Black Rain

As Moore examined the stone, Danielle felt a new surge of energy. A reverberation of the jolt she’d felt when first viewing the stone herself—and something sorely needed by both of them.

“Did he know what he was selling you?” Moore asked, flipping the stone over.

“Not the specifics,” she said. “But he knows where it came from and he claimed to have seen a much larger stone nearby, one with similar markings. Too heavy to carry, apparently, so he took this one instead.”

She watched as Moore ran his fingers across the sharp edges on the back of the stone; the rest was relatively smooth and weathered.

“Recent break,” he said. “I wonder if he chipped this piece off of the bigger one.”

“My thoughts exactly,” she said.

Moore looked up. “What else did he tell you?”

“He said they hired some members of the Nuree tribe to act as guides upriver. One of the tribesmen pointed out the larger stone as they were hiking along the banks of a small tributary. They treat it as a marker of some kind, denoting the border of a land they consider to be cursed. Beyond it lie terrible things, apparently: shadows darker than the night, a tribe that converses with the spirits and controls wild animals … and a wall,” she said, “made with the bones of human beings.”

It was local folklore—more often outright false than even partly reliable—but in this case they had reason to trust it, at least enough to hope. One of the few landmarks Blackjack Martin had used in his journal was a place he called the Wall of Skulls. If they could find it, they might be able to trace the rest of his movements and locate the source of the items he’d brought back. And if they could do that …

“A wall made of bones,” Moore repeated.

She nodded.

“Big step,” he said, “if you could find that.”

He placed the stone back on the table.

“And when I say you,” Moore continued, “I mean you alone.”

Danielle glared at him, not certain that she’d heard him right. “What are you talking about?”

He elaborated. “There are changes afoot. Gibbs is calling me back to Washington, and, despite my best efforts, I haven’t been able to talk him out of it.”

Gibbs was the NRI’s director of operations. The man who’d sent them here in the first place. Gibbs seemed to have a strong personal interest in what he called the Brazil project—unfortunately, he also had a strong personal dislike for Arnold Moore. And the two men had been clashing since the word go.

“Tell me you’re joking,” she said.

Moore shook his head. “Afraid not. I’m going back, and you’re staying on. It’s going to be your show from here on out. Your team to run, when all the players get here.”

She stared at him, eyes wide with shock. Moore had been her mentor almost since she’d first joined the NRI. He was also one of the few people she trusted in the strange and perilous world in which the NRI operated. The thought of being suddenly denied his assistance in the middle of a critical operation infuriated her.

“Why?” she asked. “Of all times, why now? I mean, we’re finally making progress here.”

Moore took a deep breath and pulled the reading glasses from his face. “I’m sixty-three,” he reminded her. “Too damn old to go traipsing around the jungle in search of lost cities. That’s a job for the young—and the foolish, I might add—and you seem to fit at least one of those categories,” he said. “I’ll let you decide which. Besides, Gibbs is well aware of my aversion to snakes, mosquitoes and poisonous frogs. I expect he’s just trying to save me from all that.”

“That’s a crock of shit,” she said. “You’ve been begging Gibbs to send us out there with the snakes and frogs since the day we got here.” Her eyes tightened their focus, as if to prevent him from hiding something. “Give me the real reason.”

Moore faked a smile. “Two reasons,” he said. “First, Gibbs thinks you’re ready, and he’s right—you are. You have been for some time. I’ve just been selfishly holding you back. And second, he’s worried. He thinks we’re getting close, but he fears someone else may be closer. He’s afraid they may already have people in the field.”

She was sick of hearing about Gibbs and his paranoia. The operation was being run so quietly that they had no staff, a shoestring budget and nonstandard channels for basic communications. “Impossible,” she said. “The only people who even know the whole story are you, him and me.”

“Yes,” Moore replied quietly. “The only three.”

As she worked out what he was suggesting, what Gibbs had suggested without speaking the words, her face betrayed her once again. “I’m not going to listen to this. If he thinks—”