Viper's Nest Read online

  Downstairs, Maria was nowhere to be seen. She slipped quietly out of the door, around the back of the hostel and into the humid gloom of the jungle. She couldn’t risk being out in the open now.

  Staying close to the clearing, she pushed her way carefully through the vines that hung from the trees like curtains, steering clear of the strange-looking plants that grew all around. High above her, creatures chattered and grunted restlessly in the trees, watching her closely, wary but not yet alarmed. Ahead of her she saw the bright plumage and unmistakable oversized bill of a toucan meandering its way through the overgrowth. At any other time she would have been enthralled by this close-up of nature’s most colourful beings, but now every strange movement and sudden sound made her heart skip a beat, pushed her breathing faster, her heart pounding with a savage fear.

  Cate crossed the river, wider now than it was at the dig, jumping from stone to stone, holding her rucksack high above her head. The cool of the water provided a welcome relief from the humidity.

  She stopped by the bank and tried to call Marcus, waving away the swarms of mosquitoes that buzzed around her head as she did. His phone went straight to voicemail so, in desperation, she texted him instead.

  Novak on his way. Need to leave immediately. Pls send transport.

  Eventually she was back at the dig, looking out from the jungle towards the hut. She sat down against a tree, pulled out her binoculars and made herself comfortable. For now, she was in no hurry to leave the safety of her jungle cover.

  She looked down at her phone, hoping for a return message from Marcus. The signal was low here, and flickered in and out of range. She reached into a side pocket of her rucksack and pulled out the powerful hyper-dongle that Arthur had given to her and plugged it in. The signal picked up, but her inbox remained annoyingly quiet.

  She hated to beg for help, but this time she had no choice. If Novak was determined enough to come all this way to find her, then he must really mean business.

  It was hard to keep her imagination in check. After all, he could be close by even now, waiting for her, a gun in his hand, a bullet with her name on. She had never felt so lonely, so far away from home.

  Behind her, a sudden shrill shriek had her leaping to her feet, but it was only a hunting eagle, rising up from a nearby tree before floating majestically out over the bright green treetops.

  Night came suddenly. The darkness dropped like a blanket over the tops of the trees and the temperature plummeted with it. Cate stood up and eased out her stiff legs. These rainforests held wild cats, hunters like pumas and jaguars, not to mention the odd nasty reptile, and Cate knew that she was far more vulnerable to attack in the darkness. It was time to take shelter. Scanning the clearing and the jungle fringe one more time, she ran to the hut and went inside.

  She stood for a minute or two, waiting for her heart to stop racing and her breathing to return to normal; then she set about securing her hideout. There was a door bolt, but nothing for it to go into, just splintered wood. Cate looked down. At her feet was a thin metal wedge, presumably used to keep the door open. She pushed it hard underneath the bottom of the door and then jammed a chair firmly under the handle. It would do for now.

  She was cold, sore, and craved a hot drink. Using her torch she found a battered saucepan on the shelf and filled it with water from a bottle, switched on the electric ring and said a prayer of thanks as it glowed red.

  Whilst she waited for the water to boil, she pulled the spy kit out of her bag and found the tin containing the night-vision lenses. Despite her anxiety, she felt a growing excitement as she put the lenses in.

  She looked about her, blinking hard, then reached for the tiny remote control, pressing the green button firmly down. Instantly, the darkness lifted, the room was filled with colours so bright that it seemed as if sunlight was flooding in! Cate looked around her.

  She tried the zoom-in option, and her close-up vision became sharper. She looked down at the floor and she could see every speck of dust, the tiny cracks in the floorboards, the grime between them.

  ‘Wow,’ said Cate, ‘I’m an eagle.’

  Cheered up, she switched on her torch again, removed the lenses and stored them carefully away. With her vision back to normal, she made a cup of tea, stashed her rucksack under Amber’s bed and sat on the bare mattress, wide awake, waiting for first light.

  To distract herself, Cate looked up at the pictures and slogans plastered on the slats of the bed above her as she sipped her drink. There were photographs of Gandhi, of Obama and Mandela, as well as famous explorers and anthropologists – Darwin, David Attenborough, and a fair-haired, white-bearded man called Thor Heyerdahl. Cate did a double-take. The name was familiar . . . and somewhere in the back of her mind she remembered her father telling her about the famous Norwegian explorer who had set out to prove that the Egyptians could have made it across the Atlantic to Peru.

  She turned to the books on the side table and scrabbled through them until she found what she was looking for. A Compendium of Great Twentieth Century Explorers. She flicked through the pages until she came to Thor Heyerdahl. There he was, standing on the deck of what looked like a primitive sailing raft, his long blond hair flowing, a modern-day Viking.

  A prolific explorer, Thor Heyerdahl had become convinced that Egyptians had made the epic voyage from Africa to South America, travelling by sea and then land, bringing with them their pyramid architecture, sun worship, and an obsession with astrology and calendars. Despite widespread derision from the scientific community, the Norwegian had been determined to prove his point. Using early African boat-building techniques, he had created a raft out of papyrus reeds, named her Ra after the Egyptian sun god, and set out from North Africa in 1969. Ra had broken apart, but he tried again the following year with Ra II and this time made it six thousand kilometres across the Atlantic, landing safely in Barbados in the Caribbean. Proof, he said, that the Egyptians could indeed have made it to South America.

  There were other theories too. He believed that Vikings had settled on the East Coast of America; in Peru he had heard a legend that the Incas had told of white gods who had come from the north in the morning of time. They had white skins and long beards and were taller than the Incas. Heyerdahl had never stopped searching for proof that ancient people travelled further than experts had ever believed.

  Cate scanned through the last few pages of the chapter. Despite making the voyage successfully, and selling thousands of books about his travels to an adoring public, most of Heyerdahl’s theories were still dismissed as fantasy by his fellow scientists and he died in 2002 without ever being taken seriously.

  Cate closed the book thoughtfully. Was Heyerdahl the Thor that Jade had been talking about on Twitter? And if so, what did her message mean? Thor was so wrong and yet so right – about what?

  Cate gave up trying to work it out and looked at her watch. Nine hours to go till dawn. She would have to move on soon, it was dangerous to stay in one spot for too long.

  Then she heard him – heavy footsteps on the hard earth outside the hut, walking slowly towards the door. She saw a face at the window, peering into the room. Terrified, she shrank back against the wall.

  Her heart in her mouth, penknife in hand, Cate edged along the wall to the door and stood beside it, waiting for it to open. Surprise, if used wisely, was a valuable weapon. It was one of her mantras.

  The person was at the door now, pushing against Cate’s makeshift barricade. The timber strained and bent as he put his weight against it. Cate tightened her grip on her knife and readied herself for attack.

  Suddenly the door burst open, the chair flew across the room, and Cate raised her arm to strike – then pulled back in surprise.

  ‘Ritchie!’ she cried, relief flooding her body as he fell into the room, banging his head on the low door frame as he did. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  He turned to her, rubbing his head ruefully. ‘I could ask you the same question, Cate.’


  ‘How did you know I was here?’ Cate persisted. The relief that it had been Ritchie, not Novak Dabrowski, made her feel almost giddy.

  ‘Nancy Kyle,’ he said. ‘You said you were with her in your text. And my uncle has her number.’

  Cate mentally kicked herself for not being more careful. She’d forgotten how every celeb seemed to know each other – and that Nancy had even been at Johnny James’s party.

  ‘She was a bit cagey when I rang her,’ Ritchie continued, ‘but as soon as I explained who I was she couldn’t have been more charming. She said she hadn’t got a clue where you were and that you’d cleared off without telling anyone where you were going and your mum was furious. Apparently it had taken three head massages and a bottle of Moët to calm her down. Actually, they assumed that I was meeting you somewhere! But then Nancy remembered that, when you were having dinner, you had mentioned that you wanted to visit “some historical thingy” as she put it.

  ‘There aren’t that many sites close to Veracruz so I put two and two together. I rang a hostel – there aren’t that many after all – and struck lucky with the first one I tried. The receptionist said you had checked in and I tried your cell, but the call just went to voicemail.

  ‘When I got up here your room was empty – in fact the door wasn’t locked and it seemed like you’d left, but the receptionist said you’d paid for a week. She said you’d talked about getting a lift to Paplanta, but she wasn’t sure how you would find one.

  ‘I went to the museum and the other hostels – I even checked on the site itself in case you were wandering around there. Finally I stumbled across this place. Amber said they were living in a remote hut, and so I reckoned this must be it – and of course I wanted to have a look. I should have guessed that you would have found this place before me!’

  They sat down at the table and Ritchie produced some chocolate from one of the many zipped pockets on his khaki jacket and offered it to Cate. ‘I think Maria thought I was a boyfriend, running after you to propose or something.’

  Cate flushed. Michel was back in her life, but she was surprised at just how happy she was to see Ritchie.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Ritchie laughed, ‘cute as you are, it wasn’t exactly my idea to come here. It was my uncle’s. He was worried about you and suggested I try to track you down. And when I worked out you were in El Tajin, well, that was the push I needed.’ He looked sombre. ‘I should have come down earlier, to look for the twins myself. I wanted to, but my uncle told me to leave it to the professionals.’

  He smiled then. ‘Cate, let’s work on this together. I kinda think that we would make a good team. I’m beginning to realise that there’s more to you than meets the eye. For instance, why did you leave Veracruz in such a mad rush after you’d only just got there?’

  Cate looked at Ritchie thoughtfully. Usually she worked alone, trusting in her own wit, with Arthur and IMIA as a backup. But it would be good to have a partner, especially one so reassuringly large and strong as Ritchie.

  ‘Nancy convinced Mum and me to come with her and Lucas to Veracruz to keep her company,’ she said finally. ‘When I learned how close we were to El Tajin, I couldn’t resist coming here to have a look for myself. It was a spur of the moment thing, really. I knew Mum wouldn’t want me to, so I didn’t tell her.’

  She wasn’t lying, but of course she couldn’t – wouldn’t – confide in him completely. Some things had to be kept secret. Including the fact that she had been sent here as a spy for IMIA.

  ‘I thought I might be able to find clues that would help locate the twins,’ she said. ‘And here I am.’

  ‘And have you found anything?’ asked Ritchie eagerly.

  ‘I’ve had a good look around the site, I’ve searched the hut, I’ve even gone through old maps and charts. Nothing. Maria the receptionist believes that the attackers didn’t come or go by road, but I’m not sure how accurate that information is.’ She sighed and took a bite of chocolate. ‘Ritchie, can I ask you something, about your Uncle Jack?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Ritchie.

  ‘Did you know that Amber and Jade weren’t the only people he was sponsoring in Mexico? That he was also covering the costs of digs in about ten sites all over the country?’

  Ritchie shrugged. ‘No. But Uncle Jack has a huge charitable foundation that funds hundreds of projects all over the world. He wouldn’t tell me about all of them – no reason to. In any case, he probably loses track himself. Ned, his lawyer, deals with most of the details as far as I can see.’ He grinned. ‘My uncle has a short attention span.’

  As she took another bite of chocolate, a vision came into her mind of the lawyer whispering something to Novak Dabrowski as he stood, like a soldier, guarding the entrance to Johnny James’s panic room.

  ‘Ritchie, have you ever been inside that panic room – the one in the basement close to his office?’

  ‘Not for a while,’ he said. ‘We used to go in quite often. He keeps lots of valuables there – cool stuff from his art collection. He absolutely loves art, as you probably realised when you saw his house. But in the last six months or so, whenever I’ve asked he always seemed to put me off. I think that weird-looking guard made him beef-up his security – and that meant not allowing people in to see it.’ He gave Cate an odd stare. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Cate truthfully. ‘Don’t worry about it, Ritchie, I’m just thinking aloud.’

  Ritchie stood up. ‘How about we start searching properly tomorrow first light? As a team. Two pairs of eyes are better than one. In any case, the twins’ mother isn’t going to leave it to the Mexicans for much longer. She’s talking about going public, launching an appeal for information, for money to fund a search. I don’t think they’ll be able to keep a lid on it for much longer.’

  Cate suddenly felt a wave of despondency washing over her. ‘Amber and Jade and the others have been missing for nearly a week. We should have come down earlier, shouldn’t we? If they are alive, we have to hope they’re being properly looked after, with food and water and shelter, otherwise they are going to be pretty close to . . .’ She left the words unsaid.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Ritchie said suddenly. ‘If they had wanted them dead then they would have killed them on the site. There’s still been no ransom request, but there must be a reason that they took them alive. And we have to hope that they still are.’

  He put out a hand and pulled her to her feet. ‘Come on. I’ll walk you back to the hostel and you can get a good night’s sleep. Things will feel a lot better in the morning.’

  Cate stood up. ‘I guess we may as well,’ she said, feeling under the bunk for her rucksack. ‘At least we won’t have to use those horrible chemical loos.’

  She tugged at the strap of her rucksack, but it stayed put. Cate got down on her knees and slipped her arm underneath and, catching hold of the bag, gave it a good yank – but it refused to budge.

  ‘Dammit,’ she grumbled. ‘My rucksack is stuck on something. Ritchie, do you mind moving the bed a bit? I think you might find it a bit easier than I would.’

  ‘No problem.’ Ritchie was at her side instantly, his large arms tensing as he lifted the bunk bed up and away from the side of the wall.

  Cate crouched down, shining her torch into the darkness, and instantly spotted the problem. The metal tag on the front of her rucksack had somehow got stuck under a loose floorboard and, as she twisted and pulled at the tag, the board lifted and came free, leaving Cate staring in amazement at a small metal cash box.

  Over her shoulder she heard Ritchie draw in a breath. ‘What the hell is that?’

  Cate said nothing, but pulled the box out. It looked new, hardly used and the lock was secure. She reached into her rucksack and retrieved the laser from her spy kit. She held the top against the lock.

  ‘Where the heck did you get that?’ Ritchie exclaimed. ‘It looks like one of the laser wands plastic surgeons use to get rid of wr
inkles.’

  ‘Close,’ said Cate, putting on her Raybans for protection and turning it on. ‘Same principle, different uses. But don’t ask where I got it. Now, just look away for a minute.’

  There was a crackling, sizzling sound and the smell of burning. ‘Done.’

  She used her penknife to flick away the charred metal. Pulling the lid open, she tipped the contents carefully out on to the bed. There was a coloured stone and a small bronze dagger, slightly corroded but still unmistakable in its shape. Cate touched it reverently, running her fingers over the red stones on the narrow handle, feeling along the blunted blade.

  ‘Incredible,’ Ritchie breathed above her. ‘Do you think it’s for real?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Cate said quietly. ‘We need to get it to an expert. But what’s this?’

  She picked up a piece of folded white paper and stared down at it. It was a simple map, signed in Amber’s flamboyant signature. Ritchie sat down on the bed and peered at it over her shoulder.

  ‘There’s us here,’ Cate said, placing her finger on the crudely drawn hut. ‘And . . . what’s this?’

  She pointed to a triangle, highlighted with a red asterisk, sited a kilometre or so north-east of the dig site, in the rainforest. On the east side of the triangle Amber had marked two green lines as intersections and behind it a blue splodge.

  ‘Must be some sort of building. A ruin perhaps?’ suggested Ritchie.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Cate, trying hard to contain her excitement. ‘Let me try something.’

  She pulled out the old map from her rucksack, unfolded it and looked at it alongside Amber’s map.

  ‘Bingo,’ said Cate triumphantly. ‘Look, this old map shows a pyramid in the same place that Amber has drawn her triangle.’

  ‘Amazing!’ said Ritchie admiringly. ‘What are those green lines on Amber’s pyramid, do you think?’

  Cate stared down at the rough map, looking at the two green marks running parallel with each other, cutting into the centre of the pyramid. ‘I think Amber found the entrance to a lost pyramid,’ she said softly.