I awoke as a sliver of sun flashed through the stone doorway of the room and forest birds erupted around me in celebration. As I pulled myself up and moved over to the opening, a quick tropical glare burned into my face. My God, the dawn was electric; it was the purest blue I'd ever seen, a swath of artist's cobalt. An azure radiance from the sky glistened off the rain forest leaves around me. Had I dreamed the stormy, haunted world of the night before?
When I looked down, everywhere below me was a bank of dense, pastel mist. Was the plaza really there or had I imagined it? I felt like the top of the pyramid was floating on a cloud.
"Babylon." That was what Sarah had called this place. Ancient and mysterious. I took a breath of the morning air and wondered what would draw her back here. Was Baalum the ultimate escape from her other life? Even so… why would she want to return after somebody had tried to murder her? What was waiting down there in the fog?
Turning back, I noticed that the room's inside walls were embossed with rows and rows of classic Mayan glyphs, like little cartoon faces, all molded in newly set plaster. To my groggy sight they seemed playful, harmless little caricatures, though next to them were raised bas-reliefs of warriors in battle dress. It was both sublimely austere and eerie, even creepy.
I knelt down and rolled my sleeping bag, trying to clear my head. Then I stuffed my still-moist clothes into my backpack and thought about the river, the Rio Tigre, down somewhere at the back of the pyramid. And I felt my pulse rate edging up. The first thing I wanted to do was see it in the light of day. It had been Sarah's way out, the only thing I knew for sure she'd touched.
Get going and do it.
I headed through the rear door and down the back steps. When I reached the ground, the dense forest closed in around me, but I was certain the river lay dead ahead, through the tangle of trees. As I moved down a path that grew ever steeper, the canopy up above thickened, arching over me till it blotted out the pure blue of the sky. And the air was filled with nature sounds-birdcalls, trills, songs, and clacks, all mingled with the hum and buzz of insects. Then suddenly, from somewhere up in the canopy, a pack of screeching spider monkeys began flinging rotten mangos down in my direction. I also thought I heard the asthmatic, territorial roar of a giant howler monkey, the lord of the upper jungle. And what about snakes? I kept an eye on the vines and tendrils alongside the path, expecting any moment to stumble across a deadly fer-de-lance, a little red-and-black operator whose poison heads straight for your nervous system.
On the other hand, the birds, the forest birds, were everywhere, scarlet macaws and keel-billed toucans and darting flocks of Amazon parrots, brilliant and iridescent, their sweeping tails a psychedelic rainbow of green, yellow, red. Then the next thing I knew, the path I was on abruptly opened onto a mossy expanse of pea-soup green, surely the Rio Tigre, and…
My God, those dark-brown bumps scattered everywhere… they're the eyes and snouts of… yes, crocodiles, lurking there in wait, hoping I'm dumb enough to wade in. Forget what Alan Dupre said. This is definitely not "Disneyland."
Then I glanced upstream and caught sight of a string of mahogany dugout canoes tied along the shore. They were huge, about fifteen feet long and three feet wide, and clearly designed to be crocodile-resistant. They…
Wait a minute. Lou said Sarah was found in a dugout canoe that had drifted all the way down the Rio Tigre to where it joins the Usumacinta. One more clue she might have been here. Maybe I was closing in. Yes!
I glared back at the crocodiles' unblinking reptile eyes and tried to get my mind around the fact Sarah could have stood right where I was standing, or been set adrift from here in a coma, to float downstream. Seeing that vision, I felt unbidden tears trailing down my cheeks. And the questions I had kept piling up. Was this the location of Alex Goddard's "miracle" clinic? Why was Baalum such a high-security secret? What was the connection between this place and Sarah's ravaged mind and body? I wanted to know all of it, and by God I would.
This was the farthest I'd ever been from "civilization," though I was trying not to let that fact sink in too deeply. The water was green and full of small aquatic creations, but I managed to find a reasonably un-mossy spot and-still keeping an eye on the leering crocodiles-splashed my face. It felt good, even if it was filthy…
Okay, I'd seen enough of the river. I raised up and stretched. Time to go.
My hopes at war with my nerves, I turned my back on the scummy, fetid Rio Tigre and headed back up the jungle trail toward the plaza.
When I got there, I was struck all over again by the vision of the pyramid. Something like it might have been here originally, but in any case it had been completely redone, with newly cut yellowish stones and white lime plaster, an exotic castle nestled in the green lap of the rain forest, rising above the square like a haunting presence. It must have been well over a hundred feet high, a stone wedding cake with a dozen steep tiers between the ground and the platform at the top, which also was square and roughly fifteen feet on the side.
Standing there gazing at it, I think I'd never felt more disoriented. Sarah, Sarah, how could we both end up here, at the last outpost of the known world? But seeing is believing. I took a deep breath, then turned down the pathway toward the thatch-roofed huts.
Through the mist it was gradually becoming clear that Baalum actually was a village, and a sizable one. The walkway led past a string of clearings, each with clusters of one-room huts built in the ancient, classical style, with walls of mud over rows of vertical saplings, their roofs and porches peaked with yellow-green thatch weathering to browns and grays. The structures, outlined starkly against the towering green arbor of the forest above, were grouped around paved patios. It all was neat and meticulous, like a jungle Brigadoon. Although the effects of the storm were everywhere-blown thatch and bamboo-I still felt as if I'd fallen into a time warp where clocks had gone backward. What…?
Then I began to catch the outlines of people, as though they had materialized out of the pale fog. All pure Maya, short and brown, shiny black hair, they appeared to be just going about their daily lives. I was approaching a workshop area where, under a wide thatch shade, men with chipped-flint adzes were carving bowls, plows, various implements from mahogany and other rain forest woods. Next to them, potters were fashioning brown clay jugs. They all were wearing white loincloths and a large square cotton cloth knotted around their shoulders, their hair tied back in dense ponytails. It must have been how the Maya looked a thousand years ago.
Their earnestness reminded me of the villagers I once filmed in the Yucatan for the Discovery Channel-with one big difference: There I was the big-shot gringo; here I felt like a powerless time traveler. The sense of being lost in another age was as compelling as the "colonial" mock-up at Williamsburg, but this was real and it was decidedly spooky.
Finally one of the men looked up and noticed me. Our eyes locked for an instant-it seemed like forever-and then he reached over and, in a way that seemed breathless, shook the man next to him, gesturing toward me. Together they gazed back as though viewing a phantom, their brown faces intent, and then they turned and called out to the others, alerting them.
What are they going to do with me? I wondered with a sudden chill. A stranger here in their hideaway midst. Would they just turn on me?
Find some women. Get off the street.
I turned and headed as fast as I could down the cobblestone central path, till I saw a cluster of females on a whitewashed stone porch, long hair falling over their shoulders as they bent to their tasks beneath the thatch overhangs. Some were stirring rugged clay pots of corn soaking in lime; others were grinding the softened maize to tortilla thinness on wide granite platters. Behind them was another group that appeared to be part of a sewing commune, young wives busy at their back-strap looms, layering thread after thread of dyed cotton. None of them was wearing a huipil-the traditional multicolored blouse I'd remembered from the waitresses in the restaurant. Instead, they all had on a kind of handloom-woven white shift I'd never seen before.
Talk to them. Let them know you're no threat to anybody.
As I moved down the hard clay pathway toward them, two looked up and took notice. Their first reaction seemed to be alarm, as they tensed and stared. But then I tried a smile and it seemed to work. Their looks turned to puzzlement, then embarrassed grins, as though they wanted to be friendly but weren't sure how to acknowledge my presence.
When I reached the porch, several reached out to touch me. One older woman, short and wizened and extremely brown, even tried to stroke my hair.
What was going on? I was taken aback, but I also was determined to get through to them. Why not just ask them point-blank if Sarah's here? Is there any chance they understand Spanish?
"Buenos dias." I smiled and nodded. "Dispenseme. Quiero descubrir… esta una gringa de los Estados Unidos aqui? "
They all returned uncomprehending looks, then glanced quickly at each other in confusion. Or at least that was how I read their faces.
"Sarah," I said, pronouncing the name slowly. "Sarah Crenshaw."
"Sara," one voiced, then others. They backed away and immediately began a heated dispute, which eventually involved all the women. Well, one thing was for sure: They damned well knew who I was asking about. But why were they so upset? Next, several of them grew testy, pointing at me as they continued to argue.
Finally the two I'd first approached turned and began urging me to leave, gesturing at me with their hands as though sweeping me out of the compound. Yes, there was no mistaking. I was being dismissed. And I detected an odd nervousness as they glanced around, seemingly worried somebody might catch me there with them. I got the feeling they'd finally decided they didn't want me anywhere near them, since they kept pointing down the thoroughfare in the direction of the pyramid.
I've blown it, I thought. They must have figured out I'm here to get her and decided they no longer want to have anything to do with me. What did that mean?
And now what do I do? As I retreated back out to the main walkway, I felt a growing sense of defeat. Then, looking down it, I realized I'd literally been going in a circle. It was actually a large oval that curved back to the main square and the pyramid, where I'd started from.
God, what a nightmare. I obviously had to rethink my game plan, find a way to communicate. And on top of that, I was dying of thirst.
I fished out the almost-empty plastic container from my backpack, then walked across the square and settled myself on the first step leading up the steep front. As I drew on the bottle, my mind still swirling, I happened to notice an upright stone slab off to the side, like a tall, thin tombstone, with a bas-relief of a Maya warrior on it, next to some kind of two-headed serpent god-probably Kukulkan, one of the few Maya deities I knew. And then, down the side, were rows of lines and dots. I studied them a minute before realizing it was the classical Mayan number system, telling precisely when things happened to the ruler shown there: born on such and such a date, assumed the kingship, won great battles, etc., all carefully dated as career high-points. I knew that dots represented single years, horizontal lines the number five. The Maya loved numbers and numerology, so…
That was when I glanced up to see a group of women approaching slowly across the square, with a bunch of the men watching from the forest arbors beyond, and they were huddled around something they were carrying. Whatever it was, they seemed to be delivering it to me. Then I realized they were the same ones who'd just kicked me out of their compound. What next? Are they coming to drive me from the plaza too? Should I try and forcibly search all the huts?
But then they set down their load-it turned out to be a crude bamboo-and-thatch palanquin-and stepped aside as they beckoned me forward.
For a moment I just stared, disbelieving. I felt like I was seeing someone I didn't want to recognize, perhaps because that someone looked so much like me.
"Morgy, they told me a new one was here, and I hoped it was you." Sarah was swinging her skinny legs off the side, her voice bright. Her face was drawn, but her hair was neat and her eyes were radiant. "Isn't Baalum the most wonderful place you've ever seen?"
She was wearing a white shift that reminded me of the blue hospital smock she'd had on the last time I saw her, except here it seemed more like something that had a special significance, like the robes of an acolyte. Her shoes were soft brown slippers that looked brand-new, and around her waist was a braided leather band. As I stared at her, I wondered if she was really as transformed as she looked. She was undeniably stronger than two days ago, in spite of what that bastard Alex Goddard and his Guatemalan Army cronies had done to her to get her here. But still, she had to be half dead. Thank God Lou couldn't see her now.
"Sar, oh, Sar." I rushed over and threw my arms around her. She'd been freshly bathed and perfumed-a fragrance like chocolate-but she felt like a bag of bones. "Are you okay?"
"I was afraid Baalum was all just a dream." She hugged me back, then started rising to her feet. God, could she walk? "But now I remember everything."
"Sar, I've come to take you home." I grasped her hand, warm and soft, to help her stand-though it wasn't necessary. "You're not safe-"
"No, it's wonderful now" Then she turned and said something to one of the women. It took me a moment to realize she was speaking their language; I guessed it was Kekchi Maya.
I was stunned. How did she learn it? Finally she looked back at me and switched to English again. "I didn't understand before. I was… sick so much."
"Sar, come on." I slipped my arm around her. "We're going to get you out of here."
I'd never felt so helpless. Alan Dupre had said there was a road, but it was controlled by the Army. Right now, I didn't even know where it was. Maybe I could find a phone, or radio. Call the embassy. There must be something. Alex Goddard has to be here somewhere, but he's not going to stop me. I'll strangle him if he tries.
I hugged her again, the feel of her skin-and-bones frame making my soul ache. But most hurtful of all, I wasn't sure she would want to leave.
"Sar, can you understand me?" I tried to catch her deep blue eyes. "I'm taking you home. Your father's very worried about you."
Mention of Lou seemed to finally get through to her. She turned and examined me with a quizzical look, and then her eyes hardened.
"Morgy, he was never there for me." Her voice was filled with certainty, and pain. "But when I went to see Dr. Goddard he let me come here for the ceremony. It's so spiritual. After-"
"Sar, come on." What did she mean by "ceremony"? Whatever it was, I had to get her out of this place. Immediately. "We've-"
"Are you here for the ceremony?" Her face flooded with renewed joy. "It's two days from now. Maybe he'll let you-"
"She should be resting." It was a harsh voice, directly behind us.
I recoiled, then whirled around. Three men were standing there, two of them young privates in uniforms of the Guatemalan Army and carrying AK-47 assault rifles, the ones with the long, ominous curved clip Steve called cuerno de cabrio, the "horn of the goat."
The third was in a black sweatshirt and black jeans, his long salt-and-pepper hair tied back in a ponytail.
"They should have known better than to bring her out here," Alex Goddard said. "Not in her condition."
The bastard. It was all coming together in my mind. He'd tried to kill her once before, and now he was going to finish the job. But he'd have to kill me first.
"I'm here to take her home." I marched up to him. "You're not about to get away with kidnapping. I'm going to get the embassy to-"
"She's here for important medical reasons." He met my eyes. "I hope you'll allow me the opportunity to help her."
"What do you mean, 'help'?"
"I'll explain if you'll give me a chance." He revolved and delivered some brusque orders in Kekchi Maya to the women, who nodded apologetically and began helping Sarah back onto the palanquin. After he admonished her in the same language, he then said something in quick Spanish to the two young Army privates, who gave him a firm salute, turned, and walked over to pick the palanquin up, to carry it for the women. The sense of authority he exuded reminded me of that first morning we met at Quetzal Manor. His eyes flashed from benign to demanding to benign in an instant.
"No, damn it, alto!" I strode over, shoved the soldiers aside, and took her hand. "Sar, honey, don't you understand what's going on? Something terrible happened to you when you were here before. I'm so worried-"
"But he says I need to stay, Morgy." She drew back. "It's best. He's helping me."
As I watched the two privates carry her away, down the cobblestone pathway, AK-47's swung over their shoulders, I felt my helplessness become complete. The Army here was under his control, just like everything else.
How was I going to tell Lou about this, that Sarah had been brainwashed? Whatever Alex Goddard had done to her had turned her into some kind of "Moonie," ready to denounce her own father. So now did I have two battles to wage: one with Alex Goddard and one with her?
Then he walked over to me.
"I'm not going to ask how you got here, though I assume it wasn't easy." He smiled, like a kindly priest, and put his hand on my shoulder. "But however you did it, I'm glad you decided to come. It's important for you to be here. She needs you now."