Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead (4 page)

Now Indy did smile. Hoyt had worked as an assistant undertaker in the off-season, hence the nickname.

“So, speak of this artifact.”

Mac and Indy exchanged glances.

“Come, gentlemen, if I am to act as your guide, I will need to know the proper questions to ask the locals—unless you have a map that shows the location?”

“No, no map,” Mac allowed.

“So if this item is to be located, we will have to talk with somebody on the island who has some idea of where such a thing might be found. Sooner or later, I must have this information. Better now, I think.”

“Then you are willing to help us?” Mac asked.

“Yes. But we must trust each other.”

The two men exchanged another quick look.

Indy said, “During the height of the slave trade in the late 1700s, a Central African woman was taken in a raid. The exact location of this is less than clear, but it was probably in the equatorial regions—Ngoyo, Kakongo, Ndongo, or Matamba.

“This woman was somehow very dear to the ruler of one of the most important kingdoms, a fellow known as the Manikongo. Some accounts have her as the wife; others, a daughter; still others say she was his mother.

“This ruler sought to buy her back from the slavers, and offered what was a rare and extremely valuable ransom. The item was a large, asymmetrical black pearl, taken from a giant oyster species long extinct. The pearl was the size of a man’s fist and shaped somewhat like a human heart. Legend had it that it had been the centerpiece of some kind of magic practiced by a family of witch doctors on the west coast before it was taken during a tribal conflict. Supposedly imbued with a curse.”

“Aren’t they all,” Mac said under his breath.

She either didn’t hear him or affected that she didn’t. She nodded. “Go on.”

“The slavers agreed to the deal, but when the pearl was delivered, they killed the men who brought it and took the treasure. Kept the woman, too, so the story goes.

“They sailed to Hispaniola, but during a storm, the vessel—either Spanish or Portuguese, that part is also unclear—was caught and wrecked in a storm off the south coast of Haiti. A result of the curse, so it was said. Most of the crew and cargo drowned, but somehow the pearl—which, by the way, was known as the Heart of Darkness—was saved by a man who managed to swim ashore to an unnamed island.”

Indy’d had another adventure with a black pearl a few years back—smaller gem, different continent, and Nazis involved, too, complete with a Chinese dragon, or a pretty good illusion of one, but . . .

“The Heart of Darkness?” Marie asked.

Indy said, “If it sounds familiar, that’s probably because there’s a Polish writer, Joseph Conrad—he was a boat captain on the Congo River who wrote a story—”

“Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Conrad’s real name,” she said. “I did read while I was at college, and I do know a bit about history.” Butter wouldn’t have melted in her mouth, so cool was her smile.

Mac gave Indy an I-guess-she-told-you look.

Indy nodded, properly abashed. “Right. Sorry.” It would be a mistake to underestimate this woman. Smart and beautiful and educated, a powerful combination. He could hardly forget Elsa, and how he had felt about her—right up until he realized she was a Nazi on their trek to find the Grail. Elsa had been gorgeous, sexy, sharp as a tack, and man, what a bad girl and a wrong number
that
liaison had turned out to be. Though it had had its moments before it went sour, those few hours in Venice . . . But—then he’d found out about her and his
father
? Oh, that had been really bad . . .

Mac took over the lecture, interrupting Indy’s stroll down memory lane: “So, from the descriptions—and these are oral, and passed down among certain tribes in what is today the Belgian Congo and Nigeria—the Heart was put in a place of safety and warded with magic to somehow attenuate the curse. Supposedly, it has rested there for a hundred and sixty years, give or take.”

“And you want it. To sell?”

“No,” Indy said, “to put in a museum! To keep treasure hunters from getting it first and peddling it to some gloating rich man who will keep it in a safe in his bedroom, hidden away, to drool over alone. Such things should belong to the world.”

She turned her gaze to regard Indy. “Is this what you really believe, Dr. Jones?”

He realized he might have sounded a little over the top. “Yeah. And call me Indy.”

“Then you must call me Marie. I will help you find this Heart of Darkness, gentlemen. But I must warn you—the Island of Death is a strange and dangerous place, at least as much so as Conrad’s Congo. Your lives will be at risk.”

Indy thought,
Huh. She agreed to that pretty quickly.
He said, “There’s a surprise.” He paused. “We’ve managed to keep ourselves alive in some dangerous places. We’ll chance it.”

She nodded. “We will need to hire a boat, and once we arrive there will be more expenses. Have you funds?”

Indy started to tell her they were broke, but Mac interrupted. “We do.”

Indy looked at him. “We do?”

Mac patted his ample waist. “Money belt. A fair number of gold coins. Been saving them for a rainy day, but it’s only money—and who needs that?”

“I hope you have enough to get us a room with a bath and a couple of razors. Some washed clothes would be nice, too.”

“Not a problem, old man.”

“I know a woman with rooms to let,” Marie said. “They are clean, and she is honest. Best if you don’t check into one of the city’s hotels. Port-au-Prince is full of spies since the war began.”

“Yeah, we noticed one of those ourselves,” Indy said.

“Really? Which one?”

Indy looked at Mac. In for a dime, in for a dollar. “An American.”

“Joe Edmonds,” she said. “OSS, posing as a sisal buyer.”

“You seem well informed about spies, too,” Indy allowed.

She smiled. “It is my home. One pays attention.”

Yeah.

“Go and see Madam Josette, for the rooms. We can begin as soon as you are ready.”

“All we need are directions,” Indy said.

“You do not need those. Alain will show you.”

A young man suddenly seemed to appear from nowhere, to stand in the doorway. He looked enough like Marie to be a younger brother or maybe a cousin. She said something to him in a soft and liquid Creole, none of which Indy caught except his name: Alain.

Mac and Indy stood.

“Thank you,” Mac said to Marie.

She gave him a slow nod, and for a moment Indy thought he could see something in her eyes, some knowledge, a hint of amusement. But he was tired and dirty and he realized he was probably imagining it. It had been a long and exhausting few days . . .

As they headed away from Marie’s house, Mac said, in English and quietly enough so their guide couldn’t hear, “More to that woman than meets the eye.”

Indy nodded. “Yeah. Surprised you noticed.”

“I have passed time with a woman or two.”

Indy nodded again. Penelope. Indy still had a letter to her from Mac, to be delivered if Mac died. Well, he didn’t have it with him. The letter was in a bank box in Washington, DC, which was good, because the ink would have gotten a little smeary during that swim if it had been in his back pocket.

Every so often, Mac gave him an updated version of the letter, telling Indy to burn the older one.

A pity he didn’t have anybody like that. Not since Marion . . .

Marion Ravenwood. Had that been only six years ago that he’d left her at the altar? Yeah, 1937. Marion . . . and he couldn’t count Elsa, who hadn’t been at all what she had first seemed. And then there was that woman revolutionary in Peru, early in ’41, and his decision to join in the war effort, and look where
that
had led . . .

Don’t go there, Jones. No point. It’s all history now.
What was it Satchel Paige said? Avoid fried meats and don’t look back: Might be something back there, and it might be gaining on you.

Onward and upward.

FIVE

B
OUKMAN STOOD
in the warm darkness outside the rooming house, watching people as they passed in front of the windows. No electricity here, but they had kerosene lanterns aplenty, and the yellow lamp glows suffused the two-story wooden house, leaking out the glass and cracks into the night. Moths bounced from the windows, trying to get to the flame, unaware that the clear panes were all that kept them from turning into torches . . .

Boukman, a head taller than average, was effectively invisible even to the mosquitoes as he leaned against the rough bole of a palm tree, a phantom in the shadows. If a man looked right at him, he would not see him. Boukman could hide in plain sight, so great were his talents in the black arts.

He could have sent somebody. A man of his status? He did not have to skulk around in the blackness spying. But he did need to see them for himself, for they were something unlike anything he had ever felt before, even at his age.

He smiled at that last thought. As far as he knew, there were no other living men his age. It was possible that somewhere in the world there were magicks equal to his own, other ways to stave off the Final Harvest, to extend one’s years far beyond the oldest normal men. He had heard rumors, but if there were such, he had not felt their energies vibrating through the realms on either side while he was
chwal espri
—the Horse of the Gods. And he was most sensitive to such things. He had felt the two white men—the
imen blan
—as soon as they had set foot on the land. Felt them as strongly as if they had touched him with their pale hands.

That meant something.

He’d had The Dream again last evening, the same recurring nightmare that had been with him since he’d been a boy. The Dream had small variations, and he had yet to determine the full meaning of it, even after all these years. But each time he had The Dream, events of great importance followed it, always. So these
imen blan
meant something. He did not yet know what—nor how he was to use them; only that he must. Boukman had a destiny, and it was part of some grand design, he knew that. He had not risen to be the most powerful man in the islands for no purpose, even if he did not know what it was.

That they had found their way to Marie Arnoux? But another sign they were
espesyal.
One could possibly be foolish enough to ignore a Sign, but no bokor, nor even an average houngan worth his own salt, would ignore
two
Signs, and there were other things of which he had become aware of late, interlinked pieces of a great puzzle that he was being given to solve. It would be a thing of much power, he felt, perhaps more than any Vodoun bokor ridden by the loa had ever possessed.

Who sent these men? Why? He would find out, eventually.

Such a thing was like a lighthouse beacon on a moonless, cloudy midnight. One had to go to it. Power called to power, and in this land bokor Boukman was supreme. The world was larger than his island, however, and if he was to bestride the seas and control more of it? He would need to increase his strength. The strongest man in a village was not necessarily the strongest man everywhere. He was at his limits now.

These two white men from afar? Somehow, they were the key.

He had seen them. Now he would have them watched. He could call upon many eyes, and he would. Something of great import was happening, and these men were the catalyst.

He turned and walked away from the house. The night was overcast and ebon, but there was nothing natural in the dark that frightened bokor Boukman.

Nothing that possibly could.

The Pétionville Road,
Four Miles South of Port-au-Prince

Indy, Mac, Marie, and, as it turned out, her brother, Alain, rode in a rusty, mostly black Chevrolet of uncertain vintage, a rattletrap four-door sedan. Indy guessed it was about a 1930. With the war, they’d stopped making cars for commercial sale in the United States, churning out Blitz Buggies—“jeeps”—tanks, and planes in their place, so whatever you had, you had to keep running. Even so, this was an old beast, and grumpy.

After a good night’s sleep and a bath, with their clothes washed and dried, not to mention a good breakfast, Indy had felt a lot better—though that feeling was beginning to fade already. They were bumping and jostling along a rutted dirt road heading south, more or less, climbing into the mountains, and Alain drove with a slapdash, carefree attitude that made Indy nervous more than a couple of times. The car smelled as if somebody had roasted a pig in it, long ago, so that only a faint hint of the odor remained. They bounced around on the old cracked leather seats like Ping-Pong balls.

Now dressed for a trek, Marie wore khaki slacks, a long-sleeved khaki shirt rolled up past her elbows, and hiking boots. Fixed to her belt was a stubby sheath knife, with what looked like a bone handle. She had a small backpack in the car’s trunk.

As his teeth clacked together for maybe the fifteenth time, Indy said, “How far did you say it was?”

“As the crow flies, only about thirty, thirty-five kilometers to Terre Rouge. But because of the hills and the way of the road, twice that and a little.”

Indy nodded. Terre Rouge. That meant “red dirt.”

“Two, three hours, longer if it rains.”

“Bad road in the rain?”

“Bad road anytime. Worse in the rain. Easy to slip over the side.” She made a diving gesture with one hand.

“And if we don’t fall off the road or get beaten to death by the time we get there?”

“My cousin André is a fisherman, he has a boat. Zile Muri-yo is only four kilometers to the south of the coast at Terre Rouge. It is not large, the island, only five kilometers long by two at the widest. But it is heavily forested, mostly jungle, with a couple of sisal plantations hewed from the woods. A small village there.”

“Shouldn’t be hard to find what we’re looking for on an island that size,” Mac said.

“Maybe not so easy. There are many places where the trees and brush are so thick, you cannot see a meter into the forest,” she said. “Much of it is accessible only on foot and by way of sharp machetes and strong arms. In such terrain, it can take all day to go three hundred meters. Even if you knew exactly where it was, getting there wouldn’t be a picnic.”