by Aaron Elkins
An hour earlier, at a little after four in the afternoon, after cruising most of the day, he had swung the Adelita north, leaving the broad, safe, familiar expanse of the Amazon for the narrower, endlessly winding, more oppressive Javaro River. He had quickly pulled into a narrow inlet to let off Cisco and one of the kitchen crew, the Yagua Indian Porge, neither of whom had papers that would pass inspection at the border. They would run up ahead through the jungle, and once the Adelita was safely past the checkpoint (by the grace of God) and out of sight, the boat’s dinghy would pick them up.
A few minutes later the ship had passed the rusting Republica de Colombia sign high on the right bank (which was what had started the perspiration streaming), and now they were pulling up and securing to the dilapidated pier, at the end of which was the falling-apart wooden shack that housed the Colombian military border police. At Vargas’s order, the Adelita’s gangplank, a two-by-twelve board studded with crosspieces every couple of feet, was let down. The door to the shack opened.
El momento de la verdad. The moment of truth.
From the shack swaggered an overweight officer in mirrored sunglasses, fatigues, and combat boots, with a black baseball cap on his head and his hand resting on the heavy, black butt of the supersized handgun holstered on his belt.
Vargas’s heart sank. Malagga.
“Buenas tardes, mi coronel!” Vargas effused, grinning away like crazy. “Cómo está usted?”
He extended his arm to assist Malagga in making the one-foot jump onto the deck, but Malagga ignored him, as he had ignored the greeting. Instead he let himself down, and without even looking at Vargas, held out his hand and rubbed his thumb and forefinger impatiently, abstractedly together.
“Pasaportes.”
Vargas had them ready, having collected them earlier. Malagga riffled through them without evident interest, although he occasionally looked up, apparently to match a photograph with one of the faces of the passengers, all of whom were assembled in the deck salon at Vargas’s instruction.
While Malagga shuffled the passports, two soldiers that Vargas had not seen before came aboard, one well into his fifties, wiry and sly, the other a pot-bellied, dim-looking, snaggle-toothed youth of twenty. That these were low-grade officers was evident from their ragged, stained uniforms. Both wore fatigue pants, but only the older one had a matching shirt. The other had on a dirty T-shirt with a picture of an Absolut vodka bottle on it. The older one was wearing filthy tennis shoes; the other had on flip-flops. Neither had shaved for a few days. Both had the same sinister, mirrored sunglasses and the big semiautomatic pistols that Malagga had.
But it wasn’t the guns that had sent an icy, new spicule of fear deep into Vargas’s gut, it was the small, friendly-looking brown-and-white dog they dragged with them on a leash. A drug-sniffer, God help him. He had worried that such a thing might happen and had expressed his concern to Scofield, but Scofield had laughed it off — he was a big laugher, Scofield was, always chuckling — telling him that the balls of coca paste were hidden in the sixty-kilo coffee bags for a very good reason: the coffee beans would mask their scent so that the dogs couldn’t smell them. But did Scofield know that this was so? Or was it only something he had heard? Vargas, in the clutch of his shameful greed, which he now so sorely repented, had not asked, but only eagerly accepted it as fact.
He stole a glance at Scofield, who was pointedly studying some kind of book, leaning his forehead on his hand to avoid any possible eye contact with Malagga. Vargas surreptitiously flicked perspiration from his own forehead. This kind of grief wasn’t worth five thousand dollars, it wasn’t worth fifty thousand dollars. Only let him get through this and, on his mother’s grave, he would never — never — again violate even the smallest law, the tiniest, most trivial legal technicality. Well, unless, of course, there was absolutely no danger whatever of—
Malagga gave the passports to one of the soldiers for stamping, then made the quick thumb-and-forefinger gesture again. “Sus papeles.” Your papers.
Vargas handed over the manifest and the various permits he had gotten, everything having been scrupulously completed. Malagga glanced at them indifferently, then took another look at the people around him, a long one this time, stopping at every face for two or three seconds as if to register it. At least that was the way it appeared, but with those sunglasses, who could tell for sure where he was looking? Still, his intention to intimidate them couldn’t be missed. Most of the passengers did what any sensible person would do under the circumstances: they tried their best to look as unremarkable as possible. All except for the FBI man, Lau, who was glaring right back at the colonel and visibly bristling.
Don’t… make… trouble, Vargas tried to convey to him with an assortment of grimaces and facial expressions. Can’t you see the kind of person you’re dealing with here? Don’t you know the kind of trouble this man can make? Don’t you understand where we are? But the FBI man was continuing to stare boldly back, patently uncowed. Malagga’s thick lips pursed thoughtfully. For a second it appeared as if he was going to walk over and confront the Hawaiian (or Chinese, or whatever he was), but apparently he decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Instead, he muttered a few curt words to Vargas.
“Si, mi coronel,” Vargas said. “Seguro que si.” He turned to the passengers. “In addition to inspecting our cargo, Colonel Malagga respectfully requests your kind permission to examine your cabins. He also asks that you remain here while this is being accomplished, if there is no objection.”
“I have an objection,” Lau said, despite the eye-rolling facial contortions Vargas was now sending his way. “I’d like to know what his grounds are for examining our cabins.”
“Oh, it’s routine, merely routine,” Vargas said, smiling through his perspiration. “Very standard. It’s done on every ship.” Now shut up, will you?
“Yeah, but is he looking for drugs, or what?” Lau persisted. “He should have a reason.”
Malagga’s heavy eyebrows rose. “Pues que pensa este?” he said ominously, his hand back on the butt of his gun. What’s with this guy?
Before Vargas could reply, he heard Lau’s friend, the anthropologist, come to his aid. “John, will you shut up, for Christ’s sake? Let the guy do his job, don’t bug him.”
“I just don’t like to see a cop act like that,” Lau answered, still glaring at Malagga. “I hate that crap.”
“So do I, but look around, we’re not in Seattle at the moment, if you haven’t noticed. This is Colombia. This is the Amazon jungle. Different rules.”
Lau, thank God, appeared to see the sense in this, even if reluctantly. “Okay, forget it,” he said to Vargas.
Now Malagga’s eyebrows lowered behind his sunglasses. He didn’t like Lau’s tone. “Que es lo que dice?” What’s he saying?
“El Señor Lau se equivocó, y le pide su perdón,” the conciliatory Vargas explained, embellishing a little. He misunderstood. He asks your pardon.
The crazy Lau looked anything but apologetic, but Malagga, with a shrug, chose to let the matter pass.
Tim Loeffler, the gangly student, held up his hand. “Is it okay if I go to my room for a minute first?” he asked in reasonably good Spanish. “I want to get some—”
“No, it is not all right,” snapped Malagga in Spanish. “You will wait here with the others.” He slapped the manifest and permits back into Vargas’s hand. “These appear to be in order.” In fact, he had hardly looked at them.
Malagga’s head swung toward the bar and Vargas thought he was going to demand an explanation for the broken, boarded-up glass pane, but instead he remarked amicably on how fortunate Vargas was to have all those bottles of Scotch, and how difficult it was to get decent whiskey in this miserable jungle outpost, where all that was available was the miserable, homemade aguardiente you could buy in that so-called town of Potrero de Mineros, and—
Vargas, lamentably slow on the uptake, finally leaped willingly for the bait. “I hope, Colonel,” he said, �
��that you will accept from me as a friendly gift a bottle of our finest—”
Malagga’s brow lowered. His mouth pursed again.
“—I meant to say, four bottles — six bottles—”
The colonel’s brow relaxed.
“—of this fine Scotch whiskey for the pleasure of you and your men, when you are not on duty, of course.” Not that your men are likely to see a single drop of it, you thieving bastard.
“That is most kind of you, Captain, and I accept with pleasure on behalf of my officers. You can have someone bring it to the office.” He extended his hand in a limp, three-fingered handshake. “I wish you a safe continuation of your journey,” he said, and jumped up on the gangplank.
Vargas’s world, so dark for the last hour, lit up. Was that it then? They could go? There would be no inspection after all?
No such luck. The other two men and the dog stayed. “Do your work, Sergeant,” he said to the older one, who wore no insignia of rank. “Captain Vargas, accompany them, if you please.”
The next twenty minutes, spent in the hold of the ship, were the worst of Vargas’s life. With the two soldiers dourly tagging along, the little dog merrily explored every crevice, every item, sniffing away at the lumber, the boots, the guitar… and finally the coffee sacks, stowed neatly in stacks of three. Stopping at the very first stack, he put his nose right up against the bags and went over them like a vacuum cleaner gone crazy. Then, God in heaven, he barked, sat down, and looked proudly up at the sergeant, eyes bright, tongue lolling, tail wagging against the floor, as if to say, “Here it is, I’ve found it. It’s coca paste, all right. Quick, arrest that man right there!”
The younger soldier leaned curiously over the stacks, poking at them with a finger, as if that would tell him something. Vargas, about ready to faint by now, crossed himself with a trembling hand. Hidden deep in thirty of the forty-eight sacks of beans were sealed, white, plastic bags, each containing five kilos of coca paste. Scofield, damn him, had said it would be impossible for a dog to—
“Open this one,” the sergeant said to him, slapping the central sack.
“Open the sack? Are you serious?” Vargas babbled. There was a tiny sign, a black triangle made with a marker pen, under the folded down tops of the sacks that contained the paste, but Vargas, in his panic, couldn’t remember whether that particular sack was one of them or not. “I can’t open any sacks. Can’t you see they’re sewn shut? They’re not my property, I can’t—”
At a tilt of the head from the sergeant, the soldier shoved the top sack off, produced a stubby folding knife, and sliced into the burlap of the center sack, slashing it from top to bottom. The contents spilled like beige lava onto the floor, filling the hold with the sharp aroma of dried, unroasted coffee beans. Vargas, grasping at the corner of a crate to keep from collapsing, closed his eyes. He was hyper-ventilating. He could feel his soul flying away, leaving him. This was what it was like to die. He heard the soldiers burrowing through the pile of beans. And to make it even worse, he had wasted — thrown away — six 1.14-liter bottles of Cutty Sark, his best—
“Nada,” mumbled one to the other.
Nada? Nothing? Was it possible? He opened one eye. They were still sifting through the beans with their feet, but it was clear that there was nothing to find. Beans, only beans. The dog was happily sniffing at them. A dog that liked coffee, that was all it was. Vargas’s soul returned to his body. His heart soared. He opened his other eye.
“Look what you’ve done,” he told them severely. “How am I going to explain this? This is going to cost me a lot of money. I’m warning you, you’d better not damage anything else. I’ll file a complaint with Colonel Malagga, I’ll—”
“These boots,” the one holding the knife said. “Are they extra?”
“Extra?” He was so thickheaded with fear and relief that it took him a few moments to understand. “Yes, as a matter of fact,” he said more agreeably, “two of the pairs happen to be extra. I wonder, would you gentlemen like them? It would save me the trouble of transporting them.”
They grinned their acceptance, the knife was folded up and put away, and the worst, the longest, twenty minutes of Alfredo Vargas’s life came to an end.
AFTER leaving the hold, the two soldiers and the dog started going through the cabins, as instructed by Malagga. Vargas went joyfully up to join the passengers, where he opened the bar early and offered a free round of drinks to make up for the inconvenience of the check. In a few minutes, the young soldier returned to the salon.
“Cabin six, whose is that?”
“Mine,” said Tim in a voice from the tomb.
The soldier motioned to him. “Come with me, please.”
Tim, with panic in his eyes, looked to Vargas for help, but all Vargas could do was shrug. “Go with them, don’t worry.”
He was back in two or three minutes, in even deeper distress. He took Vargas aside. “They found my stash. They want to arrest me.” He looked every bit as frightened and desperate as Vargas had been a little while ago. “They told me to ask you for advice. They told me you understood the law, you’d know what to do.”
“Your ‘stash,’ what is it?”
“It’s just pot.”
“Nothing else? No coca? No cocaine? Are you sure?”
“Yes, marijuana, that’s all, I swear. Captain Vargas, I can’t go to jail here. I couldn’t—”
Vargas gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Relax, amigo, they don’t care about marijuana.” He smiled and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, much as Malagga had earlier.
Tim frowned. “I don’t understand. They want money? A bribe?”
“A gift, let us call it. Not necessarily money. Did they admire anything in your cabin?”
“No, they just… wait, I’ve got a big bag of Jelly Bellies — jelly beans — on the shelf. They were asking about them. I gave them a couple to try and they really liked them, but — no, that’s stupid—”
“There you are, then.”
The young man stared at him. “They want jelly beans? That’s the bribe?”
“Offer them and see what happens.”
“You mean, just… go back and… offer them? Just say, ‘Would you like these jelly beans?’”
“That’s as good a way as any,” Vargas said, laughing. He was feeling marvelously relaxed, and even somewhat paternal toward Tim. “You’ll see, don’t worry. They’re not interested in putting you in jail, my friend, trust me. It’s too much work.”
As Tim began to understand that he was not really going to rot for the rest of his life in some jungle hellhole of a prison, other matters came to the front of his mind.
“Will they let me keep my stash?”
“That I cannot tell you. Be polite and hope for the best. Now go back and do as I say. These people are not known for their patience.” He waved him affably on. “Go go go.”
AN hour later, the Adelita, having stopped to pick up Cisco and Porge, was on its way once more, lighter by six bottles of Scotch, two pairs of rubber boots, and a twelve-ounce bag of jelly beans. There were, as well, a number of lightened moods: Vargas’s because he’d actually come through this horrible experience in one piece and his additional $5,000 was now as good as certain; Scofield’s, because the coca paste was safe in the hold and, having been sealed and certified by customs, was immune from further official prying and his $120,000 was as good as certain; and Tim’s because he had his freedom, his stash, and a deeper understanding of the Colombian system of criminal justice.
FOURTEEN
THE main dish that night was something a little different: freshly caught piranha. While the Adelita had been tied up at the checkpoint, the crew had passed the time fishing from the deck. Using bloody gobbets of lizard as bait (according to Vargas, the bait, if untaken, had to be changed every couple of minutes; as soon as the blood drained away, it was of no interest to the piranha), they’d hauled them in by the dozen. The piranhas were served up from the buffet
table in filets of firm, white meat, much like halibut in taste and texture. In addition, a sort of centerpiece for the dining table had been made up of four whole ones arranged in a circle, with their tails together in the center, and their ferocious little sharp-toothed mouths facing out.
Gideon had seen photos of them, and some dried specimens as well. Still, he was surprised at how small the celebrated “cannibal fish of the Amazon” were: six or seven inches long, chubby and pink, and almost cute when looked at from the side. But seen head-on, there was nothing cute about that open mouth crammed full of those justly famous little teeth, as sharp and pointed and vicious-looking as a shark’s.
Because Scofield was the only one at the table who had any personal knowledge of piranhas, they were naturally a subject of curiosity to the others. Scofield, feeling his oats — he was almost manic — was regaling them with scientific and not-so-scientific piranha lore. These particular specimens were Pygocentrus natterreri, the infamous red-bellied piranha, that could strip an unlucky live cow or human down to a bare, white skeleton in thirty minutes or less. As far as Gideon knew, this was an exaggerated account. He was fairly certain that there were no verified accounts of human beings having actually been killed by piranhas, although many a barefoot native fisherman had less than his full complement of toes as a result of standing in a dugout and continuing to fish while freshly caught, still-living piranhas flopped about on the floor. And there was no doubt about their ability as scavengers to peel the flesh off an already dead creature in short order (even if thirty minutes was pushing it a bit). But tonight it was not an issue. The piranhas were the eatees, not the eaters, and it was they who were being made short order of.
Cisco showed up late for dinner, as he did now for most meals — when he bothered to show up at all. As usual, he was weaving a little, as if the boat were on the high seas and not on a slow, brown, jungle river. Also as usual, he ignored the main dishes and went straight for the dessert, which was local finger-length bananas sliced up in honey. He loaded up a good four servings’ worth in a soup bowl, the tip of his tongue sticking out with the effort at eye-hand coordination that was required. Holding the bowl carefully in both hands, he wandered unevenly back to the others, where he took his usual place as not quite part of the group, his chair pushed back from the table, so that he had to hold the bowl in his lap, where it claimed his whole attention while Scofield continued regaling the others.