Their paper declared lidar a “scientific revolution,” and an “archaeological paradigm shift.” It was, they said, the greatest archaeological advance since carbon-14 dating.

CHAPTER 9

It was something that nobody had done.

The more Elkins studied lidar, the more he was convinced that, if the lost city existed and he had the fortitude to resume the search, lidar would find it. His excitement, however, was tempered by the thought of trying to get the permits from the Honduran government, which had been a nightmare the previous time around. The government had changed hands several times and undergone a military coup, and the permitting process looked more daunting than ever. “I wondered,” Elkins told me, “if I wanted to go through all that bullshit again.” Mosquitia in the dozen intervening years had become extremely dangerous, an outlaw region controlled by violent drug cartels and criminal gangs. Even to fly a plane in Mosquitia airspace was perilous, as it was the prime flight corridor of cocaine smugglers, where unidentified planes might be shot down by either the US or Honduran military.

Then came one of those crazy coincidences that a novelist wouldn’t dare put in a book. As Steve Elkins was pondering what to do, he got a call from his old friend and fixer in Honduras, Bruce Heinicke.

Bruce and his Honduran wife, Mabel, had moved to St. Louis in 1996 after Mabel’s sister had been murdered in Honduras. Bruce gave up his drug smuggling and looting career and settled down to more mundane pursuits. But he, like Elkins, couldn’t shake his obsession with finding the White City.

At the end of 2009, Mabel returned to Tegucigalpa, without Bruce, to attend her father’s funeral. At the time, the country was recovering from a military coup. The coup had taken place earlier in the year, when the current leftist president, José Manuel Zelaya, had launched a heavy-handed effort to hold a referendum to rewrite the Constitution so that he could try to gain a second term of office. The Supreme Court ruled the attempt illegal; Zelaya defied the court; and the Honduran Congress ordered his arrest. Early on a Sunday morning, the military disarmed the presidential guard, rousted Zelaya from bed, and put him on a plane to Costa Rica, where, in the airport, he gave a fiery speech of defiance still wearing his pajamas. The press reported that Zelaya had been forced out of the country so quickly he wasn’t allowed to dress, but Honduran officials privately told me later that he had been allowed to dress and take some clothes with him; in a moment of wily stagecraft, he had changed back into his pajamas on the airplane in order to garner more sympathy and outrage.

The military turned power back over to the civilian sector, and elections were held five months later. Those bitterly contested elections brought into power Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa. While Mabel was in the church for the funeral, she heard that Pepe, the new president-elect, would be attending services in the same church the following Saturday with his cabinet, to get God’s blessing for his upcoming four-year term.

She mentioned this in a phone call to Bruce, who urged her to seize the opportunity. Mabel told me in an interview: “Bruce kept bringing it up all week. ‘You get close with this guy,’ he said ‘and explain to him about the White City. Just leave the rest up to me.’”

On the day of the president’s visit, she went to the church with her brother, Mango, a Honduran soccer star, to try to buttonhole the president. The place was jammed. The president arrived late, with twenty bodyguards and a contingent of local police with rifles.

After the service, Mango told Mabel to stay in her seat and he would arrange everything. He went up to talk to the pastor, but as their conversation dragged on, it became clear to Mabel that he was getting nowhere. Meanwhile, the president and his entourage got up to leave, and Mabel realized she was about to lose the opportunity. She rose from her seat and barreled through the thronging crowds, shoving people aside. She drove toward the president, who was surrounded by a chain of bodyguards with arms linked. She called out his name—“Pepe! Pepe!”—but he ignored her. Finally she rammed her way to the ring of guards, reached over them, and grabbed the president’s arm. “I said, ‘Pepe, I need to speak to you!’”

“Okay,” he replied, resignedly turning toward her, “you got my attention.”

“I said to the bodyguards, ‘Excuse me, let me through.’ And they shook their heads no. The bodyguards put their hands on their guns. They were holding their hands very strong and I was trying to push them around. Pepe was laughing and I told him, ‘Can you tell them to let me through?’ They did, then they closed the circle around me holding hands again, very tight.

“I ask him if he had heard about Ciudad Blanca. He says yes. I say my husband tried to find this city twenty years ago. He says, ‘This sounds kind of interesting, keep going.’ I say he’s been there.* He says, ‘Can your husband go there again?’ And I say, ‘That’s why we need your permission.’”

Lobo looked at her and finally answered: “Okay, you made it through here. You got to me, God only knows how. I’ve heard about this city but I’ve never heard of anyone who’s been there physically. I trust you and I want you to trust me. I will introduce you to a member of my cabinet. He will speak for me, and he will be able to get all your permits and everything you need to get this done. His name is áfrico Madrid.”

So Mabel went to where the cabinet had gathered and found áfrico. “I start talking with him about the project. He said, ‘Wow, that does sound interesting.’ He said, ‘If the president told you we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it. I’m going to get you everything you need.’”