by Jason Kasper
A tumbling fall took me halfway down before I clipped the legs of Gabriel, who, between revolutions, I vaguely saw leaping down the steps. Our impact sent him sprawling behind me. The weapon inside the backpack slammed against my spine as the MP5 and shotgun at my side pinned against my rattling ribs.
We crashed to a flat landing in the staircase, and before Gabriel recovered his wits I grabbed his shirt and threw him into a gap between buildings. Then I followed him down the tight alley in the hopes our pursuers would assume we had continued down the stairs. Civilians in the alley vanished into the walls to either side like tiny fish darting into crevices of coral. The sound of gunplay on the street above hadn’t caused them to hide, but the appearance of two bleeding and desperate men drawing hunters their way surely did.
Oblivious to the gunfire, a horse comprised of little more than skin and bone chewed on the contents of a filth-coated trash bin in the alley. We ran around it, cutting down a cobblestone footpath and around another corner before I heard the sounds of men running and shouting to one another.
I pulled Gabriel into a tight wall inlet amid the reeking stench of urine, pointing my MP5 at the corner to our front. The sounds of our pursuers seemed to be moving downhill behind us, following the stairs to lower ground as I’d hoped.
Once I could no longer hear them, I turned to face Gabriel.
He was breathing hard, panicking, his hand clasping the back of his scalp and coming away bloody. He looked to me for guidance, a child judging the severity of their fall by the reaction of the nearest adult.
“Better than getting shot,” I whispered. “Come on, we need to make our way back to the market street.”
“No! We can’t go back.”
“They won’t expect it. And—”
“I won’t go. I can’t.”
“All you have to do is follow me. Okay? If we don’t link up with Micah we’re dead anyway.”
“I can hide here.”
“Think about it. No one’s sending a helicopter for either of us once Parvaneh makes it out. We’ve got to head back.”
I turned and left our hiding spot before he had time to overthink our situation, hoping that my departure would cause him to blindly follow me.
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that it had. He shuffled behind me, his poise an awkward, fearful scatter as he anticipated further gunshots.
I took a circuitous route back toward the link-up road, proceeding with measured caution. The ease with which I could lose orientation in the favela, and the death sentence that represented, made me hyperalert. I looked up to the intersecting buildings looming over us in every direction, our surroundings bursting with makeshift drainage systems, rubble, bicycles, laundry drying on clotheslines and windowsills. I could hear the murmur of adult voices mingled with the crying of babies all around, but the outdoor spaces were remarkably abandoned as the population collectively waited out the shooting.
We continued threading through gaps in the labyrinth, making steady progress before a stationary shadow at the end of an alley suddenly shifted.
We broke into a run as the first bullets cracked through the air. Gabriel matched my dead sprint as I desperately tried to maintain my bearings. If the kill team was smart enough to fake their departure while leaving a shooter behind to wait us out, the other members wouldn’t be long in reinforcing him.
I turned one corner, then two, before finding a tight opening between buildings where gravity could once again work in our favor: a narrow channel was covered in several feet of trash sloping steeply downhill.
Flinging myself into it without a second thought, I scrambled down the shifting landscape beneath me, skidding over slimy plastic bags and moldy cloth atop a decaying sludge, the reeking stench only slightly more bearable than the kill team that followed behind us.
After fifty feet of a tumbling crawl downhill, I grabbed the corner of a wall and pulled myself into an adjoining footpath before looking up the way I had come.
Gabriel was gone.
Had he missed my turn into the channel? It was possible, though more likely he’d abandoned me, convinced his chances of survival were greater on his own.
I heard another burst of gunfire somewhere above, the unmistakable sonic crack of bullets echoing through the slum’s corridors. Readying the MP5, I prepared to go back for him. The thought of doing otherwise was revolting on a primal level, whether or not he was going to expose my time in the Dominican Republic. I’d been ready to punch him in the face minutes earlier, but the appearance of a worse external threat had turned Gabriel into a brother by circumstance.
But I had resources that Parvaneh needed—the food and water, weapons, and, most importantly, information. She and Micah didn’t realize that flyers bearing their faces were being distributed to every armed gang in the favela, didn’t know that Ribeiro had definitively placed a bounty for their kill or capture. Instead they were huddled in some crevice or another, possessing a single pistol with a few remaining rounds, waiting for an Outfit invasion once night fell. And the carnage of civilians on the market street was nothing in light of what would transpire if that event occurred as planned.
I continued moving down the footpath and toward the market road as silently as I could, tucking the slung MP5 under my jacket. A few faces began to appear in windows and doorways around me, assessing the safety of their surroundings before they spilled back into the slum’s corridors. As I finally made out the market road to my front, I heard Micah’s harsh whisper.
“David.”
I turned toward the noise. A primitive, muddy concrete staircase ascended and twisted sideways into an opening at the side of a wall made of square red bricks. At the top, a cat watched me from a dark window before vanishing inside.
Micah’s voice again.
“David.”
Kneeling down, I saw the vague outline of his face in the shadows beneath the exposed stairs. I ducked down into the space and out of view to the alley behind me. Micah crawled forward to make room for two new occupants before he stopped and turned, waiting for Gabriel to enter and realizing he had been lost to us.
He whispered, “Radio?”
I gave a slight shake of my head, drawing back a side of my jacket to reveal the MP5 and shotgun. Without a word, he spun and crawled on all fours into a gap in the cinderblocks behind him.
I followed him through a muddy shaft between buildings, shuffling through the soggy slime of earth eternally protected from the light of day. The path led into a small crevice lit by shafts of sunlight permeating through gaps in the structures around it.
Seated there, with beams of yellow light blazing stripes across her figure, was Parvaneh.
She looked strangely comfortable in that space, legs drawn up under her arms like she was sitting around a campfire. Her dark hair was neatly parted, descending on either side of her face. Even the dried mud on her body seemed dignified evidence of an adventurous nature, as if she were royalty who had transcended mortal toil and nonetheless chosen to enter the wilderness.
Her jade green eyes creased in disappointment, bringing me back to the sordid reality that I had returned alone.
“He made it out of the initial ambush,” I said before she could ask. “We ran, and he was right behind me. I took a turn, and he didn’t.” I momentarily considered adding the sound of final gunshots that I’d heard and decided to omit this to spare her what little hurt I could. “He could still be evading. If anyone can talk their way through the favela, it’s him.”
“What’d you get?” Micah asked.
“They didn’t have radios or grenades.” I took the backpack off my shoulder, snatching it away as Micah reached for it. “I snagged two MP5s and a breacher shotgun.”
“I asked you for an AR pistol. They didn’t have any?”
“Christ, Micah. You want guns? I went into a drug den and got you guns. If they had AR pistols you’d be holding one right now.” I laid out the contents of my bag, starting with the food and water a
nd stopping before I reached the .32 pistol.
Parvaneh watched me with an unwavering focus. “Was it the same men who extinguished our signal fires last night?”
“Definitely.”
Micah checked that the other MP5 was loaded before slinging it across his chest. “We need to be certain.”
“Suppressed weapons and wildly effective use of fire and maneuver. It was them.”
Parvaneh wasn’t convinced. “This favela is controlled by drug traffickers. How can three men pursue us freely while we have to hide?”
I picked up a bottle of water and offered it to her. She didn’t accept it.
“They’re protected,” I said.
“Not by our employer,” Micah interjected. “His is the only protection that matters.”
“This isn’t his turf.”
“Everywhere is his ‘turf.’ Who’s protecting them?”
I set the water bottle down and wiped a slick of mud off my pants. “Ribeiro.”
Parvaneh smiled as if coaxing a child to tell the truth. “There are consequences to what you say, David. You must be certain before making accusations like this.”
“A courier arrived when I was leaving the trafficker’s house. He brought orders that the kill team isn’t to be interfered with. Pictures of you and Micah inside the conference room yesterday, a bounty for you both—”
“Senhor Ribeiro could be trying to recover us.”
“—double if you’re delivered alive.”
Micah’s eyes cut to Parvaneh. Her smile remained, though the rest of her face assumed a pallor of fury.
“I’m going to crucify him,” she said.
Micah spoke harshly. “You’re certain about everything you just said?”
“The drug boss we met was going to kill us. I convinced him I was working for Ribeiro too, that I chased her into the favela.”
“He bought that?”
“Not really, but he wasn’t about to risk being wrong. They don’t know who the Handler is, but they’re scared shitless of Ribeiro.”
Parvaneh was unmoved. “They’ll know who the Handler is very, very soon.”
My mind seamlessly crossed from a recollection of Karma being killed beside me to waking up strapped to the electric chair, the wet sponge and leather straps tight against my body as the Handler toyed with the switch. I cleared my throat, carefully wording my next statement. “I think it’s time we considered the possibility that the Handler is working with Ribeiro to kill us.”
Micah actually laughed. It was the first indication yet that he possessed a sense of humor, and he displayed it with the awkwardness of a newborn calf learning to walk for the first time. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
I said, “Laughter doesn’t suit you, Micah. And the Handler was prepared to execute me at my meeting with him—that much I’m certain of. But he ordered me to meet his delegation in Brazil instead.”
Parvaneh waved a hand at me, her mind elsewhere. “He’s not colluding with Ribeiro. That’s the one thing about this situation I can tell you with total certainty.”
I watched her closely. “Think, Parvaneh. You had to leave a trained bodyguard behind to take me along. He wants me dead. He had the chance to kill two birds with one stone by sending me here, and he took it.”
“He sent you here,” Parvaneh said bluntly, “because beneath his façade of genius lurks a superstitious madman.”
Micah suffered a barely contained explosion.
“That superstition,” he spat, “has saved his family’s legacy and their place at the head of the Organization more than once. And in a long line of great men to occupy the position he now holds, he is universally regarded as the greatest. There have been many Handlers, but he is the One.” The last word caught in his throat as he regained himself, eyes flicking toward me in a self-conscious realization that came too late. “Ma’am.”
Parvaneh didn’t seem to mind his breach of professional courtesy. She reached to the ground and procured a bruised apple from the pile of food. “Every generation has said that about their leader. Ours is another raving murderous bastard just like the rest.”
“You stand alone, ma’am.”
She took a bite, chewing slowly before swallowing, as if using the pause to make sure she wanted to say her next words. “If I stand alone, it’s because those who agree with me are kept silent by fear. And for good reason.”
“He can’t afford to take chances. The Organization comes first in all things.”
Parvaneh said nothing. She knew Micah harbored a fanaticism that couldn’t be reasoned with, and rather than try further she retreated into silence.
Seeing the divide between them, I stepped into the gap.
“You two need to tell me why I’m here.”
“False counsel,” Parvaneh said at once.
Micah corrected her. “Counsel that has been right in the past, and without which our leader wouldn’t have claim to the throne he now holds.”
“Blind luck,” she replied.
“The Organization owes its very existence to that luck.”
“Jesus,” I blurted, “stop speaking in riddles. I got off a plane from Africa and ended up in this shithole a week later, and everyone knows why but me. For once, can somebody just tell me what in the fuck you’re talking about. In plain English.”
Parvaneh smiled, my frustration providing a rare moment of amusement in the midst of her official duties. “You know better than we do, David. The Silver Widow.”
I looked at her blankly. “What about her?”
“After meeting you, she delivered a prophecy that you would save my life. And since the Handler is the one person left who listens to prophecy, he believes that without you, I’m as good as dead.”
In a flash, I understood it all.
That’s why the young Somali woman separated Caspian and me upon our arrival to her hideout, summoning only me to meet her. She wanted the Handler dead and had assumed the Silver Widow’s identity before receiving us. Gaining my complicity, she intervened on my behalf with a false prophecy. If I hadn’t followed her advice and confirmed that she didn’t speak or remove her mask, the prophecy would be dismissed, and I’d have died in the Handler’s chair—before my first sunset in America, just as she’d said.
You do not grasp the danger you are in.
That’s why she said we had only a few years, and not a decade, before the Handler realized the truth. The Silver Widow, the real Silver Widow, was aged to muteness. A false prophecy was only as good as the belief that it had come from her, and she was at best a few years from death. The young woman insisted she would help me, but only if I lied about my meeting with her. That’s what she meant—if I didn’t convince the Handler that I’d met with the Silver Widow, he’d have no reason to keep me alive.
That’s why he had strapped me to the electric chair and interrogated me about her. The possibility of my collusion with the Indian was a distant second to his true priority of protecting his envoy.
Parvaneh spoke. “So quiet all of a sudden, David. What’s the matter, it doesn’t make any more sense to you than it does to me?”
“No. That…can’t be right.”
“It shouldn’t be right. But it is.”
“If he truly believes I’m going to save you, why did he treat me like a death-row inmate during our meeting?”
“Part of his routine for honoring first-time visitors. In his mind, everyone is trying to kill him.”
My mind was set aflame with the words first-time visitors. So, there was a chance I’d undergo less scrutiny on my return. With a man like the Handler, a chance was all I’d ever get—and if I was lucky, all I’d need.
“What about putting me in the electric chair? Is that part of his routine too?”
Micah replied before Parvaneh could. “More of a lie detector. You must have said at least one truthful thing to be here now.”
Parvaneh flinched but continued, “Because the Handler listens to this prophetic nonsense, m
y entire delegation was halted until you could arrive. And since I was ordered to keep you at my side, I now have one world-class bodyguard here instead of two.”
“With me,” I said, “one is all you need. And while Micah may not be world-class per se, he’s not bad as a sidekick—”
Micah flexed his hands into fists and cut me off. “She’s talking about me.”
Parvaneh giggled, and the way Micah’s face swung toward her in response made it apparent he feared losing control.
Aside from the fact that I enjoyed pissing him off, Parvaneh represented the greatest ally I could have. If the Handler considered her important enough to keep me alive to save her, then earning her favor was my best chance of smuggling the .32 pistol close enough to him to use it.
Micah looked to Parvaneh and said, “Every decision that seemed lunacy at the time has turned out to have been made with a foresight rivaling omnipotence. We shouldn’t be questioning the One. Especially not in front of an outsider.”
She replied, “That’s the problem, Micah. No one questions him, and then when he obeys the ranting of a leprous old hag, we assume it must be a mark of psychic genius.”
I took a breath. “We need to discuss our options.”
Micah bristled with superiority. “There are no options. You tried to get a radio. You failed. We hide here until the Outfit invades tonight, and that’s final.”
“My picture wasn’t on the bounty.”
“And if Gabriel were still here to translate, that might mean something. But you didn’t bring him back.”
“Take a break from playing armchair quarterback, just for a minute. You must have heard the Outfit helicopter flying search patterns over us. I can signal it and get them to drop off a team of shooters.”
“Ribeiro’s kill team will find you long before that point.”
“Even better. If I kill them, I get a radio and bring it back. You can raise the Outfit on their emergency frequency, and the helicopter comes to us.”
He snorted. “A bald twenty-year-old kid—”