Several small ruins reclaimed from the forest that had consumed them for millennia now served as a backdrop to the airport, helping create the mood sought by the Mexican Tourist Board. In reality, they’d razed the largest concentration of former Mayan civilization on the island to build the runway I was now standing upon. The Mexican government deserved some credit, though, for letting e-Antiquity, and a team of archeologists from the University of Mexico, exhume a vast collection of subterranean ruins. e-Antiquity’s ability to assemble the best and brightest international team led to what remains one of the finest collections of its kind, now housed at the university’s main campus in Mexico City. We were allowed to keep and sell twenty percent of the find, which caused yet another surge in our stock, a couple of years before it hit the wall and went the way of the Mayan people into extinction.
There’d been a nice story on e-Antiquity at the Mexico City exhibition, but my guess was it had been removed. Where I was once greeted as a renowned guest of the nation, I now sought to pass through quickly, undetected and unrecognized.
Reminiscing about that gave me an idea. I grabbed Ray’s phone and dialed one of the only numbers I still had memorized from my former life.
“Harry Greenbaum, here.”
“Hi, Harry, it’s Buck.”
“I say, young man, good to hear from you. Not in trouble again, I trust?”
“No, Harry, everything’s fine.”
“And the Atocha theft, tell me you’re not up to your neck in that?”
As e-Antiquity’s largest venture capital investor, Harry had lost a fortune when the company filed Chapter 7, but first he’d cashed out far more than his principal investment, so I didn’t feel too bad for him.
“Only my ankles, Harry. A friend captained the boat the thieves absconded on. I’m out searching for them now.”
“Of course. When I heard about the incident I assumed you’d get in the middle of it, one way or another. I’m just glad to hear you’re not on that old schooner yourself.”
When I told Harry why I’d called, he promised to do some checking. I didn’t have much information other than Gunner’s nickname and the conflicts he claimed to have participated in. That and the “SM” on the tail of the G-IV.
“If any of the sixty-two companies you own pieces of can provide any information, Harry, I could sure put it to good use.”
“Sixty-four now, Buck. At least this bloody down market’s provided some plum acquisition opportunities. Yes, I’ll inquire in the proper places and perhaps a few improper ones too,” he paused. “So you finally rejoined the modern world and purchased a cell phone?”
“Nope, it belongs to a friend, but that’s where you can reach me. And thanks, Harry. I’d say I owe you one, but that’d be redundant.”
“So it would, young man. Cheers.”
I always felt better when Harry was involved. With my parents gone, he was the closest thing I had to a senior family member, and even though we’d been estranged for a couple of years after e-Antiquity cratered, he’d been kind enough to forgive if not forget the troubles we caused him. He was a perfect British gentlemen tempered with Yiddish sensibilities, which in combination had helped build a fortune that allowed him to invest in businesses that captured his imagination and promised substantial profits. His vast array of companies offered a broad network of information sources he was savvy enough to manipulate to his benefit, and occasionally mine.
I hoped my intuition would lead us to Truck Lewis. Booth had already threatened to cancel the credit card, so I held my breath here. The FBO processed the card for the fuel and sundries just before we began our run-up and taxi toward the runway.
“I still can’t believe you threw that phone out the window,” Ray said. “At least you held on to the credit card.”
Crap. Even without the GPS tracking device in the phone, Booth would be able to track our course with the credit card. And he’d go ape-shit when he saw we were in Cozumel.
I looked around the tarmac one more time and was relieved not to see Gunner’s G-IV. Maybe the trip down the Keys had lost him after all.
We climbed to 8,000 feet and flew for an hour before I added ten degrees of flaps and began to descend. Ray looked out the window and glanced at the chart.
“We’re still a couple hours outside Panama,” Ray said. “Why are you reducing altitude now?
“There’s been a head wind much of the way, might have slowed the Sea Lion’s progress.”
“Assuming they came this way,” Ray said.
“Let’s start searching from here on in.”
We leveled off at 1,000 feet, low enough to spot boats of the Sea Lion’s size clearly but still high enough to see a significant distance. We flew a straight course on autopilot so we could both study the waters with binoculars. Two hours of that produced nothing but 35 container ships sighted and mounting fatigue for Ray and me. Now within thirty minutes of Colón, I went through the motions of landing prep.
I caught a whiff of something and saw that Ray had perspired through his shirt.
“What’s bothering you?” I asked.
“I’ve never been to Panama.” He wiped his brow. “I used to have this video game called General Drug Lord and the bad guy looked just like General Noriega. He was a bitch to track down. Took me a year to reach level twenty and finally nail him.”
I edged forward on my seat. “Do me a favor and hand me the small leather phone book out of my flight bag.”
Ray dug into the bag and produced the worn leather booklet, secured shut with a leather strap.
“Open it up and find the page marked with Panama on the top,” I said.
He paged through the book. I had a flashback of better times, when the book in Ray’s hand was my private listing of contacts, friends, and not so friendlies I’d met hunting for treasure around the world.
“Argentina … Costa Rica … Ecuador …”
“Should be in the middle,” I said.
“Nicaragua?” He hesitated on that page. “Did you really know Daniel Ortega? Nicaragua’s president?”
“Between his presidencies. Should be the next page, Ray, and please, ignore the notes. Just look for Enrique Adolfo Jiminez.”
He flipped the page. “Got it. Who’s he?”
“It’s not a he. It’s the name of the airport in Colón. The airport code is MPEJ. There should be a listing for Jaime Escobar with a phone number on that page.”
“Yep, here it is.”
I asked Ray to call Jaime, hoping he was still alive, had the same number, and wouldn’t hang up on me. Ray put it on speakerphone. After a long delay, the number started to ring and Ray threw the phone to me like it was a hot potato.
I sucked in a deep breath.
Someone answered in Spanish.
“Jaime, is that you?”
“Sí, who’s this?”
“Charles Reilly, old friend. How the hell are you?”
“Charles?” Ray shook his head.
“Oh, my. I hope you’re not in Colón. Señor Acosta would be very interested to see you,” Jaime said.
“No, Jaime, I’m not in Colón, but I might be soon.” I felt down to where I kept my new waterproof pouch in the slot below my seat. “I’m on my way there.”
“You have some grande cojones, Charlie, let me tell you—”
“I need to see Señor Acosta, can you arrange it?”
Silence.
“You there, Jaime?” I checked the window on the cell phone. We were still connected.
“I can reach him, but what will I tell him? You know about killing the messenger, King Charles?”
“I go by Buck now. You can tell him I’m bringing his map back.”
“Ay yi yi!” Jaime said. “Just like that?”
“Actually, not just like that,” I said. “There’s a catch.”
Jaime laughed. “With you, there’s always a catch.”
16
Not fifteen minutes after I hung up, Ray’s cell phone ra
ng. He held it up so I could see the caller ID: “South Region SAC.”
“How’d they get my number?” Ray said.
“Turn the phone off.”
Booth knew Ray was with me, and he must have received notification of the credit card being used in Cozumel. A trace on Ray’s phone would show that we’d continued south to Latin America, so he’d be apoplectic by now—or Gunner was high above us reporting our every move. I didn’t want to answer the call with Ray here, but I might have no choice—if he froze the credit card we’d never get home. For now I’d stall, wait until I had something to report.
Ray clenched his palms together and interlocked his fingers. He looked like he was about to pray.
“Why won’t you tell me who South Region SAC is, or why this Acosta’s pissed at you?”
“I told you—”
“Spare me the client bullshit, okay? Why would a new client pay off two grand of your gas bills unrelated to whatever you’re doing? Or hire you to look for Truck—”
“It’s irrelevant, Ray.”
He squirmed sideways to look at me squarely.
“Irrelevant? Really? How do I know we’re not going to be grabbed at customs—”
“We’re not going through customs, Ray. MPEJ doesn’t even have a border station. In fact, there’s no FBO, either.”
His mouth hung open so wide I could count the fillings in his molars.
“We’re not going to be here long enough to—”
“What, go to jail?” Ray said. “That doesn’t take long—”
“We’re not going to jail.” At least, I hoped not. “Raul Acosta’s the governor for the Panama Canal Zone. He and I used to do business together when I was studying the overland travel routes from the Pacific. Remember I told you how the Spanish would dismantle the galleons? I paid him handsomely to allow me to study those routes by air, then on the ground.”
I took a deep breath and debated what I’d say next, but I owed Ray an explanation. I reached down below my seat for the waterproof pouch, rifled through my notebook, and pulled out a map.
“He lent me this map, which dates back to around 1600. It documents the overland route traveled by a Spanish armada.”
“Big whoop. What good’s that?”
“Only half the fleet made it across. The rest were ambushed and a hundred men were killed. Another hundred died from disease. Those who escaped reported that they buried their cargo to be recovered later.”
“Damn. What happened?”
I handed him the piece of old brittle paper in the sealed plastic sleeve.
“This is what they drew to document their journey.” He held the map like it was a newborn infant. “It’s the original, Ray. A one and only four-hundred-year-old map.”
“Holy crap.”
The map could hardly have been more fragile. The hand-drawn route was on yellowed parchment that was stained, torn, and crumpled. Thanks to the plastic sheath it was in the exact same condition as when Acosta lent it to me four years ago. He was supposed to get half of anything I found, or I’d return the map after thirty days. So I was a little late.
“We were never able to decipher the notes, and our expedition found nothing but unmarked graves and rusted armor over old bones. But there was no doubt something of incredible value was buried along that path, and it pains me to come to Panama for any reason other than to take up the search where I left off.”
Ray scratched the stubble of beard on his chin.
“What about South Region SAC?”
Colón appeared on the horizon, the waters that led to it littered with a vast array of ships loaded with colorful containers, all funneling toward the canal.
“Let’s just remember we’re here to find Truck, okay?”
I lined us up due south, aimed at runway 18, and held my breath. There would be no announced approach, vectoring, or guidance from the small tower. A chill passed through me.
My plan rested on Raul Acosta’s being honest with me. And why should he? I hadn’t been with him.
The jungle seemed to press in even closer since the last time I was here. Our wheels touched down and Betty bounced along the rugged runway. All we could see were transport planes, aside from a handful of small propeller planes and a green, military-looking helicopter. I taxied Betty to the end of the runway and pulled off onto the tarmac near an old fuel truck.
“Want me to power her down?” Ray said.
“Not just yet.” I unbuckled and climbed into the cabin. “Wait here,” I said.
Ray’s expression told me he agreed with this idea but he damned well wasn’t happy about it. He and I had never argued before, but he wasn’t giving up on wanting to know who South Region SAC was. I couldn’t blame him, but I couldn’t tell him the truth, either.
Once I was on the tarmac I stretched my arms and legs. Ten minutes passed. I saw people watching us from the hangars in the distance, but nobody made contact.
A black sedan approached at high speed. My sphincter tightened as the car adjusted its course directly toward me. The driver came into view first, but all I could see were dark sunglasses. He wasn’t smiling. The car screeched to an abrupt stop and the back door swung open.
Jaime Escobar jumped out and stared at me with his hands on his hips.
“Can’t believe it’s you.” He shook his head. “You one crazy sum’bitch.”
There was no doubt about that.
17
“The size of your balls have not shrunken, eh, King Charles?”
“Call me Buck. Wish I could say the same about my financial statement.”
Jaime laughed, then shook his head. “Yes, Señor Acosta told me you had gone broke. Hard to believe—but in this world, in this time, many have.”
“Where’s Acosta?”
“Waiting for you. What about your friend?”
“He’ll stay here and fuel the plane.” And keep an eye on it.
Jaime removed a cell phone from a clip on his belt, made a call, and turned to look at one of the hangars. He spoke in Spanish, then waved to the fuel truck.
“Credit card okay?”
He nodded quickly.
I stuck my head inside the plane and told Ray the gas truck would be here soon and to have them fill it up with the credit card I tossed him—I was going into to town to see Governor Acosta. He took the card without a word.
The ride to Colón took us around acres of containers stacked five high that covered a mass of land equivalent to the city itself. Business was good, but then, monopolies tend to be fruitful. If you wanted to get cargo from the Atlantic to the Pacific, you could either go through the canal or around Tierra del Fuego. I was only a kid when President Carter signed the canal back over to the Panamanians, which I now saw as a commercial and strategic blunder that weakened our nation in ways he never dreamed about, but then, he didn’t ask my opinion.
Colón was pressed onto the muddy banks of the Caribbean Sea, just north of the funnel-shaped start of the Canal Zone. Ships as tall as skyscrapers floated in line in Limon Bay awaiting Panamanian pilots to usher them through a series of locks, all for a hefty fee. From here the canal looked like a broad river, the locks being several miles south. I remembered visiting Raul Acosta at his office near the locks, in the heart of the canal operations center. Jaime’s driver had turned into town rather than continuing on toward the canal itself.
“Where are we going?”
“Señor Acosta does not want you to come to his office. He’ll meet us here in Colón.”
A jolt of anxiety pressed me into the back of my seat. When I hadn’t returned the map previously, Acosta had been quite graphic as to what he would do to me if he ever saw me again. I slipped the map from my shirt pocket and kept an eye on Jaime and the driver up front. I needed an insurance policy.
The driver wound through the Byzantine town until he came to a small restaurant perched atop the seawall that overlooked the bay. We entered the building and were ushered upstairs into a small room where Ra
ul Acosta stood next to an open balcony door. The breeze blew his gray hair back.
A huge grin revealed brown crooked teeth below his nicotine-stained moustache. His eyes didn’t smile.
“King Charles, you finally returned. Here I thought you had stolen my map. Some of my partners wished to come find you—”
“I go by Buck now.”
A quick lift of his eyebrows was the only recognition of my changed name. I suspected Raul was used to dealing with people who had many names.
“But, no, I told them, Charles is an honest man. He’ll come back. There’s no need for violence.”
This last part caused Jaime to smile. Jaime, the man who introduced me to the governor originally. Jaime, the curator of the Porto Bello Museum of Fine Art and Antiquities. Like many men with similar titles at private and state-owned museums around the world, Jaime was intent on improving his collection, but even more intent on lining his pockets.
“And you have my map with you, King Buck?”
“Just Buck.” I glanced at the bodyguards, who looked like they were anxious to administer tooth extractions without Novocain. “I need a favor first—”
“More favors. It’s always favors with you, isn’t it?”
The smile began to fade. Even Jaime’s veneer of affability disappeared. Raul paused for a moment, then stepped out onto the small balcony.
“Perhaps we should discuss this favor out here where we can observe the sea.”
The two bodyguards took a half step forward and urged me on to follow their master. Outside, the view was amazing. The restaurant was set directly above the water, and the balcony was cantilevered out from the cliff, suspended high above the rocks and surf below. It took my breath away, but not just because of the beauty. The bodyguards, who now filled the doorway, were smiling.
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