Origin (14 page)

Adams hoped that there would be no search for them but knew they had to be cautions. A trickle of blood ran down his chin from the corner of his mouth, and he wiped it away.

‘How are your gums?’ he asked Lynn, the blood reminding him of what they had done to escape.

‘Not bad, considering,’ she replied with a smile, which showed the gap in the top row of teeth.

The night before, Adams had started to perform evasive manoeuvres, getting whoever was watching them used to the chopper’s erratic movements. Then, when the missiles had been just behind them and the lip of the canyon was right in front of them, he had slowed the helicopter and taken it right down to the ground, and then they had jumped.

They fell ten feet to the hard, dusty desert floor, both of them rolling through the rough sand towards the edge. They saw the missiles hit the helicopter which exploded with a tremendous, cataclysmic roar, its destroyed body falling to the canyon floor below.

They came to a stop just an arm’s length from the huge drop over the canyon, and Adams had cradled Lynn in his arms, holding her tight, protecting her from the intense heat of the explosion. As the heat started to die down, Adams had released her, his shirt smeared with blood from her mouth.

Knowing the pursuit would continue without some proof that they had been in the helicopter when it went down, Adams had used the precious seconds they had before the missiles hit to give their enemy the physical evidence that would be needed.

He had withdrawn his utility knife, snapping it round into the pliers position. He had then quickly wrenched out two of his own teeth, blood spurting from his gums across the cockpit. The pain had made his head dizzy, but he had maintained control of the aircraft, deploying one more round of chaff.

As the countermeasures took out one more missile, he had been amazed as Lynn had pulled the pliers from him and wrenched out one of her own teeth, casting it on to the cockpit floor. Blood trickled from her mouth as she looked at him, and Adams saw the determination in her eyes. He hadn’t wanted Lynn to copy him, but he knew it made sense – if the pursuers just had teeth from one of them, they might well carry on their search. With definite evidence of two bodies, they likely wouldn’t bother.

And then Adams had taken the helicopter down, and they had exchanged one more look of mutual reassurance before they had opened the doors and jumped.

An hour later Lynn found herself with her own arms cradling Adams, their roles now reversed. He was shivering uncontrollably, unable to stop himself, teeth chattering, his entire body convulsing violently.

They had taken extra clothing from the helicopter, as well as some emergency blankets they had found, and Lynn packed the clothing around him, covering him in the blanket; but still he shivered so hard that Lynn was scared he was going to rip himself apart.

She gave him water, and some of the rations they had found on board, forcing him to eat a couple of small chocolate bars. She then took off her clothes, stripped him naked too, and climbed underneath the same blanket as him, arms and legs entwining with his, sharing her body heat.

She held him close, and the feel of his body next to hers brought memories back to her, powerful memories from their joint past together, lying in bed for hours, making love, resting in each other’s arms, and then making love once more.

They had been happy at the time, she knew that now. Why had she not known it then? It had been her work that had stopped her from ever truly living in the moment with him, stopped her ever truly being happy with him; even as they lay together in blissful harmony, she couldn’t help but start thinking about her next research project. Who was she going to recruit for the project, how were they going to raise the money, what results could they expect to find? The list went on, and it eventually began to tear them apart.

Adams was a man who enjoyed life, here, in the moment, and Lynn was obsessed by her work. When her husband had mentioned having children, she had scoffed at the suggestion – had he no idea what her work entailed, how time- and energy-consuming it was? Children were definitely going to have to wait. Adams had wanted to know for how long, and Lynn hadn’t been able to give him an answer. They had stayed together for a short while afterwards, but it was clear that their lives had different priorities, and eventually they had drifted apart so far that divorce had been the only option.

And now? As Lynn held Adams in her arms, the warmth of her skin flowing into his body, she recognized how mistaken she had been. Where had her work brought her? She lived alone, and people were trying to kill her, and the only person she could turn to was the man she had been with originally. She was at the top of her field, certainly, but what did that matter now?

She felt Adams stir next to her, his eyes opening, groggy and disorientated. ‘Lynn?’ he said weakly.

‘It’s OK,’ she replied, holding him closer. ‘It’s OK. It’s just a fever.’

She saw him close his eyes again, felt him breathing deeply. Then he reopened his eyes, staring directly into her own. ‘No,’ he said sadly, ‘it’s not.’

He still longed for sleep, just a few hours of
real
, honest sleep. He could have continued to pretend he had a fever but he owed it to Lynn to tell her the truth.

‘I’ve not been sleeping,’ he said plainly, registering the surprise on her face as he spoke. ‘I have bad dreams.’

‘But . . . You? Why?’ Lynn just could not understand it. The Matt Adams she’d known had never had any problem sleeping. He had been full of life, full of optimism and hope, and when the time had come for sleep, he had drifted off with no cares in the world.

‘After we broke up,’ he began, glad to finally get it off his chest, to share his problems with someone, especially
this
someone, ‘I was recruited by the government.’

‘What?’ Lynn was surprised once more. He hadn’t shown any interest in working for the government when they had been together, that was sure. He had been the best tracker on the reservation, she knew that much, and he had often helped the local police with tricky cases, but government work was something else altogether.

‘US Immigration and Customs Enforcement,’ Adams clarified. ‘They had a group set up called the Shadow Wolves, responsible for tracking smugglers through the border territories between Mexico and the US. All trackers like me, from nine different tribes. They’d heard about me, and wanted me to join.’

‘And you agreed?’ Lynn asked, again finding it hard to reconcile with the Matt Adams she had known.

‘What else was there for me to do?’ he asked in return. ‘We’d just been divorced, you’d told me I needed direction in life – like you had with your own work – and the opportunity came up, so I took it.’

Lynn nodded her head, sorry she had been in part responsible for his decision. ‘Go on,’ she encouraged gently.

‘Well, I worked with the Shadow Wolves for years, became the top man in the unit – my success record was off the chart. And then one day everything changed.’

Lynn saw the look in his eye – harrowed, guilty, tortured. She didn’t say anything, knowing he would go on when he was ready.

‘A call came in about a truck driven by a gang of child smugglers. We’d heard of the group before, they’d been bringing kids across the border for the past few months, but we’d never been able to get a handle on them. This time we had the make and model of the truck they were using, so we knew we had them.’ His eyes wandered, lost in the past. ‘We tracked the truck across sixty miles of Tohono O’odham territory, and we finally found it, just ten miles from the border.

‘It was abandoned, just left out in the desert sun. We approached it carefully, ready for the smugglers to run, but when we got to the driver’s cab, there wasn’t anyone there. Marks in the sand indicated that the drivers had left the night before, maybe even the day before. The truck had been there twenty-four, maybe thirty-six hours.’ Adams paused, taking a deep breath before continuing. ‘We went round the back to open the doors and check inside, but already we could smell what it was. Dead bodies.’

He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the memories. ‘We opened those doors to a nightmare. Sixty-seven children, some as young as three years old, crammed together in the back of the truck, unable to move, and then left there for dead in the middle of the desert. It was the height of summer, temperatures inside must have reached over a hundred and fifty degrees. And there was no ventilation in the truck. They never had a chance.’

Tears started to roll down Adams’ cheeks as he remembered the horror of what he had seen as the truck doors opened. ‘They were all dead – all of them. Died from the heat, and from asphyxiation. Can you imagine how they must have felt? Trapped in that oven, unable to get out, people dying next to you, above you, under you. There was vomit and diarrhoea everywhere, scratches on the inside of the truck as they struggled to get out.’

Adams wiped away his tears, and looked at Lynn. ‘And you know why the smugglers left them there, why they ran away?’ Lynn shook her head. ‘It was because they’d heard that the Shadow Wolves were chasing them. They thought they didn’t have a chance, so they took off, escaped on foot, leaving the truck behind. Because of us.’ He looked down, too upset to continue.

Lynn held him close, their bodies warm, reassuring. ‘There’s nothing you could have done,’ she said softly, knowing it made no difference but saying it anyway.

‘I could have found that truck quicker,’ Adams answered immediately. ‘I was supposed to be the best, and I failed. I failed badly, and they all died because I wasn’t quick enough, wasn’t good enough.

‘I tried to carry on working afterwards, but pretty soon I started having nightmares about it. They began to get worse and worse, more like night terrors really, and pretty soon I was scared to go to sleep. After a while, I was completely incapable of work. I was broken. They finally let me go, and I went back to the reservation, where I’ve been struggling to just get by ever since.’ Adams held Lynn’s hands, looking into her deep, lustrous, opaline eyes. ‘You might not think it, but you’ve given me something to live for,’ he said finally. ‘Thank you.’

Lynn’s heart jumped in her chest. She had endangered his life, and he was
thanking
her? Tears began to stream down her own cheeks, as she realized something she had been unwilling to admit. She still loved him, even as she was sure he still loved her.

Close, their bodies still naked, intertwined, Adams wiped her tears away and then moved his head even closer, his lips brushing hers. At first the kiss was exploratory, checking for her reaction, and then she responded, pulling in tightly, kissing him back with unexpected passion.

Relieved that the desire was mutual, both Adams and Lynn let go completely, moving in perfect synchrony as the build-up of stress and adrenalin that had filled them for the past few days transformed itself into frenetic, frenzied passion, their bodies fitting into a rhythm they had thought long forgotten, until Lynn buried her face in Adams’ neck and they both felt the tension escape them in a flow of sweet, wonderful relief.

T
WO DAYS LATER
Adams and Lynn finally made it into the small town of Nazca.

They had walked most of the way to Arequipa during the second night, then had to hole up again during the day, finally getting there the following night. It didn’t take long to organize transport on to Nazca – they had simply walked around the town until they made it on to Highway 1 heading north, and then hitched a lift.

The driver of the big truck, on his way to Lima, had dropped them off in the small, dusty town just as dawn was rising. The town itself was unprepossessing, consisting of a grid-like formation of one-storey houses and shops on a section of the desert pampa that lay in the shadow of towering mountains beyond.

Although the town itself was nothing to write home about, Lynn squeezed Adams’ hand tight as they watched the sun rise slowly, majestically, above the snow-capped peaks in the distance, its muted pink-red glow spreading warmth down through the valley.

They just watched it together, hand in hand, in silence for several long, wonderful minutes, all worries temporarily forgotten as they admired the imperial beauty of the natural world.

As the sun finally pushed its way above the mountaintops, Adams turned to Lynn. ‘So where do we find Baranelli?’ he asked her.

‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure,’ Lynn replied sheepishly, ‘but I think I’ve got a good idea.’

The Nazca Lines Hotel, on Jiron Bolognesi, was just five minutes from the famed Nazca Lines, which explained its popularity among tourists, astronomers, explorers and conspiracy theorists.

The lines had originally been noticed in 1939, when an American scientist called Paul Kosok flew over the dry coastline in a small plane. The lines up until then had been thought to be part of some form of irrigation system, but Kosok, an expert in irrigation, quickly discounted such an explanation.

His flight happened to coincide with the summer solstice, and he soon discovered that the lines of the sunset ran parallel to those of a huge drawing of a bird in the desert sands, which made him dub the area ‘the biggest astronomy book in the world’.

After Kosok, a young German mathematician called Maria Reiche went on to study the area for the next five decades, concluding that the colossal drawings were part of an astronomical calendar made by the people of the Nazca culture, possibly also intended to send messages to the gods.

Reiche had lived at the Nazca Lines Hotel, then known as the
Hotel Turistas
for many years, giving hour-long talks about the archaeological phenomenon every evening.

Lynn had heard Baranelli talk about Reiche back at Harvard, and felt sure that he would stay in no other place during his time in Nazca. Not that there
were
many other places anyway.

Adams and Lynn walked past trimmed lawns and baby palm trees and entered the hotel’s white-painted colonial foyer. They made straight for the reception desk.

Lynn, trying not to be too self-conscious about her missing tooth and her generally dishevelled appearance, strode towards the desk, a smile on her face.