“You’re home?” said Rosa.
“My boss, Senor DeCura—” She began crying, unable to continue.
Rosa knelt next to her on the wet floor and wrapped her arm around her. After a while, Calvina told her cousin what had happened, punctuating the story with soft moans that she would never be able to find a job again. Rosa comforted her, assuring her that something would be found.
“Finding that job was so difficult,” Calvina complained. “So impossible.”
“You should come to the United States with me.”
“When? When are you planning this?”
“Within a few days.” And Rosa explained that she had been let go more than three weeks before. She had kept it a secret from her family, making plans instead to go north.
“Where can you get the money for the trip?” asked Calvina.
“There are ways to make money,” said Rosa.
Calvina froze. Her face must have turned white, for instantly her cousin reassured her that no sin was involved.
“I’m sure you could do it as well,” added Rosa.
“What would I do?”
“You carry things. They pay for your flight and give you documents.”
“It must be dangerous.”
“Not so.”
“What would you do in the North?” asked Calvina, already considering the offer.
“There are many things to do. Clean rich people’s homes, care for their children — the pay is ten times for a week what you make in a month in Lima.”
“Could I stay a year?”
“A year? The rest of your life.”
“I would work very hard.” Calvina felt a rush of hope. She could become a person such as Señor DeCura.
Except that she would not fall victim to temptation as he had.
“How?” she asked her cousin.
Rosa put her finger to her lips. “I will explain later. Don’t tell them. The old women will worry. But we will take a trip first, arrange everything, then leave. I will help you, Calvina.”
“Thank you,” she said.
27
After getting into the car, Fernandez had been shunted in a different direction by soldiers who arrived to quell the disturbance. Sure that he had lost Lia forever, he spent the two hours they were separated alternately roaming the streets and calling everyone he could think of to help look for her. By the time Lia finally caught up to him at the election commission’s temporary Lima offices, he was on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. He greeted her as if she had survived an earthquake, blaming himself for abandoning her.
The Peruvian army had moved in and shut down the center of the city. Order had been quickly restored — it had never really been threatened — but the police found themselves besieged on all sides. The media accepted the allegations that the police had fired into the crowd and another demonstration had spontaneously erupted a few blocks away from the first.
The UN delegation had decided to push up a scheduled tour of Cusco, the major city to the south. They had boarded a hastily chartered aircraft and left Lima, hoping to keep themselves from becoming the focus of any more attention. That left the local staff to try to deal with the press. Even Fernandez’s voice mail was overwhelmed with requests for comments.
“You should tell them it’s definitely a setup,” Lia said. “The police weren’t involved.”
“The gunmen were able to get very close.”
“So were we.”
After a few minutes of arguing, Lia realized that having him say nothing was better than the alternative. She watched TV accounts of the disturbances for an hour or so. Several thousand people blocked off Javier Prado Avenue, a main thoroughfare in the Lince section of the capital, but there was no violence. In the other parts of town the crowds were much smaller and just as peaceful. Traffic was hopelessly snarled, but that was a normal state of affairs in Lima.
By early evening even the most breathless television commentator was saying that the city had returned to normal. The incident’s effect on the election was already being measured; it was generally agreed that the disturbance would harm the vice president, who was seen as the government’s candidate and therefore connected to the police. Victor Imberbe of the Peruvian Centrists had already given a press conference denouncing the violence, though he was careful not to directly criticize the police force.
He had a round, almost cherry-red face, with slicked-back blond hair. He had the smooth patter of a host on an infomercial. Lia started shaking her head as she watched him talking to an interviewer.
“Don’t do that,” said one of the UN people.
“Don’t do what?”
“We have to be neutral.”
“I can’t shake my head?”
“Here, we are among friends, but elsewhere, you never know who may see you. We have to be neutral.”
“Three people died. Five were wounded,” said Lia. “We have to be neutral.”
“The election—”
“Fine.” She got up.
“What’s wrong?” asked Fernandez, coming over.
“I think I’m going to call it a day,” she told him. “I’m going back to my hotel.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I do. My work is done for the day.”
“What I meant was, you should stay here where we have some protection.”
The UN had hired security guards to protect the election workers; the men were from Spain and Portugal, to help ensure that they could be trusted.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Maybe we could have dinner first?”
“Another time.”
28
Dean felt his “pre-go” adrenaline build as he and Karr placed fresh video bugs around the bank. Some people were stricken with all manner of jitters; Dean had known a sniper in Vetnam who always threw up before leaving camp. Dean didn’t get nervous before an assignment, but he did feel his pulse quicken and stomach tighten. There was nothing to do about it but wait for the mission to begin.
While the batteries in the small video units were state-of-the-art, they could provide power for only a few hours and had to be replaced for the night’s mission. The Art Room had analyzed their earlier coverage plan and come up with a few tweaks, improving what the geeks called the redundancy of the system — if one or two bugs failed, they’d still have a complete virtual surveillance net over the area. Dean moved along planting his share of the bugs, nonchalantly pressing them against different surfaces. The fit wasn’t always perfect, and in some cases the sticky material on the back had to be reinforced with a small blob of additional stickum. Doing this wasn’t exactly hard — but doing it without attracting attention took finesse and patience. Dean felt his adrenaline working against him, pushing him to rush the task. He kept reminding himself to move more slowly and not press.
Karr passed him as he worked a bug onto the back of a road sign. The other op smiled but didn’t make eye contact. To provide possible diversions in case things got complicated inside the bank, Karr was planting small explosive panels along the block. About the size and thickness of a checkbook calculator, the devices were essentially flat firecrackers that could be ignited by radio signal. Their sound was much worse than their bite, and they were meant only to temporarily confuse the police unit that would normally be stationed outside, or anyone arriving to assist them.
Dean finished planting his last bugs and went to meet Karr at a café a few blocks away. By the time he got there Karr had used his very elementary Spanish to order himself a hot chocolate, which was advertised here as French Cocoa.
“Why do you think this is French Cocoa?” asked Karr as Dean slid into the booth. “Do Peruvians think the French make great chocolate?”
“Maybe they realize it’s not as good as Swiss,” said Dean.
Karr laughed. “I’m kind of tired. What do you say about going back to the hotel and taking a nap?”
“I have to talk to Rubens,” Dean t
old him.
“Why?”
“I want to make sure he knows that was a setup at the demonstration.”
“Telach told him by now.”
“I want to tell him myself. I told Lia I would.”
“I’d leave that part out. Or make it a group thing — tell him we’re all concerned.”
Karr’s protectiveness was touching, and Dean remembered it two hours later, back in the hotel, when Rubens called him back. He was in a helicopter — even the Deep Black communications system couldn’t completely erase the turbines and blades in the background.
“Mr. Dean, you wanted to speak with me?”
“The incident in front of the restaurant where the UN monitors were gathering seems to have been a setup. Lia saw two men who were not policemen come out of a building and fire into the crowd. A short while later, there was a television interview with a victim who lied.”
Rubens listened impassively, not even muttering a “yes.” Dean couldn’t tell if he was interested, uninterested, or even still on the line. Maybe it was just the nature of the communications system they were using, but Dean felt like he was talking to a machine. He expected some sort of reaction.
Was this just Rubens being Rubens? Or was it a subtle way of telling a field op that his job was to simply follow orders and not analyze what was going on around him?
“I don’t know who was behind the riot,” added Dean. “Lia wasn’t sure, either. Someone trying to make the police look bad.”
“Very well. Anything else?” asked Rubens.
“That’s it.”
“Please do your best.”
The line went clear.
29
Since Dean and Karr were going into the bank, Lia handled the task of doping the guards’ dinner by herself. Dean and Karr had already scoped out the arrangement: a waiter at a restaurant across the street took the plates and some bottled water and carried them over to the bank at eleven. The tray was prepared at the waiters’ station between the kitchen and the dining area in a hall that connected to another hall with the restrooms.
Two bottles with a heavy dose of a barbiturate ordinarily used to sedate patients for operations had been prepared; Lia carried them under her long skirt, strapped to her calves.
Her first task after getting a table in the restaurant was to plant a video bug near the waiters’ station; since it was out of view from the dining room the Art Room would have to tell her when to make the switch. But when she went to plant the bug, she found the corridor filled with waiters; they were gabbing about a soccer game, milling around making it impossible to simply sneak over and put the bug in one of the light fixtures as she’d planned. And she couldn’t just mount it on the baseboard, either; the shelf of the waiters’ station blocked the view.
One of the waiters noticed Lia as she eyed the corridor, looking for a solution. He asked if he could help her, and she said that she was looking for a job.
She could tell instantly from his expression that was the wrong thing to say. Not only was she too well dressed to be a service worker, but she was female — all of the servers here were men.
Lia froze for half a second before plunging into a more believable story — she was a chef in training who hoped to gain experience overseas. As the words rushed out of her mouth she began to feel more comfortable. The waiter’s face brightened and he insisted she come with him to the kitchen and meet the chef. Lia followed him around the divider into a small area of controlled chaos, where four rather large men threw pans and pots around, jabbering in a kind of kitchen patois about the food they were preparing.
Lia spotted a shelf that had a view of the window over the waiters’ station; she moved next to it, scratched her hair, and in a smooth, well-practiced motion, planted the video bug.
“Good. We have a full view,” said Rockman.
But now she was trapped by her own cover story. The chef had interned at a number of restaurants in Europe and the U.S. and apparently saw an opportunity to pay back the kindness of others — and not coincidentally gain some free labor and an attractive protégé. With great enthusiasm, he began telling Lia his philosophy of food preparation as well as his methods, giving a running commentary on what he was doing that would have put many a TV chef to shame.
He had just started to hold forth on the importance of fresh herbs when one of his assistants plucked some chicken out of a pile, spooned up some rice, and set out two plates for the waiter to finish and take over.
“Have to go,” Lia told her would-be benefactor. “Ladies’ room.”
It was an effective if overused excuse, and she escaped back into the hallway just in time to see the waiter who had introduced her earlier take the tray from the station and start toward the back door.
Lia followed, waiting until he was at the threshold to call to him.
“There you are,” she said. “I wanted to thank you. You’re very kind.”
The man looked at her with the puzzled expression he’d had earlier. Once again Lia felt herself freeze, her brain refusing to move ahead smoothly.
She got over it by touching the man’s shoulder, feigning something more than casual interest as she thanked him again. The look of desire in his eyes as he glanced down revolted her, even as she realized it meant that she would succeed. She reached up to kiss him — and as she did, knocked the tray to the floor. The contents went flying, the plastic water bottles rolling down the hall.
“I’m sorry; I’m sorry,” she said, grabbing them.
Exasperated, the waiter left the bottles where they had fallen and went into the nearby kitchen for replacements. Lia switched the bottles, holding the replacements out to the waiter when he returned.
“I’m sorry,” she told the waiter.
He forced a smile and this time kept his leers to himself as he walked out the back.
30
Dean heard Rockman grumbling in the background as he climbed in through the second-story window of the bank.
“They’re just taking forever with that food,” said Rockman, referring to the guards outside the bank, who had to check the tray and bring it inside to the other guards. “The last two nights they went right in. Now they have to taste it? What gives?”
Dean smiled to himself. The runner — and the rest of the Art Room — tended to get testy when events didn’t precisely match their preconceived script.
Karr waved at him from the inside doorway, pointing to an infrared beam of light running across the threshold. The light was easily visible with their glasses; they’d decided to let the system alone, since it could be easily avoided.
Dean turned back to the window, lowering it carefully so that he didn’t jostle the device Karr had used to defeat the alarm. Then he placed a satellite transmitter on the sill, making sure it was oriented toward the clear sky. The transmitter — it had been designed to look like a small personal satellite FM radio receiver — would pick up signals from the booster they would place downstairs, allowing the Art Room to communicate directly with them if they were both in the vault. In the event they had to leave it behind for some reason, the Art Room could send a signal to fry its circuitry, and they’d pick it up the next day.
“Transmitter’s good here,” Rockman told him.
“Good,” said Dean. He checked the replacement envelopes in his backpack before cinching it back up, then moved across the room.
“Finally,” said Rockman. “They’re bringing the food inside.”
Karr was waiting for Dean by the stairwell, once again pointing out the beam of ordinarily invisible light. Once Dean acknowledged it, the other op tapped his watch. They had agreed before going in that if the guards weren’t sleeping by 11:40, they would use the blowpipe. They had ten minutes to go.
Dean took the weapon from his belt and loaded it. About the size of a .22-caliber air gun, the blowpipe had a highly accurate scope integrated into the housing; the weapon had no kick and could be held at just about any angle without harming its accur
acy.
“Guard One is drinking,” said Rockman, watching them through the bank’s own video system. As soon as the other guard had left, Rockman had begun feeding the command post a tape they had made from the feeds the two previous nights. “Saying something. Guard Two thinks it’s amusing. He’s opening his bottle. Should be out any second.”
Dean followed Karr down the staircase, moving as quietly as he could, each step, each breath, deliberate.
“Guard Two is getting up!” hissed Rockman. “He didn’t drink yet. Don’t let him see you.”
No kidding, thought Dean, pushing back against the wall and raising the blowpipe so it was ready.
“Going back,” hissed Rockman. “All right — taking a slug, another slug. Sitting down. Any second now. Bingo. You’re clear! You’re clear!”
“You ever think of doing baseball play-by-play?” Karr asked as he raced across the lobby.
31
Lia sat in a car three blocks away, listening to the conversation at the bank. She wanted to run over and try cracking the safe herself. It would be a useless gesture — they were already doing everything that could be done — but it would be better than sitting here helplessly.
Was this what it had been like for the people in the Art Room the day she’d been raped?
A loud tap on the car window jolted her to the present. Lia glanced up as a flashlight glared against the window. A shadow loomed behind the light, a voice.
“Out of the car, miss.”
Lia glanced to the other window and saw that she was surrounded by soldiers.
32
“Isn’t working,” said Karr, pushing on the handle again. “Next set of numbers.”
Rockman started reading the numbers. The cracker worked by listening as the wheels of the safe’s tumbler fell into place. It also guessed on the approximate positions of the numbers in the combination sequence by measuring the sound, but it was only a guess, and with eight wheels there were still many different possibilities.
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