by Mike Lawson
For the first time, Juan Carlos hesitated, and Emma didn’t think he was going to answer the question, but then he said, “When we set up the facility, fifty-five people lived here. Now there are forty-six. Four died the first year, but this was understandable. It was a very hard winter that year and some were still traumatized by the earthquake and some had been injured. One man who died was buried beneath his own house for two days before he could be rescued.”
“But what killed these people?”
“Dr. Lambert said it was most likely heart issues or some respiratory infection.”
“Most likely?”
“Yes, that’s what he said. The next year two people died. One was a woman who Dr. Lambert said had a weak heart; the man … Well, he just died. He missed his wife a lot. I think he wanted to die. The following year, thank God, everyone stayed healthy, but …”
Juan Carlos stopped speaking, so Emma prompted him. “But what?
Juan Carlos looked away, as if he felt guilty about something.
“Look,” Emma said, “if you don’t want to talk about this because it’s too painful, I understand. And I’m sure if people died, it wasn’t your fault. I’m only asking about fatalities because if the Red Cross sets up a place like this, we need to understand some of the problems we might encounter.”
Juan Carlos nodded. “If you use generators, you need to be careful,” he said. “A short time ago, three people died here one night and—”
“All on the same night?”
“Yes. Dr. Lambert’s man said it was probably the generators. Carbon monoxide. The morning after the people died, everyone was nauseous and complaining of headaches. The Warwick Foundation sent a technician from Arequipa to look at the generators and he did some maintenance on them, and we haven’t had any problems since. So be careful if you use generators.”
“Were autopsies performed on the people who died?” Emma asked.
“I don’t know. Mr. Hobson sent a helicopter for the bodies. To give them a proper burial, I was told, but maybe they did autopsies, too.”
Emma found it astounding that they would send a helicopter for the dead and not bury them locally, but she didn’t say this to Juan Carlos.
“Did anyone tell you not to talk about this place and the people who died?” Emma asked.
“Who is there to talk to?” Juan Carlos said. “But yes, Dr. Lambert said that if anyone from the media came here, I was to refer them to him. The same with anybody from the government, but the government doesn’t care about these people. No one from the government has ever been here. Ever. Only Señorita Warwick and Doctor Lambert care. But I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me talking to somebody from the Red Cross.”
The man was so open and honest, Emma again felt guilty about duping him.
“Can I look at these drugs you give them?”
“If you want to, but there really isn’t anything to see,” Juan Carlos said, and walked over to a cabinet and removed a small vial from a cardboard box. The liquid in the vial was transparent, like water. As he handed it to Emma, he said, “There’s no name on the bottle. Just numbers and letters and a bar code.”
And that’s all there was. The label said A234XA, and Emma had no idea what that meant.
Juan Carlos handed her another small container. This one was plastic and looked like a nasal spray dispenser. The label contained a bar code and the alphanumeric code A234XC. Nasal spray, Emma thought. She wondered if the drugs were for treating respiratory infections or sinus problems.
After the tour, she sat outside with a few of the patients, although she wasn’t sure patient was the correct word. They all seemed to be in good health, and if they were ill, there was no common symptom she could see. She asked Juan Carlos if it would be okay for her to sleep at the facility that night and he said they had several empty beds and that would be fine.
She took a short walk, then ate dinner with a group of women, sitting on the lockers in the hut where they slept. She steered the conversation eventually to the fatalities, and learned one other thing. The first year, when four people died, they died in the second half of the year—not immediately after the facility opened, as Juan Carlos had implied—and they died about a month apart.
After dinner, she excused herself and walked down to the stream behind the facility. She took a seat on a rock, and as the sun and the temperature dropped, she thought about what she had learned. The first thing that occurred to her was that building and operating this facility had to be horrendously expensive. The Quonset huts weren’t cheap, and Warwick had paid for a construction crew and heavy-lift helicopters to transport building materials from Arequipa or Lima. And Warwick continued to pay for fuel and food for approximately fifty people. It would have been much less expensive to have transported these people to Arequipa or Chivay after the quake and house them there; the money being spent on such a small number of people could have been used to provide for several hundred if this facility had been placed somewhere else. Which made her think about how the facility was so isolated. It wasn’t exactly hidden, but to say that it was off the beaten path was an understatement.
Lastly she thought about the RFID chips inserted into people’s arms, the drugs being administered, the samples taken—and she thought she knew what was going on and what Phil Downing had discovered by coming here.
If she was right, Lizzie Warwick was a monster.
Kelly lay on his belly and watched Emma through the scope of his rifle. It would be easy to kill her right where she sat, but he couldn’t do that. He needed to know what she and DeMarco knew and what she had learned from that simpleton Juan Carlos. As soon as she left the care center, he’d take her and question her. And then he’d kill her.
There was only one good road leading from the care center back to Arequipa. In many places the road was barely wide enough for two cars to pass, and five miles from his current position was a blind curve—the sort of curve where a sensible driver would sound his horn to alert any vehicles coming from the opposite direction. When Emma left the facility, Kelly would get in his car, drive rapidly down the road, and park on the downhill side of the curve. When Emma rounded the curve, his car would be parked in the middle of the road, and she’d be forced to stop. Then he’d point a pistol at her face and take her. If she tried to back up, he’d shoot out her tires—or shoot her.
He’d make her tell him everything she and DeMarco had learned—and there was no doubt she would tell him—and then she would simply disappear. She was a woman who came on her own to the wilds of Peru, and her rental car would be found abandoned on the road. Maybe she had been attacked by robbers. Maybe she’d been kidnapped. If her car had a flat tire, they might think that she walked down the mountain road to find help and stumbled and fell into the steep ravine that ran alongside the road. Her death would be an unsolvable mystery.
She sat by the stream for an hour, then walked to her Land Rover, and Kelly thought she might be planning to leave. But she didn’t leave; instead she reached into her car and pulled out her knapsack and entered the women’s Quonset hut. It appeared she was planning to spend the night. He had no choice, however, but to stay where he was and continue watching in case she did decide to leave.
While he waited, he retrieved the satellite phone from his vehicle and called Nelson, and when Nelson again didn’t answer his cell phone, he called Fiona. “I can’t reach Nelson.”
There was a long pause before Fiona spoke. “Nelson screwed up. He was shot and right now he’s in a hospital and under arrest.”
“He was shot?” Kelly said, unable to believe what he was hearing.
“Yeah,” she said. She explained that when Nelson entered the liquor store to kill DeMarco, an off-duty cop was in the store and he shot Nelson. She concluded by saying, “Do you think he’ll talk?”
“You cold-blooded cunt!” he screamed. “Ho
w bad is he hurt?”
“I don’t know. I just found all this out a little while ago and I don’t have all the details yet. I got a lawyer for him, and the lawyer will call me after he gets in to see him.”
“Jesus,” Kelly said.
“What’s your status?” Fiona asked.
He was having a hard time concentrating, but he told her about Emma.
“You have to find out what she knows and then take care of her,” Fiona said.
“I know that! I’ll deal with her tomorrow and then I’m flying back. In the meantime, you damn well better figure out a way to help Nelson, or I’ll beat you to a bloody pulp.”
24
Emma forced herself to stay awake for two hours after going to bed, and then, when she was fairly sure everyone was sleeping, she rose from her cot. She pulled a small flashlight out of her knapsack but didn’t turn it on until she was outside the Quonset hut.
She wanted to take one of the vials Juan Carlos had shown her. She didn’t know if he kept an inventory of the drugs—she imagined he did—but if she stole one of the vials tonight, he wouldn’t realize it was missing until after she was gone, and she doubted he would call the police; she wasn’t even sure there were any police in the region he could call.
She used the flashlight to find her way back to the small hut used as a clinic, where Juan Carlos stored the drugs. The door to the hut wasn’t locked, and she went immediately to the sheet metal cabinet where the drugs were stored—and discovered that the cabinet was locked, and with a good padlock manufactured by Master Lock. Emma tugged on the lock, but as she didn’t have any lock picks, that was all she could do.
She returned to the women’s Quonset hut and tried to fall asleep, but her mind was spinning.
Kelly spent a sleepless night.
An hour after dawn, he saw Emma come out of the women’s Quonset hut. She used one of the portable toilets, then spent an hour sitting outside drinking coffee, eating fruit, and talking with a couple of the women—which infuriated Kelly. He wanted her to get going so he could deal with her and get back to D.C. and check on Nelson. Finally, she shook hands with Juan Carlos and got into her Land Rover.
Kelly immediately abandoned his position on the hillside and drove to the blind curve as fast as he could. He almost lost control of his vehicle at one point, and barely avoided going off the road and into the ravine that ran alongside it. He parked in the center of the narrow road, then took up a position near the rear bumper of his car, his Glock in his hand—and waited for Emma. Fifteen minutes later, he heard her honk her horn before she rounded the curve, and then watched calmly as she slammed on her brakes, stopping six feet from him.
Kelly pointed the Glock at her face and said, “Get out of the car.”
He didn’t know if she could hear him, but he could see her face through the windshield of the Land Rover, and he had no doubt she understood what he wanted. She didn’t seem to be afraid, though. She just sat there looking at him, her face just as impassive as his, and then she pressed down on the gas pedal and drove directly at him.
He hadn’t expected that at all.
He snapped off a shot, but he was trying to dodge out of the way at the same time and the shot went high—and then the hood of the Land Rover struck him a glancing blow, knocking him off the road and down into the ravine. He fell about ten feet before he hit the ground the first time and, when he hit, he heard a bone in his left arm snap. Then he just kept falling, bouncing and rolling, down the steep hillside. He hit his left shoulder hard on a boulder. Then his head struck something—and all was darkness.
Emma closed her eyes for a moment, then exited the Land Rover. The man who had tried to kill her, kidnap her, or rob her—she wasn’t sure which—was lying a hundred feet below her, on his back, on a narrow ledge, and he wasn’t moving. She figured he was dead; he’d fallen a long way. If she’d had a rope, she might have climbed down to see if he was still alive, but since she didn’t have one, she wasn’t about to risk her life climbing down a steep hillside to check on the condition of a man who had just pointed a gun at her face.
When she had rounded the curve and saw him standing there, holding a gun, she’d hit the brakes. He’d obviously thought she’d step out of her vehicle because he was armed. He obviously didn’t know her. The look on his face was almost comical as she drove straight at him. Her intent had been to crush him between her Land Rover and his Explorer, but the man had been too quick. He’d jumped out of the way and her car had only struck him a glancing blow—but that was enough to knock him off the road and down into the ravine.
You jumped the wrong way, amigo.
She looked at her car. Her bumper had a small dent in it from hitting the Explorer’s bumper, but there appeared to be no other damage. Then she noticed there was a long, fresh scratch on the roof of her vehicle, and she figured the scratch had been caused by the shot he fired at her. She also noticed that if the bullet had been four inches lower, it wouldn’t have scratched the roof—it would have gone through the windshield and hit her in the face. The guy had been pretty good, Emma thought. Even while diving out of the way, he’d almost managed to kill her.
She walked over to the man’s Explorer. Lying on the front passenger seat was a satellite phone. On the backseat was a knapsack—and a rifle with a high-powered scope. She picked up the knapsack, and in one of the zippered side pockets she found two U.S. passports, one made out in the name of Kelly and the other made out in the name of Shaw. The two passports had the same photo of a good-looking black man. Folded up in one of the passports was an airline ticket for a flight from Dulles to Lima, and the ticket was made out to Shaw. He’d left Washington about two hours after she did.
She searched the Explorer and the rest of the knapsack and found a flashlight, an extra magazine for the pistol, and some clothes he had purchased in Lima, but nothing that gave her any idea as to why he had stopped her car at gunpoint. The logical assumption was that he had followed her from Washington and his mission had something to do with the Warwick Foundation and the facility she’d just visited—but that was just an assumption.
She looked down into the ravine again. The man, whoever he was, hadn’t moved.
She had no regrets if she’d killed him. Nor did she have any intention of reporting the incident to the Peruvian authorities. There was no way she was going to get caught up in the investigation of a fatal accident in Peru, particularly since she had deliberately caused the fatality. The one thing she did regret was that she was going to have to leave Peru right away. There’d be no more sightseeing for her.
Her immediate problem was that the man’s car was blocking her way and he hadn’t left the keys in the car. Fortunately, the Explorer was pointed downhill, and the road was steep. Emma placed the satellite phone and the man’s two passports in her Land Rover; she left the knapsack and the rifle on the backseat of the Explorer. Then she put the Explorer in neutral, turned the steering wheel sharply to the right—and pushed. The car crashed down into the ravine, starting a small landslide, and ended up on its top about a hundred yards below the man.
Good. If someone bothered to investigate, they’d conclude that the man had lost control of his car, the car had gone off the road and fallen into the ravine, and he’d been thrown from the car as it crashed down the hillside.
She returned to her car and used Shaw/Kelly’s satellite phone to call DeMarco’s cell phone. “A man just tried to kill me or kidnap me,” she said.
“Aw, goddamnit,” DeMarco said. “Didn’t I tell you that would happen if you went down there? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, but the man is dead. Or, I think he is.”
“What?”
“And he wasn’t a local. He followed me here from D.C.”
“But how the hell did he even know you were going to Peru?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what did you find out down there?”
“I don’t have time to go into that right now. We’ll talk when I get back. But I need you to do a couple of things. Get a pen.”
She gave DeMarco the names on the two passports and the passport ID numbers. “Tell Neil to find out who this guy is and everything about him. Let’s hope one of the names he used is real. And write down these phone numbers and give them to Neil, too,” she said, and gave him two numbers that were in the recent-calls directory of the satellite phone.
“The other thing I want you and Neil to do is see if there’s a link between the Warwick Foundation and a pharmaceutical company.”
“A pharmaceutical company?”
“Yes. I think there’s something really ugly going on down here, Joe, and I think Phil Downing found out about it and that’s why he was killed.”
“But what—”
Emma hung up. She looked one last time at the body lying below her—the man still hadn’t moved—then put the Land Rover in gear and drove away.
25
Fiona sat in front of Orson Mulray’s desk, telling him what had happened with DeMarco and Emma—and as she spoke, Orson felt the anger welling up inside him like lava rising in a volcano. He had never struck a woman in his life, but right now he wanted to knock Fiona’s arrogant head right off her shoulders. Nelson was in a hospital and under arrest, Kelly seemed to have disappeared, DeMarco was still alive, and Fiona had no idea where Emma was or what she had learned in Peru.
“God damn you!” Orson said. “Why in the hell didn’t you talk to me before you ordered Kelly and Nelson to kill those people?”
“I, uh … It was a judgment call,” Fiona muttered. Knowing the enormity of her failure, she actually sounded contrite and embarrassed —and Orson couldn’t recall her ever having displayed either of those emotions in the past.
“When I found out DeMarco and his pal were going to Peru,” Fiona said, “I felt I had to act. I mean, what would you have done? Did you want them going down there and poking around and screwing things up when we’re so close to finishing what we started?”