“Why?” she asked. “Of all times, why now? I mean, we’re finally making progress here.”

Moore took a deep breath and pulled the reading glasses from his face. “I’m sixty-three,” he reminded her. “Too damn old to go traipsing around the jungle in search of lost cities. That’s a job for the young—and the foolish, I might add—and you seem to fit at least one of those categories,” he said. “I’ll let you decide which. Besides, Gibbs is well aware of my aversion to snakes, mosquitoes and poisonous frogs. I expect he’s just trying to save me from all that.”

“That’s a crock of shit,” she said. “You’ve been begging Gibbs to send us out there with the snakes and frogs since the day we got here.” Her eyes tightened their focus, as if to prevent him from hiding something. “Give me the real reason.”

Moore faked a smile. “Two reasons,” he said. “First, Gibbs thinks you’re ready, and he’s right—you are. You have been for some time. I’ve just been selfishly holding you back. And second, he’s worried. He thinks we’re getting close, but he fears someone else may be closer. He’s afraid they may already have people in the field.”

She was sick of hearing about Gibbs and his paranoia. The operation was being run so quietly that they had no staff, a shoestring budget and nonstandard channels for basic communications. “Impossible,” she said. “The only people who even know the whole story are you, him and me.”

“Yes,” Moore replied quietly. “The only three.”

As she worked out what he was suggesting, what Gibbs had suggested without speaking the words, her face betrayed her once again. “I’m not going to listen to this. If he thinks—”

Moore interrupted her. “He didn’t say it, of course, but he wonders. He’s not sure about me anymore. We argue too much. Besides, he thinks you’re the stronger horse now. You’re young and full of ambition. He figures you’ll do almost anything to make this work. I, on the other hand, am not so young and might not be as willing to risk my neck—or other, more vital body parts—on what could very well be a fool’s errand. He’s afraid I might even look at this as a chance to retire with something more than a measly pension. And he surely can’t afford that.”

“This is ridiculous,” she said.

“It’s not all bad,” Moore insisted. “He’s got one big carrot to dangle in front of you—one I wouldn’t care about either—promotion. You pull this off and he’ll give you a full director’s position, with a group of regionals working under you.”

As he paused, she looked away—unwilling to answer.

“I know this isn’t how you want it to happen but you should look at this for what it is—a chance to prove yourself.”

“What this is,” she said emphatically, “is more bullshit. No one else would have to do something like this for a promotion.”

Moore’s face turned serious but still kindly. “You’re younger than the other field reps, and you’re the only one at your level who didn’t come directly from the Agency. Those are two disadvantages. The fact that you’re close to me is another. With that kind of background, you’ll always have to do more. You have to beat the others just to draw even with them.”

She didn’t want to listen. Despite her rapid ascent in the NRI, she continued to feel like an outsider. And why not—Gibbs ran the organization like a private club: there were those who could do no wrong, “Gibbs’ Boys,” and those who were looked on as perhaps problems in waiting, staff with loyalties that ran to the organization itself rather than directly to Gibbs. Chief among them was Moore—and by extension, Danielle. Outsiders.

“You have a choice here,” Moore added, not allowing any time for self-pity. “You can take this task and see it through, or you can quit, fly back to the States and confirm everything Gibbs thinks about you in the first place: that you’re a good second but not a first.”

She ground her teeth, the suggestion infuriating her. The project was a long shot at best, setting her up for failure. They had no real budget, no backup and no middle ground. Either they would find what they were looking for or they wouldn’t. And no amount of effort or explanation could make the second outcome acceptable.

She exhaled, visibly frustrated. And yet, as angry as she was at the circumstances surrounding the change, she couldn’t deny feeling a thrill at the prospect of finally being put in charge. For the past few years, she and Moore had worked as almost equal partners. Through no fault of his own, Moore received the lion’s share of the credit, with others seeing her as mostly a beneficiary of his expertise. One thing about a long shot—if she could somehow pull it off, she would prove everyone wrong, prove to Director Gibbs and the rest of them that she was more than a good second, that she was a force to be reckoned with.

“You know damn well I won’t quit,” she said. “But I’ll promise you this, when I get back to Washington with this thing in my hand, I’m going to march into Gibbs’ office and shove it down his damn throat.”

He smiled. “Just make sure I’m sitting ringside.”

Moore played the good soldier to the best of his abilities, but Danielle could sense his anger and frustration. He clearly hated being moved aside. Not too far down the road, a bigger move was coming: forced retirement. At that point she’d be his legacy. It made her even more determined not to let him down.

As she steeled herself for the work ahead, Moore’s face grew serious. “You must know,” he said, “things have gotten more dangerous. And not just because you’ll be leading on your own. There’s another party involved now, an outside player.”

She listened intently.

“We lost our transportation this morning,” he said. “The guy took another charter. I offered to beat whatever they were paying, but he didn’t want anything to do with us. That makes our porters and our transportation all in one week.”

Danielle thought about the men who’d backed out. At least one of the porters they’d hired had been assaulted and badly beaten, while the rest of the group had just disappeared.

“Not a coincidence,” she said.

“No, it’s not,” Moore said, sliding his glasses into a jacket pocket. “It doesn’t really matter anyway. Gibbs was going to replace them. He’s got a hand-picked crew coming in, and they’re not locals either.”

“Who?” she asked.

“Private security first, led by a man named Verhoven, a South African mercenary. Well thought of, from what I hear. He’ll be arriving the day after tomorrow, along with his crew. Then there’s a pilot Gibbs wants you to meet: an American who goes by the name of Hawker. He’s known in Manaus but he spends much of the year crop-dusting for the owners of a coffee plantation a few hours drive from here.”

“What’s he doing down here?”

“Ex-CIA,” he said. “Black-flagged, apparently.”

“Then why are we using him?” she asked.

Moore smiled like a jackal but he didn’t reply. He didn’t need to.

“Has it really come to that?”

“Gibbs doesn’t trust anyone now. He’s convinced we have a leak and he wants people with no connection to the Institute. He thinks that should make them clean—and he’s right, at least to begin with. It doesn’t mean someone can’t get to them later, but it gives you some insulation.”

As Moore took a sip of water, Danielle realized he’d slipped back into the role of mentor. This was it, she guessed, the last words of advice she’d receive for a while.

“What’s their cover?”

“No cover,” he said. “Hawker’s already here and Verhoven and his group are coming over the fence, not through it.”

“And their clearance?”

Moore shook his head. “No one’s cleared to know what you know,” he said. “Not them or the civilians. They can know about the stones, the ruins, the city you’re looking for. Everything that’s obvious. But beyond that they stay in the dark.”

And that was the rub—the burden of leadership on this particular expedition. They were ostensibly planning to follow Blackjack Martin’s tracks into the rainforest in search of what would be an astounding discovery, a branch of the Mayan race living in the Amazon, thousands of miles from the rest of Mayan civilization; but there was more to it than that, a goal that coincided with the search, one that the others would never be informed of.