As Verhoven finished the conversation, Hawker tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to one of the walls, holding the flare up to give him more light.
The central part of the left wall appeared to be made of stone. It was covered in lumpy chunks of mud, but even in the flickering light, a large face could be seen beneath that mud. A face carved in the stone. Around it were other marks, hieroglyphics that looked remarkably similar to those Danielle had showed him.
As they studied it, the rescue party arrived and dropped down a rope. Hawker and Verhoven climbed out and the group shined their lights into the pit. Danielle nodded her approval. “We’ll show McCarter in the morning,” she said.
Weary and covered in muck, Verhoven began his walk back to the camp, ignoring the questions about what had happened and glad that the ridiculous situation was over.
Before he’d gone ten paces Hawker spoke, stopping him in his tracks.
“Where is it?” Hawker asked.
“Where’s what?” Danielle replied.
Hawker’s voice rang with suspicion. “Verhoven’s monkey.”
Danielle, and the men who’d helped with the rescue, only seemed more confused, but Verhoven understood. He looked around. There was no monkey carcass, no blood on the ground or a trail to indicate that something else had dragged it off into the woods. No sign of the thing he’d blasted.
“There was a monkey in the pit,” Verhoven explained. “I shot at the bugger as he went over the top of the wall. Looks like I missed.”
The others seemed to accept that and appeared un-worried, but Hawker’s stare was unrelenting, his suspicious nature locked on to the latest small thing that seemed out of order. Verhoven met his eyes and then scanned the forest around them again.
Both of them knew he didn’t miss.
CHAPTER 16
Richard Kaufman glanced around the confines of the small hospital room. The walls were covered in a muted green. A pair of ancient beds, complete with rusting iron frames and tall IV stands, sat opposite and parallel each other, while a wilting, forgotten plant spread its thin arms in a corner near the window.
He waited there as a nurse helped the room’s sole patient return from a trip to the communal rest room. The man entered, struggling with a crutch under each arm.
Stooped but still over six feet tall, the man was broad-shouldered, thin and bony, appearing almost emaciated. A ragged nest of tangled dark hair sat on his head, while dark circles hung from his eyes and his skin looked a sickly color. He reminded Kaufman of a house that had caught fire but remained standing: hollowed out, discolored and lifeless.
A look of surprise appeared on his face as he studied Kaufman. “You’re not a doctor,” he guessed.
“I would have thought you’d seen enough of doctors.” Kaufman replied.
The man nodded slowly, then hobbled to a new position with a smile covering his ragged face. “Yeah, I have,” he said. “Which means you must be Helios.”
“That’s right,” Kaufman replied, sarcastically. “I’m the Greek god of the sun, and I spend my time visiting patients in small hospital rooms.” He stood. “The real question is who you are and how you came to know about Helios, considering that you can’t remember your own name.”
The man tried to smile, but it seemed to cause him pain and he quickly gave up. “Give me a second. I’ll explain.”
He crossed the room, struggling with the crutches in the narrow space. He reached one of the beds and leaned the crutches against the wall. When they started to slide, he grabbed them and slammed them back into place. Anger and bitterness, Kaufman thought. Here was a man who hated his current predicament. Then again, who wouldn’t?
The patient looked up at Kaufman, his legs sticking out beyond the hem of the gown; one leg was white, the other a dark tan color.
Noticing Kaufman’s gaze, the man explained. “They took it off,” he said. “Didn’t even ask me. Just took it off and gave me this one to replace it.” He glanced down at the dark prosthetic. “I guess there aren’t too many light-skinned Caucasians in these parts, so the legs all look like this, and in the end, they just give you what fits.”
“You were going to explain some things,” Kaufman said. “Let’s start with Helios.”
“Right,” the man replied. “But first I have something you might want to see.” With great effort he retrieved a small backpack from beside the bed, rummaged through it and then tossed something to Kaufman.
Kaufman studied it: a hexagonal crystal resembling those the NRI had been examining; the erstwhile Martin’s crystals. The meeting’s importance grew.
“Interested in talking?” the patient asked.
Kaufman closed the door. “Who are you?”
“I’m Jack Dixon,” the man replied.
Kaufman had seen photos of the NRI’s team, including Dixon, and he now recognized the man, a shell of his former self, perhaps fifty pounds lighter, not including the leg.
“The NRI is looking for you,” Kaufman noted. “Not interested in getting in touch with them, for some reason?”
“Not particularly,” Dixon said. “Not if I can do better.”
“What makes you think I can help you with that?” Kaufman asked.
“Because a two-faced son of a bitch stole something from me,” Dixon said. “Stole what we were fucking dying for out there.” The burst of anger seemed to come from nowhere. “My guess is he did it for you.”
As Dixon paused to calm himself, Kaufman considered what he’d said. Futrex had two moles within the NRI. Out of prudence, he’d tried to split them up, and as luck had taken its course, one had ended up on the current field team while the other had joined Dixon on the first effort.
When the NRI had stopped receiving reports from Dixon’s field team, Kaufman had taken it as a good sign, thinking his man had made some type of move. From Dixon’s comment, it was apparent that he’d done so, only something had gone wrong. There had been no radio call requesting extraction, no communication of any kind, and for several weeks no sign of either Kaufman’s mole or the NRI team.
“You caught him,” Kaufman guessed.
“No,” Dixon said bluntly. “But something else did. The natives skewered that son of a bitch and then let some animal feed on him. When I found him he was missing half his body, but he still had his pack. He had that crystal and some other items. He also had a piece of paper tucked into his ID packet with a list of frequencies on it, and the word ‘Helios’ circled a few times.”
Dixon paused to scratch carefully at one of the sores on his face. “The thing is, no one in my unit touched the radio except me. And Helios … not our code word. Sounded more like a buyer or a corporation. Some big shot waiting for delivery. Maybe a Greek god among men.” He nodded toward Kaufman. “So what do you think, big shot? You still want to buy?”
Kaufman listened to the man’s words, their abrasive quality seemed false, a forced effort as the man’s voice wavered ever so slightly. Kaufman wondered what he was hiding.
“Maybe,” Kaufman said. “First I need to know a few things, beginning with what happened out there.”
Dixon went quiet for a moment. He gazed at the floor before looking back at Kaufman. “I took eight men out into the jungle,” he said finally. “And I left all eight of them behind, dead,” he said. “Most of them ripped to shreds by some animal we never saw.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We were the rover party, our job was to cover a lot of ground, talk to the locals and categorize what we found. Sinkholes, caves, anything that might have once been a stone structure. For the first three months we didn’t find anything that wasn’t just shit. But then we hired on these two native guides, and after jerking us around for a week, they got all liquored up and told us about this place no one was supposed to go. To go there was death, they said, but for enough whiskey and the promise of a couple of rifles, they told us how to find it. And so we did. A big-ass temple, just sitting there out in the middle of nowhere. We cracked it open and I found that crystal in there, along with some metallic-looking stones, the kind that set off a Geiger counter, if you get my drift. And just then everything started going straight to hell.”