Red Jungle (34 page)

“It’s about what she represents. It’s about the danger. If it wasn’t her, it would have to be someone like her,” Katherine said. “I’ve thought about it a lot. There wasn’t a lot to do at my parents’ house. I thought about you. I thought about you and her. And I decided that you were attracted to her because she could get you killed. You want to die, like all those friends back home you told me about. I don’t really understand why, exactly. . . . But it’s a waste, if that’s all it is. If you just want to die, I mean.”

“That’s not fair. You don’t know her.”

“I know she married a monster. What kind of woman has children with a monster? Not fair? I think it’s not fair for you to want to die. And I think it’s not fair that you don’t love me, because I’m not married to a killer and I want to have your baby and I would go anywhere with you and do
anything,
and I don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to prove you’re a big man for me. You don’t have to do a fucking thing. She’s all about the money. Can’t you see she has to be rich, to be
anything?
That’s all she can be, a rich man’s wife. A beautiful, charming, rich man’s wife. It would all be spoilt if she couldn’t be that. Can’t you see that? I can’t understand why you can’t see the simplest things. . . . But you think you’re so smart, and no one can tell you anything.

“Now, please go,” she said. “I really love you, and you can’t even see we could be truly happy.”

“I need to go with you to see President Blanco. When you and the group go tomorrow. Can you get me in? I’ll need a credential,” he asked.

“Is that all you want?” she asked. She stood up and went to the bathroom. She started crying; she wet her face in the sink and picked up a towel from the counter. He felt guilty, and didn’t know why. He’d saved her life, after all.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s all.”

“I’ll do what I can,” she said.

“Don’t ever make a decision like that for me again,” she added. “What you did at the airport. Never do that again.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I care for you. I didn’t want. . . .”

She turned on him, her face still wet.

“You have no right! Do you understand? If I’d been a man, you wouldn’t have dared do that.” He didn’t answer her; he knew he would have done it regardless.

It was dusk. Even under the jungle’s canopy, Mahler could tell it would be dark soon.

He seemed to exist in a netherworld of smoke from the campfire and the mist/rain that fell quietly around him. Mahler’s shirt, now almost a rag, was wet. He drank a cup of coffee, squatting on his haunches. He’d shot the girl while she was running in the river. She’d been getting away; he’d run after her, his boots heavy in the shallow water, firing. The echo of the shots scared the birds in the trees, the sound repeating, banging echoes over the moving river. He wasn’t sure he could hit her, in the dimming light. But then he saw her fall, and he’d stopped. He watched her body move along in the current, and finally disappear.

He didn’t like doing it, he’d told himself, but she was going to run away. He said it out loud in German: he wouldn’t have done it if she weren’t going to run away. The Mayan temple loomed hoary in the mist behind him. Why would he? He wasn’t a murderer, he was an archaeologist after all,
from a good family
. The men he killed would have certainly killed him once they realized what the Jaguar meant. The statue was bigger than even the most optimistic reports from the Spaniards. It was huge. It was worth…
Only God knew what it was worth
, he thought, holding his cup.

He turned slightly and looked towards the temple they’d uncovered. He remembered those early sketches from
A Journey In Mesoamerica
, which he’d read as a child. The rain was falling through the canopy. The temple door was clearly in view; if anyone happened along now, they would see the freshly-cut jungle around the entrance.

He stood up and walked across the camp, stopping to pick up one of the dead men’s waterproof ponchos and pull it on. He walked back to the fire.
If she only had been frightened,
he thought, looking back towards the river. He would have taken her to Germany. The girl would have liked Germany. He would have shown her snow and the Alps. He closed his eyes for a moment and saw her fall. She was heading out to the deep, thinking she could swim away. But it wasn’t to be. No, he wasn’t a murderer; she’d forced him to it. She wouldn’t ever see the snow now, he thought, looking again into the fire. And that was too bad—regrettable. But he had to protect his investment. She would have told someone. He couldn’t just let people steal what he’d worked so hard to find.

Mahler stared into the fire for a long time. He built it up again as the darkness came. He didn’t notice the water streaming down his face; he was lost in his thoughts, weighing what he should do, calculating. He had tried to get Russell back here. They could have worked together and taken the Jaguar out together. But Russell was crazy. He’d gotten involved with politics. He would probably be killed. He was already as good as dead.

If something happened to Mahler now, what would become of the Jaguar, after all these hundreds of years? The jaguar was
his
. He’d found it. It belonged to him. It had taken his whole life to find it, and now he had. It was his to keep. He would get it back to Germany somehow. He would prove to all his father’s friends that his father’s son was the greatest archeologist of all time. He was the man who had found the famous Red Jaguar, after all, and it was bigger than anyone had dreamed it would be. He would have his picture in the paper. He would be famous for a thousand years. He would teach again.

•••

He looked across the edge of the darkness past the firelight, the rain dripping off the brim of his rubber-covered cowboy hat as he stared at the temple. He finally got up and walked toward the temple entrance in the dark, with a torch from the fire. The rain hissed as it hit his torch. Here and there he saw the torch’s yellow light reach out into the darkness, clawing at the night as he made his way. That night he slept in the temple, under the jaguar, and well out of the heavy rain.

“I haven’t heard from Mahler. It’s been three days,” Russell said.

He’d brought a pistol. It was noontime, and the sun was intense. He’d barged through the front door of Carl Van Diemen’s place in Antigua. The maid had tried to warn Carl he was coming, but he’d been right behind her, jogging past the fountain with the pistol. Russell pulled out his pistol as he ran; the maid saw it, and the gardener saw it, too.

Carl was in the shower. Russell had come right into the shower, past the maid and past the boyfriend, whose outline he’d seen under the sheets of the big canopy bed. Now he was staring at Carl’s scarred face, water hitting him in the chest.

Russell yanked Carl out from under the shower and pushed him down on the toilet. Russell held the pistol down by his thigh. He was breathing hard, because he’d run all the way from the street.

Russell said it again.

“I haven’t heard from Mahler in three days. Where is he?”

“I haven’t heard from him either,” Carl said. He was dripping wet. The maid, anxious and frightened, stood by the door.

“Tell her to go away. I want to talk in private,” Russell said. Carl did as he was told, and the woman left them.

“Do you have any guns in the house?” Russell asked.

“No. Of course not. They scare me.”

“Does your driver carry one?”

“No. Russell, what’s wrong?”

“I want to know where the fucking jaguar is. Do you have it?”

“No. Of course not. How could I? Did you find it?”

“I think Mahler’s taken it. And I want to know if he’s given it to you. If you tell me the truth, I won’t kill you. If you lie to me, I’ll come back and kill you. Do you understand me?”

“Yes. I don’t have it. I haven’t spoken with Mahler in days. He was waiting for you at
Tres Rios
. I saw him here and gave him some money.”

“You’re sure about that?” Russell said.

“Yes. I didn’t know he’d found it.”

“Yes. I think he has. I think he’s found it, and he’s trying to cheat us.”

“He can’t sell it. He wouldn’t know how. And he can’t move it around the country like that, by himself,” Carl said. His big white stomach was wet. His scarred face, just now healing, was red from the hot water. He was ugly, ugly and fat and afraid Russell might kill him.

“Yes, he can. This is Guatemala. You can do anything you want. He might already be gone. He might already have loaded it on a ship at Barrios!”

“No, he won’t do that.”

The door opened, and Carl’s boyfriend—his arms straight out—was pointing a gun at Russell. It was a small woman’s gun, and he was aiming it at his head. From the corner of his eye, Russell watched the kid move into the bathroom. The kid’s gun hand was shaking; he was wearing lipstick and girl’s panties, and he was scared.

“Put that down, or you’ll get hurt,” Carl told the boy. “We aren’t fighting. Everything is okay.”

“Put that fucking thing away or you’ll be sorry,” Russell said, without turning to look at the boyfriend. As soon as he said it, he felt the gun barrel press against the side of his head and stay there, resting by his ear. Russell was getting angrier and angrier.

He looked Carl in the eyes. The thought of the kid holding him at gunpoint was making his heart race.

The anger he’d been keeping at bay since he heard Blanco had appointed Selva president started to spill out. Beatrice had called him, to tell him again that she couldn’t possibly leave the country. She was afraid of Carlos in a way she’d never been before. He would be president of the country by tomorrow, and more powerful than ever.

“No. You drop yours. It’s your fault Carl looks like that,” the kid said.

“You motherfucking punk. What did you say to me?”

“It’s your fault the jaguar did that to him. To my Carl.”

Russell knew then that the kid was going to kill him. He just understood it. He was still looking at Carl, at his face. He could see the scars on Van Diemen’s face and the look in Carl’s eyes. Carl
wanted
the kid to shoot him; it was in his eyes. Carl wouldn’t stop him.

“Tell this punk of yours to put his fucking gun down, or I’m going to kill him,” Russell said. He could barely speak. The rage was choking him. “Do you hear me, kid? I’m going to kill you.”

As soon as he said it, Russell turned around, snapped his elbow up, and hit the kid’s gun. It went off. The blast in the bathroom was loud. Russell grabbed the kid’s arm and managed to slap his hand towards Carl. The gun went off again. By now Russell had his hand on the kid’s wrist; he brought his knee up hard and snapped the kid’s arm at the elbow. He felt the arm break, and heard the boy scream. The gun fell to the floor.

Russell looked up. Van Diemen had a bullet in his face and was jerking on the toilet, already dead. Russell’s ears were ringing from the gunshots.

“Ah, mi brazo! Ay… Ay mi brazo! Ahi, Poppi, mire que me ha hecho a mí brazo
.” The kid, screaming, hadn’t yet seen what he’d done. He was in agony looking at his broken arm, the bones sticking out of the elbow. The arm pointed back in an ugly way.

“You killed him,” was all Russell could say. “You dumb motherfucker!”

The kid picked his head up and looked at Carl’s body on the toilet.

“You happy now, asshole?” Russell picked the kid up, carried him into the bedroom, and sat him on the bed. The kid’s face was blank, as if he couldn’t believe it.

“You’re going to tell me where he sells his stuff. There must be a person in Europe—someone. A phone number. Something!” Russell said. The kid kept looking toward the bathroom. He hadn’t said a word. He had to be in a lot of pain, but suddenly he wasn’t saying a word; he wasn’t even holding his mangled arm. He was just staring into the bathroom, at the body on the toilet.

“Listen to me, asshole. I want a name. I need to have that name or I’m going to break your other arm. Are you listening to me? I don’t care, you understand? I don’t care about your dead boyfriend, and I don’t care about you. You understand that? I need a name.”

The kid wasn’t listening to him.

Russell reared back and slapped the kid in the face, knocking him back onto the bed. “Can you hear me now? You’re going to give it to me. I’ve come too far to let a punk like you stop me. Do you understand me, kid?”

“His brother . . . Poppi’s brother. He’s the one. He buys everything from Carl,” the kid said, looking up at him. “He’s in Paris. He has a gallery in Paris.”

“Get up and get me the fucking number,” Russell said. “Go on. . . . Get the fuck up and get me that number.”

“I can’t,” the kid said. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Where is it? So help me, God, I’ll break the other one.”

“On the computer. He has it there,” the kid said. He was going into shock. He was starting to shake, and he’d turned deathly white. Because of his arm, he couldn’t push himself up off the bed.

“Where is it? His computer?”