“I’ll put it in another envelope,” he said to himself, with little thought given to anything beyond delivering his package to Blackman and then getting the hell away from Fort Detrick in time to meet Diane, a young captain’s wife who discovered her first orgasm when Arturo introduced her to the inherent skills of a Latin lover while her husband was overseas serving his country.
He tore open the ruined wrapping and tightened the capsule lid before placing it in another envelope, convincing himself the dampness clinging to his fingers was only insulating jelly and harmless. He heard his flight number being called. He tucked the newly wrapped package into his briefcase before hurrying from el baño to catch his plane to Baltimore, glad to be out of Mexico despite his enchanting rendezvous with lovely Rosa Morales.
Arturo flashed his ID badge to a guard sitting at a desk just inside the second security door to the USAMRIID laboratory building. The guard smiled in recognition as Arturo approached, then frowned as he came closer.
“Jesus, Arturo, you look like shit. You feelin’ okay?”
Arturo sleeved sweat from his forehead and shivered with a sudden chill.
“Yeah, I guess so. I think I must be coming down with the flu. I’ve been on crowded planes for the past two days and in addition had to tramp through fifty miles of jungle so there’s no telling what kind of crap I caught.”
He held his briefcase up and tilted his head toward the inner laboratory down the hall. “I just gotta drop this off, then I’m home to bed.”
The guard waved him through. “Take two aspirins and a hot blond and call me in the morning,” he said with a smile and a wink.
Arturo Vela, code-named Paco, entered the final security door to deposit his deadly cargo on Colonel Blackman’s desk in the lab, thus completing his latest task for the Colonel.
Though he did not realize it, it was to be his last delivery to USAMRIID.
Chapter 17
Malcolm Fitzhugh continued having symptoms of what he thought was malaria aboard Mexicana Flight 1151 from Mexico City to Houston. A sudden onset of a series of chills, cramps deep within his abdomen, and sweat flowing from his pores had him feeling terrible.
He ordered another drink from a stewardess, double bourbon and water and a twin pack of aspirin, waving away her concerns about his appearance.
There wasn’t time to be sick. Not now. The jeweled artifact in his duffle bag was most certainly worth a fortune, a stroke of unexpected luck when he stumbled upon the wandering Indian boy who offered to sell it to him for a ridiculous sum, roughly the equivalent of two hundred dollars.
The boy had no idea how much the artifact was truly worth. Fitzhugh believed his story that it came from within Montezuma’s tomb, since the tale coincided with what Fitzhugh had heard from the Mexican workers he had bribed to steal whatever they could and bring it to him on the road where he’d met the Indio.
Of course, the boy’s story that all of the Americanos and even the Mexican laborers had died was patently false. Hell, he’d met with some of them only ten days before… they couldn’t all have died in that length of time.
Malcolm chuckled to himself, thinking it was all a lie to cover up the fact that the boy didn’t want him to go to the dig and tell them he had stolen the collar.
That the boy, who called himself Guatemotzi, was a thief did not matter in the least to Fitzhugh — hell, that was how he made his living, by dealing with thieves on a daily basis.
What did matter was what the artifact was worth to an antiquities dealer in Houston — hundreds of thousands of dollars if the artifact could be proven to be from Montezuma’s tomb.
It was clearly from the Aztec period, which was not Fitzhugh’s specialty, and the boy’s story that it came from one of Montezuma’s pets had made the dealer almost drool with anticipation as it fit perfectly with legends about how the Aztec emperor treated his pets.
Fitzhugh knew the dealer, Walter Simmons, was so anxious to obtain the artifact that he could probably be milked for something approaching its true value. Yes, he thought, the trinket hidden in the false compartment of his duffle bag was going to set him up for life, and he vowed then and there to never again set foot in a jungle of any kind.
An hour away from Houston he was sweating profusely. He left his seat to go to the bathroom at the rear of the Mexicana 737. When he passed a stewardess in the narrow aisle she gave him an odd look, paying particular attention to his eyes. His nose had begun to run and without a handkerchief or a tissue he could only sniffle back the discharge, noticing it had a peculiar coppery taste.
Clinging to his briefcase, he entered the bathroom and secured the door before he glanced in the mirror above the sink.
“Oh my God!” he exclaimed, reaching for a paper towel. His tear ducts were oozing blood and there was a trace of blood on his upper lip.
He quickly wiped the blood away just as a violent spasm hit his stomach. He retched, sounds hidden by the roar of twin jet turbines on either side of the tail section. But what he vomited into the sink horrified him. Raw blood and mucosa splattered into the stainless steel basin. He wiped his mouth with another towel, feeling strangely weak, a tremor in his legs and arms as he looked in the mirror again.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” he asked, speaking to his reflection, not entirely able to recognize the image he saw — pale gray skin beaded with sweat, bloody tears dribbling past his nose down his cheeks. This episode was far different from his other periodic bouts with malaria.
Had he contracted some rare jungle disease? he wondered. As one who traveled all over remote parts of Mexican jungles buying artifacts to smuggle into the United States, he’d been vaccinated for everything his doctor in Houston warned him about, and he’d been across these same jungle regions for years without mishap, only occasional bouts with dysentery when he was not careful enough about what he ate or where he ate it and his rare bouts of malaria.
He knew just enough about bodily functions to know he was hemorrhaging internally somehow, but that wouldn’t explain the blood from his tear ducts or his nose. Had he contracted some rare blood disease?
His eyes widened and he gasped as the implications hit him — could the Indio have been telling the truth about all of the Americans dying… and could he somehow have gotten the same illness? “Oh Jesus!” he exclaimed out loud to the mirror. “Not now… not when I’m about to hit the jackpot.”
He needed a doctor quickly. They were another hour from Houston International Airport. Surely he could endure this odd phenomenon for an hour, then a half-hour’s drive to Walter’s to leave his artifact, then a hurried taxi ride to a Houston hospital to find out what the hell was wrong with him. Surely, even if he had contracted the illness that killed the dig crew, modern medicine in a city as large as Houston could cure him.
But with his stomach muscles contracting so violently he might get sick in the customs inspection room and someone could then discover the piece of antiquity he was bringing into the country illegally.
A safer bet was to call Walter on the cell phone on the back of the seat in front of his and ask him to meet him at the airport, and of paramount importance was to have him take the briefcase if his copious bleeding alerted customs officers for a need to summon an ambulance or a doctor to the airport.
Walter would understand that the artifact would have to be protected at all costs, and he knew he could trust him for his payment later when he was feeling better. After all, he had been doing business with Walter for years.