Revelation at Tikal | Literary Adventure Fiction Podcast

Chapter 32: "Question Mark" One day to the hearing. The passport in Cutty's shirt pocket says he owns a motorcycle. He sold the BMW two days ago to a Panama cop to buy three seats home, but the customs men at the border wrote the bike into his passport in ink, and nobody has cleared it. The only flight north that week leaves Tocumen at ten o'clock. Floey's competency hearing in Los Angeles is at nine the next morning. There is no second plane. All Sergeant Herrera will promise is that his cousin will come "before your plane departs," and in Panama, that counts as a time. The boarding line moves. An American kid with a guitar gets sent to the bench and doesn't come back. Cutty sends Paula and Floey on ahead, and counts the people between himself and the man with the stamp. Once they're in the air, Paula finally opens the Time magazine she bought at the airport newsstand. On page twenty-two, Reverend Zeek Kestrel is shaking President Carter's hand in the Oval Office, having told him what American money was doing in the Guatemalan highlands. On the next page is Floey, barefoot on a scaffold, painting the Popol Vuh. Then comes Los Angeles at dawn, a newspaper ad for a mimosa-morning sale of "the final works" of a woman everyone believes is dead, and a gallery on La Cienega full of collectors bidding on her paintings. Floey walks in the front door with a tube of alizarin crimson. In this episode: - A passport that could keep Cutty in Panama, a cousin who may not come, and a boarding line that keeps getting shorter. - Seat-to-seat on a midnight milk run through Mexico City: the preacher, the President, and the translation of "tacit support." - "That's your good side." Floey sees her Quiché mural in Time. - "Tahoe's a lake, Cutty." - A crowded gallery, one red brushstroke through a fake death date, and a question mark painted in front of everyone. - The Kuna molas, a phone call to Carl, and a cab race downtown to the courthouse on Hill Street. A line to carry out: "Carl," she said. "It's Florence." This is the final chapter of "Revelation at Tikal," Book One of the Further Adventures of Cutty Braughn. Cutty's story continues in "The Last of the Goletas," the second novel in the trilogy.

Chapter 29 — "Truth on Achutupu" Cutty wakes in a gray Colón hotel room to an empty bed and finds Paula alone at the end of the dock at first light, crying. What she's been carrying comes out in pieces: before the trip ever started, she signed a delayed-entry U.S. Army JAG commission. She has roughly two weeks left before she has to report, finish law school, pass the bar, and spend six years as an officer defending the same institution that chewed up her father and discarded him with a Dexedrine habit and no hearing. It isn't a choice against Cutty. It's a promise she made to herself years before she met him, and both of them know it. They take Mateo Igwais's boat out to the islands anyway, chasing a rumor to Cartí Suitupu and then further, to the far island of Achutupu, "where only the serious ones go." And there, sewing beside a semicircle of Kuna women with a half-finished mola across her hands, sun-worn and remade, is Floey. The reunion barely settles before the Foundation's newer, harder recruits arrive to reclaim their "star woman" — and this time Floey has an island full of people who tell them, in no uncertain terms, to get back in their boat. What follows is the truth Cutty has chased for the entire book: their brother Barry didn't vanish chasing flying saucers. The Air Force loaned him to the CIA for Operation PBSUCCESS, the real 1954 coup in Guatemala, flying cover for a fake rebel radio station built to protect a fruit company's land. No aliens. Just businessmen, spies, and a cover story their parents were handed instead of the truth. Floey gets to be furious and relieved at the same time, and for the first time in the whole chase, brother and sister sit still long enough to actually talk. In this episode: - Paula's Army JAG commission, her father's court-martial-that-wasn't, and the ticking clock now hanging over her and Cutty. - The boat run to San Blas, island to island, chasing a rumor to Achutupu. - Finding Floey — remade, barefoot, sewing molas among the Kuna women who took her in. - A tense standoff as harder, newer Foundation recruits try to reclaim their "star woman," and the island says no. - The full truth about Barry: Operation PBSUCCESS, the fake liberation radio station, and the fruit company behind it all. - Floey's own reckoning: relief that her brother wasn't lost to a UFO myth, fury that the truth was buried for over twenty years. A line to carry out: "Barry didn't vanish into a cosmic mystery, Floey. He got fed into a machine that runs on countries and bodies. No aliens. Just businessmen, spooks, and a government willing to wreck a nation for a fruit company without ever saying its own name out loud." The manuscript's editorial read flags this as the strongest chapter in the book — the reunion, the reveal, and the reckoning, all in one place. Part of the Cutty Braughn literary-thriller trilogy — one man, a motorcycle, and a hunt across Central America, 1977–1980s, where the deadliest thing on the road is a polite instruction typed on a distant desk.

Chapter 28 — "Locks and Leaving" Panama City greets Cutty and Paula with heat, noise, and the last thing they wanted to see in a mirror: the Foundation's battered white van, back in the game and shoving through traffic with David hanging out the window shouting about callings and star convergence. Cutty doesn't outrun it. He outsteers it — threading the BMW through a gap built for a motorcycle, not a van, until the van plows into a bus and slides sideways into a waiting police sedan. A Panamanian sergeant, unimpressed by prophecy and very impressed by a clean-looking rider with his papers in order, impounds the van, processes its crew, and hands Cutty his card along with an offer to buy the BMW. At the bank, a stack of refunded traveler's checks and a TV news crawl collide: a press conference for the "Luminous Path Foundation," and the man in the linen suit, calm on camera, one lingering shot too long. He isn't hiding anymore. He's holding a press conference. At the Miraflores Locks, the Canal does its slow, engineered miracle while a rust-streaked freighter called Verapaz Star eases through, its name painted over an older one — Verapaz, cardamom country, the same province Father Felipe named as Foundation territory, one more coincidence that refuses to feel like one. By nightfall, Cutty and Paula find their boat captain, Mateo Igwais, and buy passage to San Blas for tomorrow, first light — every dollar they have against a scatter of islands and a sister who may not want to be found. In a mildewed room by the harbor, Paula finally says the quiet part out loud: there's a point coming where chasing Floey and staying with Cutty stop being the same road, and when they reach it, she'll have to choose. In this episode: - A motorcycle-versus-van chase through Panama City that ends with the zealots' van folded into a bus and a cop. - Sergeant Herrera: impound lot justice, a business card, and an offer to buy the BMW. - The Luminous Path Foundation goes public — a press conference, a philanthropist's name nobody quite catches, and a man too comfortable on camera. - Miraflores Locks: the Verapaz Star, painted over an older name, and Cutty's dream of coming back with a boat of his own someday. - Finding Mateo Igwais, the boat captain who can get them to San Blas — for nearly everything they own. - Paula's warning: the road she's on with Cutty and the road he's on for his sister won't stay the same road forever. A line to carry out: "It means there's a point where chasing your sister and being with you stop being the same road. And when we reach it, I'm going to have to choose." Tomorrow, first light, they get on a boat headed straight into someone else's prophecy. Part of the Cutty Braughn literary-thriller trilogy — one man, a motorcycle, and a hunt across Central America, 1977–1980s, where the deadliest thing on the road is a polite instruction typed on a distant desk.

Chapter 27 — "Parrots, Prophets, and Puerto de Cartí" Eight days into a pool-repair layover at La Herradura, waiting on a bank refund that keeps not arriving, Cutty is elbow-deep in a filter trench while a chained parrot heckles the world and Julio hands down a piece of quiet wisdom about love and hurricanes: real love isn't the calm day, it's holding the same rope when the storm hits. Then a familiar reddish-blond head reaches over the pool fence for a lost pair of trunks, and the past climbs back into frame. Conrad Brisson, the Canadian who once sat up all night with a heartbroken Paula in Palenque, has news that changes everything: a glossy newspaper feature has turned Floey into "la señora de las estrellas," the Lady of the Stars, photographed sketching among the Kuna women of San Blas. She's slipped the Foundation's van at last, and for a moment that reads like victory — until Cutty recognizes the Foundation's own language coming out of his sister's mouth, and realizes she hasn't escaped the cage. She's just given them better scenery for it. Conrad also says the quiet part out loud: Paula is in love with Cutty, and has been for a while. Between one revelation about his sister and one about the woman across the table, Cutty makes two decisions before dinner ends. In a shift to Floey's own eyes, the Kuna chief moves first: he pulls her out from under her Foundation keepers, hands her an unfinished mola, and gives her the only kind of freedom this island actually has to offer — the freedom to slow her captors down. In this episode: - Julio's philosophy on love, hurricanes, and holding the rope when things break. - Conrad Brisson's unwelcome return, and the reunion Paula didn't ask for. - The newspaper photo that reveals Floey has left the van, and the Foundation's fingerprints all over the story anyway. - "La señora de las estrellas" — how a staged rescue becomes a better cage. - Conrad says out loud what Paula wouldn't: she's in love with Cutty. - Floey's own chapter: the Kuna chief separates her from her keepers, and hands her a mola to finish on her own terms. A line to carry out: "They didn't need to lock her in a house in the city. They'd let her think she was free and photograph the cage." The islands that voted no on the canal treaty aren't about to say yes to the Foundation either. Part of the Cutty Braughn literary-thriller trilogy — one man, a motorcycle, and a hunt across Central America, 1977–1980s, where the deadliest thing on the road is a polite instruction typed on a distant desk.

Costa Rica, 1977. Somewhere ahead of him is a white van with his sister in it, and the only way to close the gap is straight over the roof of Central America. Cutty Braughn takes the Inter-American Highway south out of San José and climbs into the Talamancas toward Cerro de la Muerte — the Mountain of Death, the highest pass on the Pan-American Highway. Then the fog comes over the summit like a slow avalanche and the world shrinks to a bowl of white light and a broken white line. No shoulder. No edges. No way to know what is coming downhill in the middle of the road. Paula is on the back with one pair of jeans and a borrowed rain jacket, keeping score of every bad decision out loud. Cutty keeps riding, because stopping is the worse bet, and because every minute he creeps through the cloud is a mile he hands to the men who have his sister. What waits on the far side: a plate of pork chops he will regret for hours, a border stamp he is afraid to speak a name in front of, and a trailer park in the Panamanian hills where a retired Canal plumber breeds horses and knows exactly where a rich man's money stops working. **In this chapter** - The climb into the cloud, and the diesel truck that comes out of it - Layers, gaiters, and the failure of every one of them - What a wasp can do that frostbite cannot - Paso Canoas by night, and the question Cutty decides not to ask - La Herradura: a pool full of moonlight, a broken VW turn signal, and an offer of one dollar a night - Julio, the Kuna boy who became a Canal Zone plumber, on why the islands are not Panama - A cook's secondhand story: four men in white, a woman they kept apart, and a plan involving flying saucers and cocaine - The first hard confirmation that the road ends where the water starts **Historical note** Cerro de la Muerte tops out at roughly 3,451 metres — about 11,320 feet — and is the highest point on the Costa Rican stretch of the Inter-American Highway ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_de_la_Muerte)). It earned the name before the road was finished, when crossing the range on foot or muleback could take days and not everyone arrived ([Q Costa Rica](https://qcostarica.com/the-famous-cerro-de-la-muerte-why-is-it-called-that/)). Paso Canoas remains the largest crossing between Costa Rica and Panama, at the southern end of Route 2 ([Two Weeks in Costa Rica](https://www.twoweeksincostarica.com/paso-canoas-border-crossing/)). Julio is telling the truth about the islands. Following the Tule Revolution of 1925, the Guna secured a reserve in 1930 and formal recognition as the Comarca de San Blas in 1938 — one of the oldest legally recognised Indigenous autonomies anywhere in the world, with its own governing congress and its own say over who comes ashore ([Guna Yala](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guna_Yala), [Universidad de Panamá](https://revistas.up.ac.pa/index.php/contacto/article/download/7447/5535/16841)). In 1977 that is not folklore. It is jurisdiction — and it is the first wall the Foundation's money has run into. **Content note:** peril and reckless driving, brief non-graphic sexual content, alcohol, illness, references to drug trafficking and coercive religious groups. *Revelation at Tikal* is a serialized literary adventure novel, read in chapters. Start at Chapter 1 for the full ride.