Mutation

by Roland Smith

  When Wolfe had announced that it was time to board the helicopter, Luther had immediately shouted “Shotgun!” and climbed into the right-hand seat next to him.

  Grace didn’t mind being in the back — even with the crated hatchlings directly behind her, snoring and passing gas — because it gave her a chance to be alone. As much as one could be alone in the cramped confines of a helicopter.

  She had put on a headset to dampen the noise of the engine and muted the volume so she didn’t have to listen to Luther peppering Wolfe with questions. Her intention had been to spend her time in back reading her mother’s soggy journals, but not realizing how tired she was, she’d fallen asleep within minutes of taking off from the airport. She awoke suddenly with the sun in her eyes, a crick in her neck, and a terrible smell in her nostrils. At first she didn’t quite know where she was, but one look at the back of Luther’s head, with his flaming red hair just growing back in, and Wolfe’s black shaggy beard, brought it all back to her. She was on her way to a jaguar preserve, on the run from her grandfather Noah Blackwood.

  Mother’s Moleskines, she thought. She unzipped the pack on the seat next to her and pulled out the swollen journals. One advantage of being so close to the hatchlings was that she could no longer smell the damp mildewed paper.

  She set the first Moleskine in her lap and stared down at the black cover. She had asked Marty to go through the trunk because she’d been afraid to do it herself, afraid of what she might discover, afraid of her past.

  Ridiculous! she thought, and opened the cover.

  Like Rose, Grace had written in Moleskine journals since she’d learned how to write, even though she had only been a toddler when her mother died. She wondered if she had watched her mother write in these journals without a conscious recollection of seeing it, and copied her, like kids do.

  The first thing Grace noticed was that her mother had been smarter than Grace was with her journaling technique. Grace used a fountain pen to write. Her mother used a pencil. If Rose had used a pen, the contents would have been ruined when Marty dunked the Moleskine in rhino pee.

  The first page was dated fourteen years earlier, six months before Grace’s birth. Below it was a single sentence …

  I’ve been having vivid dreams the past several nights. Rather than write about them, I am going to attempt to draw them.

  The first drawing was a two-page spread of Lake Télé in the Congo. Her mother had drawn a large island in the middle of the lake. Grace had spent several horrifying days at Lake Télé with Marty, and she was certain there was no island there. But she reminded herself that the drawing was from her mother’s dreams, not reality. She turned the page. The next drawing was a bedroom, but again it wasn’t the bedroom from the Skyhouse that Rose and Wolfe had built on the lake’s shore. It was smaller and more utilitarian: almost more a box with a bed, a dresser, a desk, and a window covered with bars. The windows in the Skyhouse did not have bars. They were simple cutouts covered with fine mesh screens to keep the insects at bay.

  The next drawing was a view from the bedroom window, presumably from her mother’s dream island on Lake Télé, because in the picture there was a village on the lake. The real lake had no such thing. Lake Télé was one of the most hostile, isolated places on earth, which is why Mokélé-mbembé had survived there for so long.

  Grace wondered if her mother’s dreams had been caused by that isolation. Lake Télé was a lonely place. Regardless of how much her mother had loved Wolfe, having only him to keep her company had to have been difficult. Grace didn’t know Wolfe that well, but she suspected he was the kind of man who could spend long stretches of time alone without ill effect.

  She glanced up at Wolfe, who was staring straight ahead through the windshield without so much as a nod to the jabbering Luther.

  He may prefer to be alone, she thought. Cryptos Island certainly lends itself to that kind of life. But what about my mother? Was she cut out of the same cloth?

  The Congolese rain forest was beautiful, but it was also dark and claustrophobic. After a while it pushed in on you, making your chest ache for open sky.

  She continued flipping through the pages.

  Sketches of villagers farming, children playing …

  Her mother was a good artist, something Grace had not inherited. She could draw a picture with words and sentences, but not with lines and shading.

  Marty should have looked through this Moleskine. He would have been impressed.

  She finished reading the first journal and picked up the second. The drawings inside this one were more architectural in nature. Each page seemed to be a different room, or a design for a room. There were laboratories, bedrooms, kitchens, hallways, closets, bathrooms, utility rooms, electrical diagrams, heating diagrams, conference rooms….

  It was clear to Grace that these rooms were a different type of dream. Rose must have wanted to build a sophisticated research facility at Lake Télé. A place where scientists and researchers from all over the world could gather to study the unique ecosystem.

  Rose never got a chance to see her dream come true.

  Grace felt a hot tear run down her cheek. She wiped it away quickly, and was glad she had, because at that moment Luther turned around and said something she couldn’t hear through the muted headset. She turned it back on.

  “What?”

  “Fuel stop,” Luther said.

  Grace looked out the window. Sure enough, they were descending. She hadn’t even noticed. Five hundred feet beneath them was a floating fuel barge. Before they had left the hangar, the helicopter had been fitted with pontoons for water landings. The chopper touched down on the river’s surface like a feather. Wolfe shut the engine down. A couple of men on the barge readied lines. Luther started to open his door.

  “Hold it,” Wolfe said.

  “What? I’m just going to jump out and catch the lines.”

  Wolfe shook his head and glanced back at Grace. “You both need to stay put. No need to advertise we have two kids on board. If the bargemen see you, word will spread up and down the Amazon faster than we can fly.”

  Grace wanted to get out of the helicopter, too, and stretch her legs, but she knew Wolfe was right. The more quietly they got to the preserve, the better.

  “Can we at least crack the windows open?” Grace asked.

  “Sure,” Wolfe said. “But use the window on the river side so no one can see you.” He climbed out onto the pontoon, caught a line thrown by a bargeman, and tied it off.

  Grace opened the window and took a couple of deep breaths of gas fumes, which smelled sweet compared to the hatchlings’ exhaust inside.

  “Do you think the hatchlings will sleep until we get to the preserve?” she asked.

  “Geez, I hope so,” Luther said. “Kind of hard to feed them midair inside a crowded chopper.”

  The hatchlings’ crate took up half the cargo space. The other half was stacked with boxes of frozen meat. Enough to feed the hatchlings for weeks.

  “I wonder what will happen to them?” Grace asked.

  “To who?”

  “The hatchlings.”

  “Haven’t you been listening?” Luther asked. “Wolfe’s been gabbing about that almost the entire flight.”

  Grace seriously doubted Wolfe had been gabbing, but didn’t argue the point. “I had my headset off. What did he say?”

  “Wolfe would like to take them back to the Congo and let them go, but he can’t do that until he takes care of the Noah Blackwood situation. He thinks Noah would just send Butch or another of his minions to recapture them. The other alternative is a small island Wolfe has in the South Pacific. It’s uninhabited and has a good prey base. He thinks they could make a living there, but there are logistical problems. The island is isolated and a long way from anywhere. Finding someone to live on the island with them would be nearly impossible.”

  “Robinson Crusoe,” Grace said.

  “Who’s that?” Luther asked.

  “Appar
ently you weren’t paying attention during literature at OOPS,” Grace said.

  “So?” Luther said.

  Omega Opportunity Preparatory School, or OOPS, was the private school in Switzerland that Marty, Grace, and Luther had all attended since kindergarten. Luther was heading back there at the end of summer unless he could talk his parents out of it.

  “Robinson Crusoe is a book about a guy named Robinson Crusoe who gets stranded on a deserted island,” Grace said. “It was written in 1719 by Daniel Defoe.”

  “Useful information,” Luther said, rolling his eyes. “I’m certain it will come in handy someday.”

  Grace shook her head in pity.

  Luther looked out the window. “Uh-oh.”

  Grace followed his gaze. Wolfe was surrounded by a half-dozen uniformed men carrying guns. She was out of the helicopter in a flash, disobeying her uncle’s order. She didn’t care if she was seen or not. Luther was right behind her. By the time they reached Wolfe, another man had joined the guards, but he was not wearing a uniform.

  Wolfe gave Grace and Luther a disapproving look, but said nothing about them disobeying him. The man reached into his sweaty shirt pocket, pulled out a leather wallet, and flipped it open.

  “Special Agent Steven Crow, FBI.”

  “As in Federal Bureau of Investigation?” Luther blurted out.

  Wolfe gave Luther another disapproving look, then nodded at Agent Crow. “What can I do for you?”

  “Scuttlebutt is that you’re heading to Doc Lansa’s jaguar preserve upriver. I need a lift.”

  “I don’t know who Scuttlebutt is,” Luther said. “But you have it wrong. We’re —”

  Wolfe grabbed Luther’s arm. “Can you excuse us for a minute, Agent Crow?” He took Grace’s arm, too, and escorted them both to the end of the barge, where they couldn’t be overheard.

  “I thought I told you two to wait in the helicopter.”

  “That was before the Brazilian army surrounded you,” Grace said.

  “They’re police,” Wolfe said. “But that’s beside the point.”

  “How did he know we were going to the jaguar preserve?” Luther asked.

  Wolfe gave him a small grin. “Scuttlebutt,” he said. “The jungle vine. And now they know you and Grace are on board.”

  “Maybe he works for Blackwood,” Luther said.

  “Maybe,” Wolfe agreed. “But his credentials look real, and it’s best not to lie to the FBI.”

  “He looks kind of old to be in the FBI,” Grace said. “He must be in his seventies.”

  Wolfe nodded. “And by the photo on his credentials, and the way his clothes are hanging on him, he looks like he’s lost a lot of weight. I’m guessing probably recently. But none of that matters, either.”

  “The FBI doesn’t have jurisdiction in Brazil,” Luther pointed out.

  “Are you an attorney now?” Wolfe asked.

  Luther shook his head. “Saw it on a TV show.”

  “Perfect,” Wolfe said. “He may not have jurisdiction, but the police he’s with do. Look. We need to be really cool about this. The one thing we don’t want is for Agent Crow or his friends to discover what we have on board the helicopter. We need to get our cargo to the preserve. What we don’t need is to be detained in a Brazilian jail.”

  “Why don’t we just take off?” Luther asked. “No way they’re going to catch us in a boat.”

  “Because we have about eighty miles of fuel left,” Wolfe answered. “This is the last fuel stop before the preserve. And they may not be able to catch us, but they’ll be able to catch up with us. They know where we’re going. We don’t want to become fugitives and have the federal police after us.” Wolfe looked off in the distance for a second, then turned back to Luther. “But you might have hit on something with the boat. I’m going to try to talk him into using alternative transportation. But in case he doesn’t go for it, I want you to figure out a way to mask the hatchlings so there’s no chance of him seeing them. I’ll put him in the copilot seat, which will put him farther away from the back.”

  “What about when we get to the preserve?” Grace asked.

  “We’ll deal with that when we get there,” Wolfe said. “Right now we need to get out of here.” He pointed at the banks of the river. Both sides were now lined with curious onlookers staring at the helicopter and the police boat. “This is exactly the opposite of how I wanted to get upriver.” He turned to Grace. “You come with me.” He looked at Luther. “Put some stuff in the backseat to make it look like there’s no room. And do what you can to hide those hatchlings.”

  “The first thing you should do is open the windows so Agent Crow doesn’t gag to death,” Grace said.

  Luther started toward the helicopter. Grace followed her father over to Crow and the policemen, who were standing by the pumps. The fueling crew hovered a few feet farther away, waiting for permission to do their job.

  “Sorry about that,” Wolfe said. “Kids.”

  Crow nodded. “Do you work for Noah Blackwood?”

  Grace nearly fainted.

  “What?” Wolfe asked.

  “Noah Blackwood,” Crow said. “I ran the tail number on your helicopter, and it’s owned by Ark Enterprises. CEO, Noah Blackwood.”

  Grace waited for him to say, “And you are under arrest!” But Crow just stared at Wolfe, waiting for an explanation.

  “I don’t work for Noah Blackwood,” Wolfe said. “I borrowed his helicopter.”

  “Nice guy, this Noah Blackwood,” Crow said. “I don’t really care how you acquired the helicopter. All I’m interested in is a lift to the jaguar preserve.”

  Grace tried to hide her relief. He obviously didn’t know, or care, that the helicopter was stolen, or who Noah Blackwood was, which surprised her. She thought everyone knew Noah.

  Agent Crow looked fit despite his recent weight loss. His face and arms were deeply tanned. Instead of the dark suit and tie that were the unofficial uniform of most FBI agents, he was wearing jeans, snake-proof boots that went halfway up his calf, a light cotton shirt, and a sweat-stained baseball cap advertising one of the local beers. He had a couple of days of white stubble on his face, and there were dark circles under his brown eyes, as if he hadn’t slept, or slept very well, for a while. He was a little shorter than Wolfe, which still put him well over six feet tall.

  “What’s the FBI’s interest in the jaguar preserve?”

  Crow shook his head and smiled. “Sorry, but I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “How much do you weigh?” Wolfe asked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your weight,” Wolfe repeated, taking his Gizmo out of his pocket. “I need it to figure out our load.”

  “I’m not sure. I haven’t seen a scale in months.”

  Wolfe squinted at Crow. “Two ten? Two twenty?” He started tapping on the Gizmo. When he finished he shook his head.

  “What?” Crow asked.

  “By my calculations, if we take you on board, we’ll crash, which wouldn’t help any of us.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “Because you don’t want to take me upriver for some reason, and I suspect the reason is inside that helicopter.”

  “We’re not up to anything illegal.”

  “Then you wouldn’t mind my friends here giving the helicopter a little search.”

  “I would mind,” Wolfe said. “We’re way behind schedule, and we have perishable and fragile cargo aboard that I don’t want your friends manhandling.” He nodded toward the policemen. “Why don’t you have them take you up to the preserve?”

  “Because this is the end of the line for them. They aren’t authorized to go any farther. It could take me weeks to get there hopping little boats.”

  “Better than dying in a helicopter crash,” Wolfe said.

  “Like your sister and brother-in-law, Dr. Wolfe,” Crow said.

  Grace’s breath caught in her throat. She glanced at W
olfe. If he was surprised, there wasn’t a trace of it in his expression.

  “Their deaths have not been confirmed,” Wolfe said evenly.

  “You could do worse than having a veteran FBI agent’s help in determining what happened to them. I’ve had a lot of experience finding people.”

  “I’m sure you have,” Wolfe conceded. “But we can’t accommodate you on this flight.”

  “Too bad,” Crow said. “We’ll just have to take a look at what you’re hauling.”

  “Be my guest,” Wolfe said. “But the delay will force me to take my other offer off the table.”

  “What offer?”

  “We have a boat coming up behind us. It should be here in a few hours. I’ll have them stop and pick you up. If the boat takes longer than twenty-four hours to get you to the preserve, I’ll fly back and pick you up myself. Either way, you’ll get there.”

  “You really don’t want them checking what you have on board, do you?”

  Wolfe looked at his watch. “What I don’t want is to be delayed a second longer. It’s critical that we get these supplies upriver.”

  “What assurance do I have that you’ll do what you say?”

  Wolfe looked him in the eye. “You have my word.”

  Crow shook his head. “Sorry, Dr. Wolfe. That’s not good enough.”

  “Do you know Albert Ikes?”

  “Everybody in the FBI knows Al Ikes. He’s a legend in the intelligence community.”

  “Have you met him?”

  “Several times.”

  “Would you take his word?”

  “If he was here, yes.”

  Wolfe held his Gizmo up. “I can have him here in five seconds.”

  It took three seconds for a tired-looking Al Ikes to appear on the Gizmo screen.

  “How’s it going?” Al asked over speakerphone.

  “I’m with a friend of yours,” Wolfe said quickly, making it clear that they weren’t alone. “FBI agent Steven Crow.”

  “What’s he doing down there?”