The chopper buzzed by the trailing boat. On a wooden seat near the front, the Sicilian stared up at the chopper through a pair of high-powered Japanese binoculars.
Rio’s gaze shot down through a band of late afternoon sunlight. The glare from the binocular lenses shot back up at him like the signal from a hand mirror. “Look at that asshole down there, will yah?” Rio raised his voice. “Look at that.”
“Did you see that? He’s staring up at us through a pair of binoculars.” Rio’s eyes grew hot with fire. “I swear, if we weren’t so low on fuel, I’d run his ass to shore and throw the book at him.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” said Naomi. “That little guy reminds me of those slimy cockroach pickpockets we used to arrest in the shopping mall at Plaza Indonesia.”
She had no idea she was dealing with a paid assassin.
Chapter Twenty
The boat arrived at Long Apari just before dark. A tour van idled near the pier. A billowing cloud of monoxide vapor squeezed out from beneath the undercarriage. It rolled up into a white cloud and vanished quickly back into the dark debts of the forest beyond the pier. The street lights were on. A breath of hot, humid air filled the sky. Cautious and careful as he left the boat, Seabury’s eyes scanned the distance. Very little movement stirred on the streets of the Dayak village a few miles away. A hush settled over the land, and the noiseless calm of great distance filled the night sky.
Staying low in a crouch, Seabury sandwiched in between Lois, Gretchen, and Hornsby, and they headed toward the van. A small group of tourists getting off other boats formed an additional canopy. He managed to hide among them and at the same time keep his eyes peeled out for the Sicilian’s boat, still far out on the river.
Moving quickly, he made his way over to the van and got inside. He sat in the center row flanked by Gretchen, Lois with Hornsby. A few passengers got on and filled the empty seats in back. The driver got back inside the vehicle and slammed the door behind him. He took a head count and wrote a number down on a clipboard, wetting his tongue on the tip of a pencil as he jotted down the number. A moment later, he locked the vehicle in gear and drove off in the direction of Swan Lake Guest house half a mile away. They booked rooms there for the night.
“I’m exhausted,” Lois said to Seabury on the stairs leading up to their rooms. “I think I’ll skip dinner or have it catered up to my room.”
“Have them cater one for me,” he said. “I’m going to turn in early.”
Gretchen and Hornsby had already gone ahead of them to their rooms.
By now, they’d reached the landing at the top of the stairs. He moved closer to her. “It looks like I’ve dodged another bullet…for now. Maybe they’ll look somewhere else,” he said with a faint smile, not really believing it. “Oh, by the way,” he said switching topics, “The SUV will be parked out front at seven tomorrow morning. I checked with the touring company prior to booking the tour. Let’s plan on leaving no later than seven-thirty. Okay?”
“How about the weather?” Lois asked.
“It’s okay now. I only hope it holds up. A thunderstorm up here this time of year would be disastrous.”
“I’m really tired, Sam,” she said. “Is there anything else?”
“That was quick thinking on your part today,” he said. She looked puzzled. “The way you stacked the bags all over that tarp in the boat. At first, I thought I’d suffocate. It was hotter than hell down there, but in the end, it’s what saved my bacon. I appreciate the quick thinking on your part.”
“No problem,” she said, as if seeing nothing special about what she’d done. Her eyes were red, and her face looked tired. In the dim light of the hall, he could feel the wall going up between them. He realized that Lois Lockett was a woman he was never going to get close to. She turned around and left. He saw her slip into her room a few doors off the landing and close the door behind her. Ice Queen, entered his mind and then he put off the thought. After all, her quick thinking had saved him today. He felt guilty about having the thought and went down to his room. At that moment, he was unaware of how close he was to being killed.
* * * *
An hour later, the Sicilian drove past the guesthouse in his SUV rental. He stopped at the side of a stand of tamarind trees and cut the engine. A single light shone down from the darkness of the second floor. The light in the room led to a small balcony circled by a wrought-iron railing. Seabury stepped onto the balcony for a breath of fresh air, unaware of the car hidden below him in a grove of trees. Amazed by his good fortune, the Sicilian reached for his nine-millimeter Berretta.
He quickly twisted the suppressor onto the barrel and locked it into place. He rolled down the window and pointed the gun up through the trees at Seabury.
Just then, a loud crash came from inside the room. Seabury rushed back inside. Hornsby had kicked over the ashtray stand near the chair where he sat. In the silence and darkness, the Sicilian’s mouth twisted into an ugly snarl. He was just about to squeeze the trigger.
“Damn!” he cursed and grumbled. “Imagine that fucking close.” He let the F-bomb fly a few more times and then put away the gun. He turned the engine over and drove away, still cursing.
“Tomorrow, you won’t be so lucky.”
* * * *
Slipping back inside the room, Seabury helped the old man pick up the ashtray. Immediately, Hornsby got tissue from the bathroom and began scooping up a small pile of ashes into it. He deposited the tissue into a wastebasket in the bathroom and came back outside. He pulled up a chair and sat down at a small writing desk near the outer wall of the room. The place was sparse—two flower prints on opposite walls, two small beds, a closet, and a toilet down at the end of the hall. Hornsby began writing as if to get the thought down before losing it.
As Seabury stepped across to the desk, Hornsby stopped writing. “There. I didn’t want to lose the thought. I do quite often. So now, I take a pad in my back pocket and write down my thoughts quickly before I lose them. It seems to work out better for me.” In the dim light, his face looked pink and serene. His pale blue eyes were glossy and filled with luster.
“What are you writing?” Seabury asked.
Hornsby put the pen down. “Notes,” he said. “A book might come out of this adventure, and I want to make sure everything is precise and accurate the way these tired old eyes see them. For example, I’m toying with the idea of God and His creation.”
Seabury sat down and listened while the elderly man went on. “In the beginning, I was a practicing Christian. It wasn’t until I reached the age of sixteen that I stopped believing altogether.”
“Many people I’ve known have changed religions,” Seabury commented. “But most of them eventually went back to where they started.”
“True, but I wasn’t one of them.” He started his pipe, and a hickory smell entered the room. “In fact, the more scientific I became, the more discrepancies I discovered in the Bible. The age of the Earth. People wandering around with Moses in the desert for forty years with no geological evidence left to prove it turned me against organized religion. I’m simply not committed to believing unless, of course, something changes my mine.”
“Like Eden Two,” said Seabury.
Hornsby cracked a thin smile and went on. “If God knew Adam would commit the unpardonable sin, wouldn’t that sin be a blight on his creation? I think it would. Sure, man had free choice, but wouldn’t a kind and just God know all along that man would fail? If so, why go through the whole Creation thing—the sin, the fall from grace, banishment from the Garden—if He knew all along that man would fail? That’s why I think much of what Genesis tells us is nonsense.”
In the dim light and quietness of the room, Hornsby stared over the top of his glasses at Seabury. “Am I boring you?” he asked.
Seabury shook his head. “Not at all.”
“I have postulated simple truths,” he told Seabury. “They are truths about life. They are truths about mankind’s evolutio
nary link to a prehistoric past. I often write about the impending reality of my own death. Many times, I have heard a faint glimmer of truth whispering to me through the bougainvillea in my own backyard. It whispers in a quiet, gentle voice, telling me about the reality of my own life. Why am I here. What is my place. It tells me how in the end, Truth is what man searches for and hopes to eventually find. You can only hope someday to discover Truth and to make a home for it deep inside your soul.”
The skin on his tired face looked coarse and wrinkled. Seabury noticed the dark lines under his eyes. Deep furrows ran down the sides of his face like black snakes. In the silence, he began to cough. A loud, wheezing sound escaped from his lungs and caused him to shudder.
“Are you all right?” Seabury found bottled water in a refrigerator and rushed it over to him. Hornsby took a drink. The wheezing stopped, and he started to relax.
He turned away. “My notes,” he said. “If you will excuse me, I have to finish them.”
Hornsby turned back to his notebook and began writing. “Tomorrow brings another day, and with it, the petty pace that continues to surround us.
Chapter Twenty-One
The next day , in a brighter mood, Hornsby said, “I can’t wait to get going.” He sank his thin, bony body down on the passenger’s seat next to Seabury.
Behind the wheel, Seabury checked his watch. He looked out the side window at the door to the guesthouse. “Lois,” he said. “She mentioned something about getting started before noon. I hope she was just kidding.”
At 7:30 a.m., the sky was overcast. A few motorcycles buzzed through the parking lot. A few sped by on the street down the hill.
“I hope they won’t take too long getting ready,” Hornsby said in a bland voice, rubbing his goatee and staring at the map in his lap. You know women.” He leaned in close to Seabury. “I don’t mean to sound sexist, but it’s one of the reasons I chose to remain single.”
“If they’re not here in five minutes,” Seabury said to Hornsby, half in jest, “I’ll go up and roust them. I want to get started, too. We’re booked here for a couple of nights. From here, it’s only sixty miles up to the Muller Mountains .”
Hornsby gave him a thumbs-up gesture. Seabury grinned. “I need to feel the wind at my back and miles of open road drumming under the tires. That way, I’m a happy camper. It won’t be long before we reach the temple ruins. Then, the work begins. I hear the road’s good, though. So that helps a lot,” Seabury added, to keep the conversation going.
“What do you think about the police?” Hornsby asked, worried. “Think they’ll show up there?”
Seabury cocked his head to the side and looked straight at Hornsby. “Count on it,” he said. “A bloodhound smells the scent of blood. It can’t go any other way but after its quarry.”
“Which reminds me of the novel, The Hounds of the Baskervilles” said Hornsby. “Remember that chase scene where the dogs are racing through briar and bramble without a let up? I’m afraid the reality is a pooch and the police always get their man.”
“They do if the man hasn’t come up with an alternate plan. If what you’re saying is true, I won’t run forever from them. I know I didn’t kill anyone. I’ll just need to prove it.”
“It might take some doing.”
“I’m along for the ride…however it ends.”
Seabury turned away and looked up to see Lois and Gretchen walking out the front door of the guesthouse. They were dressed in jeans, hiking boots, and sweaters. They dashed for the car, as if they were in a footrace.
“Sorry, Seabury.” Lois pulled open the door to the backseat. She and Gretchen, with a mop of damp hair, piled in.
Gretchen blurted out, “I feel rushed, pulled together at the seams.”
“Good,” Seabury teased her. “That way, you’ll be wide awake for the show.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“A dark cave…miles of tunnel…maybe a buried treasure.”
She sat back, thinking about the possibility. She said, “A diamond necklace around my lovely neck? I’ll take it.” She giggled.
Seabury turned the engine over. Ten minutes later, they were leaving a patch of pavement for a dirt road. Gravel ground under the tires and clanged off the undercarriage. They drove down a serpentine road with mountains in the distance, and jungle forest all around. Seabury slowed down for an unexpected rut in the road, eased the SUV through, and kept going. The wind at his back and miles of open road, he never felt better.
A half mile farther up the road, he glanced in the rearview mirror. Another SUV was eating their dust. It wove through a wide, swirling plume and trailed them. Seabury glanced back onto the road. The Sicilian, he said to himself. Who else? A knot churned in his stomach.
* * * *
Now, as they sped along, Seabury noticed how quickly the land began to change. Dense jungle forests became windswept foothills. Ponds, streams, and then clear, crystal lakes appeared in the distance. Far off in the distance, the mossy, jade-colored cliffs of the Muller Mountains towered over the land, powdered with a light crown of snow.
The Muller Mountains and the majestic Schwaner Range ran sequentially from northeast to southwest and formed about two-thirds of the country’s southeastern boundary. In the distance to his left, Seabury saw Mount Raya—the highest peak in the Schwaner Range. It rose to a height of 7,474 feet and stood like a sentinel, proud and imposing in the early morning sun. To the south of the mountains lay an expanse of alluvial plain. It swept for hundreds of miles west across a flat, grassy plateau that eventually dropped down toward the Sea of Java.
Outside, the air was crisp and fresh, Seabury noticed, like a fall morning in New England, back home in the States. The sight of breathtaking vistas caught his eye. They seemed to run for endless miles in the vast, open spaces between the flowing grassland and the Mahakam River winding its way south across the land.
“There’s the lake.” Hornsby pointed to the map. The road circled the grassy slope of a large foothill. On the opposite side, across the road, a clear and pristine lake—like the surface of a mirror—sparkled in the morning sunlight.
They drove another quarter mile in silence. Lois and Gretchen lay asleep in the backseat. Seabury stared out the window when suddenly, he spun the wheel hard to the right and crashed into a clearing inside a grove of pine trees. Lois and Gretchen sprang wide awake in the backseat. Hornsby braced his hands on the dashboard, his head inches from the windshield.
“Sorry,” Seabury said, staring back through the trees.
Up ahead, a black SUV containing two Indonesian security guards from the mine drove in a cloud of thick dust down the road toward them.
“Security?” Hornsby asked.
Seabury nodded. The vehicle swept down the road past them.
“Phew! That was close,” Lois said in a strained voice, rubbing her eyes.
The respite was short-lived. A moment later, the security vehicle reversed gears, backed up, swung around, and entered the clearing next to them. Seabury saw the front door swing open and two men—one built like an ostrich, the other stout and muscular—get out and circle around the front of the car. The ostrich’s face hardened, exposing chunks of jutting bone. He motioned for Seabury to get out.
Seabury opened the door slowly and go out. He exhaled and looked calm as he stared up at the guy.
“What are you doing up here,” the ostrich asked.
“Sightseeing.” Seabury handed him his passport. “We’re staying the night in Long Apari.”
The ostrich exchanged glances with his partner and then laid eyes back on Seabury. “You’re up too far. No one goes up here.” He pointed back through the trees. “See the northern boundary of the lake.” Seabury nodded. “It’s all private land from there on up to the mountains. There’s a coal mine up there. It’s owned by Eastern Temple based in Jakarta.”
Seabury nodded a slow, deliberate nod, like he was taking it all in.
“You need to go back.
Sightsee somewhere else.” The ostrich’s voice held a sharp edge.
He brushed past Seabury, cupped his hands up to the window, and looked inside. Hornsby, Lois, and Gretchen sat in the dim light inside the car, mute and immobile, like toy statues scared and stiff in the stony silence.
“Okay,” Seabury said finally, and the ostrich turned around. He motioned his partner back into the car. They pulled out of the clearing, turned right, and drove back down the road.
“It looks like we’ve reached a dead end,” Lois said, shaking her head, disgusted.
Seabury got back into the car and slammed the door behind him. He turned on the ignition, and the engine roared to life.
“They’re out patrolling,” said Seabury, pointing his finger up and down the road. “I’ll drive down behind them. Let them think we’re going back. When they turn around and head back toward the mine, I’ll follow them at a safe distance.” He stared into a wall of disgruntled faces. He stared at them as if they weren’t there. “Did you notice the road forks up ahead? My guess is they’ll turn off toward the mine. We’ll go the other way, back toward where the temple ruins are. The map points in that direction.”
For a time, no one said anything. Suddenly, Lois protested from the backseat. Her voice was loud and tinny as it reached his ears. “Seabury, did you hear what was said?”
“Uh, huh.”
“You’re going to get us into trouble. Can’t you see that? They said—”
“I know what they said, Lois.” His voice carried a sharp edge. “They’re hiding something up there in the mine. I want to find out what it is. I hope there are trees up there. If we can ditch the car in the temple area, I want to go back to the mine. There are a lot of tunnels up there, so maybe they’re interconnected. We can still search for buried treasure later. If we play our cards right, we can do it all. So, let’s work as a team and not panic.” He directed his remark more toward Lois than the others.
“I don’t know.” Lois shook her head, confused and uncertain.
Eden Two Page 15
