Sanibel Flats

Ford and Tomlinson rode in the far corner of the bed, nearest to the cab. They hadn't spoken more than a few words to each other because the soldiers sat on the other side, just a few feet away. The soldiers probably didn't understand English, but Ford wanted to take no chances. Not now; not when they were so close. But then the trucks began a long series of switchbacks as they entered the volcanic ranges, and the noise of the shifting gears and straining engines blotted out all other sound, so Ford slid down closer to Tomlinson and nudged him with his foot. "You asleep?"

Tomlinson had his head pillowed on a sack of beans, his long legs draped over more sacks, and his eyes were closed. "What?" He sat up and stretched a little, touching his face experimentally. "Naw, had to open my eyes anyway to see who was kicking me."

"Sorry. I guess you've been kicked enough for a while."

Both of Tomlinson's eyes were black and his face was streaked with iodine from the first aid kit Suarez had given Ford. Looking around, he said, "Hey, you catch those volcanos up ahead? Weird-looking, man. Like something out of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel. Like you expect to see dinosaurs and winged reptiles and stuff. Cave men eating raw meat, maybe."

"Sounds like you're feeling better anyway."

"I feel like hell, man." He tapped his head. "In here I feel like hell."

"I can bang on the cab and tell Suarez to give us some more aspirin."

"Pills aren't going to help what I feel. It's what those guys did to me. The way they humiliated me. They hit me with their fists and they kicked me in the nuts. They . . . they made me cry, Doc. I pissed my pants and they made me cry like a baby. That sort of shit shouldn't happen to a human being." He put his head down, not able to shake it off, the abasement.

"It's okay, Tomlinson."

"It's not okay, man. You told me to be careful, but I had to go and open my big mouth to that asshole Suarez. Hell, he seemed like a nice guy. Kind of dumb and harmless. Next thing I knew, he was kicking me down the alley. Now I've screwed up your plans."

"Not too loud. Keep your voice nice and relaxed, like we're talking about the weather or something."

"Well, I did screw it up, didn't I? No more messenger going into the mountains for us, no more clean exchange. And they're probably going to kill us."

All of which was true.

Ford said, "I'll think of something. We'll just have to play it by ear. One thing we can't afford is for them to catch us in a lie. Our stories have to match. That's why I need to know what you told Suarez in that room. Everything."

Tomlinson blinked at him. "I didn't tell him anything, man. I zoned out while they were beating me. I had no reason to tell them because I didn't feel a thing."

"Look, Tomlinson, it's all right if you talked. It's nothing to be ashamed of. You said they humiliated you—"

"Not by beating me, they didn't. Hell, they degraded themselves, not me. It's what they made me feel that was so damn humiliating. It's what was going around in my brain while I was zoned out. You know what they made me feel? Hatred, man; hatred like I've never felt before. Hatred for all the cruel, unfeeling, unthinking sons of bitches in this world, and I wanted to kill them. I mean, I actually wanted to take a gun and kill the bastards because they were enjoying it. I could see it in their faces, kind of grinning while they kicked me, Suarez most of all. Hell, it was like a trip to Disney World for that buggy fucker. Hatred does a number on the bladder, I found that out. But I didn't tell them a thing, not one damn word. "

"That's why you feel humiliated?"

"Sure."

"You feel bad because of the way you reacted. " Incredulous, as if Tomlinson were a cross between Audie Murphy and E.T.

"Yeah. You know why? 'Cause I still got that feeling in my head. I can't get rid of it. I close my eyes and I see Suarez grinning and kicking, and I want to take a gun and give him one right here." Tomlinson, looking miserable, touched an index finger to his nose and pressed his thumb down.

* * *

Once they were in the mountains, the caravan made several stops, pulling off the road near clusterings of thatched-roof huts on the hillsides. At each stop, a couple of soldiers came straggling down, Maya teenagers, mostly, looking too small for their camouflage fatigues and shiny AK-47 Soviet assault rifles. These boys were the substance and sustenance of war in Central America, leaving their mothers to carry weapons made in countries they knew nothing about and would probably never see; fighting battles against their own kind in which each side functioned as little more than mercenaries on their own land. The young guerrillas would swing up onto the already overloaded trucks, neither smiling nor speaking; resigned to something, but Ford had never quite understood what was at the core of that resignation. He doubted if he ever would. Then someone would whistle and the caravan would rumble onward again as the teenage soldiers blinked stoically in the wind.

Two hours from Utatlan, they reached the peak of the lowest pass and there was the lake, God's Eye, bright blue and almost perfectly round from that distance, glittering like a mirror amid the dark hills which surrounded it. Beyond a vent in the hills was another pale-blue void that Ford knew was the Pacific Ocean.

Tomlinson was looking, too. "Boy, there's no describing that, is there? Like a picture you see on a calendar, only you hate to see something like this on a calendar because it spoils it some way."

Ford said, "See that village? It's Tambor. I used to live down the shoreline from there, about a mile. I had a little lab set up."

"Where you studied the sharks."

"Right. For about eight months."

"I'd like to get a look at ol' Carcharhinus leucas." Using the Latin name, but not sounding affected—something only Tomlinson could do.

"Just don't get in the water to do it."

"Man-eating fish, huh?"

"They're not as quick to attack as the Maya say, but they can be pretty aggressive. They act differently than sharks in saltwater, too. For one thing, their growth's been stunted, possibly because of overpopulation, possibly because of the fresh water, but mostly because of the limited food supply. The lake's more than a thousand feet deep in some places, but the sharks have to feed near the surface because that's where the food is: fish, birds, turtles, stuff like that. They take what they can get."

"I'd feel safer in the water than I would with that bastard driving."

"Yeah, well, you probably would be safer. Once I watched these guys trying to row a horse across the lake on a makeshift bamboo ferry. The ferry dumped and the horse went in the water. I was in a boat, so I got a good look. I hadn't seen a shark all morning, but within a minute of that horse hitting the water, they were all around. The water's so clear you can see them from a long way off."

"Goddamn, they ate a whole horse?"

"No. That's the point. They never touched it. The horse made it clear to shore with these five-footers cruising all around. But the way those fish vectored in the instant that horse hit the water was impressive. I don't believe in the legends, but I don't want to test them either. "

Tambor was bamboo, thatch, plywood, and tin, too rustic to be tacky, too well traveled to be quaint because it was the only village on the lake built on the main road. Ford looked to see if he recognized anyone as they drove through, thinking that, if they stopped, he might somehow be able to get a message to . . . who? Rigaberto Herrera, maybe. Ford couldn't think of anyone else who could help.

He didn't recognize anyone on the street, though. And the caravan didn't stop. It turned east up a mud logging trail, the trucks grinding along in low gear, twisting and sliding for nine or ten miles past a series of camouflaged bunkers. They were following the perimeter of the lake tpward the sea, and, at each checkpoint, guerrillas stood with their machine guns and made sloppy, bored salutes. Finally the forest thinned and they ascended onto a broad plateau a hundred feet or so above the lake and about a mile from the Pacific, but still hidden by the hills behind and the forest beside. Then they came to a clearing: Zacul's main camp, almost directly across the lake from Tambor.

Ford had spent time on this section of shoreline, but he didn't recognize what he now saw. What was once thick jungle had been cleared and pushed back. Zacul had installed a permanent camp, using fiberglass housing shells that were camouflaged to blend with the high green forest canopy. There was a big open cook house, kettles boiling. There were open-air messes and a parade ground, too. Ford guessed there were facilities for five hundred or more men. The rest of Zacul's forces, as were Rivera's, would be spread around the country as a sort of civilian militia. Sitting not far from the parade ground beneath gray webbing was a Soviet gunship, its blades folded like wilted petals, rockets clinging to its underbelly like eggs on a gravid crab. There were artillery bunkers, too—antiaircraft ordnance, Ford guessed, but the artillery was covered and he couldn't see it clearly. The whole camp had a sterile look; a place of raw earth and fresh paint, as if the bulldozers had only recently finished their work.

Protruding from the jungled hillsides, in stark contrast, were wedges of gray stone blocks buried beneath earth and vines that were now being torn away by men working on scaffoldings.

Tomlinson noticed and nudged him, excited. "Those are pyramids, man. Even covered by that hill, you can see the shapes."

Ford said, "Yeah, I think so."

"I thought an earthquake supposedly took all that stuff. Look at it, man. It's not supposed to be here."

Ford did not reply. He had suspected that this was where he would find Zacul, suspected it when he heard that Pilar Balserio's archaeological camp had been attacked by robbers.

Zacul and his men had been the robbers and it was here they must have assaulted Pilar and taken the book that Rafe

Hollins would later steal from them, the Kin Qux Cho. Now Zacul and his men were continuing the work that Pilar had started, uncovering the lost temples of the Tlaxclen Maya.

When the trucks stopped, they waited for the soldiers to get out; then Ford jumped to the ground. He took a few steps, looked to see if anyone was watching, then squatted and picked up something small and black, as shiny as quartz. He handed it to Tomlinson.

"What's this, man? An Indian arrowhead? Naw, it's a—"

"It's a shark's tooth," Ford said.

Tomlinson was staring at the ground. "Hey, they're all over the place. There's one; there's another one. A big one, too—"

"Don't pick it up. Just keep walking."

"What are sharks' teeth doing up here, man? We must be a mile from the ocean and at least a half mile from the lake. A lot higher, too."

"It's because we're standing where the lake used to be."

"Huh?"

"The earthquakes didn't cover the lake, they moved it. That's why no one ever found anything looking in the lake."

"I'll be damned!" Tomlinson couldn't resist, and picked up another shark's tooth. "Yeah, right—I get it. The whole bottom shifted." He turned to Ford. "But how did you know? Did Pilar tell you?"

Ford said, "No, I told her."

They were herded across the parade ground to a fiberglass structure about forty feet long and fifteen feet wide set apart from the other, smaller huts. Two guards with automatic weapons lounged outside, and they watched blankly as Suarez snapped open the padlock. "Your hotel while you are our guests." Grinning like a comedian, Suarez mfade a sweeping gesture with his arm. "But do not get so comfortable. I am sure General Zacul will want to speak with you soon. Tomorrow, yes. Or the next day." He had made a joke in English and was laughing.

Inside, daylight filtered through a grating at the far end creating a dusky darkness that emphasized the heat and the stench. Ford was aware of movement inside, of other shapes hunched close to the ground. Then his eyes adjusted and he could §ee that the shapes were human; people chained to the walls, sitting in the stink of their own offal, no longer bothering to swat at the flies that buzzed in a translucent veil around their faces.

Most of them were men, but there was at least one boy, too. Ford stood breathing shallowly in the foul air, studying the child chained beneath the grating. The boy was using his free hand in play, trying to build a tiny house of twigs but without much success. The house fell when Suarez slammed the door, locking them in. The boy began to rebuild the house again, but it fell once more. Finally, with a moan of frustration, he knocked the twigs away and buried his face against his arm.

He did not cry, though, and his silence was more chilling than any scream.

The boy was Jake Hollins.

SEVENTEEN

Tomlinson was saying "You know why I like traveling with you, Doc? Because you steer clear of all that tourist-trap stuff. No Days Inns or Ramadas for you, man. Places you go, a guy doesn't have to worry about that troublesome holiday traffic." His voice slightly higher with a nervous edge, Tomlinson was frightened and had to talk.

They had found a space on the ground as close as they could to the boy without making it obvious that they had an interest in him. Outside the temperature was probably 84 degrees with a cool breeze from the mountains. Inside the fiberglass hut, though, it was like a sauna, and Ford's cotton shirt and pants were already soaked. If the heat was bad, the stink was worse, plus there were the flies.

Now Tomlinson was trying to be funny.

"Then there's all the interesting people we've met, and now you even found us a place to stay for free." He patted the ground like it was a pillow. "Don't think I don't see the wisdom in a vacation like this. Nothing shakes off those nine-to-five blahs like a good dose of hepatitis."

Ford was watching the boy, studying him out of the corner of his eye. Physically, Jake Hollins was a mess. His long brown hair hung matted over a grimy face, and his Miami Dolphins T-shirt was as mud-caked as his jeans. He had shown some interest when he heard them speaking English, turning toward them with a face that emanated a glow as brief as a firefly's, an expression of pure hope. But he had quickly withdrawn again, sliding down into a curious sitting fetal position, rocking back and forth as Ford had seen blind invalids rock. The boy had wanted the face of his father, not the stares of more strangers.

Now Jake Hollins didn't seemed to hear them at all; seemed, in fact, oblivious to everything around him. After ten or twelve days in this hellhole, Ford guessed, oblivion would be a welcome escape. Especially for a sick child—the boy clearly had a bad case of dysentery, judging from the mess around him. He looked feverish, too, staring out from dark eyesockets like an animal peering from a cave. It was the one painful ingredient in the whole initiative that Ford hadn't anticipated: They couldn't tell the boy they had come to help him. Not right away, anyway, not until Ford was convinced Zacul or Suarez hadn't planted an observer inside the jail. They couldn't take the chance of Zacul discovering that the child's life was a potential bargaining tool. And, from the look of him, Jake Hollins might not last much longer without some word of hope.

Ford took a deep breath, sighing, and Tomlinson seemed to pick up on what he was thinking, saying "I wish there was someone else in this dump who spoke English. No offense, Doc, but you haven't exactly been a joy to talk with lately."

The boy just sat there, still rocking. Didn't even look up.

Ford slid closer to the boy as he pretended to stretch. Then he began to collect the twigs Jake had been playing with, taking care to keep the pile right in front of the boy. Tomlinson said, "See, Doc, you've got the advantage here. Conversationally speaking, I mean. You can speak Spanish, so you can talk to anybody you want. But me, I don't speak anything but English, so I've got no one else to talk to."

The boy still did not react.

Ford began to lay the foundation of the house. But he laid it out crooked so that the next level of twigs didn't quit fit, and the next level fell.

Tomlinson said, "You aren't much at building boats either."

Ford said, "It's a house," as he began to lay the crooked foundation again.

Then someone else spoke, a soft voice from halfway down the room saying "You are Americans, no?" Leaning forward to make himself known was a slightly built man sitting in white underwear and covered with mud, but with a formal expression on his face, as if he were at a cocktail party and about to make introductions. "I hope you do not mind that I try my English on you, but lately—" He shrugged, oddly embarrassed. "I so seldom get the chance to be using it."

"We're Americans," Ford said.

"Ah, yes, I thought so by your accents."

Tomlinson said, "Not that it makes any difference around here. General Zacul seems to treat all prisoners as equals."

The man shook his arm and the chain made a rattling noise in the dusky light. "Not completely equal. You are to be here only a short time. Me, I have been here for ..." He stared at the ceiling as he calculated. "I have been here for nearly a month. Perhaps longer. They would have chained you if you were to be here like the rest of us. Since the floor is earth, they are afraid we will dig out."

"You're considered criminals, then. That's why you're here?" Glad for the diversion the man was creating, Ford got to the third level of the house before the twigs fell this time. Once again he started to rebuild on a crooked foundation.

"Oh, yes. Every person here has committed a crime. We are all very desperate criminals." The man sounded so weary that the sarcasm in his voice wasn't easy to read, but it was there. "The person sitting across from me, his name is Fredrico. Fredrico's crime is that he sold some vegetables to a group of government troops. Fredrico has been here even longer than I. Two months, he says. And that boy sitting by the door, his name is Jesus. Jesus is not yet eighteen years old, and his crime is that he refused the attentions of one of General Zacul's advisors, a Cuban officer named Arevilio. When Jesus's parents learned that a man tried to take their son to bed, they naturally contacted the authorities. For their crime, they were murdered. For his crime, Jesus was brought here. Someday Zacul or Arevilio or one of the other officers will come and seduce the boy again, for it is their way. Until that time, he will stay here chained with us. Or they will take him to the little wooden shed near the cliff to await execution." '

The man was sitting there in the filth, speaking softly, talking about outrages but not sounding outraged, just tired.

Once again Ford's house fell.

The man said, "The man lying near the door, his name is Creno. Creno's crime is that he is a Miskito Indian. Normally, the soldiers of El Dictamen shoot Miskito Indians on sight, for that is the wish of General Zacul. But Creno has not been shot because he apparently saw something that he should not see. What this thing was, Creno has been kind enough not to tell us. But because it is possible that Creno told others about this thing he should not have seen, General Zacul has ordered that he be tortured each day until he talks. Only after talking will he be shot. It is a thing you call irony, no? Normally, one is threatened with death if one does not cooperate. But Creno faces certain death if he does cooperate. So he has endured these many weeks. Three weeks, I think. Yes, more than that. He has been a great inspiration to us. But, as you can see, he cannot last much longer."

Creno was a tiny man with straight black hair who lay naked, face down on the ground. There was a random grid of red welts on his back and buttocks, whip scars, probably. He had not moved since their arrival, just lay there panting in the heat like a wounded animal.

"What about you? What's your crime?" Tomlinson asked.

"My crime is that I am a physician. I could have opened a practice in Masagua City after internship, but I chose instead to spend a year practicing in the rural areas of my country—to pay a debt of respect to my own people. About a month ago this army attacked Pochote, a mountain village they suspected of helping another guerrilla group here, the Masaguan People's Army. Zacul's soldiers burned the village, but that is not the worst thing he did. He assembled the men of Pochote and offered them the chance to join his army. He asked for volunteers, which was Zacul's way of tricking them for, of course, none of the men volunteered. He had burned their village, you see.

"There were forty-three men in that village over the age of fourteen. Zacul and his lieutenants cut the testicles off all forty-three of those men. They stripped the men, tied them with ropes, and used no anesthetic. It took all night. When I arrived two days later, the floor of that place was like a charnel house. It was black with blood. I tell you, when Zacul goes to a village now and asks for volunteers, all the men step forward. That was his intent when he tricked the men of Pochote. I have heard him joke of it."

The doctor continued, "I learned of the atrocity and traveled two hundred miles to help those men. Several had bled to death, two had committed suicide. Those who survived were already badly infected when I arrived, but I had brought medicines and set about trying to treat them as best I could. Several days later I was arrested. Four times they have taken me to a room and beaten me. Each time I am asked to sign a paper which says that

I agree to serve as a medical officer in Zacul's army. I am not a strong man. In fact, my classmates considered me to be a coward. So I was surprised and rather proud that I did not sign that paper during the first torture session. Of course, they did not beat me badly. They are desperately in need of a physician, so I'm sure they treated me more gently than the others you see here, such as Creno. But I began to take strength from the courage of poor Creno and I survived the second beating. Now I have survived four, and it has been three or perhaps four days since either Creno or I have been beaten." The young doctor leaned farther forward, anxious as a child as he said, "You, obviously, are not considered criminals by General Zacul. I will not ask why you are here, but perhaps you have even spoken with the general. Perhaps you know him as a man in some way. Do you think it is possible that he has given up his efforts to force us by torture? Do you think it is possible that we might some day be released?"

Ford was reaching to reconstruct the foundation of the twig house for the seventh time when a small white hand reached out and stopped his. Jake Hollins was staring at the pile of twigs, but watching him peripherally. There was an expression on his face: impatience, Ford decided. As if to say Can't you adults do anything right?

Ford liked the expression on that small, grimy face with its cleft chin; recognized something in the light of those dark-brown, gold-flecked eyes that he had once admired in Rafe's. As Tomlinson and the young doctor continued to talk, he and Jake Hollins began to build the house together.

Ford did not answer the physician's question.

Three A.M., and Ford was whispering, "A boy who lived in Tambor used to bring me sharks' teeth. Hundreds of them, some °f the biggest and best I've ever seen. I finally convinced him I'd still buy the teeth if he showed me where he was finding them. He brought me here."

Both Tomlinson and Ford were lying on their stomachs, gripping the steel stake to which Jake Hollins was chained, trying to twist it free. The stake was driven through the chain, through a heavy grommet built into the fiberglass, then deep into the ground.

The boy was asleep, knees drawn up to his stomach, lying on his side.

Ford said, "The question was obvious: Why so many sharks teeth a half mile from the lake and nearly a mile from the sea? They weren't fossilized; nothing to suggest a prehistoric drop in sealevel. It gave me something to think about, and, believe me, you live alone in a place this remote, you treasure little mysteries like that.

"At about the same time, I met Pilar. While her husband was on a tour of Europe, she had rented a little cabana about a quarter mile from my lab and lived alone. We met on the beach, and gradually—very gradually—became friends. I began to help her in her work, and she began to help me in mine."

"And that's how you fell in love with the Presidente's wife, man. I can see how it could happen."

Ford said, "Balserio wasn't president then but, yeah . . . that's how it happened. Pilar and I had some great talks sitting outside that cabana at night, just the two of us. She was about as desperate for company as I was at first, but then it became more than that. We weren't lovers; not completely, but I guess I was in love with her—as close as I've ever come to being in love, anyway. Twice she said that she loved me, and a woman like that doesn't use the word loosely."

They were twisting the steel rod back and forth, working it like a crossbuck saw, and it was beginning to move. Tomlinson said, "A guy like you, he's got to be in prison before he opens up. I think you ought to consider this a kind of therapy; make it into a positive thing."

"Uh-huh, right. Pilar s the one who told me the story about the Kache, the conquistadors, the calendar, the earthquakes; all of it. The problem she was working on was what happened to the calendar. If the legends were correct, the calendar should have been someplace in the lake. It's a hell of a big lake and it's deep, but it's only really deep toward the middle and, considering all the people who have looked for the calendar, someone should have found it. At that time, Pilar was plotting constellations for the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, doing a lot of complicated math and trying to figure out exactly where the Tlaxclen priests would've had to mount the calendar to reflect the light of a certain major constellation. She had settled on Orion as the constellation because it had seven bright stars and, in Tlaxclen tradition, the last year of the calendar was called the Year of Seven Moons. This event only happened once every fifty-two years—"

"I know, I know," Tomlinson said impatiently. He was sweating, working hard but trying not to look like he was working in case anyone was watching. "Christ, I'm the one who told you."

"Oh, yeah . . . Anyway, she kept coming up with the eastern shore, where we are now. But so had a lot t>f treasure hunters, and this was the only section of the lake that had really been thoroughly searched, even with all the sharks. That's when it came to me, sitting outside the cabana with Pilar one night. The earthquakes that came after Alavardo's conquest either drastically reduced the level of the lake or altered its position. Where we are now was once underwater, that's why all the sharks' teeth. If the Tlaxclen priests had really pushed the calendar into the lake, it would not be sitting beneath the jungle a half mile or more from the shore. "

"Not bad, man. I bet Pilar loved that idea."

Ford had both hands on the stake and slowly worked it out of the ground. "Pilar like the idea. She loved me."

"So why did she leave you?"

Ford slid the stake back into the ground and patted earth around it. "That's a mystery I never solved."