Relic (Pendergast, Book 1) Read online

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Part 1: Museum of Unnatural Mystery

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part 2: Superstition Exhibition

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Part 3: He who walks on all Fours

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Epilogue

  Chapter 63

  Teaser

  By Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

  Praise

  Copyright

  To Charles Crumly.

  —D. P.

  To Luchie, who came along for the ride.

  And in memory of Nora and Gaga.

  —L. C.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The authors wish to express their thanks to the following persons, who generously lent their time and/or expertise in helping to make Relic the book it is: Ken Goddard, Tom Doherty, Bob Gleason, Harvey Klinger, Anna Magee, Camille Cline, Denis Kelly, Georgette Piligian, Michael O’Connor, Carina Deleon, Fred Ziegler, Bob Wincott, Lou Perretti, and Harry Trumbore.

  INTRODUCTION

  1

  The Amazon Basin, September 1987

  At noon, the clouds clinging to the top of Cerro Gordo broke free and scattered. Far above, in the upper reaches of the forest canopy, Whittlesey could see golden tints of sunlight. Animals—probably spider monkeys—thrashed and hooted above his head and a macaw swooped low, squawking obscenely.

  Whittlesey stopped next to a fallen jacaranda tree and watched Carlos, his sweating camp assistant, catch up.

  “We will stop here,” he said in Spanish. “Baja la caja. Put down the box.”

  Whittlesey sat down on the fallen tree and pulled off his right boot and sock. Lighting a cigarette, he applied its tip to the forest of ticks on his shin and ankle.

  Carlos unshouldered an old army packboard, on which a wooden crate was awkwardly lashed.

  “Open it, please,” said Whittlesey.

  Carlos removed the ropes, unsnapped a series of small brass clasps, and pulled off the top.

  The contents were packed tightly with the fibers of an indigenous plant. Whittlesey pulled aside the fibers, exposing some artifacts, a small wooden plant press, and a stained leather journal. He hesitated a moment, then drew a small but exquisitely carved figurine of a beast from the shirt pocket of his field jacket. He hefted the artifact in his hand, admiring again its workmanship, its unnatural heaviness. Then he placed it reluctantly in the crate, covered everything with the fibers, and reattached the lid.

  From his rucksack, Whittlesey took out a folded sheet of blank paper, which he opened on his knee. He brought a battered gold pen out of his shirt pocket and began writing:

  Upper Xingú

  Sept. 17, 1987

  Montague,

  I’ve decided to send Carlos back with the last crate and go on alone in search of Crocker. Carlos is trustworthy, and I can’t risk losing the crate should anything happen to me. Take note of the shaman’s rattle and other ritual objects. They seem unique. But the figurine I’ve enclosed, which we found in a deserted hut at this site, is the proof I’ve been looking for. Note the exaggerated claws, the reptilian attributes, the hints at bipedalia. The Kothoga exist, and the Mbwun legend is not mere fabrication.

  All my field notes are in this notebook. It also contains a complete account of the breakup of the expedition, which you will of course know about by the time this reaches you.

  Whittlesey shook his head, remembering the scene that had played itself out the day before. That idiotic bastard, Maxwell. All he’d cared about was getting those specimens he’d stumbled on back to the Museum undamaged. Whittlesey laughed silently to himself. Ancient eggs. As if they were anything more than worthless seed pods. Maxwell should have been a paleobiologist instead of a physical anthropologist. How ironic they’d packed up and left a mere thousand yards from his own discovery.

  In any case, Maxwell was gone now, and the others with him. Only Carlos and Crocker, and two guides, had stayed. Now there was just Carlos. Whittlesey returned to the note.

  Use my notebook and the artifacts, as you see fit, to help restore my good standing with the Museum. But above all else, take care of this figurine. I am convinced that its worth to anthropology is incalculable. We discovered it yesterday by accident. It seems to be the centerpiece of the Mbwun cult. However, there is no other trace of habitation nearby. This strikes me as odd.

  Whittlesey paused. He hadn’t described the discovery of the figurine in his field notes. Even now, his mind resisted the memory.

  Crocker had wandered off the trail for a better look at a jacamar; otherwise they’d never have found the hidden path, slanting down steeply between moss-slick walls. Then, that crude hut, half-buried among ancient trees, in the wet vale where daylight barely penetrated … The two Botocudo guides, normally chattering nonstop to each other in Tupian, shut up immediately. When questioned by Carlos, one of them just muttered something about a guardian of the hut, and a curse on anybody who violated its secrets. Then, for the first time, Whittlesey had heard them speak the word Kothoga. Kothoga. The shadow people.

  Whittlesey was skeptical. He’d heard talk of curses before—usually, right before a request for higher wages. But when he emerged from the hut, the guides were gone.

  … Then that old woman, blundering out of the forest. She was probably Yanomamo, obviously not Kothoga. But she knew of them. She had seen them. The curses she’d hinted at … And the way she’d just
melted back into the forest, more like a jaguar yearling than a septuagenarian.

  Then, they turned their attention to the hut.

  The hut … Gingerly, Whittlesey allowed himself to remember. It was flanked by two stone tablets with identical carvings of a beast sitting on its haunches. Its claw held something weathered and indistinguishable. Behind the hut lay an overgrown garden, a bizarre oasis of bright color amid the green fastness.

  The floor of the hut was sunken several feet, and Crocker almost broke his neck on the way in. Whittlesey followed him more carefully, while Carlos simply knelt in the entranceway. The air inside was dark and cool and smelt of decaying earth. Switching on his flashlight, Whittlesey saw the figurine sitting on a tall earthen mound in the middle of the hut. Around its base lay a number of strangely carved discs. Then the flashlight reached the walls.

  The hut had been lined with human skulls. Examining a few of the closest, Whittlesey noticed deep scratch marks he could not immediately understand. Ragged holes yawned through the tops. In many cases, the occipital bone at the base of the skull was also smashed and broken off, the heavy squamosal bones completely gone.

  His hand shook, and the flashlight failed. Before he switched it on again, he saw dim light filtering through thousands of eye sockets, dust motes swimming sluggishly in the heavy air.

  Afterward, Crocker decided he needed a short walk—to be alone for a while, he’d told Whittlesey. But he hadn’t come back.

  The vegetation here is very unusual. The cycads and ferns look almost primordial. Too bad there isn’t time for more careful study. We’ve used a particularly resilient variety as packing material for the crates; feel free to let Jörgensen take a look, if he’s interested.

  I fully expect to be with you at the Explorer’s Club a month from now, celebrating our success with a brace of dry martinis and a good Macanudo. Until then, I know I can entrust this material and my reputation to you.

  Your colleague,

  Whittlesey

  He inserted the letter beneath the lid of the crate.

  “Carlos,” he said, “I want you to take this crate back to Pôrto de Mós, and wait for me there. If I’m not back in two weeks, talk to Colonel Soto. Tell him to ship it back with the rest of the crates by air to the Museum, as agreed. He will draw your wages.”

  Carlos looked at him. “I do not understand,” he said. “You will stay here alone?”

  Whittlesey smiled, lit a second cigarette, and resumed killing ticks. “Someone has to bring the crate out. You should be able to catch up with Maxwell before the river. I want a couple of days to search for Crocker.”

  Carlos slapped his knee. “Es loco! I can’t leave you alone. Si te dejo atrás, te morirías. You will die here in the forest, Señor, and your bones will be left to the howler monkeys. We must go back together, that is best.”

  Whittlesey shook his head impatiently. “Give me the Mercurochrome and the quinine, and the dried beef from your pack,” he said, pulling the filthy sock back on and lacing his boot.

  Carlos started unpacking, still protesting. Whittlesey ignored him, absently scratching insect bites on the back of his neck and staring up toward Cerro Gordo.

  “They will wonder, Señor. They will think I left you. It will be very bad for me,” Carlos said rapidly, placing the items in Whittlesey’s pack. “The cabouri flies will eat you alive,” he continued, moving over to the crate and lashing it shut. “You will catch malaria again, and die this time. I will stay with you.”

  Whittlesey stared at the shock of snow-white hair plastered to Carlos’s sweaty forehead. That hair had been pure black yesterday, before Carlos looked into the hut. Carlos met his gaze for a moment, then lowered his eyes.

  Whittlesey stood up. “Adiós,” he said, and disappeared into the bush.

  * * *

  By late afternoon, Whittlesey noticed that the thick, low clouds had returned to shroud Cerro Gordo. For the last several miles, he had been following an ancient trail of unknown origin, barely a narrow alley in the brush. The trail cleverly worked its way through the blackwater swamps surrounding the base of the tepui, the soggy, jungle-clotted plateau that lay ahead. The trail had the logic of a human trail, Whittlesey thought. It moved with obvious purpose; animal tracks often wandered. And it was heading for a steep ravine in the shoulder of the approaching tepui. Crocker must have come this way.

  He stopped to consider, unconsciously fingering the talisman—a gold arrow overlaid by another of silver—that had hung around his neck since childhood. Besides the hut, they’d seen no sign of human habitation for the last several days except a long-deserted root-gatherer village. Only the Kothoga could have created this path.

  As he approached the plateau, he could see a few braids of water cascading down its steep flanks. He would camp at the bottom tonight, and make the thousand-meter ascent in the morning. It would be steep, muddy, and possibly dangerous. If he met the Kothoga—well, he would be trapped.

  But he had no reason to think the Kothoga tribe was savage. After all, it was this other creature, Mbwun, to which local myth cycles ascribed all the killing and savagery. Strange—an unknown creature, supposedly controlled by a tribe nobody had seen. Could Mbwun actually exist? he wondered. Conceivably, a small remnant could be alive in this vast rain forest; the area was virtually unexplored by biologists. Not for the first time, he wished that Crocker hadn’t taken his own Mannlicher .30 06 when he’d left camp.

  But first, Whittlesey realized, he had to locate Crocker. Then he could search for the Kothoga, prove they hadn’t died out centuries before. He’d be famous—the discoverer of an ancient people, living in a kind of Stone Age purity deep in the Amazon, on a plateau that floated above the jungle like Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.

  There was no reason to fear the Kothoga. Except that hut …

  Suddenly, a sharp sickly smell assailed his nostrils, and he stopped. There was no mistaking it—a dead animal, and a big one. He took a dozen steps as the smell intensified. His heart quickened with anticipation: perhaps the Kothoga had butchered an animal nearby. There might be artifacts left at the site—tools, weapons, perhaps even something ceremonial in nature.

  He crept forward. The sweet nauseating reek grew stronger. He could see sunlight in a patch of canopy high above his head—the sure sign of a nearby clearing. He stopped and tightened his pack, not wanting to be hampered in case he had to move fast.

  The narrow trail, walled in by brush, leveled off and took a sudden turn into the head of the small clearing. There, on the opposite side, was the carcass of the animal. The base of the tree it lay against had been ritually carved with a spiral, and a bundle of bright green parrot feathers lay on top of the gaping, greasy brown rib cage.

  But as he walked closer, he saw that the carcass was wearing a khaki shirt.

  A cloud of fat flies roared and swarmed about the open rib cage. Whittlesey noticed that a severed left arm was lashed to the tree trunk with a fibrous rope, the palm sliced open. A number of spent cartridge casings lay around the body. Then he saw the head. It lay face up under the corpse’s armpit, the back of the skull torn away, the cloudy eyes staring upward, the cheeks bulging.

  Whittlesey had found Crocker.

  Instinctively, Whittlesey began stumbling backward. He saw how rows of claws had flayed the body with obscene, inhuman strength. The corpse looked stiff. Perhaps—if God was merciful—the Kothoga had already departed.

  Assuming it was the Kothoga.

  Then he noticed that the rain forest, normally overflowing with the sounds of life, was silent. With a start, he turned to face the jungle. Something was moving in the towering brush at the edge of the clearing, and two slitted eyes the color of liquid fire took shape between the leaves. With a sob and a curse, he drew his sleeve across his face and looked again. The eyes had vanished.

  There was no time to lose—he had to get back down the trail, away from this place. His path back into the forest lay directly ahead. He’d have
to make a run for it.

  Just then he saw something on the ground he hadn’t noticed before, and he heard movement, ponderous yet horrifyingly stealthy, through the brush in front of him.

  2

  Belém, Brazil, July 1988

  This time, Ven was pretty sure the dock foreman was onto him.

  He stood well back in the shadows of the warehouse alley, watching. Light rain obscured the bulky outlines of the tethered freighters and narrowed the dock lights into pinpoints. Steam rose as the rain hit the hot deck-boards, bringing with it the faint odor of creosote. From behind him came the nocturnal sounds of the port: the staccato bark of a dog; faint laughter leavened with Portuguese phrases; calypso music from the waterfront bars on the avenida.

  It had been such a sweet deal. He’d come down when Miami got too hot, taking the long route. Here, it was mostly light trade, small freighters bound up and down the coast. The dock crew always needed stevedores, and he’d loaded boats before. He’d said his name was Ven Stevens, and no one questioned it. They wouldn’t have believed a first name of Stevenson, anyway.

  The setup had all the right ingredients. He’d had plenty of practice in Miami, plenty of time to sharpen his instincts. Those instincts paid off down here. Deliberately, he spoke Portuguese badly, haltingly, so he could read eyes and gauge responses. Ricon, junior assistant to the harbormaster, was the last link Ven had needed.

  Ven was alerted when a shipment was coming in from upriver. Usually he’d just be given two names: incoming and outgoing. He always knew what to look for, the boxes were always the same. He’d see that they were safely off-loaded and stowed in the warehouse. Then, he just made sure they were the last cargo loaded onto the designated freighter headed for the States.

  Ven was naturally cautious. He’d kept a close eye on the dock foreman. Once or twice he’d had a feeling, like a warning bell in his brain, that the foreman suspected something. But each time Ven had eased up a little, and in a few days the warning bell had gone away.

  Now he checked his watch. Eleven o’clock. He heard a door opening, then closing, from around the corner. Ven drew himself up against the wall. Heavy footfalls sounded against wooden planking, then the familiar form passed under a streetlight. When the footsteps receded, Ven peered around the corner. The office was dark, deserted, as he knew it would be. With a last glance, he edged around the corner of the building, onto the docks.