Blue Gold (NUMA Files 2)

“What do you know? The Chulo national colors.”

Gamay’s eyes widened as she looked past Paul, who had his back to the forest.

“That’s not the only thing around here that’s blue and white.”

Paul turned and saw about twenty Chulo Indians emerge from the trees, their faces and bodies painted the colors of sky and

bone. He cursed himself for allowing the plane’s discovery to push caution aside. As silently as the ghosts they were reputed to be, the Indians surrounded them. There was no way to run. Paul and Gamay were completely boxed in.

The Indians advanced with their spears held high, but then they did a peculiar thing. They opened the circle. One Indian indicated with his spear that they were to go through the opening. The Trouts glanced at each other for mutual reassurance, then, with the silent Indians flanking them like a military honor guard, they marched from the shrine and followed the path along the river.

The path widened into a road that took them to a stockade palisade. They made their way toward a gate wide enough to drive a truck through. From a distance they had seen on either side of the gate tall wooden staffs that had knobs on the top like flagpoles. As they neared the entrance Gamay squeezed her husband’s hand even tighter.

“Paul, look,” she said.

He followed her gaze. “Oh, hell.”

The knobs were in fact human heads. Their faces had been baked brown like apples in the sun, and the birds and insects had been making inroads, but it was still possible to pick out Dieter’s features. He wasn’t smiling. Neither was Arnaud or his taciturn assistant, Carlo. The fourth head belonged to their Indian henchman. Trout recognized him by the New York Yankees baseball cap.

Then they were through the gates, past the grisly decorations. Behind the fence were several dozen long thatched huts clustered along the river. No women or children were visible. Their guards had lowered their spears and unstrung their arrows and were using the presence of their bodies to keep the Trouts from trying anything foolish.

Paul said, “Look at that water wheel. We have them like that in New England.”

Water had been diverted from the river and was flowing through wooden chutes to turn a wheel. They didn’t get the chance for a closer look. Their guards directed them toward a structure at the center of the settlement. It was four times bigger than any of the surrounding huts, and the walls were made of putty-colored clay rather than saplings. They stopped in front of a portal that looked like a large, gaping mouth. Hung over the entrance was the bladed fan from a jet engine. The Indians closed ranks behind them, put their weapons aside, and kneeled with their noses touching the earth.

“Now what?” Gamay said with astonishment at the sudden submissiveness of the fierce Indians.

“I wouldn’t advise running for it. We wouldn’t get ten feet before they nailed us. My guess is they want us to go in. After you, madame.”

“We’ll go in together.”

They walked hand-in-hand through the doorway into the dim interior. They passed through two smaller rooms, then into a large space. At the far end of the hut, visible in a shaft of light coming through a hole cut in the roof, was a seated figure. The figure raised its arm and beckoned for them to approach. They moved ahead slowly. The floor was made of wood, not dirt like the huts they had been in before.

The figure sat on a throne made of what looked like an airplane seat. With the exception of two tanned and shapely legs, most of the body was hidden behind a blue-and-white oval mask that could have come out of a nightmare. It was painted with huge eyes and a wide mouth with sharp-pointed shark’s teeth. The Trouts stood nervously in front of the bizarre figure, not knowing what to do. Then two hands came from behind the mask and lifted it off.

“Whew, this thing is hot,” the beautiful woman behind the ugly mask said in English. She set the mask aside, cocked her head at Paul, then at Gamay.

“The Drs. Trout, I presume?”

Gamay was the first to speak through their astonishment. “How do you know our names?”

“We white goddesses see all and know all.” She laughed when she saw the puzzlement deepen even more. “I’m a poor host, teasing my guests.”

She smiled and clapped her hands lightly. The Trouts were in for another surprise. The beaded curtains behind the throne parted with a rustle, and Dieter’s wife, Tessa, stepped out.

15

THE LAW OFFICE of Francis Xavier Hanley was on the twelfth floor of a blue glass tower that looked out onto San Diego Harbor. Austin and Zavala stepped from the elevator into the office lobby and gave the attractive young receptionist their names. She punched a button on her intercom and after a murmured conversation smiled brightly and told them to go right in. A ruddy-faced man with the body of a nightclub bouncer gone to flab greeted them at the door. He introduced himself as Hanley and ushered them to a pair of Empire-style chairs. Settling his bulk behind a large mahogany desk, he leaned back in his plush swivel chair, tented his fingertips, and contemplated the two men like a wolf drooling over a pair of staked goats.

After crossing back from Tijuana, Austin had called Hanley’s office and asked for an appointment. He spread his story on as thick as peanut butter, saying he and his partner “had made a few mil” in the market and wanted a place to spend it. They got an immediate meeting. The predatory gleam in the lawyer’s pale green eyes suggested that the bait had done its job well. He looked from one man to the other. “I believe in getting right down to business,” he purred. “You said on the phone that you’re interested in foreign investment.”

“We’re primarily interested in Mexico,” Zavala explained.

The attorney wore an expensive sharkskin gray suit and had enough gold and diamonds on his fleshy hands to sink the Titanic. All the tailors in the world couldn’t hide the brawler’s body, and no amount of jewelry could have obscured the coarseness ingrained in his every word and move. The NUMA men were dressed in jeans, T-shirts, and windbreakers. It was a studied casualness. In California, the only ones who look like millionaires are those who aren’t.

Hanley took in Zavala’s Latin American looks. “You’ve come to the right place,” he said expansively. He smiled in an attempt to exert charm, but the V-shaped mouth in the fleshy face made him look like a fat vulture. “Did you have a specific area in mind?”

“We like tortillas,” Austin said with a straight face.