Hunt at the Well of Eternity (14 page)

Escalante and Tomás wore blank expressions. They had been listening to Mariella’s story, too, and clearly didn’t know what to make of it, but also weren’t inclined to get in between the two women.

Cierra looked back and forth between Gabriel and Mariella and said, “You’re both insane.”

“What’s so insane about it?” Gabriel said. “When people came from Europe to America at the turn of the last century, their lifespans increased, and their children’s even more. Why? Diet, among other reasons. Surely you’re not doubting that there are things you can swallow that make you healthier or live longer—I’m sure you’ve visited a pharmacy or two in your day.”

“Longer, sure. But not centuries.”

“Why not? There’s research going on right now into extending human lifespan—mitochondrial research, telomeric research, and don’t ask me what any of that means because I don’t know, but I do know we’ve funded some of it and Michael’s convinced it’s not quackery. Not all of it anyway.”

“That’s sophisticated genetic engineering,” Cierra said stubbornly, “not drinking water from a well.”

“Sometimes,” Escalante said, clearing his throat first, “the oldest ways turn out to be the best.”

“No. No—I will not accept a fairy tale about people living hundreds of years!”

“All right,” Gabriel said. “You don’t have to. All you have to accept is that other people have accepted it—starting with Mariella here and ending with Esparza out there somewhere in the jungle with his machine guns. Even if it’s all myth and no substance, there are men willing to kill over it. Men who
have
killed over it. Men who have tried to kill us.”

That silenced Cierra’s objections.

Gabriel turned back to Mariella. “So you’re saying that this Well of Eternity was the great secret beyond the mountains that General Fargo was looking for, the one he thought would help him restore the Confederacy. And I imagine it would have. Face it, if he possessed the secret of eternal youth, he could have gotten the backing of any nation on Earth. And you’re saying he did possess it. So why didn’t he carry out the rest of his plan?”

“It took us months to find the Well. They were not easy months, and they opened his eyes to a great many things. When we got here, he’d begun having second thoughts, and after he’d stayed a while…his plans changed. He no longer wanted to reignite a war. He no longer wanted hatred to divide his homeland.” She smiled. “And as he likes to say, he was selfish. He had found paradise, and he had no desire to leave.”

“Then why send you to New York now?”

“Word had somehow gotten out; rumors were starting to spread once more. We’d had more than one persis tent explorer come close to discovering us—more in the past two years than in the prior twenty. These were people who would have stolen the secret for themselves; people who would have destroyed everything we had built. We could fight off one, two, perhaps more—but eventually would come the one we couldn’t fight, and then what would become of the Well?

“Granville believes that the answer is not more secrecy but, at long last, openness. That the scientists in your employ could have the water analyzed to see if it might be possible to determine what gives it its remarkable powers. If it could be duplicated, then the Hunt Foundation could perhaps administer a program to make the water available to all nations—and could also protect the source, so that our life in Cuchatlán could continue undisturbed. I was to give the sample of the water to your brother for that reason; I brought the flag with me to help convince him of the truth of my story.”

“Michael can be a skeptical little rascal, all right,” Gabriel said with a smile.

“Perhaps he’s simply not as gullible as his brother?” Cierra suggested.

Gabriel didn’t take offense at her tone. She was a scientist, after all. And she hadn’t seen some of the things he had.

Gabriel tugged at his earlobe as he thought about what Mariella had told them. After a moment he said, “Why did Esparza send Podnemovitch and his men to stop you from handing over the water and the flag to Michael? How did he even find out all this in the first place?”

A pained look passed over Mariella’s face. “The people of Cuchatlán were betrayed,” she said. “One of our representatives who went into the outside world to gather news decided to try to make himself rich by selling our secret. He found out that Esparza has fundedresearch into prolonging human life—perhaps you and he have even funded some of the same undertakings. And this man, Hector, thought that Esparza would be a likely buyer. Unfortunately for Hector, he did not know how truly ruthless Esparza is.”

“He told Esparza the whole story?”

Mariella shook her head. “Not at first. He realized that if he told Esparza everything he knew, Esparza would have no reason to keep him alive. Hector only told him enough to pique his interest—and then fled south and hid. Esparza sent one group of men to search for him while another investigated the partial story he had been told.”

“That must’ve been when he and Podnemovitch went to Florida,” Gabriel said.

Mariella continued, “Unfortunately, one of the things Hector
had
told Esparza was that Granville planned to send me to New York with the water sample and the flag. I reached New York before Esparza’s men could stop me, but Podnemovitch followed my trail and as you know he made it to the Museum in time to intercept me.”

“Podnemovitch didn’t get the water or the flag, but he got
you
,” Gabriel said. “And he saw the bottle destroyed, the water lost. He must have figured we weren’t likely to make sense of the markings on the flag—but just to be safe, Esparza left Podnemovitch behind to make sure we didn’t interfere with his plans.” Gabriel grinned. “Which shows he doesn’t know me very well. I’m not so easy to kill—and when anyone tries, it makes me curious to find out why.”

Escalante said, “Does trouble always follow you so diligently,
amigo?
”

Gabriel chuckled. “Not always. Just most of the time.” He turned back to Mariella and asked, “How does Esparza know where he’s going now, if you didn’t tell him? We know he doesn’t have the flag.”

“His men finally located Hector and brought him back.” Her face darkened with anger. “This time he told Esparza everything he knows. Esparza gave him no choice. He beat it out of him. I saw some of it. It was truly terrible.

“He’s keeping Hector alive in case he needs any more information from him, although I don’t know what else Hector could tell him. We were prisoners for a time in the same cell, and then later the same truck. That’s how I learned about his involvement in this affair. He confessed to me one night, half boasting, half begging for forgiveness. I told him I’d never forgive him, that none of us would. That his folly had doomed us all. He still seemed to harbor notions, even after everything he’d gone through, that Esparza might let him live, might even reward him. It’s madness.” Mariella leaned back, sipped from one of the canteens. “Does that answer all your questions, Señor Hunt?”

“For now,” Gabriel said.

“And do you believe me?”

“I believe you believe. As for me…I guess you could say I’m reserving judgment.”

Cierra snorted. Mariella gave her an icy glance and then said, “You will all see the truth for yourselves when we reach Cuchatlán.”

The fire had burned low, and shadows filled the cavelike area. The faint light from the flames was a reddish gold glow burnishing the faces of Mariella and Cierra and the two men. It made the men look older, Gabriel thought, but the women—it made them both look more beautiful, if such a thing was possible.

He had heard some astonishing things tonight—things most people would scoff at or dismiss. Cierra clearly felt that way. And maybe she was right.

But maybe she wasn’t.

Certainly Esparza thought she wasn’t.

Either way, it was as Mariella had said: The truth was waiting for them, somewhere out there in the night, in the lost valley of the Mayas.

When Gabriel woke in the morning, his muscles were stiff from sleeping on the floor of the cave, which had only a thin layer of sand over hard rock. He stirred a little and became aware that there was soft warmth pressing against both sides of his body. He had gone to sleep between Cierra and Mariella, and as he opened his eyes he saw that Cierra had shifted so that she was snuggled up next to him with her back to his chest. Mariella must have moved around some during her sleep, too, because she was pressed against him from behind, with an arm draped over his hip.

Gabriel couldn’t help but grin as he lay there between the two women. On the other side of the cave, Escalante and Tomás were shivering under their coats. He could almost hear his brother’s voice in his head:
Only you, Gabriel, could find yourself stuck in a cave on the side of a Guatemalan mountain and still wind up spending the night between a pair of beautiful women.

Of course, one of those women was well over a hundred years old, Gabriel reminded himself, and a married woman to boot. That is, if Mariella’s story was true.

He moved a little more and that woke up Cierra, who let out a soft groan as she stretched. Then she seemed to become aware that she was spooning with Gabriel and pulled away slightly as if she were embarrassed. She looked around, saw Mariella cuddled against Gabriel from behind.

“She didn’t waste any time, did she?”

“Hey, she’s an old married lady,” he said. “Really old.”

“Doesn’t seem to have bothered you.”

Mariella’s hand, meanwhile, lifted from his hip, curled into a fist, and punched him on the shoulder, showing that she was awake and had heard what he’d said.

“Years don’t matter in Cuchatlán,” she said. “And don’t flatter yourself, Señor Hunt.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” Gabriel said as he sat up.

Escalante grinned at him. “You slept well, Señor Hunt?”

“I always sleep well. The trouble starts when you wake up.” Gabriel got to his feet and stretched, working some of the kinks out of his muscles. He would have helped Cierra and Mariella up as well, but neither of them seemed interested in his help. They were too busy glaring at each other and at him.

“Any sign of Esparza and his men?” Gabriel asked as he went over to join Escalante and Tomás.

Escalante shook his head. “I thought I heard the sound of his trucks far in the distance a while ago, but I could not be sure.”

“If he’s still in the trucks, he won’t be able to go much farther in them,” Mariella said. “The trail isn’t wide enough for them, and then there’s the Blade of the Gods to consider.”

“What’s that?” Gabriel asked.

“A gorge that borders the valley on the west. It’s narrow and very deep, as if someone had drawn a giant knife through the earth. On the eastern side of the valley, the mountains are impassable. Those two barriers are why Cuchatlán is so isolated, and why it has remained so for all these years.”

“How do you get across this gorge?”

“There is a rope bridge. It will support men and even pack animals, but not trucks.”

Gabriel nodded. This was a primitive land where they were going, but not a primitive people, he reminded himself. They knew quite a bit about the outside world in Cuchatlán, enough so that Mariella had been able to travel to New York City and function just fine. The gown she had worn that night at the Met, while presumably handsewn, could have passed for the height of current style. Hell, it
had
passed.

“What about between here and there?”

“There are several trails. I can guess which ones Hector is likely to show Esparza. We will take a different path, one that is shorter. And we can move faster, since our group is smaller.”

Gabriel nodded. “We’d better get started. We don’t want to blow what ever advantage we’ve got.”

They made a quick breakfast on the provisions that had been left in the cave, then set out. Mariella led them along the ledge as it twisted downward, and soon they were back in the thick, junglelike forest. She took Escalante’s machete and used it to chop away the vines that clogged the narrow path. This was some sort of game trail, Gabriel thought, and it took a considerable amount of work to widen it enough for them to use it. Mariella’s fatigue shirt was dark with sweat and torn in several places by thorns that had caught it, but when he offered to spell her with the machete, she shook her head.

“No offense, Señor Hunt, but you would soon lose the path. I know where I’m going.”

Unlike the cool, clear air where they had spent the night on the side of the mountain, down here the atmosphere was thick and muggy, and mosquitoes and other insects buzzed and whined around their heads. Once Mariella held up her hand in a signal for the others to stop, and they stood there silent and motionless as a snake twenty feet long and as big around as a man’s leg slithered across the trail in front of them. Another time Mariella halted the group with the whispered warning,
“Tigre!”
and they waited nervously, listening to the nearby rustling in the brush, until the jaguar moved on.

All five of them were drenched in sweat by the time they trekked through another pass and then climbed down a steep slope, clinging to vines to keep their balance as they did so. “The Blade of the Gods is not far now,” Mariella said as they paused to rest for a moment. “We will be in Cuchatlán in less than an hour.”

That couldn’t come soon enough to satisfy Gabriel, and the others were showing signs of impatience as well.

The jungle remained nearly impenetrable, right up to the point where it suddenly thinned out and they stepped onto a grassy verge about ten yards wide. After that, the ground dropped away into the yawning nothingness of the chasm Mariella had spoken of. The Blade of the Gods was a good name for it. Fifty yards wide, evidently hundreds of feet deep, its sides were perfectly sheer and dropped straight down. The chasm ran perfectly straight as well, due north and south as far as Gabriel could tell. It vanished in both directions, extending farther than the eye could see.

Mariella’s knowledge and instincts had led them unerringly to the only spot where they could cross the chasm. A four-foot-wide bridge made of thick ropes and rough-hewn planks extended across the giant slash in the earth. Cierra muttered,
“Dios mio,”
when she saw it, and when Gabriel glanced over at her he saw the fear in her eyes. Even Escalante and Tomás, hardened though they were, looked a little nervous at the prospect of crossing that sagging span. A breeze drifted along the gorge and, at its touch, the bridge swayed back and forth.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Mariella said. “I’ve crossed it many times. Many of us who live in Cuchatlán have.” She gave Cierra a slightly superior look. “If you’re worried about it, I’ll go first, so you can see how it’s done.”

“That’s not necessary,” Cierra replied with a defiant toss of her head, though her eyes still showed her ambivalence. “But will it hold all five of us?”

Mariella gestured toward the ropes that were attached to the sturdy pair of posts anchoring each end of the bridge. Those ropes were each as thick as a man’s wrist. “The bridge will support all of us without any problem. I’ve seen fully loaded pack mules go across it.”

“Let’s go, then,” Gabriel said. He was ready to see this so-called lost city of the Mayas for himself, and wanted to have as much time there before Esparza showed up as possible.

Mariella stepped out onto the bridge. The planks had gaps of several inches between them. She moved carefully but confidently, holding the machete in her left hand and the bridge’s guide rope with her right. There was no guide rope on the left, only open air.

The bridge sagged even more under her weight. Gabriel saw the ropes attached to the anchor posts tighten around the wood.

“I’ll go next,” he said. “Cierra, you follow me.” Escalante and Tomás could bring up the rear, Gabriel didn’t care in which order.

Despite his generally steady nerves, he felt a tightening in his belly as he stepped out onto the span. The gaps between the planks gave him a very good view of the hundreds of feet of empty air underneath him. The gorge was a good four hundred feet deep. At the bottom of it ran a stream that appeared to be nothing more than a thread of silver from this height.

Mariella was four planks ahead of him. She glanced back over her shoulder and called, “Are you doing all right?”

“Fine,” Gabriel replied. “No problem.” He moved to the next plank and paused to look back at Cierra. “Come on. It’ll be fine. Just hang on tight to the guide rope and don’t look down.”

Cierra swallowed hard and said, “I think you can count on that, Gabriel.” She moved onto the first plank. She’d reached out and grasped the rope with her right hand before she stepped onto the rough board. It was clear that heights bothered her a great deal. Still, determination was etched on her face as well as fear. She stepped out with her left foot, rested it solidly on the next plank, and moved her right foot to join it.

Slowly, they worked their way out onto the bridge. Escalante and Tomás followed Cierra. Soon, all five of them were above the deep gorge. The ropes had sagged so much that their heads were below the level of the cliff on the far side.

This would be a heck of a place for a trap, Gabriel thought.

As if reading his thoughts, Mariella turned to look back at Gabriel and smiled in encouragement.

That smile disappeared abruptly, to be replaced by a look of shock and horror. Gabriel jerked his head around, knowing that Mariella had seen something behind them.

Alexei Podnemovitch had stepped out of the jungle at the western end of the bridge. He no longer wore the sling for his injured arm and shoulder but had a gun in that hand instead. Podnemovitch leveled the revolver at Gabriel and the others and said, “Not another step, Hunt.”