“I’m not going to hurt you, ok? Stop yelling. I need everyone else in their tents, where they won’t be paying any attention to you.”
He removed his hand from her mouth, then scooped her up and carried her, kicking and struggling, towards his rumpled sleeping bag. “You’ve got to lay down!” he insisted, inwardly kicking himself because he knew he was scaring her to death. “You were in an accident, ok? I’ve got to see how badly you’re hurt. You probably have a concussion, so you need to hold still.” He tried to keep his tone calm, because the usual way he barked out orders was probably not going to make this girl stop kicking.
She stiffened, then curled up on the sleeping bag, eyes squeezed shut. In the light of the tent’s lamp, Alejo took in his captive’s dusty jeans and sweater. Her dark hair, coated with a fine film of dust, was streaked with burgundy highlights and scattered around her shoulders. With tan skin and light brown eyes, she didn’t look like the typical North American girl.
Alejo slid to the floor of the tent, one knee in the air, and let out a long sigh. After deliberation he finally said, “I’m sorry for the crudeness outside, but I just wanted to get you in here to keep you away from the other guys. Ok?”
She slit her eyes open and searched his face, as if wanting to believe him, then gave up and curled back up in a ball. He did a double take, noticing the girl had coffee-colored, Indian-style tattoos on her palms. Henna.
“What’s your name?”
“Wara,” she muttered. Alejo was surprised to hear a Bolivian name.
Aymara language. Means “star.”
A gold star ring twinkled in the America girl’s nose. “Why do you have a name from Bolivia?”
He saw her swallow, hard. “My grandpa was a missionary, too. In Peru. He married a Quechua lady. My parents let my grandma name me and she gave me a native name.”
“Are you hurt?” Alejo felt himself staring. The girl’s explanation of her name had suddenly brought it home: she was very real, with a very real family somewhere who would miss her if Alejo just killed her here in cold blood. “I have a medical kit,” he said hoarsely. “Cuts from broken glass?”
He sounded like an idiot. His team needed him to kill this girl. For the mission, he had to kill this girl.
And he was asking her if she needed Band-Aids.
She glared at him then, jaw clenched with anger. “Why do you care?” she hissed. “My best friend was sitting right next to me, and if you didn’t find him he could be dead. What have you done?”
Her tone rose frantically, and she curled up tighter on his sleeping bag. Alejo’s stomach burned at her words; the others on the bus had almost certainly been taken out, but he couldn’t think about if Salazar was gone or not until he heard the news that the body was found.
If they ever found a body.
Alejo stared at this girl with the nose ring in his tent and saw a life he had just utterly devastated. “Who else was on the bus?” he asked against his better judgment. His mouth was bone dry.
Wara stared at the olive wall of the tent, obviously exhausted by her tirade. “I was…with Noah. I didn’t really pay attention. There were a bunch of people in the back in suits and then some more people came on at the last minute.”
Alejo felt sick. More people possibly unrelated to Salazar. And this girl in front of him. Wara.
Uncontrollable nausea welled up in the pit of Alejo’s stomach, and he knew there was no holding it in.
“Excuse me,” he told the girl briefly, then ripped open the door to the tent and ran outside into a nearby cluster of banana plants. He threw up until there was nothing left, then wiped his chin on his t-shirt. Alejo sank down onto the ground with a clear view of his tent, still feeling sick and undone. Thankfully, it looked like everyone was in their tents snoring. No one had seen him out here vomiting. Sucking in a slow breath, Alejo tried to clear his mind and think.
If he helped the girl leave this place alive, he would have to leave the Prism. Forever. The guys could even be sent after him to kill him. And then look for his family.
She would have to leave and never come back, always look over her shoulder. And she would tell the authorities everything.
Thank God the Khan is gone.
Lázaro had met him in the jungle near Boris’ house tonight, and the two were driving to La Paz in Lázaro’s chartreuse Brasilia. Ishmael was off to Peru, then home to Peshawar.
If Ishmael were here, she’d be dead already.
This time Alejo felt he had no plan.
There was always a price to pay, he’d learned, for doing what was right.
This time, the payment might have to be Wara, the American missionary girl.
11
coffee
SHE MUST BE SHOCK. SHE HAD TO BE, because how else could she keep breathing, how else could she even think, when Noah might be dead.
She was sprawled on a sleeping bag in some tent, captured by some dangerous guys who had probably made her bus crash and killed Noah.
No!
She forced herself to erase that thought, scrub the eraser madly across the pencil lines on the page until it was gone altogether.
That couldn’t be right.
Noah had to be just fine.
And it was good he wasn’t here, with these awful guys who had threatened Wara outside.
She closed her eyes against the cool material of the sleeping bag, feeling sick and dizzy, but surprisingly, not in pain. The thought crossed her mind that she could just get up and walk out of here, but she was sure they would catch her. Thoughts of Noah in the bus at the bottom of the ravine paralyzed her, filling her body with lead.
The door of the tent rustled and the guy came back in, brooding and dangerous looking, with stormy hazel eyes. She blinked, noticing he wasn’t wearing a t-shirt anymore. The guy looked about her age, maybe five ten, wearing khaki pants with pockets everywhere and leather sandals.
Wara cringed, because she knew whoever these guys were, this one was the leader. She’d heard how he’d ordered the guys around outside, sending them away mumbling with muted curses.
And now she was stuck here with him.
Who in the world were these guys, and where was she?
What happened?
The haze in Wara’s mind suddenly drifted away and she dragged herself to sitting. The guy with coffee-colored skin stalked over to a backpack in the corner, yanked out a gray t-shirt and pulled it over his head. He eyed her, then lowered himself to sitting at the other end of the sleeping bag.
“My name is Paulo,” he said. “You should sleep.”
There was no way she felt like going to sleep right now. In this tent, with him.
“Someone said something about a bomb,” she blurted out, needing to understand what kind of situation she was in here. “Please at least tell me what’s going on.”
Paulo pressed his lips together and folded his arms across his chest, looking even more dangerous. Wara fought not to shrink back. “There was a bomb on the bus,” he said finally. “It was in a package that we mailed freight to La Paz. You and Noah had nothing to do with it. You were an accident. You weren’t supposed to be there.”
Wara stared, dumbfounded. “But, why? Why would you…what…?”
How could she say, Why did you do this to us?
Paulo sighed. “There are a lot of things I can’t explain to you. You weren’t supposed to be there, but you were. And now you’re a witness.”
Icy fingers ran down Wara’s arms.
So, what? They were just going to kill her?
“So you’re just planning on killing me too. Like right now? What are you waiting for?” That came out sounding much too hysterical, but Wara was really scared.
Paulo’s eyebrows lowered even more and he uncrossed his legs and rested his forearms on raised knees. “I would have had the guys just leave you on the road, for someone to find and take to the hospital. You never would have known a thing.”
Was it her imagination or did he a
ctually wince hearing his own words?
“But you got brought here,” he continued, “and so now everything is more complicated. If we let you go, that causes some major problems for us. I’m going to do the best I can to think up a solution for this, ok? But no promises.” She just then noticed that this guy called Paulo had a water bottle in one hand, which he held out to her.
“Take these.” Wara felt her eyes narrow in suspicion at the sight of two huge white pills on his palm. “It’s Ibuprofen,” he said, mouth twisting wryly. She took the medicine silently, draining half a bottle of water. She was so thirsty.
“You’re sure you’re not bleeding?”
The question made her furious as she thought about Noah: where he was, if he was hurt right now.
Bleeding.
She was just fine. For now.
But when Paulo pulled on a sweater and stretched himself out on the tent floor as if to sleep, claustrophobia set in. “I’ll have to wake you up every hour,” he informed her. “Since you could have a concussion. And just so you know, we have motion detectors around our camp. Don’t try to escape. We’ll catch you.”
And Paulo switched off the camping lamp. It was pitch black in the tent, but she heard his even breathing, imagined him already sleeping, not affected at all by the way he had just destroyed her life.
Sorrow gripped her chest like a vise and she let herself sink back into the sleeping bag. She twisted the silver ring on her finger, feeling she was really in a dream.
In the real world, girls like her didn’t survive bus crashes and get dragged off by a bunch of crazy guys as their prisoner.
In the real world, nice guys like Noah didn’t still love girls like her when they found out who they really were. Or give them silver rings.
Noah. Oh Noah. How could you do that?
She felt herself sinking into the ground, asleep in the tent somewhere under the stars, and in her dreams she was back in Cochabamba in Café Amara with Noah.
It was three in the afternoon a few months ago, and the café was nearly empty. Bittersweet chocolate and coffee from Coroico scented the air, fairly dripping from the lime green silk plastered on the walls. Sweet corn mixed with white cheese and anise wafted from the kitchen, where Dona Filomena, the Quechua lady who wore perpetual smile creases around her obsidian eyes, was boiling humintas in an enormous dented pot. Wara always imagined her in there, praying under her breath in tongues while she cooked or washed dishes, wide velvet pollera skirt swaying against the counter.
Across from Wara at a smooth wooden table, Noah looked up from his Toshiba tablet and said, “So, how did it go on Tuesday? Did you get in trouble?”
“Huh?” Wara frowned at him, glancing up from the Quechua book she d been reading while waiting for Nazaret to show up. The two girls were teaching a group of ladies to read in Quechua at a church downtown, close to Café Amara. Wara saw the twinkle in Noah’s eye and suddenly got what he was talking about. Her face spread into a grin and she lay the book on the table, right over half of Che Guevara’s face that some local artist had painted in pastels. She leaned back into the chair, raised an eyebrow at him and fingered the little gold star on the side of her nose.
“About this? Well, I don’t think they liked it, but I’ve always been a little weird. The Bennesons are nice missionaries; they didn’t say anything. Plus, c’mon, my name means star. In a Bolivian language.” She peered at Noah over the top of her maroon glasses, still grinning. “It’s you you should worry about. Just cause you didn’t go to prayer meeting on Tuesday doesn’t mean the rest of the team isn’t gonna find out next time.”
“You got me.” Noah ran a hand through his straggly sandy blond hair, pushing it aside to reveal a little silver hoop in his right ear. “They might be mad. But I’m not sure what the big deal is. Half the Bolivian guys I’m friends with here have an earring. Or a couple earrings.” He let the hair fall back over his ear and they both sat there, smiling, enjoying the moment of feeling like naughty missionaries.
Well, at least one of them wasn’t really naughty. Noah was just a nice guy who wanted an earring.
Clay dishes clinked from the kitchen and the aroma of lemon bubbles joined the coffee floating around them in the empty coffee shop. Footsteps scuffed on the pavement outside the open café entrance and Tiago slouched by under a black backpack covered in skull patches, wearing baggy black jeans with chains as usual. Noah and Wara threw him a wave, and he grinned back, revealing a silver stud in his tongue Wara didn’t remember seeing before.
Noah and I have a ways to go before we beat Tiago in the piercing count, she thought, still smiling.
Noah had stretched his legs out under the table and was back typing furiously at his little tablet. He was squinting at the thing with extreme concentration, like a successful young stock broker in an Armani suit instead of a missionary in cut-off khaki shorts that really needed a haircut. “Ok, so, look at this,” he told Wara, whirling the screen around so she could see. “Remember last week when we saw all those Muslim ladies passing out tracts in the plaza?”
Sure she did. Wara had been with Noah and Nazaret, and they had come upon a big group of women in veils, right in the Plaza Colon. Most of them were Bolivians who had converted to Islam through the influence of the small-but-growing Muslim community here in South America. The ladies had been passing out tracts about Islam, and the whole scene had been kind of surreal because back in the day, Christians used to be the only group you would see doing things like that.
Wara scooted her chair closer to Noah and planted an elbow right in Che Guevara’s eye as she positioned herself to squint at his tiny screen. “So I was checking online a little about Islam,” Noah said, “cause I was kinda curious about how it’s growing so much around here. Look at this website I found. ”
Wara’s eyes fell on something like a PowerPoint presentation, all in Spanish, with photos of dramatic mountain backdrops fading away around the large letters. “Islam is the only hope for Latin America,” the title proclaimed. The following screens explained how Islam really is the heritage of Spanish-speaking peoples and they should return to it with all their hearts. Islam is the only light for Latin America. And Islam gives us a common cause as brothers: fight against injustice and Western Imperialism.
“That’s a little bit freaky.” Wara bit her lip while meeting Noah’s eyes. “The part about fighting against Western Imperialism. The way so many people feel about Western Imperialism in Bolivia these days, that seems like a great reason for a lot of people to join Islam. ”
Noah cocked his head to one side and shrugged. She could see the earring again, and he looked kind of cute with it. The thought occurred to her that there must be a ton of Bolivian girls in love with this guy, and it almost made her laugh.
“Didn’t your parents want you to be a stock broker? Or something,” she asked him, totally changing the subject.
Noah blinked, then settled back slowly into his chair. “Yeah, something like that. They made me study international business. And they are not too happy with me right now, as I’m sure I told you before. Maybe if I wore a tie to work it would help. ”
They both snorted, then burst into laughter, tears leaking out of their eyes as they looked at themselves. Noah in the cut-off shorts and a wrinkled t-shirt with giant Hawaiian flower flip-flops. Wara was wearing frayed jeans and yet another hippy shirt, this one a pumpkin orange with purple tie-dyed rings and little brass bells hanging from the sleeves.
Yeah, maybe Noah should start wearing a pinstripe silk tie with that outfit, when he went to play with the kids at the Martirs’ AIDS center and give them their medicine. Or when he sang here at the café. Tobin and Tobias could get one too.
They both laughed and swiped tears from their eyes until Nazaret came to get Wara for their class.
12
hazel
A HARD WHISPER JERKED HER AWAKE, cutting violently through the darkness. The memory of where she was crushed her. She and Noah weren’t laug
hing in the café together. They had been in a bus accident, and she didn’t know where Noah was.
She was here in a tent somewhere, captured by some really dangerous guys.
Wara froze on the sleeping bag, praying that if they thought she was still asleep, they’d leave her alone. The guy who’d kidnapped her, Paulo, had woken her up a few times in the night, just to make sure she was still alive.
Before they killed her.
“Hey!” The insistent whisper came again. “Time for prayers, che.” Wara cracked her eyes open in the direction of the tent door and saw a thin, pale face with a little goatee leaning inside, calling Paulo. Nylon fabric rustled as Paulo staggered up off the floor, shivered, then pulled a second black sweater over his head.
“Ya voy,” he whispered, and the light-skinned man disappeared, leaving the tent flap hanging open. “I’m coming.” Paulo turned his morbidly serious gaze on Wara and she tensed and did her best to appear fast asleep. She slit her eyes open as she heard him padding towards the door, saw that he was leaving in khaki cargo pants and bare feet. After a minute, she slipped from the sleeping bag and crawled to the door of the tent, where a star-studded sky and crescent moon gave the only light.
Was it almost early morning? Or what were these guys doing up in the middle of the night?
“Time for prayers,” the man who came to get Paulo had said. Wara frowned and bit her lip. Around six men were gathered in the clearing, close enough that she could pick up what they said. Six more men suddenly appeared out of the darkened forest, dripping water from their hair and sleeves. The other six, including Paulo in his black sweater, walked together into the trees and disappeared.
Wara settled in cross-legged, watching the strange scene with bleary eyes. When Paulo’s group came back, also glistening with drops of water in the moonlight, all of the men lined up facing the same direction, now silent, without the excited chatter. Everyone bowed their heads, and then Wara heard the soft rumble of them all chanting together:
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