Ice Shock(6)

“I was completely amazed to hear about Andres,” Rodrigo says, sipping his Cobra beer, shaking his head in wonder and dismay. “And to think that I actually saw him just before! That gave me a really weird feeling.”

We all stop eating and slowly look up, staring at Rodrigo.

Mom speaks first. “You were in Mexico in March?”

Rodrigo smiles, puzzled. “No, I mean I saw him while he was still in England.”

“Rodrigo,” says Mom, almost whispering, “he was in Mexico for weeks before the plane crash.”

“You’re sure it was him?” I ask. “Not just someone who looked like him?”

Rodrigo shrugs, bemused. “Well, definitely; I spoke to him!”

It’s as though a switch flips inside me. Instinctively I know that Rodrigo’s on to something. “What day?” I insist. “Can you remember the exact date?”

Rodrigo sips his beer again. The sudden tension around our table seems to get to him. “It was June sixteenth. Yes, had to be. Quite early in the morning. I had a concert that evening, and your dad said what a shame it was that he couldn’t be there.”

We almost drop our forks.

“June sixteenth … ?”

Rodrigo nods. “Something wrong?”

“My dad died on June sixteenth,” I say. “Sometime that night, Mexico time.”

And flew away from the secret city of Ek Naab on June 15, the night of the UFO sighting—the six Muwans, one flown by Dad, five from the NRO …

Rodrigo stares at me, dumbstruck.

I get my question in before Mom can say anything: “Was he with anyone?”

“Yes,” Rodrigo says, looking at us in turn, now utterly bemused by our reaction. “A couple of guys.”

“What did they look like?”

“Well dressed,” says Rodrigo. “Shirts and ties. Andres introduced them as fellow archaeologists. From the United States.”

“Archaeologists don’t wear ties … ,” Mom says. Her voice sounds hollow.

She’s right. I knew it—Dad was captured by those evil NRO agents. I can hardly sit still.

Ollie hasn’t said a single word so far, but now she speaks up: “Where was this?”

“Saffron Walden,” Rodrigo replies, “a little town near Cambridge. We were doing a concert in a church there … music from the latest recording …”

I want to leave the restaurant immediately, go somewhere quiet, and think about this. But Mom’s reaction is so extreme that it takes my mind off everything—for the moment.

Mom faints. She literally fades out, right there at the table. It doesn’t last long, but when the paramedics arrive, they diagnose low blood pressure and shock. Poor Rodrigo can’t believe the effect of his innocent comment.

Mom is driven home in the ambulance. Rodrigo, Ollie, and I take a taxi, stopping to drop off Ollie, who kisses me on the cheek when she says good-bye. Back at our house, Rodrigo sits with my mom, making her tea with a splash of brandy. Maybe I should be more astonished at the whole event, but somehow I’m not. I’ve seen this coming, the wearing away of Mom’s strength. There’s a cloud of worry floating around her these days. I just know it centers on me.

Rodrigo takes me aside. “What’s going on?”

If Mom falls apart again, I have to get help—I can’t do this on my own. I have to tell someone something. It’s like a dam struggling to hold in a flood; something’s got to give.





3


Well, it’s no use. I won’t be sleeping much tonight either. The dream is back. Not just that but I can hear my mom snoring next door. The doctor gave her something to help her sleep and it’s put her into mega-deep napping mode.

I do what I always do when I can’t sleep—Latin homework. Usually works like a charm. But the latest batch isn’t that dull—it’s a history of Julius Caesar’s military campaigns. Apparently he invented a whole new code—a cipher—for communicating with his front line of troops. Since I’m really getting into codes, it actually keeps me awake.

I came close to spilling the beans with Rodrigo del Pozo yesterday. He caught on to how freaked we were with what he said about seeing Dad in Saffron Walden.

“You know something about this, I can tell,” he said just before he left, and gave me a hard stare. “Your mom, she was shocked. Absolutely stunned. But you! You hardly flinched.”

“It’s probably something to do with that Mayan archaeologist who used to live in Saffron Walden,” I said. At least that could be true, so I actually met his eye. “Dad sometimes mentioned him. Maybe he was checking something out?”