Then she recognised it as something quite different. It was knocking, loud and insistent knocking, on the door of the apartment … Torn out of her pleasant reverie, she pushed her chair back, almost upending it as she hurried to answer the door.
She had no idea who it could be. Papa had his keys; he was wearing them on the ring he always carried at his hip. Besides, he would’ve been calling her name. Sofia put her eye to the spy-hole. Her heart stopped beating. It actually stopped, dead in her chest, she was sure.
Two uniformed police officers were standing in the hallway outside her apartment.
Her first thought was for her father.
Papa?
11
FORMER URUGUAYAN-ARGENTINIAN BORDER REGION, SOUTH AMERICAN FEDERATION
Ramon Luperico was much weakened by his ordeal. The former administrator of the small French detention centre in Guadeloupe, a state-run facility that appeared nowhere in the public records of the French state, he did his best to match the pace of his liberator as they hurried through the thick forest. He was desperately glad to be free, of course, but not at all comfortable about being dragged through the primordial wilds by this woman. His lungs burned and muscles quivered, and he’d been stung more times than he could count by fiendish insects of all sorts. Ants, flies, mosquitoes, even a wasp on one occasion, he was sure. The woman had sprayed some sort of aerosol in his face when he complained, but otherwise she seemed entirely unsympathetic. At least the spray had kept the insects at bay.
He had thought her French when she’d spoken back at Facility 183, but now he was not so sure. She hadn’t talked much at all since pushing him out the door of the old police station, past the bodies of his former jailers, but when she did speak he was sure he detected a slightly guttural North American tone in her accent. Canadian perhaps - a Quebecois?
But he doubted it. The Canadians had always been a civilised people. And even now, with the world turned inside out and savagery the first refuge of scoundrels and good men alike, it seemed improbable that any government in Vancouver would’ve dispatched somebody like this she-devil into the wilds of the South American Federation purely for his benefit. Indeed, it seemed unlikely to Luperico that she had been dispatched for his benefit at all.
His armed escort prodded him deeper into the brush, sparing no thought for the injuries he had sustained under torture, or for the fact that he hadn’t eaten properly in days; ignoring his protests to stop, just for a moment, to let him gather what little strength he had left. The further into the forest they penetrated, the more conflicted he felt. It was good to put some distance between themselves and the prison, to get as far away as possible from any chance of him being recaptured. And yet his anxiety continued to grow. The trees seemed enormous, like vast and ancient cathedral pillars, soaring far overhead. The vines and thorny creepers through which they fought seemed utterly impenetrable to him, but the woman hacked and slashed a way through using her long, black-bladed machete. Occasionally he would catch a glint of dappled sunlight on its sharpened edge and worry about what might become of him while in this killer’s company. Nobody but she knew he was here now. Nobody even knew he was alive.
Whenever it seemed as though he might flag, she urged him forward with monosyllabic orders and once with the toe of a boot applied with some force to his posterior. A posterior that had been whipped with electrical cords just two days ago. Not to extract information from him, it should be noted. What could he possibly have told those militia brutes that they would’ve found interesting? No, they had whipped him and humiliated him purely for the fun of it.
As a man who had supervised the hostile debriefing of any number of the French Republic’s enemies himself, Luperico found the oafish, horribly unprofessional behaviour of his former captors almost as upsetting as the torture itself. He realised that this might have seemed like a ridiculous point of distinction. After all, nobody likes being tortured, and the attitude of one’s tormentor should hardly make a difference when the battery clamps go on. Except that it did. Especially for somebody like him, who knew that professionals would stop when they had what they wanted.
There were times in his cell when Luperico lost all hope, because he had no idea what those animals were after, beyond the momentary pleasure of causing him pain and inestimable grief. He felt not a shred of sympathy for them, regardless of the way in which they’d lost their lives. He would have spat on the corpse of the deputy commander had he been able to raise sufficient moisture in his mouth to do so.
*
‘Continuez,’ ordered Caitlin as he slowed down about halfway up a small hill.
She forced him along the rudimentary trail she had cut earlier, but it was not an easy passage. The undergrowth grabbed at his already tattered clothing. He stumbled and tripped every few metres on tree roots and sharp rocks, crying out as they lacerated his bare feet, while the canopy grew so thick overhead that it seemed twilight was upon them. At times Luperico had trouble discerning where she wanted him to go. He would stop and turn on her with a wounded look, seeking direction, flinching from an expected rebuke.
‘I do speak English, you know,’ he told her now. ‘Your facade is not necessary.’
‘Save your breath. You’ll need it.’
She pushed him on relentlessly, allowing him to stop and rest only while she checked for any sign of pursuit. Once at the edge of a small clearing, covered in a bright, startling blanket of red flowers. Another time, in a deep V-shaped hollow formed by the roots of some monster tree. He was never unobserved during these brief interludes. But caution and field craft demanded Caitlin take a few moments to direct her attention back along the trail they’d just covered. Luperico gave no impression of planning an escape or assault. He was an administrator, not a killer. Not like her.
The worst heat of the day was upon them, ramified into a terrible crushing humidity under the tree canopy. They avoided the occasional open areas covered with nothing but grass, skirting around them whenever they reached a clearing. All the while sweat poured out of her companion in great torrents, and she made sure that he was keeping well hydrated. He sipped from a spare canteen she passed to him, containing not water but a flavoured nutrient drink. It tasted both salty and a little sweet at the same time. Probably better, though, than the food bar she’d made him sit down and eat, about half an hour after they’d set out. That motherfucker looked like chocolate but tasted of cardboard. He wolfed it down, nevertheless, ravenous and pathetically grateful.
Presently they reached another small clearing, or in this case, more a crude hollowing out of the undergrowth where she had earlier cut away at thick vines and dense masses of ferns with her machete. Some of the cuts and slashes were still raw, dripping with sap.
Caitlin gestured for him to sit on a small log and he lowered himself gratefully and carefully to the ground. The day was passing and she noted a change in the clamour and tenor of bird and animals noises around them. The world was quieter now, as those creatures that hunted and fed during the day repaired to their burrows and nests to take refuge from the night stalkers. The long, pencil-thin shafts of light that penetrated the canopy had shifted from bright white to a softer, golden hue.
After close to three hours of rigorous trekking through the forest, Luperico was exhausted and close to emotional collapse. She could tell that the idea he might actually escape the nightmare of the Federation’s wretched sinkhole was finally becoming real to him. He might live. He might escape, get far away from here, and survive to such an age that the terrors of the last few years, and especially the last six months, receded into the dark numbness of the long ago.
As long as he could give this woman what she wanted.
She could read all of this in his face because she had seen that stupid, futile hope in the face of so many other men that she had lost count.
He silently watched her interrogate the data pad strapped to her forearm. She busied herself with that for a minute, fixing their location, while he sippe
d again from the canteen. His limbs were shaking, whether from extreme fatigue or shock she could not say and didn’t much care. But he tried not to let his weakness seem so obvious. His eyes told her he was already turning his thoughts to what she might ask of him next.
What possible interest could she have had in him?
Caitlin was content to let him stew.
She knew the years of la colapso had not been kind to Ramon Luperico. He had lost his position in Guadeloupe in October 2003, a few months after the civil war in France. ‘The intifada’, they called it, but he probably knew better. Even living in virtual exile thousands of miles from metropolitan France, taking care of the Republic’s dirty laundry in the quiet, grim, but well-maintained little detention centre that had been his fiefdom, Luperico would still have had enough contacts among the more significant bureaux back in Paris to have understood that the street fighting and urban warfare was not merely a more violent reprise of 1968. No, the state had been at war with itself.
She knew Luperico was not a stupid man. He would have understood that in such times, it was the tiny little cogs in the wheels of politics that were most likely to be stripped and crushed. As the collapse accelerated, according to her briefing set, Luperico had very wisely looked to his own interests.
*
For the life of him, Ramon Luperico could not see how his interests intersected with those of this American woman. At least he could take some satisfaction, some small sense of control, from having earlier recognised the broad American accent of her natural voice, even as she spoke in French and Spanish. But he could not place her within that much-reduced nation. She had neither the drawn-out cowboy twang of a southerner, nor the nasal drone of a couple of Americans he’d met from that region once known as New England. If anything, her voice sounded as though it had been scrubbed of any identifying inflections; as if she’d been taught to speak anew at some time. It was possible, he supposed, that she wasn’t American at all.
Whatever her origin, Luperico had a very bad feeling about her. He didn’t fool himself for even a moment that he might get the better of her merely because she was a woman. A lifelong jailer, a professional custodian of the criminal classes and later of the political enemies of the state, he had encountered more than enough cruel and psychopathic females to disabuse himself of such a notion.
No, this woman was a hazard to life and limb. There was a terrible, machine-like quality to her movements. As they forced a passage through the forest and her arm raised and fell, blurring the arc of the machete, he could see not the slightest waste of effort. Where he had flagged simply trying to keep up with her, she appeared to have ocean-deep reserves of energy on which she could call. And he’d seen the carnage she had left in her wake back at the prison. Just one woman. It did not bear thinking about. The best he could hope for was to give her whatever she sought. Unlike his former captors, she was very obviously a professional, a state actor, and as long as he remained of use to her, he was certain she would do her best to preserve him.
But what use could he be?
She had surely not fought her way into the Federation, murdering all of his guards and the Sweet Virgin only knew who else, merely to question him about the invoices he had padded out for the prison kitchen - back when he’d paid a handful of suppliers grossly inflated prices for foodstuffs they never delivered, preparatory to splitting the profit with them, of course. Nor did he imagine that she was here to carry out an audit of his former workplace because of the unusually high turnover in expensive computer equipment. All nefarious deeds, yes, but hardly worthy of state-sanctioned murder. Not even by the Americans. Racking his memory for the details of every tawdry little scam he had run back then, he could come up with nothing to explain her presence.
The woman appeared satisfied with whatever information she had exchanged with the little computer attached to her arm. She took a drink from her own supply before unwrapping two more of the unpleasant-tasting chocolate bars. Luperico thought she might share one with him, but she ate both.
She took a few seconds to chew through the small meal, regarding him without apparent effect as she did so. Then something crashed through the undergrowth nearby, causing her to cock one ear in that direction, and even to sniff the air like an animal, but she detected nothing to alarm her. Another drink, a quick check of their surroundings, and she seemed ready to deal with him. It did not leave him feeling confident.
‘You ran a detention facility, an undeclared asset, for the French Government, in Guadeloupe.’
It was a statement, not a question. Luperico nodded warily. He’d been sure this would be about that period. He’d lived hand to mouth, stitching together one arrangement after another, since losing his position in the colony. Although he’d involved himself in any number of questionable activities during that time - some of which had finally brought him undone, when he trespassed on the prerogatives of Roberto Morales’ mafia state - none suggested themselves as likely to elicit the very precise form of violence this woman, this operatif, had visited upon the militia. His mind began to race all over again, desperately searching for some memory that might explain her arrival. In the meantime, there was little point in lying to her. Indeed, it would probably prove to be dangerous.
‘I was the administrator there, yes,’ he answered.
‘You remember a prisoner, a German national of Turkish background, by the name of Bilal Baumer? You would have received him via extraordinary rendition, sometime after the Paris intifada.’
Luperico tried to keep his face neutral, but he feared that the woman could read his underlying anxiety. He now knew this was political, and political intrigues were always the most problematic, no matter that his own involvement might be tangential. Again, he saw no point in lying to her. She obviously knew the prisoner had been through his facility.
‘Well, we had a large number of renditions after September 11,’ he replied, watching her carefully for any sign of a reaction while he tried to reach back through the years. She gave none, which he found even more unsettling. He did not want to displease her. A German national? Of Turkish background.
Think, he told himself. Think.
‘I didn’t say September 11,’ she corrected him. ‘I said you would have received the prisoner after the intifada.’
‘But, of course,’ he said, desperately searching his memory and finally coming up with a face to put to the name she had given him. Baumer. It had been so long ago, and that had been a different life. He nodded vigorously, wanting her to know he could help. He was useful. ‘Yes, we had more after the intifada. I think I recall your German now. He was young, and very much assimilated into western culture. Not like most of the crazies we took in around then.’
‘Do you recall the circumstances of his release?’
Luperico could not help himself. This could be dangerous ground. He averted his gaze, staring instead into the brush, as though his memories might lie in there.
‘Well, as I said, we had a number, a large number, of renditions pass through in those days. I am afraid I do not recall the details attending each of them. They were not really my responsibility. I was a processor, not an … end user - is that the term? And also, I’m afraid that part of my life … it was a long time ago. Much has happened, and I am no longer working in the service of the French state. As you can see, I have been abandoned.’
If he had hoped for a flicker of sympathy, he was disappointed. The woman’s eyes seemed as cold and fathomless as a frozen lake.
‘Think hard, Luperico. You may not survive the wrong answer. Was Baumer’s release authorised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris, or did you release him on your own authority?’
Luperico had been thirsty before, but he now found that his mouth was unnaturally dry. There could be no doubt that he was in great peril. His tongue rasped against the back of his teeth, sticking there. His heartbeat, previously thready and uncertain, seemed to have slowed down considerably, as though every contra
ction was struggling hard to pump double the normal volume of blood.
‘Understand me,’ said the woman. ‘I do not care what scams or shakedown rackets you had going in Guadeloupe at the end. I know how things fell apart. They fell apart everywhere. I don’t need contrition or evasion from you, I need information. Why did you release Bilal Baumer?’
She did nothing as crude or obvious as turning her gun on him, but everything about the American and her lethal demeanour spoke to Luperico of the gravest consequences if he didn’t tell her what she wanted to hear. He shook his head involuntarily, as if arguing with himself.
‘You are right, of course. Everything was falling apart. Once the intifada began, the guerre civile, the colonies were very quickly cut off. We had no -‘
‘I’m not interested in a history lesson on the manifest inadequacies of the French state,’ she interrupted. ‘You are obviously getting to Baumer. Just take the direct route and save us some time.’
Luperico couldn’t believe it. It was impossible that something so simple should rebound on him so many years later. My God, the terrible things he had done in the last days at Guadeloupe … He shook his head again. He had thought for a moment he may have had to answer for prostituting his female prisoners or, in the final extremes of la colapso, of organ harvesting some of his charges for a Chinese billionaire who flew into the facility on his own plane. But no.
The man sat on the brush floor, with moisture seeping in through the seat of his pants, marvelling at how a simple payoff could have brought him undone.
He slapped at a flying bloodsucker attempting to make a meal of his earlobe. The high-pitched buzz was distressing in and of itself. The sun still had enough power to make the terrible press of heat and humidity utterly unpleasant, but the small clearing in the forest remained heavily shaded by the thick, intersecting layers of overhead canopy. Luperico reached for any recall of the smaller details of those days. For something that might just reduce the pitiless stare with which his liberator/captor regarded him.
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