“We’ll miss you too,” said Remi. “In a couple of weeks, some people from our foundation will be in touch.”
Christina looked puzzled. “Why?”
“This won’t be the last disaster,” said Sam. “But maybe our foundation can help in advance to prepare for the next one. We want you and Maria to tell us what needs to be done and to decide how to spend the money.”
Maria, who was usually the shy one, threw her arms around Sam and kissed his cheek. When she released him, she hurried off toward the terminal. Christina smiled, and said, “As you can tell, we’ll be delighted.” She turned and trotted after Maria to catch up.
Sam and Remi sat down in the airport bar. Sam said to Remi, “You know what I’d like? To drink something that’s ice-cold. It’s been a while.” He ordered two bottles of beer, and called Selma.
“Hello, you two,” she said.
“Hi, Selma,” said Sam. “We’re back in Tapachula, at the airport, and it’s time for us to go somewhere else. Can you find us a resort on the Pacific Coast that hasn’t been affected by the earthquake?”
“I’ll do my best. Keep your phone where you can reach it.”
Before they had finished their beer, Sam’s satellite phone rang. “Selma?”
“The very same. You have tickets waiting for an Aeromexico flight to Huatulco in forty-five minutes. It’s close but not damaged at all. Your hotel is Las Brisas, which is a very good one on the beach, and your room has a balcony overlooking the ocean. I’ve rented a car for you and you pick it up at the airport.”
“Thanks, Selma.”
In Huatulco, Sam and Remi signed for the car and drove to the Las Brisas Hotel. They went to the pool to soak and lie on long deck chairs, drinking margaritas. After about an hour, Remi turned to Sam, lifted her sunglasses, and said, “If you were to invite me to a great dinner at seven o’clock tonight, I would try to find time in my busy schedule to accept.”
They bought new clothes in the shops at the hotel and went to the restaurant at seven. Sam ordered pheasant in almond red sauce and Remi had seafood posole with snapper, cod, and shrimp. They selected an Argentine Malbec and a Chilean Sauvignon Blanc to go with them. They had Mexican tres leches cake and polvorónes de Caulle, a local type of cinnamon cookies, for dessert.
After dinner, they walked on the beach and then went to the bar on the patio to sip a Cabo Uno Lowland Extra Añejo tequila that had mellow undertones of vanilla. Remi said, “Thanks, Sam. I like it when I can tell you remember I’m a girl and not your old army buddy.”
“Not a likely mistake unless I get hit on the head.” He sipped the aromatic, powerful tequila. “This is a nice change for both of us. Living in a tent and spending your days burying sewer pipes is only fun for so long.”
They finished their tequila, and Remi stood, stepped behind Sam’s chair, put her hands on his shoulders, and leaned down to kiss his head, letting her auburn hair fall to both sides of him like a silky curtain for a second, then straightened. “Shall we?” she said.
They walked, holding hands, to the entrance and went up in the elevator. Sam opened the door of their room but suddenly put his arm out to keep Remi from entering. He turned on the light and stepped in. The room had been ransacked. His pack and Remi’s had been poured out on top of the bed. The closet doors were open, and the extra pillows and blankets had been swept off the shelf to the floor. Sam said, “Luckily, we didn’t use the room safe. What’s missing from the packs?”
Remi pushed some of her clothing aside, opened a zippered compartment in the pack, then stepped back and looked around the room. “Not a thing. I don’t bring fancy jewelry on boat trips, and our only expensive gear is the satellite phones and dive watches. We had them with us.”
“I’m not missing anything either.”
“Please tell me you still have the receipt from the parking attendant,” she said. “The pot is in the trunk of the car.”
“Here’s the receipt.” He held it up so she could see it.
“Let’s check anyway.”
They took the elevator to the parking garage, found their rental car, and opened the trunk. There was the pot and Remi’s computer, wrapped in their jackets, and the airtight packages of seeds and husks with the wooden vessels the Mayan had used.
“Everything is here,” Remi said.
“Whoever it was apparently didn’t see the car or didn’t connect it with us or couldn’t get to it.”
“What do you think is going on?”
“I don’t think it was a regular hotel room robbery. I think somebody recognized us from the newspaper article, or the viral Internet version, and figured we had something valuable from the shrine.”
“The pot?” she asked.
“It might be valuable, and it’s the only thing in our possession, but they couldn’t know that, whoever they are.”
“Then the thing to do is get out of here,” she said. “We need to make sure these people don’t follow us.”
Sam said, “We’ll check out right now and move to another hotel.”
“Where?”
“On the other side of the country.”
“Sounds far enough.”
“Wait here. I’ll go up and use the express checkout and bring the packs down here by the back stairs.”
“While you’re doing that, I’ll call Selma and let her know where we’re going.” She paused. “Where are we going?”
“Cancún.” He hurried into the hotel.
In a half hour they were on the road in the rental car, beginning the nine-hundred-mile drive from Huatulco to Cancún. It was now late in the evening so there was little traffic. Sam drove hard, watching to be sure they weren’t followed. Remi took her turn driving after two hours, and they kept going until four. They pulled over at a closed gas station in Tuxtla Gutiérrez and slept until it opened at eight, filled the tank, and drove on to Centro on the Gulf Coast. All day they kept changing drivers at intervals until they reached Cancún. They checked into the Crown Paradise Club, showered, and slept until morning.
In the morning, they drove to El Centro, the central part of the city, to shop. They found a number of small stores that had been designed, built, and stocked with American tourists in mind. They bought a number of souvenirs, all of them cheap replicas of Mayan artifacts — pots, bowls, wall hangings, mats, and fabrics that more or less reproduced Mayan art and writing. Everything bore images of Mayan kings, priests, and gods, but crudely and garishly painted. At a hobby shop, they bought a water-soluble acrylic paint set that included silver and gold paint and brushes.
At the hotel, Sam went to work on the genuine Mayan pot from the shrine. He painted designs and altered pictures to make the painting on the pot look as cheap and crude as the souvenirs he and Remi had bought. He used sparkly gold paint to cover the pieces of jewelry the Mayan king wore. Parts of his shield and war club Sam highlighted with silver.
When the paint was dry, Sam and Remi asked the concierge at the hotel where they could find a mailing company that would ship their souvenirs home. He replied that the hotel would do this for them. Sam and Remi watched him pad a large packing box, load the pot into it, fill all the spaces around it with the mats, wall hangings, and fabrics, then fill the box the rest of the way with Styrofoam peanuts and seal it up. With the concierge’s help, Sam and Remi filled out the customs declaration, saying the contents were “souvenirs from Mexico,” and declared the price they’d paid to be under a hundred dollars.
They paid the cost of shipping the souvenirs to their house in La Jolla, gave the concierge a large tip, and went off to the beach to do some snorkeling in the shallows after their hot morning in the city.
That night, Sam and Remi called Selma from their room.
“Hi, you two,” Selma said. “What is it this time, a flood?”
“Not yet,” said Sam. “We just wanted you to know that we’ve sent some souvenirs from Yucatán to the house in La Jolla.”
“I’ll watch for them. Is this on
e big box?”
“Yes,” said Remi. “There’s some pottery, which we really don’t want broken.”
There was a very slight pause, during which they could tell that Selma had understood what the package was. “Don’t give it another thought. Are you on your way home?”
“As soon as we can get a flight,” Sam said.
“Have you given any thought to where you plan to sleep when you get to San Diego? The fourth floor of the house is still a process, not a product.”
“Until yesterday, we’ve been sleeping on the side of an active volcano,” Remi said. “We’ll manage.”
“You could stay at the Valencia Hotel. I can reserve a suite or even a villa. Then each day you can walk home across the lawn or down to the beach.”
“Sounds good,” said Remi. “If we rent a villa, will they let Zoltán stay with us?”
“I’ll see if they can arrange it. I can even bring him there to show them what an exemplary animal he is,” Selma said.
“Maybe that’s not such a good idea,” Sam said. “A hundred-twenty-pound dog who sits when you say sit is still a little scary.”
“I’ll sing his praises, then, and offer to put up a damage deposit.”
“Make sure it’s enough to cover any kindergartners he might eat.”
“Sam!” said Remi.
“We’ll call before we get on the plane.”
Sam used Remi’s computer to buy plane tickets home. Then he researched the names of American archaeology professors specializing in the Mayans. It was a pleasant surprise that one of the most distinguished seemed to be Professor David Caine at the University of California at San Diego. Sam e-mailed Dr. Caine and said that he and Remi had made an unusual find at Volcán Tacaná, and attached the Mexican news article about it. He asked Caine if he would meet with them when they returned home. He asked Remi to read the e-mail before he sent it.
She did, and said, “My advice is, click send.”
“You don’t think we ought to include something about ourselves? Maybe list the places we’ve excavated in other countries and so on?”
“Nobody needs to do that anymore. When he reads this, he’ll be sitting in front of a computer. He can Google us and get much more than he wants to know.”
“I suppose.”
Within an hour, Professor Caine answered. He said he would be happy to meet with them and was eager to learn more about their latest find. Remi pointed at the screen. “See that? Our ‘latest find.’ He Googled us first thing.”
That afternoon, Sam and Remi checked out of the hotel and hired a taxi for the ride to the airport south of the city. The driver put their two backpacks into the trunk. As she was about to get into the cab, Remi hesitated for a second.
“What?” Sam said. “Something wrong?”
She shook her head. “Just a guy waiting outside the main entrance. When we came out, he ran.”
“Where to?”
“I don’t know. Down the street, I guess.”
“Could he be a parking attendant going to retrieve somebody else’s car?”
“Sure. That’s probably it,” she said. “I guess I’m a little jumpy today. Some of the experiences we’ve had lately…”
They got into the backseat, and the driver said in English, “Which airline?”
“Aeromexico.”
The cab dove off down the long driveway toward the federal highway. The airport was about ten miles away and the traffic was moving steadily, so they made good time. They looked out at the Gulf of Mexico and enjoyed the ride.
Just as they could see the airport ahead to their right, a black car came speeding up behind them. It pulled up beside them, and a stern-faced man in a dark suit gestured to them to pull over.
Their driver muttered, “Policía,” and coasted, looking for the best place to stop. Sam looked out the rear window and saw that as the cab pulled over, the black car pulled up behind them and came to a stop a few feet from their bumper. Two men got out. One walked up beside the window of the cab and held out his hand. The driver handed him his license. The man handed it back and glanced at the Fargos, sitting in the rear seat.
The second man stood behind their cab and to the right, with his hand on the gun in the holster at his belt. Remi whispered, “The guy back there is the one I saw running before.”
The man beside the driver said, “Abra el maletero.”
The driver pressed the button to pop the trunk. The man in back of the car unzipped their backpacks.
“What are you looking for?” asked Sam.
The man beside the driver glanced at him but said nothing. Sam opened the door an inch to step out, but the man threw his hip against it and slammed it shut, drew his gun, and held it on Sam.
Sam sat back in his seat and kept both hands in his lap. The man backed away from the window.
The cab driver said quietly, “Please, señor. Those men are not policemen. They’ll shoot all of us.”
They waited until the men put the two backpacks in the trunk of the black car, then got in and drove away. Sam said, “Who were they?”
“I don’t know,” said the driver. “Most of the time, we don’t have to deal with people like that. Everybody knows they’re here—narcotraficantes use this as a shipment point, Zetas come to town looking for somebody. Somehow, those two picked you. Maybe you can tell me why.”
Sam and Remi looked at each other grimly. “Just take us to the airport,” Sam said. “We have a plane to catch.”
When they arrived at the circular drive in front of the terminal, Sam handed the man a large tip. “Here. You earned this.”
As they entered, Remi said, “They had to be after the you know what.”
“I know,” said Sam. “If I ever run into José Sánchez again, I’ll be sure to thank him for all the free publicity he gave us. Let’s get to our gate before somebody else tries to murder us because of that stupid article.”
The flight home took eight hours, including a stop at Dallas — Fort Worth. As they flew in above San Diego after dark, they looked down at the lights of the city. Remi held Sam’s arm. “I missed this place,” she said. “I miss my dog. I want to see what they’ve done to our house.”
“It’s good to have a chance to rest up between vacations,” Sam said.
She pulled back and looked at him. “You’re already thinking about leaving again, aren’t you?”
“I’m delighted to be home,” said Sam. “I don’t have any specific plans to go anywhere.”
She leaned against him again. “I guess that’ll have to do for now. No specific plans means we won’t be leaving tomorrow.”
“True,” he said. “As of today, we don’t even own any luggage.”
Chapter 6
LA JOLLA
On their first day back from Mexico, Sam and Remi walked from the Valencia Hotel with Zoltán, their German shepherd, through the ground floor of their house at Goldfish Point, marveling at the newly remodeled building. Nothing revealed to the uninformed eye that a few months ago the house had been attacked by an assault force of more than thirty men armed with automatic weapons. The thousands of bullet holes that had pierced the walls and splintered the hardwood, the dozens of broken windows, the front doors that had been battered open with a pickup truck were all long gone. Everything was new.
Only the upgrades might have hinted to an astute observer that a battle had taken place here. The steel shutters that they’d had in the original design in case of a once-in-a-century Pacific storm were replaced by a set of thick steel plates that were designed to come down by force of gravity and lock at the press of a button. The surveillance system now included cameras mounted on all sides of the house and even in the tall pine trees at the edge of the grounds. As they walked the floor, Selma sounded like a tour guide. “Please notice that every window is now double-paned safety glass. I’m assured that a man couldn’t break them with a sledgehammer.”
Selma walked straight to a bookcase, tugged out a particular bo
ok, and the case opened like a door. Sam and Remi followed her into a passage and swung the door shut. “See?” she said. “The light goes on when you open the bookcase. The rest is just the way you designed it.” She led them to a stairway that led to a steel door with a combination lock. Selma punched the code in and the door unlocked. She opened it and took them into a concrete chamber. “We’re now under the front lawn.” She pointed at the ceiling. “You’ll notice that the ventilation comes on automatically, and the lights. They laid two hundred feet of concrete culvert, seven feet in diameter, to make the shooting gallery.”
“We prefer the term ‘firing range,’” said Remi.
“That’s right,” said Sam. “If we call it the shooting gallery, we’ll have to give people the chance to win Kewpie dolls and teddy bears.”
“Suit yourselves,” said Selma. “If you’ll look behind you, you’ll see that I had them install two extra-large gun safes so you can store guns and ammunition here. And, over here, behind the bench rest, is a workbench for cleaning and adjusting weapons.”
Remi said, “You seem to have taken a lot of interest in this project. You never used to care for guns.”
“Our experience with Mr. Bako, Mr. Poliakoff, and Mr. Le Clerc and their friends has caused me to acquire an affection for firearms that I didn’t feel before.”
“Well, thank you so much for watching over all this construction,” Remi said. “What’s at the other end?” Remi pointed at the far end of the range.
“That’s a sheet of steel set at a forty-five-degree angle to deflect rounds downward into the sand so there will never be a ricochet.”
Sam said, “Did they put in the other exit?”
“Yes. Behind the sheet of steel is a second stairway that leads up into the stand of pines near the street.”
“Great,” said Sam. “Let’s go back upstairs and see how the wiring changes for the new electronics worked out.”
“I think you’ll be pleased,” Selma said. “They’ve been working on it for months and finally finished last week. Instead of one emergency generator, there are now four, for different circuits supporting various functions. This is now a very difficult house to deprive of electricity for even a second.”
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