The Mythical City

Chapter 2.1

At that moment one cry of another of the outlaws came to his attention, and he walked away from the woman. When he returned, Teresa could see that he was holding between his fingers the piece that had she found in the cenote. She had completely forgotten the finding, but as she saw it again she lamented that the outlaws had found it as they stirred among her belongings. Camilo addressed to her:

“Well, well, now you'll immediately tell me where you found this.”

Teresa was sufficiently scared and had no intention to let her finding jeopardize her integrity. Anyway she knew that her captors would hardly leave the object in her possession, and she was already resigned to losing it. Therefore she answered but without giving details on the opportunity and the meeting place. The Cuban appeared meditative, went back on his steps and returned after a few minutes with another character that had remained in the background until then. It was a man of between forty five to fifty years, very pale skin, blond hair cut to snuff, of strong German or Slavic appearance.

The newcomer turned to Camilo in a language that sounded like Russian to Teresa. Surprisingly, the Cuban replied in the same language, and then approached her again.

“Why are you working on this area?” he asked imperative.

“It is a scarcely explored area, while there are myths about several Mayan cities of the classic period, which have not yet been found.”

“What does the piece that you found represent?”

“I did not have time to analyze it yet, let me go and I´ll do it.” said Teresa in a challenging tone.

“Were you looking for a piece in particular?” Camilo ignored the haughty response the young woman had given.

“No” replied Teresa.

“Then you were not looking for the pectoral?” insisted the Cuban.

“What pectoral are you talking about?”

The man hesitated before showing his cards.

“The Ix Chan Ahau piece” said finally.

Teresa was surprised by the response. She had vaguely heard of the legendary Mayan Queen, daughter of a god, and therefore a semi divine figure herself. What was striking for her was that the legend belonged to a pre-classic period, when it was presumed that the Matriarchy still reigned and the Queens-goddesses dominated the pantheon.

“A mythological character would hardly own a real pectoral” responded Teresa with an involuntary pedantry.

Camilo did not respond, and both men walked away from Teresa, leaving her under the Sun light, which on its journey to the West began to illuminate the clearing of the forest where they were.

An hour passed, and thirst began to harass Teresa. She asked water each one of the captors who passed close to her, but they did not pay her any attention. Finally the alleged Russian approached with a jug in hand. Looking at her from above, he poured out a bit of a dark liquid in the sand. Teresa looked desperately how the precious liquid was dumped. Seeing the feverish gaze of the young woman, the man knelt down and filled with the liquid a vessel he was carrying in his left hand. The women believed that he was going to make her suffer approaching the jug and then moving it away, but was relieved when he put it in her mouth. She lifted the torso as far as the ties would allow and drank avidly. When he was convinced that the young woman had satiated their thirst, the Russian moved away. He had not issued a sound in all that time.

A few minutes later, Teresa became aware of an extreme dryness in her mouth, as if the palate was cracked due to the lack of moisture; then a veil slowly covered her senses. The girl realized in her last moment of lucidity that the Russian had made her ingest a narcotic or sedative, and fell asleep.

When she woke up she was still on her cot, but without ties; she then tried to raise her body but felt dizzy and feared falling down. Her view clarified gradually, and saw Camilo sitting on a stool in front of her; it somewhat reassured her seeing that his face and attitude were relaxed.

“What do they want with me? Why was I drugged?” She asked, realizing that her voice was plaintive, which disgusted her. She did not like to show weakness, nor even is that situation.

“Nothing else, Princess” replied Camilo “Yuri has already interrogated you through me.”

The attitude of the Cuban had less hostility which had displayed before, and a certain amount of disinterest. Teresa thought that whatever they wanted from her, they had obtained it. She stood up from her bed and hesitantly walked a few steps. She had already identified one of the captors, a very young boy, looking at her with a mixture of admiration and shyness. Teresa knew very well how to assert her feminine charms to achieve her ends, and was supposedly casually approaching the boy.

“What are you eating?”Asked she. The young man looked confused as she addressed him.

“Corn Cakes" he replied blushing “would you like a little?"

“I'm dying from hunger and thirst.” Teresa felt that she was already getting control of the situation.

When the boy, who said his name was Antonio, offered her drink and food, she headed for a few bushes to sit in a root, making sure to stay hidden from view of the rest of the bandits, dragging Antonio after her. The boy was standing looking her eat. While she ate and during a quarter of an hour, Teresa questioned him cleverly, and obtained the information she was looking for, at least to the extent that Antonio knew it.

The contingent of fifteen men - indeed several of them almost children - was formed by a mix of former guerrillas, peasants, d**g dealers and a couple of hit men, all of them hired by the Russian named Yuri, former member of the secret service of his country and his Cuban henchman Camilo, who had been active in various insurgent movements in Africa and the Middle East. As far as Antonio could understand, they were in search of Mayan relics, but not by randomly looting suspected archaeological sites, since they seemed to be looking for something very specific, and that should be in that area. Teresa recalled the enigmatic question made by Camilo on the chest-piece of a mythical Maya Queen.

Antonio had approached as close as possible when Yuri interrogated the woman through his Cuban henchman; he had done so more for interest to know something about Teresa, who had obviously dazzled him, that about the answers to the questions that Yuri made. Thus, Teresa learned that they had mixed drops of burundanga in the drink that Yuri gave her. This d**g, local name of scopolamine, produced a state of stupor and loss of awareness and control over the own volition of the drugged, and it was used for interrogation since the time of the Gestapo, as well as by rapists and kidnappers.

The boy had heard the questions asked to Teresa about a special archaeological piece, not getting to understand what it was. But he had paid particular attention to personal questions made to the young woman. Thus he had learned her name, profession and activities. It had especially captured his attention the Teresa´s narration of how she had sought in a site of the underground river led by her perceptive powers. The Russian appeared to have been particularly interested in those powers. Finally, Antonio remembered clearly when the young woman had expressed her belief that the powers came in direct line of one of his ancestors, an Indian princess.

“I said that I descend from a Mayan Princess?” Teresa answered surprised.

“So I heard, Miss” responded Antonio with security.

In reality, this intuition was around Teresa´s head at times, probably from her trances, but she had never obtained a clear definition in this respect, and she had failed to confirm hard facts with her parents. Whatever it was, the secret was lost in past generations. The fact that in a state of hypnosis the issue would have come to light deeply intrigued the young woman.

“When the Russian learned of your powers of "divination"” added Antonio, giving his own interpretation of these powers “he asked again you to think about the piece that they are looking for, to be able to find it, but he did not seem satisfied with the result.”

Teresa was convinced that no additional useful information could be obtained from the boy, and quietly departed from him. At that time Camilo approached, and with bad ways lashed out Antonio:

“What you were talking about with women?”

“About... nothing. She asked me something to eat” replied troubled the boy.

“Do not go near her any more” ordered abruptly the Cuban.

Teresa had now much data processing in his head. Her captors were indeed a group of bandits, but unlike what she had thought at the beginning, were not related to the smuggling of narcotic drugs, but with the traffic of archaeological objects, and apparently with precise objectives, which would boast a certain organization behind them, in order to select those of special interest and eventually sell them or dispose of them if they were found.

However she did not have much time to reflect. At an order of the Russian leader, the group set out to leave. For a moment Teresa hoped that they would leave her behind, but this expectation was short lived. She was hand-tied and forced to walk through the jungle at the quick pace of the men, accustomed to such marches. After an hour of walking, they came to the edge of a dusty path, flanked by tall trees and dense vines. There was waiting an ancient truck, to which the men climbed, forcing Teresa to go with them. Once up, Camilo covered the eyes of the woman with a dirty rag, no doubt to prevent her from recognizing the roads they were going through. In a way this gave the woman the hope she was going to be freed alive at a later step.

Teresa calculated that they traveled a couple of hours of hard rattle, after which the vehicle stopped, the box of the truck was opened and the girl noticed that men descended from the vehicle. However she remained on board and the travel continued. Teresa had the feeling that she was not alone in the rear part of the truck, although she could not perceive noises since any sound was undoubtedly covered by the own vehicle´s.

After a new journey of at least another couple of hours, the truck slowed, circulating at very low speeds, Teresa felt that someone was untying her hands, taking her below the armpits and dragging her to the edge of the vehicle. Then she felt that she was lifted in the air and thrown it into the vacuum.

She fell down and rolled for several seconds, until something stopped her movement. Sore and bruised she sat down on the floor and withdrew his eyes band. The bright light after several hours of total darkness forced her to close my eyes, and then slowly opened them to become accustomed to the light. She found that she was hurt and dirty, but at least free. She inspected the surroundings and saw that the path that they had been following now expanded in one of the directions. Out of the tracks on the dusty ground, no remaining traces of the truck that had brought her were left; once she was thrown away it had surely accelerated and continued its course. Teresa took charge of his situation: she was lost in some wild and isolated place, and had no idea in what direction to steer.