Fallen Idols (50 page)

He turned to the armed man again and spoke some more. The two men nodded.

“It will be all right,” Oscar said, trying to reassure the brothers. “Follow me and do what I tell you, and you will be safe.”

They marched single-file along the trail which meandered farther up the side of the mountain at an easy grade. One of the armed guards led the parade, then Tom, Oscar, Clancy, with the other guard bringing up the rear. It was mid-morning now, hot again, and steamy. The sweat coming off Tom's and Clancy's bodies turned their shirts black, their hair fell in wet clumps about their faces. Oscar handed them water bottles and they drank greedily. Oscar and the guards did not drink, and they did not sweat.

They could barely see sky or sun through the dense tree canopy, but they could hear the ongoing sounds of the rain forest, the screaming of monkeys, the calls of birds, once in a while a cry that sounded like it came from something big and dangerous. The trail slowly, inexorably led them higher. Finally, after several hours of hard, nonstop hiking, they reached a crest, and the forest suddenly and dramatically gave way to a crystalline-brilliant, almost blinding sky. The lead guard, who had moved up ten yards ahead of Tom, stopped at the top for a moment and looked into the unseen distance. Then he disappeared down the trail. Tom, Oscar, Clancy, and the trail guard scrambled to keep up with him.

The clearing they emerged into was similar to locations they had visited with their parents over the years. About a dozen small huts, the walls made of thin tree limbs interwoven with vines, the roofs tightly thatched, were laid out in a haphazard grid. A couple of larger buildings were bunched in the center. Off to one side there was a corral that held several rawboned horses. Beyond the corral, a large garden was under cultivation, and next to that, a pen that held goats, sheep, and chickens. Various muddy vehicles were scattered about the area.

Surrounding this cleared-out area were dozens of tall mounds, some close to a hundred feet in height. They were covered in shrubbery and scraggly trees, but in a few places there were faint signs of the hand of man: a set of limestone steps in the side of a hill leading from nowhere to nowhere; a plaster floor cut into the side of a mound; what looked like columns reaching tentatively toward the sun.

Several men came into the center of the clearing. Like the boatmen, they were all young, and heavily armed. Some had automatics in holsters in their belts, others brandished rifles, a few bore machine guns. As they came closer they jabbered to one another, mostly in Mayan, some in Spanish, although in a regional dialect too thick for Tom to understand.

“Oscar!” a voice boomed out in Spanish.

A tall, bearded man with strong Indian features strode toward them. A matching pair of black Glock .44 automatics hung loosely from his waist. The man embraced Oscar in a bear hug, lifting his smaller friend off his feet.

“Was it an easy trip?” he asked Oscar.

“Yes,
jefe,
“ Oscar said respectfully. “We saw no one. And no one saw us.”

The man smiled. “Good work, Oscar.” He stared at Tom and Clancy. “These are the men that Manuel sent to me?”

“Yes.”

The man turned to the brothers.
“¿Hablan Español?
” he asked brusquely.

Tom nodded.
“Sí
.”

“Good,” the man replied in Spanish, “because my English is not good.” He laughed, a dry ironic cackle. “So it is good you speak
my
language, since you are in
my
country.” He smiled, revealing a mouthful of gold teeth. “You can call me Che. I cannot divulge my real name because the government would use my family to get to me, if they knew who I really am. You would not think it from these surroundings, but I am well educated, and my family is one of the most prominent in our country. I've had to leave all that behind, to fight for our freedom.”

He gave them a piercing look. “There is a substantial bounty on my head. There are many men—jackals—who would betray me for it, so I have to be careful. Do you understand?”

Tom nodded. “You don't have to worry about us,” he told their host. “We're not interested in that.” He turned to Clancy. “He's political,” he explained. “Calls himself Che, like in Guevara. The government has a bounty on his head. So he's skittish.”

Having declared his colors, the man gave Clancy and Tom a squinty-eyed look. “You are the sons of the woman who was killed.”

“Yes,” Tom answered tightly.

“And you want to know why.”

“Yes,” Tom said. “And by whom.”

Che nodded gravely. “I will tell you those things,” he declared. “Every son deserves to know how his mother died. And why.”

Before getting down to business, Che took Tom and Clancy on a tour of the area. Several of his men followed closely, their hands at the ready on the stocks and barrels of their rifles and shotguns.

“We are self-sufficient,” Che boasted, showing off the garden and the animals. Pointing to the livestock in the corral and the vehicles, he said, “There are roads we use that connect us to neighboring countries that are more friendly to our cause. Only we know where they lead—they are heavily camouflaged. We cannot allow anyone outside of our cadre to know where they are, which is why you had to walk in and why you will have to walk out.”

Clancy pointed to one of the nearby mounds that had been cleared away just enough to reveal that there had once been a structure underneath the dirt and trees. “Ask him what that is,” he told Tom. “This must've been a city. All these mounds are covering up structures, from the looks of them.”

Tom relayed the request to Che, who nodded. “Your brother is right,” he said. “This was a prominent city. Not as grand as Tikal or El Mirador, but significant.”

“Was it ever excavated more than this?” Tom asked.

Che shook his head. “No. This is all that was done, several years ago. We are a poor nation. We have to spend our money in feeding our people and building schools and factories. We do not have time to dwell in the past, because the present is too harsh.”

He scooped up a handful of dry dirt, let it sift back to the ground between his fingers.

“Those few sites that are restored, it is only because foreign teams come in to do it, like your father's.” He waved an arm, taking in the vista. “Most are deep in the jungles, like this one. It is impossible to guard them, so there is looting and plundering. If a site cannot be guarded, and the artifacts from them kept from looters, it is better not to open them at all.” His face flushed in anger. “When the tomb raiders come, they steal the heart and they leave the skeleton. Which is what happened at La Chimenea.” He paused. “Except there, the tomb raiders were the government. And the archaeologists themselves.”

They sat at a battered wooden table in the structure which was the headquarters for Che's operation—Che on one side of the table, Clancy and Tom on the other, opposite him. The other men, including Oscar, stood outside, looking in through the small screenless windows.

The air inside the hut was still, fetid. These guys bathe once a week at best, Tom thought, as Che's rancid B.O. drifted across the table into his nostrils. Clancy, too, could smell their host's funkiness—he kept running his hand across his nose and mouth, as if using it for a filter.

Che cleaned his fingernails with the tip of a large Bowie knife, then ran a pinkie finger around the inside of his mouth as a toothbrush. Finished with his casual toilet, he laid the knife on the table and leaned forward toward Clancy and Tom, his large, rough hands splayed out in front of him.

“We are at war in our country between those who stand shoulder to shoulder with the people and the corrupt regimes that suppress them. This is no secret. All the world knows it. It is a conflict that has been fought for many, many years. But no one wants to put a halt to it, except the people who are suffering because of this unjust war: the original people, the children of the great Maya empire.”

He spread his arm in an expansive gesture, taking in his men and the ancient ruin. “We are of Maya descent. Most of us, like me, are not pure. We are mongrels, bastards created from centuries of cross-breeding by subjugation. But in our hearts we are Indian, not Spanish.”

He stared at them sharply, to make sure they were listening carefully. “The current regime is particularly harsh. They are determined to crush our revolution. They will go to any means they think is necessary—murder, false imprisonment, torture. They do this with the knowledge of the rich nations like yours, who look the other way. You know this, I'm sure.”

He paused for Tom to translate his remarks to Clancy. When Tom was finished, Che spoke again.

“But our subjugation is not enough for these jackals. They also turn a blind eye to the stealing of our priceless heritage, our monuments and the symbols of our former greatness. Not only because they are venal, or corrupt, or weak. But also, too often, because they are accomplices.”

He slammed his open palm down hard on the table. “In this small area, like so many others, all of the important artifacts have been spirited away. You want to see the remains of our great civilization? You won't find them here. You will have to go to the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, so many places in your country and Europe, even in Japan.” He shook his head sadly. “There you will see the monuments to our greatness.”

After pausing to wait for Tom to translate this diatribe to Clancy, Che continued. “These thefts are terrible. But it is not only the
guaqueros,
or the
chicleros.
They, at least, are our countrymen, as poor and desperate as we are. It is the
outsiders
who steal who are the most offensive to me and to my people—
because they have no right!
They come like pirates. They plunder, and then they leave.”

He banged his fist on the table again. “With the cooperation of our government they do this. Who turn a blind eye to this plundering.” He grimaced. “You met with the Minister of Archaeology and Culture?”

Tom nodded.

“He told you there had been looting at La Chimenea?”

Tom nodded again. “Yes.”

“And from the time your father stopped being there it stopped?”

Another yes. This one difficult to acknowledge.

“This minister,” Che continued. “Did he also tell you it was he who removed the military escort that was to guard your father's party on their perilous way from La Chimenea to the airport? So that they had to travel without armed support?”

“We knew about that,” Tom answered carefully. “But how did you?”

“We have informers everywhere,” Che responded. “We have to, for our survival.” He picked his knife up from the table and twirled it between his fingers, a bit of bravado to indicate to them that he considered the sharp weapon no more dangerous to his health than a letter opener.

“This minister is a scurvy dog,” he proclaimed disdainfully. “He works both sides of the street, and shits on both sides of the street as well. For years he had been taking bribes to permit our precious heritage to be stolen and taken out of the country. But then, shortly before your mother was killed, he realized the noose was closing around his neck, because one of the workers at La Chimenea discovered what was going on. He was going to report the thievery to one of the handful of men in our government who has not been corrupted. The Minister of Archaeology and Culture was afraid his involvement would be uncovered. He had to put distance between the looters and himself, for his self-preservation, even if it meant betraying his accomplices.”

He twirled the knife between his fingers again, like a magician playing with a coin. “Through an emissary, he sent his informant to me. He knew that I would do what he could not: stop the thefts, by whatever means were necessary. This is why the troops were removed. So that my men and I would not encounter resistance.” He spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the floor. “Protecting their own hides is all our government officials care about, because they are vermin. And they are cowards. They come to men like me when there is dirty work to be done, because they want to keep their own hands clean.”

He waited for Tom to relay this burst of information to Clancy, then continued.

“I spoke for a long time with the informant, to be certain he was telling the truth. And I insisted that he accompany us when we set out to stop your father's party from leaving the country with the stolen artifacts, to make sure we weren't being set up. Because once I knew, beyond a shadow of doubt …” He paused.
“Beyond a shadow of a doubt
,” he repeated, his voice rising, “that there had been looting at La Chimenea, I had no choice. I am Maya—I had to take a stand.”

With a sudden, violent motion, he stabbed the knife into the table. “We had to show these thieves that we are men!” he shouted impassionedly. “That we are not scurvy dogs who run away with our tails between our legs! That we will not allow our culture and our heritage to be stolen, to be bought and sold like pigs or cattle!”

His voice dropped back to a matter-of-fact conversational level. “I shot your mother,” he said.

Both brothers gasped.

“It was not me directly,” Che told them quickly. “It was the man who had come to me with the information.” He scowled. “He was a coward. But I take responsibility, because I was in charge.”

In meticulous detail, Che told them everything that had transpired up to the moment of their mother being killed. Then, he continued, after they had ridden away with the trunk of stolen artifacts and other personal valuables in tow, he and the turncoat archaeologist had gotten into a terrible fight. He knew the man had fired at Walt deliberately and he was enraged, because he hadn't wanted a killing unless it was necessary, which hadn't been the case. Now it was going to be much harder to rally sentiment to his side, because both his government and the American government, the power that held all the cards, would condemn them as one more group of bloodthirsty bandits, rather than men with a true political and revolutionary cause.

They had returned the artifacts to the tomb from which they had been stolen, and sealed it back up. It had been almost a year and a half now, and he was sure that no one had gone back to steal them again. There were no archaeologists working there anymore, he informed them. Without Walt's involvement the money had dried up, and the government had been forced to abandon it. The site was rapidly returning to its natural state. In a few years, no one, except the handful of people who had been there, would know it had ever existed.