Country Of The Falcon

Country of the Falcon

Anne Mather

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

ALEXANDRA awoke with the familiar sensation of apprehension which came from knowing that any one of a dozen horrific creatures might have entered the hut during the night. She peered down warily from her hammock with the alertness which came from experience and saw to her relief that the mud-packed floor below appeared free from invaders. On her first morning there over a week ago, she had climbed down carelessly and almost trodden on an enormous spider which her host had calmly informed her was merely seeking refuge from the dampness of the tropical forest outside and was quite harmless so long as she didn’t attempt to touch it or attack it. As Alexandra was totally incapable of doing anything but standing there with every hair on her head assuming a life of its own, either alternative was beyond her.

Now she slithered in a rather ungainly fashion to the floor and looked about her drearily, stretching her aching back. She was not used to sleeping in a hammock, but that was the least of her worries. This bare hut with its thatched roof and mud floor had been her home for the past eight days and would continue to be so, so long as the rivers remained in flood and her guide refused to take her upstream. And as each day passed, the conviction grew within her that her father would not be pleased to see her.

She sighed. It had seemed such a great adventure, sitting in the common room, discussing the idea of coming to Brazil with her friends, but her pitiful knowledge had not prepared her for the savage reality of the Amazon basin. Until then, it had been her father’s place of work, and the more she was warned against doing anything impulsive, the more determined she became. All her life, she had rebelled against her father’s resolution that she should acquire a good education while he went off to all the most exciting countries of the world and only saw his daughter for brief periods at holiday times. When she was younger, she had not minded so much. She had tried to understand that because her mother had died while accompanying her father on one of his expeditions to some outlandish place, he had naturally wanted to protect his only offspring from a similar fate. But as Alexandra grew older, she had begun to doubt the validity of this. Her mother had always been a rather delicate woman, following her husband more faithfully than enthusiastically, while Alexandra possessed her father’s strength and determination. Or so she had thought …

She couldn’t deny that most of the time she had been happy at school. She was a popular girl and as the school accommodated boys as well as girls, she had grown up accepting a certain amount of male admiration as her due. She was not conceited, but she was aware that she was attractive to the opposite sex. Tall and slim, with straight corn-coloured hair, she possessed the kind of lissom beauty much sought after by less fortunate females, and even the most casual of attire looked elegant on her.

But she didn’t feel very elegant now. The thin cotton shirt was creased and so, too, were the tight-fitting jeans which had become her usual sleeping attire. She had almost forgotten how delightful it was to shed one’s clothes and climb between the sheets of a real bed, and how soft and relaxing an interior sprung mattress could be.

It was all her own fault, of course, but that didn’t make it any easier to take. And how was she to know that she was to be delayed in this godforsaken spot indefinitely?

She had flown up to Manaus ten days ago, ten days ago when the Rio Negro had been in full flood, its black, crashing waters swollen by the storms of the rainy season. She had, until that moment, never seen such a tremendous volume of water shouldering its way to the sea, but even then she had not really considered its possible effect on her journey. And it had been comparatively easy obtaining a passage to Los Hermanos, but no one had told her that Los Hermanos was nothing like Manaus …

Manaus was a civilised port, founded in the mid-seventeenth century, but owing most of its architecture to the rubber boom which occurred at the turn of the twentieth century. Then a thriving English corporation had built a stone quay, with warehouses and floating wharves that were unaffected by the tremendous swell of the river in the wet season. In consequence its public buildings looked reassuringly European despite their tropical backcloth. Alexandra had stayed at a reasonably good hotel, partaken of mainly European dishes, and decided that all the stories about the Green Hell of the Amazon basin were untrue. But that was before her journey to Los Hermanos.

Manaus was surrounded on three sides by tropical rain forest and on the fourth by the surging waters of the Rio Negro, and indeed it had rained most of the time she was there. But viewing such scenery from the security of a hotel room was utterly different from the actual experience of penetrating further into this watery maze of rivers and forests. It had been a shock to learn that the rivers were the only navigable highways in the area, but she had refused to be deterred even though the knowledge that beyond the steaming wall of giant trunks that flanked the river-bank there was nothing but trees and creepers and rotting vegetation was shattering. The trees themselves were a fantastic sight, towering upwards for over a hundred feet, creating an illusion of lushness from the air which was never visible from the ground. The trees, the vines, the creepers, everything strove upward, and above the canopy of greenery that covered the underworld in cathedral gloom, blossoms flourished, trees flowered, and there was an abundance of life and colour.

Travelling upstream to Los Hermanos in a small craft which seemed totally inadequate to withstand the forces of the thundering waters, Alexandra had still been in the grip of excitement, eager to get on to Paradiablo and find her father. His delight at seeing her would outweigh his annoyance that she had not obeyed his instructions and gone to Cannes with Aunt Liz as planned, she was sure, and it was not until later that the doubts set in.

Her father was a bacteriologist, working for the London-based Haze Institute, and was presently researching the possible uses of the rare fungi found in the Amazon basin in the curing of certain tropical diseases. It was through the Institute that Alexandra had managed to gain the necessary documents and injections to come out to Brazil in the first place, and she had had no qualms about using her not inconsiderable charm to persuade Bob Haze that her father would have no objections. The fact that Aunt Liz had imagined she was spending a few days with a girl friend until the cable she had sent her from Rio de Janeiro arrived had caused her some pangs of conscience, but by then it had been too late to have second thoughts.

She had not given a great deal of thought to the kind of conditions her father might be living under either, and she had soon realised that a camping expedition could be a terrifying prospect. Tarantulas were common enough, albeit harmless if left alone as she had been told, but there were other equally disturbing creatures. Flies, of all kinds, ticks and fleas and centipedes, and mosquitoes which seemed impervious to the insect repellant she used so liberally.

Her arrival in Los Hermanos had been a revelation. It had proved to be little more than a landing point along the river, with a collection of thatched-roofed huts, and a store and warehouse. Her guide, a wizened, monkey-faced little man provided by the tourist authority in Manaus, deposited her there with the storekeeper, and then, by the means of much gesticulation, went on to explain that there were rapids upstream and until the vastly swollen river subsided he would go no further. They had left the Rio Negro some fifty miles above Manaus, and had followed this tributary, the Velhijo, for almost a hundred miles. It had been a strange journey. At the junction between the mighty Negro and the narrower Velhijo, their puny craft had been forced upstream by the weight of the waters below, and to Alexandra, who had never seen a river run against the current before, it was a frightening phenomenon. Further upstream they encountered a stagnant pool, strewn with dead insects and littered with leaves, which her guide had endeavoured to explain was the point where the descending waters of the Velhijo balanced the pressure of the water being forced upstream. After that, the river ran normally again, but Alexandra couldn’t help but shiver at the thought of negotiating that turbulent current on her way back.

Now she pushed aside the curtain of vine leaves which gave the hut a little privacy and emerged into the sunlight. The mornings were the best time of day. Apart from the fact that each day brought her a little nearer to seeing her father, she had the reassuring knowledge inside her that it would be several hours before she had to climb into that precarious hammock once more.

She looked round, aware of the speculative gazes of a group of Indian women sitting cross-legged around a camp-fire in the clearing. Naked children, some of them adorably sweet, played in the dirt, occasionally standing and staring at Alexandra with their thumbs stuck in their mouths. She had grown accustomed to being an object of curiosity, and as she was the only wholly white person in the settlement she was doubly so. The storekeeper, Santos, was of mixed Indian-Mexican origin, while her guide, Vasco, spoke Portuguese but looked more Indian than anything else.

Alexandra’s own knowledge of foreign languages was limited to a fair grounding in French and German, and the merest smattering of Spanish, gleaned during holidays abroad. Santos, fortunately, spoke quite good English, but Vasco littered his speech with Portuguese words that quite often completely confused her. Still, she had managed to communicate with both of them and the rest of the time she had sweated and waited restlessly, growing daily more convinced that she should not have come. But if anyone had told her how remote Paradiablo was she would probably not have believed them …

The hut she had been given to occupy was set some way back from the river but within sight and sound of the store and warehouse on the landing. What food she ate was provided by Santos’s cook, Maria, and now she walked slowly across the clearing towards the shaded verandah of the store. Here Santos had bamboo chairs and a table, and Alexandra had grown accustomed to sitting there for hours on end, flicking away the flies and watching the constant movement of the river.

Maria was putting out some of the starchy mandioca bread on the table which was the Indian’s staple diet, and she looked up and smiled when Alexandra appeared. She was an Indian girl of indeterminate age, although Alexandra suspected she was no older than herself. Indian women aged more quickly and Alexandra had seen the way Santos treated her. She was pretty sure he kept the girl for other reasons than cooking, but Maria didn’t seem to mind. There was a certain acceptance of her lot about her, and Alexandra wondered rather grimly how Women’s Lib would make out here.

Santos appeared as Alexandra was drinking her second cup of coffee. Of all things the coffee here was excellent, and she felt quite sure that without it she would have found it difficult to remain resolute.

Santos was not very tall, but he was immensely fat, and Alexandra could never completely quell the surge of disgust she felt at the idea of he and Maria together. He had a long moustache, and thinning black hair which he combed across his bald pate. He was invariably smoking a cigar, and this morning was no exception.

‘Ah, good morning, Mees Tempest!’ he greeted her blandly, scratching the hairs on his chest visible between the open buttons of his shirt. ‘Is a lovely morning, yes?’

‘Lovely,’ agreed Alexandra without enthusiam.

‘The river—she is subsiding, yes? Yes,’ he nodded.

Alexandra’s head jerked up. ‘You think so?’

He shrugged in typically Mexican fashion. ‘I think.’ He chuckled. ‘We will get that lazy—good-for-nothing moving, yes?’

‘Oh, I hope so.’ Alexandra was fervent. She put down her coffee cup. ‘How long will it take us to get to Paradiablo?’

‘You ask this many times, Mees Tempest. I cannot say.’ He shrugged again. ‘Two days—–’ He spread his hands. ‘Three days.’

‘So long?’ Alexandra tried not to feel perturbed. Two nights alone with Vasco were not absolutely acceptable to her. It wasn’t that she was prudish; in other circumstances the idea of feeling any alarm at the prospect would not have occurred to her. But here—with nowhere to escape to except the jungle—that was something else. And there were still the rapids …

Santos was studying her expressive face and now he said: ‘You are worried about Vasco?’ He shook his head. ‘You will not be alone.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I will send two Indian bearers with you.’

‘Bearers?’ Alexandra frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

Santos lowered his bulk on to one of the cane chairs and Alexandra watched the narrow legs buckle a little. It always amazed her that they didn’t snap altogether beneath his weight.

‘The rapids, Mees Tempest.’ He raised his eyebrows and at her look of incomprehension, he went on: ‘Not all rapids are—how do you say it?—negociavel?’

‘Negotiable?’ offered Alexandra, and he nodded.

‘Sim, negotiable.’ He stretched out his legs. ‘We leave the boat and walk around—yes?’

‘Leave the boat?’ Alexandra’s mouth felt dry. ‘And—walk through the jungle?’

‘For short distance only.’

‘I see.’

‘You will need these men to carry your cases.’

‘And—and the boat?’

‘It is hauled along the river-bank above the rapids.’

‘I—didn’t realise.’ Another anxiety, Alexandra thought sickly, contemplating in imagination the scores of insects and snakes they might encounter in the forest. She had an intense and cowardly desire to turn back.

‘And—we sleep in the boat, is that right?’

‘Safest,’ nodded Santos, chewing at the end of his cigar, and while she pondered this he turned and shouted: ‘Maria!’ at the top of his voice. When the Indian girl appeared, he grasped her familiarly about her hips, dragging her close against him and saying: ‘You tell that inutil Vasco I want to see him, yes?’

Maria pulled away and went to do his bidding while Alexandra poured herself another cup of coffee. She wished she smoked. Right now she would have appreciated something to calm her nerves. On her first evening she had sampled some of Santos’s spirit alcohol in an impulsive effort to appear sophisticated, but she had spent several hours afterwards being violently sick and she had not repeated the experience. Indeed, she had avoided almost everything, food as well as drink, that did not come out of a tin and in consequence she had avoided any further gastric disturbances.

But now she could have done with some stimulating brew to dispel the sense of chilling apprehension she was feeling.

Vasco arrived with Maria, looking more than ever like a monkey as he loped along beside her. He had long arms and a short body, and a shaggy mat of black hair which Alexandra supposed he must comb but which never looked as though he had. She felt an hysterical sense of the ridiculous overwhelming her. To think—she had left the comfort of an exclusive boarding school, or the equally exclusive luxury of her father’s house in a fashionable square in London, to live in a mud hut in the heart of the Amazonian rain forest. She must be mad!

Santos’s conversation with Vasco was conducted in Portuguese and Alexandra understood little of it. But what did emerge was that Santos had accused the other man of delaying here because he was paid by the day and the longer he took to deliver Alexandra to her destination the more money he made. Until then Alexandra had hardly considered that aspect of it, and somehow just talking about money made everything seem a little more normal.

The wrangle continued, but Alexandra turned her attention to the river. In truth, it looked very little different today than it had done the day before, but for all his obesity and his disgusting affair with Maria, she trusted Santos more than the wizened Vasco. She half wished it was he, and not the other man, who was to escort her on the final leg of her journey.

Eventually Vasco went away muttering to himself but apparently persuaded that the waters were subsiding. Santos sat, smiling and nodding, and when Alexandra looked at him, he said:

‘You will go now, Mees Tempest. Santos will see you on your way.’

‘You mean—we’re leaving today?’ Alexandra was surprised to find how little enthusiasm this aroused in her now that the moment had actually come. Although perhaps after her anxiety earlier she could be forgiven for losing the determination with which she had initially begun this journey.

‘Is right,’ agreed Santos, lighting another cigar from the stub of the first. ‘Santos will see that you have everything you need.’

Alexandra got to her feet. ‘I’d better get my things—–’

Santos yelled for Maria, and when she came he told her to go and collect the senhorita’s cases from her hut. Alexandra began to protest that she was perfectly capable of getting her own things, but Santos interrupted her, saying:

‘Maria will do it. Leave her. The Indians like to serve. Hadn’t you noticed?’

Alexandra made no response to this. If she had she might have been tempted to tell Santos exactly what she thought of the kind of servitude in which he held Maria, and she had no wish to make enemies here. So she merely smiled and walked to the edge of the landing, looking down in to the amazingly clear waters of the Velhijo. She could see the sandy bottom lying beneath the water, the bleached rocks and curious dark red tinging of the water in places which from a distance made it appear almost black. She realised it was the mineral deposits in the river, swept down by the force of the elements, and it was mostly iron which gave it its curious colour. On the opposite bank, what had appeared to be a log moved, and she saw to her horror that it was one of the grey alligators, called caymans, which she had seen from time to time on the river-bank on her journey to Los Hermanos. Its narrow beady eyes and raised nostrils which enabled it to swim almost completely submerged sent a shiver of apprehension up her spine and she took an involuntary step backward. What would they do if they encountered something like that as they tramped past the rapids? She had little confidence in Vasco’s protection.

But by the time the boat was loaded with sleeping bags and extra blankets, cans of water and supplies, and two rifles had been added to the pile of equipment in the bottom of the boat, she felt a little more relaxed. The two Indians who were to accompany them seemed cheerful enough, although Alexandra had to avert her eyes from their apparent disregard for clothing of any sort. They sat together in the prow of the boat, chewing the tobacco which had blackened their teeth, and talking in some language of their own. She tried not to think about the fact that apart from Vasco’s, theirs were to be the only other human faces she was likely to see for two whole days. She had too much imagination, she decided.

Santos waved them off. He had shown little surprise at her adventurous journey to see her father, and Alexandra could only assume that like the Indians he considered all white people slightly eccentric. And, too, he had displayed little interest in her destination, and she hoped this was not because he never expected her to reach it.

A bend in the river hid the trading post from view and the boat’s small motor chugged steadily upstream. There was a canvas canopy rigged at the rear end of the craft and Alexandra sat beneath this, glad of the respite from the glare of the sun which was just beginning to make the heat unbearable. In fact, it was a little better on the river. There was a slight breeze as the boat moved through the water, and Alexandra fanned herself with her sunglasses.

Well, she thought, trying to be philosophical, she was at least moving again, and who knows, maybe in less than forty-eight hours she would see her father again. It seemed an unreal supposition.

They didn’t stop at lunch-time, but Vasco chewed a hunk of the mandioca bread and drank some beer while Alexandra opened a tin of Coke and peeled two bananas. The fresh fruit was infinitely more delicious than any she had tasted in England, and if the Coke was a little warm, it couldn’t be helped. The Indians had nothing to eat, but grabbed the tins of beer Vasco threw to them with eager fingers, tearing open the tops and drinking greedily, the liquid dripping out of the corners of their mouths in their haste. Alexandra tried not to watch them, aware that her interest might be misconstrued, but their behaviour both repelled and fascinated her.