Inshalla Gringo

By Jacques Guerin

A sixteenth century Spanish sailor’s chest reopens a four century old, sometimes contentious, buddy story fueled by the lost gold of the Conquistadors. Inshalla (Arabic for God willing) Gringo is one of a series of Govón and D’Arcy adventures and mysteries that unfold in the rainforest of the Amazon, the shadows of the Andes, and even the Arabian deserts.

Headhunters chase Diego de Valverde and his conquistadors out of the western Amazon, and into the Andean foothills. Among the conquistador’s men are scribes are friends the Jew Juçe de Govón and the Moor Aziz al Jubail. The Jivaro catch up to the invaders and their purloined gold for a reckoning in a foothill cavern. Somehow, the scribes escape the fate of the Spanish and make their way to a Galleon homeward bound along the so-called “River of Gold”.

Centuries later, Govon’s chest re-surfaces in an Amazon poker game, attended by a strange wartime partnership of rival Nazi and Allied men, including F.A. Green (once Govón), his partner Dick D’Arcy and a pair of Jubail brothers. The Jubails are beginning construction, unusually, on an Amazon mosque. Together, they carry on the old relationship, and the search for enduringly hot gold continues.

In more current times, filmmakers Jock Green and his partner Bubba D’Arcy travel to Saudi Arabia to film an ambitious documentary for Jubail brothers Ali and Maher. In time the ARPC (Amazon River Poker Club) is reborn and Green and D’Arcy find themselves flying back to Brazil to make a documentary about an unusual mosque, but it’s not long until they are looking for a late payment and an Andean cave perhaps harboring a missing fortune in gold that everyone seems to know about and want.

This is a story about cross cultural and enduring friendships and about the villains everyone loves to hate – Conquistadors, Amazon headhunters, and Nazis. It is a story that takes place on some of the world’s great canvases – the Amazon rainforest, the great Arabian deserts, the great al Qateef Oasis and the Andes Mountains. And, it takes place along great bodies of water including the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the mighty Amazon and it’s tributaries.
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Jacques Guerin
• Release date: Mar 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476123172

Jacques Guerin

Jacques GuerinMr. Guerin has worked as an advertising executive, agency producer, marketing researcher and think tank scientist and executive. He has produced documentaries from the U.S. to the Middle East, commercials and public service announcements featuring celebrity talent, animation and special effects. His father was a career diplomat and his mother was a dancer and singer appearing in nearly fifty feature films through the 1940's. Jacques traveled the world with his parents, mostly throughout Latin America and Africa. It was during those years that he met Chi, after whose true story this book was conceived. The author has finished a second novel, now in editing, and is working on a children's book he hopes will allow youngsters to inspire themselves to a better diet and exercise paradigm.

Book preview

Inshallah Gringo

By

Jacques Guerin

[e-mail]

Smashwords Edition

Copyright ® Jacques Guerin, 2008

All Rights Reserved

Reg. Writers Guild of America

Part 1

Rainforest

Chapter 1

A Back Tale

It’s just as well the jittery knight hasn’t noticed the bamboo skewers in his leather shoulder strap, a scant two fingers from his naked neck. Valverde curses the tradition that has cast him in the role of a soldier while Gael, his younger brother, by minutes, is cloaked safely in the armor of religious orders, the soft domestic job of a Dominican – wretched choices anyway, conquista or inquisition. The official screed is that both are employed nobly in the service of the Lord, saving souls if slaughtering bodies, careers rich in indulgences in Fernando and Isabela’s consecrated Spain. Diego and Gael found it all loathsome, but had long since made their accommodations. It reeked of money and politics, especially in the context of the bloody river of gold.

The young Castilian, half mummified in a grimy cast of dirt and sweat, aching with tension, and nauseous from the co-mingling stench of the animals and his own body, curses the prickly burden of morion and body armor, and labors to find a solid path, not that it much matters; his mount still scatters clots of clay and stones back down onto the men and pack mules lumbering under the weight of plunder. Valverde is hauling it back from the lowland streams (and purses) from which it has been painfully sifted over the past year, for rendezvous with the galleon that will race it back home to the anxiously salivating Court in Madrid.

Gold!

Don Diego de Valverde causes himself to visualize a lovely jasmine day in the garden of the villa, his young daughters, Niña Flor and Niña Luz playing and giggling while their lovely mother, Doña Ignacita, watches over them, scissors in one hand and a spring bouquet gathering in the other. But, no matter how hard he tries to hang on to the fantasy, his troubled mind returns to the nasty moment, like a capirucho ball.

Don Diego creaks half way around in the saddle, onwardly exhorting the men, moving as lightly as a train of tinker’s wagons, echoing treacherously through the hills. What’s wrong with you? I have no intention of lugging a sack full of SHRIVELED HEADS back to Spain. The shaman can keep them, thank you!" Not sure he had been heard, he took another gulp of thinning air, and again screeched into the wind, but the words just blow back into his face. Filled with frustration, he curses blasphemously.

The Jew and the Muslim climbed in tandem, Valverde’s debris rattling off their armor. "The fool counts cadence, here in the middle of nowhere; who knows how many leagues from the nearest outpost; and what makes him think he’ll keep his own head," Juçe Govón grumbles for the benefit of his old friend.

If we are the smart ones, why are we behind the asses, and I don’t mean the four legged ones? Don Diego still fails to notice the darts near his jugular. The wind scatters their laughter.

Discernable at a fair distance, nature has carved a distinct saddle shape for the hill – a sagging mid section, with a tower of boulders constituting as a proud saddle horn. As the column wends its way toward the ridge, Valverde spies a narrow waterfall plunging perhaps forty or so meters.

He retrieves his spyglass, irritated that it has been made sticky from a forgotten chunk of rapadura. He confirms what he can make out with the naked eye, then pulls up and waits to confer with the Moor, Aziz al-Jubail, and the Marano Juçe Govón, whose work it was to make Valverde (and consequently Francisco Pizarro) look good – fashion Valverde’s words, map the terrain, draw and annotate flora and fauna, add to the records of indigenous peoples, and most importantly, keep a faithful accounting of Christian souls and gold, which the Conquista systematically acquires at whatever cost. Yes, God himself is the helmsman on that galleon running wildly on the river of gold.

There… just above the fall. His shouted words are swallowed in the roar of the water. The tin man points directly into the brilliantly refracted sunlight, right where the water flows over the broad ledge and rushes past them to the pool below. A few of the men, hating the moment, cast a reluctant blink into the harsh light.

But their minds are elsewhere – more on what may be gaining on them than what might lie ahead. Already a half dozen of Valverde’s tin men will not be making the long voyage home, because of the way the shameful foray ended. Conquistadors indeed… How brave do you have to be to subjugate a band of child-sized savages?

Like truffle dogs, the Spanish sniffed their way to the source of the gold, to Jivaro villages along a stream in the margins of the rainforest, and easily took control of the simple band of Shuar Jivaro living like bugs in the mud and grass in a string of riverside villages, snatched whatever gold they found, and forced the Jivaro to scour the mountain stream for more. And, it ended as it usually did – a Castilian horror show.

Finding nothing to recommend the slave lifestyle, the Jivaro plotted to shake off the binding ties of the tin men. But, bolstered by sham Christian piety, Jesus and justice were swept under the thatch, and the Conquistadors, like matadors, pitilessly slaughtered Jivaro men, who died like doomed bulls in a second rate ring. For the Conquistadors it was a celebratory gesture in commemoration of fresh baptism, a twisted boost to heaven. But a handful of anointed savages managed to melt into the rainforest, women and children in tow. Valverde let them go. He was no inquisition goon, nor did he have the stomach for slaughtering children, no matter how feral or godless. Besides, he had done more than his share of dirty work for Pizarro, upon whose visage he had not once laid eyes. By his estimation, he owed the living legend… nothing.

When it was all over, the Castilians sowed six of their own in rich, shallow soil, under the sign of faith. They packed up every grain of gold they could shake out of the Jivaro and creaked, rattled, and strained back upstream like common thieves. The harrowing episode left a heavy mark even on Fernando and Isabela’s bullyboys. Since Don Diego was never good at budgeting his time and was doomed by every Christian and Jivaro measure anyway, he would not get a chance to launder his contaminated conscience. And, he and what was left of his crew would scurry away like plague-ridden mutants. The Shuar Jivaro, on the other hand, freshly emboldened by the unexpected mortality of the tin men collect their fighting brethren and set off in swift pursuit, visions of tiny white noggins in their painted heads.

After the newly mortal Spanish were gone the headhunters reclaimed the villages. They drank kaapi until visions of forgotten ancestors reminded them that it would be a shame to waste perfectly good and valuable white heads. Back out of the nourishing soil emerged the fetid Spanish corpses, off slid their heads and the highly guarded ritual for tsantsa became fueled by ever more reckless doses of kaapi. Valverde had found such a grotesquely diminished head in the shaman’s longhouse, grinning idiotically at him through leathery stitches, out of an empty gourd (flecked with trace evidence of gold that got away) – perhaps it was some kind of heathen talisman, some weird icon of the shaman’s trade – he just shrugged and stuffed the curious object into his saddlebag. He decided, finally, that it was nothing more than a primitive toy. It would delight the girls!

Sometime in the night, the corroding column lost a few more tin soldiers – to some unseen, unheard jungle fiend. But, even Valverde’s knew it was Shuar who were gnawing on the engorged column, so he made up lies for the men. He fooled no one; the troops were familiar with the Spanish voice. Besides, there were those telltale bamboo skewers.

The Semites could earn their keep now. The men knew that the only portal home was through Valverde’s cave, somewhere on the mountain. They had almost missed it on the way down into the rainforest – it’s the mouth of the beast yakking up evil, an outlet for the runoff, wherever the source. The humps on the mountain were less reminiscent of a saddle horn than devil horns. Valverde added the curious saddle ridge to his map, inscribing the rudimentary rendering with basic commentary… should have assigned the Jew to make a better likeness.

Unlike Valverde, the Moor and the Jew appreciated their armor, protection from the detritus of Don Diego’s wake. They were friends; they had known each other practically since they first wandered the steep and narrow streets of Toledo. The Jew had immigrated from Tangier to work as a scribe, a sort of executive assistant in the ranks of the Conquista. The Moor had come to Spain by way of Tangier as well, but had set foot on three continents in the process, traveling thousands of leagues from Jeddah. Family had preceded him in Spain, family that had been in Toledo since well before and until the Arab Muslims were evicted in 1492 (that was a year for Spain). The Moors ruled Spain as semi-enlightened occupiers in the name of Allah, Mohammed, and the Caliph. And the Spanish and Moors accommodated the Jews, each for their own reasons.

The Jew and Muslim have more in common with each other than with the Iberians in whose employ they find themselves. They are smart. They read and write, not only in Arabic and Ladino, but also Spanish, French, Latin and Greek. Their job is to transcribe, translate, counsel and teach. Together they chronicle (and embroider the events and accomplishments of the Valverde party, a troop on very remote assignment for the Conquista.

Aziz and Juçe write the journal in the official voice of the Conquista, for Don Diego’s uncomplicated signature, subservient, of course, to the seal of Francisco Pizarro, who himself would make it no closer to the court in Madrid than a glass box in the cathedral in Lima, mummified in artificial dignity, and there to this day. The journal is destined for transit on the same vessel assigned to join the semi-annual fleet of galleons, lugging all that plunder back to Spain.

Finally the junk heap remnants of a once gleaming column of Conquistadors, clattered over the top, and followed the icy stream into the mouth of the labyrinth. Even the holy cross and proud pennants had been secured for the hasty retreat to the refuge of Valverde’s cave to hide from little people of no consequence, trolls hiding behind bamboo blow guns. They fixed the animals some fifty meters into the massive chamber took up positions and prayed. The gold was buried in a shallow trench deep in the frosty but dry grotto. At least there was clear, clean drinking water.

So the Jew and the Moor, hunkered down in the dubious security of a frigid, mountain cave in the cordilleran piedmont, worlds away from Toledo or Tangier, or from Lima for that matter, praying to outwit Stone Age savages. Aziz had made a note comparing the painted natives of the rainforest to the Tuareg of North Africa, the blue People of the Sahara, though the rainforest bands, almost regardless of tribe, favor applying red pigments whereas the skin of the Tuareg acquires a permanent blue hue from the dye in their clothing.

The tinned lieutenant is struggling with the notion of making fire, trepidatious even though it could be well concealed in one of the many nooks and crannies in the cave. But who knows the range of the Jivaro nose?

Juçe Govón watches the conquistador busily pace off measurements at various angles between the mouth of the cave, and the interior, mumbling to himself, his chilled breath visible in the scant light. God help us. He’s going to hurt himself trying to squeeze a thought through that morion; the man can’t even scratch his name in the dirt with a stick.

Water flows down an interior wall of the cavern, and across the sandy surface along a porcelain-smooth channel, out the mouth, and over the precipice, crashing to the plunge pool below. The lieutenant relents and allows small fires. The weary men pick out places for their saddles and blankets, and secure the priceless clay jars and leather pouches in a position behind them, protected, at least, from a frontal assault. The Jew and Muslim were assigned the furthest recess of the cave, not coincidentally just in front of the gold.

Only Aziz al-Jubail and Juçe Govón seem to fully appreciate the folly. Nonetheless, they silently go about what they are certain is their valediction. For what it might be worth, the cavemen worship the same God. The Christian is confident that he will be their deliverance; the Muslim prays that he will grace them with his compassion, and the Jew thinks, "Here comes another beating. Aziz stares into the embers as if they might illuminate things to come. But if there is a vision, he shakes it off and turns to comforting notions of family and home.

Whistling in the dark!

Aziz whispers pulling a burning stick from the fire. He burnishes fanciful tracings in the darkness.

I pray that Allah is merciful tonight, and that the Prophets protect us. We are fortunate to be sheltered in this place… fortunate indeed.

Can the ever-pessimistic Moore be thinking survival, the Jew wonders? What’s so great about this creepy hole in the mountain, and what prophets? Juçe inquires after the answer he half anticipates, Aziz’s ecumenical turn. And the Moor fulfills his responsibility to take the revelation to the infidels, sort of a cub Gabriel. "Start with "Ibrahim and Mohammed… peace be unto them. And caves are the portals of angels in this world. "

Peace be unto THEM, the two.

And don’t forget Jesus? You know, especially for Christians.

The Moor sighs. Of course, prophets all, Aziz glances up at the glowing face of his companion. "Peace be unto all of them… but… for the record… for our journal… the journal of Diego de Valverde… peace be unto Mohammed, the last and greatest of the prophets… and that’s not me talking, it’s the word of God."

Well, of course it is. Try to convince Don Diego, or Father Oñate.

"Well, Don Diego is going to hell."

Don Diego is going to hell?

The Moor looked around, making sure that no one had slipped out of his armor and into the chamber. He’s going straight to hell, Hades, the fiery hole, so compelling to Christians.

They don’t really like the idea, but Christians believe in a fiery hell. They are taught that if you die right after committing a serious sin, and have not made your confession to God, the torture will begin immediately and will never end.

I never understood the contradiction.

Contradiction?

Yes Christians say that God is all love and all good… perfect… and cannot contradict himself.

Yes.

Well, if that is so, how can a good, loving, perfect God condemn his own creation to eternal torment?

As far as I can surmise, by sins against God’s commandments, and Christians don’t mean you have to commit murder to be banished to hell… self abuse will do the trick. They both cover their mouths suppressing laughter.

Then all those Spanish wankers are going south; it will be quite a crush. More Muffled laughter.

Hard to abuse yourself wearing armor...

If Christians like the notion of pain, it’s my turn to give them some.

Presently, sitting almost on top of the flames, they began thawing. Aziz becomes wrapped in own thoughts. The flames lend his face a ghastly countenance. He thinks aloud. I do believe that they find pleasure in their fear too, a titillation. It gives rise to the likes of Dante Alighieri, I suppose.

The Jew is skeptical. Pleasure in their fear? Isn’t that another contradiction? I know that some derive pleasure from pain, but fear? And, just FYI, Dante was Florentine.

Aziz ignores the factoid, trying to hang onto his fragile construct. "You know what I mean… like children embrace the fear in jinni fantasies."

Ah… yes, I suppose... the thrill of danger, like sex with the risk of being caught. The Moore stares at him Or… so I’ve heard.

Yes… so you’ve heard.

Juçe rephrases, What I’m trying to say is that I know what you mean. Who can really understand the Iberians? Even Spanish art favors those ghastly images full of gloom and death, and unappealing proportions. Perhaps it actually means something.

It makes me appreciate that Islam prohibits representation of the human form. After all, what could be more beautiful than the natural world around us?" The Muslim meticulously adjusts his gutra – once pristine, now filthy and sweat stained – that covers his tagiyah skullcap and is draped halfway down his chest. Juçe Govón too wears a skullcap, a yarmulke. They agreed, early on, that these are symbols of an ancient kinship, of people of the book. Theirs is an affinity anchored in a common heritage, an ancestry they can trace back to the greatest Prophet. Whenever they want to feel like true kin, in the midst even of despair, they remind themselves that Jews, Muslims and Christians; alike are the children of Abraham. It has been a blessing that they have not, until now, felt the hopelessness at the same time. Or, in any case, one always maintains enough to boost the other. Under the tin men, they were a very small fraternity.

But, in this kinship, this common heritage, there is also dissonance – a family fissure, lingering infection from an ancient wound, the particulars of which are the narrow province of rebbe and mullah. It is a split among siblings, a feud that started between Abraham’s boys Isaac and Ishmael. Jews trace their heritage back to Abraham’s son Isaac, and Muslims to his brother Ishmael. In what was perhaps the original source of Muslim alienation, and resentment, Hagar and her infant son Ishmael were banished into the Nafud by Abraham. But Allah, the most compassionate, took pity on the wretched wanderers, and created a spring of fresh water out of the lifeless desert. Today, the well of Zam Zam is still issuing life-affirming water for thirsty pilgrims, and for ablutions upon the Hajj.

The Spaniards mostly find humor in tragedy, in cruelty. Juçe observes, making no attempt to sugar coat his contempt.

Aziz smiles. "We are alike, you and I… nomadic people of the book… Bedu... I think that Allah would be very forgiving if we were to teach these infidels a lesson."

Juçe is taken aback by the Moor’s bravado, tinged, he thinks, with sedition. "Right, a lesson… just what kind of lesson do you think that you might teach the most powerful monarchy in the WORLDS, old and new?"

The Muslim traces another figure in the dark space. The fiery point leaves an afterglow over the men’s heads. Perhaps it was the repetition of this radiant motion, but Juçe thought that he was actually beginning to make out the drawing.

Alright maybe not ‘lesson’… perhaps something more base. He tries for a sardonic laugh.

But it is surely righteous to inflict upon them just a fraction of the pain they visit upon others… a little of God’s pay back. He stares into the dark space for a while, and then asks, We both know what the great conquistadors prize more than anything in the world.

Juçe begins to sense that Aziz speaks in earnest, and with growing passion. He does not care for it one bit. A collage of ugly images suddenly rushes through his head, images of thick-necked, Spanish mouth-breathers with too little space between their rheumy eyes, the types who can’t remember the lyrics to the simplest drinking round, but nonetheless

"Let me guess… ajedrez?" Juçe tries to redirect the dangerous trajectory of the conversation with a little humor. Ajedrez is both Arabic and Spanish for chess – a subtle war game, well suited for the Spanish character, if not the Spanish intellect.

That’s right… ajedrez. I warned you to keep away from the Kaapi. He growled. You know how they get that crap to ferment don’t you? They chew wild berries and spit them into a pot. The spit causes fermentation. He explained as grossly as possible.

I didn’t really need to know that. Anyway, I never touch the stuff. I know that it’s sacred to the Jivaro, and we screwed them enough. No, I know I know… I know… the Spanish care only about gold, gold, gold.

"You forgot, and … more gold."

They snickered quietly, mindful that they were just out of earshot of the tin men. The Moor resumed his abstract spatial doodling.

Well, that’s what you expected me to say, gold… gold and silver…

"And, like children, just about anything that sparkles… they think it’s their just reward. "

Just reward?

Yes, it’s the heavenly reward for defending a faith that it encourages the faithful to burn doubters alive and to impale those who decline the invitation to convert, like lambs on a spit.

The faith of redemption and it’s a good thing, they need a lot of redeeming or they themselves will wind up dramatis personae in an Alighieri tale.

"So, what exactly do you have in that dangerously diseased Muslim mind of yours? You’re not thinking that you could separate those martinets, from a single real are you? Trust me my friend; it is not even worth the daydream."

I detest pieces of eight… you know, for what they represent. I trade mine as soon as I possibly can. I don’t want Spanish blood money, but I don’t want THEM to have it either. A sneer turns into laughter, but he shushes himself, preempting the admonition on the Jew’s lips. I know, I know. He whispers, cocking his head toward where the tin men lay nestled in uncharacteristic silence, …no doubt scheming and praying. He whispers.

This summer we return home to Spain with the rest of the regiment.

Juçe shrugs. What of it? I’ll be glad to get out of this hell… especially to see my family.

What would you think if I told you that I know how we can sink a mighty galleon and deprive the invincible Spanish of at least one ship load of their precious plunder?

I would think you mad. You’d be flayed alive. And, incidentally, I rather like the shiny stuff. Didn’t you tell me that Arabian women love gold jewelry? You said they love wearing it under their abayas… especially bangles and breastplates.

Yes… Jews don’t?

It’s true our women love their gold… all jewelry for that matter. But Jews don’t wear abayas. And, they don’t much care for breastplates. But, jewelry might be the one universal link between men and women. The Jew shakes his head. If I could figure out how, I’d like to go home with just enough shine to start a little jewelry shop… something a Jew is permitted," he says bitterly.

As far as flaying is concerned, they’d have to catch us first, Aziz says with bravado in his voice.

"There you go again with that US thing. What US? Forget about us. As far as this crazy talk is concerned, there is no us, the Jew growls. And, you don’t have to worry about them finding you. The sharks will get to you first; they’ll pick your bones clean. No sir… not me. My rebbe says I’m Trefah to fish."

Aziz, the Muslim, shrugs. I’m a munitions specialist at sea.

Juçe groans. He hopes it’s a non-sequitur, but knows it is not.

I can rig an explosion to blow a hole the size of Pizarro’s ego in the bulkhead, below the water line. Before thy can seal the breach, they will be resting on the seabed like a conch. The weight of all that stolen gold will make the vessel sink like a canon ball… ironic really, he says icily. Juçe is shaken. He’s never known his friend to be this passionate about anything but Islam.

That’s nice, I’m hiding from headhunters in a dark cave, half way round the barely known world, a captive of the masters of greed, and my closest friend can offer barely a scant shred of solace… turns out to be madder than an Amazon monkey.

Juçe stops in mid thought. Suddenly he sees it. Aziz is tracing and retracing the figure of a boat, conjuring, no doubt, a Spanish galleon. He repeats this over and over against the utter blackness of the cave with a burning stick.

You’re showing signs of the fever my friend. You spent one day too many in the moldy jungle.

"For the record… not Don Diego’s record… the real record, I’m not afraid of death. It’s just another passage. Since I am but an instrument of Allah, I will die a martyr. I will go straight to paradise and into the soft, perfumed bosoms of virgins … just for my pleasure." He smiles a decidedly unholy smile.

What are you going to do with dozens of virgins? You can barely handle the one wife you already have. And I’d very much appreciate it if you would stop including me in your crazy death wish. I’m pretty sure that I’m not in line for any virgins… maybe a wrinkled old yenta. More likely, my head will end up on a Spanish pike... after they torture my sorry Hebrew ass. My physician has told me that torture can cause permanent scarring – not good for this pretty face, thank you.

Juçe tries to change the subject. I suppose you are considering what we might write in the journal, my friend. Don’t think too hard or you might actually say something CRAZY! Just try to think of a clever valediction, maybe if it gets back to the right people it will be helpful for our families.

The Moor is put off by that remark. My God man, what are you saying? Maybe you don’t, but I definitely plan on seeing home again… soon… and with my head on my shoulders. I’m used to it… right where it is. What Aziz thinks is that written words will not matter much to the Iberians, dead or alive. It is beginning to have the feel of busy work, so might benefit from creativity... a message in a bottle.

Juçe climbs to his feet and stretches. He cocks his head, wets an index finger and holds it up. There’s a draft… very slight, but a breeze nonetheless.

Of course there is; it’s coming from the mouth of the cave.

I think not. I think you’re the one who’s mesmerized… disoriented at least. He points, The mouth of the cave is that way, but the breeze is coming from the opposite end. He pokes a thumb over his shoulder. I think I’ll just take a torch and see what I can find."

The Moor shrugs. Don’t get lost. I don’t want to be tasked with your assignment.

Juçe Govón gathers up a handful of kindling and ties the bunch with a length of twine. He dips one end in pitch and holds it to the glowing coals. The bouquet of seasoned twigs quickly flares into a compact, bright torch, He is a bit surprised that the light reveals a much more spacious chamber than he had imagined in the darkness. He descends cautiously down into the void. The passageway narrows into a corridor of lofty, striated sandstone walls.

The space between the walls narrows like an inquisition torture pit, but he perseveres. Barely perceptible at first, a familiar resonance gradually fills the quiet emptiness like a rush of air. The walls tighten even more, like they might indeed come together, and he began to worry that he might become wedged and trapped. But, just as he fears the worst, the space suddenly yawns open, and he breaths easily again, gulping in the cold dark air.

The space grows larger still, revealing a new chamber, one with breathtaking features – great stone arches designed by nature to mimic flying buttresses. He holds up the torch and squints, peering ahead toward what seems to be the source of the sound, now crashing more loudly ahead. Across the room is another opening to the outside, a few meters directly below the first he estimates, since he had felt himself descending and turning throughout his brief sortie. He smiled when he finds the source of the noise to be a sheet of water crashing down like a ship’s sail between the cave and the outer world.

Juçe studies this for a while, and then turns to make his way back. The torch is half consumed and he knows he has already risked enough. There is enough fire left to illuminate the chamber around him, and what it reveals causes his mouth to go dry, and he gasps, choking with an unexpected dread. The perimeter of the room is stacked high with human bones and skulls, casting the Gothic features of the chamber in a suddenly ghastly light.

The scribe doesn’t pause to explore the chilling discovery, but makes his way back up the passageway in panic, repeatedly colliding with the stonewalls, until he drops the dimming torch. He is left to claw his way up like a blind man, as the dead torch tumbles away behind him. He calls out to God to rescue him. Then abruptly he is entangled in the limbs of a walking corpse. He is surely doomed. He starts to let out a scream, but a hand clamps his mouth shut.

Alarmed, he looses control and wets himself.

But a familiar voice shushes him, whispering urgently. Not another word, I think that the Shuar are with us.

I know… I just found out. There are stacks of old bones downstairs, Juçe manages, through trembling lips.

Yes, but… what… downstairs? What are you talking about, I… What downstairs?

There’s a lower level… some kind of burial chamber… stacks of bones, skulls too… no, wait. What are YOU talking about?" His heart feels like it will crash out of his chest, escaping his worthless carcass.

The Jivaro have caught up with us… Live Jivaro.

Allahu Akhbar. The Moor whispers in the Jew’s ear. Amen, responds Juçe. And, they hunker down in the strata and pray to their consensus God, sandwiched like fossils between Jivaro relics below and Jivaro warriors above. All night the cave reverberates with strange rhythms, real and imagined.

Chapter 2

More Back Tale

Particularly because of an extraordinary following sea that propels the creaking monster along the River of Gold at a gallop approaching twelve knots, the portly Captain is cheerfully convinced of a quick crossing. Instead, he finds himself wrestling restraint from the bloated vessel. Not a fortnight out of Española, the redoubtable 40-gun galleon, Salve Regina begins climbing steeper hills, and dropping into deeper valleys as the swells, winds, and rains of a tropical squall begin to organize into something unseasonably angrier. And, as the skies darken with the gathering storm, and lightening dances around the edges of the minutely visible sky like Spanish lace, Captain Orlando Mago’s optimism sinks with each receding wave.

The unseasonable sea should be disquieting to the veteran sea captain. He curses himself for once again allowing enthusiasm to best reason. The monstrous, three-mast, twelve sail war ship was built to handle speeds of four to eight knots. But, at four hundred tons of hardwood hewn of two thousand oak trees, the weight of a thousand iron balls, (not to mention all that accursed loot), the vessel is still no match for the prehistoric monster on whose back it travels. So, he reluctantly, trims the sails and pulls in the Genoas, and generally endeavors to sail off wind.

The skipper pats his belly cheerfully, prosperity, prosperity, an inspiration born of the frequent ribbing of his peers. Now, despite the bedlam around him – the screaming wind, the exploding sea, and the clamor of grimly resolute seamen swarming the decks and climbing up and down the rigging like spiders, the prosperous captain is filled with thoughts of home, of Josefina and of the children. And he daydreams in anticipation of an appearance before their Majesties Fernando and Isabela, where he would be recognized as a hero of the realm, imagine that. A runner from Lord Pizarro brought word under Royal Seal (no less) that Captain Mago has been elevated to Commodore of the Fleet. Now the entire Flota would be in his charge. Puffed up by this thought, and anchored by his low center of gravity, Mago assumes the appropriate gravitas and resolutely stands his position in the face of the anonymous cyclone.

Hero of the realm!

Three decks beneath the waterlogged boots of the Commodore-in-waiting, everything but the air was in motion. Juçe Govón detests sailing. The motion is the least of what sickens him, especially within the unnatural constraints of the dark and dank ship’s gut, with it’s barely breathable stale air, swirling with the stench of unbathed bodies, decaying food, and leaking bilge. The only saving grace is his hammock and Newton’s third law of motion – just so long as he keeps his eyes locked on the page. The relative stillness of the hammock, amidst the surrounding chaos, allows the scribe to get on with the organization of two long years worth of Valverde’s ghost-penned journal.

To safeguard the vessel from fire, particularly in turbulent seas, illumination is constrained to caged oil lamps, tightly secured to the bulkhead, barely out of head range. The amber glow casts macabre shadows that dance a frenetic chaconne in double time with the cyclone upon the surrounding bulkhead and beams. Every so often, caught by the light, a skulking rat casts a monstrous shadow. But, in the chaos of the storm even the rats rarely venture out.

Juçe looks up from the relative calm of his hammock, sorting out a new image captured in his peripheral vision, another giant rat. Only this one appears sans pointy ears. The Jew squints in the tumultuous darkness, bringing the new rat into sharper, if unsteady focus.

"Aziz… is that you Sultan? He laughs nervously and too loudly. Something heavy drops to the deck, Are you alright?"

Crouching low, legs spread to keep his balance; the Moor makes his way across the sloppy deck toward the hammock. Aye Aziz mutters curtly, his mind thick with squirming sea slugs.

Hurry up man; you know what this swaying does to my gut. I don’t know when I last took a single breath of clean air.

The Moor grabs hold of a post and steadies himself awkwardly. What are you doing? You’re not working on that illiterate swine’s journal are you? He asks, eying the writing materials,

I am.

What can it possibly matter? I think the monster is in trouble. He pats the post. "If the round one keeps trying to run with the sea, I won’t need to worry about making a hole in the bulkhead."

Where did this come from? Juçe rolls his eyes as if scanning the unseen sky. The cyclone season is a month away. The Jew searches for something not in motion upon which to fix his gaze. By the way, what are you doing out of your hammock?

The Moor responds with a barely restrained and manic laugh.

What in Hades was that noise? Was that you?

I’m just doing Allah’s work. Aziz snarls.

The Jew groans. He feels a pang of anxiety as he remembers a conversation in an Andean cave. What if there is no Paradise? What if there are no virgins waiting to greet you?

Although he is but a shifting shadow in the occasional dim beam of light, Juçe Govón can feel the Moor’s smirk.

"Never mind that, take your