Hunt at the Well of Eternity by Gabriel Hunt, James Reasoner Page A

a smile to Gabriel’s face when he heard it. His first impression of Cierra had been that she was a beautiful but fairly strait-laced academic and museum administrator. But she had demonstrated since a wilder side. The way she had handled the jeep during the pursuit down the hillside told Gabriel that she had been in some tight situations before.
    That was good. He was liable to need a tough, competent ally again before this was over.
    But not today. This day turned out to be a welcome respite for Gabriel Hunt. The expressway climbed and wound through the mountains that surrounded Mexico City, then dipped toward the Gulf of Mexico, turning to parallel that body of water several miles inland. The terrain flattened into plains covered by cultivated fields, interspersed with coffee and banana plantations and areas of oil drilling. The driving was easy, as there wasn’t too much traffic on the expressway.
    Gabriel kept a close eye on the rearview mirror, watching for any signs of pursuit, and he noticed that Cierra often turned around to look behind them, too. Gabriel said, “I’m sorry you had to find out about Esparza like this. I know you considered him a friend.”
    “Not really,” Cierra said. “Not a friend. I appreciated the things he did for the museum, of course, but that was all. We had little in common.”
    “He claimed to have a passion for history and archaeology.”
    Cierra shook her head. “I think the only thing Vladimir really has a passion for is power.”
    “What about money?”
    “That goes hand in hand with the desire for power. You can’t have one without the other.”
    Gabriel nodded. Clearly, Vladimir Antonio de la Esparza was going to be a formidable enemy. But Gabriel had gone up against better men than Esparza, he told himself, and he was still here.
    They reached Villahermosa late that afternoon and found a rundown motel in which to stay. There were plenty of nicer hotels in the city, but that wouldn’t have fit the image of a poor farming couple.
    After taking one look at the neighborhood, they decided to carry all of their supplies into the room rather than leaving them in the pickup. As Gabriel slipped the chain into place on the door, Cierra asked, “Were you bored today?”
    Gabriel frowned. “What do you mean?”
    “No one shot at you all day. That must be a dull day by your standards.”
    That brought a laugh from Gabriel. “Sometimes my life is as mundane as anybody else’s.”
    “Really?”
    “Well…sometimes. Not too often.”
    Cierra smiled. “I think I’ll see if the shower works.”
    She went off into the bathroom, and a few minutes later Gabriel heard the water running in the shower. Through the thin walls, he could hear Cierra turning under its spray, soaping up. He tried to put the image out of his mind; there was still work to take care of. He took off his shirt and removed both flags, which he’d folded and taped to his torso, front and back, in flat, compact bundles. He spread out General Fargo’s personal standard on the bed and sat beside it, leaning over to take a closer look at it.
    The artwork on the flag was fairly crude and of course somewhat faded, but everything was still clear and distinct. Some of the lines, in fact, were darker than the others, Gabriel realized. The distinction was small enough so that it wasn’t likely to be noticed except on close scrutiny. Two such lines made their way in a snaking, parallel path across the hills to the right of the cavalryman figure. Gabriel had assumed at first that those lines just depicted slopes in the hills, but he realized now that wasn’t right. In some places the lines cut across the slopes that the artist had drawn. They ended at the far right of the circular picture in what Gabriel suddenly realized was a tiny letter Z .
    No, he thought as his heart began to slug harder in his chest. It wasn’t a Z. He turned his head so that he was looking at the flag lengthwise, ninety degrees from how it would