“You know who Nemesis is, don’t you?”
“As Zalaya, I heard of his reputation, but in the past tense. I was told he was dead, that he had been executed at the outbreak of the revolution—a preemptive strike.” Now his tone was firmer. This was more comfortable ground for Duardo. Less emotional.
“I’m afraid I don’t, though,” Calli said. “Duardo was the one on the phone talking to Cristián, so he got that end of the conversation. Nick, you seem to know all about this Nemesis already, so you’re ahead of me there. You both need to back up and fill me in.”
“Duardo, why don’t you start?” Nick said. “Get it over and done with.”
“Thanks,” Duardo said dryly. He walked for several paces in silence. Nick pushed the mescal at him and he took it absently. “Daniel and his family lived in Pascuallita. Daniel is the same age as me, although we went to different schools. His family came from…there is no English translation for it. ‘Down the hill’ is the closest. Nick?”
“Lower class,” Nick murmured. “Working class. If you care about such things. In Pascuallita it’s more to do with where you live and how you conduct your life, than what you were born into.”
“Like American ‘white trash’?” Calli suggested.
“Yes, close to that,” Duardo agreed. “His mother left when he was young. She just disappeared one day. Her clothing and possessions were all gone. No one knows why, not even Daniel. I’m not even sure his father knows, although when he got drunk, he liked to hint that he knew and it was all Daniel’s fault. Then Daniel’s father died when we were about eleven. I remember it, because there was a big discussion in the town about what to do with ‘the boy’. My mother and father talked about it at dinner one night, while we were all sitting around the table. Pascuallita was small enough then that every family’s business was the whole town’s business. So we all got to talk about Daniel’s future and figure it out. A family took him in, but they were just using him as an unpaid servant and everyone could see it, including my father, who got angry about that. So just like that, my father decided we would take him. About four weeks after Daniel’s father died, Daniel came to live with us. My father announced that Daniel was our new brother.”
Duardo stopped talking abruptly. He drank from the mescal.
Nick stayed silent. He could hear how Duardo hated talking about this and if he interrupted with questions, Duardo was going to clam up.
Was this how Calli always scraped painful stuff out of him? Was he learning empathy from her?
He glanced at her. They had left the lights behind and in the dark he couldn’t see enough of her expression to guess what she was thinking.
“Daniel was angry and hostile. My father was patient, though. He eventually got his way. I was in awe of Daniel. We were the same age, but Daniel always seemed to be older than God to me. He knew so much, had experienced so much and seemed so wise. To this day I have no idea what Daniel saw in me. We became this odd pair of friends. Then, when I was sixteen, my father died.” Duardo drank from the bottle again. “Someone had better take this,” he said, his voice rough.
Calli took the bottle from him.
“My mother insisted that Daniel was part of the family, but even he could see she couldn’t afford to keep him with her single income. He found a family in town who had a printing business who would let him help out after school for room and board and moved in with them. My parents taught him one thing—that he needed to graduate high school. So he did. It took him a year longer than I did because he had to work a lot of the time in order to eat, but he graduated. That meant he could join the army and qualify for officer training after basics, if they liked what they saw.”
“Jesus,” Nick breathed. He made a mental note to review welfare and education systems if ever they got that chance.
“That’s why Daniel ended up under my command eighteen months later. Both of us immediately asked for a reassignment but while we were waiting for it to come through, there was a skirmish on Pequeña del Sur with some rebel factions that later would become the more formalized Insurrectos. Back then, they were just dissatisfied villagers picking up guns and shooting at the Army because they had a beef about how things were being run. On this particular day they were a bit more organized than most and we got pinned down in a mountain crevasse and called for a chopper evac.
“While we were waiting, the rebels called for reinforcement of their own. Their backup came over the ridge from the other side. We saw them on the mobile radar. Daniel, who was covering our tail, would have been caught in the crossfire, so I dropped my pack and sprinted back to cover him and bring him up to where we were protected by the higher sides of the ridge. I got there just as the reinforcements cleared the ridge and brought him down flat.”
“You saved his life,” Calli concluded.
“That’s what he has always said,” Duardo replied. He shrugged. “There was a pretty good chance Daniel could have scrambled out of there all on his own, too. He’s a damn good basic foot soldier.”
Nick wisely kept his mouth shut. If Duardo needed to justify it, he’d let him. He’d done enough jungle and mountain work to know that getting caught between two lines of enemy fire left a slim to nothing chance of shinnying out of the way, no matter how fast one ran. For some reason, Duardo didn’t want to be credited with saving his friend’s life.
“Daniel never forgave me,” Duardo finished. He reached for the bottle again and Calli handed it to him.
Ahh… Nick thought to himself.
“What?” Calli breathed. “Forgive you for what?”
“Forgetting about my men. For making him a higher priority. For making it personal.” Duardo shrugged. “He was right.”
“No, he wasn’t!” Calli said hotly.
“Yes, he was,” Nick said gently. “I don’t know if never forgiving you is fair, but he was right, Duardo. There were other ways you could have dealt with it.”
Duardo nodded. “Now, with over ten years of command experience, I could easily give you a dozen different ways I could have handled it,” he replied. “I was inexperienced. It was my first command. Daniel was my friend, my brother. What can I say? I made a choice. Daniel has never spoken to me since.”
Calli’s indrawn breath was adequate enough a response. Nick felt his own touch of shock. “Never?” he repeated carefully.
Duardo shook his head. “Daniel got transferred out of my unit after that, as requested. Then I heard he’d been reassigned for special training. I heard a rumor that it was Intelligence. I didn’t bother trying to find out if it was true because no one would confirm something like that. It seemed appropriate. Intelligence would suit Daniel exactly. Then things got in the way. Time passed. I can’t quite believe it’s been over ten years, to tell the truth.”
Calli drank from the bottle. “And the call you made to Cristián tonight? Minnie came rushing into the room, talking about Trini and Téra on Facebook, so the first thing you did was pick up the satellite phone and call Cristián. I thought the phones were down in Pascuallita?”
“They’ve been systematically restoring them across the main island,” Nick said. “However, we have assumed that all calls are tapped or traceable. Duardo’s landline in Pascuallita would be high on the Insurrectos’ trace list.”
“The first thing I did wasn’t to pick up the satellite phone,” Duardo replied. “It was to go to my room. Trini and Téra are typical sisters. They rub along like flint and stone. For Trini to take such lengths to speak to Téra privately alarmed me and Téra’s reaction to the news and her abrupt disappearance made me check if my backup gun was still where it should be. When I found it missing, I picked up the satellite phone and called Cristián to find out what Trini had told Téra. I judged the call was worth the security breach. We needed the information fast. What I learned—”
Nick reached for the bottle that Calli held and took a drink before passing it to Duardo.
Duardo nodded his thanks, but he didn’t take a drink from the half
-empty bottle. “Daniel is in the White Sands Hotel with the other diplomats,” he said.
That wasn’t what he had been about to say.
Duardo glanced at Nick, then away. “I knew, earlier tonight, before the phone call.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“I saw him briefly and recognized him. I remembered he was mixed up with Intelligence. If I had said something, I thought perhaps it might ruin things for him. I don’t know who he reports to now. I’ve never known.” He handed the bottle back and pushed his hands into his trousers. “Then I phoned Cristián and it all made horrible, hellish sense.”
“What did Cristián say?”
“That Daniel had made some awful, desperate bid to steal a phone and call for help. Call me.” Duardo stopped walking. Nick and Calli fell back to face him. “They’ve been locked up in the White Sands for five weeks, those people. Serrano has been playing mind games with them and no one knew. Daniel was part of it and he’s only now been able to reach out. Cristián said the call will cost him, that he and the people he’s protecting will only last a little while longer now. He’s expecting me to go in and get him.” He pushed out a laugh that sounded anything but amused. “To save him.”
“Then we’ll go,” Nick said.
“But—”
“No,” Nick overrode him. “Not because he’s your friend, your brother, or any of that, Duardo. You want a political expediency as an excuse, then take this one. If we go in there and pull out those hostages when the UN and US will not dare, then how is that going to make us look to them? How grateful are they going to be?”
“Nick!” Calli was shocked. “You’re counting political brownie points over something like this? How could you?”
“I’m not,” he said. “Duardo wants to find a way to justify this so Daniel won’t stop talking to him again for another ten years. I just gave him a decent excuse to go in there with all guns blazing. That’s all.”
Duardo grinned. “Thank you, but I, too, do not want to do it for the political brownie points, either. I just want to go in there and rip their fucking heads off because they deserve it and because they’ve got my brother at gunpoint and that’s something no one gets away with and lives.”
Nick clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m looking forward to meeting this brother of yours.”
“If he has not changed much, Nick, you may find him offensive. He does not think highly of authority.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” Nick started walking again and Calli and Duardo trudged alongside him again. Their silence was companionable.
“So Daniel is this Nemesis you mentioned?” Calli prompted.
Nick nodded. “Now that I know who Daniel is, I’m beginning to understand why he is Nemesis.”
“And who is Nemesis?” Calli asked.
“From what we’ve just said and from what has happened tonight, Calli, you can probably put it together yourself now.”
Calli took the bottle, drank and cleared her throat. “If the Insurrectos went to such great lengths to get Nemesis off the game board before they even began the revolution, then Nemesis has to be good. Really, really good. Daniel is Nemesis and he’s in Intelligence. Zalaya was primed about Nemesis when he was there. Then Nemesis was—or is, rather—one of the best intelligence agents Vistaria has ever had. One that scares the crap out of Serrano enough that he sent Lucas De la Cruz to kill him before the war…right?”
“My girl,” Nick said happily.
“You are correct on all points,” Duardo agreed. “If Serrano was aware that Nemesis was still alive, he would be turning Vistaria upside down looking for him. He was that afraid of the man. If I had known it was Daniel… Well, perhaps it was best I had not known at the time. The Insurrectos were convinced he was dead. Nemesis alive and well can cause Serrano far too much trouble and he knows it.”
Chapter Thirteen
Ibarra stared at Serrano. “It’s not possible. Nemesis? Here? He died before the revolution began.”
“I got the information from a most reliable source, one I trust completely,” Serrano replied. “The details were missing, which tells me the information was supplied under strained circumstances. The agent would have risked much to get this fact to us. I suggest we not waste it, hmm?”
Ibarra watched Serrano’s eyes narrow, the flesh around them folding down.
“No, of course not,” Ibarra said slowly. He surreptitiously looked at his watch. It was getting late and he had been up for more than forty-eight hours, thanks to Serrano’s questioning of the Davenport woman the night before. “Where do you wish to start?”
“I find it a curious coincidence that Nemesis should surface again, just as all this fuss at the hotel comes to the fore,” Serrano mused, his thick fingers stroking the loose skin under his chin.
Ibarra reached into his pocket, thumbed one of the small pills out of the container there and dry swallowed it. Always, it came back to the White Sands. Always, Serrano brought everything back to there. He was obsessed about the place and the delusional castles it could build for him, if only he could manipulate the people inside it just the right way.
“You want to search the hotel?” Ibarra asked, deliberately misunderstanding.
Serrano dropped his hand from his chin. “He’s one of them, Ibarra. He has to be!”
The first thought that crossed Ibarra’s tired brain was “Who cares?” Ibarra was a simple soldier and all the spy games and strategies were not for him. If Torres and Zalaya had not got themselves killed, he would never have had to get this close to Serrano in the first place.
The digitalis quickly did its work. He could feel his heart and pulse ease and soothe themselves. He relaxed. “We’ve questioned them all, General,” he said carefully. “We’ve never found anything.”
“Only, we now know who they are,” Serrano pointed out. “We don’t have to use kid gloves.”
Kid gloves? Ibarra swallowed. “Are you suggesting, sir…?” he tried to lead delicately.
“God’s teeth, man,” Serrano said, slapping his hand on the table. “Zalaya understood what I meant in half the time. Use Pentothal, or blowtorches, or whatever the hell they use these days. Rip it out of them, Ibarra, before the fucking United Nations decides they want their precious diplomats back.”
Ibarra sat back in his chair, stunned.
“Then you don’t think they’re going to give us diplomatic status?”
Serrano rolled his eyes. “Would you? After today’s performance? They’d be mad to give in to us.”
Ibarra reached up to wipe sweat off his temple and realized his hand was shaking so badly he was just spreading it around his forehead. He had to clear his throat hard to be able to speak. “Then, sir, if I might ask, why are we baiting the United Nations in this way?”
Serrano snorted. “Who said I was baiting the United Nations? They’re a toothless, whining bunch of sheep that bleat any time you get more than two of them within a yard of each other. They won’t deal with us, Ibarra, but if we kill off enough Americans, the United States will. The U.S. of A. will always protect its own and that’s who I really want to talk to. They’ll come in here willing to deal and I will have such a deal for them.” Serrano smiled and rubbed his hands together as if he was contemplating a large, delicious meal.
Ibarra stared at Serrano. He was beyond the capacity to feel horror. He just nodded. “More Americans,” he said. He got to his feet. “Yes, sir.”
“And Nemesis, remember!” Serrano called after him.
Ibarra shut the door gently behind him. One didn’t make loud noises around unexploded bombs.
* * * * *
Olivia was up and out of the bed as soon as the soft set of knocks sounded on the window. She opened it enough for Daniel to slip though, then dogged it tight behind him.
He turned and took her into his arms and just held her, his hand in her hair. She felt him exhale heavily.
Olivia closed her eyes and allowed herself to nestle
into the circle of his arms, her face turned into his strong neck and let herself be comforted.
Daniel was the one person on earth in whose presence she allowed herself to feel weak and did not experience any panic because of it. She trusted him that much.
“The bug?” he murmured.
“Disabled,” she assured him.
She felt more than saw his glance at the door. She had carefully slid the wedge and chair in place when she had returned to the room, even before she had taken off her jacket and boots, or washed the blood off her hands.
Daniel’s lips pressed against her forehead. “Did you get the gun down?” he asked in Spanish.
“It’s under the pillow again.”
His lips slid down to her cheekbone and pressed. “You’re perfect. No, in these clothes, you are beyond that.” His hand tangled in her hair, slid up against her head and cradled it. She was drawn around to face him properly. “I wish we had weeks. Months.” His tongue slid over her chin and down her throat as his hands tilted her head back, giving him access.
Fright tore through her. “What has happened, Daniel? What did you do with that phone?”
“I have yelled for help.” His lips pressed against the hollow at the base of her throat and his tongue dipped into it.
“Yelled to whom?”
“The loyalist army.”
Olivia drew in a shaky breath, unsure if it was Daniel’s lips or his news that caused the trembling in her. “They’re coming?”
“I gave them no choice. I gave Duardo no choice.”
She put her hand on his chest. “You phoned Duardo?” She felt heat and softness through his shirt and moved her fingers gently, enjoying the solidness of him.
“I phoned Duardo,” he confirmed heavily, straightening up.
Olivia hugged him, delight flaring in her.
He stroked her back. “If we must do this now, then you must listen, Olivia.” He was speaking English. He put his hands on her arms. “Listen to me.”
She let him pull her away from him and looked up at him.
His eyes were stormy with some emotion she didn’t understand. “I have to leave here soon. I have to go out and meet them, do you understand? To lead them back in.”
Hostage Crisis Page 20