Ben used the stick like a baton, tapping twice on the ground. “Is it?”
“Sure. That’s the last page. Zip, zero, nothing after that.”
“Imagine that there was.”
“What do you mean?”
“If there was more, what would it say? Pretend there was another chapter.” Or a second book, he thought, but was too afraid to say. “Just make believe that the story keeps going, and tell me, my squire, what happens next?”
Luke scrunched up his face, buried in thought.
“Well?”
“Um … once upon a time…”
“An excellent beginning!”
“Once upon a time … Tilanna got up in the morning and … and”—he brightened—“she was going to have a baby!”
Ben knew it was true the second he heard it. His hand shook as he reached for the book. “You better give me that. I need some paper.” Taking the novel from Luke, he stopped at the first mostly empty page he saw. Then he took out the pen he’d brought with him from his flat in Santiago. Maybe it was the most valuable thing he owned. Maybe he was a fool for not pawning it. Or maybe he kept it as a reminder of better days. In any event, the Montblanc fountain pen he’d bought for five hundred dollars upon receiving the advance on his one and only novel now served as a kind of rabbit’s foot, a talisman against the ghosts that haunted him. He unscrewed its heavy cap and wrote.
Luke read over his shoulder. “‘Tilanna woke up on a late-summer morning and realized she was pregnant on Mars.’” He hooted once in approval. “What’s next?”
“You tell me. We’re writing this together.”
“We are?”
“You woke up Tilanna, now you better get her moving. She’s impatient, you know. She won’t be happy if she has to stand there too long.”
Luke smiled. “She goes to the window and looks out, but … but the dust storm happened last night and … and she can’t see!”
Ben wrote, following this madcap muse who’d somehow tapped into the circuitry of his soul.
Luke gobbled up the words in the wake of Ben’s swiftly flowing pen. “‘The window of her environmental cabin drew her as it always did, though she frowned when she saw the armor plating of dust. The sandstorm had encased her again, which meant at least an hour digging herself out.’” He looked at Ben. “Dycar used to do that.”
“Not anymore.” He kept writing.
Luke read over his shoulder. “‘Things had been easier when Dycar was alive. It was not only easier to extricate yourself from sand-covered cabins, but it was also easier to breathe, not to mention to fight and to cry and to laugh until your stomach ached.’” He clapped. “That’s really good!”
“Shut up and keep storytelling.”
“Okay, um … Tilanna never likes being stuck inside. You remember when she had to hide in that cave for two days while Dycar was off getting the medicine?”
“Yes, yes.”
“So she can’t stay in the cabin. She’ll go crazy!”
Ben found another partial page at a chapter end and kept writing.
Luke read, “‘Though she’d never been diagnosed as claustrophobic, she’d damn sure wilt and fade without the meager Martian sun. And so, though a secret voice was telling her that her sickness was the result of Dycar’s legacy kindling in her belly, she ignored it and stepped outside with a wide-bladed knife. It was Tilanna versus the dust once again, and by now the dust should’ve known who would win.’”
“Not too bad, eh?” Ben asked.
“But there’s more!”
“Oh, I have no doubt about that. But if we keep moving at this breakneck rate, I’m going to need to find myself a fresh reservoir of paper. I can only fill up so many margins before there’s nothing left. Not to mention the fact that my hand already hurts.”
“Are we writing a whole book?”
“If they’d publish only half of one, I’d be thrilled, but I figure the readers are going to demand some sort of ending.”
“But I thought you don’t write anymore.”
“The two things I’ve learned,” Ben said, smacking the paperback against his palm, “are one, never spit in front of a lady, and two, you damn sure write when the urge is upon you. And my friend, the urge is beating me to death.”
“Is it beating me, too?”
“That’s for you to decide. Let me ask you this. Do you like talking about Tilanna and her unborn child?”
“You bet, sure! It’s cool!”
“And are you curious to see what happens to her when she’s all alone on Mars?”
“But she’s not alone. Remember the Kanyri rebels? There’re still some of them out there, and they hate Dycar’s crew.”
Ben nodded, never feeling more carried along by fate than he did now. “The rebels indeed. I think it’s probably up to us to check in on them, see what they’ve been up to since Dycar’s death. What do you say?”
Luke hoisted both hands skyward. “I say shit is holy!”
Ben joined him in celebration, the two of them exulting in the strange and unpredictable gift the desert had given them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Gabe and Mira found the racers’ camp a mile out of town.
“The dictionary defines civilization as a society capable of keeping written records,” Gabe said as he turned off the Land Rover’s ignition. “I tend to think of it as any place offering a satellite uplink.”
The camp consisted of army tents, a stack of knobby tires, radio equipment, and a Texas state flag hanging from a ten-foot antenna.
“Check it out.”
The truck stood tall on a chassis designed for maximum ground clearance. With a roll-cage, monstrous shock absorbers, and a wallpapering of sponsor decals, it reminded Gabe of a toy he’d had when he was seven. It looked expensive. He could almost hear his mother saying that line about boys being boys, and for some reason this made him miss her with sudden acuity. Splashed across the truck’s nose was its creed: TREAD ON YOU.
Gabe and Mira got out to meet a man in a headset and a Firestone cap.
After Gabe introduced himself, he explained his problem. He and his friend were traveling South America’s wilder places but found themselves in need of sending an e-mail back home. His lies surprised him by how natural they felt on his teeth.
Tony Brannon, crew chief of Redline Racing, noticed nothing. He subjected them to several minutes of tech-speak—Dynatrac steering knuckles, thirty-five-spline axle shafts, and selectable hubs—then caught himself and grinned like an old prospector. “Sorry about that. You folks just came to use the john, and here I’m giving you a tour of the living room.”
“Not a problem,” Gabe assured him.
Brannon showed them to the largest of the tents, where the Redline team housed their diagnostic gear and some of the more sensitive engine components. A card table supported a well-traveled laptop.
“Knock yourselves out,” Brannon said. “All I ask is that you keep the porn video streams to a minimum.” He winked and dropped the tent flap behind him as he left.
“So now what?” Mira asked.
Gabe sat down on the folding metal chair. “Now we find out just who’s involved in all of this so we have something to show the police. If I don’t want to go from being a person of interest to a full-fledged suspect, I have to give them a lead or two.” He opened a search engine and typed in the true name of the Midnight Messenger. His death had passed the baton to Gabe, who was currently doing his best to run with it and avoid being caught from behind.
The term Alban Olivares generated a random sampling of Spanish-language pages, some featuring the first half of the name and others the surname. Gabe tried again, this time enclosing the name in quotation marks, but this produced only a single hit on a genealogical Web site; that particular Alban Olivares died in 1965 in Panama.
“So he’s not on the Web,” Mira said, leaning over Gabe’s shoulder.
“I know how he feels. There’s nothing more humbling than
finding your name doesn’t turn up any interesting results.”
“Maybe it means you have more important things to do than get talked about online.”
“Or it could just mean I’m lame.”
“Well, if it makes any difference, I’ve known you for over twelve hours now, and the last thing you’ve been is lame.”
“Under other circumstances I’d take that as a good thing.” He entered “Chilean DINA” and found several articles detailing the war crimes and human-rights infractions perpetrated under the regime of dictator Augusto Pinochet.
“So DINA was kind of like a thug police squad?” Mira ventured.
“The same mentality, yeah. I mean, look at all of this. Kidnappings, execution squads, torturing of prisoners…”
“And they were funded by the CIA?”
“At least for certain operations. Of course, the U.S. claims it wasn’t involved in the assassination of Pinochet’s predecessor and some of the other nastier events, and that may or may not be true, but it says here that in 2000 the CIA released documents showing how they underwrote several DINA operations throughout the seventies.”
“Okay, but that was a long time ago. Look, according to this, the DINA was disbanded in 1977. How could they possibly have anything to do with that woman you and Luke found?”
“Maybe Micha Lepin can tell us.”
“Who?”
He typed the name into the search bar and hit ENTER.
That first link was enough. After reading only a few paragraphs, Gabe knew that Lepin was the pivot upon which the entire nightmare turned. “Here we go…”
Mira leaned closer and read out loud. “‘Biochemist Micha Lepin rose to prominence within the National Intelligence Directorate and became an integral member of Pinochet’s covert development unit, Quetropilla. Though Quetropilla’s foremost objective was the production of sarin nerve gas, Lepin was allegedly permitted to pursue experimental chemical toxins.’”
“A saint among men,” Gabe said.
“It gets worse. ‘Lepin subjected leftist detainees and other captive political dissidents to a diverse program of torture, primarily focusing on the introduction of neurochemical agents in doses small enough to produce effects without resulting in the victim’s premature death.’”
“My God…”
“‘Known in the DINA by the alias Lantern, Micha Lepin was a key figure in the 1973 Caravana de la Muerte, or Caravan of Death, in which at least seventy people were murdered.’”
“Seventy?”
“That’s what it says.”
“So that’s him out there?” Gabe wondered. “The rifleman is Micha Lepin?”
“Not according to this. ‘Lepin fled the country upon the collapse of Pinochet’s administration. He was extradited from Portugal in 1985 and is currently serving a life sentence at a detention facility in Chile.’”
Gabe drummed his fingers on the table.
“Any ideas?” Mira asked.
“It doesn’t make sense. I’m assuming that those papers I found down there were somehow meaningful to the … the killer or rifleman or whatever you want to call him.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of insane murdering dickhead.”
“Yeah, that too.”
“And if you’re right and Lepin is important to him, for whatever reason, then we need to know why.”
“And how do we do that?”
“Run an image search, for starters, and let’s get a look at this Micha Lepin just to make sure you don’t recognize him as the same man you saw down below.”
Gabe stopped drumming.
“What? What did I say?”
He’d often heard of people giving a rueful smile. He tried one on for size, though he wasn’t sure if it was rue he was feeling. Hell, he wasn’t even entirely sure what rue was. But there was irony on his lips, and not a small amount of regret. And that was enough.
“Uh, Gabe?”
“I’m not very good with faces.”
“Oh. Well, it doesn’t hurt to give it a try.”
“It won’t help.”
“I know it’s kind of grasping at straws, but what else do we have? We need to try anything that comes to mind. You’re the one who roped me into this. I didn’t ask to have you blow into my life, and I certainly didn’t ask to have that man killed right in front of me.”
“Trust me.”
“How can I do that? I don’t even know you. Let’s just see the picture already.”
Gabe almost made a fist. It wasn’t a fist that intended to hit anyone, but a reflex of frustration and embarrassment. He got his Zen back together and kept his hands relaxed as he went through the motions of complying with her request, hoping that he wasn’t blushing or transmitting any other sign of his unease.
Steady as she goes, Captain.
He took his own advice and stared straight ahead at the image of Micha Lepin that appeared on the screen. Lepin was either sixty years old or twenty-six; his cheeks were pockmarked or smooth; his nose was hawkish or as petite as a thimble.
“I take it you don’t recognize him,” Mira said.
“That is definitely, entirely true.”
“No resemblance to the aforementioned insane murdering dickhead?”
“None that I can see.”
“Okay, great, then we’re still sitting here at square one. Where do we go from here? Do you have any more names?”
He wished that he did. But the boy with the pinwheel was as anonymous as the woman in the wagon … though he was certain they shared a common denominator.
“Let’s go back to Olivares,” Mira suggested. “What do we know?”
“Not much. I know that he found the boy and was trying to get him out of the desert.”
“That means that Olivares visited the town of Mentiras.”
“Right. He was out there, he was maybe even down in the rifleman’s cellar.”
“Did he find it by accident? Or was he out looking for the boy?” Her enthusiasm surprised him. She didn’t think it was too strange or too horrific. She was more ready to accept the fantastic than Gabe would have expected. “If I were guessing, I’d say he was intentionally trying to find the boy. It’s pretty unlikely that he could’ve found that underground place by chance.”
“Agreed. He was in the military. Maybe we should contact them and—”
“Ask them if he’s AWOL?”
“He is AWOL. I saw him … go down.”
“Maybe we could talk to his friends or even find a family member.”
“That’s what I’m thinking, yeah.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Do you do this kind of thing often? Solving homicides, I mean. Because this is pretty scary to me, and I haven’t even done anything but flee a murder scene and watch you surf the Internet.”
He put on a smile that he didn’t feel. “First of all, I haven’t solved anything. And secondly, no. I usually spend my time staring at a computer screen full of numbers that explain starlight from a million years in the past. It’s not exactly as thrilling as running with the bulls in Pamplona.”
“Good.”
“Why good?”
“Because I wouldn’t want to think I was the only one out of my element here.”
Gabe stood up and slid his chair under the card table. “In my life, if there’s an element, whatever it is, I’m usually out of it.”
“You’ve seemed fairly sure of yourself so far.”
“Glad it looks that way, but in the last two days I’ve managed to lose my job, derail my doctoral research, and become a person of police interest. I saw two men shot, I found a dead boy in the desert, and a woman with no arms and legs died while I watched. I promise that the last thing I am is sure of myself. But thanks for saying so.”
He left the tent before she could respond, not wanting to explain that his real reason for pushing so hard was because Alban Olivares had died without seeing a friendly face. G
abe knew that whether he lived for five more decades or only five more days, he was destined to go out the same way.
* * *
“Someone’s coming.”
Mira turned from the passenger’s window and saw the two Humvees rolling toward them, antennas bent in the wind. Returning from Brannon’s camp, she and Gabe still had a mile to go before reaching the church, but now it appeared that they were about to be intercepted.
She looked at Gabe. “This is bad, isn’t it?”
“Could be.”
“Are they going to arrest us?”
“Me, maybe. Not you.”
“But they’ll question me. Because of Eduardo, right?”
“I reckon so.”
“Is that safe? You know, you hear horror stories about American citizens in foreign custody and how they’re treated…”
“You want me to head off into the desert and try to lose them?” He raised his eyebrows at her, and she wondered if he was serious. Then she realized how silly she was being. Her mother might have been strung-out and distracted, but she was as tough as something made on an anvil. Cathy Westbrook wouldn’t have squirmed at the thought of a little questioning from the cops, regardless of what language they spoke. “I suppose we can save the stunt driving for later.”
“Go peacefully, huh?” He continued to slow down.
“This time, anyway.”
“Yeah. This time.”
Though Mira was only kidding, she detected a note of sincerity in Gabe’s voice. He was close to spinning his tires and hurtling off into the hinterland, evading all comers. She couldn’t blame him. If she’d seen those awful things that he had seen, she knew she’d be a little gun-shy herself.
They’d no sooner stopped than the Humvees boxed them in, one in front and the other sliding around to the rear. At that point, Mira knew that matters were worse than she’d predicted.
Doors swung open. The men who emerged were not plainclothes detectives but men in flak jackets and Kevlar kneepads.
“Gabe, what’s happening?”
“Chile’s version of the SWAT team.”
“Why?”
“Hell if I know.”
The men drew guns.
Mira automatically lifted her hands, but her instinct was to engage the door lock. Though she knew she’d done nothing wrong, and though these were supposedly the good guys, she panicked at the sight of the semiautomatic pistols. No one had ever pointed a weapon at her before.
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