He forced himself to breathe deeply, and Maria heard him. “Deep breaths, Super-Spy.”
“What is this place, anyway?” he asked.
“It is exactly what it looks like. A tunnel to someplace secret.”
“Did you guys dig it?”
“You mean, El Grande and his people? No. This tunnel was here long before we came of age. You could say we inherited it from a long line of concerned citizens.”
An interesting way to put it.
Kittredge didn’t know nearly as much about Venezuelan history as he felt he should, but he was aware of the basics. Because the country was blessed with oil beneath its land, its problems were of a far different nature than the poorer Central and South American countries.
Oil brought interest, intrigue, and all manner of deals with the devil that left the populace whipsawed between increasingly shrill political entrepreneurs, who crafted a self-sustaining system where oil money bought political influence, which protected oil money. Synergy.
It had gotten nasty at times, of course, and party politics had infiltrated the neighborhoods in a very palpable way. Unlike in the US, where political debates were usually about abstract issues that rarely impacted the common man, every kind of real event in a Venezuelan neighborhood became a potential division bell between opposing parties.
Kittredge recalled one particularly grisly story involving a basketball court, which the local politico had agreed to put in for a group of interested teens, in exchange for some election day get-out-the-vote activity. The teens weren’t innately interested in the political process, but were interested in a new basketball court. So they agreed to back the local public works official when the time came.
Most of the teenagers walked around the neighborhood holding the right signs and knocking on the right doors when election time came around, but a few of them didn’t. In all probability, they didn’t abstain on principle; they were just lazy teenagers.
They were beaten, one of them to death. The survivor suffered permanent brain damage.
There was a saying at the embassy: Every councilman is a gangster in a suit. Kittredge got the idea that there weren’t many minor issues in Venezuelan politics. Every issue was a loyalty check.
A thought occurred to him. “Was this tunnel built for drugs?” Kittredge asked.
“No. At least, I don’t think so. Maybe it was used for that purpose for a time, but I think probably not. But to my knowledge, it’s always belonged to members of the special services.”
“The government special services? Why would they need to sneak around in a cave, like rats?”
He heard Maria chuckle. “You are a little bit naive, I think. It’s cute, and very American.”
Kittredge bristled. “Maybe. But I really am interested in knowing what the caves are all about."
“We have a long walk, so I will tell you. In Venezuela, wealth is not a problem. It is beneath the ground. If you want it, you drill a hole, collect it, and sell it. Voila. Wealth.”
“Must be nice.”
“Ahh, more naive American thinking,” Maria chided. “You see, the problem is removed one layer. Nobody worries about finding the wealth. The trouble is always over how to distribute the wealth.”
Kittredge understood. It certainly explained the elaborate patronage system that Chavez was ostensibly elected to upend. Getting one’s hands on fistfuls of oil money still required skill and hard work. It was just that the required skills were political, not entrepreneurial or administrative. If you wanted to reach into the big bag of oil cash, you had to gain favor with the right people.
In many ways, a ready supply of wealth created the worst kinds of problems. “I bet you see a lot of ugliness,” he said.
“Of course. And not just from each other. Also from people like you.” She squeezed his hand, which reminded him that she was still leading him along, even though a dim string of lights illuminated the narrow subterranean passageway.
“I think it is probably the same everywhere,” she went on. “Powerful people attract supplicants. But in Venezuela, even more so.”
“That still doesn’t explain the sneaking around.”
“Sure it does. When everyone owes favors to everyone else, it is easy for two people to want the same payback,” Maria said. “When this happens, one of them will be unhappy. And we have long memories.”
“So why is everyone pissed off at Chavez?”
Maria groaned. “Everyone isn’t. And you’re lucky we’ve already had sex,” she said. “Discussing politics is such a turnoff.”
“Sorry. I’m just trying to figure out who the hell you guys are, and what the hell I’m doing in the middle of all of this.”
She laughed. “The existential struggle of the pawn, as El Grande says.”
“Should I be offended?”
“Only if you prefer. But you are a pawn, no? Your Agency friends, they don’t ask you for strategic advice, do they?”
He shook his head. “Good point. So if I’m a pawn, why are you risking your life to keep me out of trouble?” He turned his shoulders to squeeze through a narrow section.
“It’s your physique,” she said with a playful squeeze.
“Obviously.” She hadn’t really answered any of his recent questions, and he found himself a little annoyed. “Really, why are you doing this?”
“El Grande has already told you. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“But you know that I work for the CIA.”
“No. We know that they have forced you to work for them. That is very different.”
“True.”
“And there’s Charley.”
Kittredge stopped. “How the hell do you know about Charley?”
“I know because we know,” she said. “And we just know, the same way we knew to hand you a phone number.”
“And you knew I would call?”
She laughed. “You are cute, Peter Kittredge. A cute baby boy in a big, bad world. Of course not. We knew only that you would certainly not call if you did not have our number. So we gave you our number.”
Something bothered Kittredge. The old man in the red scarf had given him the phone number on the same day that Charley was beaten up, and just hours after his horrible and painful introduction to Quinn and Fredericks. How did the Venezuelans find out so quickly about his unpleasant introduction to the Agency, and how did they know about Charley?
It was also troubling that the old man had been killed – probably by Quinn – just moments after handing Kittredge the slip of paper with the Caracas phone number scrawled on it.
“Does the Agency have a leak?”
“Other than you?”
“I don’t know any secrets to tell.”
“But I think you would tell them if you knew them.”
“I think you’re right,” he said. “Seriously, Maria, I need to know how you guys figured out what was going on so quickly. You gave me the phone number right after I visited Charley in the hospital.”
“I think only El Grande knows that. And I think I would never want to know the answer. Safer that way. Watch your head.” She ducked beneath an especially low support beam, which was obviously installed to repair the damage from a cave-in.
Kittredge ducked, and had to twist to squeeze through the narrowed walls around the area of the collapse. He shuddered again, anxious to end the spelunking adventure.
“So how did you know to find me at the Mall? I mean, Quinn stopped there on a whim after we saw Charley.”
“You ask a lot of questions. You should stop, or El Grande may change his mind about you.”
Kittredge thought about El Grande. “That night when I met him out in the boonies, he said something about not having many enemies.”
“That is true. El Grande has few enemies because he has the right friends.”
“Like who?”
“Like ones with tunnels.”
Kittredge started to press, but she cut him off. “Enough questions. Re
ally, it’s unhealthy. Besides, we’re getting close, and it’s time to be quiet.”
He reluctantly obliged, but felt more unsettled than before the question-and-non-answer session with Maria. It wasn’t that she didn’t want him to have the answers, he sensed, but more that she didn’t want to be the one to give them to him. It was undoubtedly a byproduct of living for too many years in a hyper-political society.
But there was probably a much more pragmatic reason, too. Kittredge realized that El Grande, Maria, and their interesting coterie of guerrilla goat farmers had a difficult task where he was concerned. They had to keep him interested in their organization, yet tactically distant enough not to be a threat, because of his lingering Agency ties. If he returned to Quinn and Fredericks, it would certainly be catastrophic for El Grande’s group.
Which is who, exactly?
“One more question,” he said.
“No.”
“Yes. El Grande said that he was an instrument of state security, which sounds very official. But he said that in a tent in the damned jungle, and now you and I are playing Indiana Jones in a cave. So who are you guys, really?”
She sighed. “You will come to regret all these questions, I think.”
“Are you government employees?”
“Of a fashion.”
Aha. Contractors. Blackwater, but Latin style. “It’s all much clearer now. Thank you.” He was only half kidding.
“Quiet,” she said. He heard a click, and they were plunged once again into darkness.
The last several hundred meters of the subterranean passageway were even worse then the first. The ceiling was lower, and Kittredge had to stoop to avoid adding another welt to the growing collection of bruises on his skull, one of which was still bleeding.
Maria pulled him along by the hand, pausing every few steps to listen carefully for anyone else approaching in the cave. As they continued onward in the stifling darkness, Kittredge heard the faint hum of distant machinery growing louder with each step.
The passageway’s floor sloped upwards over the last few steps, and the cave ended at the foot of another ladder, this one leading up a circular shaft capped by what looked like a manhole cover.
Kittredge offered to be the first up the ladder to remove the heavy cover, but Maria declined, favoring trade craft over chivalry. She climbed the ladder and listened intently.
Kittredge wasn’t sure she could have heard much, as the noise of machinery had grown almost unbearably loud, amplified by the tight confines of the passageway. He had grown impatient by the time she lifted the manhole cover several inches and peered into the darkness of another unlit mechanical room.
Several seconds later, she slid the cover aside, and motioned for Kittredge to follow up the ladder.
They inched their way around the machinery and came to a set of double doors, with slatted ventilation openings at the bottom. Maria ducked down to the floor and peered through the ventilation slats for several long moments while Kittredge waited.
Finally, Maria turned the handle on one of the doors, and opened it several inches to peer outside. Satisfied, she opened the door all the way.
Kittredge gasped. Holy shit! “I know this place!”
“Shh!”
In fact, Kittredge had been in this very building just days earlier, before meeting El Grande for the first time. It was the lobby of the Banco de Caracas, situated at the ground floor of a modern high-rise building. The bank had long since closed, and the lobby was dark.
Maria grabbed his hand, and they stole quietly from the mechanical room, past a bank of idle elevators with their doors open, stopping at a stairwell entrance.
Maria produced another key, and Kittredge soon found himself following her curvaceous frame up flight after flight of stairs. He had begun to sweat and pant, but Maria seemed unaffected by the exertion.
She slowed politely to allow him to keep pace. “What’s wrong with the elevators?” he asked, but she simply laughed in reply. Security cameras, he figured.
The climb ended at the eighteenth floor. The building had twenty-five floors, so Kittredge counted his blessings, which numbered seven unclimbed flights, he figured.
Maria again found the right key and gained entrance to yet another locked door, this one leading to what appeared to be the foyer of a very expensive apartment. They exited the stairwell and walked past a single elevator, which he surmised wasn’t available for public use.
They stopped at a set of large oak double doors, each adorned with an ornate eagle’s head encircled in an elaborate coat of arms, all carved in relief from the heavy oak. Burnished silver hardware graced the edges, and an ordinary telephone keypad, surrounded by an extraordinary silver frame, protruded from the wall to the right of the doors.
Maria punched nine digits into the keypad, and Kittredge heard a metallic click as the magnetic lock yielded. “Wait here,” she instructed.
She disappeared inside the doors, gun drawn.
Moments passed, which afforded Kittredge the opportunity to ruminate further on his situation, resulting in a fresh swell of anxiety and apprehension.
He wanted another drink, which made him feel more anxious. He’d spent the better part of the past five days in varying degrees of inebriation, and he realized that he’d become very used to dealing with the substance of his problems by turning to a problematic substance.
Time to slow down.
Moments later, the door opened, and Maria handed him a drink. “Vodka on the rocks,” she said with a smile.
Maybe tomorrow for the sobriety thing, he thought, taking the glass gratefully.
He stepped into what was possibly the most upscale apartment he’d ever seen. He took in the marble floors, Persian carpets, leather and oak furnishings, and a giant wall of windows framing a breathtaking view of the Caracas skyline.
Maria noticed his reaction and smiled. “Good friends are important, and important friends are good,” she said.
Venezuelan life summed up nicely.
“This is as secure as we can make you for the moment,” she told him. “The windows are mirrored, so no one can see inside. Machines vibrate them so that laser listening devices have a tough time picking out conversations. The phone lines are VOIP with proxy masks, but don’t call anyone you know. Your friends will have them under surveillance. The Internet connection is also secure, but you shouldn’t access any of your accounts for the same reason.”
Kittredge raised his eyebrows, impressed by the thoroughness of the preparations. He’d been in secure facilities at the embassy before, and they had nothing on the apartment. And they sure as hell had nothing on the decor.
Kittredge opened his mouth to ask a question, and Maria held her finger to his lips. “No more questions, Peter. Now we wait, and relax.”
She lied. She didn’t want to relax. She wanted activity that involved exertion, gasping for breath, and orgasmic convulsions.
Then they relaxed. “Will your boyfriend be upset?” she asked, running her hand through the hair on his chest, her head resting on his shoulder atop silken bed sheets.
He hadn’t thought much about Charley, and her mention of him brought a cloud over Kittredge’s thoughts. He shook his head. “We have an open relationship, but I think he’d be surprised that you’re a woman.”
“You’re worried about him,” she observed.
“Among other things.”
“And you wonder why he was beat up.”
“And by whom.”
“Those are good questions.”
He looked at her, troubled by a thought. “Was it you guys?”
She held his gaze. “Your Charley is more than he seems.”
That was a whale of an answer, but to a vastly different question. And it was a telling dodge. Kittredge sat upright in bed, jarring Maria off of him, and walked naked to the kitchen to refill his drink, cursing under his breath.
She followed, naked and exquisite, catching his eye in spite of his sated sexual a
ppetite and his sudden emotional turmoil. “You knew that already, but maybe the words were difficult for you to hear,” she said gently.
He nodded. “Yeah, a lot of things between Charley and me haven’t made much sense, looking back on them. I feel like a fool.”
Maria smiled. “Everyone is someone’s fool. Maybe now, I am yours?”
“You give me too much credit.”
“I’ve learned never to underestimate anyone. For example,” she said, with a devilish smile and a playful caress of his reproductive gear, “you told me you were gay.”
“I was. I mean, I am.”
“Right,” she said. “Whatever you are, it is working for me. Now come back to bed.”
Hours later, while Maria snored softly in the vast, luxurious bed, Kittredge stole away to the kitchen table, poured another glass of vodka to stave off the burgeoning hangover, and turned on the computer in the luxuriously appointed study.
Kittredge didn’t know much about IP encryption, except that it was supposed to make it look like you were using a different computer than the one you were really using. His intuition told him that it would be very difficult to pull a trick like that off, with the ubiquity of data and the cheapness of data storage combining to leave unexpected clues that would undoubtedly betray any clandestine browsing.
Intuition notwithstanding, Kittredge needed some information about Charley’s condition. He wanted to be the first person to speak with his erstwhile lover and flat-mate when Charley regained consciousness, in the hope that Charley would be maximally forthcoming before his cognitive defenses fully returned.
Kittredge browsed for the intensive care desk phone number at DC General Hospital.
A few minutes and a dozen clicks later, he picked up the phone from its cradle on the wall and dialed the number displayed on the screen. He heard clunking as the call routed through several terrestrial trunks, and a more rapid clicking as the voice-over-Internet system synchronized.
A tired voice spewed a stream of nearly unintelligible sounds, but Kittredge thought he made out the words “DC General” and “intensive care.” He identified himself and asked for an update on Charley Arlinghaus’ condition.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 23