The Seventh Stone (28 page)

She clenched her fists. “You’re talking about people’s lives.”

“
I’ll kill if I must, but you can help me save them.”

“
The best way to get that antidote is for me to get back to my lab. I’ve been working on the solution in my greenhouse. Bring me home. Let my daughter go. And I will help you.”

A spot of blood red against the orangery’s gray slate floor caught Baltasar’s eye. It was distorted somewhat, refracting through the beveled edge of the glass table. Baltasar narrowed his eyes. It was the rose that Rambo had crushed. Baltasar, too, could crush what displeased him. He leaned towards the computer screen. “Is the damn Circle of Seven that important, that you will still keep the location of the pyramid and hidden canyon secret? Do you think I have the seven stones, even though I tell you I do not? Are you willing to take the chance that I’m telling the truth? Or will you risk the lives of your daughter, and your son?”

“
Liam?”

“
Of course, you haven’t heard. Your son, Liam, has fallen ill. He has a rash and delusions.” Tears brimmed in her eyes. Baltasar almost pitied her. “The whole community is becoming sick, although it hasn’t made it into breaking news. Not yet.”

“
I’ll do anything,” she said, “to save my children.”

Perhaps he had gone too far. The woman looked broken. “You will find that pyramid and the antidote,” he said, “within the next forty-eight hours. You must believe in your destiny, Doctor Hunter, as I believe in mine.”

CHAPTER
34

Christa felt the sharp edges of Salvatierra’s crucifix as Conroy pressed it into her palm and closed her fingers around it. She hung the chain around her neck and tucked it beneath her blouse. Its metal was cold against her skin. Conroy breathed in as if gathering strength and stood. He sidled out from behind the desk and navigated his way past stacks of books to the dirty hopper window that squinted out onto the campus green. She had translated Salvatierra’s letter, but she needed him to interpret it before she could hope to save Lucia, and the thousands who may already be poisoned.

“
We must turn to the past to save the future,” he said.

“
Not before sorting out the present.” She crossed over to him. “Gabriella had identified a new species of belladonna on her trip to Colombia last summer. Did she tell you anything about it?”

“
Belladonna.” He peered towards the peeling ceiling. “I had the opportunity to try it once, silly of me, really, but, I thought, to truly understand the effects.” His voice trailed off.

“
Professor Conroy,” Christa said. No telling what else he’d tried for history’s sake, hallucinogenic mushrooms, moonshine. “What about Belladonna Conquistadorum, indigenous to Colombia?”

He nodded and turned towards her. “As you know, belladonna, or as we commonly call it, deadly nightshade, has earned its infamous place in history, what with the wives of the Roman emperors Augustus and Claudius poisoning their husbands with the plant extract. But the name actually translates as
beautiful woman
,” he said. “Like using the deadly botulism toxin as Botox for a beauty aid today, ladies centuries ago would use the belladonna extract in eye drops to expand their pupils. The look was considered quite attractive at the time. Unfortunately, prolonged use could cause blindness. True irony, using the belladonna drops to enhance your beauty only resulting in never being able to see yourself again.”

“
And the Muisca Indians,” she said, “did they use Belladonna Conquistadorum?”

“
I know the Muisca used poison,” said Conroy. “For as long as they can remember, they have been using the poison dart frog to tip their arrows in poison. When I lived there as a child, I befriended the son of the shaman. He showed me. He held a golden frog near the fire. It sweated. He used that sweat for the arrow tip. Just a small drop was quite deadly. In fact, the tiny golden dart frog is the deadliest animal on Earth.”

Christa stepped aside as Conroy bundled by her. He dug through a miscellany of items on a lower shelf. He extracted an old photo, square, its color faded. He blew off the dust and handed it to her. The photo depicted a tiny, golden frog.

Daniel craned his neck to see over her shoulder. He raised an eyebrow. “That frog is the deadliest animal on Earth?”

“
And I thought that distinction belonged to man,” said Christa.

“
Don’t let its size fool you,” said Conroy, “nor its beauty. A plant that is poison to us is a staple of indigenous beetles and ants. The insects eat the plants. The frogs eat the insects. The poison from the frog on the dart kills the Muiscas’ prey. Frogs raised in captivity are not poisonous, as long as they are not in an environment with poisonous plants.”

“
But Gabriella is looking for one particular poison plant,” said Christa, “a species that has been thought to be extinct for five hundred years. She returned for a reason. She’s got to think that she can find it. Professor Conroy, the Oculto Canyon, it’s got to be where Gabriella is headed.”

“
Yes, of course,” he said. “I should have thought of this before.” He began scrabbling his fingers across the spines of the books jammed onto one shelf, finally landing on a particularly thick one, an ancient looking tome,
Atlas of the Americas
. He yanked it out of its spot, its weight nearly knocking him off balance. He blew off the dust and opened the book. From inside the front cover, he removed a piece of paper that was yellowed and creased with age. “Now that I’ve read Salvatierra’s letter, I remember.” He let the atlas drop with a thud to the floor, kicking up another cloud of dust. “She returned to find the hidden canyon.”

“
You know about the canyon?” she asked.

Conroy tilted the map towards the gloomy light of the hopper window. “I drew this as a child, when my parents were missionaries in the Colombian rainforest. My friend,
Jairo Salaman,
the son of the Muisca shaman, we’d adventure together. One day, we ventured a bit far, got lost, in fact. Jairo was terrified. We’d wandered into the forbidden area. He’d heard stories about an old temple there haunted by evil spirits. Didn’t find anything, of course, but something found us.” Conroy rubbed his shoulder as though reliving an old injury. “A jaguar.”

“
You were attacked?” Christa asked.

“
The cat was after Jairo, actually,” Conroy said. “He was a foot shorter than me, easier prey. The jaguar leaped out of a tree. We didn’t see it coming, but the animal must have been stalking us. I pushed Jairo out of the way and, before I could think, I had two hundred pounds of hungry cat on my back. I was lucky that I was just a boy.”

“
Lucky?” Daniel echoed, finally intrigued enough to shift his attention from the letter.

“
The jaguar, as I’m sure you know, kills by crushing the upper vertebrae in its jaws, or by clamping its jaws on the back of its prey’s head and piercing the brain with its canines.” Conroy bent his head forward and pointed to the back of his neck to demonstrate. He smiled. “I fancied myself a bit like Doctor Livingstone,” he said. “I’d never venture into the jungle without wearing my metal pith helmet. The cat took one bite and ran off.” He rubbed his shoulder again. “Did get a bit of a scratch on my shoulders from its claws. It serves as my barometer, always aches when a storm is coming. Brute of one on its way now.”

“
You saved Jairo’s life,” said Christa.

“
And he saved mine,” said Conroy. “He bound my wound with healing herbs and a pressure bandage of leaves. And he half-carried me back to my parents.”

“
But you remembered enough to draw a map,” Daniel prompted, pointing at the letter, “to this Oculto Canyon.”

“
I drew it in hospital, when I was recovering. I tried to remember landmarks, but finding landmarks in the jungle is like finding trees in a forest. There are many of them, but few are unique. Still, I had a good sense of direction and distance. I did find our way home to the mission, after all.” He handed the map to Christa.

“
A Map of the Forbidden Territory,” Christa read the heading.

“
I apologize for the B-Movie title,” he said. “A child’s imagination trapped in a hospital room finds its escape with his memories of the outside world. When I couldn’t adventure out there,” he tapped his temple, “I adventured in here.”

Christa held the map beneath the flat light of the overhead fluorescent panel. Drawn on parchment stationary bearing the hospital’s letterhead, the map was deftly, if whimsically, illustrated. It featured a patch of green labeled the Forgotten Forest, a snake of blue that depicted the Tequendama River. The most distinctive feature was an outcropping of rock towering above the tree canopy that resembled the wings of a giant bird of prey. The words from Salvatierra’s letter leaped out at her. He had written that the temple was in a clearing lorded over by a rock outcropping he named
Demon’s Wings
.

“
This temple,” she said, “the one your Muisca friend feared. You think this may be the pyramid temple that Salvatierra referred to in his letter. It must be completely overgrown. Complete cities can be lost under centuries of forest growth. Hiram Bingham didn’t discover the lost city of the Incas, Machu Picchu, until 1911, even though it was a thriving mountaintop city in the 15
^th
century. Even with your map, it would be near impossible to find the Oculto Canyon.”

“
Jairo told me that the oral history claims that Demon’s Wings can only be seen from this bend in the river.” He pointed to the river bend on his map. “But we could not see it. Only the very top of the granite shows above the tree canopy. Most of the time even that is obscured by the low clouds. Botanists call these upper altitudes the cloud forest. Indeed, that is how the plants get their moisture.”

“
Still, this map could be the key to finding the temple,” said Christa.

“
Hold on,” Daniel said, his eyes on the letter. “The temple, that’s where Salvatierra buried the Breastplate.” He raised his eyes. They were glossed over, as if he’d been drugged. And maybe he had.

“
Alvaro Contreras realized that the temple defended the entrance to the Oculto Canyon,” said Christa, “and the antidote plant.”

“
Brilliant,” said Conroy. “It was easy for the conquistadors to bring death to the New World, but to bring life, now that would place them truly in the realm of a god. The death that Contreras brought was not a new disease. In was not infested, but ingested. He had created a poison elixir, with only one cure, a rare plant that would only grow under unique conditions, conditions that he alone controlled.”

“
Like a hidden canyon,” said Christa. “A specific microcosm.”

“
Salvatierra didn’t write anything about poisonous plants,” said Daniel, shaking the letter. “We should focus on what he tells us about these gemstones.”

“
The Breastplate is only a means to an end,” Christa said. “That’s all its history has ever been. Alvaro Contreras dammed the river flowing through the temple. Why?”

“
To control it,” said Conroy.

“
And defend it,” said Christa. “The temple was remote, but he wasn’t the first European to venture through that area. A conquistador named Quesada was searching for El Dorado near there. It was in 1569, just seventeen years before Salvatierra wrote that letter. Quesada sets out with 500 mounted soldiers, 1500 natives and hundreds of horses, cattle and pigs. He returns with four natives, 18 horses and twenty-five Spaniards. I’d bet one of them was Alvaro Contreras.”

“
Alvaro survives the ill-fated expedition,” said Conroy. “He has found his El Dorado, the temple where he will create a new empire, using an indefensible weapon.”

“
A bio-weapon,” Christa said, “the poison.”

“
But why go back,” asked Daniel, “to a place where most of the men died?”

“
Because some of them lived,” said Christa. “The history is sketchy, but the men were starving. They ate a native plant and grew deathly ill. That must have been the belladonna. The legend says that the only cure was a river of life hidden deep in the mountains.”

“
The river that flows through the temple,” said Conroy.

“
Alvaro Contreras dams the river. He has sole control of the antidote,” said Christa. “He is on the threshold of his new world order, but one man stops him.”

“
Salvatierra,” Daniel chipped in. “A priest.”

Christa nodded. “Alvaro is brought back to Spain in chains, but he’s not about to give up easily.”

“
Alvaro is executed,” said Conroy, “but not before he passes his story on to his family.”

“
And the rest, unfortunately, isn’t history,” said Christa. “It’s happening, now. Baltasar Contreras is picking up where his ancestor, Alvaro, left off. And this time that poison won’t wipe out whole villages. He aims to wipe out entire cities.”

CHAPTER
35

Jared Sadler had booked a modest suite in the Waldorf, much to the disgruntlement of his young wife, Zoe, who had now tried on and rejected three different frocks for her shopping trip to Neiman Marcus to buy yet another “perfect” dress for the event tonight.
Our role tonight is that of a humble servant
, he had told her.
Speak for yourself
, she had laughed. He had to admit, she was lovely when she laughed. And he would make her happy, if he could craft this afternoon’s encounter as expertly as he crafted jewelry.