He gave an awkward cough, then continued speaking as he tucked the dark stone into the breast pocket of his jacket.
“The saddest part of it, Mr. Bates, is that she may not even realize she’s lying when she does. Are you familiar with the works of a Mr. Freud? He describes a condition called hysteria, one peculiar to females, particularly those who are too long unmarried.”
“Not a widow then, either,” Adam commented.
Ellie felt her cheeks burn, but there was more at stake than Adam’s discovery of her true marital status. She was familiar with Freud’s works, of course. What self-respecting woman wouldn’t arm herself with knowledge of the man who was trying to pathologize their struggle for equal rights?
“I am not a hysteric,” she asserted sharply.
Dawson ignored her objection.
“The symptoms are manifold. Pathological lying is among the foremost, but the others include paranoia, delusions.…” He cleared his throat awkwardly and cast a look over her male attire. “And promiscuity. Of course, many hysterics are also quite charismatic, which I believe we can all agree applies to our Miss Mallory.”
He was complimenting her? The sheer gall of it was overwhelming. She had to find some way to fight back against this, before it was too late. She drew on every reserve of self-control she could, forcing her tone to remain calm and even, knowing Dawson would seize upon any sign of emotional excitement.
“Bates, you can’t trust anything these men are telling you.”
She chanced a look at his face, hoping to see some sign there of wavering, some hint that he was still with her. But the feeling etched plainly on his features was not what she’d hoped. It was doubt. Suspicion. Betrayal.
“My case in point, sadly.” Dawson gave her a lingering, sympathetic look so convincing it made her wonder, just for a moment, whether maybe she had dreamed the whole thing up. Perhaps the map had been theirs to begin with, and this whole business had been nothing but a great misunderstanding.
Then she remembered the words she had heard while hiding outside her room at the Imperial, the look on Jacobs’s face as he chased her through the crowds on Regent Street. It was not the look of an outraged man trying to reclaim what was rightfully his. It had been the cold expression of a cat stalking a wounded bird.
“I am terribly sorry for all the inconvenience this must have caused you, Mr. Bates,” Dawson went on. “You could hardly have been expected to know.… Mr. Jacobs will be happy to arrange passage back to the city for you on one of our steamers. It’s the least we can do. But I do hope I can prevail upon you to stay for the night. Perhaps join me here for dinner. As to Miss Mallory…” Dawson gave her a look she imagined must have been well practiced on his students, an elegant expression of disappointment. If he had ever actually had students, of course. Formerly of Saint Andrews, her left foot. “I must insist that she remain with us. I know it must seem strange, after all the inconvenience she has put us through, but I’m afraid I feel a certain sense of responsibility for the poor creature. I will see her back to London personally, once we have completed our expedition.”
“Very kind of you,” Adam said flatly. Once again, she struggled to find any hint of ambiguity in his tone, but there was nothing beyond cold disappointment.
She was struck with a realization that left her dizzy: He was going to leave her here, with Jacobs and Dawson. Jacobs with the employer who did not like “loose ends.” How easy would it be for some unfortunate accident to ensure that she didn’t make it back to the city?
And what about Adam? Surely they wouldn’t want to risk his going back and telling the tale of how the find of the century was swiped out from under his nose, all thanks to some lying female. No doubt they considered him as much of a loose end as her. Which meant that Dawson had no intention of letting him steam his way back to safety. They were being separated so that they could be neatly and tidily removed from the picture.
She had to fight the urge to scream, to grab Adam by the shoulders and shake him into understanding the danger he was in. But that would only reinforce Dawson’s claims. Her mind whirled.
“And dinner? You will stay, I hope?” Dawson was saying.
“Fine,” Adam agreed. The word flooded her with relief. He was staying. They certainly wouldn’t kill him tonight, not when it would be so much simpler once he was isolated on the steamer. She had one night to find some way to prove to him that Dawson and Jacobs weren’t what they pretended to be.
She would find a way. She would think of something. And in the meantime, she’d let them think they’d gotten the better of her.
She suddenly remembered what she had seen as they had walked up to the tents—the shining cylinders of the hydrogen tanks. An idea began to take shape as Dawson continued to exchange pleasantries with the man he undoubtedly planned to destroy.
“Splendid. I’ll arrange accommodations for you. I’m sure that our foreman, Mr. Velegas, would be willing to sacrifice his tent for the night.”
“I’ll sleep with the men, if it makes no difference to you,” Adam said. “I’m used to roughing it.”
“Of course. As you please. Mr. Jacobs will see to Miss Mallory. Someplace comfortable but secure. I’m sure you understand, given today’s revelations, that it would be unwise to permit her the freedom of the camp. I expect it would take her little time to make her way back into the jungle. That she survived there so long already is, I’m certain, due entirely to your diligence.”
“Something like that,” Adam grumbled. Ellie didn’t let his tone upset her. Her mind was already busy with the plan. She would find a way to show him, beyond doubt, what he needed to see.
“Very well. Six o’clock, then? For dinner? Until then, please let Mr. Jacobs know if there’s anything else you require.”
“I’ll be fine,” Adam said. He accepted Dawson’s outstretched hand, shook it, and walked out of the tent without a backward glance. Once he had gone, Jacobs approached her, reaching for her arm. She pulled it back.
“I’ll walk, thank you.” She held her head high. She might be playing along—for now—but that didn’t mean she’d hand over what was left of her dignity. Jacobs shrugged, unperturbed, and motioned her through the flap back out into the camp.
He marched her to a small tent near the camp’s center, the quarters of the foreman. Ellie vaguely remembered seeing the man when they had arrived, a short, wiry mestizo standing on top of a crate and shouting orders, aptly organizing the chaos around him. Inside the tent was a narrow, simple cot, and another desk, this one covered in papers showing manifests of men and supplies. Jacobs gestured to one of the men and he hurried over, gathering up the pages and carrying them outside. Then Jacobs turned and left, without so much as another threat.
He didn’t need to threaten. She understood her situation perfectly.
She hurried over to the flap and peered through the gap without moving the canvas. Jacobs was speaking to the two men who had captured them in the woods. She saw the smaller one—Mendez, she had heard him called—nod, then set himself down on a log across from the entrance to her tent, his rifle resting on his lap. The larger of the two, Flowers, kept his gun slung over his shoulder and leaned against a nearby tree, whistling tunelessly.
Her guards, undoubtedly.
Certain that Jacobs was now out of earshot, she stepped back from the flap and gave the cot a sound kick, letting out a stream of curses. Of course, her fit of pique earned her nothing more than a stubbed toe. She sat down, nursing it. However frustrated she was now, it was temporary. She had a plan. All she needed to do was wait until dark.
13
THE WOMAN HADN’T EVEN told him her damned name.
The thought ran in circles in Adam’s mind as he moved through the camp, stealing his focus and leaving some rather less comfortable emotions in its place. She had lied about her name, about the map, about the rivals who were on her tail—and she was certainly not a widow.
Not that he’d ever really bought that
last one.
The discovery stirred up a regular maelstrom of emotions—anger, frustration, and no small degree of hurt. The anger and frustration he could deal with. They were good, straightforward feelings. The sense of betrayal was something else, dragging with it all kinds of uncomfortable associations, like why he should care so much that the woman hadn’t seen fit to trust him.
He had to put it out of his head, however difficult that was. There were more immediate concerns he had to deal with, like determining exactly what his situation was in this camp.
He turned his attention toward finding a good spot for his hammock. He still had his pack, luckily, though he hadn’t failed to notice that his machete and express rifle hadn’t been returned. They must be in the hands of the two men who had captured him in the bush, or whoever acted as their supervisor.
He spotted another pair of armed men patrolling the perimeter where the camp bordered the jungle. It wasn’t exactly typical for an excavation—nor did it seem to be an isolated case with this particular camp. Most of the men strolling around or resting by the fires were armed in one way or another.
They also didn’t look much like the usual expedition crew. When Adam collected a team for an excavation, his own bearers and assistants were just as varied as these in their race, languages, and clothing. They were also admittedly a rough lot. But this wasn’t the same sort of rough, he thought, stopping to let by a man whose ripped shirtsleeves revealed biceps that made him look strong enough to crack a coconut barehanded. Or a skull.
He watched as he walked, absorbing as much as he could of the place and its inhabitants. The camp had been set up on a wide riverbank that Adam suspected was probably underwater during the height of the rainy season but for now formed a firm, flat, clear surface for the massive array of tents, mules, crates, and men. Most of the hired bearers would be sleeping rough, as he was, in hammocks with mosquito netting strung between trees on the higher side of the bank. The animals had been penned into a temporary corral closer to the water, and men were still unloading equipment and supplies from the big steamboats anchored nearby.
The sound of the cataracts was a constant static in the background, and the stone bridge shadowed the water only a hundred or so yards away, lending an eerie, almost ritual feeling to the place.
There was no doubting it. The stretch of river was the tributary of the Belize he’d added to the map the previous year, after a group of logging scouts dropped by the survey office and left a report of their explorations. A map the professor had apparently consulted.
Bested by my own damned map. He tried not to let it rankle him, but it was hard. If the woman had just trusted him enough to show him the whole map from the start, they would have been here days ago, long before Dawson and Jacobs arrived.
Then again, she hadn’t even trusted him with her name.
He caught sight of the slight figure he’d seen when they came in, calling out clipped, authoritative orders. It must be Velegas, the foreman. The man wasn’t anyone he recognized, and Adam had thought he knew every potential expedition leader in the colony.
The whole place raised his hackles, as did the realization of how quickly it must have been thrown together. Had someone been organizing an outfit like this while he was still in the city, he would have heard about it. It wasn’t that big a town. But there hadn’t been so much as a hint, which meant that Dawson and Jacobs hadn’t started organizing until after he and Ellie had left. Using the more direct route up the Belize would have saved them only a day or two. Even taking into account the power of the steamboats cluttering the river, that meant that the pair had pulled this whole expedition together in no more than two days.
That was a startlingly short time frame for mounting an effort of this magnitude. It meant that whoever was running this show had some serious cash to throw around, and enough influence to keep the local authorities from asking too many questions.
Adam couldn’t even start to think who would have that kind of power.
As he began tying up his hammock, he wondered just what the hell Miss Eleanora-Constance-Tyrrell-Mallory had gotten him into.
Adam had almost finished setting up camp when he finally saw what he’d been hoping to find since he’d arrived: a familiar face. Charles Goodwin was a lanky native of Belize City and a regular addition to Adam’s expedition teams. Though his education was basic—public school offerings in the colony being limited, particularly for the city’s poorer black inhabitants—he was a quick-thinking, sensible man, as Adam had more than once had occasion to appreciate. When he strolled into view, he was a very welcome sight.
Charlie stopped just short of Adam’s site. He leaned against a thick palm, taking out his papers and tobacco.
“Got yourself into a bit of trouble?” Charlie’s tone was low and even. He rolled himself a cigarette.
“Not entirely sure yet.”
“You came in with a woman, didn’t you?”
Eleanora Mallory’s image flashed across his mind.
“Yeah.”
He expected a laugh. Charlie wasn’t the type to pass over a chance to rag on him.
But the other man merely lit his smoke.
“You joining the crew?”
“More like making a guest appearance.”
“Then the woman might not be your biggest problem.”
Adam paused only a moment at his task of hanging the mosquito net. He realized that Charlie hadn’t looked at him since he’d come over. To anyone else watching, it would seem that he was just having a solitary smoke.
It wasn’t like Charlie. Adam felt a warning thrill.
“Care to clue me in?”
Charlie took a drag. The ember of his cigarette glowed at Adam.
“Haven’t seen too many familiar faces around here, I’m betting.”
“Not as many as I’d expect.”
“This boss seems to look for a different sort of qualifications. Most of these guys are in exports. You following me?”
Adam followed. Like most places far from government’s watchful eye, the black market flourished in British Honduras. Poached hardwoods, bootleg liquor, and more than a few archaeological artifacts found their way out of the colony’s ports, while other illicit goods made their way in. The men who ran the trade were known for their discretion and their ruthlessness. They were the sort of people you hired if you didn’t want the colonial offices hearing what you were up to. The sort who didn’t balk at a bit of unpleasantness, if it became necessary.
It only confirmed what Adam had already come to suspect—that there was nothing routine, or legitimate, about the expedition he had stumbled into. The knowledge wasn’t comforting.
“So how did you end up here?”
“A connection.” Charlie shrugged. “And they’re paying better than you do. The wife wants a new wardrobe.”
“With me, you’re on government wages.”
“There’s others here making more,” Charlie added significantly. Adam waited for him to continue. “That man Jacobs has been offering some of them three-times pay.”
“For what?”
“Being ready to do whatever he needs them to do. And the ones he’s asked… Well, he has an eye for the sort who don’t draw much of a line at what they won’t do.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Just letting you know what you walked into.” The unsmoked cigarette continued to burn in Charlie’s hand.
“What about the bosses? What do you know about them?”
“That the professor might make like he’s running the show, but it’s the other one who holds the reins.” Charlie rose. He stamped the cigarette out under his heel, then spoke again without turning to look at Adam.
“You’ve got me and Lavec. One more in a pinch.”
Lavec. Adam pictured the grizzled French Canadian. He was surly and smelled like a hibernating bear, but he was a good man to have at your back.
Charlie, Lavec, and one more. It wasn’t much. Charlie seemed to
agree.
“Try not to let it get to a pinch,” he finished, then strolled away to where the evening campfires of the rest of the men were springing to life.
Adam got the picture. And given what Charlie had told him about the crew of this particular expedition, he had no desire to put things to the test.
Not that he’d necessarily have much choice. He was learning that where his traveling companion was involved, things had a tendency to get complicated whether he liked it or not.
He might as well try to dig up a bit more information about what he was up against. And judging by the golden angle of the sun against the trees, it was nearly six o’clock. Which meant it was time for an appointment that might give him a clue.
Dawson’s tent was empty when Adam stepped inside. Its contents had been tidied since he had been there that afternoon, all except the desk, which was covered in papers. A stack of books rested on top of them. Adam moved over for a closer look. He saw a primer on Aztec glyphs, a volume of American Anthropologist, Lewis Gunkel’s travesty of a study on Mayan deities. What a mess that was.
A glance into the trunk on the floor told him that Dawson had packed a significant library. Adam tried to recall whether he had ever carried a book into the bush with him, besides his field journal.
He dropped the lid and stood just as the tent flap lifted and Dawson himself stepped inside. He pulled off his pith helmet and daubed a line of sweat from his forehead.
“It’s damnably hot even this time of the day,” he complained. “Sorry you had to wait. I meant to be here when you arrived.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Adam replied. He kept his tone neutral, unsure of exactly what he was in for.
“I see you aren’t standing on ceremony. Do you mind terribly if I do the same?” Dawson indicated the khaki field jacket he wore. Adam, who brought a jacket into the bush about as often as he did a book, shook his head.
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