"Crystal Skull" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacGregor Rob)

Monica smiled, took a step back. "I better go. Thanks again. It was nice."
"Good night."
Pierce watched her cross the lobby and head for the elevator. As soon as the elevator door closed behind her, he crossed to the beach side of Ocean Drive. He took in a deep breath of night air, gazed at the moonlight reflecting off the Atlantic.
After a moment, he leaned against a palm tree, opened his camera bag. He kept his eye on the hotel as he fixed his zoom lens onto the camera body, then put it away. He lowered the bag to the ground and turned his full attention to the hotel. He didn't have to wait long. A couple of minutes later, he saw Monica retrace her steps across the lobby and leave. He wasn't surprised.
Her story didn't ring true to him. He'd realized it when she'd slipped up and said she knew that the Chinese restaurant he'd mentioned was in the Grove. The place had been in Little Havana for years, and had reopened in the Grove only a couple of months ago. He didn't have any idea why she would lie to him, but now he was curious. He wanted to know who she was.
She headed away from the beach, walking at a swift pace. Pierce trailed well behind her, walking on the opposite side of the street. It was still before midnight; plenty of cars and people were around to make it easy for him to remain inconspicuous. He had an idea where she would lead him, and he was right. When she neared the Jack of Clubs, she approached a white VW Cabriolet, unlocked the door, and slid behind the wheel.
Pierce hurried ahead another hundred feet, unlatching the strap on his camera bag as he ran. He ducked inside a doorway a half a block away from the car. Dropping down on one knee, he took out his camera and pulled out the zoom lens to its full extent.
As the car started and the lights came on, he focused on the license plate. He lowered the camera and watched the car pull away. He wouldn't have any trouble remembering what he'd read. Monica had a personalized license plate: MAYA-2.


6
In the dream, the crystal skull rested in the middle of a table. He was seated on one side of it, Monica on the other. She was dressed like a gypsy and stared intently into the skull, seeking to divine something. The jaws of the skull were moving, speaking. What it said was important, but Pierce couldn't quite hear, couldn't understand.
Suddenly Monica's hand and arm were sliding into the skull's mouth; it was devouring her. He grabbed her other arm and pulled. But the mouth kept swallowing her, and suddenly the jaws clamped onto his own hand and he was being dragged down after her.
The peal of the phone punctured the dream; the reality hissed out of it and he rolled over, blinking hard against the light. He patted the table until he found the receiver and answered in a gravelly voice.
"Good morning, Nicholas."
The voice was cheery and familiar, but Pierce couldn't place it.
"It's Ray Andrews. Hope I didn't wake you."
He cleared his throat, sat up. "Ray, hello. No, it's okay." He rubbed his face, trying to clear the sleep from his head. A vague memory of his dream, something about the crystal skull, jumbled together with the woman he'd met, tracked across his mind.
"You sure?"
He looked over at the clock on his bed stand, saw it was almost eight-thirty. "It's time I got up."
"How are you feeling? I read about what happened to you."
"I'm okay, Ray. Just a lump on the head. Appreciate your concern."
"I'm glad you're all right, because we need to get together as soon as possible."
Pierce cleared his throat again. "What's up?"
"I'm the one who hired you."
* * * *
An hour later, Pierce was crossing the MacArthur Causeway when traffic slowed to a stop as the drawbridge rose. He knew he'd be stuck for several minutes, suspended above Biscayne Bay. He shifted into neutral and pulled up the emergency brake. He lowered the back of his seat a notch and gazed out over the aquamarine bay. He saw in the distance the vague outline of the Rickenbacker Causeway, which he would take to reach Key Biscayne, where he was to meet Andrews.
His front pocket bulged from the roll of cash. Andrews hadn't asked about the money, and a couple of grand was nothing to him; the man was a multimillionaire. But Pierce was still going to give it back. He didn't like being indebted to anyone, especially Andrews. After all, he was hardly as naive as he'd been when he'd met the man.
That had been the summer of his sophomore year at Columbia. He'd answered an ad in the student newspaper that had said: _"Help wanted, international travel, Spanish required."_ The telephone number had been Andrews's. It hadn't taken Pierce long to figure out that the job involved being an accessory to an international marijuana smuggling scheme, and at first he'd wanted nothing to do with it. But Andrews had convinced him that he would act only as an intermediary, setting up the time and place of exchanges, delivering messages. For Pierce, no money and no drugs were involved.
The summer job had meant four trips to Santa Marta, Colombia, and had earned him $3,200 tax-free. That fall, he and Andrews had gotten an apartment together. Those days had been a time of almost childlike innocence, when drugs were new and mysteriously mind-expanding, instead of mind-destroying; when only the cops carried guns; when cocaine was only a rumor; and when those in the business lived by the countercultural motto: You got to be honest to live outside the law.
Andrews had majored in business and philosophy and had continued operating his importation and distribution network while attending classes. He'd reaped windfall profits from his cannabis connections, and by the end of the academic year he was already starting to invest his profits in legitimate businesses, some of them small, high-risk, high-tech ventures involving the manufacture of what was then a virtually unknown product called the microchip.
Pierce remembered Andrews as generous, but obsessed with amassing wealth. He'd once confided to Pierce that it was a mystery to him why so many of their friends seemed ambivalent about seeking their own pots of gold. Pierce knew that Andrews considered him one of them, and that Andrews would soon move on to a new circle of friends.
Maybe it was his unstable childhood that had provoked the search for quick wealth. He remembered Andrews telling him that he was lucky to have grown up with a father who came home from work every day and a mother who stayed at home to raise the family. Andrews's memories were of a father who was in the air force and a mother who worked in a mill. His mother, he'd once told Pierce, had been obsessed with her fading youth and had started drinking after his father walked out for good. By age ten, Andrews was living in the homes of relatives and family friends, and by thirteen he was working his first job after school each day.
The next fall, his senior year, Pierce saw less and less of his former roommate. Andrews arrived on campus driving a new Porsche he'd paid for with cash, and he no longer needed to share the rent with anyone. A couple of years after graduation, Pierce saw an article in _Esquire_ listing Raymond Andrews as one of the top twenty-five young millionaires in America. There was little doubt at that point that his old roommate's ambitions were quickly being fulfilled, and that he was no longer relying on New York pot-smokers.
Over the years, he'd read about his success in commodities and foreign currency investments. He'd financed two blockbuster movies and others that had fared well. He had been president and major stockholder of World Cable Network before selling his interest and buying an airline, which he'd taken from insolvency to prosperity in three years, renaming it Tropic Air. He owned a real estate development company, large land holdings, restaurants, a shopping mall, and God knew what else. He was a financial whiz, worth more than three hundred million ... and counting. But he was much more than just another wealthy, successful businessman. He considered himself a man of vision, one who saw a future in which mankind emerges from conflict and chaos.
Pierce didn't see Andrews in person for almost fifteen years. Then suddenly one day he'd received an engraved invitation to the dedication of the new headquarters of Tropic Air in Miami. He and Tina were still married, and she'd been stunned to find out that he knew Andrews, that they'd been roommates.
He remembered Andrews speaking from a platform in front of the new building. He was in his element, and charisma emanated from him like a hypnotic scent. It was more than his handsome face, the authority in his voice, or his demeanor. Andrews was born to galvanize a crowd. He commanded your attention, made you feel as if he were talking to you and only you and that he was putting into words what you had been thinking yourself. Here was a man, you thought, who could not only put this vision of a better world into words, but who had the ability to carry it out. Even Pierce, who knew him like no one else in the crowd, had been caught up in the talk that day.
"The course I will follow from this day on will be dedicated to building a peaceful and prosperous world, a world community. Some say, why bother, enjoy your wealth. Others say, nothing can be done; the tide of the times is washing us over the edge of the world into oblivion, the end of history.
"But I say, that is the flat-world vision. And I see the world and mankind as multidimensional. With proper guidance to avoid the inevitable pitfalls, we are headed into a holistic future where mankind prospers in a vision larger than the ordinary. In science as well as society, new paradigms, or visions of reality, are emerging. Indeed, the era of the New Enlightenment is almost upon us. Of course, we may see instances of chaos as our vision shifts. But keep in mind that no system can be completely understood by the properties of its parts. I promise you that through it all, the power of the vision, the dynamics of the whole, will radiate through the darkness."
Andrews stepped down from the podium and was immediately surrounded by a throng of reporters and admirers. On the edge of the crowd, Tina urged Pierce to approach him. "Go say hi to him, Nicky. He must want to see you."
"He probably won't even recognize me."
"Of course he will."
Pierce made his way through the crowd with Tina behind him. He wasn't sure why, but he felt ambivalent about talking to Andrews. When he was within a few feet of him, he saw a hulking man who looked like a professional wrestler and realized that it was Andrews's bodyguard.
He ignored the man's cold stare and after a moment caught Andrews's eye. "Hello, Ray."
Andrews looked blankly at him a moment, then his face lit up, and he grinned broadly. "Nicholas Pierce. Great to see you. Hang on a minute, will you?"
He greeted several more people, told them to help themselves to the food and drinks that were being served from long tables on the lawn. Then he excused himself, and motioned for Pierce to follow him. Pierce took Tina by the hand and noticed that the bodyguard stayed close to Andrews.
They stopped near a tall, attractive blond woman, and Andrews introduced her as his wife, Ginger. "Hon, Nicholas is an old college friend, and I bet this is -- "
"Tina, my wife," Pierce finished.
"Mr. Andrews, it is so wonderful to meet you. I am a great admirer, and I did not believe it when Nick received your invitation. He never told me you were friends."
Andrews turned to Tina, looked at her as if no one else existed. His eyes glistened, his toothy smile brilliant, affable. At close range, Andrews permeated a sense of vitality, enthusiasm, and undeniable charm. He took Tina's hand, leaned into the introduction giving her a full second of his presence. His voice was smooth as silk. "Very nice, nice to meet you. Nick always had a wonderful eye for beauty," he confided. "I see that attribute of his has only improved with time. You're lovely."