"What can you tell me about the body?" Eldon asked in Spanish through the handkerchief.
"The policía dropped it off last night," the attendant said, visibly amused by the Consul-general's squeamishness. He wore a yellow surgical gown and cap, finger-painted with brown bloodstains. "Found him way up north in the Amazonas. Textbook case of drowning, you ask me."
"How do we know he's an American citizen?"
"The pilot who flew him into Pomacochas recognized him."
"But he couldn't identify him?"
"That's all I know. You're supposed to be the man with the answers. Shouldn't your embassy have told you all of this?"
Eldon flushed with resentment.
"Where are his possessions?" Eldon asked.
"What you see is what you get."
Par for the course.
"Let's just get on with this then, shall we?"
With a curt nod, the attendant pulled back the sheet to expose the head and torso of the corpse.
Eldon had to turn away to compose himself, but he couldn't chase the image from his mind. The man's face was frosted from the freezer, his skin tinged blue. Chunks of flesh had been stolen from his cheeks, earlobes, and the tip of his nose. There were still crescents of mud in his ear canals and along his gum-line. He was dramatically swollen from the uptake of water, which caused his epidermis to crack as the deeper tissues froze.
"You don't want to see the parts I left covered," the attendant said. He smirked and clapped Eldon on the shoulder, eliciting a flinch. "Do what you need to do quickly. We don't want him to start to thaw."
Eldon removed the digital camera from the inner pocket of his suit jacket and leaned over the body. Three hurried flashes and he was out the door without another word. He needed fresh air, humid and oppressive though it may be. He ascended the stairs and crossed the lobby through a churning sea of the sick and injured, oblivious to their curses as he shouldered his way toward the front doors. As soon as he was outside, he ducked to his left, cast aside the handkerchief, and vomited into an acacia shrub.
Sometimes he absolutely hated his life.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and headed to where his car idled in the emergency bay. The driver waited outside the open rear door of the black Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan, and ushered him inside. They drove in silence, save the whoosh of the wind through the open driver's side window. The chauffer repeatedly raised his hand to cover his nose as discreetly as he could.
Wonderful, Eldon thought. He'd obviously brought more than pictures of the corpse with him.
The Mercedes turned through the black, wrought-iron gates of the Consulate. Armed Marines saluted as the car passed and rounded the circular island of rainbow flowers, from which twin poles bearing the American and Peruvian flags rose.
Eldon didn't wait for the driver to come around to open the door. He just wanted to get this over with. As he ascended the concrete stairs beneath the gray marble portico, he focused on the task at hand: upload the digital images into the program that would compare them to the passport photos of all Americans still in Peru, starting with those who had registered their travel plans with the Embassy. Once he had positive identification, he could make his calls, get the body embalmed and on a plane back to the States, and wash his hands of the whole mess.
"Mr. Monahan," the receptionist called in a thick Spanish accent as he strode into the lobby. She pronounced it Meester Monahan.
He pretended not to hear her and started up the staircase beside her desk. The middle-aged Peruvian national climbed out from behind her post with the clatter of high heels.
"Mr. Monahan!"
With a frustrated sigh, he turned to face the frumpy woman and raised the question with his eyebrows.
"There's a man waiting for you outside your office."
"I assume he's been properly cleared?"
"Yes, Mr. Monahan."
"Thank you, Mrs. Arguedas."
He ascended to the top floor and headed toward his office at the end of the corridor. A man with shaggy chestnut hair and pale blue eyes sat in one of the chairs outside his office, a filthy backpack clutched to his chest. The armed soldier beside him snapped to attention when he saw Eldon, while the other man rose almost casually from his seat. His discomfort was apparent, yet he seemed less than intimidated by his surroundings. He had broad shoulders and a solid build that suggested he had been shaped more by physical exertion in the real world than by countless hours in the gym.
Eldon extended his hand and introduced himself as he approached. "Consulate-general Monahan."
"Wes Merritt," the man said. He offered his own hand, but retracted it when he noticed how dirty it was.
Eldon was silently grateful. He lowered his hand, gave a polite smile, and gestured for the man to follow him into his inner sanctum. The soldier fell in behind them and took his place beside the closing door.
"How can I be of assistance, Mr. Merritt?" Eldon seated himself in the high-backed leather chair behind his mahogany and brass Royal Louis XV Boulle desk, and made a show of checking his watch.
"Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Monahan. Especially with no notice."
Eldon waved him off, but he would definitely have to discuss such improprieties with Mrs. Arguedas.
Merritt opened the flap of the rucksack and set it on the edge of the pristine desk.
"I wanted to give this to you in person. You know how the authorities are down here..."
Eldon nodded and fought the urge to shove the vile bag off of his eighteenth century antique desk.
"I found this with the body you just visited at the morgue. I need to make sure it reaches the right people back home." Merritt shrugged and rose as if to leave. "You'll make sure it does, Mr. Monahan?"
"Of course. Thank you, Mr. Merritt. I'm sure the decedent's family appreciates your integrity."
Merritt gave a single nod in parting and exited through the polished oak door.
His curiosity piqued, Eldon plucked a handful of tissues from the box on the corner of the desk and walked around to inspect the bag. He gingerly moved aside a tangled nest of dried vines and appraised the contents. His eyes widened in surprise.
He leaned across the desk and pressed the "Speaker" button on his phone.
"Yes, Mr. Monahan?" Mrs. Arguedas answered.
"Please hold my calls."
"Yes, sir."
He disconnected and returned his attention to the rucksack.
Now he really needed to figure out to whom the body in the morgue belonged.
III
Advanced Exploration Associates International, Inc.
Houston, Texas
October 15th
8:47 p.m. CDT
Leonard Gearhardt stood before the wall of windows on the fiftieth floor of Heritage Plaza, hands clasped behind his back, staring out over the sparkling constellations of downtown, the Toyota Center, the theater district, and the distant suburbs beyond. Smoke from the Montecristo No.4 Reserva swirled around his head in much the same manner as the thoughts within. His gray eyes settled somewhere between the reflection of the aging man he had become and the cold black sky. He wore a hand-tailored Italian suit that cost more than most new domestic cars and polished leather shoes crafted from the suffering of some young animal or other. His ghost-white hair was slicked back to perfection and his eyebrows tweezed. Only his callused hands and the wrinkles in his sun-leathered features, which most considered distinguished, marred the illusion of grandeur he paid a fortune to perpetuate. But none of that mattered now. He was already sixty years-old, and felt as though he had aged a lifetime in the last hour alone.
He had been expecting the call for so long that it had almost been a relief when it finally came.
Leo turned away from the window and surveyed his domain through the Cuban haze. He was surrounded by the fruits of his professional labors: a sextant salvaged from the wreckage of the Neustra Senora de Atocha; a golden idol of the Mayan god Chac; various coins fro
m the nefarious pirate frigate Queen Anne's Revenge; the gilded horn of a narwhal; the porous skull of an ankylosaurus; and paintings and sculptures from myriad expeditions, all encased in Lucite and stationed precisely around the luxuriously appointed office. There were Medieval and Renaissance texts, monographs from centuries past, and handwritten diaries on alarmed shelves. A lifetime of amassed history and riches, but only a single framed picture of the son who had died in pursuit of his father's favor.
Leo had built his empire from his own sweat and blood, from his adventurous spirit and refusal to be cowed by fear. What had begun as a simple salvage operation on the Gulf coast had blossomed into a forward-thinking, diverse corporation with varied interests from exploration and artifact discovery and recovery to management of high-risk extraction sites and implementation of high-tech mining solutions. He had raised entire battalions of sunken warships thousands of feet from oceanic trenches, discovered indigenous ruins on every continent, mined ore and shale from the steepest slopes, and found and named more extinct animals and dinosaurs through fossilized evidence than any other single individual.
The way Leo saw it, he had conquered the world.
And now here he stood amid the trappings of wealth, and all of it was for naught. In just under twenty-four hours, his son's remains would arrive at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, sealed in plastic wrap and boxed in a crate, where the body would be immediately sequestered by the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine under the watchful eye of the CDC. The Consul-general in Lima had been aghast at his insistence that his son's body not be embalmed, that he'd rather delay interment by potentially several days to weeks. There was no way he was going to let some foreign doctor with marginal medical training butcher what was left of his only child. Hunter Gearhardt's body would be autopsied by a real medical examiner and then prepared by a mortician, regardless of the cost.
The image of his son's features pressed beneath cellophane rose unbidden and he slammed his fists down on his desk. Ashes flew and the cigar rolled onto the lacquered wood. He watched the clear coating melt away from the glowing cherry before snubbing it in the ashtray.
Never in his life had he felt so helpless. There was no problem to solve or challenge to overcome. He couldn't step back and brainstorm solutions. His Hunter was dead, and what were his first words? Not an outpouring of remorse or a curse upon the gods who would rob him of the only thing in his life that should have mattered, but "What did he have in his possession?"
He removed a bottle of Macallan 1939 from the bottom desk drawer, poured two-fingers into a glass, and hurled the bottle across the room. A rich amber river ran down the wall to join the shards of forty year-old glass, assailing him with the scents of vanilla toffee, peat and wood smoke, and time.
This small man with his big title, this Eldon Monahan, had listed off his son's belongings like he'd been checking off a grocery list. One Black Diamond Sphynx rucksack; one four-liter MSR Dromedary hydration bladder; one Garmin eTrex Summit HC handheld GPS unit; various items of no appreciable value: possibly collected samples of vegetation, and three four- to six-inch feathers; and, most interestingly of all, two black- and gray-streaked rocks weighing eighteen and twenty-six ounces respectively, and a native headdress of indeterminate origin, cast in pure gold. The Consulate had confiscated the headdress as Peruvian law frowned upon the unlicensed plunder of its heritage, however, Monahan had promised to include multiple photographs with the rest of Hunter's belongings. There had been no mention of the Les Baer 1911 Premium II pistol or the machete Hunter would have been carrying, nor mosquito netting, change of clothes, or food reserves. Hunter hadn't even packed any of his testing supplies, his various rock hammers, satellite phone, or geologic field spectrometer. All indications pointed to a hurried abandonment of camp. His son had taken only what he could quickly pack and what would be of importance when he escaped the jungle and reached civilization.
Hunter was a world-class geologist with the best academic pedigree that money could buy, though he had proudly earned it on scholarships alone. A B.S. in Geology from Texas A&M, and a Ph.D. in Mineral Exploration and Mining Geosciences from the Colorado School of Mines. Throw in the fact that he had spent the last five years reconnoitering some of the harshest unexplored terrain on the planet, and more questions were raised than answers. Something had happened to his son, and he'd move heaven and earth to find out what.
During their final communication via satellite uplink, Hunter had intimated that his party was close to reaching its destination, quite possibly within the next couple of days. Leo had heard the smile in his son's voice, the faint tremble of excitement. He had felt it, too. In that moment, he had been as proud of his son as any father could be, but he had also been his boss. So instead of heaping praise and adoration on Hunter, he had demanded daily reports and detailed his expectations in businesslike fashion.
That had been twelve days ago now, and the last time he would ever speak to his son.
Two black- and gray-streaked rocks.
A native headdress of indeterminate origin, cast in pure gold.
Although it was subtle, he heard his son's posthumous message loud and clear. It was almost as if Hunter had known there was a good chance he might not return to Pomacochas alive, and had brought items only his father would understand. Clues that would stymie a layman, but purvey important information at the same time. The headdress was simultaneously a location marker and a red herring meant to distract whoever found the backpack like a starling with a bit of foil. The real message was in the rocks, the seemingly mundane black and gray chunks of earth. They were stratified layers of volcanic magnetite and quartz, placers, streaks that pointed like arrows to their ultimate quarry.
Hunter had found it.
For a heartbreaking moment, Leo's pride eclipsed his sorrow and guilt.
IV
Harris County Medical Examiner's Office
Houston, Texas
October 18th
4:32 p.m. CDT
Despite their indignation that the body had not arrived embalmed, the CDC had cleared Hunter's remains of potentially contagious viral and bacterial agents, infestation, and acute pathological processes in record time, thanks in large measure to Leo's government connections. After taking possession of his son's cleaned and sterilized belongings, he had followed the Medical Examiner's van from the airport, cell phone glued to his ear, calling in every favor he possibly could. By the time he arrived at the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office near the Astrodome, the Chief Medical Examiner had already been informed that he would be observing his son's autopsy. It had cost him a fortune---how quickly the mayor and the good Senator had forgotten how much he'd contributed to their last campaigns---but he had gotten exactly what he wanted, as he had known he would. Now, he stood back toward the rear of the room, staring at his son's lifeless carcass on the cold autopsy table.
He couldn't take his eyes off the body. Whatever had once been his Hunter had long since abandoned that broken vessel, which now only vaguely resembled the child he had known for the past thirty-two years. He couldn't bear the sight of where Hunter's flesh had been chewed away by animals that had had no right to violate its integrity. He wanted to throw himself onto the body, to wrap his arms around the boy he had loved unconditionally and breathe his own life into the young man who still had so much living left to do. A surge of rage rippled through him. Heat suffused his face and his fists curled so tightly that his fingernails bit into his palms.
"Christ. They could have at least rinsed it off for us," the Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. James Prentice, said. His glasses perched almost miraculously on the tip of his bulbous nose, framing brown eyes that didn't appear to blink. The overhead recorder started and stopped with his voice, providing a whirring undertone to his words. "All right. Let's get this show on the road, shall we?"
He took a pair of scissors from the sterile tray beside him and cut twin lines up each pant leg and through Hunter's underwear. His s
hirt hadn't made the return trip to the States with him. Prentice dropped the tattered fabric in the biohazard waste container for incineration and pulled the retractable hose nozzle out from under the table. With a squeeze of the handle, he sprayed Hunter's face and chest with scalding water. Smears of mud broke apart and dissolved. The runoff traced the contours of his musculature in streams that rolled down the lines of his ribs and into the side gutters of the table. Swirls of brown water turned around the drains. The flesh beneath the grime was a sickly gray and marbled with blue veins and black bruises. There were dozens of insect bite marks.
"Bird mites," Prentice said.
Superficial lacerations bisected Hunter's clavicles and pectorals. Leo could see exposed sections of the lumbar spine through the gaping hole in the abdomen where it appeared that piranhas, or some other small-mouthed, toothy critters, had absolved him of a large measure of his viscera. Apparently they had also feasted upon his manhood. Once Prentice had cleaned his legs, he carefully rolled Hunter's body over. His back, buttocks, thighs, and calves were all livid with blood, cellular fluid, and retained river water.
A quick spray through Hunter's hair and the ME was about to roll him over again when he abruptly paused. Leo noticed several sections where the fluid was beginning to drain in foul, sappy ribbons. Prentice leaned closer and inspected the wounds. There were two large punctures over the lower aspect of the rib cage. He sprayed directly into the holes and clumps of clotted blood and mud washed out.
"Twin dorsal stab wounds, one to either side of the spine," Prentice said. "On the right: entrance between the tenth and eleventh posterior ribs. Visible comminuted fracture of the tenth rib. Inferior displacement of a triangular fragment. Approximate penetration: three inches. On the left: entrance between the seventh and eighth posterior ribs. Oblique fractures of both the superior and inferior ribs without significant displacement. Again, approximate penetration of three inches."
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