by Aiden James
I expected Mayta to return within an hour, and when her absence approached the two-hour mark, I started to worry, wondering if maybe I should’ve accompanied her instead. But, just before I expressed my worry to Ishi, the trio returned.
“Help is on the way!” she announced. “A transport is coming from Cuenca, and it will be here within an hour!”
“How in the hell did you manage that?” asked Dr. Pierce, stealing the question from my mouth.
“One has been on standby, arranged by my employer, who is also Nick’s and Ishi’s boss,” she said, proudly, and drawing surprised looks from the professor and his family, as well as from Ishi and me. I knew she was hired help, but I figured the arrangement was more of the temporary kind. It sounded like she had a hot line to D.C. at her disposal.
“Who might that be?” asked Dr. Pierce.
“Special agent Brandon Jacobs,” she replied. “He became worried when a report reached his Washington office that you all had disappeared in the jungles near Logrono.”
She managed to do what I had begun to believe was impossible, namely rendering our dear archaeologist-snob speechless. He looked over at me and then at Ishi, and our expressions matched his wide-eyed look.
“You know Brandon?” Sandra Pierce asked Mayta. She seemed more astonished than the rest of us.
“Yes, I do,” she said. “And Nick and Ishi were sent here by him to find you and your family. In truth, I might not have ever found you without their help.”
Yet another flirtatious look came my way. I no longer cared how I had gone from village idiot in attendance to a potential beau, but the benefits of that change continued to be quite fortuitous. Dr. Pierce studied my Tawankan pal and me, and I could literally see the elevator ride from the dunghill to potentially becoming esteemed colleagues in his eyes. They twinkled with keen interest, accompanied by a widening smile that was as infectiously warm as it had been when we first shook hands.
“I like Brandon… quite a bit,” he said, pausing to regard his eldest daughter once more. “He would’ve made a wonderful son-in-law.”
I worried his comment might kill the progress we had made to achieving a happier work environment the past few minutes. However, Dr. Pierce remained jovial and agreeable for the duration of our time with him. When the transport arrived, it looked like one that had originally been commissioned during the Vietnam War. It sounded like it, too, as we lumbered through the sky back to Quito. After we landed at the airport, Sandra Pierce pulled me aside on the tarmac before Ishi and I returned to the Mansion del Angel, where a new one-night reservation awaited us, as we wouldn’t return to Washington until tomorrow morning.
“Would you mind delivering this to Brandon?”
She held out an envelope containing a letter she had composed on the way to Quito from the Amazon Basin. I could tell from the look in her eyes that she felt as strongly about Agent Jacobs as he did for her…. Truly a poignant moment for me to see what ‘true love in absentia’ looked like. These two lovebirds needed to quit whatever bullshit game they were playing and get hitched… just sayin’.
“Sure, I’ll be glad to deliver it,” I told her, fighting the urge to share her tears that she dabbed at while repeatedly thanking me as we walked to where her parents waited for her, next to the taxi that would take them to the offices of Ecuador’s Minister of the Interior.
“Maybe you could learn something from Ms. Pierce and Agent Jacobs, eh?” asked Ishi, after Mayta dropped us off at the hotel and we were on our way up to our suite. Mayta planned to join us for dinner that night, and I planned to rest for a few hours beforehand.
“What do you mean?” I thought he might be hinting at the sparks emitted that day between our assigned guide/fellow PGE employee and me.
“Or, maybe not,” he said, after pausing to open the suite’s door for us.
“Okay, now I’m confused, little buddy,” I said, after we stepped inside our suite. Glad to be back to something that reeked of western comfort, I looked forward to a bed with an actual mattress after sleeping very little the night before, tied to a stalagmite and believing my unshaven mug was destined to become part of Shuratu’s belt at dawn. “What are you trying to say?”
“You are better alone, Nick, than with a woman,” he said. “We are still friends, no?”
“Of course…. More like brothers,” I said, feeling a twinge of anger, despite being told what also rang true in my heart. “You’re like the little brother I never had…. But again, what are you getting at?”
“Mayta… you should leave it as it is right now,” he said, after studying my face, as if clearly picturing my latest internal debate. “Marie still owns your heart… at least today she does. Don’t start something you can’t finish…. Unless you want to end up like Agent Jacobs and Ms. Pierce. Lasting happiness is not destined for them… and not for you either. At least not with Mayta, just like it wasn’t with Marie….”
He looked like he wanted to say something else, but I shushed him. There was no need to persist… I knew he was right, and only wanted to help me avoid an inevitable heartache that would be piled upon the one I was already dealing with. I longed for things to be different with a new love interest, but knew it wouldn’t be until I took the time to heal.
And that’s where a tall bottle of Scotch and a pack of cigarettes could come in handy. The situation called for a drink and a smoke… and not necessarily in that order. If only either option could permanently dull the pain and the temptation to go through it all again.
Chapter Sixteen
“Will Agent Paradis meet us at the airport since we are going to the office first thing?” asked Ishi, as our chartered jet began its final descent into Dulles Airport.
“I’m not sure,” I said, checking the current D.C. time on my cell phone. “It will probably be another of Agent Spence’s lackeys.”
Just after one-thirty in the afternoon, the last thing Mayta had told us was Agent Jacobs’ instructions to be on the lookout for his driver, and that we would immediately head to the office for our debriefing. It sounded like potential trouble was in the offing for Ishi and me, since the original plan was for us to get a good night’s rest and then get grilled the next morning.
My bet was on Agent Jacobs somehow turning the tables on Ishi and me, landing us a solo trip to the big boss’ doghouse. Meanwhile, he would skip off merrily into the sunset with Sandra Pierce on his arm—contrary to what Ishi prophesized the night before.
“You’re still thinking about her, aren’t you?”
Ishi peered into my face, as if hoping to steal a peek at my eyes shielded by a pair of moderately effective sunglasses I picked up at the airport in Quito. Thankfully, he seemed unable to detect the little sleep I had managed to extract from a restless night. I had told him I managed three hours worth that morning at breakfast, but in truth it was much less. Too much going on, and nothing remotely as fun as some might assume.
“Mayta?”
“Yes.”
“Nah… she’s already old news, little buddy,” I assured him.
Despite the truth that Mayta and I would likely never cross paths again in this lifetime, Ishi was right. I was thinking about her, and had been since last night. In fact, she dominated my restless thoughts until we approached the States. Then Marie popped back into my awareness, pushing aside my latest infatuation as if it was a flimsy adolescent crush. Perhaps that’s all it was.
But before that moment, my heart and mind had been in agony since last night’s dinner. Maybe if Ishi’s words hadn’t already found a resting place in my heart—or worse, in my mind’s forefront—I could’ve enjoyed one helluva fling and been ready to move on afterward. Instead, my head had been filled with an endless barrage of ‘what ifs’ since last night…. Allow me to explain.
Ishi and I decided to wait in a lounge adjacent to the main lobby of the Mansion del Angel. I was actually in the process of commending him on the wisdom of his earlier advice when an unexpected vision of sensu
al beauty strolled into the lounge and headed for us… a goddess in the flesh, if such a thing was possible.
Mayta. Mayta looking nothing like the tough-natured guide who had accompanied us into the unforgiving Amazon wilderness. Dolled up in a casual and yet refined blouse and shorts ensemble, I was struck by her ease in carrying this glamorous side that had been hidden until now. Her lovely legs almost Madison Avenue in their perfection… my quickening heartbeat confirmed how vastly I had undersold her physical attributes. Instead, it was like a fashion model had decided to grace a couple of rough-cuts with her ethereal presence for charity… yet she eyed me with the same fiery desire from earlier.
My resolve to heed Ishi’s advice—that still made some sense to my head—was dissolving rapidly. Especially, when she brushed up against me and lingered close while tightly wrapping her arms around my neck after we rose to greet her. Mayta’s hand rested on my chest, softly stroking me before she pulled herself away, as if laying her initial claim upon my body for later on that night….
Regardless of my loins clamoring for my brain to stay out of this, and after the three of us enjoyed a leisurely meal in the hotel’s acclaimed restaurant, I resisted the bait to spend the night with this maddeningly alluring lady. It took staying focused on what I thought of Mayta when we first met, while silently cursing Ishi for giving me the stink eye out of range of her sight, to carry out my platonic ruse.
Yes, she seemed confused, surely based on my earlier comments and flirtation in the jungle. But without giving me long to reconsider my stated desire to retire early to catch up on lost sleep from the night before, she gracefully agreed to call it a night, reiterating her earlier offer to take us to the airport in the morning. She mouthed a kiss to me as she left our presence….
Who knows what might’ve happened had she still shown interest when she returned to the hotel this morning? But by then the warm, sweet, and sexually interested lady had been siphoned away from the no-nonsense gal we had met two days prior. After dropping us off at the airport terminal, we parted ways with polite goodbyes and a handshake, as she eluded my move to embrace her.
Maybe it’s better this way….
“That’s good, Boss,” said Ishi, smiling. Luckily, my Tawankan pal lacks the keen intuitions of the fairer gender, as obviously so do I. He chuckled when I returned his smile. “Maybe you’re getting back to being the old Nick, no?… Back to the good times.”
One could only hope. Hell, maybe I am healing… maybe I can finally move on. Maybe this is bullshit.
Fortunately, that marked the end of the Mayta and Marie discussion. After we landed and took care of the customs routine, we found the familiar Mercedes waiting for us. Only this time, we had a new driver.
“Agent Jacobs? What are you doing here?” asked Ishi, the first to notice the ultra non-congenial Agent Paradis wasn’t the dude waiting to take us to PGE’s headquarters.
“Agent Spence wanted me to personally welcome you guys back,” he said, smiling weakly. Actually, it was more of a wounded puppy look, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him sitting on a pillow to comfort his ass from the teeth marks and paddle blows received from the big boss. I handed him the letter from Sandra Pierce soon after I slid into the back seat with Ishi. “What’s this?”
“A good word from our sponsors,” I quipped. “Hell, man, don’t you recognize the handwriting on the envelope?”
His face lit up and he tore into it, quickly scanning the contents. His smile improved slightly when finished and then he stuffed the letter inside his jacket. I had scarcely noticed that he had foregone the casual attire from when he dropped us off a few days earlier and was back to wearing his formal blue suit.
“Thanks,” he said, quietly, before turning his attention to the road ahead.
“That’s it?” I asked, curious about the letter’s contents, after Sandra’s desperate entreaty to deliver it to him, which had preceded the past Sunday night featuring the agent’s dramatic outburst over his long lost sweetheart.
It appeared the passion had waned and only the ‘long’ and ‘lost’ aspects remained. Bye-bye ‘sweetheart’.
“You must’ve gotten in some serious trouble, huh?” added Ishi, when Jacobs’ response to me was a weary shrug.
“I guess you could say that,” he said. “At least she and her family are safe.”
“No rekindling of the romance you prattled on about the other night?” I asked. He shot me a perturbed look in the rearview mirror. “Sorry, lack of sleep.”
“Maybe something’s still there,” he said, shaking his head after releasing a drawn-out sigh. “She will be back in Virginia with her parents for a couple of weeks after New Year’s…. I’ll know more then.”
I thought again about what Ishi had proclaimed the night before about the agent’s love prospects with Ms. Pierce. Maybe my buddy’s intuitions were better than I assumed. Definitely better than mine.
Agent Jacobs advised we would reach our destination in the next few minutes and turned up the stereo’s classic rock, ending the discussion about his dysfunctional love affair. We soon pulled into a newly developed strip mall, a few miles closer to the airport than the dilapidated building we last visited. Ishi and I exchanged perplexed looks when our ‘chaperone’ parked the sedan in front of a storefront that had a ‘For Lease’ sign in the window.
“It’s our latest digs,” Agent Jacobs explained, just before he stepped out of the vehicle. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Used to what?”
“We’re the ‘rolling stone’ of all the agencies in the city,” he said. “We change venues more often than some people change socks and underwear. So, try not to get attached to any particular location. You might be there a month, or maybe two. Most times, it will be for just a few days.”
“Huh? I thought you had a new office being built somewhere in the burbs, man,” I said, following Ishi out of the sedan.
“Well… apparently that place is going to the DEA,” Jacobs advised. “Besides, Project Golden Eye gets other perks that are a helluva lot nicer than some swanky office complex.”
Another fun teaser to consider, it kindled new questions about the mysterious agency that had hijacked our lives. An agency that could be headquartered someplace new at any time, and without warning. How ‘Men in Black’ of you, Agent Jacobs! Maybe Ishi and I should keep an eye out for a neuralyzer, eh?
Meanwhile, he headed for the door without waiting for us.
“Is Agent Spence angry we went to Ecuador?” Ishi asked him, motioning for me to hurry and catch up before the agent moved through the main entrance—a grand brick façade with two tall tinted-glass doors.
“He’s not happy,” he replied. “He’ll be even unhappier if we keep him waiting much longer.”
“Are you still our direct supervisor?” I asked, as we navigated through a lobby with a grand fountain, a large reception desk, and then headed down a hall with glassed-in offices. Everyone was dressed in formal business attire. Most of the faces were familiar, but both the laid-back style and relaxed atmosphere from last Sunday’s meeting with Agent Spence were absent.
“For now,” he said, motioning to the last office on the left. “William is ready to forgive, provided you guys come through for us in the next assignment.”
What in the hell? Like this excursion into head-hunting country was our idea?!
Before I could utter something smartass that surely would’ve made things worse, Ishi and I were ushered into the office. Agent Spence sat in his high back leather chair and barely looked up while immediately motioning for us to sit down in what looked like the same pair of smaller leather chairs from his last office. The imposing cherry desk was new. The man knows how to style it—gotta give him that.
“That was quite a stunt Brandon pulled,” he grumbled, handing us each a copy of a surprisingly detailed report about what had happened down in Ecuador, instructing us to review and sign off on it. “This kind of shit won’t ever happen again. Co
rrect?”
Ishi and I nodded, and a slight smile tugged on the corners of Spence’s mouth.
“Good. Now we can get back to your original assignment.”
“Are we heading to Fiji?” I asked him. “We’ve still gotta bust two drug dealing brothers pretending to be archaeologists, right?”
Agent Spence chuckled, while his penetrating gaze regarding me never wavered. A slight shiver raced up and down my spine.
“Nope. The Ramos brothers have moved on, and so shall you two,” he advised. “The pair is believed to be hiding in the jungle forest near Kilauea. That’s where they disappeared to a few days ago.”
“You mean the volcano in Hawaii, on the big island?”
“Are you always this sharp?”
He regarded me with an impish expression, and I honestly wasn’t sure if this was playful or demeaning in intent.
“Only when I’ve had less than three hours sleep,” I said. “And, having a persistent head hunter wanting to get a closer look at my noggin makes me especially… incisive.”
“Sorry about that, Nick... but at least you and Ishi are still with us, and in one piece. Right?”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” I said, unwilling to lower my guard just yet. “So, what’s the catch? Why do you need us to flush ‘em out of this new jungle?”
“Our contacts tell us the brothers are following up on a lead about an ancient statue that was reportedly stolen sixty years ago from a wealthy Oahu resident,” he said. “It’s a statue, three feet in height, made of solid gold.... But there is more. The statue was never intended to be in a private collection.”
“You mean it was stolen by the rich guy living along Waikiki?” I persisted.
“Well… let’s just say it was a legitimate purchase from nefarious sorts—not all that different than something you guys would arrange in your previous lives,” he said.
Ouch!
“However, the important thing now is to get it back for the Department of Interior office, as the statue means a great deal to the native Hawaiians,” he continued. “The statue is a rare depiction of Pele.”