by Linda Barnes
The Kogi spoke in his strange language.
“What did he say?” I demanded.
“There were two helicopters.”
Two. “Then one got away.”
“Yes, but that one did not carry gold.”
“Someone on the second helicopter must have recognized you.”
“Or they could have seen me on the film.”
“Film?”
“Mama Parello says they used the ‘black boxes’ as they looted. I saw cameras pointing at us from the helicopter as it flew away.”
“Who would recognize you, know you, wearing what you’re wearing? Here in the mountains?”
“I cannot say.”
“Can’t say or won’t say?”
“It makes no difference. The kidnappers have not called back.”
“You offered them the wounded American.”
“In exchange for the girl. It seemed reasonable, a life for a life.”
“What will you do with him if they don’t call? Kill him?”
“I pray that, in this life, I am done with killing.”
He might be an outlaw, he might have been a drug dealer, but when he spoke about killing, I found myself believing him. Still, the wounded soldier might die in the hut, of infection or disease. The Kogi might have saved Roldan with the bark of trees, but the American could have undi-agnosed internal injuries. My faith in ancient remedies was limited.
Thoughts of the wounded man made me remember. “Who is Gee-mo?” I said.
Mama Parello raised both arms, hands outspread. His words sounded like the chatter of birds, but I caught the repeated sound: Gee-mo.
“Where did you hear this name?” Roldan said.
“You stuck me back in the hut with the wounded soldier. You must have hoped I’d learn something.”
“He mentioned Gee-mo?”
“Who is he?”
Roldan glanced at the wizened man for guidance. The mama slowly nodded his head, and Roldan said, “If his name passed the lips of the gringo, possibly a traitor.”
“One of the mamas?”
“Not a priest, but a Kogi. A few have intermarried with people from the coast. It’s difficult for the children. Usually they stay with the tribe, but some learn Spanish as well as the Kogi language, and they help the tribe by bartering with the outside world. Gee-mo is one of these half-and-half Kogi. He will be found and questioned.”
“When? How?”
“I can tell you only what Mama Parello wishes you to know.”
“Come on; he won’t be able to tell one way or another.”
Roldan shot me a glance. “He knows.”
Whether he knew or not, the picture was starting to make sense, the fragments of the mosaic coming together. Gee-mo, the traitor, reveals the location of the gold. Two copters come for it. One crashes; one gets away. Someone recognizes Roldan, either in person or on film, and sees another way to get the gold. Paolina’s kidnapping and the ransom demand follow: Paolina, in exchange for the holy gold.
I said, “Cabrera wants to make this front-page news. She wants governments to fall. What do you want?”
“For myself, nothing.”
I stared into his eyes and waited. I thought: A woman could get lost in those eyes.
He said, “I wish only to make it as it was before this evil thing happened. The mamas are unsure whether the desecrated gold can be re-sanctified. The pots in which it was buried are broken, and they no longer know the words to bless the Mothers. They hope, by divination, to ask the Mother for guidance.”
Divination. I stared at him blankly.
“The beads you recovered are divining beads. It is a good omen that you found them.”
I’m no mystic. I’m a cop to my gut; I collect facts.
I said, “Did they bury the moro?”
“They took his body away.”
“The others? The soldiers?”
“We covered them with rocks. The scavengers would have taken them if we hadn’t.”
“Let me look at them. Let me look at the helicopter.”
“My men have been over the ground.”
“Let me look.”
Roldan’s eyebrows arched. “You know about helicopters?”
“I know about crime scenes. I know how to search. Let me look.”
CHAPTER 29
The initial search team never finds everything. It’s one of Mooney’s tenets. The initial searchers can get wrapped up in the crime. Cool heads are needed for a search.
What might I find? What was I looking for? Another of Mooney’s rules: Don’t look for anything; look for everything. If you search for the specific, you’ll have eyes only for those car keys, that shell casing.
I blanked my mind while Roldan and Mama Parello discussed my request with clicks and gutturals and waving hands. When Roldan nodded permission, I scurried down the incline, scrabbling over rocks and boulders, grateful for work I knew how to do.
Divination, my ass.
I’d flown in helicopters during police exercises, gotten a quick lift in an FBI copter once, smaller than this one and in pristine condition. I tried to remember where things had been stored, where compartments had been located. Possibly there were places in the copter that hadn’t been searched, papers that might tell me who they were.
The holy they were the Kogi. Who were the evil they?
Because of the angle of the crashed copter, I had to clamber onto the fuselage, clinging to a metal bar, to reach a sliding door that was immobilized in the open position. Dropping down into the cabin would have been no treat considering the condition of my feet, so I let my eyes do the initial walk-through. There were no bodies inside, but there were helmets and goggles, charred remnants of scarred machinery. I saw another light source, slid to the ground, and squirmed inside a more convenient opening, a narrow crack in the fuselage.
It was a Boeing craft, model CH-4, something, something. The panel had cracked on impact and the last two letters or numbers were illegible. I wondered whether the radio might be miraculously intact. It wasn’t. There had once been labels on the helmets, but they were charred. Same with the goggles.
I squirmed back into daylight. Roldan and the priest sat cross-legged on the ground. The little man was holding Paolina’s birdman up to catch the rays of the sun.
“How many men were there?” I yelled.
“Dead?” Roldan said. “Six.”
“Dog tags?”
He shook his head no.
No dog tags on the injured American; no dog tags on the dead. Odd.
The signs of hastily abandoned digging were plain, shovels stuck in the earth, picks propped against skinny trees, shrubbery uprooted. A moonscape of holes pocked the earth. Half a huge pottery urn leaned against a rock. Bits of hard red clay littered the ground. Some holes were completely empty; some littered with shards indicating the breakage of an urn. There were bones scattered in the remnants of the urns, human bones, I thought, ancient bones. If I’d been an archeologist, I’d have been fascinated, but I wasn’t looking for bones, pots, or gold. I divided the area into a mental grid. In the first few minutes, I found a package of cigarettes and two partially smoked cigars. After ten minutes, a lump of chewing gum. I worked at a slow, deliberate pace, lulling the men into inattention. I noticed a khaki cap caught on a bush, but it bore no insignia. Why were there no dog tags? Roldan’s eyes were glued to the priest; the shaman focused on the birdman.
The pistol was shoved into a mound of dirt, concealed under brush and leaves. If the sunlight hadn’t caught the dull metal, I wouldn’t have noticed it. I didn’t react; I kept walking and stooping, pretending to examine a patch of discolored earth. I glanced downhill. The little man clicked and chattered.
If I grabbed the gun and threatened to shoot the old man called Mama Parello unless Roldan cooperated in getting Paolina back, where would I be? I had the feeling that the two men would simply tell me to do what I needed to do, that the mama would be pleased to join the spirit world
sooner rather than later.
A Mac-10 might have been more persuasive, but a small pistol like this one could be concealed. It looked like a Beretta, a new one, a .38 with twelve rounds, and I didn’t intend to leave the mountaintop without it. Roldan and the priest were peering at something in the Kogi’s cupped palms, possibly the divination beads. Where were the others who’d melted into the mist? I did a quick scan of the area, waited till a bird called. Roldan and the little man looked up, and the gun nestled in the back of my waistband like an old friend.
Mooney was right, I thought. The initial searchers had missed a gun. If they’d missed a gun, they could have missed anything. I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them wide, determined to overlook nothing even if it meant crawling over every inch of the mountain.
I worked for another fifteen minutes, another half hour, forty-five minutes. Roldan was right; time had no meaning in this place. When I saw the scorched leather folder, I almost walked right past it. Someone had trodden it into the earth. It looked like it belonged, like a line of rock under the soil. I sank to the ground and scrabbled at it with what was left of my fingernails. It had started out tan; it was brown now. It peeled away from the ground, slightly damp.
I pried it gently open, afraid I’d find the tattered remnants of a dollar bill, a worthless itemized receipt, other meaningless debris. Half of a photograph of a dark-haired child; that wasn’t going to help. Two thin cards were stuck to one another. I tried to wedge my nails into the crack between them. There: The corner of one chipped off, but they separated into a Florida driver’s license and a plasticized badge with a corporate logo. I studied the badge, shielding it from the fierce sun.
A black arrow pierced a blue triangle, the same design I’d last seen tattooed on the arm of the wounded American. The tiny photograph on the badge meant nothing to me, a man’s face, nothing more, a name: Sean McIntryre. It was the corporate name that hit me like a sudden slap. BrackenCorp. My lips shaped the name. Drew Naylor rented his huge house from MB Realty Trust, a subsidiary of BrackenCorp. BrackenCorp, the big defense contractor.
BrackenCorp in Miami. BrackenCorp here on the mountain. Pieces of the mosaic shifted in my head.
“Roldan!” My voice carried in the clear thin air. I moved downhill as I spoke, rushing as though I’d never known a blister.
“What is it?”
“The lawyer, Vandenburg. Why didn’t you send Paolina’s gifts through Vandenburg this time? What were the rumors?”
“What troubles you so?”
“Tell me.”
“Five years ago, Vandenburg was picked up by the DEA.”
“And?”
“That’s all. They let him go, but after that, others were detained. You know what I mean?”
He was telling me that Vandenburg was a DEA informant. But if the lawyer was linked to DEA…
The small Kogi priest lifted his arms and rattled off a barrage of incomprehensible sounds. I glanced at Roldan, waiting for translation.
“He says you’ve had a vision. What does it tell you?”
BrackenCorp in Miami, BrackenCorp on the mountaintop, BrackenCorp in the camp. The soldier in the hut had to be weaned off opiates and made to talk, made to talk now. I wasn’t sure why, but my heart was pounding in my chest, and each beat was sending the same message: Hurry.
I said, “To get down the mountain, back to the camp. As quickly as possible.”
CHAPTER 30
Going down was faster than going up, but not much. The stone steps were slippery with moss, and the sloping ground too steep for real speed. I tried to match pace with Roldan but whenever I started to establish a rhythm, the terrain would change, from savanna to woods to heavy jungle undergrowth. My feet felt flayed in spite of their leaf padding and I was afraid I’d twist an ankle, break it if I got unlucky.
I had the sequence of events in Colombia: the crash on the mountaintop, the long delay before the ransom demand. I considered the order of events in the States, starting with Paolina’s disappearance.
I’d gone to Vandenburg, assuming he must be involved. Now it seemed possible he was involved not with Roldan, but with DEA. But he hadn’t sent me to Group 26, the DEA branch in Miami; he’d reacted badly when I’d mentioned them. Instead he’d brought me to see Naylor. Naylor, who rented his huge house from BrackenCorp. Naylor, whose stolen phone bill yielded two Bogota numbers, one for the Zona Rosa, a bar from which drugs were dealt, one for the mysterious Base Eighteen. A breeze stirred the foliage, a thin whistle of wind mixed with exotic bird calls and forest chatter.
“Roldan,” I called. “Wait up!
“What is it?”
“Is Base Eighteen DAS?” Maybe Base Eighteen was the Colombian version of Group 26, the anti-drug force.
“It’s a division of the regular army, one that is known to cooperate with the private armies, the autodefensas, the right-wing paramilitaries. It has a bad reputation. People who are questioned there do not return. Luisa was right about that: I wouldn’t want Dieciocho to know I’m still alive.”
“Are they involved with drugs?”
“With protecting drug runners, yes. That is the rumor. Luisa would know more.”
“She told me she knew nothing.”
“You’re a stranger. She is cautious. With every right to be cautious. Her father investigated Base Eighteen.”
Sweat ran down my back as the air grew warmer. Her dead father.
We were maybe three-quarters of the way back when the helicopter buzzed. A flyby, I told myself, an unrelated weather flight, a medical evacuation. Still, I started moving more quickly than the terrain warranted.
“The helicopter, you thought it would come?” Roldan’s tone was accusatory.
I shook my head no.
Roldan frowned. “You believe there is urgency? You feel it?”
“I found an ID badge by the dig site. From an outfit called BrackenCorp.”
“So?”
“The same name came up in Florida, when I was trying to get a line on you. It connects to the soldier in the hut.” I gasped out the words, one by one, as we scurried down the path.
His left hand closed on my shoulder. “Here. You must take this. Chew it. It will make the pain less, the going easier.” A ball of leaves from his woven bag nestled in his right palm.
“No.”
“Take it or I’ll leave you to follow at your own speed.” He offered the wad of leaves again. “It will not make you crazy. It will not addict you. It’s not refined. It is what the Kogi have used forever, to ease hunger, exhaustion, and pain. Keep it in your cheek. Add a little of the lime. It may make your mouth numb, but that will pass.”
If he abandoned me, my chances of finding the encampment were remote. If I didn’t find the encampment, I’d never question the soldier, never find Paolina. I took the ball of leaves and stuck it in the left side of my mouth, between cheek and gum.
“Now take my hand,” he said.
It was a matter of stones across a brook. If I hadn’t been exhausted and in pain, I could have managed them easily. His hand was brown and wiry, and I released it the moment I had solid ground beneath my feet, dropped it like it was too hot to touch. Mooney’s right about another thing: I’m attracted to outlaws—good-looking, wolf-grinned outlaws— and this was not just an outlaw, but Paolina’s father.
The drug was starting to have an effect. I felt calmer, more aware, and my feet no longer troubled me with each step. It was easier to keep my balance. Roldan seemed to be going more slowly, but I knew he wasn’t. The change was in me. I was moving more surely, more quickly.
“Tell me of your vision,” Roldan said.
“It was not a vision.”
“Then why do you feel such urgency? Helicopters have tried to find us before. The canopy of the jungle protects us. We make no fires; we show no signs.”
“After you offered the American in exchange for Paolina, the kidnappers didn’t call back. Why?”
He shrugged and kept movi
ng. “At first, I thought because the girl was no longer alive. Therefore they could not bargain.”
I swallowed. The leaves tasted odd, not bitter, not sweet. “I don’t believe it.”
“Nor do I. Not any longer. She’s frightened, but alive. Mama Parello has seen her in the dream world.”
What a goddamn comfort, I thought. A gnome in a pointed hat has seen her in the dream world.
Roldan said, “If you are worried they might attack to retrieve the wounded American, that is why my people go armed. That is why we moved from one small village to another.”
I was worried. I said, “Do you hear the copter now?”
“Perhaps they have given up.”
“No,” I said.
“Why do you say this?”
“Because I don’t believe in Luisa’s theory. I don’t believe this is a conspiracy of governments. I don’t know about your government, but mine doesn’t steal Indian artifacts.”
“You saw what you saw.”
“The American in the hut doesn’t wear dog tags. The men you buried under the rocks had no dog tags. The helicopter had no insignia. What if this is a private thing, a private raid? For the gold.”
“The helicopter is part of the coca eradication plan. That’s government.”
“I went to the lawyer, Vandenburg. Vandenburg took me to a man named Naylor. After that I always felt followed, shadowed, by a car, by a presence.” The blue Saturn, the man on the plane.
“No one could have followed you here,” he said.
“There are other ways to track a person.”
“There’s a famous story here,” he said, “of Tranquilandia.”
I shook my head; I didn’t know it.
“When Colombian government troops discovered the first huge coca processing plant, at Tranquilandia in the southern jungle, it was because the DEA fixed a live transmitter on a barrel of ether.”
A transmitter. The sort of thing that would have been detected during an airport screening…if I’d gone through security.
“My God, who searched my backpack?” I told Roldan about the airport. The woman who’d unpacked and scanned my backpack could have hidden a transmitter. I’d been marched through the airport, bypassing security.