Old Poison (27 page)

He stopped walking, grabbed me by the
shoulders, and turned me toward him. “Think. She must have told you
something, a hiding place, a contact, a friend, a plan of some
sort.”

My mind raced ahead, checking the parts of
the story I could tell and what I could not. I wanted to appear
cooperative and trusting and give him lots of detail, but none of
it involving anyone else they could find and kill.

It’s tricky when you begin to lie
extemporaneously and very easy to trip yourself up; so I stuck with
the facts, except that I substituted Evelyn as the person who sent
me the
Martian Diary
chapter. I told him the whole story of
Antia’s escape from the subterranean Martian city and her narrow
escape from Red 19. I told him about my encounter with Evelyn and
her would-be kidnappers on the river and her hasty departure and
disappearance. I left out the receipt of the second chapter, but
told him in painful detail about my embarrassing interview with
Agent Camas, my subsequent search for the boat, and my entombment
in the ocean-going container. I avoided mentioning my side trip to
the desert where I met Jim, and left out any mention of Sam’s
special assistance, Richard’s disguise mastery, and my friend
Barbara’s reluctant assistance with Customs and the LAPD.

As I talked, his expression became more and
more grim. If I hadn’t seen what a wonderful actor he was, I would
have been sure that he believed every word and was totally
discouraged by my lack of useful information. He let out a big sigh
and shook his head.

“When I learned you were the last one to
talk to Evelyn, I hoped–”

I interrupted. I didn’t want him to ask
questions that might poke holes in my story. “James, I was far from
the last person to talk with her. Our meeting was two weeks before
her body was found. I have been in over my head since this whole
thing started. If I stick around and those prints get back, Woods
will have me killed too. I need to get out of here.”

The look he gave me was so different from
the friendly, boyish face he had presented at the ambassador’s
dinner that he seemed like a different person. “Evelyn got out. He
still killed her. I warned you he’s very good at what he does.”

He was quiet for a long moment, then shook
his head again. “I was foolish to bring you in here, but now that
you’re here, your only chance is with me. Listen carefully. We are
going to have lunch, then you’re going to take a dinner back to
your room and stay there until dark. At nine o’clock you will meet
me over there at the High Security Building.

“Why?”

“Old man Duffy discovered and quietly
patented Hyacinth Red, but he never used it. His formula turned up
after Blue Morpho took over his research facility in California. It
is the fuel from that formula that will be announced by the
corporation next week unless I can find the original studies that
proved Hyacinth poses a worse environmental hazard than petroleum.
Needless to say there is not a large group of us in the company who
are looking too hard for the downside of this fuel. If you really
don’t have Evelyn’s copies of his studies, our only chance is to
find the original reports. I have been looking each night, but now
that Woods has your prints, this will be our last night to search.
And Diana, don’t come out your door. It will be watched.”

* * * * *

After our lunch, I headed down the elevated
walkway toward my cabana and found that Folger was back, playing
shadow. When I went inside, he took up his post out front. I locked
the door and stepped out onto the balcony to survey the area and
make my plans.

The mosquitoes buzzed around me, and I knew
they would be worse at night. I took my quinine, stripped,
slathered my whole body with mosquito repellent, and wrapped myself
in my Tahitian pareau., basically a piece of hemmed yardage you
simply tie around your body. They were invented by European
missionaries to cover the heathen nakedness of the Pacific
islanders. Now the missionaries’ granddaughters wear thong bikinis
and the tourists buy pareaus. Cool and comfortable, it rolls into a
small ball, travels well, and can be everything from a sun dress to
a nightgown. Like my Amex card, I never leave home without it. This
particular one is covered with bright tropical flowers and is
highly visible from a distance.

I laid out my green hiking shirt, pants with
cargo pockets, and small daypack, then stuffed the pants pockets
and the pack with things my prospector great-grandfather would have
called
possibles
. That meant anything you might possibly
need. My hiking shoes went into the pack.

At five o’clock I ate the light supper I had
brought from the diningroom, then took two pillows and went out on
the balcony, leaving the cabin door open. I stretched out in the
hammock and both slept and feigned sleep until eight. By then it
was quite dark.

Folger’s movements had been routine all
afternoon and evening and were not hard to follow, because his
heavy boots were not exactly designed for stealth. He had
maintained his guard outside my front door, doing one tour of
inspection around the building each hour on the hour, and had just
returned from his eight p.m. inspection.

In case there was a second guard who was not
so noisy, I moved carefully, untying the pareau and laying the
loose edge over the top of the pillows at my side. With gymnastic
control I didn’t know I still possessed, I moved to the deck,
leaving my pareau behind and causing little rocking of the hammock.
Lying in the darker shadow between the hammock and the wall, I
listened to all the night sounds of the rain forest, trying to
discern any that might belong to the human jungle. After several
minutes of careful listening, I crouched behind the hammock,
arranged the pareau carefully over the pillows, then crept inside
the room.

I put on the shirt and pants and shrugged
into the daypack, then slipped back out onto the balcony. Crouching
down and moving slowly in the shadow of the wall, I reached the end
of my balcony, folded myself over the top of the stucco wall, and
slithered to the floor of the next balcony.

Moving slowly and silently, I reached the
far end of that balcony and climbed down the trellis, feeling
carefully for each hand and foothold. At the bottom I stepped to
the cool, wet ground, then slipped behind the trellis and under the
balcony. An overcast obscured the stars and moonlight, making it a
dark night. I stood there for several minutes, listening, watching,
giving all my senses time to adapt to the night: eyes, ears, nose,
taste, skin, and that sixth sense that is harder to define. I could
smell Folger’s cigarette smoke, the rotting foliage on the damp
forest floor, the dank green river at the edge of camp, the resin
used to treat the wood in the balcony, a faint sweet perfume from
some night-blooming flower, the musky odor of some nearby rodent
nest. My sixth sense told me there was more. I waited.

I could faintly hear a radio playing in the
next duplex, frogs croaking near the river, an occasional bird or
animal cry, and over all the constant buzzing and humming of the
insects. No cars. A slight, damp, balmy breeze kissed my
cheeks.

Then it came. The crack of a twig, the
crushing of leaves, sounds that did not belong to the forest. My
second watcher was on a small hill about thirty-five yards west,
between me and the river. From his vantage point he would have a
clear view of the back of my cabin, as well as the elevated walkway
to the diningroom and the garden path that led around the
encampment to the front road. Training my senses in his direction,
I prayed whoever was there was not equipped with infrared
goggles.

The sound of his urine splattering against
the leaves on the ground reached my ears a few seconds before the
breeze carried its strong smell to my nose. My brain does work in
strange ways. While one member of my internal board of directors
debated whether Nolan or Woods posted this guy up there, the mother
in me was noting that he should take water with him on watch
because his urine had that strong stink of dehydration. Some
rational voice on the board suggested that neither thought was
truly useful at the moment.

The building where I was to rendezvous with
James was farther south and west, across the main bridge and on the
other side of the river. If I moved to the south, I would be in the
watcher’s line of sight and be back-lit by the lights of camp. If I
went around in front, I would be spotted by Folger. The only route
open was to head first north, then west to the river and follow the
river south, past the back side of the hill.

I crouched to the ground, moving out from
under the balcony, feeling carefully before I put weight on either
my hands or my bare feet, making sure I made no sound. Just three
feet from the balcony I reached the cover of tall heavy foliage and
could stand almost upright and still be hidden from the view of the
guard on the hill. Moving as quickly as I safely could, I made my
way past the end of the hill and down to the river.

There I met my first real obstacle. To the
south, there was no path or open ground of any sort. Deep thick
undergrowth grew all the way to the water’s edge. There was no way
to move through that stuff silently. In fact, there was no way
through it without a machete. With the main road out of the
question, crossing the river would require back-tracking to the
long swinging foot bridge. It would be impossible to move across
that bridge without setting up vibrations that would make the
bridge swing.

Going into the river would be my last
choice. Though my childhood trained me pretty well for surviving in
the wilderness, the wilderness I knew best was the Southwest desert
and the High Sierras. My experience with tropical rivers was just
sufficient to make me wary. I had no idea what could live in this
one. Whether this river held schools of paranha like the Rio Caroni
in Venezuela or tiny parasitic critters that entered various bodily
openings, like the Amazon, or large crocodiles, like the Sarapiqui,
I had no desire to go swimming.

Hoping to find another route toward the
rendezvous point, I backtracked to the path. I was debating my
chances of making it across the swinging bridge unseen when my ears
picked up a familiar sound, water slapping against wood. I headed
to the river and there found two boats tied under the bridge, one a
rowboat with oars and the other a small motorboat.

The river here flowed north to meet the
Sarapiqui, but it was slow moving and the current was not too
strong. The motorboat was out of the question but I thought I could
get the rowboat across the river without losing too much ground to
the north. Once on the other side, the water would mask my
sounds.

I untied the rowboat, pushed off, and rowed
as silently as possible. Beaching the boat just down river from the
swinging bridge, I found a good path running parallel to the shore.
In most places there was enough shadow and cover to hide me should
my watcher on the hill look in this direction. No longer needing
stealth, I sat down and put on my hiking shoes, then followed the
path south to the High Security Quonset hut. Positioning myself
behind some foliage, I waited for James to show.

* * * * *

On the road to the south I heard footsteps
and saw James, alone. He didn’t walk in front of the Quonset hut,
where the night-light was, but turned at the other side and made
his way around the back of the building, along the north wall, and
right past my hiding spot. He peered around the front of the
building, looked worriedly toward camp, then searched for a place
to get out of sight. He headed directly toward me.

I stood up. “Sorry, this bush is taken.”

He flinched. “Jesus, Diana, you scared the
shit out of me. Come on.” He moved to the door and punched in a
code, inserted his security pass, opened the door, and motioned me
in.

He shut the door and flicked on the light.
“I’ve searched those boxes by the front wall. Start with this bunch
over here. We have until morning to find the Hyacinth Red research.
With or without it we have to get out of here in the morning before
Woods learns you’re AWOL.”

“OK, enough games, James. You’re the plant
manager. Do you really expect me to believe you have to sneak
around like this to look in your own files?”

“Do you really believe Woods would let me
out of here alive if he knew I had the file?”

I stared at him, not knowing what to
believe.

“You’re supposed to be smart, but you don’t
get it yet, do you? This fuel that old man Duffy developed and
called Hyacinth Red is now going to be used by Blue Morpho and is
intended to totally replace petroleum-based fuel. Some people see
it as a way of saving the world environment. Others see it as a
means to absolute power. No more oil competitors, no troublesome
problems with Middle East oil production, no more problems with any
of the puny little countries of the world. I work for the good
guys, the ones who want to use Hyacinth in a responsible way. Now,
on the brink of introducing it to the world, we hear it might be a
worse ecological disaster than we already face. A few people in my
corporation would like to know the truth before it’s too late.
Other people in the corporation and in the military don’t
care.”

“How could they not care? What good is
absolute power if the Earth becomes as barren as Mars?”

He shrugged. “Did they care about mass
atomic weapons? Did they care about lead poisoning? Do they care
about global warming?”

“People tried to fight all of those things,
too. Did it do them any good?”

I wished I hadn’t said that. The look on his
face was so close to defeat I knew I had hit too close to home. He
turned away without answering and began searching through the
nearest file box. I stood still for a moment, wondering if there
was anything else I could say. Finding nothing brilliant, I looked
around at the nearby file boxes. I opened the first one. “Oh,
cripes. I could be looking right at it and not know it. I don’t
know what this stuff means.”