The Source - Michael Cordy [140]
Lauren's eyes were open. And she was looking at him.
'She opened them when the baby cried,' said Gunderson, testing Lauren's legs. 'Her reflexes are fine, too.' Her voice cracked with emotion. 'This is impossible. It's a miracle.' She stroked Lauren's left sole and the foot moved away. 'She has feeling and she can move her legs.'
He moved closer and Lauren's eyes followed him. 'Where have I been?' she whispered weakly.
He knelt by the table, not trusting his legs to hold him. 'It doesn't matter now. You're back,' he said. He showed her the baby. 'And now here's someone I want you to meet. Our daughter, Chantal.'
86
Six months later
As the plane landed in Lima's Aeroporto Internacional Jorge Chávez, Ross smiled at Zeb. So much had changed since the first time they had flown here with Sister Chantal.
It had been hard to leave Lauren and the baby at home, but this time it was only for a couple of nights and he was excited about joining up with Hackett again – though not as excited as Zeb.
For the last six months, while he had been engrossed with Lauren and Chantal, Zeb and Hackett had been in Peru working tirelessly on the project; however, they had returned to the States from time to time to talk with the New York banks, visit Lauren and admire Zeb's new goddaughter. Last week, Zeb had joined Lauren at Yale's Beinecke Library for the triumphant presentation of their officially recognized translation of the Voynich Cipher Manuscript. It was now accepted in academic circles that the final section, written in a totally invented synthetic language, would never be translated without the author's original notes. In their submission, neither Lauren nor Zeb revealed the author's name or suggested that the document was anything other than an allegory.
Hackett was waiting for them at the airport, tanned and fit: a different man from the pale asthmatic who had first approached them in Cajamarca. Zeb ran into his arms with such enthusiasm that it dispelled any doubts Ross might have had about how serious an item they had become.
Hackett shook Ross's hand, then embraced him. 'How are Lauren and the little one?'
'They're fine.' And they were fine, thought Ross. They really were. Lauren had made a full recovery and Chantal was a delight. Despite her size at birth she was now of average weight for her age and she was going to be tall. 'How are things this end?'
'Everything's prepared. Come. I'll show you.'
Hackett drove them to the anonymous offices he and Zeb had hired in Lima. Inside the main room, pinned to a corkboard behind the desk, there was a large map of the world. On it, a significant section of the Peruvian Amazon had been sectioned off with red pins linked with ribbon. Ross smiled. It stood slap-bang in the path of Alascon's proposed pipeline. The company would have to go round the area now or abandon the project. On the desk a pile of stationery bore the logo of a stepped pyramid, a ziggurat made of gold bricks. Hackett unlocked a drawer, took out a cheque and handed it to Ross.
He looked at it and whistled. Made out to the Peruvian government, it was for an enormous amount of money. 'I've never seen so many zeroes.' Both Hackett and Zeb had signed it, but there was space for a third signature. Hackett passed him a pen. 'It needs to be signed by all three trustees.'
Ross scribbled his name. 'What now?'
Hackett checked his watch. 'I'll drive you to the hotel so you can freshen up. We're meeting the Minister of the Interior at six to hand over the cheque, followed by a press conference. Though we're paying them shedloads of money, the government wants to gain some environmental Brownie points for enabling a large swathe of virgin jungle to be protected in perpetuity.'
Ross studied the cheque, then handed it back to Hackett. He thought of the gold in the lost city, and how it was finally doing what its ancient owners had originally intended when they had stacked it in the ziggurat: protecting their city and the source of the fountain