Two Graves

But Foote was closer to the car than he was—too close. The gun was visible in one bleeding hand. Foote was chuckling as he opened the rear door.

“Get ready, bitch,” he said.

All the strength fled from Jack’s limbs and he collapsed to the ground. This was it. He was too late. It was all over.

At that moment, something dark in color—one of Corrie’s boots, followed by a jeans-covered leg—flashed out from the rear seat toward Foote. The boot caught him squarely in the crotch with a savage impact. Foote gasped in pain and staggered backward, dropping the gun.

In an instant, Jack was on his feet. In another, he was atop Foote, ignoring the gun in the grass, instead bringing the penknife down into the man’s face with one smooth, swift motion, the blade going straight into his eye. The knife sank into the orb, the ocular jelly squirting out, the knife scraping against the thin bone in the back. Foote jerked and thrashed with an inarticulate roar, hands flying to his face. Jack fell on the gun, grabbed it, then trained it on Foote while the man lay rolling in agony, blood leaking between the hands gripping his face. Jack raised the gun, pointed it at Foote’s head.

“No!” came the voice from behind him.

Jack turned. It was Corrie, lying in the backseat, hands tied behind her back.

“We need him alive,” she said. “We need him to talk.”

For a moment, Jack said nothing. Then, slowly, he lowered the gun. His eyes fell to her ankles. They were free, a pair of plastic cuffs lying scuffed and severed on the floor of the rear seat.

Corrie followed his glance. “There was a burr in the metal rail behind the driver’s seat,” she said.

And now Jack came forward. Wiping off the bloody penknife, he used it to cut through the plastic handcuffs. In another moment he was wordlessly hugging his daughter like he had never hugged anyone before in his life, the tears streaming down both their faces.

57

IT WAS A COOL MORNING AFTER A NIGHT OF RAIN, THE mists drifting over the surface of the river, as they set off from the last town on the Rio Itajaí do Sul, the southernmost tributary of the Rio Itajaí.

Mendonça, in a foul mood and nursing a hangover, guided the boat upriver. The naturalist, Fawcett, resumed his seat in the bow, no longer reading his book but keeping a lookout for butterflies. Once in a while he would shout for Mendonça to slow down when he spotted a butterfly fluttering along the river’s edge, and once he demanded that they actually chase a butterfly with the boat, with him leaning over the bow, swiping at the thing with his net until he caught it.

The last town on the river had been a sad, dirty, horrible little place called Colonia Marimbondo. While there, Mendonça had made careful inquiries about Nova Godói: where it was, how to recognize the landing place along the river. He had gathered most of his information at the local cervejaria, the central beer hall in the town, where he had been forced to spend his hard-earned money buying endless rounds to encourage the uncommunicative villagers to talk. What he had finally managed to squeeze out of them had unsettled him greatly. Most of it was no doubt superstition and sheer ignorance, but it badly u

They had set off early, just at dawn, the sound of the engine echoing off the wall of araucaria trees, dripping after a night of rain. Mendonça could feel the wetness gathering in his hair and beard and creeping through his shirt.

God in heaven, he couldn’t wait for this to be over.

Around noon, they came around a broad bend in the river, and there, on the right-hand bank, stood a floating dock with a ramp leading up to a rickety wooden quay. Beyond the high riverbank lay a partially overgrown clearing in the forest, with several rusting Quonset huts and a ramshackle wooden warehouse. It was exactly as the villagers had described it.

“We have arrived,” said Mendonça, eyeing the quay for signs of life. To his great relief, it looked abandoned.

He slowed the engine and angled the boat in, easing up to the dock, hopping out and tying it off. He stood on the dock as the naturalist, awkward as usual, hauled his pack out and transferred it to the dock, then got out himself, standing unsteadily and peering about.

“We have arrived,” Mendonça repeated, mustering a smile. He held out his hand. “The rest of the money, please, o senhor?”

A pause. “Now, wait just a minute,” Fawcett said, his beard wagging in sudden irritation. “We agreed: two thousand up front, and—”

“And one thousand on arrival,” Mendonça finished for him. “Surely you remember?”

“Oh.” The naturalist screwed up his face. “Is that what we agreed?”

“Yes, it is.”

More grumbling. “You have to wait here until I come back. We agreed on a round trip, six days total.”

“No problem,” said Mendonça. “I wait. But you pay me now.”

“How do I know you won’t take off?”

Mendonça gathered himself up. “Because I am a man of honor.”

This seemed to satisfy Fawcett, and he delved into his pack, fished around, extracted the wad of cash, and peeled off two five-hundred-real notes. Mendonça snatched them and stuffed them in his pocket.

The naturalist picked up his pack. “So where’s the town?”

Mendonça pointed toward a four-wheel-drive track that crossed the clearing, passed by the huts, and disappeared into the forest. Beyond, the green canopy rose in hills, one after another, culminating in a volcanic caldera that disappeared into the low-lying clouds. “Up that road. About three miles. There’s only one way to go.”

“Three miles?” Fawcett frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I thought you already knew.” Mendonça shrugged.

Fawcett fixed him with a scowling eye. “You wait for me. I’ll be back in three days—seventy-two hours—by noon.”

“I will stay with the boat, sleep in the boat. I have all I need.” He gri

“Very well.” The naturalist struggled to get the pack on, adjusted the straps, and then began doddering up the muddy track, his figure appearing and disappearing in the drifting mists. As soon as he had finally vanished into the forest, Mendonça hurried down to the boat, fired up the engine, and cast off, heading back down the river toward Alsdorf as fast as he could go.

58

PENDERGAST HEARD, AT THE EDGE OF AUDIBILITY, THE sound of the boat engine as it moved down the river, soon fading away. The trace of a smile crossed his lips as he continued on. The jeep road wound its way through the endlessly dripping forest, the strange spiky branches of the araucaria pines heavy with droplets. He trudged along, occasionally stopping to pursue a butterfly, as the road wound upward through the dense forest in a series of broad switchbacks, mounting higher and higher until it eventually reached into the low-hanging clouds.

Half an hour later, the track leveled out as it arrived at the top of a low ridge—the rim of an ancient volcanic crater. From there it descended into the mist, the visibility now only a few hundred yards.

Pendergast peered closely at the crater. Then he reached into his pocket and drew out a folded piece of paper: the picture Tristram had drawn of a mountain—the feature of Nova Godói he’d been unable to describe in words. It perfectly matched the crater that now rose up before him.

He made his way down, and as the trail once again leveled out he came to two pillars of dressed lava rock on either side of the road, with a chain-link gate across and a rock wall extending on both sides out into the forest. Behind the gate stood a guardhouse. As he approached, two guards came tumbling out, rifles in hand. They cried out at him in German, pointing their rifles.