Hunt at The Well Of Eternity

Chapter 8

For a moment Gabriel thought that Dr. Almanzar was going to argue with him, maybe even fight to get away.

Then she said, “This interest in General Fargo’s flag is not just a matter of academic research, is it?”

Gabriel shook his head. “No.”

“Then perhaps we should take it with us,” she said as she slipped her hand out of his, went to the display case, and unlocked it with a small key she took from a pocket in her dress.

Gabriel grinned as Dr. Almanzar took the flag from the case and folded it carefully. “I can put it under my jacket,” he suggested.

“Can I return to my office for my bag?” she asked as he stowed away the flag, nestling it next to the other flag, which he’d tucked into the waistband of his pants at the small of his back before heading to the museum. Good thing they made flags of thin fabric back then, he thought. It was getting a bit tight as it was.

“Okay,” he said. “But make it quick.” The alarm was still going off and it was only a matter of time before someone showed up.

They hurried out of the Special Collections room, Gabriel going first just in case one of the black-clad assassins had remained behind and was waiting in ambush for them. No shots came their way, though, as they headed toward Dr. Almanzar’s office.

“There’s a back door we can use,” she said once she had collected her purse.

“Excellent,” Gabriel said. He’d noticed how the doctor avoided looking at Carlos’s corpse as they passed the security station, but other than that she seemed to be holding up well, considering.

She led the way to a rear door and pushed it open. It was very dark back here in the shadow of the trees of Chapultepec Park, but Dr. Almanzar seemed to know her way around. A couple of vehicles were parked in the small lot she led him to, and she headed straight for one of them, a jeep with enclosed sides.

“Looks like something you’d use for field work,” Gabriel commented as Dr. Almanzar unlocked the jeep’s doors.

“It is. Get in.”

“You’re driving?”

She patted the jeep’s hood and smiled. “This is my niño. No offense, Señor Hunt, but if there’s a chance anyone is going to be coming after us, I’d rather be at the wheel.”

Gabriel nodded and swung into the passenger seat. “Let’s go.” If this turned out to be an attempt to doublecross him, he would deal with that problem then.

Dr. Almanzar knew all the roads through the park and sent the jeep twisting and turning along them, emerging a few minutes later at Paseo de la Reforma, the wide, busy boulevard that cut through the northern section of the park. As the doctor turned west on the boulevard, Gabriel heard whooping sirens and looked back to see flashing red and blue lights through the trees.

The police had arrived at the museum. They would find the shattered door, Carlos’s body, and the damage in the Special Collections room.

What they wouldn’t find was the man Gabriel had shot. Once again, the killers had taken their fallen comrade with them. That might almost have been an honorable gesture—if Gabriel hadn’t suspected that it was motivated purely by self-interest. The bastards were savvy enough to know better than to leave any evidence behind that might lead the authorities to them.

Dr. Almanzar navigated through the heavy traffic on the boulevard like someone who was accustomed to it. As she drove, she said in a brisk voice, “Considering that you almost got me killed tonight, Señor Hunt, don’t you think you should tell me what this is all about?”

Gabriel hesitated. He didn’t want to draw her any deeper into this affair than she already was.

“You have an event to attend,” he said. “If you’ll drop me back at my hotel, you can go on to that and forget about everything that’s happened tonight.”

“Until the police arrive to question me, you mean.”

“Well, there’s that to consider,” Gabriel admitted. “You can always claim that you met with me, saw me out, and then left yourself, and that everything was fine when you did. The break-in and Carlos’s murder could have happened after you were gone.”

“I suppose, but I won’t have an alibi. And neither will you. Did you rent a car?”

“I did,” Gabriel said. “But I paid cash for it and used a phony driver’s license. The police won’t be able to trace it back to me.”

She glanced over at him. “Do you always cover your trail like a criminal, Señor Hunt?”

“Often. A lot of times in my work it’s better if I don’t get any meddling from the local authorities.”

“So you believe it’s all right to flout the laws of another country, eh?”

“Oh, I flout the laws of the United States, too,” Gabriel said. “When I have to.”

She glanced at him again and then, after a moment, laughed. “You’re un hombre loco, aren’t you, Señor Hunt?”

Gabriel sensed the tension between them easing. “Why don’t you call me Gabriel?”

She said, “All right, Gabriel. Then I’m Cierra. I guess once you’ve been shot at together, there’s no more point in formality.”

“My thinking exactly,” Gabriel said.

“I still want to know what this is about. Why don’t you tell me on the way to the event?”

“You’re still going? And you’re taking me?”

“I’m sure the host would like to meet you,” she said.

“As long as he’s not the chief of police,” Gabriel said.

Gabriel wasn’t sure this was the best idea, but he supposed a magnificent villa in the exclusive Lomas de Chapultepec residential district west of the city was as good a place as any to wait and see if the police were going to connect him with what had happened at the museum.

“The estate belongs to Vladimir Antonio de la Esparza,” Cierra Almanzar explained. “He’s one of the museum’s largest benefactors. He’s thinking about making another very generous donation. That is why I couldn’t say no when he asked me to come to this party tonight. I hope he’s not offended that I’ll be showing up an hour late.”

“You could always tell him you were delayed by three assassins,” Gabriel suggested.

She shot him an angry look. “I cannot take this as lightly as you, Señor Hunt. Carlos was my friend, and he leaves a wife and four children.”

“I’m sorry,” Gabriel said without hesitation.

She nodded.

“In this traffic, it should take us at least half an hour to reach Señor Esparza’s villa,” Cierra said, her tone thawing. “Is that enough time for you to tell me why those men wanted you dead, and what your interest is in General Fargo’s battle flag?”

“I think so,” Gabriel said. He launched into the tale, thinking as he did so about how many events, how much danger, had been packed into the past twenty-four hours. It had been a hurricane, and he was lucky to have survived it. And the storm wasn’t over yet.

He had to give Cierra credit. She didn’t interrupt as he laid out the facts for her. When he finished, she drove silently for a full minute before saying, “You expect me to believe this?”

“Every word of it is true,” Gabriel insisted. “You have my word on that.”

“The word of a man who has admitted breaking laws, who has counseled me to lie—”

“Only for the best reasons.”

Cierra fell silent again, obviously trying to digest everything he had told her. After a few moments, during which she continued to weave in and out of traffic, she said, “It is an incredible story, Gabriel. But incredible things happen sometimes. You have no idea what’s behind these attempts on your life?”

He shook his head. “Just that it must involve General Fargo’s legacy somehow. Maybe when he went to Mexico, he took part of the Confederate treasury with him?”

“If he did, it was stolen from him within days. Even then, Chiapas was full of bandits.” Cierra turned from the boulevard onto a smaller road that led up into hills topped with expensive villas. Gabriel could see the lights of those estates, hanging over the city like stars. “This Mariella Montez…you say she is very beautiful?”

Was that a tone of jealousy he heard in her voice, Gabriel wondered? If so, it came as something of a surprise.

“She was…striking,” he said.

“You mean beautiful.”

“Well…yes.” Facts were facts.

“She must be a descendant of Enrique Montez, the man who sold the flag to the museum a hundred years ago,” Cierra mused. “The family must have had both flags and hung on to the other one for some reason.”

Gabriel nodded. “That’s the way I see it, too.” An idea occurred to him. “Maybe she wanted me to go to Chiapas and find the general’s trail.”

“After a century and a half?”

“I’ve found older things than that.”

“True enough,” Cierra said. “But you said she was not seeking you, she was seeking your brother. What century-old trails has he ever followed?”

For that, Gabriel didn’t have an answer.

“I’ll tell you again, Gabriel, it would not be a good idea for you to go to Chiapas. It’s dangerous enough for the people who live there, let alone outsiders.”

Something in her voice intrigued him. “You sound like you know quite a bit about the area.”

“I ought to. I was born and raised there.”

That surprised him, too. From looking at her, he’d have said Cierra had more Castilian blood than Indian, and he knew that Indians dominated the population of the Chiapas region.

She must have sensed his reaction, because she explained, “My father was the manager of a coffee plantation.” Her voice hardened as she went on, “He and my mother were killed by bandits while I was studying at the university. I’ve never gone back. It wouldn’t have done me any good if I did. The bandits took over the plantation.”

“I’m sorry,” Gabriel said.

“So you see, I know what it’s like to lose one’s parents. Perhaps that is why I’m willing to help you if I can, Gabriel. We have a…kinship.”

They had more than that, Gabriel thought as he sensed the attraction between them growing.

The road they had been following wound around a steep hillside and finally emerged at the top of the slope, where a huge, sprawling, brightly lit Spanish-style villa sat in the midst of well-manicured lawns and gardens. A number of expensive cars were already parked there, and Cierra’s jeep looked a bit out of place as she slid it in among them.

“You had better leave your gun in the jeep,” Cierra said as they got out.

“I don’t care much for that idea.”

“Señor Esparza is a very rich man. Because of that he and his family are likely targets for kidnapping. He has many bodyguards, and you won’t be allowed in the house if you’re armed.”

What she said made sense. Gabriel didn’t like it, but he removed his jacket, stripped off the shoulder rig, and placed it and the Colt under the jeep’s seat. Cierra locked up the vehicle.

Lanterns burned in the limbs of the trees that overhung the driveway. The sweet, heavy fragrance of flowers filled the air. Along with the floral scent, the place reeked of money.

His dark suit wasn’t quite good enough for a cocktail party in luxurious surroundings like this, Gabriel thought, but it would do. Particularly with Cierra on his arm. No one would be looking at him.

After a couple of tough-looking bodyguards waved metal detector wands over him, as Cierra had warned would happen, a poker-faced butler who wouldn’t have been out of place in a British manor let them in the door and escorted them into the ballroom where the party was taking place. It was crowded with exactly the sort of beautiful, brittle people he’d seen a day earlier at the Met in New York. Only with better tans. Gabriel could never understand how Michael could bear to spend his days in circles like these. Gabriel could move among them easily enough…but he didn’t like them.

“There’s Señor Esparza,” Cierra said. She nodded toward a man making his way through the crowd toward them. Like Moses at the Red Sea, the mass of people parted before him, indicating that no matter how much wealth was in this room tonight, this man was the richest, or the most powerful, or very likely both.

He was also, Gabriel thought as he noted the man’s gray hair and distinguished appearance and the two moles above his narrow mustache, the man Stephen Krakowski had described that morning at the Olustee battlefield—the one who had accompanied the broken-nosed killer on a quest for information about General Granville Fordham Fargo.