Burial Ground (2 page)

He looked to the sky, a thin channel of
cobalt through the lush branches that nearly eclipsed it from
either bank. Blue-capped tanagers darted through the canopy in
flickers of turquoise and gold, and common woolly monkeys screeched
out of sight. The omnipresent cloud of mosquitoes whined around his
head, but showed little interest in the waterlogged corpse, which
already seethed with black flies.

Merritt had seen more than his share of
bodies during his years in the army, and approached this one with
almost clinical detachment. That was the whole reason he had run
halfway around the world to escape. There was only so much death
one could experience before becoming numb to it.

With a sigh, he climbed down from the mound
of sticks and rounded the body again.

"This is
so
not cool," he said,
leaning over the man and grabbing one of the shoulder straps.

He braced himself and pulled. The body made
a slurping sound as he pried it from the mire and dragged it higher
onto the bank. Silver shapes darted away through the water, their
meal interrupted.

The vile stench of decomposition made him
gag, but he choked down his gorge. It wasn't as though this was the
first corpse he had ever seen. A flash of his previous life
assailed him.
A dark, dry warren of caves. Smoke swirling all
around him. Shadowed forms sprawled on the ground and against the
rock walls. One of them, a young woman with piercing blue
eyes---

Merritt shook away the memory and willed his
heartbeat to slow.

He blew out a long, slow breath, then rolled
the corpse onto its back. The angry cloud of flies buzzed its
displeasure.

"For the love of God..." he sputtered, and
drew his shirt up over his mouth and nose.

The man's face was a mask of mud, alive with
wriggling larvae, the abdomen a gaping, macerated maw only
partially obscured by the tattered remnants of the shirt. Merritt
had obviously dislocated the man's right shoulder when he wrenched
it out of the mud. The entire arm hung awkwardly askew, while the
left remained wrapped around a rucksack worn backward against his
chest, the fingers curled tightly into the fabric as though afraid
to release it even in death.

Merritt groaned and knelt above the man's
head. He really wished he'd brought his gloves. Cupping his hands,
he scooped the mud from the forehead, out of the eye sockets, and
from around the nose and mouth. The skin beneath was so bloated it
felt like rubber.

Even with the brown smears and discolored
flesh, Merritt recognized the man immediately. He had flown him and
his entire group into Pomacochas from Chiclayo roughly three weeks
ago. So where were the rest of them?

His gaze fell upon the rucksack. If it was
still here when the policía arrived, nothing inside would ever be
seen again. Corruption was a way of life down here.

Merritt unhooked the man's claw from the
fabric, pulled it away from the bag, and set it on the ground. He
unlatched the clasp and drew back the flap. At first all he saw was
a clump of soggy plants. He moved them aside and blinked in
astonishment.

"Son of a bitch."

Hospital Nacional Docente Madre Niño San
Bartolomé

Lima, Peru

October 15
^th

9:03 a.m. PET

Eldon Monahan, Consul-general of the United
States Consulate in Peru, waited in the small gray chamber,
handkerchief over his mouth and nose in preparation for what was to
come. At least this time he'd had the foresight to dab it in Vicks
VapoRub before leaving the office. He wore a crisp charcoal
Turnbull & Asser suit with a navy blue silk tie, and had
slicked back his ebon hair with the sweat that beaded his forehead
and welled against his furry eyebrows. His piercing hazel eyes
absorbed his surroundings. It took all of his concentration to
suppress the expression of contempt. Slate gray walls lined with
ribbons of rust from the leaky pipes in the ceiling surrounded him
on three sides. The fourth was a sheet of dimpled aluminum that
featured a single door with a wide horizontal handle, the kind of
freezer unit they installed in restaurants. Twin overhead sodium
halide fixtures were mounted to the ceiling on retractable
armatures. The diffuse beams spotlighted the scuffed, vinyl-tiled
floor in front of him.

God, how he hated this part of his job.

A baccalaureate degree in Political Science
from Stanford and a doctorate in Politics and International
Relations from Oxford, and here he was in the basement of what
could only loosely be considered a hospital by American standards,
in a backward country half a world away from where he really wanted
to be. Paying his dues. Mastering the intricacies of foreign
diplomacy. Whatever you wanted to call it, it was still about as
far as a man could get from a seat on the Senate floor. Here he
was, thirty-six years old and not even an actual ambassador.

The screech of his grinding teeth reminded
him of his hypertension, and he tried to focus on something else.
Anything else.

The door in the aluminum wall opened outward
with a pop and a hiss. Eldon took an involuntary step in reverse.
The morgue attendant acknowledged him with a nod as he wheeled the
cart into the room and centered it under the lights. A sheet,
stained with a Rorschach pattern of mud and bodily dissolution,
covered the human form beneath.

"What can you tell me about the body?" Eldon
asked in Spanish through the handkerchief.

"The policía dropped it off last night," the
attendant said, visibly amused by the Consul-general's
squeamishness. He wore a yellow surgical gown and cap,
finger-painted with brown bloodstains. "Found him way up north in
the Amazonas. Textbook case of drowning, you ask me."

"How do we know he's an American
citizen?"

"The pilot who flew him into Pomacochas
recognized him."

"But he couldn't identify him?"

"That's all I know. You're supposed to be
the man with the answers. Shouldn't your embassy have told you all
of this?"

Eldon flushed with resentment.

"Where are his possessions?" Eldon
asked.

"What you see is what you get."

Par for the course
.

"Let's just get on with this then, shall
we?"

With a curt nod, the attendant pulled back
the sheet to expose the head and torso of the corpse.

Eldon had to turn away to compose himself,
but he couldn't chase the image from his mind. The man's face was
frosted from the freezer, his skin tinged blue. Chunks of flesh had
been stolen from his cheeks, earlobes, and the tip of his nose.
There were still crescents of mud in his ear canals and along his
gum-line. He was dramatically swollen from the uptake of water,
which caused his epidermis to crack as the deeper tissues
froze.

"You don't want to see the parts I left
covered," the attendant said. He smirked and clapped Eldon on the
shoulder, eliciting a flinch. "Do what you need to do quickly. We
don't want him to start to thaw."

Eldon removed the digital camera from the
inner pocket of his suit jacket and leaned over the body. Three
hurried flashes and he was out the door without another word. He
needed fresh air, humid and oppressive though it may be. He
ascended the stairs and crossed the lobby through a churning sea of
the sick and injured, oblivious to their curses as he shouldered
his way toward the front doors. As soon as he was outside, he
ducked to his left, cast aside the handkerchief, and vomited into
an acacia shrub.

Sometimes he absolutely hated his life.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand
and headed to where his car idled in the emergency bay. The driver
waited outside the open rear door of the black Mercedes-Benz
E-Class sedan, and ushered him inside. They drove in silence, save
the whoosh of the wind through the open driver's side window. The
chauffer repeatedly raised his hand to cover his nose as discreetly
as he could.

Wonderful, Eldon thought. He'd obviously
brought more than pictures of the corpse with him.

The Mercedes turned through the black,
wrought-iron gates of the Consulate. Armed Marines saluted as the
car passed and rounded the circular island of rainbow flowers, from
which twin poles bearing the American and Peruvian flags rose.

Eldon didn't wait for the driver to come
around to open the door. He just wanted to get this over with. As
he ascended the concrete stairs beneath the gray marble portico, he
focused on the task at hand: upload the digital images into the
program that would compare them to the passport photos of all
Americans still in Peru, starting with those who had registered
their travel plans with the Embassy. Once he had positive
identification, he could make his calls, get the body embalmed and
on a plane back to the States, and wash his hands of the whole
mess.

"Mr. Monahan," the receptionist called in a
thick Spanish accent as he strode into the lobby. She pronounced it
Meester
Monahan.

He pretended not to hear her and started up
the staircase beside her desk. The middle-aged Peruvian national
climbed out from behind her post with the clatter of high
heels.

"Mr. Monahan!"

With a frustrated sigh, he turned to face
the frumpy woman and raised the question with his eyebrows.

"There's a man waiting for you outside your
office."

"I assume he's been properly cleared?"

"Yes, Mr. Monahan."

"Thank you, Mrs. Arguedas."

He ascended to the top floor and headed
toward his office at the end of the corridor. A man with shaggy
chestnut hair and pale blue eyes sat in one of the chairs outside
his office, a filthy backpack clutched to his chest. The armed
soldier beside him snapped to attention when he saw Eldon, while
the other man rose almost casually from his seat. His discomfort
was apparent, yet he seemed less than intimidated by his
surroundings. He had broad shoulders and a solid build that
suggested he had been shaped more by physical exertion in the real
world than by countless hours in the gym.

Eldon extended his hand and introduced
himself as he approached. "Consulate-general Monahan."

"Wes Merritt," the man said. He offered his
own hand, but retracted it when he noticed how dirty it was.

Eldon was silently grateful. He lowered his
hand, gave a polite smile, and gestured for the man to follow him
into his inner sanctum. The soldier fell in behind them and took
his place beside the closing door.

"How can I be of assistance, Mr. Merritt?"
Eldon seated himself in the high-backed leather chair behind his
mahogany and brass Royal Louis XV Boulle desk, and made a show of
checking his watch.

"Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Monahan.
Especially with no notice."

Eldon waved him off, but he would definitely
have to discuss such improprieties with Mrs. Arguedas.

Merritt opened the flap of the rucksack and
set it on the edge of the pristine desk.

"I wanted to give this to you in person. You
know how the authorities are down here..."

Eldon nodded and fought the urge to shove
the vile bag off of his eighteenth century antique desk.

"I found this with the body you just visited
at the morgue. I need to make sure it reaches the right people back
home." Merritt shrugged and rose as if to leave. "You'll make sure
it does, Mr. Monahan?"

"Of course. Thank you, Mr. Merritt. I'm sure
the decedent's family appreciates your integrity."

Merritt gave a single nod in parting and
exited through the polished oak door.

His curiosity piqued, Eldon plucked a
handful of tissues from the box on the corner of the desk and
walked around to inspect the bag. He gingerly moved aside a tangled
nest of dried vines and appraised the contents. His eyes widened in
surprise.

He leaned across the desk and pressed the
"Speaker" button on his phone.

"Yes, Mr. Monahan?" Mrs. Arguedas
answered.

"Please hold my calls."

"Yes, sir."

He disconnected and returned his attention
to the rucksack.

Now he really needed to figure out to whom
the body in the morgue belonged.

Advanced Exploration Associates
International, Inc.

Houston, Texas

October 15
^th

8:47 p.m. CDT

Leonard Gearhardt stood before the wall of
windows on the fiftieth floor of Heritage Plaza, hands clasped
behind his back, staring out over the sparkling constellations of
downtown, the Toyota Center, the theater district, and the distant
suburbs beyond. Smoke from the Montecristo No.4 Reserva swirled
around his head in much the same manner as the thoughts within. His
gray eyes settled somewhere between the reflection of the aging man
he had become and the cold black sky. He wore a hand-tailored
Italian suit that cost more than most new domestic cars and
polished leather shoes crafted from the suffering of some young
animal or other. His ghost-white hair was slicked back to
perfection and his eyebrows tweezed. Only his callused hands and
the wrinkles in his sun-leathered features, which most considered
distinguished, marred the illusion of grandeur he paid a fortune to
perpetuate. But none of that mattered now. He was already sixty
years-old, and felt as though he had aged a lifetime in the last
hour alone.

He had been expecting the call for so long
that it had almost been a relief when it finally came.

Leo turned away from the window and surveyed
his domain through the Cuban haze. He was surrounded by the fruits
of his professional labors: a sextant salvaged from the wreckage of
the
Neustra Senora de Atocha
; a golden idol of the Mayan god
Chac; various coins from the nefarious pirate frigate
Queen
Anne's Revenge
; the gilded horn of a narwhal; the porous skull
of an ankylosaurus; and paintings and sculptures from myriad
expeditions, all encased in Lucite and stationed precisely around
the luxuriously appointed office. There were Medieval and
Renaissance texts, monographs from centuries past, and handwritten
diaries on alarmed shelves. A lifetime of amassed history and
riches, but only a single framed picture of the son who had died in
pursuit of his father's favor.