The Smoke Hunter

by Jacquelyn Benson

  “And if this artifact you’re after turns out to be a false lead, what happens to our deal?”

  Dawson shrugs. “I see no reason why it would not stand.”

  “After you’ve ripped the place apart trying to find it.”

  Dawson was unperturbed. “The search must be thorough enough to satisfy my employer. That does not mean it cannot be undertaken responsibly. And if at the end of that time we have no evidence that it is there to be found, then my colleague and I return to England and leave the rest in your capable hands.” Dawson stood, tidying away the bottle of rum, his tone brisk and businesslike. “I do not expect an answer from you tonight. In fact, I insist that you take at least until the morning to consider it fully. If you should decline, then Mr. Jacobs will arrange passage back to the city for you on one of our boats.”

  Adam hesitated, then asked the question that was burning too intensely in his mind to be ignored.

  “This is a hell of a lot of trouble to go to for one artifact. Why does your employer want it so badly?”

  “It isn’t my place to inquire, Mr. Bates. I simply follow orders. But that is my offer. Help us find the artifact—if it is there to be found—and the rest of Tulan Zuyua is yours. Will you consider it?”

  “I’ll think about it,” he replied at last.

  Dawson smiled, looking relieved.

  “That’s all I ask,” he said, and the table shook as beyond the canvas walls of the tent, the night exploded into day.

  14

  HIDDEN IN THE REEDS and soaking wet, Ellie watched the men of the camp flood toward the river, hastily organizing crews to paddle out to the steamboat that sat listing in the water, flames shooting out of the holes in its crumbling deck. She was less concerned with the efficacy of the bucket lines and far more interested in the position of two very specific figures. She found Jacobs standing at the water’s edge, staring calmly at the destruction as if having already seen that efforts to save the burning steamer would be futile. She kept scanning the chaos until she found his companion. Dawson was hurrying toward the banks, followed closely by a larger figure. It was Adam, of course. She must have interrupted their dinner. The sight of his concerned expression in the flickering light of her fires struck a guilty chord in her stomach—but she was doing this for his sake, after all. And now that she knew where Dawson and Jacobs were, it was time to get down to the real business of the evening.

  She hurried along the banks of the river, sticking close to the reeds and the camouflage they afforded. Then she cut away from the water, moving among the crates and piled equipment to Dawson’s tent. She paused at the entrance, struck by a momentary fear that she had miscalculated. What if there was someone still inside? One of the men left to watch over Dawson’s belongings?

  A pair of guards trotted out of the jungle beyond the tent, rifles in their hands. Their eyes were on the blaze on the river, but Ellie knew it would take only a glance in her direction to expose her. There was no time to play it safe.

  She lifted the flap and slipped inside.

  The tent was empty. A table had been set, chairs pushed back as though the men who had sat in them had left abruptly.

  Probably because of a nearby explosion.

  Dawson hadn’t even bothered to put on his coat. Ellie could see it draped over one of the chairs. While that wouldn’t have surprised her coming from Adam, she somehow doubted the professor often indulged in such informality.

  She spotted the half-empty mug on the table and picked it up, giving it a quick sniff.

  Rum. While she was shut away like a prisoner, Adam had been toasting her nemesis.

  She felt her indignation flare. How dared he consort with the enemy like that? But the anger was extinguished by a quick flood of guilt and fear. He could do it because she had broken his trust. He didn’t owe her anything anymore, so why shouldn’t he get friendly with a fellow archaeologist and scholar?

  If Adam was falling for Dawson’s charm, she had no one to blame for it but herself.

  She moved to the field desk. It seemed the most likely spot for her to find what she was looking for, though she couldn’t have said what precisely that might be. That was fine. She trusted she would know it when she saw it.

  The surface of the desk was a jumble of notes, books, and papers. It seemed that Dawson could give Mr. Henbury a run for his money when it came to organization, which was even more impressive when she considered that he had managed to make the mess in only a few hours. All of this had been packed when she had been here earlier that afternoon.

  She riffled through the pages quickly, painfully aware of how exposed she would be should anyone come inside. Her distraction held their attention for now, but it would not last forever.

  The top of the desk seemed hopeless. All she could see were scribbled notes about city layouts mingled with far drier equipment manifests and inventories. And how likely was it, really, that he would leave anything incriminating out in the open like that?

  Now, the locked drawer at the center of the desk—that seemed like a far more probable spot to keep secrets. Unfortunately, Ellie’s skills as a lock pick were limited to the simple latches she’d loosened back at the Imperial. She considered breaking into it—the letter opener on the desk looked like it could do the job—but quickly dismissed the idea. If it was clear someone had been inside, who was the first potential culprit they’d suspect?

  No, she needed to leave no trace. There could be no battered locks. But if she could find the key…

  Her eyes roamed the space, falling on Dawson’s jacket.

  Perhaps it was that simple. And sure enough, thrusting her hand into the pocket, she felt her fingers brush against a cool brass key.

  It fit the drawer perfectly. Inside, she found a smaller jumble of papers. Most were travel documents. She was disappointed to see that all of them bore the name of Gilbert Dawson. She supposed it was too much to hope that her enemy had also been using an assumed name.

  As she moved them aside, her fingers brushed cold steel.

  Ellie stared down at the revolver. It was larger than the one she’d taken from Galle’s room back at the Imperial, heavy and lethal-looking. She picked it up, opening the chamber, and was unsurprised to find it loaded.

  A loaded gun, here in her hands. It was a sore temptation, but Ellie had seen the number of armed men roaming around the camp that surrounded her. One revolver wouldn’t do much to get her past an army. And there was no point holding on to it for a future opportunity. Dawson would surely notice it was missing and would know where to look for it.

  Reluctantly, she set the weapon back into the drawer and turned her attention to the most promising item it contained: an unmarked yellow envelope.

  It looked like just the place to hide one’s most dangerous secrets.

  Ellie lifted the flap, the glue having dried to uselessness long ago. But inside she found only a pair of yellowed newspaper clippings.

  Newspaper articles? Why would Dawson go to such lengths to conceal something that was part of the public record?

  Then she started reading.

  Foul Murder, ran the headline. And foul it was, Ellie discovered as she read on. The clipping described in lurid detail how the wife of a prestigious university professor had been killed where she slept, strangled so violently that her throat had actually been crushed beneath the hands of her assailant.

  A local constable claimed to have heard her screaming, and gone through the open door of the house to investigate. The woman was already dead. Her husband had been the only one in the room. He was found crouched on the floor next to the bed, raving and incoherent.

  His name?

  Gilbert Dawson.

  The article went on to describe Dawson’s defense, which even the tabloid writer seemed to think a feeble one—that he had seen an assailant flee through the window when he came into the room, and found his wife already dead. But the bruises on her battered throat matched the size of Dawson’s hands, as had been rev
ealed at the indictment, and it seemed there were clear expectations for what the verdict at the trial the following month would be.

  A murderer. The details of the crime made her shudder, but at least this would have to convince Adam that the man was untrustworthy. The article was exactly the evidence she needed. Ellie felt a flash of triumph.

  Then she turned to the next piece.

  Foreigner Executed for University Slaying.

  Dated two months after the first article, this one described how a Russian immigrant had been hanged for the brutal murder of Anne Dawson, wife of the now retired professor of ancient history at Saint Andrews. It detailed how Dawson, originally accused of the crime, had been exonerated after new evidence was brought forward during his trial, witnesses claiming to have seen the foreigner climbing out of the couple’s second-story window.

  The man did not speak any English. A government interpreter from London had come to the city for the trial, which had been concluded in just four hours. The Russian had offered no alibi or defense.

  A government interpreter…

  The suspicion was small, just a tiny voice in the back of her mind. It wove together the disparate facts of the articles to draw an impossible conclusion.

  An interpreter could say anything he liked, if the man he translated for didn’t know English. Witnesses could be bought or manufactured. If someone had wanted Dawson to go free, placing the blame for his crime on a friendless foreigner incapable of speaking for himself was a tidy way to do it.

  She thought of the telegram in her pocket, with its obsolete Foreign Office code.

  The Foreign Office employed a contingent of interpreters.

  Ridiculous.

  The British government didn’t need to manufacture evidence and false convictions to buy a man’s freedom. If the government had wanted Dawson’s liberation, they could simply order it. There would have been no need to make another man stand in his place.

  But there was something about the story that didn’t feel right—that felt deeply, entirely wrong. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t anything she could explain to Adam and expect him to understand, or believe. She hardly understood her suspicions herself.

  To anyone inclined to think well of Dawson, the articles would seem like nothing more than relics of a difficult time in his life.

  She hardly needed Adam to feel sorry for him.

  Frustrated, she set the clippings aside. There was nothing else in the drawer, and a quick search revealed no secret compartments where something more important might be hidden.

  She could hear voices beyond the tent walls, the sounds of men returning to the camp. The surprise of the explosion must be wearing off now that the fires were under control. Dawson would return any minute. She had run out of time.

  She cursed quietly as she thrust the papers back into the drawer and locked it, placing the key back in Dawson’s jacket pocket. Her efforts had been for nothing, and she couldn’t imagine thinking up a more effective distraction for a longer search. The ball of hydrogen-fueled fire that had shattered the hull of the steamboat would be impossible to top. Her ears were still ringing from the blast, and she had nearly made it back to the shore by the time it happened.

  She slipped out of the tent, then looked down the bank to where the tent that served as her prison stood, brushed with flickering light from the flames that consumed the steamboat. Then her eyes moved in the opposite direction, to the promising darkness of the jungle.

  It would be so easy to slip away into the night. But then what? Adam was the one who knew which plants were edible and which would make her break out in hives. He was the experienced surveyor who could navigate even when the thick canopy obscured the stars and the sun. And he had the only compass.

  She couldn’t survive in the jungle without him. If she was going to escape, she would have to bring Adam with her, and that meant she would have to find another way to convince him of the danger they were in. Reluctantly, she turned to the foreman’s tent.

  Voices called from nearby—too nearby. Ellie ducked quickly around a pile of crates and bumped up against a warm, immovable object.

  Adam’s hands caught her shoulders.

  “Are you insane?” he demanded in a whisper, his features half-lit by the orange glow of the flames from the water.

  “There was no one on board—I checked,” she protested.

  “That wasn’t what I meant.”

  At the sound of a shout from behind, he grabbed her arm and hauled her roughly forward. With a sinking feeling, she saw that they were headed for Dawson and Jacobs.

  “Found her,” he said, without letting go of her arm. Dawson looked dismayed, while Jacobs frowned thoughtfully. Ellie closed her eyes, preparing for the worst.

  “She was making for the jungle,” Adam lied smoothly, and Ellie felt a rush of relief, which she struggled not to reveal on her features.

  “She’ll have to be restrained,” Dawson said.

  “Apparently,” Jacobs agreed coolly. He motioned to a man armed with a rifle who stood waiting behind him. “Take her to the foreman’s tent and see that she’s confined.”

  The guard leveled the gun at her, and Adam released her arm. She risked a look behind her as she went, searching Adam’s face for some sign of his intentions, but saw nothing. It was like looking at a stranger.

  Back in Velegas’s tent, the guard pushed her to her knees by the central post.

  “Hands forward,” the man ordered. She obeyed. The guard pulled them to either side of the tent pole, then lashed her wrists together, effectively anchoring her to the post.

  Then he left, and Jacobs stepped inside.

  Every instinct urged her to flee. She forced herself not to flinch as he stepped over to where she knelt and crouched down before her.

  He gave the ropes around her wrists a leisurely inspection, testing them with a few sharp tugs. Then, still kneeling, uncomfortably close, he raised his dark eyes to hers.

  “One of the hydrogen tanks?”

  The question took her aback. She blinked, surprised, then nodded.

  “Clever,” he said. He stood, looming over her. “Very clever.”

  He smiled. It was not an expression she had any desire to see again. Then he turned and exited, leaving Ellie wondering whether she’d just been complimented or threatened.

  She sat down—not an easy task with her arms lashed around a tent pole. Sleeping would be even more of a challenge.

  She’d gotten herself into an entirely uncomfortable position, and for what? Her search through Dawson’s tent had turned up nothing she could use to convince Adam of the danger he was in. If anything, it had just made her look even more unstable.

  But he’d protected her, she reminded herself. Based on where he’d found her, he must have seen her exiting the tent. He could easily have exposed her to Dawson and Jacobs, but he had covered for her instead.

  Did that mean there was hope? She couldn’t say. She certainly didn’t feel hopeful. What she felt was a sense of panic. If all went as her enemies had planned, Adam would be on one of the remaining steamboats first thing tomorrow morning, headed back to Belize City. Ellie was certain he would never arrive. Tonight was her only chance to warn him of the threat, and she was tied to a tent post.

  Futility washed over her. She had failed. If she’d just told him the truth from the start…

  Well, maybe that wouldn’t have been entirely realistic, she admitted. But she could at least have corrected the situation while they were traveling upriver on the Mary Lee. Instead, she’d let him go on believing a whole pack of falsehoods, misinformation that, unless something changed drastically in the next few hours, might get them killed.

  No. She wasn’t giving up. There was too much at stake. There had to be some way for her to show Adam the truth of their situation. If she could just reach him…

  She eyed the tent pole. The base was dug several inches into the ground. The top, on the other hand, was pressed lightly into a connector
that attached it to the other poles. If she could reach it, she might be able to push up the connector and slip her ropes through the gap.

  She scanned the tent for something she could use, her eyes coming to rest on the chair that sat beside the folding field desk. She reached out with her foot, managing to hook the toe of her boot around its leg. She dragged it toward her and, with a few other extremely awkward contortions, got the chair up against the pole. She stepped onto the seat, then clung to the tent post as the chair wobbled beneath her. Of course, the ground would have to be uneven.

  Fighting for balance, she reached up and found the connector. Standing on her toes as the chair bucked beneath her, she gritted her teeth and pressed as hard as she could against the steel.

  She heard a rustling behind her. A dark form crawled through the gap she had cut in the back of the tent. Startled, she lost her balance, tumbling off the chair and sliding back down the length of the pole, landing in an uncomfortable pile on the ground.

  “You all right?”

  Adam frowned down at her. She gaped up at him, too shocked to remember the awkwardness of her position. It flooded back to her awareness quickly enough, and she scrambled to her feet, trying to gather a few shreds of dignity.

  “I’m fine,” she replied, her chin up.

  His gaze moved from her to the toppled chair, then up to the top of the tent post. He shook his head, looking tired.

  “How did you know how to get in here?”

  “How else would you have gotten out?” he countered. “And while we’re on the subject—what the hell were you thinking?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she replied numbly. One look at his face told her clearly the futility of even mentioning the newspaper clippings. All her efforts had won her was a rope around her wrists and an uncomfortable new position on the floor of the tent.

  “Do you even realize what you could have done?”

  “The boat was at a safe distance from the tree line. There was no way the fire could spread. And there was no one on board.”