Blessed are the Peacemakers

by Kristi Belcamino

  “Owen Jackson from the American embassy in Mexico City.”

  Gabriella shook his hand then shot a look at the second man who remained seated and was watching her. He also wore a suit, a black one with a black shirt and black tie. His hair was longer and slicked back. His shoes reflected the light bulb hanging in the ceiling above. Something told her she should know who this man was, but she didn’t.

  The colonel ignored the other man, as well.

  “I’m sure you have some questions,” he said, gesturing for them to sit.

  As they paused in the doorway, Gabriella tried to meet Donovan’s eyes, but he looked away. She tried to reassure herself that her husband was traumatized and it would take time for things to return to normal. She reached out to squeeze his hand, but it was limp and unresponsive and she soon let it go.

  She sat on the love seat against the window, hoping Donovan would sit beside her, but he pulled out a chair in front of the desk.

  “Damn right. I need some answers,” Donovan said as soon as they settled in.

  “It looks like El Loro wasn’t really after you.”

  “No shit,” Donovan said. The colonel ignored the interruption and continued.

  “There was someone on your plane. A Colombian that purported to be your guide. Do you recall him?”

  Gabriella watched Donovan’s face carefully. He squinted and nodded.

  “Yes. Short fellow. Didn’t talk much.”

  The colonel nodded back. “That was Carlos Ruiz Domingo Gonzales. He is head of the Belize Secret Service. There is a hefty reward for his capture. Alive.”

  “Why?” Gabriella was now leaning forward listening.

  “He has two crucial bits of information that El Loro wants. He knows the identity of a key informant high up in the ranks of the cartel.”

  “Anyone want to bother explaining why this guy was on my plane?” Donovan said.

  The other man cleared his throat. “He was picking up one last piece of intelligence before we were going to smuggle him out of the country so he could testify against El Loro.”

  Donovan raised an eyebrow, waiting.

  The colonel pressed his lips together tightly before answering. “He was on his way to El Loro’s house to get a disk that contained proof that an official in our government has been compromised.”

  “An official? How high up?” Gabriella’s reporter instincts kicked in.

  “I’m sorry that’s classified.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Donovan said standing. “I’ve spent the last four months in a basement while my family—my daughter—thought I was dead. My wife was kidnapped, leaving our daughter to believe she was orphaned.

  “With the hell our family has gone through you damn well better tell me everything. I don’t give a shit if it’s classified or not.”

  The two men exchanged looks. The Colonel said, “My sources say it’s going to be on the cover of the Washington Post in the morning.”

  The other man nodded.

  “Senator Corbin has been receiving payments from El Loro for the past two years. In return, he overlooks intelligence he receives privately about El Loro’s covert drug operations. We did not know this until now. In other words, our work here has been completely useless and compromised.”

  “What?” Gabriella was exhausted. Nothing was making sense.

  The senator was corrupt. He’d sold her out. Gabriella tried to keep her fury at bay to listen to what else the colonel had to say.

  “Unfortunately, someone tipped Corbin off that we were on to him. Corbin put out a hit on Gonzalez to make sure that proof of his involvement never reached the Oval Office. That’s why Donovan’s plane was shot down.”

  Gabriella froze. Donovan’s plane was shot down. It didn’t have engine trouble and crash. She watched Donovan. He didn’t react. He was concentrating on what the colonel was saying.

  “Unfortunately for Corbin,” the colonel said. “Gonzalez disappeared with the plane crash. His body was never found. Corbin feared he had survived the crash and was still going to expose Corbin’s involvement and also provide the proof the government needed to charge El Loro in international court. They were holding Donovan to try to find out more about Gonzalez. Your memory loss, Agent Donovan, was inconvenient to them, but you were the only lead they had. Everyone else in the plane crash died. Except for you and Gonzalez. They found you, but not him. But while you were passed out, they found a note from Gonzalez on your body. It said that no matter how much they tortured you, he pleaded with you not to reveal his whereabouts.”

  “Son of a bitch.” Donovan stood.

  “Yes,” the colonel said. “It was a set up. To lead them astray. Lucky for you, you had memory loss so they were waiting for your memory to return before any real torture took place.”

  Donovan sank back down into his chair. “What about my wife? God damn it. What about her? What did she have to do with this?”

  The colonel turned toward Gabriella now.

  “When you went to Corbin and told him you were going to search for Donovan, you played right into his hands. They thought by holding you, they would have all the power over your husband they needed to get him to reveal Gonzalez’s location.”

  Gabriella closed her eyes for a second. They’d been fucking pawns in a deadly game they knew nothing about. Her so-called friend, the senator, had set her up and nearly killed her husband. He’d encouraged her to trace Donovan’s path so he could use her to get Donovan to tell them everything he knew. Her eyes narrowed. Sen. Corbin would pay for what he had done to her family.

  “How does all this tie into the Bay Area?” she asked.

  The colonel nodded at Donovan. “Why don’t you tell her what the DEA was investigating?”

  “San Francisco is El Loro’s main conduit for distributing cocaine,” Donovan said. “Those bodies in Lake Josephine were drug mules. Young women who thought they were starting exciting lives in America. But instead something went wrong. For this particular group of women, the balloons they had swallowed with the drugs were old, had sat in the sun too long and burst inside them, killing them instantly. Lake Josephine wasn’t a secret spot where bodies were occasionally dumped. It was the burial ground after a mass execution. An accidental execution, but still. El Loro knew—and wanted—the bodies to surface to send a message. Each body had a parrot’s feather in its mouth.”

  Gabriella frowned.

  “El Loro means “the Parrot” in Spanish,” Donovan said. “My mission was to find him and bring him into custody for the deaths of those young women and make sure the smuggling operation stopped. Forever.

  “Obviously, I failed.” He looked down.

  “No, you didn’t.” Gabriella turned to the colonel. “What happened to the young women at the hacienda? Did you find them? Rescue them?”

  The colonel nodded. “They are all in protective custody.”

  Gabriella gave Donovan a knowing look, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Your ‘tipster’ who called the newsroom about the bodies was one of El Loro’s operatives,” the colonel continued. Not noticing the exchange between the other two. “It seems that the bodies hadn’t surfaced on their own so they alerted the media.”

  “Why me?”

  “They also called the San Francisco paper, but some intern ignored it, figuring it was some crazy person.”

  “What now? What happens without that proof against Corbin and El Loro?” she said.

  “Well, that’s where we’ve had a bit of luck. Although Gonzalez’s whereabouts are unknown, we received an email yesterday from a computer at El Loro’s home office with all the proof we need.”

  Nico.

  It was if the colonel read her mind. “Nico Sicilia sent it.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Hours later, after extensive questioning and repeating their stories—at least the bare bones of their stories—the men left Donovan and Gabriella alone for a few minutes. It was the first time they’d been alone for
six months.

  Gabriella was still reeling from the account Donovan gave of his captivity. Both were in disbelief that they had been so close for so long.

  When the door closed behind them, Gabriella stared at the floor, suffused with guilt. She had made love to another man with her husband in the same house, alive. He was being held in a dingy basement prison without sunlight below her, maybe even directly below her bed, while she flirted and drank wine with another man and then kissed every inch of his body.

  Gabriella didn’t know how she was going to tell him or how they would ever recover from this.

  But it was as if Donovan already knew. Besides those moments when he softened while talking to Grace on the phone, everything about him was stiff and cold. He knew her so well maybe he already did know that she had betrayed him.

  Well, if not, he would know soon. She couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t tell him.

  She stared at Donovan, willing him to look at her.

  Instead, he reached forward and slid a manila folder off the colonel’s desk. The tab had a small typed label that read, “Sean Donovan/Gabriella Giovanni.”

  Setting it casually in his lap, he opened it up. A stack of pictures was on top of a thick bundle of other papers. He stared at three photos that had splayed across the page when he had moved the folder. Gabriella leaned forward to see them and then felt sick.

  They were pictures of her. In her bikini. In an evening gown, cheeks flushed with wine and a sultry smile on her mouth, clearly directed toward a man just out of the camera’s range. She lay beneath a man’s naked body. A man who was clearly not Donovan.

  “Donovan,” she reached for his arm.

  He brushed her arm away, not roughly but firmly. “I’ve already seen these.” His voice was dull, emotionless.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They showed them to me when I was in the basement.”

  “I thought you were dead. I’m sorrier than I can ever say.” There was nothing else to say.

  But then she spotted the corner of another picture. This was a different woman’s face. Donovan didn’t move as Gabriella leaned over and plucked the photo out. Her face felt numb. It was Donovan and the woman she’d seen in the hall last night. Having sex.

  Leaning over, she grabbed the stack of photos. There were half a dozen similar pictures. In each one, the woman was half dressed in different outfits, so it was clear they were different times.

  Stunned, Gabriella sat back in her chair, staring at the wall in front of her.

  Donovan didn’t move, didn’t speak.

  Finally, Gabriella said without looking away from the wall, “At least I only fucked him once.”

  Outside the office, the sounds of the jungle awakening for the night grew louder: the squawking of the parrots and chatter of the monkeys and far in the distant, the howl of something ominous and predatory.

  The door opened and the colonel returned.

  “We have a lead on Senor Sicilia’s boy. El Loro owned at least a dozen homes in this area that we know about, but there is one we learned about from your friend,” here he looked at Donovan. “She said he kept it secret. It is on the coast. We will go there.”

  Your friend. Gabriella’s stomach flipped at the words. She wanted to squeeze her bare hands around that woman’s neck until that pretty face became blue. With a start, she realized it wasn’t the woman’s fault. It was Donovan’s. He was the one who betrayed her. The woman was innocent. In fact, the woman had helped Gabriella and was now helping authorities. She had probably been this El Loro’s prisoner, in many ways, as well.

  Nobody was completely innocent in this fucked-up situation and yet, nobody was completely guilty. It was all shades of gray.

  “Excuse me, colonel,” Gabriella said. “Can you tell me where you got the photos in that folder?”

  The colonel’s neck turned red. He swallowed before he answered. “They were on Nico Sicilia.”

  Gabriella didn’t answer. The phone rang. Donovan sat rigidly beside her.

  The colonel spoke for a few minutes in a low voice before hanging up and meeting Gabriella’s eyes.

  “We are infiltrating the beach house at midnight. The woman knows a secret way in. We’re taking her with us.”

  “What will happen to the boy?” Gabriella asked.

  “We’ll bring him here.”

  “Good.” Gabriella stood up and without looking at Donovan said, “I made a promise to his father. I will take care of him.”

  THE CALL CAME AT THREE in the morning. The colonel, who was still sitting at his desk, took the call.

  Gabriella had dozed off on a small loveseat in the corner, covered with a blanket but sat up straight when the phone rang. Donovan was slumped in the chair. He straightened with a jolt.

  They’d found the boy. Five people had died. They’d found him in a bedroom that had a flat screen TV and video games and books and Legos. He’d been treated well. Physically.

  Emotionally, he was a mess, the colonel said.

  “There is more,” the colonel said. “Our men raided a small cave near a narco ranch one hundred miles north of here.”

  Gabriella waited darting a glance at Donovan.

  “We think they found Gonzales. They found his body or a body they think is he. They only found parts,” the colonel paused, as if debating to describe what parts and then continued. “He was in a small cave inhabited by hundreds of dart frogs. We might do an autopsy, but it won’t matter. Animals had eaten him. He’s been dead for a long time. Maybe shortly after the plane crash.”

  “Why won’t an autopsy matter? What if he was murdered and stashed in that cave? He doesn’t get any justice? Too bad? Jungle vigilance?” Gabriella was pissed and she didn’t know why. She could care less about this Gonzales guy who had made her life hell the past few months.

  “We shall see about the autopsy,” the colonel said. “But personally, I believe he died from poisoning. He sought shelter in the wrong cave. The Golden Poison frogs found in the cave have enough venom on their skin to kill a man who simply touches one, especially a man with open cuts and wounds from a plane crash.”

  Gabriella knew then why she was furious: The whole time they’d been torturing Donovan and keeping Gabriella in the hopes that he might know the man’s location, the man had been dead in a mountain cave. He hadn’t been a threat at all.

  It was almost too much to take in. Gabriella felt sick to her stomach and glanced around for some type of container in case she couldn’t keep it down.

  They had been drinking coffee and eating small sandwiches, waiting for word of the raid at the beach house and now all she could taste was the sour remains of her snack trying to fill her mouth.

  But the colonel wasn’t done. A third operation was taking place: a hunt for El Loro. When they’d raided the hacienda, there was not a trace of him. Only the young women.

  They hadn’t heard any word yet of how that hunt was going, he said.

  “I know this is a lot to take in and it is all happening very quickly,” the colonel said, standing. “Try to get a little sleep before we leave. A driver will be here at eight to take you to the air strip.”

  He told them they’d have to stop in Mexico City to go through some paperwork at the American Embassy there.

  “I will leave you now to rest.”

  Gabriella leaned her head back and fell asleep.

  When she woke at six, Donovan wasn’t in the room. She opened the door and found a man outside with a gun.

  “Where is the colonel?”

  “Sleep.”

  “Did the boy get here?”

  “Si, he is there.” The man pointed at another door across the hall. Gabriella peeked in. The boy was curled up on a cot in a tiny office. A beige blanket covered his midsection. His legs stuck out the bottom. He still wore small buckled leather sandals. He looked so small and vulnerable. And now, he was an orphan. Her heart went out to him.

  After using the bathroom, sh
e returned to the colonel’s office. The man who had been posted outside the door was gone. Inside, the colonel sat at his desk, looking as if he’d had a full night’s sleep, hair slicked back, uniform unwrinkled. Donovan sat in the corner with messy hair and a three-day beard. She wanted to rush over to him and hold him. She wanted him to hold her and tell her everything would be okay, but right now he felt like a stranger.

  Looking at him, her mind knew it was her husband, but her body told her that man was someone she’d never met.

  For a second, she hesitated, waiting for him to meet her eyes so she could see the love in them, but when he looked up his eyes were blank, as if she were a stranger who meant nothing to him one way or the other.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Gabriella knocked on the office door.

  “Si, come in.” The boy’s voice was barely a whisper.

  Inside the boy sat on the side of the cot, swinging his legs. A chunk of his hair stuck up and he tried to smooth it down when he saw Gabriella.

  “Mi chiamo es Gabriella,” she said.

  The boy looked relieved she was speaking Italian.

  She told him she was here to help him. He didn’t answer, but she saw his little Adam’s apple bob. He was nervous. When she asked if he spoke English he said he did, but not well.

  “Well, you are going to come with me to America until we figure out the best place for you. Is that okay? I know this must be terribly frightening and sad.”

  He looked down as she said this.

  “I knew your father and I know he loved you more than anything else in the world. You were his life. I know that for sure.”

  The boy nodded staring at his sandals.

  “I will do everything I can to make this comfortable for you. Please don’t hesitate to come to me and let me know anything you need or want. I am here to help you.”

  She paused. What else could she say? The boy was now alone in the world.