Hunt at The Well Of Eternity

Chapter 12

Now that they had a better idea where they were going, speed was of the essence, Gabriel thought. But there was one stop he wanted to make before he and Cierra left Villahermosa and headed south through Chiapas toward Guatemala.

The next morning Cierra made a phone call to the museum. The young man who answered, a graduate student at the university who was interning for the semester, was very upset, she told Gabriel later. Everyone believed she had been kidnapped. Esparza had apparently told the police he had received a ransom demand from the kidnappers, who had first tried to snatch Cierra at the museum and then ambushed her and her escort after they left Señor Esparza’s party two nights previously.

Covering his tracks for when she turned up dead, Gabriel thought when he heard about the phony ransom demand.

Cierra had assured Luis, her intern, that she was all right and that she hadn’t been kidnapped. The opportunity to lay her hands on a valuable artifact had come up unexpectedly, she told him, so she’d had to leave town in a hurry without letting anyone know where she was going. What she needed him to do was to access the information in the office computer about Enrique Montez, who had sold the Fifth Georgia’s regimental battle flag to the museum. Yes, she knew the sale was a hundred years ago. Yes, she realized that the records were incomplete and out of date. She understood how difficult it was, what she was asking. But if Luis could make an effort to track down the Montez family, Enrique’s descendants, and find out if they were still in Villahermosa, and if so where they were, that would be a great help, por favor. He would be demonstrating his research skills, which would surely put him in good standing for a full-time position after he got his degree. Oh, and if he could keep the assignment strictly confidential, just between the two of them…

Gabriel and Cierra waited by the phone, gave Luis the three hours he insisted he would need, and then she called again. He picked up on the first ring and even from halfway across the room Gabriel could hear the elation in his voice. He had the information—what a stroke of luck, the previous director had ordered all the records updated just five years earlier, and this was one of the files that had gotten the full treatment. They had a telephone number for Jorge Montez, the great-great-grandson of old Enrique, who was an executive now in one of the oil companies headquartered in Villahermosa. Or at least he had been five years ago. Cierra thanked him copiously, promised him the earth and sky in terms of reference letters and job prospects, and got off the phone as quickly as she was able, which wasn’t nearly as quickly as she and Gabriel would have liked.

Another phone call, this one to Montez’s office, gained them the news that Montez still worked there but hadn’t gone into the office today. Instead he could be found working from his home, a sprawling mansion with a beautiful lawn that sloped down to the Grijalva River. Gabriel nodded appreciatively as they approached it. So this was what life in Mexico was like if you were an oil company executive.

Not unexpectedly, there were bodyguards at the wrought iron gates leading into the estate, but Cierra had called ahead and spoken to Señor Montez, telling him that she was the director of the Museum of the Americas in Mexico City and that she wished to speak to him about a flag the museum had purchased from his ancestor a century earlier. The bodyguards searched Gabriel and Cierra, looking at them with intense suspicion because of their clothes and the rattletrap old pickup, but it wasn’t long before they were shown into an airy breakfast room with large windows overlooking the lawn and the river.

“Dr. Almanzar,” Montez greeted Cierra as he stood up from a glass and aluminum table where an attractive, middle-aged woman remained seated. He introduced her as his wife Dolores, then went on, “I am so pleased to meet you.” He frowned a little at their clothes, just as the guards had done. “And this is Señor Hunt?”

“That’s right,” Gabriel said as he shook hands with the man. “From the Hunt Foundation in New York. We’re working with Dr. Almanzar on this matter.”

“Something about my great-great-grandfather’s flag?” Montez asked, still frowning. He was around fifty, with steel gray hair and a neat mustache. “I would not normally have agreed to meet with you on a day when I have so many obligations already, but it is not always that one gets a telephone call about the events of a century ago. This flag you are asking about, it is the one passed down to Enrique by his grandfather Hortensio, the one Hortensio received from the gringo warlord El General?”

“That’s right,” Cierra said. “You know the story?”

Montez said, “It is a family legend, how the American Confederates visited my family’s home all those years ago.”

“Not this house, though,” Gabriel said. “It’s not old enough.”

“Oh, no,” Montez replied with a shake of his head. “At that time my family still had a plantation in the country. That was before oil was found in the region. El General and his men rode through there and stopped on their way to wherever it was they were going.”

“Tell him about the tigre, Jorge,” Señor Montez’s wife urged.

“Of course, of course, but first…would you care to join us for breakfast?”

“That would be wonderful, señor,” Cierra said.

When she and Gabriel were settled at the table with plates of food and steaming cups of coffee in front of them, Montez began telling them about the jaguar—because that was what the word tigre meant, Gabriel knew.

“In those days the tigres still came out of the forest and raided the plantations, carrying off livestock and some-times children as well. One of old Hortensio’s daughters was out riding one day when her horse scented a tigre and bolted in panic. The girl was thrown off. She was not hurt badly by the fall, but she would have been easy prey for the tigre had not El General Fargo come along at that moment. With one shot he killed the tigre, even as it leaped at the girl.”

“And then they fell in love,” put in Dolores Montez, beaming at the romantic turn the story had taken.

“Sí,” Montez nodded. “He was older than she by a considerable number of years but still very dashing in his uniform, according to the story. El General had stopped at my family’s plantation to let his men and horses rest after their long ride from the Rio Grande, but he was determined to go farther south, through the mountains into Guatemala. When he and Hortensio’s daughter fell in love, she begged him to stay, but he would not. He said there was a great treasure he sought in the jungles, and that if he found it he would be able to return to his homeland and rebuild the Confederacy.” Montez’s shoulders rose and fell in an eloquent shrug. “So, since El General would not stay, the girl was determined to go with him. They were married, and El General made a gift to Hortensio of his battle flag. He said that was all he had to give in return for the hand of the girl.”

“Just one flag?” Gabriel asked. “There weren’t two?”

Looking puzzled, Montez shook his head. “One flag is all I ever heard about, Señor Hunt. And the story is quite popular in my family. I think if there had been a second flag, I would have heard about it.” A look of understanding appeared on his face. “Ah! It is this second flag you and Dr. Almanzar search for, is it not?”

Gabriel and Cierra exchanged a glance, and then both of them nodded. If Montez wanted to think that, it was fine with them. He didn’t have to know that they already had the second flag.

“I wish I could be of more help,” Montez went on.

“Do you know where exactly in Guatemala the general was headed?” Gabriel asked.

“No. Just somewhere over the mountains.”

“Did he have a map, or…” Gabriel’s voice trailed off as Montez shook his head.

“I do not know. All that was left was the flag, señor, and it was sold by Enrique Montez when hard times had befallen the family for a time.”

Señora Montez leaned forward and said, “What about the photo, Jorge?”

“Photo?” Gabriel and Cierra echoed at the same time.

“Ah, sí,” Montez said. “One of the Americans had a camera. A primitive thing, but it took photographs. I have seen pictures from your American Civil War, taken by the man Brady?”

“Matthew Brady, yes,” Gabriel said. “This photographer who was with General Fargo took pictures?”

“One picture. Of the wedding party. Something for Hortensio and his wife to remember their daughter by, you understand, since she was leaving with El General and they knew she might never return.” Montez shook his head solemnly. “And of course, she never did. No one ever saw her again after she rode off with her new husband and his men.”

“Do you still have this photograph?” Cierra asked.

“It is a family heirloom.” Montez pushed his chair back from the table. “I’ll get it.”

Gabriel had no idea if the photograph would be of any help, but it couldn’t hurt to take a look at it. Montez went somewhere else in the house and returned to the breakfast room a few minutes later carrying a large, framed photograph. The ornately carved wooden frame looked old, very old. Probably almost as old as the photograph itself, taken more than a hundred and forty years ago.

Carefully, Montez placed the photograph on the table, pushing aside some of the breakfast dishes to clear a space for it. Gabriel and Cierra stood up and moved around the table to get a better look at the picture. Both of them leaned forward to study it.

The photograph had been taken in front of a large plantation house. Dozens of people were crowded onto the long porch that ran from one end of the house to the other, including Confederate soldiers in patched uniforms and whatever other castoffs they could find, and workers from the plantation. In the center of the picture, on the steps leading up to the porch, were gathered the members of the wedding party itself: Hortensio Montez, a stocky man with long, fierce mustaches; his severe-looking wife; a number of other family members; a couple of Confederate officers, the general’s best man and groomsman, no doubt; and finally the happy couple, his hand clasped in hers, General Granville Fordham Fargo and the beautiful young woman whom he had rescued from the claws of the tigre.

Gabriel suddenly felt like he had been punched hard in the gut.

He recognized General Fargo from the portrait he had seen in the book Stephen Krakowski had shown him at the Olustee battlefield. Fargo looked a little older and more worn-down in this photo, but losing a war would do that to a man. And in this picture he was smiling, as well he might considering that he had his arm around his lovely young bride as she beamed up at him.

The problem was, Gabriel recognized the bride, too.

“Mariella,” he said.

“Sí, that was her name,” Montez said, nodding his head. “Mariella Montez. She was Hortensio’s youngest daughter.”

You don’t understand, Gabriel wanted to say. I saw this woman three nights ago in New York City.

“What happened in there?” Cierra asked as they were driving away a short time later. “You seemed like something bothered you a little when you looked at that old photograph.”

“If I only seemed a little bothered, then I did a pretty good job of concealing my reaction.” Gabriel took a deep breath. “That was Mariella Montez in the picture.”

“Yes, I know,” Cierra said, nodding. “She had the same name as the woman who brought the flag to New York. It’s not that unusual a name, Mariella. Assuming it even was her real name—perhaps the woman in New York merely chose the name as an alias for purposes of meeting with your brother.”

“I’m not talking about her name,” Gabriel said. “I’m saying it was her. The same woman in the picture. She’s the one I saw at the Metropolitan Museum.”

Now Cierra looked over at him like he was losing his mind. “But that’s—”

“Impossible, I know. But it’s true, impossible or not.”

“Gabriel…you can’t mean that. I suppose the woman in New York could have been a descendant of the one in the picture. Perhaps the great-great-great-granddaughter of General Fargo and the original Mariella Montez.”

“And looked exactly the same? Not almost the same—exactly?”

“Can you say that with certainty based on a small photograph and a memory of seeing her for just a few minutes several days ago? Maybe the resemblance is not as great as you—”

“Trust me,” Gabriel said. “I never forget a face.”

“But you can’t seriously expect me to believe that she was the same woman. You can’t believe it yourself. What would that even mean? Do you know how old she would be if that were true?”

“Yes,” Gabriel said.

“And you said the woman in New York appeared to be, what, twenty-one, twenty-two?”

“About that,” Gabriel confirmed.

“So you see? It simply can’t be like you think.”

“It can’t be,” he said. “But it is.”

Nine years ago, Gabriel would have been less inclined to believe the impossible. But that was before the cruise ship carrying his parents on a millennial speaking tour of the Mediterranean had turned up empty, no one on board but three slaughtered members of the crew. All the passengers, three hundred of them, vanished, into thin air. It was before his discovery of the tomb of the Mugalik Emperor, in whose airless depths he had encountered a living man, or in any event a speaking one, who had held him at sword-point for two days and two nights before crumbling to dust when Gabriel tricked him into stepping out into the sun. It was before the events of Christmas 2004, on the Millau Viaduct at midnight, when Giuliana Rivoli leaped naked from the highest mast—a height greater than the summit of the Eiffel Tower—and somehow, impossibly, was found unconscious but unharmed the next morning at its base. Impossible, Gabriel had repeatedly found, was often just shorthand for I don’t know how. There were lots of things he didn’t know. That didn’t mean they were impossible.

Anyway, right now there was one thing he did know.

The answers to all their questions lay over the mountains, somewhere in the jungles of Guatemala.

He floored the gas.