The Source - Michael Cordy [48]
'The what?' said Zeb.
'Snakes,' said Sister Chantal, calmly. 'Very poisonous small ones you can easily step on if you're not careful.'
'I rest my case,' said Zeb, crossing her arms. 'I'm not going anywhere without an expert jungle guide.'
It seemed that their desperate quest was about to fizzle out before it had even begun. Perhaps this was a sign that he should go home to Lauren and accept whatever was going to happen. He glanced back at Amazonas Tours. A couple stood outside, holding hands. A little girl sat on the man's shoulders, twirling his hair in her fingers. Ross remembered the numerous occasions when Lauren had pointed out similar family units. 'That'll be us one day, Ross,' she'd said. Not any more, he thought. Not if she doesn't recover. Not if the baby dies.
He was about to launch into a speech about how he was going on whether the women joined him or not, when the man in the safari suit stepped into view. He was shorter and stockier than Ross with a clean-shaven ruddy face and immaculately combed hair. He exuded the subtle smell of soap. 'I apologize if I'm intruding,' he said, in a very English accent, 'but I couldn't help overhearing your predicament in Amazonas Tours. I believe I may be able to help.' He extended his hand to Ross. 'The name's Nigel Hackett, and I have a proposal. May I suggest we retire to that bar over there and discuss it?'
27
Nigel Hackett couldn't help himself.
'Please don't do that. Your towel's sucio,' he said to the waiter in the Heladeria Holanda Bar as the waiter placed a bottle of Inca Kola on the table and wiped his glass. Hackett noticed his three potential clients watching him and smiled apologetically. 'I do hate it when they wipe a freshly washed glass with a filthy towel.'
All his life, Nigel Hackett had done everything that was expected of him. As a sickly child, beset by allergies, he had gone out of his way to please his ambitious parents. When they had invested in a first-class education for their precious only child – Holmewood House in Kent, then Charterhouse and a medical degree at Cambridge – he had passed all his exams and met their expectations. He had qualified as a doctor, completed a short service commission in the British Army Medical Corps, then settled down as a GP near Guildford. He married a girl his parents approved of, then did everything to please her: earning enough money and status to give her a comfortable life as the wife of a Home Counties doctor.
Despite his apparent conformity, however, Nigel Hackett harboured a secret. Ever since he was a boy, when the legendary adventurer Matt Lincoln had visited his school to lecture on the lost pre-Incan civilizations of Peru and the Amazon, he had dreamt of becoming an explorer. He wanted to discover the fabled lost city for which Lincoln had searched in vain, the mother megalopolis in the heart of the Amazon Basin from which all South American civilizations sprang. Hackett had told no one of this dream, though. Not until his thirty-first birthday, when his wife had left him for her salsa-dance teacher and broken his heart. Three years ago, he had sold up, paid off his divorce settlement and set up a river-running outfit on the Amazon. The plan was to live on the boat, support himself by ferrying tourists to the great sites and use his spare time to follow his dream: exploring the jungle to discover lost cities – and their gold.
Dreams rarely come true.
Hackett wasn't a natural explorer. His allergies and obsessive fear of dirt were manageable in England – even when he had been in the army – but not in the jungle. The soil made his nose itch and his eyes water. He had to wear thick glasses, rather than contact lenses, to correct his poor eyesight. Though he had made some good contacts and friends,