In the dream, I felt warm and safe and comforted. I knew it was a dream, because I don’t usually feel that way in real life. But my body clock was screaming to get going, so I forced my eyes to slit open, my brain firing on only two cylinders.
I lay on my side in the hammock, facing the door. The dim light coming through the hut’s cracks told me it was nearing dusk. I’d have time to track the moth to another Death Orchid. That was good news. For a change.
While I drowsily ran through my mental climbing checklist, I gradually became aware of a warm weight on my side. And on my hand. And on my back. My brain finally ticked over into consciousness.
Rick spooned me tightly, his arm wrapped around me, our right-hand fingers entwined. Cheeky boy, I thought automatically, then realized he was a few steps further down the road from cheeky if the steady pressure on the back of my bare thigh was any indication. One of the several nocturnal gestures of hope every man has.
Too bad he wasn’t interested in sharing that hope with me.
Ignoring the wave of hurt that thought provoked, I extended the fingers tangled with his and stretched. He roused and made room for me to roll over to face him, his arm still draped over my waist. The hammock swung gently with our movement.
“Good night,” he said sleepily.
“That’s morning to you and me.” I straightened out my muscle tee that had corkscrewed around when I rolled over.
He inhaled deeply, then opened those brown eyes. We were nearly nose to nose, our lower bodies touching just enough to remind me of what I wanted and couldn’t have. He seemed to study me for a minute, then did the most erotic thing any man had ever done. He pillowed his head on his bent elbow and started talking.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“You were crying in your sleep when I came in.” His eyes wandered to my temple and he frowned. “Good God, Jess, what happened to you?” He moved his arm to stroke the hair away from my forehead, where Daley’s pistol had clipped me.
I shrugged. “I lost.”
“Lawrence Daley?” His voice was hard.
“Fair play.”
His eyes narrowed and his arm dropped back to my waist. “And he took the orchid?”
“Yeah. I was stupid. I had two. I should have left them in the canopy and carried decoys.”
“What about your great-uncle?”
Fresh pain twisted in my gut. Everything in my life had gone to hell in a handbasket in about four hours flat. “I’ve got six days to get a Death Orchid back to my employer’s pharmaceutical company.”
He frowned. “I don’t understand.”
I took a deep breath and broke yet again my self-inflicted rule about keeping my private business private. “The company is working on a drug and they think the Death Orchid has the compound they’re looking for.”
“So the hurry is…” he prompted.
“Scooter’s got maybe three weeks left, if that. They can create the drug to help him after I get back with the orchid.”
Rick’s chiseled lips pressed to a thin line. “No lab can get a drug out that fast. It takes a year and a half at best to go from formulation to phase two trials on humans.” He paused. “Well, with the new FDA regulations they can cut it to six months in some cases.”
“I got the impression this pharma had a backup plan.”
“Backup plan?”
“Like they had more than one iron in the fire. Take this plant out, put the Death Orchid in.”
“Then they’re talking about switching out the primary compound.” He shook his head. “The process starts over. Not from elementary research, which could take five to ten years, but you’ve still got the six months to get to trials.”
I’d never questioned what von Brutten had told me because pharmacology wasn’t my area of interest. I knew only in general terms how pharmaceutical companies got from Point A to Point B, but had never known specific timelines. Not like Rick apparently knew them.
Had von Brutten been feeding me a line just to get the Death Orchid into his hands faster than usual? Because he had a bet going with Thurston-Fitzhugh? Sure, he wouldn’t win any philanthropy awards, but he’d never lied to me about what he wanted or what he’d give to get it. My considerable bank account vouched for that.
No, von Brutten must have an ace up his sleeve on this one. Maybe he planned to market the drug as an herbal supplement or something else that didn’t require FDA approval.
Or maybe the Death Orchid meant a lot more to him than he was letting on. Harrison had disappeared over it. Daley might have killed me for it. Was the orchid really that potent?
“I can’t risk missing this deadline,” I said. “It’s the only chance I have.”
“I understand.” Rick was quiet for a moment, then said, “Have you lived with your great-uncle for a long time?”
“Since I was seven. My parents died in a car accident and I went to live with him in east Texas.”
His eyes narrowed. “That’s tough.” Wheels appeared to turn in his head. “Scooter helped make you who you are.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I think he let me be who I am.”
“Yeah, that’s different,” he agreed. “When did he get sick?”
“A few weeks ago. He got into a drug trial program because the pharmaceutical was using some kind of natural extract for a drug base.”
“What? The same pharmaceutical you’re working for—”
“I’m not working for a pharma,” I said shortly. “I work for a private collector. He’s got the connections to the pharmaceutical, not me.”
Rick frowned. “Working for a pharmaceutical company isn’t a sin. They do a lot of good work.”
“Maybe so, but right now I’m thinking they’re about as trustworthy as Old Lady Fenster’s rabbit feet,” I retorted.
“Old Lady—”
“Don’t get me started.”
He sighed. “So what happened to your great-uncle?”
“He agreed to be a guinea pig for the new drug they made. Then the experimental drug they gave him damaged his heart. They pretty much said, ‘Sorry, Pops, you’re too old to fix.’”
“Bastards.”
I followed this understatement with, “My employer has his own pharmaceutical company that’s a direct competitor.”
“And he thinks he can use the Death Orchid to save your great-uncle.” He didn’t sound convinced.
“Yeah.”
He nodded, still keeping my gaze. “Six days.”
“I had to haul ass from day one, but I can’t keep it up.” I rolled to my back, set the hammock swinging again, and thought how good it felt to be putting all this out on the table for someone like Rick. He might not like my choices and tactics, but I got the impression he’d never question my motivation. Being just his buddy was a bitch, but maybe it was for the best, because I sure as hell didn’t have any idea how to be anything else with a man. Except maybe a good lay.
“It’s my fault,” he said suddenly.
I turned my head to look at him.
“The attack on the village,” he continued, his eyes growing haunted again. “I thought if I could just talk to those guys, make them see reason—” His jaw clenched, then released. “You were right. I had no business getting in the middle of it. They don’t know how to negotiate with anything other than guns.”
I rolled to my side and hesitantly stroked his cheek. “Their being bastards isn’t your fault,” I said as gently as I knew how.
“But I should have stayed out of it. You were right about not getting involved. Marcello might still be here if I’d left it alone.”
“What about Porfilio?” I demanded. “Wasn’t he there trying to fix things, too? Why isn’t it his fault?”
“Because I convinced him to bargain with the colonel,” he said flatly. “I thought the best thing to do was to be up-front with them, make an offer for peace. I was wrong.”
“Did you do what you thought was best?” I asked.
He knew where I was going and didn’t answer the question.
So I badgered. “Or did you blow in with your typical arrogance assuming you knew what was best for everybody else?”
He irritably withdrew his arm from my waist and turned to lie on his back.
“I guess it was the latter, then,” I said. “I hit some button square on, didn’t I?”
“Look, I already feel like hell.”
“I know,” I said softly, raising up on my elbow to lean close. “That’s why I think you should cut yourself some slack. Yes, people died.” I let the tears pour, unashamed. “Yeah, Marcello died. But I don’t remember you pulling a trigger or swinging a machete. You were just trying to help.” I wiped my cheeks dry as I added, “You did your best, and that’s the best anyone can do.”
He shook his head. “No. I could have stayed out of it. First rule of fieldwork. And now Porfilio and the Yanomamo expect me to lead their war council.”
I sighed. Dr. Richard Kinkaid, Bug Nerd, was the best man I knew. “Heart of the jaguar” had been a fine way of putting it.
“I should have listened to you,” he continued. “You always know what you’re doing.”
“No,” I said truthfully, “I don’t.” My voice caught as I said, “I could have been here. I could have dumped a decoy orchid on Daley and come back here to help. Or waited another day.”
“But our agendas were different. The talks with the miners wasn’t what you were doing.”
“Maybe it should have been.”
And I had to face that possibility. Maybe it was time to consider the idea that my determined self-interest, the ease with which I let everyone else’s problems be their own, without lifting a finger to help, might not be the best plan. Not always.
Had I waited another night, couldn’t I have helped the Yanomamo fight the pistoleiros and still gotten my orchids, perhaps giving Daley a day to get farther away without finding me? Now I was yet another day behind, with no moth to track, and would have to execute another dangerous climb tonight in hopes of finding an orchid I overlooked the night before.
Meanwhile, Scooter was dying. The villagers had died or were preparing to. People I respected, even if they didn’t like me or want me around, were injured.
And Marcello was gone.
Rick rolled to face me, but instead of putting his arm over me, he stroked my face. “Did you do your best or did you waltz in believing you knew what was best?” he chided gently. “You always know where you are and what to do,” he whispered. “I envy that.”
He leaned forward and kissed me, as if our contact would somehow imbue him with those qualities. It started out soft, searching. The sheer comfort of being touched by a man who respected me took my breath away. It was peaceful and simple and innocent. As it always would be with Rick, who was far too good a man for me.
Then he groaned, pushed me onto my back and rolled on top. Before I could move, he lowered his head and kissed me again. His tongue thrust into my mouth and I welcomed it, tasting him, matching him passion for passion. He broke the kiss. His mouth started roaming my neck, his breath hot. The hammock’s shape made him arch into me and I gave him room to settle between my thighs.
I hadn’t earned it, and I certainly didn’t deserve it, but my God, did I need it.
I wanted the comfort of his body and his passion and his need, as much as he seemed to need mine. And I planned to give it all to him if it would make this ache in my heart go away for a while.
My hands ran down his strong back to his hips, where those sexy black briefs he wore snugged his skin. His fullness pressed my sweet spot agonizingly, and when he barely arced his body to rub against me, I nearly came just with the anticipation.
He raised his head to kiss me deeply again, then settled comfortably along my body and gazed at me with regret.
“I can’t do this,” he whispered.
“Yes, you can,” I replied, trying to keep the pleading note out of my voice.
He shook his head and cast a long lock over his eyes. I ran my hands through his hair to draw it from his face. The bedroom fantasy was back in full force. “You’d look great in a ponytail,” I observed for the hundredth time, the first time out loud. “Now take me.”
“I won’t.” His soft expression made me ache. “As much as I want to, I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not just about us.”
God, I thought, exasperated. What idealistic claptrap was he about to spring on me now?
“This hut is full of everything out there. Marcello, your great-uncle, the colonel, the villagers. They’re all here. It’s not just us.”
“I don’t care. I need this.”
“This isn’t how it should be,” he insisted, still deliciously hard against me. Then something that looked like sadness crossed his eyes. “I don’t want to be just one of your men, Jessie.”
Every hot spot in my body turned to ice.
“Yeah, I’d hate to ruin a good working relationship by making you the last in a long line of bad choices,” I said, levering him off me and scrambling out of the hammock.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” He pushed up on an elbow, the hammock swaying hard from my sudden exit. “The pilot, Carlos. You’d known him what? A day?”
“My personal life has nothing to do with you,” I said, sweeping the netting aside to leave him in the sanctuary alone, “and I don’t remember giving you permission to comment on it or my choice of lovers.”
“Lovers?” Even through the filmy white netting, I saw every line of his body was taut with tension as he swung out of the hammock. “Is that what you call your one-night stands?”
“No. I call those fun.”
“Yeah, you looked like you were having a great time when I met you, presumably the day after a little ‘fun.’”
“Okay, hotshot. Interested in my laundry list?” I challenged. “Should I tell you about Marcus in San Antonio? How about Roy in Costa Rica? Or Jack in Indonesia? There’re plenty more.”
“I just don’t want to be added to the list,” he said.
I could tell all the evidence was stacked against me. Self-righteous son of a bitch. “Look, I know I don’t deserve you,” I said, cramming my foot into my pant leg, “so let’s just let it go at that, okay? We agree that I’m not good enough for you. I knew that before you started pawing me, thank you very much.” I zipped up.
“That’s not what I was saying, Jess.”
“The hell it wasn’t.”
“Be honest with me here. ‘Long line.’ Those were your words.”
“I was honest with you about everything I could be.” I buttoned my shirt up with shaking hands. “Your track record must be pristine. I guess you’ve made excellent choices all your life. I haven’t.” I whipped my hair into its usual ponytail. “Call me a slow learner, but nobody I’ve ever been with has lasted longer than one night. At least give me points for not giving up, no matter how bad it hurts afterward.”
“One night’s not much to work with.”
“It was all I had.”
“And whose choice was that? Who left whom?”
A sudden spasm gripped my chest. I couldn’t speak.
“It’s all or nothing for you,” he persisted, stepping close, “except you don’t give anyone anything. You think you do, but you don’t.”
“I know the way things work.” I hated how weak my voice sounded. “People don’t hang around for long. Not the ones you need.”
Rick’s eyes narrowed and his voice was gruff. “No, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they don’t even give you a chance.”
“Hey, I was interested in giving you a chance.”
“All you had on offer was your body. That’s all you’ve ever offered anyone.”
Stung, I retorted, “Don’t worry, I’m clean. I get my regular checkups. You wouldn’t have caught anything from me.”
“That’s not what I was saying.”
I picked up his monitor and slung it over my shoulder. “I’m going to get another orchid,” I said. “When I get back, I’ll be ready to fight.”
I told myself that climbing alone again felt somehow right. True to who I was. The clenched fist in my chest told me I was lying. I swallowed and kept walking to the area where we’d found the orchid. Lying or not, I needed to harvest another plant and take off.
I ended up not needing to track the moth. Instead, I climbed the Pterocarpus I’d scaled the night before, belaying myself as I was accustomed to doing, and worked my way back to the spot where the Death Orchids had clung elegantly to their tree.
I switched the headlamp on full force in the gathering dark. No need to hide my activities. Daley was long gone. The man called Noah might be hanging around somewhere, but I didn’t care. My black mood, the tamped-down rage of loss, would be more than enough fuel to handle him if he showed his face. The image of green webbing flashed in my memory and I had to choke back a sob. Steady, girl. Do what’s in front of you.
The lamp’s bright beam scattered a handful of howler monkeys that bobbed and bounded away. My slow sweep across the area revealed a nice crop of Death Orchids—three sprayed their blossoms in short cascading falls, stark white against the tree bark but for the fathomless, pouting black lips.
I quickly maneuvered over and harvested all of them, filling the last of the cardboard tubes which fit snugly into my makeshift rucksack. The plants would keep well enough for the trip back to the States. And with the forged CITES certificates von Brutten had thoughtfully provided, I shouldn’t run into any customs trouble between here and there.
Tonight I’d travel with the fighters to the gold mine. I’d gladly give the colonel something to think about the next time he wanted to slaughter a bunch of kids. Then I’d be on my way. I’d be back in the States with a couple of days to spare. Scooter would survive. And my life would go back to being how it was before I ever showed up in this place.
It felt like a good plan. Scooter, I was confident, would approve.
The voices of the war council rose like smoke through the trees. Now full night, the heat had faded and a coolish breeze filtered through the trees around the village clearing as I approached it.
The men’s faces were lit only by the fire smoldering where the shapono used to stand. No women or children in sight. Twenty or so Yanomamo huya, young men, clustered in the shadows, well back from the fire, wearing red and black face paint and red-painted nut beads around their necks. Their hands bristled with arrows.
In the inner circle around the fire, the men were arguing about the best way to get near the mine without being seen. The conversation was going on primarily in Portuguese and occasionally English, and I saw Father João whispering to the shaman and village headman. The headman, a smallish Yanomamo with black designs painted all over his body, squatted next to the shaman, who meditatively chewed a hunk of bark.
On the far side from where I came into the clearing, Dr. Yagoda and one of his Stepford grad students waited. I guessed Kinkaid had called in reinforcements. He was probably going to need them.
Next to them sat Porfilio and, of all people, Carlos Gutierrez.
What the hell was he doing here?
He looked up and caught my eye. His arrogant grin broadened and he bowed his head to me. When he met my gaze again, his eyes seemed softer, almost apologetic. Definitely warm. Definitely the eyes of a man interested in showing a girl a good time. His grin faltered as I stared at him. I wasn’t interested. Best if he got that message right away.
Kinkaid’s frown deepened when he saw me. The shadows threw his face into sharp relief and his expression gave me no clue what he was thinking. I had planned to keep to the background, not knowing how these men would take a woman’s presence. The world’s advance into the twenty-first century didn’t mean much in places like this and I didn’t care to be on the business end of a curare-tipped arrow. I’d speak when spoken to. But Kinkaid motioned me to sit next to him on a downed log. He pointed to a hand-drawn map in the dirt similar to the one I’d drawn for him for our mine escape.
“Why bring her into this?” Father João asked abruptly. “She’s not needed.”
“She stays,” Rick said sharply.
“But I don’t see—”
Porfilio interrupted gently, “She took out two soldiers and humiliated the donos!”
“That was an accident,” I said.
“You didn’t see her in action, my friend,” Porfilio insisted.
“No, you didn’t,” Carlos murmured, but loud enough for me to hear and to attract the curious looks of men sitting on either side of him.
“Pissed” didn’t do justice to the anger broiling inside. I shot Carlos a glance that could have melted bone but he wasn’t looking.
Then Rick said, “If you don’t care for the situation, Father João, you don’t have to stay.”
The padre frowned slightly and nodded. “I shall stay.”
“What’s the plan so far?” I asked.
Rick turned slightly. “Approach the mine, subdue the colonel. Force a negotiation.”
“With what?” I asked. “How do you think you’ll get him to cooperate?”
Porfilio smiled. “The pistoleiros’ defeat last night will not make him happy. He’ll be glad to talk peace.”
Optimistic outlook. “How many pistoleiros does the colonel have?” I asked Porfilio.
“Ten, twelve, maybe, now.”
I looked at him sharply. “I counted twenty-three when we left last week. Did the Yanomamo kill that many?”
Porfilio nodded respectfully at the village headman. “The Yanomamo killed several. And that English hired some away.”
A teaspoon of guilt lifted from my shoulders. Broken legs, ant bites, and fire liana stings were entirely justified. And Daley, bless his cowardly heart, had diminished the colonel’s little army.
“They won’t expect a hit tonight,” Carlos said. “We’ll have surprise on our side. We can take the camp by coming in here.” He picked up a stick and drew a rough line indicating the airstrip.
“Don’t the main buildings front that airstrip?” I asked. “And look what we have here.” I gestured to the group around the fire. “Three injured men, two academics, a bush pilot, a mine foreman, and a woman, none of whom are proficient in firearms even if we had any. And any invasion team—or whatever you want to call it—will be vulnerable to automatic weapons fire.”
Even across the fire I could see Dr. Yagoda go green around the gills. “They’re carrying military weapons?”
“The bad guy’s a colonel,” I reminded him. “Some of the pistoleiros are carrying military weapons, anyway.”
Porfilio nodded. “And they have explosives, of course.” He grinned. “But I have explosives, too!”
Yagoda shook his shaggy head. “We don’t dare get involved. It’s too dangerous. The university can’t risk an international incident.”
“What about your study habitat?” Rick demanded.
“The university won’t take the risk, even to save the habitat.”
Disappointment registered in Rick’s clenched jaw. If he wanted to pursue this, it’d be on his own, without his science god.
Then Yagoda threw him a bone. “I can offer you access to the station’s airfield. That’s it.”
Rick nodded, his eyes lightening a little. I didn’t tell him not to get too excited about the airfield. Based on his previous performance, there was no way Carlos would volunteer to fly his crate into battle.
“Look,” I said, “maybe it’d be best for the Yanomamo to leave this area until the mine is exhausted.”
“Why should they move?” Rick demanded. “They were here first, it’s their land, and the laws are on their side.”
“But cannot be enforced,” the padre said softly. “The government tries, but is spread too thin. Perhaps she is right.”
“No,” Rick snapped. “We have to try to negotiate a solution.”
“With a madman?” I snapped. “You think his henchmen started killing children because the kids were some kind of threat? He didn’t send his men here to make a statement. He sent them to wipe the village out.”
“Then what do you suggest, lady general?” Carlos asked.
I ignored his sardonic eyebrow. “I suggest you figure out what your real objective here is. If you just go in and whack the colonel, you’ll have a paramilitary group, which might mean the Brazilian army, breathing down your necks as soon as word gets into the city. We may not like El Capitan, but he’s a star in somebody’s eyes.”
The men stared at me in dramatic silence. Hadn’t they thought of this problem?
“International English, Jessie,” Rick said softly.
Then he translated, which set off a round of speed Portuguese I couldn’t follow.
It seemed clear to me that the primary objective was not to take out the colonel, much as I liked that idea right now. It was to stop him dumping mercury from his processing plant.
The strip-mining, ugly as it was, was negotiable. The land could be reforested to some degree by either the miners or the Yanomamo. While it wouldn’t have the same value in eco-biological terms as the old growth that had been removed, it would grow into that value in a hundred years or so. It was doable.
And I had to admit Rick had had more or less the right idea with the negotiations. With the colonel connected in high places, he might very well just be performing a job for someone higher up the food chain. Tick that guy off, and you’d find yourself bombed into a state of reasonableness. Better to find the win-win.
However, a paranoid schizo minor tyrant with delusions of grandeur, by definition, couldn’t be counted on to see reason. It was pointless to try to cut a deal with him. The only way reason might start looking more attractive was if the tyrant’s jewels were in a vise.
The question was, What was the most expedient way of shoehorning said jewels into one’s grip?
We could shut down his mine, but he’d just move the whole operation somewhere else. We could destroy his equipment, but he’d bring in more. A miner revolt wouldn’t do it. Yanomamo threats wouldn’t do it.
No matter what we did, he’d come back to make prostitutes out of the Yanomamo women, rape the Yanomamo land, kill the Yanomamo children, and then move on to the next likely mining spot. And any village on its periphery.
Either the Yanomamo or the colonel would have to go.
I looked at the shaman, who was already looking at me. The last time I’d made serious eye contact with a shaman, I’d had the Evil Eye put on me. Pit viper. The Evil Eye had failed to keep me away. Is that what this shaman saw in me? Or did he see something else, something far less honorable and courageous than the heart of a jaguar?
Men’s voices rose and fell around us. Still, he stared. I stared back.
You know how sometimes things can fall into place when you quit thinking so hard about them? The solution to the problem happened somewhere between us while the shaman and I locked eyes.
The shaman was our ticket out. And Porfilio was our ticket in.
The shaman might be able to concoct a curare-type poison, preferably something that caused the death to look like something else—a stroke, maybe. That would take out the colonel. But what about Goldtooth, the colonel’s donos?
“Porfilio!” I said loudly over an argument about whether to use Carlos’s plane for a dubious air attack.
They hushed up and Porfilio looked at me expectantly.
“Who’s the next in command at the mine after the colonel?”
He raised his brows in surprise. “The donos. Then me.”
“The donos is a poser.” International English, Jessie. “A pretender. Isn’t he?”
Porfilio frowned. “You mean he has authority but has not earned it. The men do not respect him.”
“Right.”
“Yes, that is true.”
“And they respect you?”
Porfilio nodded. “They see me argue with the colonel about the mercury.” He made a hand motion demonstrating fumes wafting into his face. “It makes them sick. Very bad.”
“Will they help us or are they too afraid of the colonel?”
“The colonel is crazy,” he stated. “But they are scared. I cannot count on them to help until after he is gone.”
And I knew from experience they weren’t happy with Goldtooth. That seemed to clear the way for Porfilio to take over. At least until the higher-ups decided to hand the mine over to another pet colonel.
The Yanomamo headman had been talking with Father João for a while and now Father João stood. “The honored headman demands retribution from the men who attacked the village.”
I understood their sentiments. Too bad getting revenge would only make things worse for the Yanomamo. “Will he be placated with the death of the man who ordered the attack?” I asked.
Father João and the Yanomamo headman spoke at some length. Rick’s brow furrowed. I gathered the discussion wasn’t going well. Father João needed to convince the headman not to attack the colonel or his pistoleiros. Doing that would seal the village’s fate—they’d have to move deeper, further into the interior, and could never return here for fear of being picked up. Or slaughtered.
Father João finally finished up and turned back to us. “He says the world of the white man is strange to him. He demands revenge, and if we cannot provide it, he and his warriors will take it.”
“He’ll give us tonight to do what we can?” I clarified. “His warriors won’t attack the mine or the miners?”
“No.”
Not good enough. I needed to know the headman understood. “Will you ask him, just to be sure?”
The padre relayed the question. The headman grunted and said a couple of words. The padre nodded. “He understands.”
I said to Father João, “You may want to leave this meeting now.”
“Why?” Rick asked sharply.
“Because I cannot condone what she is about to suggest,” Father João said evenly. “I take it you found what you were looking for.”
I figured left field was as good a place to play as any on a day like today, and asked, “What do you mean?”
“You found the orchid.”
“Yes, I did.”
Then it hit me what he was saying. The Death Orchid wasn’t the elixir of life. Far from it. I’d intended the shaman to concoct a poison, sure. But not from the Death Orchid.
Father João nodded, spoke a few words in an undertone to the shaman and village headman, and rose. “I cannot wish you God’s blessing on this endeavor,” he said. “I cannot in good conscience even wish you to succeed.” He turned to go, then paused to look at me once more, light glinting from his thick lenses. “You will leave after this.”
“Yes,” I promised. “As soon as I prevent an all-out war, keep more innocent people from dying, and help the Yanomamo get what they want, I’ll leave.”
He answered my cutting remark by simply walking away.
“What is he talking about?” Yagoda asked.
“He’s saying the Death Orchid is called that for a good reason,” I replied. I turned then to Rick. “Will you ask the shaman if the orchid can be made into a poison?”
“Jess,” he said in a low voice.
“I don’t like it, either,” I said, “but if the colonel’s death looks like natural causes, Porfilio can take over the mine. The Yanomamo will still get their revenge. And nobody else gets hurt.”
If the Death Orchid could be used to kill, it would take a heck of a chemistry trick to make it a cure. I froze. Harrison was a taxonomist, the best in his class, not a medical research scientist. Had von Brutten fed me a line about the orchid’s curative powers just so I’d come after it? Did he want the plant because it took life away instead of restoring it? Or had Harrison actually been working with a research partner to develop the cure von Brutten told me about?
The distinct possibility I’d been used to gain an end I wasn’t aware of gnawed through my gut. If von Brutten had lied, if he’d promised to help Scooter when he knew it was impossible, if he’d lured me away from Scooter during my great-uncle’s last few weeks—
I felt Rick studying me, felt naked under his scrutiny. Naked and open and as if he could see all the way down to the anger and hurt lying on my heart. He took a deep breath. I think he might have taken my hand if we’d been alone. And I would have accepted whatever he’d offered, even if it was only that single touch.
Rick tore his gaze away and spoke to the shaman and village headman. The headman said nothing in reply but his eyes gleamed. The shaman chewed his bark for a full minute, his eyes on me. He clearly wanted something from me, but I had no idea what.
Then the shaman spoke for several minutes. At the end of his speech, the Yanomamo warriors dispersed. The headman stood, surveyed us all regally, and left.
You could’ve sliced the unease around the rest of the circle. It was one of those times you realize just how different our cultures are—the Yanomamo could have all been headed off for a communal whiz, but it looked like we’d been diplomatically snubbed. Would the arrows start flying?
“He’ll do it,” Rick said quietly. “The poison provokes a heart attack. It’ll take an hour to cook up, but then we’ll be ready to head out. The warriors have gone to keep watch on the mine. But not attack.”
Back in the hut, I carefully drew one of the Death Orchids from its cardboard cylinder and studied its white-petaled, black-lipped flower. It seemed ironic—that it represented, literally, black and white, life and death. The one who held it had life, and the one who would drink its nectar had death. Except the one holding it was me, and I lived in a world of shades of gray. Live and let live. Except, perhaps, for this one time.
Killing a man in self-defense, as a reflex, was nothing like what we were planning. None of the reasons I’d thought of could truly justify this premeditated act. While I’ve always treasured my innate sense of moral ambiguity, I wasn’t sure I was prepared to become an assassin.
But Marcello.
As I got back to the circle with the orchid, Porfilio was saying, “I can put it in his food. Or his whiskey.”
The others murmured agreement, even Yagoda. Then Rick shook his head and everyone stopped talking to look at him. “You’re already compromised as a traitor,” he pointed out. “We’ll have to find someone else to put it in his food.”
Rick was the big dog at this gathering, I realized, the man expected to lead. The glasses-wearing, granola-eating entomologist had somehow worked himself into a position of respect and authority.
I handed over the orchid to the shaman, who took it reverently, daring to stroke its lip with almost a lover’s touch. Firelight flickered over his broad brow and cast half his face into darkness. Fitting, I thought, as he turned away without a word and faded into the night.
While the shaman doubled, doubled, toiled and troubled in his private lair, the rest of us worked on how we’d get the poison into the colonel. None of the miners, Porfilio assured us, would have the courage to help. They were too afraid of the colonel. We decided it’d have to be someone familiar with the mine’s layout. Someone who could sneak in, do the deed, and sneak back out without being seen. The choice was inevitable.
I would head out as soon as the poison was ready.