Wara frowned at him and eased herself out of the taxi, obviously in pain and very angry. They both headed for the steps of the Hostal Salta.
The place was just as Alejo remembered it, back when his dad’s friend from church used to run it. Three unlit stars sagged on a brick red wall splattered with graffiti. The hostel was six skinny floors, straight up, smack dab in the center of the market.
It was now sundown, and despite the chill, Alejo felt feverish.
If something happened to his family, he would never forgive himself.
Inside, Wara veered off towards the sofas in the waiting area, just like he’d instructed her in the taxi. They needed to not call attention to themselves, and walking into a hotel with a swollen, purple nose was a good way to make someone remember you.
Alejo signed the check-in papers and got the key, making animated conversation about the latest soccer game with the kid at the counter, all the while dying inside. “Got the keys, honey,” he called to Wara, throwing her one of his best grins. “Ready to go upstairs?”
The guy behind the counter must think he was the cheapest guy in the world, bringing his date to a dive like this. But cheap hostels didn’t ask for copies of your ID.
Alejo slung an arm around Wara’s shoulder and pulled her into his side as they made for the stairs, hoping it looked romantic instead of like he was trying to hide her. Wara panted right behind him up three flights of stairs. He had gotten them the room right next to Pablo Martir. Alias Pablo Rojas.
His family had made it here.
And he was going to have to face them.
Alejo stopped in front of room 303 and rapped on the door, blinking away a bead of sweat that ran through his lashes and into his eye. A hurried grinding noise sounded inside as the door quivered. “Si?”
Wara whispered loudly through the door, shoulders sagging with relief. “It’s me. We’re here.”
The door opened with a soft whoosh, revealing an entire clan of people, gathered behind Alejo’s father in a nervous cluster. Alejo blinked. And stared. Pablo Martir looked the same, except for the sprinkling of silver in his jet black hair. He was a little shorter than Alejo, but the square jaw that the pastor clenched as he stared at Alejo was the same one Alejo saw in the mirror every day.
“Hello,” he stammered. Then, “C’mon, we should get inside”. Head spinning, he guided Wara by the arm through the doorway as his parents and all the children scuttled out of his way. Alejo closed the door with one foot and slid the deadbolt into place.
His mother stood there, older but still beautiful.
Had he really not seen his mother in so many years?
Noly Martir was staring at him as if she were seeing a ghost.
“I-I’m glad that you’re here,” he said hoarsely. Next to him, Wara sunk onto one of the room’s many beds. The room was large and lined with about eight single beds, all with pink pinstriped sheets. Alejo paced to each of the windows, making sure they were secured and not easy to open.
“Anyone following you on your way here?” he asked them. “Any strange cars outside your house?”
Everyone shook their heads no, staring at him with wide hazel eyes that mirrored his own.
“Everyone left behind their cell phones?” Alejo was relieved that they all nodded. He had a couple of implanted tracking devices, in case anyone needed to track him when he was on assignment. They wouldn’t be a problem now, though, because the things had to be activated at close range by whoever was going to track him.
The teenager who must be his little brother Nathaniel watched him with something like awe, never leaving his mother’s side. When Alejo left Cochabamba to live with his uncle, Nathaniel had been two and toddling around the patio in soiled Pampers.
Nareth, Nadia, Nestor, and Naveli huddled on one of the beds, not recognizing him even a bit. They had all been little babies when he stopped by his parents’ house for the only time after running away. He only went home to get some of his clothes and CDs. Just a quick stop before he headed back to Santa Cruz and his uncle on the bus. No time to spend with a preachy old preacher and a mother who constantly prodded about how he was doing and a house-full of raucous little Martirs who kept multiplying like rabbits.
Naveli had been born several years after he had last seen his family. Now he picked her out right away, a little seven-year old hanging on one of Pastor Martir’s legs, whimpering.
Alejo sank down onto one of the unmade beds and planted his feet firmly on the floor, determined not to be sick. “There are definitely some things you need to know,” he swallowed hard, “now that I’ve gotten you in this mess, but first…” he stood up stiffly from the bed and fought the urge to pace.
“We need to get Wara to a doctor,” Pastor Martir interrupted with concern, staring at Wara and surely thinking about the fact that she had been in a near-fatal bus accident. Alejo held up one hand.
“I know that she’s in some pain, but she’ll be fine. I asked the guy downstairs to have a taxi sent over with some anti-inflammatories from the pharmacy. The nose is probably broken, but I won’t be able to tell for forty-eight hours if it needs to be set. The swelling has to go down first.”
Noly and Nazaret audibly gasped as they swung around toward Wara, noticing for the first time her puffy, bruised face. Crusty patches of blood had dried around her violet and yellow nose. Alejo felt low as a dog, knowing everyone was looking at Wara and assuming this had happened to her in the bus accident.
The accident that he had caused. Before punching a girl in the face and knocking her to the ground, then dragging her away with a knife to the throat.
“Oh dear Lord! The accident!” Noly gasped, catching her hand over her mouth. “I still can’t believe…we heard on the news that everyone was dead, even though SAR search and rescue has just begun to bring up the bodies. And then you chatted with Nazaret…” Noly’s pale face flashed back towards Alejo. “And she said you were with Alejandro. Wara…” Nazaret’s mother hesitated, then tentatively asked, “Noah was with you. Do you know…?”
“I don’t know…what happened to Noah,” Wara said, expression clearly saying she wished Alejo would slither away like the snake that he was. “I was thrown out of the bus. He was sitting right by me, but I couldn’t find him.” Her lip shook, and she visibly forced herself not to cry. “These guys,” she jerked her chin over Alejo’s way in the Bolivian style of pointing, “say that no one else but me survived. I passed out, and then was picked up, by the killers.”
Nazaret’s blond ringlets appeared next to her mother, eyes full of tears. Alejo remembered her, the sister closest to him in age. And suddenly he knew he’d missed her. “Wara…” she said, “they say on the news it will take at least another day to continue the search for survivors and…bring up the rest of the bodies.” Her voice choked and she grabbed onto her mother for support. “The bus fell more than a thousand feet down the ravine, and then it—it exploded. I just can’t believe you’re alive!” Nazaret was sobbing now, and Alejo felt as if he were in another world, a twilight zone that could not be reality. Never in his worst nightmares had he imagined being reunited with his family like this.
“Wara,” Noly Martir’s tear-stained voice continued, “A man from Noah’s mission told me today that Noah’s parents will be in La Paz by tomorrow night. Your parents were still waiting to see what happens. The SAR search and rescue haven’t…found any one who survived the crash. Everyone from the bus is presumed dead.”
Alejo felt his fists clench hard at his sides, the words hitting him like a load of bricks. Franco Salazar must be dead.
And Wara and Noah paid the price for the man’s sins.
Everyone was crying, well at least it seemed like it. His mother, his sister Nazaret, several of the little kids whose faces he didn’t even recognize. Alejo’s chest began to constrict, and he tried in vain to be rational. He had thought this out. Salazar needed to die, whatever the cost. Of course it was possible there could be other casualties.
>
I am a murderer.
“Alejo.” The broken voice of his father sliced through his heart. Alejo turned towards him as if in daze. Pablo Martir’s eyes were red-rimmed as Alejo managed to meet them, steeling himself to do the right thing and give whatever it took of himself to make this right, as much as possible.
I, Alejandro Benjamin Martir, am a murderer, and it’s time to pay.
“Son,” Pastor Martir began, “Wara said that she was found by the killers.” Alejo’s father placed one protective hand on his wife’s shoulder, moving in front of her and Nathaniel as he spoke. “And that she was with you.”
The unspoken question hung in the air, surrounded by children’s shuddering sobs. As if in slow motion, one by one, the other members of the Martir family moved up next to their father, warily, staring at him with those hazel eyes. The little one, Naveli, sniffed loudly and cried, “Noah!”
“I’ll tell you everything,” Alejo promised hoarsely. “But not in front of the children.
18
dark
ALEJO LED HIS PARENTS UP TO THE ROOF, followed by Nazareth and Nathaniel. His heart ached as he left Wara with the youngest children in the room and pushed open a door that led to the flat concrete roof of the Hostal Salta. A high brick wall held together with globs of roughly-formed gray mortar provided privacy. A few threadbare, freshly-washed sheets flapped in the breeze in one corner of the roof, drying in the fading sunshine.
Alejo trudged to the center of the roof, where rusty metal chairs circled a wobbly table. He absently stared at the surrounding buildings, praying—yes, praying—that there wouldn’t be any problems with security at their present location for at least the next few hours, until he could explain to his parents how it came to be that he had set assassins on the trail of his baby sisters.
A squeaking of metal told him that his family had taken seats in the awkward silence, unsure of what to do.
My parents may have done many things that were wrong, but they and the kids didn’t deserve this.
The silence suffocated, and Alejo needed to escape it. “I work with a group that partners with Hezbollah,” he finally said, avoiding Nazaret’s teary gaze. With a start, he wondered if he should use the past tense.
Everything is happening so fast…
“Until this afternoon.”
For the first time in a very long while, Alejo found himself struggling for words. How could he explain who he was, when his family had not known him for fourteen years?
And who are you now? Alejo thought. Do you even know?
Nazaret was staring at him, white face stricken with shock. “You’re a Muslim? Hezbollah? They’re terrorists!”
“No, Hezbollah has renounced terrorism,” Alejo insisted. “You’re thinking of Hamas. Or Al-Qaeda.” Alejo paused, trying to come up with words. “I was a Muslim. I…am not anymore.” He couldn’t even bring himself to mention the name of Jesus in this discussion as his reason for leaving Islam. The weight of what he had done felt as if it could never be erased.
Alejo cleared his face of emotion and tried to state the facts clearly. “I was the leader of a team in an organization that kills evil men. My team put explosives on the bus that left Coroico on Sunday night. It was supposed to contain only the targets, but Noah and Wara apparently got on the bus at the last minute. The men from my team brought Wara to me, after they found her by the road, alive. They would have killed her too, and I left with her to avoid that. So I suppose my membership in the organization has been canceled.” Alejo’s mouth flattened into a wry, grim line.
“Wara’s bus!” Pablo Martir’s face flooded red. His knuckles tightened violently around the edge of his chair.
“You…you did that?” Nazaret squeaked. Everyone else seemed too horrified to even speak.
“Not only that,” Alejo’s voice was strained, “but when I left the organization, I put your lives in danger. They don’t like traitors and as soon as they found out I left with Wara, I’m sure they started to look for you. I was a leader, and the punishment for leaving is death for my family.”
Now Alejo leaned back into his chair, hating the looks on their faces, hating that he was the one who had caused all this.
Wara said they have prayed for me for years, that I would be safe and following Jesus, he remembered bitterly. And now I show up, a Muslim, a criminal, who has ruined their lives.
“Oh God,” Noly Martir whispered, covering her mouth with her hand. For a second no one could speak. Then Alejo’s mother stood up unevenly from the iron chair, a look of intense sadness quivering on her face. “Alejo, those are your little brothers and sisters below us in that room. Are they safe sleeping here, with you? What is going to happen to them? Oh God,” she repeated, her voice breaking. “You never even knew them, and already you have made their lives forfeit.”
“Noah!” Nazaret cried, breaking into sobs as well, dropping down onto her knees on the concrete floor. “And Wara…why? What have you done to them? Alejo, don’t you know how much I loved you? How much I missed you?”
“Wara told me,” Alejo muttered, struggling to meet his sister’s weepy eyes. He turned towards his mother and held out a hand towards her, then dropped it to his side. “I will do all that I can to keep them safe while they’re sleeping,” he promised gravely.
Alejo felt that until now his father had been ominously silent. Dropping down on a stack of concrete blocks facing his family, Alejo watched him out of the corner of his eye, struggling against his will with all the ancient bitterness that welled up in the presence of Pablo Martir.
Was the pastor shocked that his son had been living as a Muslim?
Well, I was happy as a Muslim, Dad. Did you really, honestly expect me to want to be a Christian? Did you ever realize what you had done, when you heard about Ruben?
Apparently, if Ruben had affected his family at all, they had recovered just fine. Word was that Pablo Martir was still a pastor. Not much appeared to have changed.
Alejo’s father leaned back in his chair with a firm, metallic clink as the legs shifted against the uneven concrete. Alejo jerked his head around to look at him, eyes blank, ready to be verbally decimated. He was almost looking forward to it.
“Amor,” Pablo began, in a deep, only slightly unsteady voice directed at his wife. “Please go back downstairs with the kids and stay with Wara. I need to talk with our son…alone.”
Fine, Alejo steeled himself. Man to man.
Alejo was glad his father appeared sufficiently cool-headed and rational, even after Alejo’s horrifying revelation. He needed to talk with his father about a plan to save their lives.
It was a heavy first conversation, all in all, after fourteen years.
Noly and Nazaret still couldn’t speak, and the two of them made their way unsteadily towards the black door that led back to their room. Nathaniel followed them slowly, eyes dark, glancing back at his long-lost brother with a mixture of morbid curiosity and fear. He gently closed the rusting door with a slight clang behind him.
Alejo opened his mouth to speak as Pablo abruptly pushed one of the wrought-iron chairs across the concrete with his foot, causing a high-pitched scraping sound.
“Please sit down.” Alejo’s father motioned towards the chair, directly across the table from himself, with his chin. Alejo sat down in the chair, hiding his uneasiness.
“Are your brothers, sisters, and your mother safe downstairs?” Pablo asked first. His voice was even and low, but Alejo noticed a bead of sweat riding his father’s forehead.
“For now. I have to get all of you out of here as soon as possible. It’s…not safe for you here anymore, and you’ll all have to…leave the country.” Alejo winced as he heard his own words, suddenly realizing how crazy they sounded.
I haven’t seen them in years, and now I show up and tell them they have to leave the only country they’ve ever known. Now.
“You need to explain this to me again,” Pablo sighed seriously. “You were involved with a Musl
im organization that you have become uninvolved with, and because of that they are after us, to kill us?”
Alejo nodded, miserable. “Yep, they as in some pretty well-trained, smart guys. If I don’t get you into hiding, they will find you.”
Now a little of his father’s composure crumpled and he swallowed hard before getting out the next question. “You…killed Noah? The bus…you… did that?”
Had he not believed it before?
Bile rushed into Alejo’s stomach and he curled his fingers around the chair’s sharp armrests with an iron grip to avoid once again emptying his stomach. He had never seen the man, but Noah had been one of his sister’s best friends. In the taxi, Wara had told him how Noah had been in charge of getting his sister home safely every night they worked until late at a café in downtown Cochabamba.
“Franco Salazar was on the bus, heading back to La Paz,” Alejo managed. “He was an evil man, and the bomb was meant for him.”
Alejo’s father’s face looked very pained, and he searched his son’s eyes carefully. Alejo felt sick, not at all ready to get into a discussion of the past with his father. His father’s face, however, was unreadable.
“Did you only come back to warn us because we are your family?”
Alejo nearly shot out of his chair. “No! I told you, I’m not a Muslim anymore, and I have left the organization! I knew I needed to leave for a while, when I realized that I believe what Jesus taught, not Islam. But I found out that if I left, they would come after you!”
Rambling and stammering, Alejo’s statement about believing Jesus obviously came as another shock to his father.
Surely the last thing that makes any sense right now is to hear that his son has just left Islam, after committing murder, and is now declaring himself to be a follower of Jesus.
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