The Arraignment

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

We pull out of the parking lot at the glass pyramid just after four in the morning, nearly two hours before dawn.

Herman is scrunched up on a couch that runs the length of the passenger compartment along one side of Ibarra’s stretch limo.

We left the black Suburban in a private area of the hotel’s underground garage. The cops in Cancun and probably the Mexican Federal Judicial Police will be looking for the two Suburbans that are now missing from the scene of Julio’s murder. Residents in the condo are sure to have seen the three vehicles parked there together.

In the front seat are Ibarra’s driver and another man, not quite as large as Herman, broad shoulders and a steely look.

Behind us is another vehicle with four security men. Three other vehicles with security left the hotel a half hour ahead of us. We are slated to meet at a point along the highway, at which time I will transfer into one of the other cars and drive by myself to the parking area at Coba.

Herman, Ibarra, and his people will approach the archeological site from a different direction along back roads. If all goes according to plan, they will be in place around the structure Ibarra calls Las Pinturas before I arrive. Some of his men are equipped with high-powered rifles and laser scopes to pick up heat signatures of people hiding in the bush. Ibarra has assured me that they are qualified marksmen.

We are unable to go to the police, since Pablo cannot be certain that his sons have not bribed some of the local authorities. Even if they haven’t, it is likely that the police would hold me for questioning well past the time set in the note, in which case Ibarra’s sons would kill Adam.

Sitting in the seat next to me, Pablo Ibarra tries to brief me on the terrain and what I will find when I get there. I can tell he is worried, a father on the verge of a violent collision with his sons, taking no joy in what he must do.

“I hope and pray that they are not there,” he says. But I can tell that the note that was shoved under Herman’s hotel room door, telling me to bring the Rosetta to Coba, leaves little doubt in his mind.

“What I do not understand is why they think you would have it,” he says.

“I don’t know.”

“Unless perhaps it is because of your association with this man Rush. Did my sons know about this?”

“I didn’t tell them.”

“None of it makes any sense.”

When I told him about the aerial attack at the Casa Turquesa, Ibarra scanned early editions of the local newspapers. He was looking for the names of the two men in the ultralight to see if he might recognize them. The brothers used ultralights over the jungle to look for ruins. Divers pulled the two bodies from the water late yesterday. But Ibarra didn’t recognize either name.

He has put together a package wrapped in cloth and tied with twine. Covered, it could pass for the Maya’s ancient book unless you had specific knowledge of its dimensions, which we do not. Once its cover is removed, however, not even the untrained eye would be fooled by the two plywood boards with paper between them.

I try to catch some sleep as we roll along the highway that connects Merida, the old Spanish Colonial capital, with Cancun.

I doze. It seems like only a few minutes when I feel a bump and wake up. We are rolling slowly, maybe twenty miles an hour, through a village along the highway.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” says Ibarra. “Topetons. Speed bumps. They put them on the highway coming into the villages so that people slow down.”

We come to another one, more like a hill than a bump. The long limo is now forced to come to a near stop to keep from dragging its rear end or losing its suspension. Herman sleeps right through this. I look at my watch. I’ve been asleep for twenty minutes.

The road to Merida is two lanes, one in each direction. Even at this hour, before five A. M. there are a few people moving about in the small settlements off the highway. Lights are on in some of the tiny cinder-block houses with their corrugated metal roofs. I have seen buildings like this before, on the islands of the Caribbean. They are fashioned to withstand hurricanes and tidal surge. The walls will stand. You can find your roof later or pick up someone else’s.

Except for the areas hacked out for human habitation, the low jungle engulfs everything within view. The even, verdant canopy is unbroken but for the occasional banyan tree that pokes through toward the sky and the indomitable microwave towers with their red lights blinking in the distance. To the east the faint glow of morning is already beginning to define the clouds.

“Do you have children?” says Ibarra.

“One. A daughter. She’s fifteen.”

“It is difficult.”

“Yes.” I have thought about Sarah and wondered what she will be doing in a few hours. Mostly I have been wondering whether I will ever see her again.

To think I could unravel the reasons behind Nick’s death was arrogant. To risk the security of the only family that Sarah has left was foolish beyond belief. If I were divorced perhaps, but I am not. I am widowed.

Harry was right, a single parent has no business doing what I am doing. And now it’s too late. By my actions, I have placed others in jeopardy: Harry in the hospital and Adam now in the hands of Ibarra’s sons. There is no turning back.

We turn off the highway at a place called Nuevo Xcan and head into the deep tropical forest. Here the road narrows, with vegetation nibbling at both edges of the asphalt. The road runs like a ribbon through jungle growth that becomes visibly more dense and taller with each kilometer.

The leafy green is impenetrable. It rises up like a wave in a sea of darkness on both sides of the car. We rocket along at seventy miles an hour, gliding over slight undulations only to find more road stretched out in front of us, a seemingly endless thoroughfare to nowhere.

The long springs of the limo lift us over a slight rise. On the highway ahead I see the taillights of two cars parked in the middle of the road blocking it.

“It’s all right.” Ibarra sitting forward in the seat. “It’s my people.”

The limo comes to a fast brake, the security car right on our bumper. Herman slides forward on the seat and finally wakes up.

“What’s goin’ on?”

“Time to switch cars,” I tell him.

“Shit, we already there?”

“Not quite. How far is it?” I ask Ibarra.

“Just a few miles. You will turn off to the right. You can’t miss the road. There should be a sign to the archeological zone.”

The limo rolls to a stop behind the other two cars in the middle of the road, and we get out. The trailing security car pulls up behind us, and two men dressed in camouflage fatigues get out and stand near the open doors, surveying the road behind them and occasionally glancing into the jungle overgrowth alongside the road. One of them is holding an assault rifle.

Up in front, Ibarra’s people are standing around on the road, two of them looking at a map spread out on the hood of one of the cars. The car doors are open, and some of the men are taking the chance to smoke a last cigarette before going in. They are wearing flak jackets, and two of them are holding scoped rifles.

Herman is walking next to me. “Rifles ain’t gonna be much good in the jungle,” he says. “Less they get an opening in the brush. I knew I shouldn’t a listened to these people. I shoulda brought the shotgun, the MP-5.”

“I think it’ll be all right. They look like they know what they’re doing.”

“Yeah.”

Ibarra waves me forward, toward one of the cars with an open door.

I start to walk.

“Hey.”

I turn and Herman is looking at me.

“Ain’t you gonna say good-bye?”

“I wish you were coming with me.”

“I could get in the backseat, lie down,” he says.

“Right. They wouldn’t see that. Besides, I have to go a ways on foot. Their people would pick you up before you could follow me thirty feet.”

“Probably. Here. You better put this on.” He’s holding a lightweight green jacket in his hand.

“I’m not cold.”

“I know. Just trust me. Take it. White shirt you got on is gonna light you up like a lantern out there in the jungle.”

I take the jacket and slip it on.

Herman zips it up, almost jerking me off my feet, pats the collar down, paws like a bear. “You don’t wanna give ’em nothing makes a target on your chest.”

“Right.”

“There’s a little something for ya in the pocket,” he says.

I reach in.

“Other side.”

I dig it out. It’s a small gun-metal blue semiautomatic pistol.

“My backup piece. Figure you’re gonna need it more than me. Walther PPK. 380. Six shots, so don’t get carried away. And don’t go shootin’ at nothin’ beyond ten, twelve feet. Waste of time, besides you just draw attention to yourself. Little switch on the side. You hit it, it turns red side out. Then it’s hot.”

He takes it, checks the clip, slaps the back against his hand, making sure the bullets are properly seated.

“What if they frisk me?”

“They won’t.”

“How can you be sure?”

“They won’t let you get that close. What they want, you gonna be carryin’. That book. My guess is, they just gonna shoot you and take it.”

“Why?”

“Trust me. Your friend, he’s probably already dead.”

“We don’t know that.”

“No. But I got a feelin’ something ain’t right. You take this.” He hands the gun back to me. “Use it if you have to.”

I slip it back inside the jacket pocket. I hear Ibarra calling to me. “They’re waiting. Gotta go.” I hold out my hand to shake his.

“Shit I don’t want that.” Instead he reaches out, grabs me by the shoulders, and gives me a hug, an embrace like a grizzly.

“You take care,” he says. “You still be in one piece when this is over. You understand?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Shit, you gonna have to do better than that,” he says.

We both laugh.

“See ya.”

“Take care,” I answer.

I turn and head for the car.

When I get there, Ibarra has the mock Rosetta under his arm. He places it across the front seat on the passenger side.

The keys are in the car.

“There is one last thing,” he says. “Do you have a scrap of paper, anything small, something to write on?” He has a pen in his hand.

I fish through my pants pockets and come up with two wrinkled and tattered scraps of pink paper. I give one of them to Ibarra.

He flattens it out on the hood of the car, turns it over to the blank side, and starts drawing, small fine lines. “When you drive in, you pass the restaurant. A white building with a flat roof. You turn left into the parking area. The visitor’s entrance is here.” He puts an X on the map. “There are some large trees. There will probably be a rope across there. You just go under it.

“Once you are inside, you will have to be careful or you will get lost. It is like a maze. There are many paths, some of them going off into the jungle.”

He draws my attention back to the diagram. “You will walk maybe a hundred meters from the entrance and the path goes to the right. You stay on it,” he says. “A little ways beyond that, you will see some ruins called La Iglesia, it means church.” He marks it on the map. “There will be stone platforms at different levels in front of it and stairs going up. You pass through the plaza. You will see buried ruins all around you. Here you go left, go maybe fifteen, twenty meters, and on your right you will see the opening to the ball court. It is a flat, open area, long and narrow with slanting walls of stone on each side. There is a stone hoop sticking up out of the walls. You pass through the ball court, and you will come to an area where there are bicycles parked.” He circles it on the little map. “Tourists rent them to ride the paths. Don’t take one. Just walk, otherwise you will get there too quickly. We won’t be in place. When you get to the bicycles, there will be paths going in different directions. Three, maybe four.” He draws these with the pen. “You must take the path that goes to your right.” He points with the tip of the pen to the junction. “That will take you to Las Pinturas. It is maybe three or four hundred meters. You will see the ruins, a small pyramid with a square stone structure on top. There are palm leaves over the roof of the structure. You can’t miss it. Do you understand?”

“I think so.”

“Here, you take this.” He hands me the slip of paper, then I climb into the car behind the wheel and roll the window down.

“What time have you got?” he says.

We check our watches.

“You have plenty of time. Remember,” he says, “you give us at least ten minutes head start before you leave from here.”

“Got it.”

He closes the door. “We will be there,” he says. “Good luck.” Then he turns and runs back to the other cars.

Car doors slam one after the other. Then the tires of the two sedans and the limo grind gravel, racing by me on the road heading west.

Within seconds, their taillights disappear around a curve.

I sit with the window down, listening to the sounds of dawn in the jungle, the chirping and screeching of some distant animal, the humming wings and clicking of insects.

I take another look at the little map on the pink paper, fold it in half, and slip it into the pocket of my jacket. I give them twelve minutes just to be safe.

Three miles up the road, I see the sign with an arrow pointing to a turnoff, white letters on a blue background: Villas Arqueologicas Coba.

I take the turn to the right. After a few miles, the road turns to dirt, and moments later I see the restaurant, a two-story building with a flat roof and a second-story veranda. Jutting out from under the railing on the veranda is a slanting palm-covered roof sheltering outdoor tables and chairs.

Straight ahead is a large body of water, a lake, with high grass along the edges. Ibarra has warned me, if I have to move quickly into the jungle, to try and stay clear of any wetlands. Mexican crocodiles may be an endangered species, but they have been known to eat dogs and small children and, on a rare occasion, tourists.

The road curves left in front of the hotel, and a few hundred feet up I pull into the parking area. It is flanked by a few small structures, mostly stucco, small curio shops, and next to it a small square building with a palm-thatched roof, the ticket booth at the entrance.

Beyond this, a path leads in to the archeological area. It passes between two large trees, curling bark hanging from gnarled trunks that look as if they might have been standing when the last Mayan ruler walked between them and turned out the lights. There is a rope suspended between them.

I pull up and park in front, turn off the engine, and check my watch. I have twenty minutes to get to the area around the Las Pinturas. By now Ibarra and his people should be getting close, checking for Arturo’s men hiding in the bush and taking up positions on them.

I pick up the wrapped package from the seat, get out and head toward the entrance, quickly slip under the rope, and head up the path.

The walkway is uneven. Ruts in the sandy soil, crossed by ridges from shallow-rooted trees, force me to watch my step. What little light there is at this hour is filtered through the foliage overhead.

I pass a display under a thatched roof to my right and climb a small rise. Then the path heads down, a gradual slope, and goes to the right. On either side of the path are symmetrical mounds, gentle rises with small stunted trees and saplings growing out of them, sending up shoots like hair on a beast. These are busy laying down more shallow roots, some of them winding like snakes into the crevices of rock outcroppings.

Under the trees and on the sides of the mounds, the ground is littered with stones, their edges rounded by erosion, their shapes too balanced to be formed by nature. Everywhere I look, I can see small hills, bumps in the jungle, Mayan ruins still buried.

Thirty feet on, I come to an opening, the plaza, what Ibarra called La Iglesia. It is a large pyramid with several terraced levels in front and steep crumbling steps leading to the top. As a tourist attraction in the U.S., it would be a lawyer’s dream.

I pass through the plaza and go left. Suddenly I’m lost.

I stop and find the pink paper diagram in my pocket and peer at it in the dim light. Ibarra has written the words “ball court” in tiny letters.

I turn slowly, a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree pirouette. Then in front of me, against the sharp edges of stone, I see the silhouette of a curving shape in the distance. It is a stone hoop on the diagonal wall of the ball court.

I check my watch, pick up the pace, and jog through the court, an amphitheater of smooth stone on each side.

Sixty yards on, through the dim light the path levels out and opens into a wide area under a grove of larger trees. I see twenty or more bicycles parked here, some of them leaning against the trees and others lying on their side, a few of them upright with kickstands down.

So far everything on Ibarra’s little diagram is accurate. I keep walking and shift the package under my arm to the other side. As I do this, I rub the fabric over my jacket pocket and feel the hard edges of the pistol inside.

I am hoping that I won’t need it. Still the heft from the metal tugging at my pocket offers the possibility that I can defend myself if I have to.

“Senor.”