Viper's Nest Read online

  CHAPTER 15

  The ancient bus clanked and groaned its way along the coastal highway, jumping violently over enormous speed bumps, the smoking engine protesting loudly at every rise and turn in the road. On one side, the Gulf of Mexico shimmered out to the horizon, the early-morning blue broken only by a never-ending stream of supertankers heading south to Cape Horn and on to the South Atlantic.

  The vivid greens of citrus groves groaned with half-grown oranges; lemons and grapefruits stretched away into the distance. Beyond them lay the beautiful yet forbidding peaks of the volcanic mountain range, fringed with the lush colours of the rainforest.

  Cate stared out of the chipped and pockmarked window and tried hard to suppress feelings of excitement and fear. Somewhere, up in those hills, pretty much in the middle of a jungle, lay El Tajin.

  Cate had done her homework. El Tajin was built by the Totonacs nearly thirteen hundred years ago. At the height of its power, between around 1000 and 1200 AD, the city was home to twenty-five thousand people who mingled and lived amongst spectacular pyramids, temples and streets with an influence that extended hundreds of kilometres along the coastline.

  The city even had seventeen ball courts for a game played by ancient Mexican tribes such as the Huastecs. Even saying the names sounded exotic and mysterious, thought Cate.

  But there was another darker side to El Tajin. The name meant ‘the place of the invisible beings or spirits’ and, according to one website Cate had found, the Spanish conquistadores who came across the deserted ruins when they invaded Mexico had another name for El Tajin. They called it Mictlan, the abode of the dead.

  Despite the warmth of the sun beaming through the windows, Cate felt a shiver running down her spine. To distract herself, she pulled out her tablet and opened a file she had filled with information about the site.

  According to Wikipedia, the city was finally looted, then destroyed by fire by an invading force called the Chichimecs. The residents fled and founded a town nearby called Papantla, leaving their city to the mercy of the voracious jungle which quickly consumed it. And there it lay silent and untouched, for the next five hundred years, until discovered by accident – and today it was a world heritage site.

  Cate brought herself reluctantly back to the present. It was ten past nine. Her mother would be waking up about now, reading the note that Cate had left on her pillow just as she crept out of the suite they were sharing.

  Mum. Didn’t want to wake you. Had a text from friends who are camping in the jungle for a couple of days. I’ve gone to meet them, but will be back for the return flight. Have fun! I’ll text you when I get there. Cate xx

  Cate knew she should really have told her mother that she was going to El Tajin, but she had been terrified that she would have stopped her, insisting that she stayed in Veracruz. And she didn’t want her mother inadvertently passing on her whereabouts to Burt. All in all, a note had seemed the only safe option.

  As the bus began to haul itself up a long, winding hill, she looked around at her fellow passengers with interest. Although the bus had left the main square of Veracruz at a ridiculously early hour, it was still packed – mainly with local people. Sitting at the back, a dark-haired man reading a guidebook reminded her uncomfortably of Burt. She sighed, put her tablet back into her rucksack, and leaned her forehead against the grubby window and tried to think.

  Burt. He had to know Gabriel, his card was found in the dead man’s rucksack. But Novak – how did he fit in?

  She closed her eyes, thinking back to that terrible night when she and Ritchie had very nearly lost their lives. Gabriel had been driving the truck – Burt’s truck. Stolen, Burt had said, from Mexicano Magic.

  She forced herself to concentrate. The man who had pushed her into the bomb shelter at her mother’s shop; she hadn’t seen his face, not once, but she had heard his voice, hissing in her ear. ‘Drop the phone, kid, or you’re dead. Drop it.’

  She sat bolt upright. Her mind scrolled forward, to another horror: a man shouting at her, running after the truck in the pull-in on the Pacific Highway as she took photographs of him from her iPhone. ‘Drop the phone, kid, or you’re dead. Drop it.’

  The same words. The same angry voice. The driver of the truck that nearly killed her and Ritchie, and the ruthless thug at Mexicano Magic. They were the same person. Gabriel Montanez. She was sure of it.

  Cate stared unseeing out of the window, her mind going back to the scene at Mexicano Magic. The two Mexicans had been adamant they weren’t doing anything wrong, that they were just doing their job. They had been so convincing that she had believed them.

  Her mind flashed to the crates she had seen stacked against the wall at the back of the shop, stamped with Spanish instructions. She had assumed the crates were for Burt’s business, but perhaps they hadn’t been carrying cheap Mexican tat after all. Perhaps the crates had been holding treasure. Ancient treasure looted at gunpoint from sites all over Mexico. No wonder they had panicked when they saw her, no wonder Gabriel was furious at the thought she may have seen what was inside those crates.

  Her heart was racing. She was sure she must be right. Mexicano Magic was the drop-off point for the stolen treasure, brought in by Gabriel and then distributed to buyers.

  But who was behind it all? Surely not a hired thug like Gabriel. This operation was highly sophisticated, requiring a huge amount of money and planning, not to mention contacts on both side of the border. She shook her head. She still had a lot of thinking to do.

  Was she right to be heading for El Tajin? Did the answer to the mystery lie, after all, in LA, at Mexicano Magic? How did Burt fit in?

  She decided she would have to leave Burt to Marcus and Henri. The most important thing was to find the twins and work out why they went missing from El Tajin. And she sensed she didn’t have much time. After all it was already four days since she had heard that the twins were missing, nearly a week since they were taken. Wherever they were, the odds of finding them alive must surely be lessening with each passing hour.

  Despite her gnawing anxiety, she must have dozed off, for suddenly the bus was juddering down through the gears. Cate opened her eyes blearily and saw they were on a narrow street crowded with stalls and vendors selling everything from rugs, clothes and stone statues to food and drink. The bus weaved through the stalls, tooting impatiently at anyone who strayed into its path.

  The bus finally pulled to a halt and the doors opened with a huge, steaming hiss. Cate grabbed her rucksack and stepped eagerly out. They had arrived at El Tajin!

  Her first reaction was one of disappointment. The dusty concrete road was scruffy and cracked, edged with parched-looking plants. Above her, a tatty Mexican flag fluttered forlornly in the thin breeze. As she looked towards the entrance of the ruins, rather than pyramids and vast stone statues, all she could see were two tubby round concrete blocks, with all the appeal of a power station.

  She followed the trickle of people walking towards the entrance. She had a stack of things to do, but she couldn’t resist at least a quick look at the ruins first. Afterwards, she would get to work, find a hostel and check in, Skype Arthur and update Marcus.

  Cate reached the entrance to the site and found herself passing through a small turnstile into a courtyard surrounded on three sides by low concrete buildings which contained the museum, a visitors’ centre and a shop. She joined the queue which led towards the ticket office and paid in cash for a pass that allowed her a week’s unrestricted access to the site.

  Her excitement growing, she followed the signs which were written in both Spanish and English and headed down a narrow, grassy path, a hedge of trees blocking out any view of what lay to either side.

  Then the hedge disappeared, the path widened out, and suddenly Cate was standing still, awestruck at her first sight of El Tajin.

  She had seen countless images, but nothing could have prepared her for the sheer spectacle of what lay before her. Cate was standing in the centre of a square. In
front of her, to the left and to the right, were huge pyramids, perfect 3D triangles, rising up, step by step, block by block, and topped by grass rectangles.

  She looked down at her guidebook. This was the religious centre of the city, the place where ancient ceremonies of worship and sacrifice had been made – and even now, one thousand years on, Cate could see how utterly incredible and awesome a sight they must have been.

  She walked slowly around and through the crumbling pyramids, marvelling, absorbing, observing. She spotted the rectangular ball courts, the walls around them beautifully decorated with artistic depictions of the game that once was played there, and she ran her fingers over the carved stone pillars found at the entrance to many of the buildings.

  Presiding over it all, looming at the top of a sharply rising grassy slope, stood the vast Pyramid of the Niches. It was a huge edifice of stone stairs rising ever upwards, each layer of pyramid marked out by myriad small, square windows sunk into the stonework, three hundred and sixty-five in all – one for each day of the year.

  Cate walked towards it and stared up, half fascinated, half fearful of its splendour. Her gaze was drawn to the niches, dark unseeing eyes, keeping watch over the ancient place of worship.

  The jungle seemed to encroach on the site and she could hear the sinister shrieking of birds, the harsh barking of monkeys and despite the bright sunshine she felt uneasy, jittery even. For a few seconds she desperately wanted to return to the safety of Veracruz and the easy company of Nancy and her mother, but then she got a grip, laughing at herself. She was letting the majesty and history of the site get to her. They were just old buildings. She had a job to do and she was going to get on with it.

  Cate dragged herself reluctantly away from the pyramids and headed back down towards the entrance. She would leave the exploration of the rest of the site to another time. Now she had to sort out a place to stay.

  ‘There’s a couple of backpacker hostels on the far side of the site,’ Marcus had explained. ‘They’re mainly for students or people studying the ruins who want to stay close to them rather than go back and forth to the town everyday. They’re full of people coming and going, all ages, all nationalities. It’s the perfect place to go undercover. Nose around the site, take a look at where the students were staying. Talk to people who might have been staying at the hostels for a while. Someone must know something. Pass on any information to us as quickly as possible.’ He looked at her sternly. ‘We don’t want anything else from you. So, leave the heroics to us. Got it?’

  The long two-storey timber building sat neatly at the edge of the jungle, surrounded on three sides by lush greenery. The front faced out towards El Tajin, which stood a good two hundred metres away. The blue shutters were tightly closed against the midday sun and an air of sleepy stillness surrounded the hostel. Only the sound of cicadas humming in the long grasses and the quiet rushing sound of nearby water disturbed the silence.

  Cate spotted a double door over which a small sign proclaimed itself to be the reception. She headed through and found herself inside a large hall. The entire building, inside and out, had clearly been constructed using local timber – the tell-tale dark wood of the mahogany tree was evident in the floorboards, the wooden panelling, and even on the stairway that led up to the first floor.

  It was cooler inside than out, but not much. Above her, large fans hummed and whirred.

  ‘Hola, senorita,’ a friendly voice called to her. ‘Can I help you, Miss?’

  Sitting on a tall stool at the end of the bar was a woman in her twenties.

  ‘Muchas gracias,’ Cate said in reply. ‘I’m looking for a place to stay. Do you have any rooms?’

  ‘You American? English?’ The woman slid down from her barstool.

  ‘Si,’ Cate said. ‘Ingles. Is my accent that bad?’

  The woman smiled. ‘No, no, it’s very good. But working here, you get to know. So how long are you planning on staying?’

  Cate put her rucksack down on the wooden floor and pretended to consider. ‘Maybe a few days, maybe a week,’ she said. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘If you pay for a week you can have a room to yourself,’ said the woman, picking up a clipboard and scrutinising it. ‘It’s more expensive, but it has a lock on the door and a private loo. You share the showers. Otherwise, if you’re staying for a couple of days you’ll have to go in a dorm. They’re OK. Clean and very cheap. You just have to put up with people snoring. Oh and this is a females-only hostel. If you’re after a man, you’ve come to the wrong place! Don’t worry – the men’s hostel is just a few hundred metres from here!’ she said, smiling.

  ‘I’ll take the room,’ Cate said. ‘I’ll pay now.’ She reached into an inside pocket of her rucksack and pulled out her money.’

  ‘Welcome to the Hostel Volodores,’ the woman said. ‘My name is Maria. Any problems, you need anything, you come to me. Now, let me take your passport details.’

  She placed the clipboard down on the counter, took Cate’s passport and disappeared through a small doorway into an office. Cate scanned the guest list to see if any of the names meant anything to her.

  ‘You looking for something?’ Maria was back, silently, without warning, making Cate jump guiltily. She didn’t seem annoyed.

  ‘Just checking to see if my friends are staying here,’ Cate said, unable to meet her eye. ‘They were travelling in this area and we thought we might meet up.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Maria good-naturedly. ‘What are their names? If they’ve been here in the last few weeks, I’ll be able to tell you.’

  ‘Amber and Jade Harvey,’ said Cate suddenly, watching Maria’s face closely. ‘They’re twins. From California. They were working on the dig here. Did you know them?’

  In the silence that followed, Cate could hear the humming of a fridge and the quiet chatter of voices drifting down the stairway.

  Maria’s face was drained of colour. She looked, Cate thought, as if she had seen a ghost. ‘They were nice girls,’ she said quietly. ‘Friendly. They came here to play cards and drink coffee with the backpackers.’ Cate saw real fear in Maria’s eyes. ‘You know what happened? I’m terribly sorry to have to tell you. The girls and their friends have vanished.’

  Her face crumpled and for a minute Cate thought she was going to cry. She started to tell Cate all about it. ‘It was very bad,’ she said finally. ‘Horrible. The guards, they were good friends of mine, they were taken too. And we heard that they are dead. Shot. The police came and told us not to scare the tourists. That we should keep quiet. I shouldn’t even be talking to you now.’

  ‘The twins, they are good friends of mine,’ said Cate. ‘Their mother is sick, she has no other children.’

  Maria shook her head. ‘Poor woman,’ she said sympathetically.

  Cate pressed on. ‘If you know anything, noticed anything that could point to what happened, could you tell me?’

  ‘There was something,’ Maria said. ‘I told the police about it. That night I was parked in a lay-by on the road from El Tajin. I was meeting my boyfriend, you understand?’ Maria looked sheepish. ‘It is difficult. He has a wife so he has to sneak out when she is asleep.’

  Cate nodded, keeping her face expressionless even though inside she could feel the excitement bubbling up. This sounded very interesting.

  ‘We were there from maybe eleven p.m. until first light – maybe four or fiveish. When I got back to the camp the guards and the students were gone.’

  She paused and took a swig of Coke from a plastic bottle on the counter. ‘So I swear that whoever it was, they didn’t come in or leave by the road. Not one vehicle passed us the whole time we were in the lay-by. Not one. And if they had come in by plane or helicopter, Juan and me, we would have heard them too.’ She looked Cate straight in the eye. ‘Whoever did this, they must have already been at the site. And maybe they still haven’t left it.’

  CHAPTER 16

  Cate closed the door of her room and locked it careful
ly. Then she sat down on the narrow bed which lay underneath the window and took a deep breath.

  Maybe Maria had been so distracted by her boyfriend that she had missed a vehicle going past. Or perhaps they had fallen asleep for a few minutes. But she had certainly been convincing.

  Cate drummed her fingers on the white sheets. Was it possible that the attackers had come out from the forest and, after the attack, escaped that way? Perhaps their vehicles had been parked miles away and they had marched their prisoners there. Or perhaps, she thought with a shudder, they had disposed of their prisoners en route.

  She pulled out her tablet, switching it on and plugging it in, and waited while it searched for the hostel’s wifi signal. The security measures Arthur had fitted to her tablet would make sure all her communications stayed secure. Cate firmly believed that there wasn’t a hacker on this earth who could break Arthur’s security codes.

  There was a soft bleep as the signal reached full strength, then a harder buzzing signifying that someone was trying to reach her on Skype.

  ‘Hey, Cate – how are things in deepest Mexico?’ Arthur was excited about something. His hair stood up on his head, forced upright from running his fingers through it, which he always did when his brain was working overtime.

  ‘Amazing,’ Cate said, ‘in more ways than one. The site is just incredible. But it’s kinda spooky too.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Arthur. He wasn’t really listening, Cate could tell.

  ‘Come on, Arthur,’ she said encouragingly. ‘Out with it. What’s the hot news?’

  Her brother pulled a goofy face. ‘Erm, just wondered if you’d heard from your Michel by any chance?’

  Cate’s heart turned a neat somersault in her chest at the mention of her ex-boyfriend’s name.