Black Sun

“You know,” he said, “we could’ve found a car with air-conditioning.”

She laughed, an easy laugh. “We have the two-sixty air conditioner.”

“The two-sixty?”

“Yeah, two windows down, sixty miles an hour,” she said.

“Great,” Hawker said, wiping more sweat from his face. “I bet James Bond never had the two-sixty air conditioner. Maybe next time we could get an Aston Martin.”

“This suits you better,” she said. “Kind of reminds me of your helicopter.”

He laughed at that. “Yeah, it kind of does.”

The road had taken them to a small fishing village. On the shore, a group of long boats with colorful but fading paint lay motionless side by side. They looked like sea lions basking in the sun. Up ahead was a row of small buildings.

“This is it,” she said. “If McCarter’s still in Mexico, and he wants us to find him, he’ll be here.”

“How can you be sure?”

“When we came down here, we set up shop about fifty miles inland near a ruined Mayan city called Ek Balam, the Black Jaguar. But McCarter kept talking about wanting to come visit this place. I guess he and his wife spent a couple of months here,” Danielle said. “Working all day and making love all night. Never slept a wink, according to him.”

“Sounds nice,” Hawker said. “Except for the working part … and the lack of sleep.”

“Wow, you’re such a romantic.”

She pulled the jeep to the side of the road.

By an hour later they’d checked every motel in town. There were two smaller bed-and-breakfast places up the coast, but one man they’d asked had suggested the small apartment house a few blocks inland.

Danielle pulled up in front of it.

“My turn,” Hawker said. He hopped out and went to see what he could find.

“Moses Negro,” the front desk clerk said, after Hawker described who he was looking for. “Este es loco.”

Hawker remembered McCarter as calm and measured. It was hard to imagine him as “loco” or resembling Moses in any way.

The clerk pointed up the stairs. “Trece, nueve,” he said. Third floor, room nine.

Hawker climbed the rickety stairs and made his way down a short hall.

From the outside the building had looked pretty worn down, old red brick and peeling plaster, but inside it was well kept, though dated and a little cramped.

The hardwood floors beneath his feet were scratched and fading but had been swept immaculate. On a sofa table at the top of the stairs, a vinelike plant with deep green leaves and bright red flowers spilled out of its pot. Through a window he saw the courtyard; an old stone fountain bubbled in the center. Birds sat on its rim or chirped in the bougainvilleas that climbed trellises along the walls.

The place certainly had charm.

Hawker arrives outside room nine. He listened for a moment.

Nothing.

He knocked. “Professor McCarter?”

No answer. The clerk had not seen McCarter leave for the day, but that didn’t mean he was in. With a key he’d bought for a hundred dollars, Hawker opened the door and stepped inside.

The room was tidy but empty. The bed was made but the blanket that covered it was slightly askew. That seemed out of place with the attention to detail that marked everything else around. Hawker guessed someone had been sitting or lying on the top of the covers. A drawer by the nightstand was not quite closed.

Something felt wrong, though Hawker wasn’t sure what it was.

Movement caught his eye as the thin, gauzy drapes by the window wafted in the soft breeze. He stepped toward them and something heavy slammed into the back of his shoulders. He fell forward, stumbling to the window.

A pistol cocked behind his head.

“Who are you?!” a gruff voice shouted.

The voice was familiar. It sounded like McCarter.

Hawker began to turn around.

“Don’t!” the voice shouted. “Don’t you move!”

“I’m just trying to show you who I am,” Hawker said as calmly as he could. “That’s what you wanted, right?”

“Right,” the person behind him said. “Okay, right. Just do it slowly.”

And so Hawker turned as slowly as he possibly could.

His eyes locked on to McCarter, and he instantly understood why the clerk had considered him loco. The professor looked like a crazy man. Bushy beard, unkempt hair, eyes filled with more lines than a Pe

“Remember me?” Hawker asked. “We had a hell of a time in Brazil together.”

McCarter’s face softened as if he recognized Hawker. But then he stiffened again. “Are you real?” he asked.

“Am I what?”

“Real,” McCarter repeated. “Are you real?”

Hawker wasn’t sure what to make of this. Perhaps there was more to the loco description than he’d thought.

“I am real,” Hawker said as calmly as he could. “Though I have to point out, if I wasn’t, I would probably lie to you and insist that I was real anyway.”

McCarter relaxed a bit more. He lowered the gun an inch. “Good point,” he admitted. “Perhaps this is not the best method of gauging reality.”

Hawker extended his hand and calmly directed the gun away from him. “Whatever you decide, I’d rather you didn’t shoot me to find out for sure.”

McCarter uncocked the hammer and tossed the gun on the small table beside him, then looked up at Hawker again. “It’s a cap gun,” he admitted sadly. “All I could get my hands on.”

“A cap gun.” Hawker had to laugh.

“It’s just …,” McCarter started saying. “Sometimes I see things … or hear things … and they’re not really there. And you don’t seem like someone I would run into … I mean … I wasn’t expecting …” He couldn’t find the words. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Hawker looked around, rubbing the back of his neck and trying to figure out how McCarter had surprised him.

“Apparently getting suckered by the old hide-behind-the-door trick.”

“Another reason I thought you weren’t real,” McCarter said quickly. “Who would fall for that?”

Hawker nodded. “I must be losing my touch.”

McCarter smiled. In his sudden moment of happiness he looked even crazier than before. A delirious, joyful madman.

“Still it is good to see you,” McCarter said. “Sorry about hitting you,” he added apologetically. “I don’t like hurting anyone, you know. I’m a pacifist for the most part.”

Before Hawker could reply, the sound of footsteps on the wooden floors could be heard in the hall. And then Danielle popped her head in, with Yuri holding her hand.

“We didn’t feel like waiting in the car,” she said.

As confused as he was by Hawker’s sudden appearance, McCarter seemed even more stu

“It’s a long story,” Hawker promised.

As the details of both party’s stories were relayed, Danielle took a look at the wound on McCarter’s leg. It was clearly still infected.

“Despite the best care of an accredited witch doctor and my own attempts at self-medication, I’ve been having hallucinations and nightmares,” he said. “And feeling paranoid in a way I can’t quite explain.”

“Fever and lack of sleep can do that to you,” she said. “Not to mention the delayed reaction to being attacked and shot. You should be in a hospital.”

She looked at the bottle of pills he’d been taking. “These aren’t strong enough to fight what you’re going through,” she said. “You’re probably just making the infection resistant. I’m going to get you some real antibiotics. And then I’m sending you back home.”

“You’re not sending me anywhere,” McCarter said roughly. Then, as if he’d realized how it sounded, he added, “I mean, I’m the one who started this, remember. I’m not going home till we’re done.”

“This is only going to get more dangerous,” she said, hoping he would change his mind.

He took a deep breath. “You’re welcome to leave if you want. Or to stay and help, but I’m not finished yet.”