Cotter smiled crookedly, looked down at the floor. “I have a peculiar sense of duty too. Not toward them, but toward you. Anything you say, that goes for me.”
The door had opened and the soldier stiffened to attention. A short, plump, bustling figure in beige linen emerged, mopping at the back of his neck with a handkerchief. He was saddle-complexioned. A tiny needle-pointed mustache and almost equally diminutive Vandyke beard suggested three black rays or spokes surrounding his mouth, which was rounded to clasp a projectile-like cigar. He struck off down the tiled corridor toward the stairhead with a quick-sounding, hard heel beat that was somewhat akin to the bite of castanets. An odor of mingled cigar smoke and expensive toilet water back-washed after him.
“That’s him, now,” Fredericks whispered hastily.
“That little—? No, it isn’t. It can’t be.”
“It is! I tell you. He must be going out for his siesta. If we don’t get him now, we won’t get him again until four or five this afternoon.” He jumped up, took a quick step or two across to the soldier, and whispered, “El ministro?”
The man didn’t answer openly, fearful of being overheard by the receding figure, but he gave a surreptitious nod of the head.
Fredericks hurried down the corridor after him and overtook him at the turn.
“Ministro, a moment of your time. We have been waiting three days to see you.”
His manner of speech was staccato, to match his footfall and other mannerisms. “A question of what?”
“The disappearance of four persons from Finca La Escondida on the twenty-fourth of last month.”
The Minister of the Interior had halted, hand to iron-wrought stair rail. “Ah, yes. I remember now. I have a request on my desk, referred to me by my subordinate.”
“Could you — could we ask you to consider it?”
“It means to go in there again, and it is very hot. I was just leaving.” He sighted down the length of his cigar toward the sun-scalded patio below, to which the stairs led. Evidently his powers of making a decision were as rapid-fire as the rest of his personality. Suddenly cigar and head had both swung around and he was already on his way back toward the door from which he had just emerged. Fredericks hung behind for a moment, taken by surprise. Then he quickly rejoined him.
At the door the minister motioned him back to the bench. “Wait out here. I will familiarize myself with it a second time. The details have escaped me.”’
The door closed and some twenty minutes went lethargically by.
“What’s taking him so long?” Cotter asked at last.
“I don’t know. I suppose the original memorandum has collected a lot of additional reports along the way, like a snowball that keeps growing, and he has to read the whole batch of them. Bureaucratic red tape is pretty much the same the world over.”
A blurred voice called out something from behind the door, echoing cavernously. The soldier took a quick side step, threw the door open behind him, and motioned them in.
The minister’s mood had been affected for the worse by the delay they had caused in his personal plans. He let them stand before him for the space of several uncomfortable minutes, thick underlip pouting sullenly, while he completed reading the last of a litter of papers of all sizes clipped together before him. Then he looked up.
“The request is refused,” he said briskly, and made a motion to shunt aside the accumulation before him.
Fredericks flashed a look of white-faced dismay at his companion. “But señor, these people’s lives are at stake. Surely—”
“It is regrettable, of course. However, this is simply an accident of nature. They have become lost, and may have died of exposure. There is no objection to your organizing a private search party if you wish to do so, of course. But there is no necessity that I can see for providing a military escort, as you ask us to. I see nothing in this case to warrant it. There is the expense involved, and my department is not wealthy. Frankly, we have other things to do. This not a matter for us, señores.”
“But a military escort, and a good-sized one, is essential if we hope to bring them back. It is the only way of saving their lives.”
The minister swept a lazy hand back and forth before his face, as though brushing away insects. “I cannot take the responsibility of dispatching a detachment of soldiers inland to an uninhabited valley, as you ask me to do. Against whom? Against what? When our men march, they must have something to march against.”
Fredericks brought his palm down despairingly against the desk. “But the valley is not uninhabited. That is what I have been trying to tell everyone!”
The minister regarded him coldly. “You have been trying to tell us, señor? It is a well-known fact that it has been uninhabited for five hundred years. Do you two gentlemen, who have just arrived down here, think you can tell us things about our own country that we do not know ourselves?” He waited to let this sink in. “I have soldiers on the very premises from the regions lying closest to there. Just a moment, I will convince you.” He raised his voice and shouted: “Guardia!”
The sentry stepped in, stood at attention just within the door.
“I believe you are from San Juan Obispo?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know the so called Tierra de los Muertos?”
“Very well, sir. It is just on the other side of the rise from us.”
“Is it inhabited? Does anyone live in it?”
“Not a soul, sir. Not a living soul.”
“That will do. Back to your post.” He waited until the door had closed, then he heeled his hands to the corners of his desk, about to rise and terminate the interview.
“Has he ever been in it himself, though, that man?” Fredericks asked quietly.
“Nobody has. Nobody goes there,” the minister snapped, the seat of his pants remaining poised clear of his chair.
“I have,” Fredericks said.
The minister’s pants rejoined the chair. “What did you say?” he faltered.
Fredericks went on speaking quietly, though his hand, still on the desk, was trembling slightly, from some inner emotion.
“Tell me, it is necessary to obtain a permit to engage in certain archaeological work, is it not? And a record is kept of the permits granted, the number of people involved, the destination, as well as the dates of departure and return.”
“All that is true, but I have not got them here.”
“But they are available to you, is it not so? Let me trespass on your time a moment longer. Inquire if there was not a permit granted covering a party of two, giving the names of Allan Fredericks and Hugh Cotter, in the late spring of 1946. And the date of return of the same expedition.” He stopped a moment. “I urge you to do this,” he added.
The minister stared at him a long moment. Then he executed another of his snap judgments. He decapitated the telephone on his desk with a slashing motion.
Cotter, who had taken no part in the interview, caught Fredericks’ eye. “Look out,” he cautioned under his breath.
“There isn’t any other way,” was the cryptic answer.
“Read it back to me,” the minister was saying.
There was a wait. He picked up his cigar, then interrupted himself to set it down again, untouched. “And what record is there covering the return? Read that.”
Suddenly he had replaced the phone as abruptly as though he had received an electric shock from it. His swarthy face had turned a shade paler. His collar bothered him.
“They have on record the fact that such a permit, to enter this valley, was granted to two men, Fredericks and Cotter, on April twentieth, 1946. In other words, two people, both males. The record goes on to indicate that the same party of two returned from there on September fifteenth, 1947, bringing out with them various relics, including a mummy case or sarcophagus, which they had obtained from a tomb they had excavated. All objects of intrinsic value, such as ornaments of gold or silver, they were compelled to turn over to the authorities, in conformance with the national law governing this matter. However, for the mummy case, after a brief official inspection, which showed that it contained nothing but the remains of a young girl, in a remarkable lifelike state of preservation, they were granted an export license, and allowed to carry it out of the country with them aboard ship, there being no museum or other such institution in this country, to take an interest in it.”