Letter to Mr. Diamond

Dear Bob,

I hope this letter finds you well. Or, more to the point, I hope this letter finds you. I’d love to tell you where I am at the moment, but I can never keep the circles of hell in the proper order. For simplicity’s sake, let’s just say I am somewhere in Peru, somewhere in time. The last town/village/two hut stretch we passed through lacked both electricity and running water. And it’s not that I mind using a late night rainstorm as an impromptu shower, but, well, more on that later.

It’s Paris, by the way. Paris Mulhare. I have a fictional cousin called India, but she’s a little plain and that’s another story entirely.

Anyway. In the event that you are not keeping track of our whereabouts (which would be foolish of you given our track record of costly mayhem), we have traveled the heights and depths of Peru in search of a lost Incan city or some such where legend has it great treasures are buried. All the other core band members are here – myself, Sheila, Jack and (Up)Chuck. With no Sheratons, Radissons or Marriotts in the vicinity, our odds of running into Alex Architect have gone below nil. We are accompanied by thrill-seeking heiress Patricia Singer (though the thrills she’s found in Chuck’s bed are open to debate), Just-One-Jake – who I am certain serves some function other than hitting on me, but I’ve been avoiding him so long I’ve forgotten – and Dr. Temple, an anthropologist / archaeologist who is our resident expert in things Incan. Leading our trek is an American called Garret, a local called Alberto, and a ghost called Donna. Oh, sure, she used to be alive and well, but the evil spirits put an end to that. I know I shouldn’t be putting too much stock into this whole ‘evil spirits’ watching over our journey thing, but generations of suspicious Hawai’ian ancestors have had at least some effect on my DNA. So when a four-hundred-year-old shaman ambled up and warned me that we had best not forget to make an offering to appease Apu, of course I took her seriously. Unfortunately, I don’t think Apu appreciated my pearl earrings as much as I used to, what with things going the way they are.

Where was I?

Oh, yes. The services of Garrett and company had been engaged to lead us by horseback from Cusco to this scenic spot near the base of the feather mountain (which, might I add, is really a volcano – dormant we hope). Let me just say at this point that the phrase "by horseback" may also be open for debate as several members of our party (notably Chuck and Jack) seem to cover most of the trail by the expedient means of falling off their horses and rolling downhill, this on a daily basis. Although Chuck – evidently lulled into a false sense of security as we rode through a valley – did manage to fall onto level terrain, he did tumble into a mud pit occupied by a venomous snake. Fortunately, Sheila and I had had the presence of mind to pack snake bite kits and Jack has been pressed into service to patch both Chuck’s and Patricia’s snake-induced puncture wounds (on separate occasions), not to mention wrapping and rewrapping the bandages around Just-One-Jake’s gaping head wound, cleaning and bandaging Chuck and Patricia’s rat bites (sustained during an amorous – and noisy – excursion to some ruins), and tending to Chuck’s monkey bites (sustained while Chuck was hiding in some bushes – an event which terminated when the last remaining monkey to beset Chuck made off with the big man’s Beretta. I am only sorry the monkeys did not filch Chuck’s perimeter alarm sensors as they kept us up most of last night).

If I seem to be treating Chuck a bit harshly… well, I’d rather explain it than excuse it. Chuck has been on my bus list since our first encounter with a man called Ortiz who appears to expect some financial recompense to allow us "safe" passage back to Cusco. Chuck, in a move I can’t help but liken to the notorious computer-date blunder, informed Ortiz that such arrangement were "Paris’s department". Sheila did her best to cover by declaring herself "Sheila from Paris", but really. To announce that you are even remotely traveling with a known smuggler… we might just as well have sent a telegram to the entire South American underground announcing our intention to remove Pre-Columbian artifacts from their soil. At any rate, this Ortiz is a former member of Shining Path and now commands a cadre of commandos who prefer Harley horses to Peruvian llamas for their transportation. Chuck is of the belief that he can remove Ortiz from the landscape without any backlash from the authorities, which may be true, but there are those cc riders to contend with. Chuck is also of the belief that, beyond keeping me safe in the past, he has also "saved" me from harm.

Not bloody likely.

He claims to have "saved" me from the Quickening (check your notes). To the best of my recollection, I met up with Chuck and Rossi while I was engaged in my own escape attempt and Richard and Mitchell were bombing the club. In my world, that was a team effort. Versailles? I got myself out of the palace, thank-you-very-much, and when I was re-captured (okay, so that wasn’t my best moment), it was Jack who offered his life in exchange for mine and it was Jack and Sheila who took down the assassin set to take me down at a restaurant in Texas (check your notes). Further, it was Dana who saved our collective asses on the reservation while Chuck was busy weighing down a dead Russian with still more led.

In short, I think this whole Viracoha thing has made Chuck delusional. See, it seems the local inhabitants have determined Chuck to be the return of one of their gods of creation. As if Chuck needed any further reason to swell. And if none of this is enough to explain my Chuck reflex, add to it that I had his "girlfriend" Patricia in my tent last night because she could not stomach Chuck’s Mud Pit Musk – although I am sure he had a remedy for her nausea, in both liquid and tablet form. So every time the perimeter alarms went off, so did she. I didn’t realize they taught girls to scream like that in finishing school. I’ve told Sheila – and I mean it – that I will never again sleep with a woman – a remark that really shouldn’t require an explanation, but I’ll give you one anyway.

Now. One of two things is true. I really didn’t make a sufficient offering to Apu or the concept of me sleeping (really, just sleeping) with a woman causes severe Universal retribution. To begin at the beginning, things being what they are and tents accommodating two, we divided into pairs: Jack and Sheila, Patricia and Chuck, Doc and Just-One-Jake, Alberto and Garrett, me and Donna. All seemed well until the night of the condor attack when I awoke out of a sound sleep to find my tent being shredded by these enormous, prehistoric birds. Surviving that, we faced the next night, when Donna and I had a mid-night visit from a poison spider and I woke up with Donna’s cold corpse. Which brings us to last night with Miss Singer when our tent was attacked by rats or nutria or some other rodent you can’t make coats out of. So really, since I still have that over-inflated sense of self-preservation, I think I’ll be sleeping alone from now on.

Of course, I say this now but if Chuck is right, I might be bunking with Sheila before this excursion is over. See, before we left Cusco, before Patricia decided Chuck was more appealing (or more available) than Jack the International Terrorist and she was still flirting outrageously with him, Sheila and Jack had a bit of a tiff regarding the attentions of the heiress. As a result, Jack, for safety reasons, bunked in that night with Chuck. As the muscle-bound one tells it, Jack told him that he plans on dumping Sheila once the mission is over. I find this hard to believe, but Chuck is adamant and really I don’t know what goes on between Jack and Sheila when they are apart from the rest of the band. Still, I hope that Jack was speaking in the heat of the moment or that they’ve mended fences on this trip. After all, Jack has fallen off his horse and set off the perimeter alarms in efforts to pick fresh flowers for Sheila. So it may be all is not lost and I will continue to have a tent to myself for as long as the expedition lasts.

Then again… maybe I need someone else in my tent as bait for the next dangerous creature that finds its way to me during the night. And yet, I’ve always had a soft spot for dangerous creatures….

But I digress. And in so doing realize I have taken up a great deal of your time, so I’d best end here. Besides, we’ll be breaking camp soon to set out for the Mt. Of the White Plume. Can’t wait to see who’ll fall off his horse on this run!

That’s it then. Signing off from the Peruvian jungle….

Best to Kieran –

Yours,

Paris