The PLB, or personal locator beacon, was a transmitter that sent out a signal that could be picked up by satellites and aircraft, and homed-in upon by search teams.
“You call us before you go into the jungle,” her boss had told her when he’d given it to her. “Then you call again when you come out. It’s like making a flight plan. If you get into trouble, push the button. Then sit tight and wait to be rescued.”
Sit tight? In the middle of the biggest rainforest in the world? Easy to say. Not so easy to do.
She glanced back at the road.
How ironic, she thought. The damned loggers who scarred the land with their bulldozers actually did the tribespeople some good. Without that road, she would have had to cut her way through sixty-two kilometers of dense undergrowth to reach this spot. Even though the rains had turned much of it to mud and even though new vegetation was quickly erasing the scars of the white men’s predations, she could still cover the entire distance from Azevedo to this, the end point, in a little less than two hours.
And, because of that, and that alone, she was able to look in on the tribe twice a month instead of six times a year.
She clipped the PLB to the belt of her khaki shorts, switched on the GPS, and punched in the coordinates of the village. Then she hoisted her knapsack to her shoulders and set off.
SOMEONE OR something stepped on a twig. It broke with a loud snap.
A tapir or a man, Amati thought. Nothing else could have done it. He grabbed his bow.
“Stay close,” he said to his son.
The arrow he chose was tipped with poison. If it was a tapir, he’d kill it for the meat. If a white man … well, let it not be a white man. Not after what those monsters had done.
But the figure that emerged from the forest was neither tapir nor man. It was a woman, one he knew, but white just the same. And she was coming toward him with a smile on her face.
A smile!
Consumed with a towering anger, Amati lowered the bow. Why should he waste poison on a creature such as this? Poison was precious, time-consuming to extract. He’d kill her with his knife.
PERPLEXED, JADE came to a stop. She’d been expecting to find dozens of people. Instead, there were only two: Amati and Raoni, and both were staring at her in the strangest sort of way.
It was true that Amati had always been a bit distant, and Raoni a bit shy, but now their body language and grim faces were making an entirely different impression. Hatred.
If she could have spoken to them she might have been able to defuse it, but speaking was a problem. Raoni’s grandmother, Yara, was the only person in the entire village with whom Jade could actually converse.
Yara hadn’t been born of the tribe. Her native language was a dialect of Tupi, a tongue Jade already spoke, but the language of the Awana was unique. Since the tribe was small and recently contacted, no one else in Jade’s organization had ever attempted to master it. Not before Jade. Not until now.
She’d been learning with Yara’s help. The two women had been working together on a Tupi/Awana dictionary, one that Jade intended to turn into a Portuguese/Awana dictionary as soon as she completed it. But the work was in the early stages, and Jade’s entire vocabulary, at the moment, numbered less than two hundred words.
She remembered advice she’d once received from an expert on the tribes: “When words fail, offer a present. It’s the Indian way.”
The gifts she’d brought, a little concave mirror about nine centimeters across, the strings of beads, and a little aluminum pot, were all in her backpack. But this was no time to go looking for them.
Get closer, she thought. Smile. Give the child your knife.
So she did just that, walked toward them, smiled through her fear, and started unbuckling her belt. The muscles in Amati’s arms and legs went taut. She freed the leather scabbard suspended next to her PLB, taking care not to put a hand to the hilt.
The Indian had no such compunction. Slitting his eyes, he bared the steel of his weapon.
She stopped in front of the boy, knelt down and made the offer. Solemnly, he accepted it. In her peripheral vision she could see Amati’s hand lowering his knife. She turned her head and looked up at him, still smiling. He didn’t return the smile, but he was no longer scowling. He waited for her to speak.
But of course, she couldn’t. Silently, she cursed Carlo Castori. Castori was the parish priest back in Azevedo. Once a missionary, he claimed to have lived among the Awana for more than a year. He’d told her he’d attained fluency in their language, but denied ever having made a dictionary—a claim she found difficult to believe. Who tries to learn a language without making a dictionary?
But, true or not, the man had never been of any help to her, and she’d given up trying to extract anything useful from him. Sign language had become her only option—and she was getting rather good at it. She began by pointing around her and simulating a mystified expression, as if to say, What happened?
Amati grabbed her wrist. His grip was strong, and it frightened her. She gave a little whimper and stood her ground. Exasperated, he released her, pointed, and took her wrist again, this time more gently. She realized then that he was trying to lead her somewhere, and she went.
With Raoni trailing behind, they passed through the heart of the village, exited the other side, and arrived in a glade occupied by mound after mound of loosely-packed soil. At the head of one of the mounds, the trunk of a sacred Kam′ywá tree had been embedded into the red earth. Kuarups, the Indians called them. They personified the spirits of the dead.
Jade’s mouth opened in surprise. Then she closed it and began to count. The mounds totaled thirty-nine, and they were divided into three neat rows of thirteen each. At last count, there had been forty-one members of the tribe. Two, the man and the boy, were standing next to her.
“All Awana,” he said. And then, in case she failed to understand, added the word “Dead.”
“How?”
“Men kill.”
More words exploded from his mouth, angry words, but Jade was unable to understand a single one. While he spoke, she tried to piece together what might have happened. There hadn’t been a war among the tribes in this part of Pará in living memory. It could have been disease, of course, but what kind of disease could have killed so many so quickly? And, if disease had been the cause, how was it possible that neither the man nor the boy were showing signs of sickness?
A horrible suspicion came over her.
“Rainforest men?” she asked.
“No rainforest men,” he said shaking his head emphatically. “White men.” He stabbed a finger into her breastbone and repeated it. “White men.”
“When?”
He pointed to the sun and held up seven fingers. A week ago. If he and his son had been doing the burying themselves, they must have been digging graves and cutting kuarups ever since.
“You come,” she said. “I help. We talk. Hurt bad men.”
“Come where?” he asked. “Talk how? Hurt how?”
“Come,” she said and then pointed to her chest and made a pillow with her hands as if she was going to sleep. She hoped he understood what she was trying to tell him. She wanted to take him to the place where she slept, to her home, to the little city of Azevedo. She pointed at him, then back at herself. “Talk. Father Carlo Castori help.”
He gave a contemptuous snort, said something she couldn’t understand, and made a sign as if he were drinking. Yes, he knows who I’m talking about. Castori is a drunk. She made a beckoning gesture. He seemed to think it over.
At last he nodded. Then he said, “How long?” She pointed to the sun and held up one finger. Again, he nodded. “I come. Not Raoni. Your place bad for Raoni.”
She couldn’t argue. Considering the contempt in which the townsfolk held the people of the rainforest Azevedo was a bad place for him.
But how will he cope if we leave him for twenty-four hours on his own?
She concluded he’d cope well
. Indian boys grew up fast.
“Good,” she said. “You come. Boy stay.”
OTHER TITLES IN THE SOHO CRIME SERIES
Quentin Bates
(Iceland)
Frozen Assets
Cold Comfort
Chilled to the Bone
Cheryl Benard
(Pakistan)
Moghul Buffet
James R. Benn
(World War II Europe)
Billy Boyle
The First Wave
Blood Alone
Evil for Evil
Rag & Bone
A Mortal Terror
Death’s Door
A Blind Goddess
Cara Black
(Paris, France)
Murder in the Marais
Murder in Belleville
Murder in the Sentier
Murder in the Bastille
Murder in Clichy
Murder in Montmartre
Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis
Murder in the Rue de Paradis
Murder in the Latin Quarter
Murder in the Palais Royal
Murder in Passy
Murder at the Lanterne Rouge
Murder Below Montparnasse
Murder in Pigalle
Grace Brophy
(Italy)
The Last Enemy
A Deadly Paradise
Henry Chang
(Chinatown)
Chinatown Beat
Year of the Dog
Red Jade
Death Money
Gary Corby
(Ancient Greece)
The Pericles Commission
The Ionia Sanction
Sacred Games
The Marathon Conspiracy
Colin Cotterill
(Laos)
The Coroner’s Lunch
Thirty-Three Teeth
Disco for the Departed
Anarchy and Old Dogs
Curse of the Pogo Stick
The Merry Misogynist
Love Songs from a Shallow Grave
Slash and Burn
The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die
Garry Disher
(Australia)
The Dragon Man
Kittyhawk Down
Snapshot
Chain of Evidence
Blood Moon
Wyatt
Whispering Death
Port Vila Blues
Fallout
David Downing
(World War II Germany)
Zoo Station
Silesian Station
Stettin Station
Potsdam Station
Lehrter Station
Masaryk Station
(World War I)
Jack of Spies
Leighton Gage
(Brazil)
Blood of the Wicked
Buried Strangers
Dying Gasp
Every Bitter Thing
A Vine in the Blood
Perfect Hatred
The Ways of Evil Men
Michael Genelin
(Slovakia)
Siren of the Waters
Dark Dreams
The Magician’s Accomplice
Requiem for a Gypsy
Timothy Hallinan
(Thailand)
The Fear Artist
For the Dead
(Los Angeles)
Crashed
Little Elvises
The Fame Thief
Mick Herron
(England)
Dead Lions
Adrian Hyland
(Australia)
Moonlight Downs
Gunshot Road
Stan Jones
(Alaska)
White Sky, Black Ice
Shaman Pass
Village of the Ghost Bears
Lene Kaaberbøl & Agnete Friis
(Denmark)
The Boy in the Suitcase
Invisible Murder
Death of a Nightingale
Graeme Kent
(Solomon Islands)
Devil-Devil
One Blood
James Lilliefors
(Global Thrillers)
Viral
The Leviathan Effect
Martin Limón
(South Korea)
Jade Lady Burning
Slicky Boys
Buddha’s Money
The Door to Bitterness
The Wandering Ghost
G.I. Bones
Mr. Kill
The Joy Brigade
Nightmare Range
The Man with the Iron Sickle
Peter Lovesey
(Bath, England)
The Last Detective
The Vault
On the Edge
The Reaper
Rough Cider
The False Inspector Dew
Diamond Dust
Diamond Solitaire
The House Sitter
The Summons
Bloodhounds
Upon a Dark Night
The Circle
The Secret Hangman
The Headhunters
Skeleton Hill
Stagestruck
Cop to Corpse
The Tooth Tattoo
The Stone Wife
Jassy Mackenzie
(South Africa)
Random Violence
Stolen Lives
The Fallen
Pale Horses
SeichÅ Matsumoto
(Japan)
Inspector Imanishi Investigates
James McClure
(South Africa)
The Steam Pig
The Caterpillar Cop
The Gooseberry Fool
Snake
The Sunday Hangman
The Blood of an Englishman
The Artful Egg
The Song Dog
Jan Merete Weiss
(Italy)
These Dark Things
A Few Drops of Blood
Magdalen Nabb
(Italy)
Death of an Englishman
Death of a Dutchman
Death in Springtime
Death in Autumn
The Marshal and the Madwoman
The Marshal and the Murderer
The Marshal’s Own Case
The Marshal Makes His Report
The Marshal at the Villa Torrini
Property of Blood
Some Bitter Taste
The Innocent
Vita Nuova
The Monster of Florence
Fuminori Nakamura
(Japan)
The Theif
Evil and the Mask
Stuart Neville
(Northern Ireland)
The Ghosts of Belfast
Collusion
Stolen Souls
Ratlines
Eliot Pattison
(Tibet)
Prayer of the Dragon
The Lord of Death
Rebecca Pawel
(1930s Spain)
Death of a Nationalist
Law of Return
The Watcher in the Pine
The Summer Snow
Qiu Xiaolong
(China)
Death of a Red Heroine
A Loyal Character Dancer
When Red is Black
Matt Beynon Rees
(Palestine)
The Collaborator of Bethlehem
A Grave in Gaza
The Samaritan’s Secret
The Fourth Assassin
John Straley
(Alaska)
The Woman Who Married a Bear
The Curious Eat Themselves
The Big Both Ways
Cold Storage, Alaska
Akimitsu Takagi
(Japan)
The Tattoo Murder Case
Honeymoon to Nowhere
The Informer
Helene Tursten
(Sweden)
Detective Inspector Huss
The
Torso
The Glass Devil
Night Rounds
The Golden Calf
The Fire Dance
Janwillem van de Wetering
(Holland)
Outsider in Amsterdam
Tumbleweed
The Corpse on the Dike
Death of a Hawker
The Japanese Corpse
The Blond Baboon
The Maine Massacre
The Mind-Murders
The Streetbird
The Rattle-Rat
Hard Rain
Just a Corpse at Twilight
Hollow-Eyed Angel
The Perfidious Parrot
Amsterdam Cops: Collected Stories
Timothy Williams
(Guadeloup)
Another Sun
Return from Nowhere