Chapter 24

"Admiral Cochrane's Forge," Annja said.

Peering through lush green underbrush, Aidan said, "The place itself is a great deal less prepossessing than the name, I have to say." He muttered a curse and swatted some kind of big green fly that had lit on his bare forearm to sink a probe.

They had parked their rented Toyota on the side of a track off the main road, crossing their fingers it wouldn't got bogged down on uncertain ground. Then they had hiked a quarter mile or so through the woods to reach the outskirts of the foundry.

Though she was in superb shape, and used to hiking cross-country, the humid heat and swarming bugs had Annja wondering if they were being paranoid in their approach. The forge, after all, had a marked blacktop road leading, they now saw, to a lot graded out of the surrounding forest. But even though the occasional dark look and scowl from her companion told her his thoughts ran down the same track she was just as glad they had taken a roundabout route. After what they'd experienced the past week or so, too paranoid might just prove barely paranoid enough.

The smelter was a sprawling rectangular building and seemed to be mostly metal post and rusty sheet metal in construction. Even in the bright daylight the fiery glare was visibly spilling out the front. They could feel heat on their faces a hundred yards off.

"Charming place to work," Aidan said.

"I'm sure their safety standards are as up-to-date as their equipment, too," Annja said. "Still, I guess the heat is easier to endure than starvation – even if you throw in the risk from the occasional splash of molten metal."

A few cars stood parked by the building's rust-streaked flank, several foreign sedans and a battered white Range Rover. They probably belonged to the technical staff and foremen. Annja guessed the workers probably walked.

"I don't see any sign of trouble," Aidan said. "Maybe we did hike all this way for nothing." He took off his bush hat and wiped sweat from his face with a handkerchief. He wore a light blue cotton short-sleeved shirt, now with big half moons of sweat beneath the arms, and his customary blue jeans.

Annja wore a cheap panama hat and her usual field garb of white man's shirt and khaki cargo pants. She had the sleeves rolled down for the same reason she avoided shorts in the heat – to discourage the plentiful and insolent Brazilian insect life.

"I wonder what it's like in the bloody Amazon, with all these bloody bugs they have down here," Aidan said, slapping his bare arm again. It left a smear of red against his pale skin.

"Worse in the Lower Amazon, I imagine. The Upper Amazon where I've been was not quite so bad. Close call, though," Annja said.

She studied him. She wasn't sure how she felt about the previous night. At breakfast, in one of the hotel's restaurants Aidan had been his usual self, not so much bubbling over with humor as voluble about his interests and passions with a dry backing of humor. She thought there had been an extra flush to his normally pink cheeks, but perhaps she'd imagined that. She felt as if her cheeks were a bit rosier, though. She had, however, studiously avoided letting herself think about what had happened between them. Or what it might portend.

"What do you think?" he asked. One thing you could say for him was that he seemed to have little trouble deferring to a woman in a potentially dangerous situation.

She smiled. "I say we go. Race you?"

He touched two fingers to her arm. "Won't it be less obtrusive if we just walk?"

She looked at him a moment. Then she nodded. "Good point." And that's what I get for getting cocky about my action-babe pose.

They strolled out of the brush as casually as if they came this way every day about this time. Some royal-blue-and-orange birds flew up, squalling indignantly. Annja and Aidan walked at a matter-of-fact pace toward the structure, feeling the heat on their faces grow with every step.

"Think they have surveillance cameras?" he asked.

"The place looks as if they're in there listening to an old radio with vacuum tubes," she said. "But we can't take anything for granted. Not with surveillance equipment so cheap these days. Still, does it really make a difference?"

"I suppose not."

They approached the open front of the building. From inside came a roar of noise. Ignoring a door covered in flaking green paint, they walked to the big opening. Annja leaned forward and peered around the wall.

Furnace heat and the stench of hot metal hit her in the face. Even after the heat of the tropical sunlight it was almost staggering.

"Inferno," Aidan whispered by her shoulder. He sounded truly horror-struck.

Through eyes watering from heat and the chemical smell she got an impression of a vast dark face shot through the glow of fires. Great tangled machines loomed and catwalks strung back and forth like a steel spiderweb above. Vast black cauldrons emerged from an enormous yellow furnace mouth, drooling liquid metal; streams of living flame like lava fell into molds, sparks showering and skittering on the floor as they reddened, faded, winked out. A continuous roar of noise sounded, the whoosh of gas jets, the rush of molten metal being poured, hissing and sizzling, and ruling all the ceaseless bellow of the flame.

Black men, bare to the waist, moved through the hellish tumult with almost desperate purpose, carrying long poles with hooks, and outsized tongs. Wiry torsos ran with sweat. The glare reflected and skittered over their safety helmets. The display might have stirred a favorable response inside Annja, who liked looking at well-muscled scantily-clad men as much as the next woman. Instead she found it somewhat frightening and sad.

"How can anybody work in that?" Aidan asked.

"Necessity." Annja said. "I guess if archaeology teaches us anything, it's just how much humans can learn to tolerate if they have to."

"Poor bastards," Aidan said.

"Amen. Let's get in there," Annja replied.

The brightness of the furnace seemed to make the shadows darker, defeating the lights hanging from the ceiling high overhead. There were ample hiding places, even had anyone been looking around. But no one was.

They moved toward the back, keeping close to the left wall. Exhausted crucibles, suspended from a track overhead, were conveyed out another wide opening of the far wall into daylight. Before them an enclosed space intruded onto the main floor, its lone story far below the cavernous ceiling. It appeared to contain an office with windows in its flank showing desks and computer monitors with men in shirtsleeves sitting at them. It struck Annja as being way too close for either comfort or safety to where the fuming cauldrons tipped their cargo into the waiting molds. Seven or eight yards beyond the far side of the structure yawned the mouth of the furnace itself.

Annja stopped, heart in throat.

She ducked behind some kind of great rounded gray-painted metal casing. Aidan duckwalked up next to her. "What is it?" He had to put his mouth to her ear and still practically shout to make himself heard over the tumult.

She pointed. A dozen or more men in dark suits stood confronting office workers in shirtsleeves in front of the office area. All of them wore large silver medallions on chains around their necks. One man wore a suit all of white and cream rather than dark fabric. He loomed above the others and appeared thin as a flagpole.

"It's Highsmith," she said.

"My God," Aidan said. "Those men have guns."

It was true. Sir Martin's followers, at least a dozen in view, held a variety of firearms, some handguns, some long arms – machine pistols, shotguns, assault rifles. Looking around, Annja saw more armed men moving around the work floor. The foundry workers themselves paid scant attention to them. They were probably not unaccustomed to seeing heavily armed men. Houses of the wealthy and even exclusive apartment complexes routinely sported guards carrying submachine guns in Brazil. Or maybe in comparison to the tons of two-thousand-degree liquid metal swaying over their heads and pouring out in great glaring streams like lava, the firearms just didn't seem dangerous.

"What now?" Aidan asked.

"We get in closer."

His expression told her what he thought of that idea. With a flip of his hand he gave her a mock-courtly "you first" gesture.

The White Tree Lodge members seemed preoccupied with keeping an eye on the foundry employees. They weren't looking around to spot people sneaking through the heavy metal machinery on the floor.

Annja and Aidan got within thirty feet of the two groups in front of the door to the office. A burly young Englishman was shouting at a short, dark man with bulging eyes, hair like Brillo pads flanking a sweat-shiny spire of skull, and his tie askew.

"Não, não," the Brazilian was saying. Annja guessed he was the foundry manager. "I do not know what the foreign gentlemen are talking about – "

"Dennis," Sir Martin said. Though he did not seem to raise his voice the name rang clearly audible above all the volcanic noise.

Without warning a short cultist with a shock of unruly dark hair shot the tall and gawky young Brazilian to the manager's left through the knee. The young man fell down howling and thrashing and clutching his leg.

Blood sprayed the immaculate ivory shins of Sir Martin's trousers. The knobbed face showed no reaction. A slight young cultist quickly knelt before his master and began dabbing at the blood spatter with a handkerchief. It only had the effect of broadening the droplets into dark smears.

Aidan tensed as if to lunge. Annja put a restraining hand on his arm.

"We can't just watch," he hissed.

"What do you suggest we do? They've got us out-manned and outgunned."

Aidan frowned furiously at her. "You've got that magical sword!"

"I can't knock bullets out of the air," she said. She looked around nervously. Though it seemed unlikely anybody could have heard their soft-voiced but intense conversation the odds against them were too high for her to take anything for granted.

"But surely you don't mean to do nothing?" Pascoe said.

"We'll do something," she said, wanting to keep things as simple as possible. "But we need to wait for an opportunity."

"But we can't just stand by – "

Annja grabbed him by the arm and put her finger to his lips. His eyes widened in outrage.

"Wait," she said. "The equation just changed."

She tipped her head toward the large front door. After a scowling moment his eyes followed her lead.

More men were striding in out of the brightness of the morning. They were thick-necked men, white, obviously foreigners, though their garb was mostly rough. Their posture suggested arrogance.

They too openly carried guns. Green braided leather thongs circled their thick necks.

Among them walked Mark Peter Stern in a tropical-weight tan suit, a yarmulke on his gleaming gold hair.