Assumed Identity

15

THE YUCATAN PENINSULA

A pall of smoke clung to the massive clearing. As construction proceeded, the crackle of gunshots punctuated the roar of bulldozers, cranes, and other heavy machinery. So did the crackle of flames, the source of the smoke that filled the area. Trees were being burned back, the clearing widened, anything to reduce the cover from which natives-descendants of the original Maya-persisted in their attacks on the construction crew and the equipment. The scattered stones of the leveled ruins of once-magnificent towering pyramids and temples still lay among the towers that had replaced them, these made of steel. Occasionally the earth tremored, but the workers and guards no longer paid attention. As with the snakes, the smoke, and the gunshots, those who labored here had become used to anything. The job mattered. Completing it. Being paid. Escaping.

Alistair Drummond did that to a person, Jenna thought as she obeyed his orders, completing the archaeological survey map that would show that the ruins were not as impressive as photographs from space had led scholars to expect. A few minor structures. Numerous scattered stones, the result of earthquakes. Pathetic remnants of a formerly great culture. With one exception. The Mayan ball court. For reasons unexplained-perhaps because one intact structure might lend credence to his story-Drummond had insisted that the ball court, a distance from the area of demolition and construction, be spared. There, on its grassy rectangular surface flanked by stone terraces upon which royal spectators had nodded approval, teams of men wearing leather armor had played a game in which they attempted to throw a punishing globe the size and weight of a medicine ball through a vertical hoop on either side of the court. The stakes of the game had been ultimate: life or death. Perhaps that was why Drummond had spared it- because the ball court represented his cruelty, his pursuit of a goal at any cost.

He and Raymond had arrived the day before yesterday, brazenly, in Drummond Enterprises’ large blue helicopter, as if he had nothing to hide as he took charge of the final stages of the operation. “You’ve done well,” he’d told Jenna. “You’ll get an extra bonus.”

Jenna had muttered acquiescence, mentally screaming, All I want is to get out of here with my sanity. Her coworker, her friend, her potential lover, the project’s foreman, McIntyre, had died from a snakebite, a half hour before Drummond’s helicopter had arrived. Jenna had prayed for the helicopter to arrive sooner so that Mac could be flown to a hospital, but the moment she had seen Drummond’s determined, wizened face as the old man strode toward her through the smoke, she had realized that Drummond would never have agreed to waste the resources of the helicopter to take a dying man from the camp. “He’ll be dead before he gets to the hospital. We don’t have time. Make him as comfortable as possible,” Drummond would have said. As it was, what he did say was, “Bury him where the natives can’t get to him. No, I’ve changed my mind. Burn him. Burn them all.”

“All” were the natives who’d been exterminated in their attempts to stop the desecration of their sacred land. Jenna had been certain she was going insane when she realized that a massacre had taken place. She’d known of tribes that were exterminated in South America, in the depths of the Amazon rain forest. But it had never occurred to her that portions of Mexico were equally remote and that communication with the outside could be so minimal that no one “in the world” would have any idea of what was happening here. By the time word leaked out, there’d be no evidence of the atrocity. And who was going to talk? The workers? By acquiescing to the slaughter, by accepting obscenely huge bonuses, they were implicated in the slaughter. Only a fool would break the silence.

Now, standing in the camp’s log-walled office, remembering how Mac had writhed feverishly on a cot in the corner, she listened numbly to final commands from Drummond about the charts she had prepared.

“Above all”-Drummond’s aged voice was filled with phlegm-“the extent of the true discovery must be made to dwarf the archaeological ones. There’ll be photographs, of course. But your charts will be given primary attention.”

At that moment, the door opened, and Raymond came in, wearing jungle clothing, holding a rifle, his face sooted from smoke, his shirt crimson with blood. “If there are more, I can’t find them.”

“But a different kind of enemy might be coming here. I think he’s hunting us,” Drummond said.

Raymond straightened, challenged. “Who?”

“A dead man.”

Raymond furrowed his brow.

“Charles Duffy,” Drummond said. “Do you recognize the-?”

“Yes, he was hired to watch the target’s home in San Antonio. To deal with her if she arrived. He disappeared from the house three nights ago.”

“He’s no longer missing,” Drummond said. “His body washed up on a bank of the San Antonio River. He’d been shot. The authorities say he had no identification. One of the men you hired was able to get a look at the body in the morgue, however, and has no doubt that it’s Duffy. But Mr. Duffy is remarkable,” Drummond continued. “While dead, he used his credit card to fly from San Antonio to Washington, D.C. He stayed at the Ritz-Carlton. For a portion of the next day, he stayed at the Dorset Hotel in Manhattan. After that, he and a companion flew to Miami, where they rented a car.”

Raymond brooded. “I don’t understand the Washington connection, but the Dorset isn’t far from the target’s apartment in Manhattan.”

“And from the ex-husband. He was paid a visit by a man and a woman the day before yesterday. They interrupted the agreed-upon payment to him.”

“Maltin knows nothing,” Raymond said. “All you paid him for was to stop attracting attention to the target’s disappearance.”

“Nothing?” Drummond looked furious. “Maltin knew it was I who paid him. That’s what the man and woman learned from him. The woman so far hasn’t been identified, although she has red hair and she claimed to work for the Washington Post, but the man’s description matches that of the same man who interfered with surveillance on the home of the target’s parents.”

“Buchanan?” Raymond scowled.

“Yes. Buchanan. Now think. What’s the Miami connection?” Drummond snapped.

“The yacht. It’s south of there. In Key West.”

“Exactly,” Drummond said. “The captain reports that three crew members brought a woman aboard yesterday afternoon. A woman with red hair.”

“She must have been helping Buchanan. Checking ways to sneak aboard.”

Drummond nodded. “I have to assume he knows something about the tape. And I have to assume that he’ll keep coming closer. Intercept him. Kill him.”

“But where would I find him?”

“Isn’t it obvious? What’s the next link in the chain?”

“Delgado.”

“Yes. Mexico City. I just received word from my contacts at Miami International Airport that a man calling himself Charles Duffy bought two airline tickets to Mexico City. The helicopter will have you there by this afternoon.”