I do. It troubled Daniela to give her such promises. She knew that if Rhytag or Thorpe had Katia alone in a room for ten minutes, they would come to the same realization Daniela had, that Katia Solaz knew nothing about a loose nuke. If you were a terrorist planning an attack you would have to be on drugs to bring her into the loop. Still, it was possible that if her grandfather was alive, Katia might know where he was. So have you always lived in Costa Rica? she asked.
Yes. I was born there.
The driver settled into his seat as the guard closed and locked the steel-and-wire mesh gate that sealed off the prisoners compartment from the drivers section. The driver pushed a button on the dash and the door up front closed with a hydraulic whoosh. The guard pulled a lever and the four case-hardened steel locking bolts slid into place, securing the heavy steel door.
And your mother, was she born in Costa Rica as well?
Yes.
There was a deep vibration under the seat as the diesel engine stirred and then started. A second later the bus began to roll.
Well, it should be very easy, said Daniela. It sounds like your whole family is from Costa Rica. She put out the bait to see if Katia would bite. She didnt. And your mothers parents, were they born in Costa Rica too?
No, said Katia. Mi abuela, how do you say? My grandmother, she was born in Cuba. Mi abuelo, my grandfather?
Thats correct.
He was born in Russia.
Really? Daniela turned toward her and smiled. Thats interesting. Where did they meet?
In Cuba.
Very international, said Daniela. And romantic.
Yes, I suppose.
Are they still alive, your mothers parents?
No. Well, actually Im not sure.
I dont understand, said Daniela.
My grandmother is dead. She died many years ago. My grandfather, Im not sure.
What do you mean youre not sure?
Its a long story, said Katia.
We have time. Its a long bus ride.
Well, my grandfather is, how do you say when someone is separated from you for a long time?
Estranged.
Yes, thats it. He is estranged from his family for many years now. When I was little I always thought of my grandfather as the black sheep.
Daniela laughed. Why is that?
Because my mother never talked about him. When I was little I would ask her, and she would always find something else to talk about. Or she would tell me to go do something. I knew he must have done something bad a long time ago.
You mean something against the law? said Daniela.
No, no, I dont mean that. Katia looked at her anxiously. I mean, this wouldnt keep me from going to the honor farm right?
No, of course not, said Daniela. As long as you disclose all the details, thats all they care about. Theyre not going to blame you for what your parents or grandparents did.
Okay. I mean, sure, its possible he may have broken the law, but I dont think so. I think its something else.
What?
I think maybe another woman, said Katia.
Another woman? said Daniela.
Yes, maybe, and maybe more serious than that. My grandfather may have had a child by this woman.
You think so?
Yes, I know it sounds stupid, except that I know my mother. If all he did was break the law, she would have forgiven him long ago.
Daniela had to laugh.
Katia smiled. You laugh, but I asked her once if he had trouble with the law and thats the reason she wouldnt talk about him and we never saw him. And you know what she said?
No, what did she say?
She said that for her father, the law was an angry Russian mother, a mistress who had taken his life.
I see. So you figure the jealous mistress was another woman, said Daniela.
Of course. What else could it be?
To Katia this meant a lover. But to Daniela, who seemed to know more about Katias grandfather than Katia herself, it was obvious. Katia, who was probably a young child at the time, had gotten the words reversed in the translation. The angry mistress who had stolen her grandfathers life was not a Russian mother, but Mother Russia. Nitikin had squandered his life on the run, hiding from the Soviets who wanted to kill him and retrieve the nuclear device, and from the western powers that wanted to capture him because of what he knew.
Youre probably right, said Daniela. It must be a woman. Did you ever have a chance to meet him? Your grandfather, I mean?
My mother told me once that I did, but I dont remember. I was too small.
And so you dont know if hes alive or dead? said Daniela. That could be a problem.
Why?
Well, because the people my lawyer is working with are going to want to know one way or the other. I mean, most people know whether their grandparents are alive or dead.
There was a long pause as Daniela allowed the anxiety to work its magic on Katia.
I suppose its possible hes alive, said Katia. Let me ask you a question. Just between us.
Of course.
Lets say hes alive and I am wrong. Lets suppose its not another woman but something else that has kept him away from his family all these years.
Yes? said Daniela.
Lets say I make a guess at where he might be; will they go after him or would they give the information to some other government so they could go after him?
Of course not, said Daniela. The information is only for background, to see if youre telling the truth about your family. It has nothing to do with your grandfather. They probably already know who he is. They would have information on computers.
I see. Katia had carried the theory of another woman through her entire childhood, only to have it shaken by Emerson Pike and his obsession with the photographs from Colombia. Katia had suspected for some time, even before she met Emerson, that the old man in the photographs might be her grandfather. If she was right, and that was the reason Pike was interested in the pictures, it wasnt because her grandfather had had an affair with another woman. Deep in her soul, though she didnt want to admit it, Katia suspected that her grandfather was hiding something more serious. It was the reason shed said nothing to her lawyers. If her mother was still with him, and Katia told them where they were, her mother could be in trouble.
So you think you know where he is? said Daniela.
Katia looked at her, wondering if she should say anything more. Its only a guess. Its probably wrong.
So tell me your best guess, said Daniela.
If youre sure they wont go after him.
Ill talk to my lawyer. Ill make sure they wont, and unless hes absolutely certain, I will tell him to forget that part of the information and not give it to anyone else.
Okay, said Katia. You see, for a long time now, several years, my mother has been traveling from Costa Rica to your country.
To the United States? said Daniela.
No. Katia looked at her with a puzzled expression. No. I mean Colombia.
Ah, Colombia, said Daniela. Of course.
That is where you come from, isnt it?
Yes. Its just that Ive been in the States so much the last few years, it starts to feel as if I live here. You know the feeling?
Oh, I know. I hate that, said Katia. I wish I could go home too. Maybe soon we can both go. Maybe I could visit you in Colombia.
That would be fun, said Daniela. So your mother travels to Colombia regularly?
Sometimes twice a year. She stays there for a long time. She was gone when I left to come to the United States.
She was in Colombia at the time?
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Yes.
So what does she do down there?
She says she visits family.
You have relatives in Colombia?
Thats the problem, not that I know of, said Katia. I have never met them.
I see, said Daniela.
My mother tells me that one of her relatives in Colombia is very old and she must go down to provide care.
Your grandfather?
She has never said this, but who else can it be?
Yakov Nitikin is in Colombia, thought Daniela. So when she goes down to Colombia, where does she go? In for a dime, in for a dollar.
She flies to Medellin.
Ah, a beautiful city, said Daniela.
But dangerous, said Katia. A lot of drugs.
Not so much anymore, said Daniela. Ive been there recently. The city has changed. I take it you have never been there?
No. I would like to go sometime.
Well have to do it. And you must tell your mother to take you so you can visit your grandfather.
If thats who she goes down to see, he doesnt live in Medellín, said Katia.
But you said thats where she goes?
Yes. She flies to Medellín, but she takes a bus from there. I have asked her many times, but she refuses to tell me where she goes. But Katia stopped and bit her lower lip a little as she hesitated.
Yes?
Last year I found a bus ticket in her purse for a place called El Chocó. I looked on the Internet, and it is located in the south of Colombia, in a place called Narnio Province.
You mean Narińo Province, said Daniela.
Yes, thats it. Do you know it?
Yes.
Have you been there?
No, Daniela lied.
That, plus little things my mother has said over the years. I know she stays in a small village near a river. She has talked about the Indians going up and down the river in dugout canoes. So it must be very rural.
The Rio Tapaje? said Daniela.
Where is that?
The name sent a chill up Danielas spine. Its one of the main rivers in Narińo Province. Daniela had been on the Rio Tapaje five months earlier. The river flowed into the Pacific Ocean in a remote corner of southwest Colombia. The first few miles were controlled by the Colombian army, but only through the use of high-speed boats with .50-caliber machine guns mounted on the front.
The fleet of boats, called Piranhas, was supplied by the U.S. government in an effort to eradicate the coca trade that thrived in the river basin beyond the village of El Chocó. Beyond that point even the Colombian army was reluctant to venture. This was the land of the FARC. And, if Katia was right, it was the place where her grandfather was holed up with a weapon powerful enough to erase half of Manhattan or Washington, D.C.
This morning the bus was late. Liquida steadied his elbows on the edge of the roof as he struggled to focus the big ten-by-fifty-power field glasses. He scanned the surface streets on the other side of the freeway. Liquida was on top of an abandoned commercial building along the side of Highway 67, less than two miles from the womens jail in Santee.
The freeway traffic was bumper-to-bumper during the morning rush hour.
Across the way he could see the Prospect Avenue on-ramp. The big box truck, the one the explosives man had rented, was already in place, parked right at the edge of the on-ramp, halfway down the sharp decline to the freeway. On each side of the paved roadway the ramp fell off steeply, on one side into a shallow ravine, and on the other toward the freeway. A man on foot could cross either slope easily, but a heavy vehicle, a bus or a truck, trying to traverse the steep slope would roll.
A hundred feet beyond the on-ramp, on the other side, across the ravine, Liquida had parked the getaway van. He had rented it the previous morning by using a stolen credit card and stolen drivers license. The van was parked along the side of the road, on North Magnolia Avenue. Liquida had cut a hole in the chain-link fence separating Magnolia from the freeway so the men could quickly pass through in their escape.
A lone figure with a sizable duffel bag at his feet was huddled in the shadows under one of the trees down in the gully of the no-mans-land between the elevated on-ramp and Magnolia.
Liquida watched as a couple of cars turned down the ramp. They passed the box truck without difficulty and drove onto the freeway where they quickly backed up in traffic. He was beginning to get nervous. If the truck remained stalled on the ramp much longer, some pain-in-the-ass commuter would call it in to the highway patrol. It was the one thing he feared. If they were forced to start the fireworks early, the bus driver would see it. Then, instead of turning right onto the on-ramp he would take the bridge straight ahead, over the top of the freeway. The bus would be gone before his men could move.
This nightmare was still rattling around in Liquidas brain when a fuzzy green image crept across the round edge on the lens of the field glasses. He adjusted the focus and watched as the sheriffs bus pulled into the left-hand turn pocket on Magnolia. It nosed to a stop at the traffic light on Prospect.
Liquida grabbed the walkie-talkie from his pocket, pushed the button, and spoke into it. Está aquí. Aquí. Its here.
Before the words were even out of his mouth, the man in the gully was moving at a run, lugging the heavy duffel bag up the steep slope toward the upper end of the on-ramp. When he reached the top, he lay flat on his stomach against the incline and waited.
Whats the matter? said Katia.
Hmm. Oh, nothing, said Daniela.
You look worried all of a sudden.
No, its nothing. I was just wishing the driver would pick up his speed so we could get to the courthouse a little sooner and get off the bus.
You dont like it, said Katia. Neither do I, its too closed in. You cant see nothing. They should put in windows.
Daniela had a different reason for wanting to get off the bus. The minute she was separated from Katia she would fly to a phone and call Thorpe at the bureau headquarters in Washington. She would tell him to gather every resource he could lay his hands on, civilian and military, and throw a wide net over the jungle surrounding the Tapaje River in Colombia. She was praying that it wasnt too late, that Nitikin and the bomb were still there.
TWENTY-NINE
Liquida watched as the bus made the left turn across four lanes of traffic and slipped into the right lane on Prospect. The lumbering bus moved like a snail. Cars were backed up behind it, trying to make their way toward the ramp, but the bus had them blocked.
Now comes the tricky part, said Liquida under his breath, traffic control.
As the bus took the tight turn onto the ramp, it nearly came to a complete stop. It eased down the ramp at fifteen miles an hour, and the man with the duffel bag sprang from the grass at the edge of the ramp. With his hand up, he stepped behind the bus as it passed and stopped the line of traffic behind it. Before the driver of the first car realized what was happening, the man with the duffel bag had flung a small satchel. The nylon bag, covered with graphite dust, slid like a hockey puck over the pavement and under the front end of the car. The man with the bag turned and ran in the other direction, down the ramp, toward the bus.
What the hell? As the driver started to lift his foot off the brake pedal, the fiery explosion buckled the center of his car and flipped it into the air. The blast ignited the gas in the fuel tank. A half second later the fiery wreck landed on top of the car behind it. A mushroom-shaped bloom of flame leaped thirty feet into the air and engulfed both vehicles.
Now thats the way to stop traffic, said Liquida.
He shifted the field glasses to look down the ramp toward the bus. Sure enough, human nature had done its part. With the blast, the bus driver had looked in his big side-view mirror. Hed seen the flames and the flying car and instinct took ove
r. He hit the brakes. It was only a few seconds, but it was enough. He was barely rolling, still looking in the mirror, when the box truck pulled out in front of him and blocked the ramp.
Look out, said the guard.
By the time the driver looked back to the front and realized what was happening, it was too late, the ramp was blocked and he had no momentum to punch his way through.
Five of the button boys came out of the back of the truck, the other two exited from the cab. All of them were wearing dark glasses, their faces covered with scarves. They carried their assault rifles slung from their shoulders and aimed from the hip as they moved swiftly toward the front of the bus.
The guard unlocked the shotgun from its rack as the driver tried to put the bus in reverse. The explosives man with the duffel bag, running down the ramp behind them, slid another satchel charge under the rear of the bus and flung himself facedown on the ground.
The blast lifted the rear wheels of the bus three feet off the pavement. It shredded all eight rear tires on the double dual axles and blew out the transmission. By the time the rear end landed back on the ground, the bus was a stationary death trap.
Several of the women up front on the bus were screaming.
The explosion lifted both Katia and Daniela off the bench seat. It would have sent them to the ceiling except that the ankle chain and the falling weight of the bus jerked them back down, hard, on the thin seat cushion, jamming their backs.
Katia was dazed. She held her head with her hands, looking up first at the ceiling and then turning her head from side to side to make sure her neck wasnt hurt. A-a-a-ah What happened?
I dont know. As she said it Daniela heard the hollow ping of metal as the first rounds ripped into the bus, followed half a beat later by the distinctive clatter of Kalashnikovs on full automatic somewhere outside.
Get down, she told Katia. Daniela reached for the small Walther under her arm. It was wedged into the tight elastic at the side of her sports bra. Get down on the floor.
How? said Katia. She was looking at the chain that joined them around their waists. Where did you get that? Katia saw the gun in Danielas hand.
Never mind, just get down, as low as you can behind the seat. Chained at the waist, they had to move together if they were going to find cover. With their ankles locked to the metal bar, they were stuck where they were. Their only protection was the thin pad of upholstery on the back of the seat in front of them and the light-gauge sheet-metal backing that supported it.
Guardian of Lies: A Paul Madriani Novel Page 20