an ambush from above. Of course, at the moment of truth, there had to be an unencumbered willingness to use her seven-inch blade.
'Natalie. I am sure you are hurt and in need of help! I can help you. I can explain everything. I can tell you about Dom Angelo.'
He was slightly breathless, suggesting that he was working his way down toward the Jeep. Snorting some bugs out of her nostrils, Natalie pushed on, searching for just the right spot. From below, the sound of the stream or river grew louder. Suddenly, on her right, the forest broke away. The twenty-five or thirty-foot drop to the swirling water — a broad stream — was not exactly sheer, but it was damn steep.
'Natalie, I see where you are going. If you want help, just stay where you are. I saw the blood in your car. I know you are hurt.'
There wasn't much time. Still on all fours, Natalie pushed ahead another twenty feet, then cut uphill for ten feet, and finally back toward the Jeep. If Vargas was following her trail, as he said, he would pass right beneath her. When he did, she would have one, and only one, chance.
She braced herself against the thick, squat trunk of a palm. There was no position she could shift to that didn't put strain on her hip, so she resolved to ignore any pain that didn't completely disable her. Somewhere she had read that there were more than 2.5 million species of insects in the rain forest. At that moment, she had no trouble believing that statistic.
To her right, she could see bushes moving. She pulled the hunting knife from her waistband and unsheathed it. The blade, unused except for slicing a piece of paper in the store, was frightening and intimidating. She hefted it in her hand, and decided to thrust it overhand, aiming for a target in Vargas's neck or chest. The image she had was of the attack by Norman Bates's mother on the detective in Psycho. As the rustling of the policeman's approach drew closer, she reflected on Dora Cabral, slumped on the table in her modest kitchen. Rodrigo Vargas, despite his charm and good looks, was a remorseless killer. She had to be strong and willing, she told herself. Strong and willing.
In seconds, she saw the top of the man's head above the undergrowth. He was moving slowly, aware of everything around him. There could be no hesitating. She crouched low and planted her right foot, clutching the huge knife, and working to ignore the electric pain in her hip. Vargas was coming into view. In three or four steps he would be directly between her and the drop to the river. The sound of the churning water was her ally, masking her last second movement. He was holding a gun loosely and professionally in front of him. Two more steps.
Don't look up. Don't…
Natalie pushed off awkwardly and threw herself down at the man, flailing more than stabbing with the knife. She struck home just behind Vargas's right shoulder and thought she might have hit bone. The man screamed. His gun discharged ineffectually. Then her momentum took them both over the edge of the steep embankment, tumbling helplessly toward the river — two rag dolls slamming off trees and over bushes.
Ten feet from the bank, Natalie caught a woody shrub and stopped herself, the branches tearing skin from her arms. Vargas continued his near free fall, finally coming to rest facedown and motionless on the muddy bank, with his lower half in the water. Blood was soaking through his khaki shirt from a stab wound just behind and below his right armpit. Neither his gun nor her knife was anywhere in sight.
Natalie lay where she was, badly shaken, gasping for breath, and hurting in more places than she could catalogue. Below her, Vargas remained still, his legs dancing obscenely in the swirling stream. Had he broken his neck in the fall? Or accidentally shot himself? Or had the wound she inflicted been mortal? Of the three possibilities, only the third seemed unlikely. The knife hadn't felt like it went that deep, but the thrust was wild, and almost anything could have happened.
Groaning from the discomfort, she rolled over and sat, bracing herself with arms that felt as if they had been assaulted with a bat. Below her, Vargas's legs continued their macabre dance of death. He was a bad man, she said to herself, and deserved his fate. In her heart, though, she still felt sick at having killed.
Painfully, she used a tree to push herself upright, then again stared down at the policeman trying to focus in on what her next move should be. Rodrigo Vargas and the rental Jeep were probably where they would forever be. Her job was to get to Dom Angelo, and the most likely way to accomplish that was the man's Mercedes.
Where would the keys be?
The climb up the embankment was not going to be easy, and it would certainly not be worth doing if the keys were, as seemed likely, in Vargas's pocket. The notion of retrieving them from there made her queasy, but climbing up the difficult slope to check for them, then back down if they weren't in the car, then back up again made no sense.
Gingerly working her way down to the body, Natalie looked for a heavy rock to use as a Weapon in case she was wrong about Vargas. What she found instead was something much better — his gun. It was resting in some mud against the base of a huge fern, about twenty feet from the water. It was a heavy, long-barreled revolver with a dark wood handle — something close to what Jesse James might have worn. No surprise there.
She wiped off the barrel on her pants and carefully approached Vargas's body. His cheek was pressed into the mud, his face turned away from her, his arms outstretched. Cautiously, she knelt beside him, then hesitated before reaching into his pocket. Instead, she set her fingers on the skin over the radial artery at his wrist. His pulse was bounding!
Before Natalie could fully react to the discovery, a guttural scream issued from Vargas's throat. Snarling, he twisted over like a viper, latching on to the wrist of her gun hand. The once urbane policeman was an apparition. His upper lip was gashed through, and was bleeding briskly into the muddy mask that covered his face. His eyes were glazed by an insane fury, and his teeth, covered with mud and blood, were bared.
Natalie pounded frantically at his face with her free hand, and kicked him again and again with all her strength, hoping somehow to catch him in the groin. He outweighed her by fifty pounds at least, and despite all of her efforts, he steadily forced himself on top of her. His free hand got purchase around her throat, and his grip closed tightly.
Just as she felt she might be losing consciousness, one of her kicks connected, and for the briefest instant the grip on her wrist relaxed. Without a conscious thought, Natalie yanked her hand free, pointed the pistol in the general direction of her attacker, and fired.
In a spray of blood and gore, Vargas's form went instantly slack. The top of his skull, shot downward from no more than two feet, was gone, exposing what remained of his brain.
In near shock, crying out with every breath, her ears ringing from the ferocious blast of the revolver, Natalie wiped tissue and blood off her eyelids with the back of her hand. Then she whirled and plunged her face into the cool, silty stream.
CHAPTER 27
In respect of temperance, courage, magnificence, and every other virtue, should we not carefully distinguish between the true son and the bastard?
Dr. Sanjay Khanduri, swarthy, handsome, and very intense, weaved through the teeming streets of the metropolis of Amritsar, proudly extolling its virtues to Anson, who sat in the seat next to him, and also to Elizabeth St. Pierre, in back.
'We are in Punjab State, Dr. Anson,' he said in his clipped, Indian-British speech. 'Amritsar is my hometown. It is one of the most beautiful cities in our country, and is a spiritual center and pilgrimage destination of Sikhism. Do you know about that religion?'
According to St. Pierre, Khanduri was one of the foremost lung transplant specialists in the world. Now, nearly two months after his remarkably successfully operation, Anson had no reason whatsoever to dispute that claim.
'I know something of it,' he said. 'Very mystical, deeply spiritual. One God, no idols, equality of all, five
