Amazonia

Louis unfolded the slip and read the name, printed neatly: St. Savin Biochimique Compagnie. A French drug company. He refolded the paper and tucked it into his breast pocket. “I’ll take the call.”

“There is a private salon—”

“I know where it is,” Louis said. He had taken many of his business calls down here.

With the concierge in tow, Louis strode to the small cubicle beside the hotel’s front desk. He left the man at the door and sat in the small upholstered chair that smelled of mold and a mélange of old cologne and sweat. Louis settled to the seat and picked up the phone’s receiver. “Dr. Louis Favre,” he said crisply.

“Bonjour, Dr. Favre,” a voice spoke on the other end of the line. “We have a request for your services.”

“If you have this number, then I assume you know my pricing schedule.”

“We do.”

“And may I ask what class of service you require?”

“Première.”

The single word caused Louis’s fingers to tighten on the receiver. First class. It meant a payment over six figures. “Location?”

“The Brazilian rain forest.”

“And the objective?”

The man spoke rapidly. Louis listened without taking notes. Each number was fixed in his mind, as was each name, especially one. Louis’s eyes narrowed. He sat up straighter. The man finished, “The U.S. team must be tracked and whatever they discover must be obtained.”

“And the other team?”

There was no answer, just the static of the other line.

“I understand and accept,” Louis said. “I’ll need to see half the fee in my usual account by close of business tomorrow. Furthermore, any and all details of the U.S. team and its resources should be faxed to my private line as soon as possible.” He gave the number quickly.

“It will be done within the hour.”

“Très bon.”

The line clicked dead, the business settled.

Louis slowly replaced the receiver in its cradle and sat back. The thoughts of the money and the thousand details in setting up his own team were pushed back for now. At this moment, one name shone like burning magnesium across his mind’s eye. His new employer had glossed over it, unaware of the significance. If he had been, St. Savin’s offer probably would have been considerably less. In fact, Louis would have taken this job for the cost of a cheap bottle of wine. He whispered the name now, tasting it on his tongue.

“Carl Rand.”

Seven years ago, Louis Favre had been a biologist employed by the Base Biologique Nationale de Recherches, the premier French science foundation. With a specialty in rain forest ecosystems, Louis had worked throughout the world: Australia, Borneo, Madagascar, the Congo. But for fifteen years, his specialty had been the Amazon rain forest. He had journeyed throughout the region, establishing an international reputation.

That is, until he ran into the damnable Dr. Carl Rand.

The American pharmaceutical entrepreneur had found Louis’s methods of research to be a bit suspect, after stumbling upon Louis’s interrogation of a local shaman. Dr. Rand had not believed cutting off the man’s fingers, one by one, had been a viable way of gleaning information from the stubborn Indian, and no amount of money would convince the simpering American otherwise. Of course, the pile of endangered black caiman carcasses and jaguar pelts found in the village had not helped matters. Dr. Rand seemed incapable of understanding that supplementing one’s work with black market income was simply a lifestyle choice.

Unfortunately, Carl and his Brazilian forces had outnumbered his own team. Louis Favre was captured and incarcerated by the Brazilian army. Luckily, he had connections in France and enough money to ply the palms of a few corrupt Brazilian officials in order to slip away with no more than a slap on the wrist.

However, it was the figurative slap to his face that had stung worse. The incident had blackened his good name beyond repair. Penniless, he was forced to flee Brazil for French Guiana. There, always resourceful and with previous contacts in the black market, he scrounged together a mercenary jungle force. During the past five years, his group had protected drug shipments from Colombia, hunted down various rare and endangered animals for private collectors, eliminated a troublesome Brazilian government regulator for a gold-mining operation, even wiped out a small peasant village whose inhabitants objected to a logging company’s intrusion onto their lands. It was good business all around.

And now this latest offer: to track a U.S. military team through the jungle as they searched for Carl Rand’s lost expedition and steal whatever they discovered. All in order to be the first one to obtain some regenerative compound believed to have been discovered by Rand’s group.

Such a request was not unusual. In the past few years, the race for new rain forest drugs had become more and more frantic, a multibillion-dollar industry. The search for “green gold,” the next new wonder drug, had spurred a new “gold rush” here in the Amazon. And in the trackless depths of the forest, where millions of dollars were cast into an economy of dirt-poor farmers and un-schooled Indians, betrayals and atrocities were committed daily. There were no spying eyes and no one to tell tales. Each year, the jungle alone consumed thousands from disease, from attack, from injuries. What were a few more—a biologist, an ethnobotanist, a drug researcher?

It was a financial free-for-all.

And Louis Favre was about to join the game, championed by a French pharmaceutical company. Smiling, he stood up. He had been delighted when he heard about Carl Rand’s disappearance four years ago. He had gotten drunk that night, toasting the man’s misfortune. Now he would pound the final nail in the bastard’s coffin by stealing whatever the man had discovered and laying more lives upon his grave.

Unlocking the salon’s door, Louis stepped out.

“I hope everything was satisfactory, Dr. Favre,” the concierge called politely from his desk.

“Most satisfactory, Claude,” he said with a nod. “Most satisfactory indeed.” Louis crossed to the hotel’s small elevator, an antique cell of wrought iron and wood. It hardly fit two people. He pressed the button for the sixth floor, where his apartment suite lay. He was anxious to share the news.

The elevator clanked, groaned, and sighed its way up to his floor. Once the door was open, Louis hurried down the narrow hall to the farthest room. Like a handful of other guests who had taken up permanent residence in the Hotel Seine, Louis had a suite of rooms: two bedrooms, a cramped kitchen, a broad sitting room with doors that opened upon a wrought-iron balcony, and even a small study lined with bookshelves. The suite was not elaborate, but it suited his needs. The staff was discreet and well accustomed to the eccentricities of the guests.