That afternoon the elder reappeared and sat near Drake for another sign discussion. At the end of it, he offered Drake a small depiction of a jaguar head, carved out of a piece of bone and suspended on a leather lanyard. Drake noted that the carving was surprisingly detailed, and the old man slipped the leather cord over Drake’s head. He patted Drake’s chest and flexed one of his scrawny biceps, and Drake understood — the amulet would make him strong. Next, he gestured at Drake and shrugged his shoulders, then pointed at the surrounding jungle. Drake didn’t need an interpreter to understand the question: What the hell are you doing out here?
Drake pointed at his knife, then at himself, and then did his best charades version of searching for something. The old man nodded.
Drake then pantomimed structures, and when the old man didn’t understand, Drake scratched out an illustration on the dirt floor — his feeble attempt at a city. The man sat staring at it for some time before nodding and pointing to the depiction and then off into the jungle. Drake felt a thrill of hope. Jack had told him his father had been excited after saving the girl, but also tight-lipped about why, other than to say that he felt that they were close. Was it possible that this ancient shaman held the final clue?
He held his breath as the man extended his hand and called to his daughter, who went into the cloudburst and returned moments later with a short stick. The elder brushed away the depiction of structures and drew a snaking line, and then a passable illustration of a waterfall. Then another waterfall a few inches away from the first, and a circle between the two with a crude recreation of Drake’s buildings. Satisfied with his handiwork, he sat back, pointed at the second waterfall and then at Drake. Drake shook his head, not getting it. The old man drew a stick figure in the waterfall and gestured at Drake.
Understanding flashed across Drake’s face and he whispered to himself, “That’s the waterfall where I fell? Then…Paititi is between these two waterfalls, down a different river…?”
Drake’s breathing accelerated as he pointed to the first waterfall and shrugged his shoulders, signaling, “Where?”
The old man sighed and stood, then pointed at the young woman, then at the waterfalls. His meaning was clear.
His daughter would show him the way.
Gus stared at the phone as though he was holding a steaming handful of dung and struggled to maintain his composure.
“I thought I was clear. Failure on this is not an option.”
“Yes, sir, you were. But we haven’t been able to pick up their trail, and the guide says at this point he’s not going to be able to.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Agreed. But I’m not sure that staying out here is going to accomplish much after almost a week. And we’ve already run across some drug traffickers we had to neutralize in self-defense, so we’re leaving tracks.”
Gus sighed. “Keep at it. Try not to kill everyone in the area, though. We really don’t want to have to answer difficult questions from the Peruvians.”
“We’ll do our best. This is just to warn you that the trail has gone cold.”
“I don’t want to have to report that to the director.”
“Understood.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Vadim swallowed another antibiotic pill with boiled water and tested his weight on his leg. One of the rounds exchanged during the raid on their camp had hit the exterior of his left thigh, and while the wound wasn’t life-threatening, it was certainly painful enough, although mending. His leg twinged when he walked, but was much improved, and while he wouldn’t be playing soccer anytime soon, he was ambulatory.
Sasha looked up from his position under a tall tree as Awa, one of their native guides, stepped into the camp. He shook his head as he approached, toting his Kalashnikov in one hand with a walking stick in the other — good for probing the ground in front of him while moving through the jungle to ensure he didn’t step on a surly snake.
“No sign of him,” Awa said in barely understandable English.
“What do you make of that?” Sasha asked, looking at Vadim.
When they’d caught up to the trio, Awa’s tracking ability having proved invaluable, the three were now two, camped beside a waterfall, with the Ramsey boy nowhere to be seen. At first they’d believed he was out exploring, but after watching the site in shifts, they realized that wasn’t the case. The remaining man, whom they didn’t recognize, and the girl left the camp every morning to root around in the jungle, presumably looking for Paititi, but Drake had yet to reappear.
And Vadim had no interest in the pair beyond their ability to lead him to Ramsey.
“This I do not understand, Sasha: why would he go off on his own? That makes no sense.”
“Perhaps he met with some kind of misfortune?” Sasha suggested.
“Anything is possible in this hellhole, but you had better pray his good fortune still remains. The Ramsey boy is the only connection to the journal, and if it was all in his head, we have a big problem if he fails to materialize. This is a big jungle, and he was our best chance. Without him, we could spend ten lifetimes looking for the city and never find it.”
Sasha knew better than to continue the discussion. When Vadim became enraged, he could lash out unpredictably, as they’d discovered twenty years earlier when the older Ramsey had steadfastly refused to share his knowledge. Sasha could still remember it like it was yesterday. Ramsey had been beaten and burned with cigarettes, and through it all, had remained silent, refusing to reward them with even a word. When he had spoken, it had been to utter a Russian curse involving Vadim’s mother and her son, and he’d punctuated it by spitting a bloody tooth in Vadim’s face.
Sasha had tried to stop Vadim, but by the time he’d reached him, it had been too late. The point-blank shot to Ramsey’s head killed him instantly.
Sasha had also seen that brutal streak when they’d been in the gulag together in Siberia. Any prisoner who crossed him would be in mortal danger, and more than one body had been found over the years, stabbed dozens of times, frozen in the snow. Vadim was wildly bright, but as with so many who had served in the KGB on its secret wet teams, unbalanced; his anger could flare to the surface without warning, with deadly consequences.
Vadim took several cautious steps toward the stream they’d camped beside and stared into the underbrush, as though the plants held a solution to the quandary he faced. When he returned, sweat beading down his unshaven face, his mood had darkened further. He glowered at Awa and barked an order.
“We continue watching and waiting. We have no choice. They are our only option.”
“Maybe we should take them and interrogate them,” Sasha said.
“If we do that, we lose the chance to catch Ramsey. No, for now, we wait.”
Sasha waved off an ever-present mosquito and nodded with an enthusiasm he didn’t feel. He despised the infernal jungle, with its never-ending parade of poisonous insects, deadly reptiles, diseases, heat, and rain. Always rain, and the mud it created. He would gladly have traded it for the icy climes of Siberia. At least there were no bugs there.
Awa moved to one of his men and had a hushed discussion in their native tongue. The man rose and walked soundlessly to the trail to take up the surveillance of the pair a scant mile away.
Awa watched his subordinate go without expression. The crazy Russians were paying a king’s ransom for their services, and if they wanted someone watching the two gringos by the waterfall as they blundered around in the surrounding jungle, then that’s what they would get. Round the clock. Pointless or not.