Painful? Buchanan suddenly realized that he was feeling something. He had never expected to welcome pain, but now he did - joyously. His feet tingled. His hands seemed pricked by needles. The stitches in his knife wound began to itch. His nearly healed bullet wound throbbed. His skull felt swollen, his excruciating headache returning. These sensations didn't occur all at one time. They came separately, gradually. Each gave him hope. He knew that if he tried to move, he'd be able to, but he didn't dare. He had to keep still. He had to make sure that his limbs were fully functional. He had to wait for the ideal moment to.
'Just about now, the drug should be wearing off,' Raymond said.
A strong grip seized Buchanan's left wrist and snapped a handcuff onto it. Then the left wrist was tugged behind Buchanan's back, and with force, a handcuff was snapped onto his right wrist.
'Comfortable?' Raymond's tone suggested that he might have been speaking to a lover.
Buchanan didn't answer, continuing to pretend that he couldn't move. Meanwhile the clink and scrape of metal told him that Holly was being handcuffed as well.
The helicopter's roar diminished, the pitch of its rotor blades changing, as it settled onto the ground. The pilot shut off the controls, the blades spinning with less velocity, the turbine's roar turning into a whine.
When the hatch was opened, Buchanan expected his eyes to be assaulted by a blaze of sunlight. Instead a shadow blanketed him. A haze. He'd noticed that the sky had become less brilliantly blue as the helicopter descended, but with so much else to think about, he hadn't paid the lack of clarity much attention. Now the haze swirled into the cabin, and the odor was so acrid that he coughed reflexively. Smoke! Nearby something was on fire.
Buchanan kept coughing.
'The drug temporarily stops your saliva glands from working,' Raymond said, dragging Buchanan from the cabin, dumping him onto the ground. 'That makes your throat dry. In fact, your throat'll feel irritated for quite some time.' Raymond's tone suggested that he enjoyed the thought of Buchanan's discomfort.
Holly coughed as well, then groaned as Raymond dragged her from the cabin and dumped her next to Buchanan. Smoke drifted past them.
'Why are you burning so many trees?' Delgado sounded alarmed.
'To make as wide a perimeter as possible. To keep the natives away.'
'But won't the flames ignite the-?'
'Mr Drummond knows what he's doing. Everything's been calculated.'
Raymond kicked Buchanan's side.
Buchanan gasped, making himself sound more in pain than he was, thankful that Raymond hadn't kicked him in the side where he'd been stabbed.
'Get up,' Raymond said. 'Our men have better things to do than carry you. I know you can do it. If you don't, I'll kick you all the way to the office.'
To prove his point, Raymond kicked Buchanan again, this time harder.
Buchanan struggled to his knees, wavered, and managed to stand. His mind swirled, imitating the smoke that forced him to cough once more.
Holly staggered upright, almost falling, then gaining her balance. She looked at Buchanan in terror. He tried to communicate an expression of reassurance.
It didn't work. Raymond shoved both of them, nearly knocking them down before their momentum jerked them upright and forward. They were being herded toward a wide log building that was partially obscured by smoke.
But what captured Buchanan's attention was the welter of activity around him, workmen rushing, bulldozers and trucks laboring past, cranes lifting girders and pipes. Amid the din of machinery, Buchanan thought he heard a shot, and then he saw stone blocks scattered before him, hieroglyphs on them, obviously from ruins. Here and there, he saw the stunted remains of ancient temples. At once, as the smoke cleared temporarily, he had a brief view of a pyramid. But the pyramid wasn't ancient, and it wasn't composed of stone blocks.
This one, tall and wide, was built of steel. Buchanan had never seen anything like it. The structure was like a gigantic tripod, its legs splayed, unfamiliar reinforcements linking them. Though he'd never seen anything like it, he knew intuitively what it was, what it resembled. An oil derrick. Is that what Drummond wants down here? he wondered. But why does the derrick have such an unusual design?
At the smoke-hazed, log building, Raymond shoved the door, then thrust Buchanan and Holly through the opening.
Buchanan almost fell into the shadowy, musty interior, his eyes needing time to adjust to the dim, generator-powered, overhead light bulbs. He staggered to a halt, straightened, felt Holly stumble next to him, and found himself blinking upward at Alistair Drummond.
6
None of the photographs in the biography and the newspaper stories Buchanan had read communicated how fiercely Drummond dominated a room. Behind thick spectacles, the old man's eyes were deep in their sockets and radiated an unnerving, penetrating gaze. Even the age in his voice worked to his advantage, powerful despite its brittleness.
'Mr Buchanan,' Drummond said.
The reference was startling. How did he find out my name? Buchanan thought.
Drummond squinted, then turned his attention to Holly. 'Ms McCoy, I trust that Raymond made you comfortable on the flight. Se¤or Delgado, I'm pleased that you could join me.'
'The way it was put to me, I didn't feel I had a choice.'
'Of course, you have a choice,' Drummond said. 'You can go to jail or become the next president of Mexico. Which would you prefer?'
Raymond had shut the door after they entered. Now it was bumped open, the cacophony of the construction equipment intruding. A woman in dusty jeans and a sweaty work shirt came in, holding long tubes of thick paper that Buchanan thought might have been charts.
'Not now, God damn it,' Drummond said.
The woman looked startled. Smoke drifted behind her as she backed awkwardly from the building and shut the door.
Drummond returned his attention to Delgado. 'We're much farther along than I anticipated. By tomorrow morning, we ought to be able to start pumping. When you get back to Mexico City, I want you to make the necessary arrangements. Tell your people that everything's in place. I don't want any trouble. The payments have been made. I expect everyone to cooperate.'
'You brought me here to tell me what I already knew?'
'I brought you here to see what you sold your soul for,' Drummond said. 'It's not good to keep a distance from the price of your sins. Otherwise you might be tempted to forget the bargain you made. To remind you, I want you to see what happens to my two guests.' With a fluid motion amazing for his age, he turned toward Buchanan and Holly. 'How much do you know?'
'I found this in their camera bag,' Raymond said. He placed a video tape on a table.
'My, my,' Drummond said.
'I played it at Delgado's.'
'And?'
'The copy's a little grainy, but Delgado's performance is as enthralling as ever. It holds my attention every time,' Raymond said.
'Then you know more than you should,' Drummond told Buchanan and Holly.