s camp before sunset. There might be nothing there; the Brazilian cops or government officers might have found the place and swooped in. Based on her description of the approximate location, coupled with Dillon’s permits on file, they could have found him.
D’jok said he’d heard helicopters, too.
This could well be an unnecessary waste of time.
But Annja had to see for herself.
The miles melted with her quick pace, though she stumbled several times in her haste, her feet catching on tree roots that snaked across the ground, tangling in vines, the forest rising thick all around her. Once she stepped in a hole, the burrow of some creature, and twisted her ankle. A minor sprain. She kept going, though a little slower and with a little more care.
The sky was clear, no hint of rain, and the air was filled with the scent of damp ground, flowers and suddenly something truly awful. She skidded to a stop.
What was that stench? Not fire, like back at the village. Something that she couldn’t put a name to. Dead fish? Maybe a honking big barrel full of dead fish. The hair on the back of her neck stood at attention and she held her hand down to her side, calling the sword. There was movement to her right, something rustling the branches, causing one of them to snap. A wuffling sound like a horse might make, then a shrill, earsplitting shriek.
Annja crouched and faced the source of the stench and the ruckus, seeing a shape through the foliage, a massive shadow that came closer. It pushed aside saplings and trundled into view.
Her mouth fell open.
The beast resembled both monkey and sloth. As it came closer still she saw that its front legs were longer than the back ones. That its back sloped and it was covered with thick, matted fur. In places the fur was missing, perhaps from a battle with a big cat. When it turned slightly, Annja saw where claws had raked it. The exposed skin looked thick and bumpy like an alligator’s.
“Crap,” Annja breathed. “Just crap.”
The creature’s snout was long and sharply tapered at the end and filled with tiny jagged teeth that glistened in the sun.
It reared back on its hind legs, and Annja involuntarily t
rembled. It was taller than her by at least a foot. It shrieked again and reached down with a three-toed foot, wrapped its claws around a young tree and pulled, uprooting it. Turning and squarely facing Annja, the beast ripped the tree in two in a powerful display of strength, shrieked again. The beast belched a sulfurous cloud of vileness and made Annja gag.
This was a mapinguari, one of the beasts she’d come to the Amazon to find. It was both beautiful and horrible, and here Annja was without a photographer or a camera, no means of recording the creature for posterity. But perhaps that was why nature had allowed her this glimpse, because she could not record it.
It was real, not a myth. The descriptions the villagers had provided of it had not been adequate. Her stomach roiled as another puff of ghastly stench came her way.
A number of the monsters her program chased were mere legends. Some she believed had existed; some she was certain were pure fabrications embellished by popular media. But to see one face-to-face. It was no more than a dozen feet away.
“Incredible,” she said. Annja wished Roux—wished anybody—was here with her to validate the encounter. A sighting like this should be shared. She could slay the beast, or try to. It truly looked formidable and might do her in. But if she killed it, the thing’s carcass would be her proof, one of history’s monsters that she’d chased and caught!
Annja dismissed the sword and held her hands to her sides.
There’d been no reports of mapinguaries attacking people. And she wasn’t about to make a trophy of one just for her television program.
“You are incredible,” she told it.
The mapinguari shrieked again and dropped down to all fours. It swung its head back and forth, snout raking through the bushes. It opened its maw to show its bright white teeth, and then it clumsily turned and headed back into the foliage, in the direction of the river.
Annja held her breath and watched until she could no longer see even its shadowy shape and could no longer hear its thrashing through the underbrush. The birds started up again. She stood quiet for several more minutes, taking deep breaths. The freshness of the rainforest air had returned. If only Marsha or Wallace had been here to record this, not just for Chasing History’s Monsters, but just to have a visual record of this creature.
