Two Graves

by Douglas Preston

  “Listen, Jack. We’ll work it out. Nothing’s going to happen to you or your daughter if you cooperate. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Jack said. He heard Foote move closer, and he once again shifted his position, moving along a low animal trail into denser brush.

  “Sure, I was involved in a scam,” Foote went on in a soothing voice. “Not what you think. Not ripping off customers.”

  “What, then?”

  “GMAC. The big boys. Get them to finance nonexistent car sales. Been working with the GMAC auditor, the guy who comes to the lot every month to count cars, punch in the VINs. It’s a great scam and we make a lot of money. You’ll get a nice cut of that.”

  Jack continued to move laterally.

  “How does fifty grand sound? And I let your daughter go. It’s all good.”

  He was continuing to move closer, slowly.

  “So you framed me,” Jack said.

  “Yeah, it’s true, I framed you for the bank robbery. I’m really sorry, Jack. I couldn’t have you going to the feds, triggering an investigation. Any investigation—even one about that stupid pansy-ass credit cozen—might have ultimately blown up in my face. You understand? Nothing personal.”

  A silence.

  “Jack? I can’t talk to the bushes. We need to talk face-to-face.”

  Foote was about fifty yards away, a long shot for a handgun. Jack stood up, immediately dropped back down as the shot rang out.

  Foote came crashing toward him through the brush, firing again. Jack ran at a crouch, diagonally away, another shot pursuing him, snipping leaves and twigs off.

  “Your daughter’s dead meat!”

  Jack continued on as fast as he could, weaving through the narrow gaps, moving in unexpected directions, the sleet and wind covering his tracks. But something happened, something snapped. The fear and paralysis vanished, replaced by anger. Searing, furious rage. The bastard had kidnapped his daughter, bound her, tried to kill him—and would surely kill them both at his first opportunity.

  With the rage came a sudden clarity of mind. He could think again. And his thoughts were terrible indeed.

  Foote, in his noisy pursuit, had lost track of Jack’s position.

  “Ha, ha, Jack. I wasn’t aiming for you. Look, let’s just talk. We can work this out, and you’ll get your daughter back. Make it a hundred grand.”

  Jack recalled hearing the slamming of a car door after he’d been shot. It had been close to the house. No doubt that’s where Corrie was being held. But where, exactly, was it?

  Orienting himself, Jack began moving swiftly but stealthily through the densest part of the woods, making a loop around Foote, who continued to broadcast his position by alternately cajoling and making threats. Finally he heard the man say: “That’s it! She’s dead!” And then he heard him moving decisively through the forest.

  Jack paused and picked up a pebble. With his good arm, he lofted it behind and to the side, where it rattled in some bushes. He could hear Foote stop, move quickly in that direction.

  “Jack! I know where you are! One… two… three…!”

  Jack used the man’s movement and his loud voice as an opportunity to move quickly himself, once again laterally, but now in a new direction, based on where Foote seemed to be heading. Foote called out a few more times and then began to move as well—very fast—through the forest.

  Jack picked up another pebble and tossed it, but it ricocheted off a tree—not as artfully placed as the other.

  “Throwing rocks, are we? It ain’t gonna work, asshole!”

  Just keep yelling, thought Jack as he used the opportunity to sprint across an open area into another thicket. The sleet was coming down hard now, soaking him to the bone.

  As he moved, he realized he was significantly behind Foote. He had to move faster. He threw another rock, which was answered by several shots aimed vaguely in his direction. He could indeed hear Foote continue pushing his way back toward the cabin, repeating his threats and describing in graphic detail what he was going to do to Corrie.

  “I’m gonna do her brown, Jack—think about that! And then I’ll strangle her, slowly!”

  Jack sprinted at a crouch, scurrying through the laurel. The lashing of the storm allowed him to move almost at a run. He could hear Foote’s yelling getting louder. He had to hurry, hurry.

  Ahead, Jack saw an opening in the dark, cold forest—the track. Foote had stopped yelling. He pushed forward through the brush, keeping parallel to the road, as silently as possible, until he saw a dull gleam. There it was, parked pretty much where he thought it would be.

  But Foote was closer to the car than he was—too close. The gun was visible in one bleeding hand. Foote was chuckling as he opened the rear door.

  “Get ready, bitch,” he said.

  All the strength fled from Jack’s limbs and he collapsed to the ground. This was it. He was too late. It was all over.

  At that moment, something dark in color—one of Corrie’s boots, followed by a jeans-covered leg—flashed out from the rear seat toward Foote. The boot caught him squarely in the crotch with a savage impact. Foote gasped in pain and staggered backward, dropping the gun.

  In an instant, Jack was on his feet. In another, he was atop Foote, ignoring the gun in the grass, instead bringing the penknife down into the man’s face with one smooth, swift motion, the blade going straight into his eye. The knife sank into the orb, the ocular jelly squirting out, the knife scraping against the thin bone in the back. Foote jerked and thrashed with an inarticulate roar, hands flying to his face. Jack fell on the gun, grabbed it, then trained it on Foote while the man lay rolling in agony, blood leaking between the hands gripping his face. Jack raised the gun, pointed it at Foote’s head.

  “No!” came the voice from behind him.

  Jack turned. It was Corrie, lying in the backseat, hands tied behind her back.

  “We need him alive,” she said. “We need him to talk.”

  For a moment, Jack said nothing. Then, slowly, he lowered the gun. His eyes fell to her ankles. They were free, a pair of plastic cuffs lying scuffed and severed on the floor of the rear seat.

  Corrie followed his glance. “There was a burr in the metal rail behind the driver’s seat,” she said.

  And now Jack came forward. Wiping off the bloody penknife, he used it to cut through the plastic handcuffs. In another moment he was wordlessly hugging his daughter like he had never hugged anyone before in his life, the tears streaming down both their faces.

  57

  IT WAS A COOL MORNING AFTER A NIGHT OF RAIN, THE mists drifting over the surface of the river, as they set off from the last town on the Rio Itajaí do Sul, the southernmost tributary of the Rio Itajaí.

  Mendonça, in a foul mood and nursing a hangover, guided the boat upriver. The naturalist, Fawcett, resumed his seat in the bow, no longer reading his book but keeping a lookout for butterflies. Once in a while he would shout for Mendonça to slow down when he spotted a butterfly fluttering along the river’s edge, and once he demanded that they actually chase a butterfly with the boat, with him leaning over the bow, swiping at the thing with his net until he caught it.

  The last town on the river had been a sad, dirty, horrible little place called Colonia Marimbondo. While there, Mendonça had made careful inquiries about Nova Godói: where it was, how to recognize the landing place along the river. He had gathered most of his information at the local cervejaria, the central beer hall in the town, where he had been forced to spend his hard-earned money buying endless rounds to encourage the uncommunicative villagers to talk. What he had finally managed to squeeze out of them had unsettled him greatly. Most of it was no doubt superstition and sheer ignorance, but it badly unnerved him nonetheless.

  They had set off early, just at dawn, the sound of the engine echoing off the wall of araucaria trees, dripping after a night of rain. Mendonça could feel the wetness gathering in his hair and beard and creeping through his shirt.

  God in heaven, he couldn�
�t wait for this to be over.

  Around noon, they came around a broad bend in the river, and there, on the right-hand bank, stood a floating dock with a ramp leading up to a rickety wooden quay. Beyond the high riverbank lay a partially overgrown clearing in the forest, with several rusting Quonset huts and a ramshackle wooden warehouse. It was exactly as the villagers had described it.

  “We have arrived,” said Mendonça, eyeing the quay for signs of life. To his great relief, it looked abandoned.

  He slowed the engine and angled the boat in, easing up to the dock, hopping out and tying it off. He stood on the dock as the naturalist, awkward as usual, hauled his pack out and transferred it to the dock, then got out himself, standing unsteadily and peering about.

  “We have arrived,” Mendonça repeated, mustering a smile. He held out his hand. “The rest of the money, please, o senhor?”

  A pause. “Now, wait just a minute,” Fawcett said, his beard wagging in sudden irritation. “We agreed: two thousand up front, and—”

  “And one thousand on arrival,” Mendonça finished for him. “Surely you remember?”

  “Oh.” The naturalist screwed up his face. “Is that what we agreed?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  More grumbling. “You have to wait here until I come back. We agreed on a round trip, six days total.”

  “No problem,” said Mendonça. “I wait. But you pay me now.”

  “How do I know you won’t take off?”

  Mendonça gathered himself up. “Because I am a man of honor.”

  This seemed to satisfy Fawcett, and he delved into his pack, fished around, extracted the wad of cash, and peeled off two five-hundred-real notes. Mendonça snatched them and stuffed them in his pocket.

  The naturalist picked up his pack. “So where’s the town?”

  Mendonça pointed toward a four-wheel-drive track that crossed the clearing, passed by the huts, and disappeared into the forest. Beyond, the green canopy rose in hills, one after another, culminating in a volcanic caldera that disappeared into the low-lying clouds. “Up that road. About three miles. There’s only one way to go.”

  “Three miles?” Fawcett frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I thought you already knew.” Mendonça shrugged.

  Fawcett fixed him with a scowling eye. “You wait for me. I’ll be back in three days—seventy-two hours—by noon.”

  “I will stay with the boat, sleep in the boat. I have all I need.” He grinned, lit a cigar.

  “Very well.” The naturalist struggled to get the pack on, adjusted the straps, and then began doddering up the muddy track, his figure appearing and disappearing in the drifting mists. As soon as he had finally vanished into the forest, Mendonça hurried down to the boat, fired up the engine, and cast off, heading back down the river toward Alsdorf as fast as he could go.

  58

  PENDERGAST HEARD, AT THE EDGE OF AUDIBILITY, THE sound of the boat engine as it moved down the river, soon fading away. The trace of a smile crossed his lips as he continued on. The jeep road wound its way through the endlessly dripping forest, the strange spiky branches of the araucaria pines heavy with droplets. He trudged along, occasionally stopping to pursue a butterfly, as the road wound upward through the dense forest in a series of broad switchbacks, mounting higher and higher until it eventually reached into the low-hanging clouds.

  Half an hour later, the track leveled out as it arrived at the top of a low ridge—the rim of an ancient volcanic crater. From there it descended into the mist, the visibility now only a few hundred yards.

  Pendergast peered closely at the crater. Then he reached into his pocket and drew out a folded piece of paper: the picture Tristram had drawn of a mountain—the feature of Nova Godói he’d been unable to describe in words. It perfectly matched the crater that now rose up before him.

  He made his way down, and as the trail once again leveled out he came to two pillars of dressed lava rock on either side of the road, with a chain-link gate across and a rock wall extending on both sides out into the forest. Behind the gate stood a guardhouse. As he approached, two guards came tumbling out, rifles in hand. They cried out at him in German, pointing their rifles.

  “I only speak English!” Pendergast cried, raising his hands. “I’m a naturalist! I’m here to look for butterflies!”

  One of the soldiers, apparently the man in charge, stepped forward and switched into excellent English. “Who are you? How did you get here?”

  “My name is Percival Fawcett,” Pendergast said, delving into his pack and pulling out a UK passport. “Fellow of the Royal Society. I came here by boat up the river, I can tell you it was no easy trip!”

  The guards seemed to relax somewhat, both putting up their rifles. “This is private property,” the commander said. “You can’t come in here.”

  “I’ve come halfway around the world,” said Pendergast in a voice that combined a shrill pleading with a certain truculence, “to find the Queen Beatrice butterfly. And I will not be turned away.” He pulled out a piece of paper. “I have letters of introduction from the provincial governor and another from Santa Catarina.” He proffered the papers, which had been duly stamped, embossed, and notarized. “And I have a letter here from the Royal Society, urging cooperation with my important mission, and another from the Lepidoptery Department of the British Museum, endorsed by the Sociedade Entomológica do Brasil.” More papers came out. “As you can see, mine is a mission of the utmost scientific importance!” His voice climbed in volume.

  The commander took the sheaf of papers and rifled through them, a frown disfiguring his keen, Nordic features. “We don’t allow visitors for any reason whatsoever,” he said. “As I told you, this is private property.”

  “If you refuse me entry,” said Pendergast shrilly, “there will be a scandal. I will make sure of it. A scandal!”

  This created a certain uneasiness in the guard’s expression. He moved back and conferred with his subordinate. Then the commander went into the guardhouse and could be seen making a call on a radio. He spoke for some time, and then returned to the gate. “Wait here,” he said.

  A few minutes later a jeep came down the road, driven by a man in olive drab, with another man, in a uniform of solid gray, sitting in the backseat. The jeep stopped, and the man in the rear got out and stepped forward. Even though he wasn’t exactly in a military uniform, he carried himself like a soldier.

  “Open the gate,” he said.

  The guards rolled the gate aside. The man stepped forward, his hand extended. “I am Captain Scheermann,” he said, with just a trace of a German accent, as he shook Pendergast’s hand. “And you are Mr. Fawcett?”

  “Dr. Fawcett.”

  “Of course. I understand you’re a naturalist?”

  “That’s right,” said Pendergast, his voice rising belligerently. “As I was telling these men, I’ve come halfway around the world on a mission of great scientific importance, endorsed by the governors of two Brazilian states as well as the British Museum and the Royal Society, in cooperation with the Sociedade Entomológica do Brasil”—he stumbled badly over the pronunciation. “I insist on being treated with courtesy! If I am turned away, I promise you, sir, there will be an investigation, a very thorough investigation!”

  “Of course, of course,” said the captain soothingly. “If I may—”

  Pendergast went on, undeterred. “I am in pursuit of the Queen Beatrice butterfly, Lycaena regina, long thought extinct. It was last observed in the Nova Godói caldera in 1932. My twenty years of research—”

  “Yes, yes,” the captain interrupted, smoothly if a little impatiently. “I understand. There’s no need for such excitement, no need for investigations. You’re welcome to enter. We have our rules, but for you we will make an exception. A temporary exception.”

  A beat. “Well,” said Pendergast. “That is most kind of you. Most kind! If there are expenses or fees—?”

  The captain held up his
hand. “No, no. The only thing we require is that you accept an escort.”

  “An escort?” Pendergast frowned.

  “We’re used to our privacy here, and some of our people might be startled by an outsider. You’ll need an escort—mostly for your own comfort and safety. I’m sorry, but that is not open for negotiation.”

  Pendergast harrumphed. “If necessary, fine. But I will be moving about in the forest in all weathers, and he or she better be able to keep up.”

  “Naturally. Now, may I escort you to our town hall, where we can take care of the paperwork?”

  “That’s rather more like it,” said Pendergast, climbing into the jeep as the captain held open the door. “In fact, that’s capital. Just capital.”

  59

  AS THEY DROVE THROUGH THE TOWN, PENDERGAST peered about with evident interest at all that he saw. The drizzle was letting up slightly, the clouds lifting, and gradually the environs were coming into view. The village sported stuccoed buildings, and it spread across a grid of capacious streets along the shores of an emerald lake. While it could be no more than half a century old, it beautifully reproduced the architecture, cobbled streets, and general layout of an old Bavarian village, even down to the steep stone staircases rising up the shorefront, the hand-painted signs, the slate roofs and half-timbering of the larger public buildings.

  The lakeshore itself was graced with long stone quays of neatly dressed stone, which led to a series of well-kept docks, wharves, and slips, on which crisply painted fishing boats and a few launches were tied up. Everything was cloaked in mist; the lake itself vanished into a drizzle of rain, its central island no more than a dim gray outline.

  The town ended abruptly in a forest of immensely tall araucaria trees, mingled with pines and other subtropical species. The darkness, the fog, the dreary weather, and the untamed wall of forest formed a strange contrast to the town—so neat, clean, and so very European in character.