Chapter 1
Day One – Lima, Peru
From the strategic cover of a lush tropical planter, the well dressed man wearing sunglasses seemed preoccupied with tourist brochures. Instead, he listened to the hotel’s voice as the evening hour descended, monitored people, carefully read the nuances of clientele and employees interacting and moving about the broad lobby. Especially, he noted the arrival at the front desk of the graying, stocky man in a tan sport jacket.
An exchange took place between that person and the clerk who retrieved the message from below the counter and handed it over.
He watched as the other unsealed the envelope, extracted the paper and flipped it open.
He observed things others failed to see and soberly bided his time.
The crisp signature read “Grant Blake.”
Professor Jerry Overstreet glowered at the short note on hotel stationery. Nobody he knew. Quick, draftsman-like printing in black ink requested a meeting that evening, at six, in the lounge. In ten minutes.
“Is everything all right, sir?” asked the clerk.
“We’ll see. Did you take this?”
“No, I am sorry. When I came on shift at five, the envelope was already in your box.”
Overstreet kept the scowl. Supposedly, besides the AnthroposAnalytics Foundation’s assigned members, only the Assistant Director of Antiquities to Peru’s Interior Minister knew about this trip. Staying mum on an archaeological find was key to avoid alerting the huaqueros. So who in hell was this? Had a hungry news-service stringer somehow picked up the scent of discovery? One lousy leak and they’d arrive to find the site stripped by pot-hunters. “When Miss Alvarado comes down, please let her know I may be in the bar.”
“Yes, Professor.” The young clerk nodded efficiently to the burly American.
Overstreet headed across the wide lobby toward the archway into the hotel’s lounge. Originally on his way to snag a restaurant spot for three, he had been thinking big steak with mushroom sauce. Some peanuts and a starter scotch would have to tide him over.
In the darker, vaguely Incan decor, the archaeologist took a table for two that put the wall close to his back. The waitress came to take his order.
Couples intent upon each other occupied a few other spots. At the bar, three men sat spaced apart, mute in their own secrets. Two were in their twenties, one suited up with no apparent place to go except into an elaborate drink, the other in casual shirtsleeves with three empty Dos Equis racked up in front of him. Nursing a single shot glass, the last man appeared late fortyish, lean in a basic windbreaker. Under a crew-cut gone salt-and-pepper much like his own hair, that hard face with a marred nose smelled military. Overstreet speculated whether he was being sized up in the mirror. The note writer?
Slowly swirling his scotch, the archaeologist grew aware of being observed, an uncanny feeling left years back in Vietnam. It didn’t come from the bar. It was exactly six. Casually, he checked the entrance.
A tall, dark-haired man in a business suit and sunglasses was walking into the lounge. With natural command to an easy stride, he immediately dominated their space, drew the interest of the other customers, especially the ladies, and the bar help. The tanned stranger headed directly for Overstreet.
At the archaeologist’s table, the note writer removed the glasses to his inner jacket pocket. His striking features and unusually green eyes suggested the sunglasses were intended to mute his appearance.
“Dr. Overstreet.”
“Mr. Blake, I presume?” Despite himself, Overstreet rose to meet the extended hand. Blake’s grip was firm but not overbearing, free of coarseness owed to heavy work, yet latent with strength and confidence. Scrupulously clean-shaven and well barbered, the man typed out in an expensively understated gray suit as military officer or CEO. Authority but not celebrity had greeted Overstreet.
“Yes.” Blake took the opposite chair, oblivious to or ignoring both the older man’s critical scrutiny and Dr. Livingston evocation, but he maintained full eye contact. This was all business. Serious business.
The barmaid hurried over.
Blake politely declined. Age-indeterminate, the man’s strong face and direct gaze contained considerable life experience; Overstreet settled on early middle years. But more, Blake possessed an indefinably unsettling quality. The archaeologist felt weighed, measured and dissected. Looked into. Deeply.
“In brief,” said Blake, “I’m engaged in scientific research that may involve the archaeological site you’ll be investigating.”
“Wow, not press?”
Blake shook his head slightly. “No, a firm that, for the time, prefers anonymity. I have a simple request: to accompany your expedition to observe and photograph human or other biological specimens and artifacts that may be found.”
“Boy, I thought we had this locked down so nobody’d get wind of it. Is this maybe some U.S. Government ‘firm’? Pardon my cynicism.”
“Understandable. There’s no affiliation with any government entity.”
“Pardon also my skepticism. Why should I give you the time of day? You’re a total stranger playing coy.”
“Sorry. This way, it’s safer for all concerned. You’re heading into dangerous territory beyond simply rugged terrain.”
“If you mean Shining Path terrorists, drug cartels or artifact thieves, we’re promised a military escort. The Peruvian Government’s assured us we’ll be in an area out of the prime coca-growing zone and stable, for now.” Overstreet didn’t like the way this was heading. Blake did not strike him as someone to mess with. “You tell me where you think we’re going that we should let you tag along.”
“It’s a possible pre-Incan site in the Junin District that may be far more ancient than estimated.”
How in hell had this guy found out even that much?
Blake reached inside his jacket and produced five $1,000 bills from his wallet. “Consider this earnest money, a down payment, or a donation to the AnthroposAnalytics Foundation in support of the project. If more is required, I’m authorized for it. And, if you’re traveling with government soldiers, that means trouble is expected. I know firearms, plus I have my own field gear. I speak Spanish. I’ve been in Peru and other parts of Central and South America, and have no intention of being so stupid as to try going it alone. I also have emergency medical training which you may need.”
“You ex-Special Forces, somebody’s merc?” Unease crept like a python over the archaeologist.
“No.”
“Then you or your bosses are just plain nuts. I’m not touching that money, so you can stuff it where the sun don’t shine.” Glaring, Overstreet sipped at his scotch. He wanted this guy gone, fast.
“I understand your reluctance. And the need to go through channels.” Blake tucked away the bills. “Please contact your Foundation people for approval.”
“Oh, believe me, I will.”
“It would be appreciated.”
Blake’s even delivery bypassed Overstreet’s caustic rebuffs to convey a foregone conclusion that he would be joining the expedition. This human steamroller appeared very accustomed to wielding power with results.
Something else itched at Overstreet’s wariness. Then he got it. Bilateral symmetry, a relative biological characteristic, caused a human face’s right side to never quite match the left. A mirror image of each half produced two different faces. Blake’s darker-toned good looks, however, appeared caliper-engineered from a template for universal ethnicity rather than purely Anglo-Saxon heritage. In retrospect, even the man’s entrance into the lounge defined his build in precise proportions, Vitruvian Man updated.
As the archaeologist assessed the man seated across from him, the more his unease increased. The archaeologist carefully set aside his scotch. “I don’t know who the hell you are, Jack. I’m not about to let you hook up with us.”
“Dr. Overstreet, I don’t know the first thing about you either. It’s a two-way street. I may have risked my life simply by meeting you.”
That statement and Blake’s classic poker face injected a creep quotient into the unknown nature of the site that did not improve Overstreet’s mood. He was juggling threat factors when the hurried click of high heels coming from the lounge entrance distracted both men.
“Hi, Jerry, I hope I’m not late.” Outfitted in a floral-print tank sheath made for easy travel and showing off an exceptional figure, the young beauty slowed on approach, curiosity and caution muting her smile. Framed by a spill of brunette curls and set off by Gypsy-hoop gold earrings, her heart-shaped face and large brown eyes always arrested attention, even other women’s. But now her own riveted upon the man with her traveling companion.
Blake stood.
Rising into that stilted silence, Overstreet debated introductions, a protectiveness rendered useless by her recovered typical openness.
Extending her hand, she said, “I’m Maria Alvarado.”
“Grant Blake.” With a polite smile, he took her hand. Holding it, he moved out of the way to guide her into the vacated seat. Then he released her hand to ease in the chair for her.
“Am I interrupting?” said Maria as Overstreet sat down. She looked at the intruder as he straightened above her. Clearly, she and this stranger were scoping each other. Blake remained unreadable, but Maria turned away to stare at the table’s candlelight. All trace of her smile vanished as she rubbed at her right palm.
“No,” said Overstreet. “We’re finished here.”
“Dr. Overstreet, Miss Alvarado, I’m glad to have met you both. I’ll be in touch. Have a good evening.”
“Yeah, you, too.” Overstreet observed Maria cautiously watch Blake’s departure and sourly contemplated the nuance that had passed between the pair.
Pair.
God! He hoped not. Not again. Not down here.
As beautiful as his star doctoral candidate was, Maria made lousier choices in men than he did with women. Her brief relationships had been historic disasters. Recently, those encounters had escalated, much to her family’s dismay. Something, maybe the biological clock cliché, drove that behavior. But, firmly locked into career mode, she refused to discuss it with parents or siblings---and certainly not with her courtesy uncle.
As unofficial chaperone, Overstreet felt responsible for this 26-year-old woman. He had watched her grow up as the sister-in-law of his long-time friend, colleague and current boss. He hoped he wouldn’t have to run rebound interference because this Blake fellow rose above and beyond all her previous academic short-termers.
“You okay?” Overstreet’s stomach growled and not from hunger.
Without looking at him, Maria slipped her hands under her elbows and sat back. “I’m fine.”
“Yeah?”
“I had assumed from the back he was Dr. Lopez. He just sort of caught me off guard.”
“He hurt your hand?” Overstreet nodded at her protective posture.
“No.” With self-conscious irritation, Maria leaned forward, flexing her fingers. She folded her hands on the table. “I---he just seemed familiar.”
“Um.” The archaeologist swirled his scotch, downed half.
“I mean, exactly, he seemed familiar. Seems familiar. Almost like I know him from somewhere. And I’m positive we’ve never met before.”
“Déjà vu?”
She shook her head. “I’ve never had the experience as I’ve read it described. And I would remember. He’s very…striking.”
“I hear that.”
“What did he want?”
Overstreet sipped long on his remnant drink, then detailed what had taken place. Carefully, he removed the note from its envelope with fingernails and dangled it open for Maria to read. “Don’t touch it. I’m going to Fed-Ex it to your brother-in-law’s FBI bro in New York so he can run this guy’s prints, see what comes back. In the meantime, let’s keep this between ourselves. Now then, I’m ready for a 16-ounce steak.”
