Viper's Nest Read online

  ‘Michel? No, nothing. And he’s not my Michel anyway. He’s not my anything. In case you’d forgotten, he dumped me.’ Curiosity got the better of her, though. ‘Why do you ask?’

  Arthur raised his eyebrows enigmatically. ‘Well, I’m not quite sure how to break this to you but, well . . . he’s just turned up. At the house. He’s downstairs talking to Monique and Dad right now.’

  They stared at each other for a few seconds. Then a huge grin broke out on Arthur’s face, one which Cate knew was mirrored on her own.

  ‘Excuse me, Arthur, for one minute,’ she said, picking up a pillow from the bed. ‘I just need to . . .’

  ‘Have a good scream,’ her brother finished for her. ‘Go on, sis, get it out of your system.’

  ‘That’s better,’ said Cate, thirty seconds later, as she repositioned herself in front of the screen and pulled her ponytail back into place. ‘Now I want you to tell me everything. What exactly did Michel say? How does he look? Is he still gorgeous? Why has he come to London?’

  Cate suddenly realised that she was no longer looking at the pixellated features of her kid brother. Instead, she found herself staring into the handsome, smiling face of her ex-boyfriend.

  ‘I came to London because I needed to see you,’ said Michel, his big, brown eyes sparkling with amusement. ‘I have missed you so much. I was stupid and stubborn and I refused to see things from your point of view . . .’

  ‘Oh Michel,’ said Cate. Her heart was suddenly soaring. ‘I don’t blame you. I would have done the same.’

  Michel looked serious. ‘No, you would have listened to me, given me a chance to really explain my side of the story. I didn’t and I’m stupid and I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?’

  Cate grinned happily. ‘Of course I forgive you. I’ve missed you so much. How are you? How’s work, your family? Oh, I so wish I was back in London. Or better still, in Antibes.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Michel. ‘That is typical of us. I finally pluck up the courage to come to London and you’ve gone to LA. But this time, Cate, I’m not letting you get away. As soon as you get back to London – the very minute you do – I’ll be here waiting for you. If I don’t see you soon I think I will go – what’s the word you use? – bonkers.’

  ‘Michel, I’m counting the days. I’ve been going bonkers too.’

  They chatted some more, but eventually they had to put an end to the conversation. Cate lay back on the pillow, a huge grin on her face. Michel had forgiven her, they were back together, he would be waiting for her in London. Just wait till she told Louisa.

  Her mobile ringing jarred her back to reality. Cate looked down at the screen and pulled a face. It was her mother and even the ring tone seemed angry.

  Reluctantly she hit the receive button. At the sound of her mother’s furious voice shrieking down the line, Cate settled back on to the bed. She had no defence, she knew that. All she could do was shut her eyes and wait for the storm to blow itself out. But did she care? Michel was back in her life. Nothing else mattered any more!

  The hut where the archaeology students had stayed was situated well away from the tourist area on a patch of land hacked from the jungle and next to a fast-running river.

  Cate approached the site carefully, checking continuously that no one was following her, keeping a wary eye out for the security guards she had seen wandering around the ruins earlier in the day.

  Signs of the excavation work were everywhere – gaping ditches with pieces of stone protruding out of them like teeth in an open mouth, a tall stone pillar topped with the half-missing face of a warrior, and the first few steps of a pyramid, crumbling, almost unrecognisable from the fully restored beauties Cate had seen earlier on the official site.

  Everywhere, the jungle was encroaching. Strangely shaped roots burst through the dry ground, thick carpets of grass and weeds reached across even the new excavations. Just then, a pair of macaws strutted out of the jungle, the bright reds and yellows of their plumage providing a vivid contrast to the dull green. Their sharp, dark eyes seemed to look at Cate fearlessly.

  ‘Hello,’ said Cate, so entranced by the sight that for a moment she forgot what she was there for. ‘You’re beautiful.’ One of them shrieked at Cate loudly, then plucked crossly at the ground in front of her, pulling out tiny insects with easy skill.

  Cate smiled and looked across at the hut. It was raised up on low timber stilts, the space between the floor and the ground outside a good half-metre. Thick grass and sinuous roots formed an almost impenetrable barrier between the two. At the back, the jungle had been allowed to grow up against the timber walls and Cate could see spiny plants and hairy vines creeping around the sides of the building.

  It was clearly deserted. The only sign that the police had been there was a ripped Do not enter – crime scene banner strewn carelessly across the front. Cate shook her head, shocked at how insecure the hut was. She glanced over her shoulder, then pushed cautiously at the wooden door. It opened easily, revealing a low-ceilinged interior which already smelled damp and dank, as if it had lain unused for months instead of just a few days.

  As Cate’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw two sets of bunk beds divided by a thin plywood partition. The bedding had gone, presumably taken by the police for forensic evidence, leaving only a thin sheet covering each mattress. Mosquito nets hung from hooks on the ceiling like ghostly waterfalls.

  It was easy to see which had been the twins’ bunks. The wall between the top and bottom bed was plastered with photographs, leaving hardly any space between them. Cate felt a sadness well up in her as she saw pictures of the twins hiking, dancing with friends, hugging someone who was presumably their mother, hanging out on the beach. There was even a group photograph of the gang from Snapper Bay, and Cate saw, with a lump in her throat, that she was in it, her arm flung carelessly around a beaming, handsome Michel.

  She turned to the books stashed on a small bedside table by the bunks. The twins were obviously taking their assignment seriously – most of the books were archaeological reference books, travel books covering Mexico, and a few biographies of world-famous explorers, dozens of the pages marked with yellow sticky notes. Cate smiled then, remembering Jade’s jokey profile on her Twitter page: Aiming to be the most famous explorer since Colombus.

  She walked around the partition and peered through the gloom at the other beds. On the bottom bunk, action shots of football jostled with photographs of female popstars and actresses and posters for heavy metal gigs. Funny how you could tell so much so quickly about people, just by looking at a few of their possessions, mused Cate.

  Her phone twitched into life. Phone reception here? She was surprised, and imagined it was sporadic at best.

  Hey Cate. Need 2 talk. Where are u? Call me? Ritchie.

  Dammit. Michel’s call had completely blown Ritchie out of her mind. She made a mental note to text him again later.

  Cate looked around curiously. On one side there was a large wooden desk and a bookshelf filled mainly with maps and charts. Above the desk hung a map of the area surrounding the hut, marking the latest excavation sites. She perched on the edge of the desk and gazed out of the small window. The group had found something here, something important enough to warrant the leader of the dig calling in one of the most important professors in Mexico. And Cate was sure that, if she worked out what that was, she would be much closer to finding out just what had happened to the twins.

  She began to search along the shelves, sifting methodically through the books and folded maps, looking for signs of any recent use. Some of the charts dated back as far as the nineteen-twenties, the time when the restoration of the site had begun, and most of them were covered in dust and clearly hadn’t been unfolded for some time. The books were a disappointment, nothing more than a random collection of cheap paperbacks and ancient hardbacks, probably what passed for entertainment when the day’s work was done.

  She moved on to the desk drawers. The discovery of a logbook g
ave Cate a quick moment of hope, but even that proved to be a disappointment. Apart from mundane entries about food supplies, dig timetables and rotas, only the date that the professor was due to arrive at the site was marked out, with a bright red exclamation mark.

  She stood back and looked at the desk, noting its carved legs, her eyes lingering thoughtfully over the battered drawers and shelves. It reminded her of a desk she played with as a child, in a rented house in Gibraltar where her father had been stationed for a few months. She and Arthur had spent many happy hours working out where the secret drawers were, using them as a hideaway for their favourite objects.

  Suddenly Cate dropped to her knees and poked her head under the desk, using her fingers to search into the furthest corners. If she remembered rightly . . . She felt a small indentation the size of a ten-pence piece and pressed up hard. She heard a dull whirring noise behind and pulled her head back out just as a thin, vertical section of wood slid out from the right-hand leg. Trembling with excitement, Cate watched as a folded piece of paper fluttered to the floor.

  She picked it up and opened it out carefully. It was yellowy, the colour of a faded coffee stain, and felt dry and flaky to her touch. The handwritten inscription was in Spanish and, from what Cate could decipher from the spindly copperplate, the map had been made in 1858 – not long after the site was first rediscovered.

  ‘Wow,’ she breathed, sitting back on her heels. ‘How long has that been there?’ She slotted it gently into her rucksack – it might not provide an answer to the mystery, but it was certainly worth closer examination.

  Cate decided it was time to explore the site, but not in the daylight, not with tourists and backpackers wandering around. That was a job best done under cover of darkness.

  Back in her room, Cate locked the door carefully behind her and began to unfold the old map on the floor. It was delicate work. The thin paper felt as if it would tear with the slightest movement, but finally she managed to get it fully open. It was only half a metre square, not large compared to today’s standards, but it was neatly and professionally drawn.

  Cate gently brushed a light layer of dust from the map and gazed at it, entranced. It was such a beautiful, evocative thing, the faded, hand-drawn ink strokes reminding her of stories of the golden age of exploration, when most of the world was yet to be discovered and determined men and women spent years in remote wildernesses seeking out flora and fauna and the marvels of nature.

  Her first impression had been correct. It was, as far as she could see, a reproduction of the entire site of El Tajin, made well before the reconstruction had taken place.

  Cate pored over it, frowning with concentration. She could see the distinctive rectangle of pyramids that had greeted her at the entrance to the site and, beyond that the vast, unmistakable shape of the Pyramid of the Niches. There were the ball courts and the remains of the other pyramids that stood close by.

  To the north-east of this main group of buildings, the river gave Cate a clue as to where the hostel now stood, and from that she worked out the position of the dig. She tugged her ring off and placed it right on the spot.

  It made sense that, if the team had found anything, it would have been close to where they had been digging and, using the ring as a focus, she began to scour that small area of the map, working methodically outwards, centimetre by centimetre. Sure enough, according to the map, the hut was in the middle of a whole host of ancient ruins, some of them stretching out into the rainforest. In fact, there had even been a building underneath the hostel where Cate was right now!

  She grinned, half fascinated, half freaked by the thought that somewhere underneath her, in the thick tangle of roots and soil of the jungle, lay the remains of the vast town. Perhaps Cate was sitting above a house, or a temple, maybe even a site of sacrifice or a mass burial ground. It was pretty damn spooky.

  Her knees aching on the bare wooden floor, she sat back and looked at the map from a distance. Something suddenly struck her. The squares and triangles obviously denoted buildings, she could recognise the meandering river, but what were the blue lines running seemingly at random from some buildings but not others? She looked at them again, puzzled. Did they denote the distance between important parts of the town, perhaps? Or maybe they were streets long vanished into the dust? There was no key to enlighten her, no way of knowing for sure.

  Suddenly weary, Cate looked at her watch. It was only mid-afternoon, but she had been awake for hours. She carefully folded the map up and put it safely under the bed, took a banana from her backpack and ate it slowly while she thought. She had a quick wash at the tiny white basin in the corner of her room, pulled down the raffia blinds and crawled gratefully into bed.

  Two hours later, she woke to the sound of her phone bleeping next to her ear.

  ‘Marcus,’ Cate said groggily. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘That list you gave us – brilliant work from you and Arthur, by the way – but it came in just too late. Another site was hit this morning – four dead, more treasures gone. And we missed it.’ He sounded despondent.

  ‘I’m sorry, Marcus,’ said Cate. She understood his frustration. No matter what they did, it seemed that the criminals were always one step ahead of them.

  ‘There’s more bad news. Novak Dabrowski,’ Marcus said flatly. ‘We know who he is, in fact we know him very well. But not as Novak Dabrowski – we called him Marek Bronicz. He worked on secondment for IMIA.’

  He fell silent. Outside the wind was getting up, whipping around the hostel, rattling at the window. The overhanging trees were scratching on the roof just above her.

  ‘He worked for you?’ Cate whispered, not sure if she had heard right. ‘He worked for IMIA?’

  ‘Yes, Cate. For IMIA. For six months. In the Mediterranean sector, which is why Dave Osbourne never met him. Pity – he would have recognised him right away.’

  ‘What happened?’ Cate asked quietly. ‘How on earth did Novak end up working for Johnny James in LA?’

  ‘We quickly realised that he wasn’t right for IMIA,’ explained Marcus. ‘He was just too violent, too unpredictable, and he was suspected of stealing gold bullion from a heist we intercepted in Sicily. It was the final straw and Henri got rid of him and refused to pass him on to another spy organisation. He must have gone private then, got a job with Johnny James.’

  Cate thought back to those cold blue eyes in the pale face, staring at her intently outside Johnny James’s office. She suddenly remembered and felt sick. She had been talking about her dad, Graeme Carlisle. She had given Novak her name, handed him her identity on a plate. What an idiot she had been. She could kick herself.

  ‘Bronicz was one of the back-up crew who helped to rescue you from The Good Times,’ Marcus was saying. ‘He would have known exactly who you were. He probably recognised you the first time he set eyes on you at Johnny James’s house and, if he was up to anything criminal, he would have seen you as a danger, a direct threat. Until we find out otherwise, we have to assume he is the most likely candidate behind the attempts on your life. He must have had Gabriel in his pocket – he might even have been the second man in the truck.’

  ‘When I saw him at the marina he was injured,’ Cate said suddenly. ‘He was limping and his arm was in a sling. When I defended Ritchie, I hit the assailant on his right arm. It must have been Novak in the truck. He must have followed me from Johnny James’s place. I’m sure you’re right Marcus – he was on to me the minute he saw me.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘It it’s any consolation, those bugs you planted on Burt have paid off big time though,’ Marcus said. ‘He’s been calling round all his old buddies, trying to find someone who can get him a false passport. Looks like he’s about to do a runner, which means he’s probably scared and ready to talk. We’re picking him up this evening. In the meantime, try not to worry. Henri and I think that you’re pretty safe where you are and we’ve an alert out for Dabrowski in LA and all airports and borders in and out
of Mexico. But even so, I know I don’t have to tell you to keep your head down and watch out.’

  CHAPTER 17

  ‘I forgot, someone was asking for you,’ Maria said as she handed Cate a thick porcelain mug containing a wickedly strong-looking coffee at the end of an amazing meal. Maria had cooked spicy chilli fajitas followed by delicious churros – a sort of cross between a donut and a fritter, Cate thought. She was now sitting in a comfy chair underneath a large fan to enjoy her coffee and daydream about Michel.

  ‘A man phoned,’ Maria said. ‘He didn’t leave his name. Said he wasn’t sure if you were here, but was just checking anyway.’

  Cate stared back at Maria, all thoughts of an easy few hours gone and replaced by a wave of fear. Novak Dabrowski. It had to be him.

  She could kick herself. Why on earth had she been stupid enough to sign in as Cate Carlisle? Marcus had offered her a false passport, arguing that it would be safer than using her own. She should have listened to him.

  ‘How long ago did he call?’ Cate tried to keep her voice calm.

  ‘About two hours ago. When you were in your room. I told him you’d be back later. That OK?’

  Cate stood up quickly. She had to stay calm. ‘Maria,’ she said casually, ‘I fancy a trip to town. To Paplanta. What time’s the next bus out of here?’

  Maria looked up at the plastic clock behind reception. ‘It’s gone. No more now till tomorrow.’

  ‘Can you call me a taxi, Maria?’

  The Mexican woman grinned. ‘Te cae. Are you serious? There is only one – and now it is siesta time. Maybe tonight?’

  Cate thought fast. She had to get out of the hostel and find somewhere to hide until she could work out how to get safely back to Veracruz.

  Her heart racing, Cate took the stairs up to the room two steps at a time. In seconds, her rucksack was packed, the precious spy gear zipped into an invisible interior pocket, but as Cate did a quick final check of the room she spotted the old map lying under her now-bare bed and grabbed it. She wasn’t leaving that behind.