by Joanne Pence
“Is the evil Colonel Ortega?” Sylvia asked, her eyes wide and fearful.
“I do not understand who or what it is. Sister says it is someone else. But we do not see any men or women who do not belong here. She must be mistaken.”
As Sylvia hung on Julio’s every word, Angie took a small bottle of chloral hydrate from the deep pocket of her habit and poured it into the pot of beans—otherwise known as slipping a mickey to whoever ate them. The drug had been a very simple black-market purchase. Julio had done himself proud that afternoon, she thought. As she’d hoped of a seaman who’d been to many cities throughout the world, he hadn’t taken long to connect with the sort of people who could find him whatever he wanted for a price. And Angie had readily come through with whatever price they had required.
To the beans, she added lots more ground chilies, cumin, and cilantro to help mask the taste of the drug, if any.
“I know who this evil one is you are speaking about, Father,” Sylvia said, moving closer to Julio. “A strange woman was here. But this morning she left. I did not like her from the moment she stepped into this house, flaunting all her airs!”
“You mean Sister may have been feeling the evil presence of some woman, not just a spirit?” Julio asked. He made eye contact with Angie.
“Yes. A real woman. Alive—but perhaps not much longer. She was supposed to give something to the colonel, but she has not done it yet. He is furious with her. Tonight, if she does not show up with it, he might have her…well, I should not say. But he is not a good man either, I am sorry to tell you.”
Julio looked ready to faint. Angie dropped the spoon she’d been using to stir the chili, and as it fell to the floor with a loud clatter, it jarred Julio into looking at her. She stared hard at him, willing him to pull himself back together.
He faced Sylvia again. “I…I see,” he said, his voice a nervous squawk. He crossed himself, clasped his hands together, and whispered some prayers of a sort Angie had never heard before. She was impressed. He was really getting into this.
Sylvia waited. Finally Julio stopped praying. “Sister Dominique and I will leave tonight, after dinner. You have given me much encouragement that we have not wasted our time here.”
“Father, please, do not abandon us!” Sylvia grabbed Julio’s hands tight.
Angie walked up to her, turned her from Julio, and gently laid her hands on both of Sylvia’s cheeks. Julio rushed to interpret. “She means that it will be all right,” he said to Sylvia. “Rest now. She will serve the dinner tonight.”
“Thank you.” Sylvia pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at her eyes as she left her kitchen.
“So, the Hydra really is a woman,” Angie said, grabbing Julio’s arms. “And she’s been here.”
“Yes,” Julio replied in an accusing voice, “and if she had been here when we came and she was someone from the freighter, she would have recognized us! Then what? We would have been killed.”
“What could we do? We had to take the chance. If she’d been here and seen us, we would have gone to Plan C.”
“What was that?”
“Run.”
Julio’s expression turned more glum than ever. “I think that should have been Plan A.”
36
The door to the basement cell swung open, startling the prisoners. George Gresham was booted into the small room, where he collapsed on the cement floor. The door slammed shut behind him.
“George, are you all right?” Grundil knelt at his side and turned him onto his back. “Vas he torturing you very horribly?”
Béla let out a muffled, terror-stricken cry.
Shawn MacDougall, who had been sitting on the floor in a far corner of the cell, scooted back further against the wall and wrapped his arms tightly around his legs.
George groaned and slowly drew himself into a sitting position. His face had a red, swollen mark on one cheek. “I’m all right. They only hit me a couple of times. More than anything, I need water.”
“What did they want from you?” Paavo asked, standing over him.
George ran his hand over his crew cut. “The colonel wanted to know what I knew about the formula—apparently it’s on microfilm. Heck, I didn’t even know that much about it. I was asked why the Hydra won’t give it to the colonel. And why I was so stupid as to go into your room looking for you. That was the only question I could answer. I agreed with him—I was stupid!”
The door opened once more, and the black eyes of the guard searched the prisoners a moment before they stopped on Paavo. “You, Come.”
Paavo followed him out the door and up the stairs to a gaudy living room with a wall of glass that looked out over the lush green jungle at the foot of the mountain. It looked out, Paavo thought, over freedom.
Colonel Ortega sat in a high-backed leather wing chair, smoking a cigar.
“Sit down,” the colonel said, politely gesturing to Paavo to sit in another leather chair across from his own. “You are—?”
“John Doe,” Paavo said.
The colonel shook his head, his expression bored and unsympathetic. “Yet another John Doe. There are so many of you. It must be a very common name in the U.S.”
Paavo didn’t reply.
The colonel flicked the ash off the end of his cigar and blew gently on the tip so that it glowed. “For some reason which I fail to understand, Inspector Smith, you and your friends are interfering in my business. And I want to know why.”
“Whatever is going on,” Paavo replied, “it has nothing to do with me or the others you’re holding. In fact, I scarcely know them. We were all staying in the same hotel. That’s it.”
Colonel Ortega threw his head back and emitted a loud, very fake laugh, then stopped abruptly and stared at Paavo, his gaze hard. “All foreigners tell stupid lies. You are making me angry! I—”
Just then Sylvia came into the room with flowers, incense, candles, and a statue of the Virgin Mary much taller than the one already in one corner of the room. “Excuse me, Colonel Ortega.”
“It is all right,” Ortega grumbled. “Set it up.” He glanced at Paavo. “We had a crazy nun here today. Ignore the servant.”
Nun? Paavo’s mind raced over the possibilities. No, he thought, couldn’t be. She couldn’t possibly pull off that one.
“Why don’t you just let us go, Ortega?” he said. “It will bring you nothing but harm to keep us. We can’t help you with your problem, whatever it is. Surely, you’ve realized that by now. We know as little as you do about it.”
The colonel leaned forward from his chair and pounded the coffee table. “I want to know where my formula is.”
“No one knows,” Paavo said. “And besides that, it’s not worth a damn thing. Cold fusion doesn’t work. It’s a scam. Don’t you know that?”
The colonel paled. “So you do know about the formula.”
“Everybody knows about the formula,” Paavo said, easing back into his chair. He had decided that the best hope for all of them was to make sure the colonel questioned everything, no matter how many lies Paavo had to tell to make it happen. The housekeeper placed the statue on a table in front of a mirror and began arranging the flowers around the base of it.
“Everybody knows that your Professor Von Mueller in Berkeley,” Paavo continued, “was trying to sell his so-called formula because the government was about to go in and shut him down. The man was a phony. He lied so he could continue to get grant money, continue to lead a good life—”
Ortega jumped to his feet, his face livid. “You are the one who lies!”
“You’ve seen my passport,” Paavo said. “I’m a cop in San Francisco. Berkeley is just across the bay from me. Don’t you think I know what’s going on right in my own backyard? The only one who’s being scammed around here is you—by the Hydra. That’s why she won’t give you the formula. If she does, you’ll find out it’s a fake.”
“No. No! You are trying to confuse me. Confuse everything.”
“
If that wasn’t the truth, how could I know so much about it?” Paavo asked, his voice calm and reasonable.
The housekeeper lit the candles and the incense, then hurried out of the room.
“Eduardo?” The colonel turned to the man who had been sitting quietly in a chair in the corner of the room.
Eduardo shrugged in a way that clearly said, Don’t ask me.
“Damn!” The colonel kicked the coffee table in front of him and stood up, then began pacing and muttering to himself. “Why do I get involved with foreigners? You cannot trust any of them! Not the bad ones, not even the good ones!”
“We’ll cause you even more trouble if you don’t let us go,” Paavo said, his voice and his manner stern and cold. “Tourists disappearing off the streets of Mazatlán? Is that what you want? Investigators will turn the town—maybe even this hilltop—upside down. Lots of people know where we were headed. You think you can stop all of them from talking? From investigating?”
“Perhaps you will all meet with an unfortunate accident,” the colonel said. “Your car will go off a hillside into a deep ravine. No survivors. Such a tragedy.”
“It doesn’t hold,” Paavo countered. “We weren’t traveling together, and we don’t have a car. Look, maybe you caught us trespassing on your property when we were out sightseeing and got lost, okay? That’s enough reason to detain us for a short while, but that’s all. Let us go.”
The colonel spun on him. “Or we can just kill every last lying one of you, and let your friends be damned. I am the law on this mountain, Inspector Smith! No one, especially not some gringo cop, can tell me what to do.”
“You don’t even know if the formula works, Colonel Ortega,” Paavo said. “Is it really worth destroying everything you’ve accomplished here? Because that’s what will happen if you kill us. Nothing will be the same for you. Think about it.”
The strong scent of incense filled the room. Ortega leaned back, breathing it in. “The nun said evil has come to my mountain,” Ortega said. “She said it brings death. I fear she is right. The evil is you and your friends!”
“Maybe the evil is your greed,” Paavo said quietly.
The colonel’s face hardened, and he glanced at the guard. “Take him away.”
The guard whacked Paavo hard on the shoulder and motioned for him to stand up. He did, and was kicked and pushed back down to the cellar.
Julio dished rice onto a plate and handed it to Angie. She spooned chili on top of the rice, then sprinkled grated Cotija cheese on top of the chili. The cheese had melted nicely when she took the first plate of food to the colonel and placed it on the table in front of him. Bowing humbly, she returned to Julio’s side and did the same for Eduardo Catalán.
Catalán watched every move she made—a bit too closely. He worried her.
The bodyguards who usually ate in the kitchen had been asked to join the colonel for this special meal prepared by the hands of a saintly nun. Quickly, Angie served each of them.
“Sister Dominique would also like to take a plate of food to the guard at the gate,” Julio said to the colonel, “the guard who was so kind as to allow us entry, and to any other help you might have, down to the lowest shepherd.”
“There are no shepherds here,” said Ortega, leaving his food untouched as he watched Angie and Julio. “The guards can wait. You two must eat first. We would not want to eat this meal and then find out it, er, was not to the cook’s taste, shall we say? Eat up, Sister, Father.”
Angie bowed her head meekly, and she and Julio sat down. They both began to eat in small bites, taking as much rice and as little chili as possible under the watchful eyes of the colonel and his men.
“It is delicious, Sister, as always,” Julio said. He reached for the shredded Cotija and added a bit more on top, then pushed it onto the warm chili, watching it melt. Angie, too, added more Cotija, trying not to make it too obvious that they were playing with their food more than eating it. The others sat and watched.
Finally, Angie took a big mouthful of food, mostly rice, and let some of the juice from the chili dribble from the side of her mouth. She used her forefinger to scoop it up, then put her finger against her mouth, making a slight sucking sound as she pulled it away—finger-lickin’ good being the message she hoped to convey. Julio smiled and nodded, as if he too was greatly enjoying the meal. Much as she did, he took a large forkful of mostly rice, and gave a little “Mmm” of appreciation as he chewed.
“Pass the cheese,” the colonel ordered, impatient with their display while his dinner got cold. Soon everyone was eating heartily.
“It is good,” Ortega said. “I have never eaten anything like it.”
“It is a northern dish,” Julio said as he and Angie stood up. “We must leave you for a moment. Sister Dominique cannot enjoy her meal while she thinks of the men who are hungry at their work stations. We will take food to them, then come back to join you. But first, let us pour you some wine.”
From under the table he lifted four bottles of what the housekeeper had told them was the best red wine in the house. They went around the table pouring large glassfuls for each of the men, then went back and refilled the colonel’s and Eduardo’s glasses.
As son as that was done, the two of them retreated to the kitchen. “Quick,” Angie said. Large mugs of strong coffee sat on the counter. They had already turned cold, but it didn’t matter. They contained the caffeine she and Julio needed to counteract the tiny portion of the drug they’d been forced to eat. In a corner, Sylvia snored loudly. She’d tested the chili as it cooked.
Angie and Julio grabbed bowls and trays and filled them with a little rice and a lot of chili and cheese, took a bottle of wine and glasses, then went in search of the four guards out on the premises. When they found them, the food and wine were eagerly accepted.
But when they returned to the house, to their dismay they heard the colonel and the others still talking in the dining room. They stood in the kitchen, Angie wondering what to do next. Sylvia had passed out within ten minutes after eating some chili. What was wrong? Did the chloral hydrate lose its punch when heated or when exposed to air too long?
Angie was heartsick. Now what?
“We must wait,” Julio said. “They are all big men. But…but what if it does not work, señorita?”
“That’s what I’ve asked myself every minute today,” she answered, rubbing her brow in anguish. “If it fails, we go to Plan D.”
“I did not know we had a Plan D,” he said.
“It’s the easiest plan of all—play it by ear.”
37
As the time slowly passed and the talk continued, Angie’s despair grew. She had to get Paavo away from this place. It was hard to believe that any of this was really happening. From this hilltop, looking down on the lush tropical foliage that surrounded Mazatl´n, a part of her wanted to believe this whole episode was a joke of some kind, that she and Paavo faced nothing more dangerous than the set of Romancing the Stone.
She wanted to call out “Cut!” and walk away, back to San Francisco and the life she knew and loved. But then she looked down at the nun’s habit she had rented at a costume shop, at Julio’s black suit and turned Roman collar, and listened to the raucous voices of the men in the dining room.
It wasn’t a game. She wanted to cry, to give up and let someone else come up with a plan. But she knew better than to follow that line of thinking. There was no one else, and she wasn’t about to let Paavo die.
She must be patient.
The waiting was interminable, though. Her eyes grew heavy with lack of sleep and the drug; she drank more coffee and forced herself to stay awake, to watch and listen.
“Julio, we’ll have to rush them,” she whispered finally. “We’ve got to do something while we still have a chance at surprise and gaining the upper hand.”
“No, señorita. They will kill us,” he protested. His eyes were begging her not to do anything so scary. “It is too dangerous.”
“
We have no choice,” Angie insisted. She lifted up the skirt of her habit and took out the gun she’d strapped to her inner thigh with the special holster Julio had found for it. She moved it to the pocket of her habit. “Come on, Julio.”
“Please, señorita.” Alarmed, he grabbed her wrist. “There must be a better way.”
“There isn’t. And I can’t stand waiting a moment longer. Let go of me!” She tried to yank her arm away, but his grip tightened. She glared at him. “I’m going to step behind the colonel, then draw the gun and hold it against the back of his head. We tell them all that if they don’t free the prisoners, I’ll shoot.”
“You would not be able to pull the trigger,” he said.
“I would.” She drew a deep breath. “God help me.”
He looked at her a long time, as if he almost believed her. “I still say it is too dangerous for you. And me, too,” he insisted.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry.” She pushed the door open and walked into the dining room.
“Ah, the little nun has come to join us again,” Ortega said. “Sit. Your dinner must be cold as ice by now.”
She smiled, then picked up a half-empty wine bottle. “Más?” she asked, pulling the cork from the bottle.
The colonel looked at his glass. It was nearly empty. “Of course, I always appreciate more wine. Especially when”—he put his hand in front of his mouth—“when served by one so holy.”
“Sister, wait,” Julio said, grabbing her arm.
She couldn’t believe this. Why was he interfering with her now? It was too late for that.
“Um, before you take the wine away, please pour a little for me, if you would,” Julio said.
Has he gone mad? she thought frantically. She wasn’t sure what to do—wouldn’t the colonel be insulted if she served Julio first?
“On second thought,” the colonel said, lifting his hand again to his mouth but this time unable to hide to hide his full-blown, noisy yawn, “I think I will lie down a moment.” He eased himself off the chair onto the floor.