that becomes visibly more dense and taller with each kilometer.
The leafy green is impenetrable. It rises up like a wave in a sea of darkness on both sides of the car. We rocket along at seventy miles an hour, gliding over slight undulations only to find more road stretched out in front of us, a seemingly endless thoroughfare to nowhere.
The long springs of the limo lift us over a slight rise. On the highway ahead I see the taillights of two cars parked in the middle of the road blocking it.
“It’s all right.” Ibarra sitting forward in the seat. “It’s my people.”
The limo comes to a fast brake, the security car right on our bumper. Herman slides forward on the seat and finally wakes up.
“What’s goin’ on?”
“Time to switch cars,” I tell him.
“Shit, we already there?”
“Not quite. How far is it?” I ask Ibarra.
“Just a few miles. You will turn off to the right. You can’t miss the road. There should be a sign to the archeological zone.”
The limo rolls to a stop behind the other two cars in the middle of the road, and we get out. The trailing security car pulls up behind us, and two men dressed in camouflage fatigues get out and stand near the open doors, surveying the road behind them and occasionally glancing into the jungle overgrowth alongside the road. One of them is holding an assault rifle.
Up in front, Ibarra’s people are standing around on the road, two of them looking at a map spread out on the hood of one of the cars. The car doors are open, and some of the men are taking the chance to smoke a last cigarette before going in. They are wearing flak jackets, and two of them are holding scoped rifles.
Herman is walking next to me. “Rifles ain’t gonna be much good in the jungle,” he says. “Less they get an opening in the brush. I knew I shouldn’t a listened to these people. I shoulda brought the shotgun, the MP-5.”
“I think it’ll be all right. They look like they know what they’re doing.”
“Yeah.”
Ibarra waves me forward, toward one of the cars with an open door.
I start to walk.
“Hey.”
I turn and Herman is looking at me.
“Ain’t you gonna say good-bye?”
“I wish you were coming with me.”
“I could get in the backseat, lie down,” he says.
“Right. They wouldn’t see that. Besides, I have to go a ways on foot. Their people would pick you up before you could follow me thirty feet.”
“Probably. Here. You better put this on.” He’s holding a lightweight green jacket in his hand.
“I’m not cold.”
“I know. Just trust me. Take it. White shirt you got on is gonna light you up like a lantern out there in the jungle.”
I take the jacket and slip it on.
Herman zips it up, almost jerking me off my feet, pats the collar down, paws like a bear. “You don’t wanna give ’em nothing makes a target on your chest.”
“Right.”
“There’s a little something for ya in the pocket,” he says.
I reach in.
“Other side.”
I dig it out. It’s a small gun-metal blue semiautomatic pistol.
“My backup piece. Figure you’re gonna need it more than me. Walther PPK. 380. Six shots, so don’t get carried away. And don’t go shootin’ at nothin’ beyond ten, twelve feet. Waste of time, besides you just draw attention to yourself. Little switch on the side. You hit it, it turns red side out. Then it’s hot.”
He takes it, checks the clip, slaps the back against his hand, making sure the bullets are properly seated.
“What if they frisk me?”
“They won’t.”
“How can you be sure?”
“They won’t let you get that close. What they want, you gonna be carryin’. That book. My guess is, they just gonna shoot you and take it.”
“Why?”
“Trust me. Your friend, he’s probably already dead.”
“We don’t know that.”
“No. But I got a feelin’ something ain’t right. You take this.” He hands the gun back to me. “Use it if you have to.”
I slip it back inside the jacket pocket. I hear Ibarra calling to me. “They’re waiting. Gotta go.” I hold out my hand to shake his.
“Shit I don’t want that.” Instead he reaches out, grabs me by the shoulders, and gives me a hug, an embrace like a grizzly.
“You take care,” he says. “You still be in one piece when this is over. You understand?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Shit, you gonna have to do better than that,” he says.
We both laugh.
“See ya.”
“Take care,” I answer.
I turn and head for the car.
When I get there, Ibarra has the mock Rosetta under his arm. He places it across the front seat on the passenger side.
The keys are in the car.
“There is one last thing,” he says. “Do you have a scrap of paper, anything small, something to write on?” He has a pen in his hand.
I fish through my pants pockets and come up with two wrinkled and tattered scraps of pink paper. I give one of them to Ibarra.
He flattens it out on the hood of the car, turns it over to the blank side, and starts drawing, small fine lines. “When you drive in, you pass the restaurant. A white building with a flat roof. You turn left into the parking area. The visitor’s entrance is here.” He puts an X on the map. “There are some large trees. There will probably be a rope across there. You just go under it.
“Once you are inside, you will have to be careful or you will get lost. It is like a maze. There are many paths, some of them going off into the jungle.”
He draws my attention back to the diagram. “You will walk maybe a hundred meters from the entrance and the path goes to the right. You stay on it,” he says. “A little ways beyond that, you will see some ruins called La Iglesia, it means church.” He marks it on the map. “There will be stone platforms at different levels in front of it and stairs going up. You pass through the plaza. You will see buried ruins all around you. Here you go left, go maybe fifteen, twenty meters, and on your right you will see the opening to the ball court. It is a flat, open area, long and narrow with slanting walls of stone on each side. There is a stone hoop sticking up out of the walls. You pass through the ball court, and you will come to an area where there are bicycles parked.” He circles it on the little map. “Tourists rent them to ride the paths. Don’t take one. Just walk, otherwise you will get there too quickly. We won’t be in place. When you get to the bicycles, there will be paths going in different directions. Three, maybe four.” He draws these with the pen. “You must take the path that goes to your right.” He points with the tip of the pen to the junction. “That will take you to Las Pinturas. It is maybe three or four hundred meters. You will see the ruins, a small pyramid with a square stone structure on top. There are palm leaves over the roof of the structure. You can’t miss it. Do you understand?”
