by Mike Maden
“Money is a powerful motivator. So are the other incentives: ideology, coercion, and ego.”
“That’s why I started nosing around a little a few days ago. Never found anything, and never caught him doing something he shouldn’t be doing. But then again, he’s so damn smart he could hide his tracks, and he would, wouldn’t he, if he were up to no good? I know the man. He’s careful, methodical, and precise.”
“You almost sound as if you’re saying the fact you couldn’t find any evidence against him is the best proof he’s guilty.”
“I know, it’s ridiculous, and that’s why I ultimately dismissed my concerns out of hand. But the coincidence between your report and the fact he worked on this very problem sent chills down my spine. And in that nosing around I told you about, I discovered that my computer had been searching the NRO workstation you identified in your report. The problem is, I never accessed that workstation. I checked the date and time in question and thought I was losing my mind until I pulled up my Uber receipt for that night. Bottom line is someone accessed my computer to check out the NRO workstation without my knowledge.”
“And you suspect Fung?”
“Your report practically confirms it. He was the last person in the office after me that night. If I didn’t know any better, it’s almost as if he wanted to leave my digital fingerprints on that machine to point at me if some problem were ever discovered.”
“Isn’t your computer biometrically passcoded?”
“Yes, but the Red Team has developed a device called PassPrint to overcome that kind of security and—”
Watson shut her eyes. “I’m such an idiot.”
“What?”
“Larry was the point person heading that up.”
“How do you want to proceed?”
“Let me start by first rechecking the satellite software all over again and running a new diagnostic. I think it’s important we find tangible evidence that this really is a problem. Not taking anything away from your people, but correlation isn’t proof. I’d like to nail that down, and if I can do that, it might yield more clues.”
“How long? Time is not our friend here.”
“I can have something to you by EOB today at the latest.”
“Good. While you’re banging away on that, I’ll have some of my people begin a discreet inquiry into Mr. Fung.”
“Yes, please do, and discreet is the operative word. He’s innocent until proven guilty, and if we’re wrong about him and he finds out what we’re doing, he’ll be outraged and I’ll lose one of my best people for no good reason. Worse, he’d blab about this thing all over town just to ruin our reputation. Maybe even sue us.”
“I understand completely. We’ll keep everything under wraps. I look forward to hearing from you by end of business today.”
“Will do. And please keep me posted on anything you find out about Larry.”
“You have my word on that,” Foley promised.
The video call ended and Mary Pat texted the director of the NSA’s counterintel outfit, referred to in the media as the Q Group, requesting assistance on the Fung matter.
* * *
—
CHIBI read the text exchanges between Foley and Q Group a few hours later, highly amused.
70
CIELO SANTO, PERU
The overnight flight from Dulles to Jorge Chávez in Lima was the fastest Jack could find, but it still had a layover in Dallas. His only luggage was a carry-on Osprey Farpoint 40 backpack toting the bare essentials.
Arriving a little after five in the morning, he splashed his face with cold water in the men’s restroom after he deplaned. He grabbed a venti drip, dark roast, no-room Starbucks coffee, waiting until seven before boarding a one-hour puddle jumper to the regional airstrip near Anta in Carhuaz Province north of Lima.
In the colorful and scrupulously clean little town of a few thousand, Jack found the store he’d located on the Internet, where he purchased a flimsy but serviceable folding knife and a disposable lighter, two items he couldn’t carry on a plane. They were already over eight thousand feet, the air cooling considerably from Lima’s. A snowcapped peak loomed in the distance beyond the low hills surrounding the town.
From Anta he caught a brightly painted GMC school bus that made the long and winding climb high into the Andes. The bus was crowded with locals, mostly working-class men, to judge from their callused hands, worn clothes, and meager belongings. Short-statured, with dark, almond-shaped eyes and sharp, broad noses, the indigenous Quechua rode shoulder to shoulder in grim silence. The man next to Jack on the bench seat sat silent as a stone the entire trip, staring wordlessly out of the windows. Jack didn’t mind. He didn’t feel like talking anyway.
Two hours into the four-hour trip, the blue skies darkened and rain fell like Noah’s flood. The unexpected torrent surprised Jack; this wasn’t the rainy season, according to his brief weather research. This far south of the equator, the weather was flipped from Virginia’s. It was supposed to be approaching Peruvian summer, but the chill air suggested the mountains hadn’t checked their calendars yet.
The steepening climb slowed the straining engine, and the bus rumbled through the mud and rocks washing over the pavement. The wipers slapped furiously at the sheets of water blinding the windshield, and the low clouds shrouded the stunning beauty of the Andes.
Just after noon, the bus screeched to a halt at its terminus in Cielo Santo, Jack’s destination. The driver killed the noisy V-8. No one spoke.
Jack stood a head and a half taller than the men in front of and behind him, the rain drumming the roof just inches above his ball cap. He pulled on his disposable emergency poncho and followed the others into the storm as they shuffled off the bus and into one of Dante’s circles of Hell.
* * *
—
Cielo Santo wasn’t on any map Jack could find, but Cory told him he wouldn’t. Originally, it was a quaint, alpine village nestled at the foot and midway between the looming twin peaks of La Hermana Alta and El Hermano Gordo. It stood approximately thirteen thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean, which was less than a hundred miles to the west, typical of Peru’s dramatic topography.
According to Cory, a gold rush in the forties had exploded the population to a few thousand and expanded the number of buildings to include at least one hotel, La Vicuña Roja. When the gold ran out in the sixties and the government made further mining in the region illegal in the nineties, the miners left but the adventure tourists came, including Cory’s father, who had climbed La Hermana as a young man.
Standing beneath the thundering steel roof at the bus terminal—a gas station—Jack surveyed the rain-soaked gloom around him. Unlike the clean and neatly ordered villages like Anta he’d seen previously, Cielo Santo was the Peruvian version of Deadwood.
The street he surveyed was lined by rusted, faded, and crumbling two- and three-story buildings, with skeins of improvised power lines webbing the sky overhead. The rain hadn’t quite washed away the stench of diesel where he stood, or the garbage and urine from an alley behind him.
Dozens of dark-faced Quechua in ponchos and rain gear stood in knots beneath leaking awnings or hustled up and down the muddy, trash-strewn street. Others wore construction helmets and heavy rubber boots, carrying tools or plastic buckets, like miners. Jack had read that with the economy tanking, desperate Peruvians—mostly Quechua and mestizos—engaged in illegal mining operations that had popped up all over the Andes, rummaging through the tailings or attempting to revive abandoned gold and silver mines like the ones in the mountains above the town.
Cory’s instructions told Jack where to find La Vicuña Roja, the hotel-bar where his father had stayed decades before. Cory had written everything down for Jack, but the tone in his deathbed voice carried the weight of the unfulfilled promise he had made to his father to climb La Hermana together. The two of th
em had hiked a dozen mountains together in America before his father died when Cory was still in college. His tragic death had cut short their plans to travel to Peru together for a trekking adventure, including La Hermana near Cielo Santo, where his dad lived for a time.
Jack touched the hollow wooden amulet hanging around his neck for the thousandth time, an unconscious check to make sure Cory’s ashes were still in place, but also to connect once again with his dead friend. Jack also carried a faded Polaroid of Cory’s dad standing on the peak. Jack’s mission was to carry the picture, along with a small portion of Cory’s ashes, to the top of La Hermana and scatter them so that Cory could keep his promise to his father to one day climb it together, and then to bury the photo on the spot where his dad had stood.
Jack’s promise was to keep Cory’s promise to his father, and he was determined to keep it no matter what.
Cory estimated Jack could make the trek up the steep incline in five hours, most of it walking a rugged trail with the last hundred meters being an easy hand climb over granite boulders.
The plan was to hit the trail by one o’clock and arrive at the peak just as the sun was setting, then make his way back down with a flashlight and grab the noon bus back to Anta the next day, reversing his trip and winding up back in D.C. by three p.m. the day after tomorrow.
It was a good plan.
Until the rain killed it.
71
Jack worked his way from the gas station toward the hotel, past makeshift shanties of plastic and tin, splashing in puddles and stepping over a few drunks passed out in the alleys. There weren’t any sidewalks in the shitty Shangri-La.
The Vicuña Roja sign showed just that—a hand-painted red animal that looked a lot like a llama, its larger, domesticated cousin. Jack’s original schedule precluded a visit here, but with the rain knocking down his plans for the day, he figured it might be the only place in town to find a room for the night. He headed inside. Heavy chopper blades beat the air in the distance.
The hotel’s first floor was a run-down little bar, dark and depressing, and stinking of cigar smoke. Waylon Jennings twanged on the jukebox speakers. Dusty trophies of stuffed rainbow trout, geese, and ducks hung on the smoke-stained walls.
The Anglo man behind the bar was leaning on the counter, fixated on a newspaper and nursing a whiskey. A cigar smoldered in an ashtray near his elbow.
Jack had shaken off as much rain as he could outside, but he was still dripping onto the faded vinyl flooring.
A mestizo woman with bad makeup, a too-small dress, and the figure of a Christmas ham sat in the back corner with a brooding Quechua man seated next to her, his arms folded across his round belly, staring bleary-eyed at the wall. Tall bottles of Peruvian beer stood on the table in front of them. She flashed Jack a propositional smile through heavy red lipstick, but he declined with his own polite smile and a slight shake of his head.
Another patron in a cheap suit and cowboy boots was passed out in the other corner, snoring on his folded arms. A half-empty bottle of sweet, clear pisco sat on the table near his head.
Jack approached the barkeep, still bent over his newspaper. His long dark hair and beard were shot through with gray. He closed the paper and rose up, his keen brown eyes drawing a quick assessment.
“American?” It wasn’t really a question.
“That obvious, eh?” Jack extended his hand. “Name’s Jack.”
“Sands.” They shook. A firm grip. He was an inch taller than Jack and leaner, but not in a good way. The crow’s-feet around his eyes were deeper than they should have been. Busted capillaries around his nose and rosacea on his forehead told the rest of the story. Sands was an alcoholic.
“Where you from, Jack?”
“Virginia.” Jack avoided references to D.C. whenever possible, especially with strangers.
“Whereabouts in Virginia?”
“Alexandria.”
“Never been. So what the hell brings you to this shithole corner of the world?”
“You talking about the bar or the town?”
Despite the alcoholism, Sands looked like he could still handle himself in a fight. But Jack was beyond caring what anybody thought about him.
Luckily, Sands laughed. “Same difference.” He eyed Jack again. “Nobody ever comes here unless they got a story.”
“Maybe so.” Jack’s eyes narrowed. There was something weighing on Sands like a lead blanket. “But the people who stay here have got the best ones.”
That earned Jack a begrudging smile. His eyes searched Jack’s for a moment, but for what, Jack couldn’t tell.
“Pull up a stool. I’ve got cold beer and warm whiskey and all the time in the world. What’s your poison?”
Jack normally didn’t drink this early, but he was angry and depressed at the prospect of the climb delayed.
“Beer.”
“Dark or light?”
“Wet.”
“Coming right up, pardner.”
Sands reached down and pulled a beer out of the ice and popped the top as Jack grabbed a stool.
The distant helicopter now roared overhead, its staccato thunder hammering the air and rattling windows. It passed by quickly.
“What the hell was that?”
“A Halo,” Sands said. “Big Russian bird. Mi-26. A real heavy hauler.”
“What’s it doing up here?”
“Haulin’ heavy shit would be my guess.”
“For who?”
“Whoever needs heavy shit.”
Jack started to push back but decided he really didn’t care.
“I think I’m gonna need a room.”
“Hourly or nightly?”
“Nightly. You got one?”
Sands set the Cusqueña Dorada in front of Jack. “Depends. You got cash?”
“Yeah.”
Sands grinned, flashing tobacco-stained teeth. “Then I’ve got a room. How long are you staying?”
“Depends on the rain.”
“Supposed to stop tonight.”
Jack did a quick calculation. If he could hike tomorrow, he could pull out on the noon bus the day after. His return ticket out of Lima was open-ended. He just needed to change the reservation.
“Two nights.”
“That’ll be . . . fifty, American.”
“Each night?”
“Total.”
Jack lifted his beer. “Deal.”
Sands clinked his whiskey glass against the bottle. “Skol.”
Jack took a long pull as Sands tossed his off in a single slug.
“Carlita back in the corner will take care of you right nice, but you gotta pay her husband five dollars American if you want a throw.”
“I’m good, thanks.”
As Sands poured himself another, he asked, “So, what’s your story, Jack?”
“No big deal. I’m heading up to La Hermana to scatter the ashes of a friend.”
“Must have been some friend to come all the way out to this dump.”
Jack snorted. “Yeah, well, he didn’t quite describe the town like this. I guess back in the day it was a nice little part of the world.”
“It was as pretty as a postcard until five years ago. Illegal gold mining on El Gordo is what brought the shitstains you see around here now. Poor bastards go swarming down into the mine like carpenter ants. No training, no gear, except maybe a helmet and a hand pick. If they’re lucky they’ll scrape out a few ounces in a week or two, but most of them aren’t that lucky. The few that do get lucky are as likely to get a shiv between the ribs topside by a desperado too lazy or scared to brave the tunnels.”
“Why don’t the authorities stop it?”
“People busy digging for gold are too tired to riot and too distracted to start a revolution.” He took a sip of whiskey.
&nbs
p; “Too bad. It’s beautiful country around here.”
“I used to run a little tour-guide service back in the day. There’s a lake that had the most gorgeous trout you’ve ever seen, but the mercury and other chemicals leaching into the water killed them off. I haven’t seen a tourist here in years, especially an American one. Kinda nice to hear a familiar accent.”
Jack’s eyes darted around the bar. He spotted a shot glass on a shelf behind Sands. It bore a familiar crest and a motto.
“‘Sua sponte,’” Jack said. “‘Of their own accord.’”
Sands frowned, surprised. “You were in the Seventy-fifth?”
“Me? No. I did my tour of duty in expensive private schools with Jesuits beating Latin into us like we were rented mules.”
That earned another chuckle from Sands.
“But you were a Ranger,” Jack said.
Sands’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you say that?”
“Because you don’t look like a Shriner.” Jack nodded toward the shot glass.
“HUA,” Sands said. He eyed Jack again. “You weren’t in the Rangers, but you look like you served.”
“No, but I have friends who did, and my dad was a Marine. Where were you deployed?”
“Wherever they fuckin’ sent me.” Sands’s face clouded over, lost in a memory.
“I’ve got a friend who’s a retired Ranger. A real stand-up dude by the name of Jankowski.”
“Midas Jankowski?” Sands asked, incredulous.
Jack smiled, equally surprised. “Yeah.”
Sands ran a hand through his long hair. “Man, that young hoss pulled my bacon out of the fire more than once. How the hell is he?”
“Tough as ever, like every other Ranger I ever met.”
Well, except maybe you, Jack thought. He finished his beer.
Sands turned around and grabbed the Ranger shot glass from the shelf, wiped it out with a bar rag, and splashed whiskey into it. He pushed it over to Jack and lifted his own glass.
“To Midas.”
“To Midas.”