Heart of the World

by Linda Barnes

I thanked her and told her I would. She was so obviously a servant that I hesitated to ask for further information although I craved facts even more than I craved the sparkling glass of juice she poured and offered. I wanted to know how I’d wound up in this tiny room, who’d undressed me and swiped my clothes, why she’d brought two glasses instead of one; but as soon as my hand closed around the glass, before I could frame a single query, she pivoted and disappeared, closing the door soundlessly behind her.

  The glass was beaded with icy drops. I wiped the condensation across the back of my neck, sipped the drink, then pressed the cool glass to my forehead. The juice wasn’t lulo; it was a blend of several flavors, including mango.

  The last time I’d flown across Colombia, from Bogota to the mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, I’d been drugged into unconsciousness. I’d been awake this time, but the morning had passed like a dream, the rushed journey down the mountainside, the takeoff, the flight, the landing on the bumpy strip that passed for a runway. I’d been grateful for the intense heat as I jumped from the door of the plane to the ground, grateful for any sensation whatsoever, because the tiny plane had been rusty and wobbly, the pilot either drunk or a show-off, and I’d spent the past hour hanging onto the handgrips, praying the damned thing would stay airborne. Roldan, mid-flight, had mentioned that the Cessna reminded him of the one that had crashed years ago in the mountains. We’d flown so low, avoiding radar, that it seemed we’d be landing any minute, diving unscheduled into blue Caribbean waters.

  The maid entered with a stack of freshly laundered clothes. When I asked her name, she flushed.

  “Amalia, Senorita.”

  She set the pile on the daybed, placed a small jar of cream on the table, and explained that the Senor recommended it for my feet. Also, the Senor wished me to know I could feel free to use the telephone. When I thanked her, she scooted out the door.

  Telephone. Was there an unseen phone in this closet? Hiding places were limited. I found it in the only possible location, a wooden built-in cupboard. As I lifted the receiver, I thought: Would the Senor be listening in on my call? Then I thought: What the hell did it matter? I dialed Gloria.

  “Damn, this better be good. You better have one fine excuse for not calling. You find her? You okay? Sam and Mooney been driving me nuts, calling all the time, Where is she? Where is she? This better be damned good.”

  I filled her in, making a bare-bones job of it, letting her know my phone silence hadn’t been a matter of choice. She thawed and responded with an update on Drew Naylor.

  “Mooney can’t trace him back more than two, three years. Might have changed his name. Lotta movie-type guys do that.”

  It seemed like I’d asked about Naylor years ago rather than days. I closed my eyes and shifted mental gears, made myself remember. Naylor produced commercial films. Actors changed their names, yes. Not producers of commercial shorts. “Keep digging,” I said. “Has the man ever been injured? Does he limp?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t have it here.”

  “Get it. Did Roz give you more stuff on BrackenCorp?”

  She made a noncommittal noise before coming up with the goods. “Okay, first of all, they were recently taken over by this huge company called GSC, initials standing for nothing, far as she can tell. GSC: founded in ‘59; it’s got eighty-nine thousand employees, FY04 revenue: 16.8 billion, Fortune 500.” She rattled off more numbers, but I didn’t find them enlightening.

  “What do they do?”

  “Risk analysis, knowledge management, security services. BrackenCorp was big, too; forty thousand employees before they swallowed it. Word is GSC wanted their government biz. BrackenCorp did over six billion in federal contracts, but they had a pile of debt. Good write-off for GSC. Solid acquisition.”

  “What did BrackenCorp do for the government?”

  “Aviation services, base operations, logistics support services, something called range tech services.”

  “Go back to logistics support. What’s that cover?”

  “Okay,” she said, “Once upon a time, the U.S. Army did its own thing. Fed its own people, handled its own communications, built its own barracks, did its own laundry, but then the government decided to privatize. Now there’s what they call a ‘partnership’ between the armed forces and a select group of private companies.”

  “Who selected them?”

  “That’s a story in itself. Quite a few of the CEOs used to be in the government, cabinet positions, undersecretaries of this and that. Like Mark Bracken. But it doesn’t work out that badly costwise, government spending being what it is.”

  Yeah, I thought, and what about accountability?

  “It’s like outsourcing,” she went on. “You know? You hire somebody from the outside, you streamline your operation.”

  “The army outsources logistical support.”

  She made a clicking noise with her tongue. “They go farther than that.”

  Bingo. “Does BrackenCorp happen to fly defoliation missions in Colombia?”

  Her “Humph” was eloquent. It said, “Why’d you get Roz to research this shit if you already know it?” I thought, if BrackenCorp was already flying security for government-sanctioned defoliation missions, they could have ordered one or two of their copters to take a “wrong turn” in the fog, get lost for a few hours, carry out a clandestine mission.

  I said, “Do they provide actual troops?”

  “They call them ‘security specialists.’ Lots of ex—special ops guys.”

  “Security specialist” sounded one hell of a lot better than “mercenary.” It sounded like a term devised to keep legislators calm and happy.

  “What if these civilians get themselves killed in a firefight? Does the body count get reported to Congress?” I asked.

  “Got me,” Gloria said. “But this privatization ain’t new, babe. World War One, the French army took cabs to the front.”

  Trust Gloria to know something like that. She was probably hoping for a contract to handle future foreign entanglements.

  “Bracken,” I said. “What about him?” Click. Will Mark Bracken be fired? That was where I’d heard the name BrackenCorp, on a radio news broadcast, something about corporate takeovers.

  “Mark Nathaniel Bracken. Yale, ‘67. Skull and Bones. Department of Agriculture, a little time in Justice, Undersecretary of Defense, more administrations than you can count, Republican and Democratic both. Went private in the early nineties, made a mint.”

  “Is he interested in gold?”

  “Christ, Carlotta, I’m interested in gold. Who the hell isn’t interested in gold?”

  “He’s in danger of being fired, right? Because of this GSC thing?”

  “Guys like that don’t get fired. They get bumped up, moved over, maybe eased out with a golden parachute.”

  “Who owns GSC?” I asked.

  Papers rustled. “Don’t have it.”

  “Find it. Get Roz on it, and if she can’t make a connection to gold at GSC, have her start looking at the other end. Find gold collectors, antique gold, pre-Columbian gold, and see who’s got a BrackenCorp or GSC connection.”

  “Okay. Now talk to me some more. You said you heard from Paolina?”

  I hesitated. “Roldan did. She’s alive.” According to him. I was upset that he hadn’t let me speak to her; I knew her voice better than I knew my own.

  “You bring her home soon, hear?”

  “I’ll bring her home.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them. It was the same expression Roldan had used about Cabrera, about her body, bringing her home.

  “You be careful,” Gloria said. “Don’t you mess up my big chance to be a bridesmaid.”

  I felt my face grow warm. “Gloria, dammit, Sam shouldn’t have told you. I haven’t decided.”

  “Are you up?” Roldan’s voice preceded a knock at the door.

  “Tell him yes, girl. Man cares about you. Think you’d get that through your thick skull.”
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br />   “How is Sam? Where is he?” The questions came in a rush, in a single breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. I was worried about the man, dammit. Maybe the metallic voice in my dream had been trying to tell me something about Sam.

  “He’s worried about you. I don’t know where he is, but last time he called he said if I heard from you, tell you to call Ignacio right away. Call him now.”

  “Carlotta?” Roldan again, insistent.

  “I’m hanging up now, Gloria. Goodbye.”

  I ought to do it, I thought. Marry Sam. Just for the vision of Gloria rolling down the aisle in one of those frou-frou bridesmaid gowns designed for girls shaped like toothpicks. The image forced a smile.

  When Roldan entered the room, he made it seem smaller. He’d left his white Kogi garb at the camp, along with his mantle of responsibility and his thousand-yard stare. He seemed more human in faded jeans and a white tee under an unbuttoned blue linen shirt. As he glanced around the room, the corners of his wide mouth lifted in amusement.

  He said, “Just the basics here: a woman and a bed. We could use a little music.”

  “I must have gone out like a light,” I said. In civilian garb, Roldan made me think of Sam. Maybe it was the faint tang of shaving lotion. Or maybe it was just that Sam was on my mind.

  He nodded at the phone. “Your friends know you’re safe? Good. How are your feet? You used the cream?”

  “Not yet.”

  “It is mainly from the aloe plant, but there is also coca in it.”

  Great, I thought, I could get stoned through the soles of my feet.

  “I brought you shoes,” he continued. “Men’s shoes, but they should

  fit.”

  “I’d rather have information.”

  The aftermath of the attack had practically precluded questions. After the terse call from the kidnappers, it seemed as if every living soul in the camp required Roldan’s presence and undivided attention. Then the mamas had come, a strange and unearthly procession, summoned, it seemed, by pure thought, and ever since Roldan had emerged from his all-night confab with them, looking like a man cast out of Eden, he’d told me next to nothing. As an outsider, I’d been excluded from the meeting with the religious leaders. Afterwards, Roldan had shut himself up briefly with his lieutenants, left Flaco in charge of the camp, and led me on a strenuous march to a camouflaged airstrip where I’d watched as men loaded bags onto the small plane, bags that looked heavy enough to be filled with gold. When I’d asked, Roldan had brushed off the question.

  “What do you wish to know?” he said now.

  There was no place to sit but the rumpled daybed. I moved to one end. He sat beside me, closer than necessary, and I was abruptly aware of the heat of the room, the color of his shirt, and my nakedness under the robe.

  The combination made my voice husky. “What did your precious mamas do to that man?”

  The night before, several white-clad men with pointed hats, among them, I thought, Mama Parello, had marched a bound man into a central hut.

  “That was the traitor, Guillermo, the man they call Gee-mo. Do you wish to know what they did to him? Or what they learned from him?”

  “They tortured him.” I’d seen him carried from the hut in the morning.

  “They prayed for him, to heal him and return him to the tribe.”

  “Prayer made his legs bleed?”

  “It’s an ancient ceremony, based on the principle of confession, like in the Catholic Church.”

  Sure, I thought, the Catholic Church by way of the Inquisition.

  “They knelt him,” Roldan said. “They put him to the shells. But first, he had the opportunity to speak. He resisted the wisdom offered by the mamas, so he had to suffer the ordeal.”

  Forced to kneel on a bed of sharp broken shells, his arms outstretched like the wings of an eagle, his head bowed, Gee-mo had listened to the questions, but refused to admit his guilt. Stones, placed on his back, pressed him deeper into the shells. Not till his blood colored the white shells did he speak.

  “It was a case of plato o plomo,” Roldan said.

  “What?”

  “Silver or lead. It’s a catch phrase, what the drug dealers say to threaten the police and the judges. Take the bribe or take the bullet. Take the money or stand by while we kill your family.”

  Six, seven months ago, a man had approached Gee-mo in a tavern.

  The man knew his links to the Kogi, and wanted to hire him as an expedition guide. At first, Gee-mo thought they were photographers, perhaps archeologists. They hadn’t seemed like thieves.

  “Did he name names?”

  Roldan paused. “He didn’t know any.”

  I was pretty sure Paolina’s father wasn’t telling the truth.

  “Let me see your feet,” he said.

  “We’re not done talking.”

  “What else is there to say? I’m prepared to go through with the deal.”

  “The Kogi gold for Paolina?” I wanted to believe him. “I told you to lie to the kidnappers. Not to me.”

  “I asked the mamas for permission.”

  “Do the mamas expect to get it back?”

  “You’ll get her back.” His tone said I should stop asking questions. He was giving me a chance to rescue her; I should snatch it with both hands and be satisfied.

  I wanted to. But he’d told me too much, intimated that the gold was everything to the Kogi, the holy gold. It governed the lives of the priests. Every ritual, every offering, was dedicated to the Mother, the golden image, of the crop. Without the gold, there would be no priests. Without the mamas, the world would end. And he was the caretaker.

  “Let me see your feet,” he repeated.

  I lifted the right one, bending my knee carefully; the robe was short and revealing.

  He examined the sole gravely. “You’re stubborn.”

  “Most people read palms.”

  “You were in pain, but you climbed quickly. The Kogi value a woman who knows how to walk.”

  Better to be valued for walking, I thought, than for a lot of other things. I hadn’t seen any women included among the mamas, and the mamas seemed to be the leaders of the tribe. So the question remained: How highly did the Kogi value women?

  “For a gringa, you’re tough,” he said. “You never complained. I admit I’m attracted to you.”

  “I should have complained.” Face it; my silence was nothing but stupid pride.

  He edged closer, and slid his hand up to my ankle. “You should, perhaps, have children of your own.”

  “I’ve got Paolina.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  It was clear what he meant, the two of us too close on the narrow bed in the overheated room after what we’d been through together. When you come close to the doorway of death, life and the physical sensations of life seem especially precious. While he’d worn his Kogi whites, he’d seemed set apart, removed from the sexual arena, some kind of mystical priest. Now I was aware that his build reminded me of Sam Gianelli’s. Now his hand moved from my ankle to my calf, and his fingers stopped probing for pain.

  Children of my own.

  It was close to what Sam had said the night before I left for Miami. I thought about children of my own, and Sam, and then—I don’t know why—I was fourteen again, in a narrow white hospital bed, empty and alone. I felt the absence of that baby, the one I gave up for adoption without ever holding in my arms, like a recent and terrible loss. Boy or girl? I guess I always think of her as a girl. I think of her as Paolina, my secret Paolina, my missing child.

  I couldn’t lose her again. Couldn’t lose Paolina, my real Paolina, my living, breathing Paolina. A shiver ran down my spine in spite of the heat, and I put my hand on Roldan’s chest, to keep him at a distance.

  “I have someone in Boston. My fiance.” And not till the word passed my lips did I realize what I’d said. Fiance, not lover. Slowly I withdrew my leg.

  Roldan said, “He should have come with you
.”

  “He was busy.”

  “He’s a policeman?”

  “He’s a crook.”

  “Congratulations. Are you sure you wouldn’t care to use the bed to celebrate? One last fling before marriage is an old and honored tradition.”

  “Just for the men, right?”

  “Are you so traditional, then?”

  He leaned over and kissed me, lightly at first. He smelled like cigar smoke and tasted like mango juice. When I kissed him back, my stomach gave a lurch of dark longing and my back arched involuntarily. The urgency was almost like a drug. The walls of the room receded, the heat pulsed, the light shimmered. When I closed my eyes, I thought of Sam Gianelli in another woman’s bed and came up gasping for air.

  “Wait.” I wanted to ask for a cigarette even though I gave them up years ago. If I asked for a cigarette, took time to tuck it snugly between my third and index finger, to fire a match to light it, I’d be able to consider what I was doing, what I was about to do. The smallest thing can make a difference, Roldan told me on the mountaintop. Actions have consequences. I didn’t know it when I was fourteen, but I sure as hell knew it now. The dark yearning was powerful; it smelled like musky sweat and cigar smoke. It tasted like mango juice.

  I smiled and said, “Wait a minute. Hold on. Are you planning to get arrested soon?”

  His fingertips burned along my cheekbone. “You’re saying I’m coming on to you too quickly?”

  I said, “If our host, Senor Cabrera, proved less than accommodating, if he called the cops, if you were about to be arrested and sent to jail, that might explain what’s going on here.”

  I concentrated on inhaling, exhaling, on not smelling the cigar scent of his skin, on not licking another taste of mango juice from his tongue. I’m not saying I didn’t want to go to bed with him. I’m not saying there wasn’t a time I’d have peeled off my robe in a flash. I’m not even saying I didn’t resent Sam poking his shadowy image into what might otherwise have proved a delicious interlude. I felt dumb; there was no reward for chastity, no silver cup for keeping my legs crossed. It was as foolish as not complaining on the mountain.

  He said, “You mean if I knew I was on my way to prison, where I’d be spending a long time without a woman, then I’d make a play for you? You’re very cynical. You don’t believe I find you attractive?”