Arkin didn’t have time to check the man's condition. He listened for the footfall of anyone alerted by the sounds of his attack, heard nothing, grabbed his apparently compromised passport from the one officer's hand, then tiptoed down the hall to peer around the corner. There were four offices on one side of the hallway, each with windows tinted with what might have been one-way glass treatment. The blinds were drawn in every one of them. Interview rooms, Arkin guessed. Behind the closed door of the first one, he could hear the unintelligible muffle of a hushed conversation. The next two were dark. The fourth was lit, and the door was open, but nobody was inside. It was probably where they'd been planning to take him. He passed the last room, quickly and quietly, before turning another corner into what looked like a locker room and coffee break area. Mercifully, it was vacant too. Arkin grabbed a nondescript brown corduroy jacket and a gray baseball-style hat off a coat rack, put them on after dropping his own jacket and hat in a trash barrel, then popped through the far door and out into the main terminal area, clear of customs.
The air smelled of warm pastries and coffee, driving home the point that he was hungry after his inadequate airline breakfast. But he dared not stop for food. He made his way not to baggage claim, where he might reasonably be expected to go, but to the check-in area, then straight out the nearest door where he grabbed a cab as it disgorged its departing travelers.
"Estación Parajitos, por favor."
"Si."
As they crossed derelict pastureland and entered the outskirts of Santiago, Arkin mimed his need for a payphone and an ATM machine. As soon as the cab driver found a phone, Arkin called the toll-free number of his Cassady credit card. To his considerable surprise, the call went through. To his even greater surprise, after confirming Cassady’s ZIP code, as well as the fake mother’s maiden name Arkin had put on the credit card application, they apologized for Arkin’s inconvenience, set up a four-digit pin for him, and reactivated his card with a note to allow transactions in Chile. After declining to participate in the credit card company’s customer satisfaction survey, he walked half a block down the street to an ATM machine where he drew—in Chilean pesos—the full $200 cash advance limit on the Cassady credit card. At the bus station, with impeccable politeness and soft voice, he paid cash for a ticket on the slow local bus to Viña del Mar, with stops in Curacavi, Casablanca, Villa Alemana, Quilpue, Viña del Mar, and Reñaca. Removing his hat and jacket and bundling them on a nearby bench, he then went to a different ticket window, where he played the archetype of the obnoxious, loud, conspicuous American tourist, purchasing a ticket for the sleeper bus crossing the Andes Mountains to Mendoza, Argentina, with the Cassady credit card, feigning confusion, and twice demanding confirmation, por favor, that his ticket was indeed to Mendoza, señor, and not to Maipú.
From the ticket counter, he made a quick study of the schedule board while retrieving his hat and jacket, exited to the bus queuing area, gave his ticket to the driver, and boarded the sleeper bus to Mendoza. He made his way to the very back of the bus before putting his hat and jacket back on. After a moment, he slipped off again while the driver’s back was turned as he loaded bags. Arkin walked 30 feet, and then boarded the local bus for Reñaca. In five minutes, they were off.
TWENTY-TWO
Several hours later, Arkin disembarked one stop short of his ticketed destination, in the coastal resort city of Viña del Mar. The cool salty air rolling in off the Pacific was a welcome change from the dry heat of the Chilean interior. The sun had set as they entered the city, and now Arkin could see, across the dark waters of a broad crescent of bay, the thousands of soft glowing amber lights of the old colonial Spanish port city of Valparaíso. Little San Francisco, as it was known to some. The colorful, eclectic, and vibrant birthplace or one-time home to the likes of Pablo Neruda, Salvador Allende, and, more notoriously, Augusto Pinochet—its neighborhoods and winding streets clinging to steep hillsides, perched above the southeastern Pacific Ocean.
Arkin gave himself a moment to breathe, then walked toward the waterfront until he found a corner grocer, where he ducked in and bought himself a razor, a bottle of water, three bananas, and a round loaf of white bread. He devoured the food in a small park around the corner. After that, he ducked into the public restroom and did his best to shave his head with a crude lather made from tap water and the bathroom's heavily perfumed pink hand soap.
Given that it would now be utterly foolish to use the Cassady credit card, Arkin opted to conserve his cash by taking the commuter train, instead of a taxi, from Viña del Mar around the bay to Valparaíso. It was a surprisingly quick ride to the line’s terminus at Puerto Station. From there, somewhat disoriented, he walked inland until reaching the Plaza Justicia. There, in front of the old courthouse, he found himself standing in the shadow of a tall statue of Lady Justice. Yet she was no typical Lady Justice. She wore no blindfold of impartiality. Stranger still, in a seemingly casual and unconcerned manner, she held what appeared to be disassembled scales of justice in a loose jumble at her side. Tarnished and soiled with pigeon droppings, she bore an unmistakably confident expression that Arkin knew full well was nothing more than a brave façade.
Back on course, he skirted the bustling Plaza Sotomayor, and began the long, circuitous climb up into the Cerro Alegre neighborhood. The night air was a mix of strong aromas—roasting coffee beans on one block, baking bread on the next, urine and stale water in the alleys in between. Warm light glowed within old wooden window frames as Arkin climbed the steep, winding streets. The murmurs of distant conversations floated across the night air. He limited his search for cheap lodging to the most bohemian of streets, reasoning that that was where the most low-cost backpacker-oriented options would be found. Before long, he came across a reasonably clean-looking hostel with the smell of frying onions emanating from its kitchen window. Seven dollars per night for a clean bed in a shared room containing four sets of bunks. That was good enough. And as he signed the register as Jeff Leary of Toronto, Ontario, the night manager didn't seem the least bit suspicious of his story that his backpack, containing his passport, had been stolen as he slept on the overnight bus from Mendoza. "Ah, Argentina," the man said, rolling his eyes and tsk-tsking.
Arkin took a shower. It was his first real shower in several days, and he lingered under the warm water, washing himself with discarded fragments of three different soaps left behind by others. Then he washed his clothes in the bathroom sink with the hostel's hand soap, and, wearing nothing more than a threadbare hostel towel, tiptoed down the dim hallway to his room. To his relief, it was still empty, his roommates no doubt out on the town enjoying an evening of good food, wine, and conversation. He hung his clothes on the railing of the bunk bed to dry, then hit the sack. He slept 12 full hours.
TWENTY-THREE
The next day, Arkin woke to a city lit bright by the morning sun. He grabbed a hostel breakfast of day-old baguette with butter and blackberry jam, washed it down with a cup of Earl Grey tea with milk, and then set off to get the lay of the land. The houses and other buildings in the neighborhood surrounding the hostel were a hodgepodge of antiquated architectural styles. Many of the old houses were painted in one of a rainbow of colors—tinted and cobalt blues, canary and lemon yellows, pale greens, pastel purples, pinks. A beautiful shambles of faded grandeur. He wandered the streets, going wherever his curiosity led him.
At the end of one street, he came across the upper station of a rickety old funicular, and across from that, a small corner grocer. He decided to use some of his precious cash to purchase two six-packs of Chilean beer—bait he would later use to draw in an unwitting accomplice to a plan he had to gather information related to the fax number he'd found at the gallery in Vancouver. He took the beer back to the hostel, hid it under his bed, then departed once again, heading for his rendezvous with Morrison.
They'd chosen the rendezvous location and potential meeting times before leaving the U.S., having spotted a promising spot using satellite
photos provided by Google. It was a large, old hillside cemetery in a part of the Cerro Panteón neighborhood affording sweeping views of Valparaiso Bay and the open Pacific. It didn't look like much from the outside, its high whitewashed walls marred with graffiti. But upon entering through the massive iron gates and Romanesque portico of the main entrance, Arkin found himself looking down a grand row of massive stone and marble mausoleums and family sarcophagi. Clearly, this was a cemetery for Valparaiso's rich and elite—not its regular citizens. Many of the grave markers listed dates in the 1800s. Many of the façades were cracked—no doubt from the many powerful earthquakes that had hit Valparaiso over the centuries.
The cemetery was something of a maze, with tall mausoleums and old trees lining numerous spur pathways shooting off from the main avenue of the dead in all directions. Arkin made his way down the main avenue, then turned left at the third spur. Fifty yards down the path, he found Morrison studying a marble sculpture of the Virgin Mary standing atop a short sarcophagus. Its nose was missing, having either fallen or been deliberately broken off.
"Excuse me, sir, but I think we are acquainted," Arkin said.
"You were supposed to be here yesterday," Morrison said with feigned irritation. They'd planned to try for the rendezvous in the same place and time each day until they both made the meeting.
"Sorry. I took the scenic route."
"Whoa! Nice haircut. I hope you got the stylist-in-training discount."
"I didn't leave myself a tip, I'll tell you that."
"How was the trip? Any issues?"
"Oh, well now. Where to begin?"
As they walked the lonely pathways of the cemetery, Arkin filled him in on the story of his trouble at passport control at the airport.
"Yes," Morrison said. "I thought that was you."
"I was in the news?"
"You were. There was a photo of you on the front page of the paper. But it's a black-and–
white security cam still taken from overhead. It's impossible to tell who you are. Especially with that baseball cap pulled low over your eyes. Not to worry. Although I wouldn't use the Cassady passport or credit card again."
"You don't say."
"What's the plan?"
"How many times have you asked me that in the past seven days?"
"Hey, I'm your monkey. You ain't mine."
"Whatever that means. Why don't we start with your impressions of the environment?"
"Very good, sir. The local police here—the Carabineros—are very professional, very straight, but underequipped. They carry only Brazilian Taurus .38s. And they're relatively slow to respond to emergency calls, due in no small part to their underpowered cars and the steep terrain and narrow streets around here."
"How do you know their response speed for emergency calls?"
"Don't ask. Let's just say I created a small handful of emergencies, then sat back and studied."
"But nobody knows your face? Nobody is looking for you?"
"Don't insult me. I'm a professional."
"Where are you staying?"
"Little fleabag hotel in the Cerro Allegre neighborhood. You?"
"A hostel in the same neighborhood."
"That'll be convenient."
"Did the guns arrive?"
"The UPS tracking thing says they did. But the hotel keeps guest mail back in the manager's office where I can't see. I didn't think it would be wise to try to break in."
"Shall we go try to retrieve them?"
"Sure."
*****
Before leaving the U.S., Morrison had shipped two compact Sig Sauer P238 pistols inside of two hollowed-out dictionaries packed in a box with other books. The box was addressed to a "Mr. Kronos"–Morrison's idea of a joke related to what he'd started to call Arkin's quest for patricide: his quest to bring down his father figure, Roland Sheffield—care of a random three-star hotel on a quiet, narrow street in the Cerra Bellavista neighborhood. At great expense, he'd shipped the package via overnight mail. At even greater expense, and to help ensure that the hotel would hold onto the mail, he'd made a reservation in the name of Mr. Kronos using a credit card number he had gotten from one of his maternal uncles. His uncle—an ex-convict and diehard libertarian who lived in rural Mississippi—didn't press for details when Morrison told him he didn't want to book the hotel in his own name.
Approaching the hotel from opposite ends of the street, Arkin and Morrison looked for any sign of surveillance—taking care just in case the guns had been discovered by Chilean customs and a trap had been set to arrest the involved smuggler. They didn't go straight to the hotel. Instead, they each passed by it and then met on the opposite side of the block.
"Did you see anything?" Arkin asked.
"Looked all clear to me. There was a woman standing in the window of a boutique looking at a dress or something. But she didn't give me the surveillance vibe."
"I saw her too. I think she's a civilian."
Arkin walked back around the block to the hotel while Morrison watched his back, trailing him by a couple dozen yards. He entered the cramped lobby—really just a small room with a threadbare couch and tall, skinny table with a pot of complimentary tea sitting on a hotplate. Having heard the bell in the door chime as Arkin entered, a clerk appeared in a small service window.
"Hello," Arkin said. The clerk nodded. "Do you speak English?"
"Yes, of course."
"My name is George Kronos. I don't check in until tomorrow. But I believe you received mail shipped here for me."
"Con permiso," the clerk said, disappearing from the window. He reappeared with the package. "You have passport?"
"It was stolen."
"In Chile?"
"Argentina."
"Ah." He nodded, as if that made perfect sense. Arkin was beginning to think the Chileans didn't hold the Argentinians in terribly high esteem.
"Any identification?"
"I'm afraid not."
The clerk stood still, staring at Arkin as if trying to memorize his face. Or as if he'd seen it somewhere before. On television? In the newspaper? On a police flier? Perhaps Chilean customs had circulated the passport photo of Cassady, and he looked enough like Arkin to earn Arkin second glances from wary clerks in hotels frequented by foreigners.
Not wanting to make the clerk any more suspicious, Arkin suppressed an urge to look over his shoulder, through the glass doorway and into the street, where he half-expected to see a squad of uniformed Carabineros waiting to march him off to prison.
Shit.
At last, the clerk handed the package out through the window. "Until tomorrow then."
"Thank you. See you tomorrow."
TWENTY-FOUR
"So now what?" Morrison asked as they walked toward Morrison's hotel to stash the guns.
"After we drop these off, we strategize."
"Why don't we go strategize over one of those famous grass-fed steaks and a cheap bottle of red," Morrison said.
"There's great red wine here, to be sure. But you're thinking of Argentina for the beef."
"Well, what food are the Chileans famous for then?"
"I don't know. Maybe empanadas de machas."
"What's that?"
"Sort of a Hot Pocket stuffed with surf clams and cheese."
"That sounds good. Let's go. I'm buying. Oh, and here," Morrison said, pulling a Samsung smartphone from his pocket and handing it to Arkin. "Now we both have Chilean cell phones."
"Is it stolen?"
"Do you care?"
Arkin thought for a moment. "No."
*****
They sat in an ancient black-and-white checkerboard tile-floored bistro near the Plaza Mayor that had a long wooden bar that looked at least a century old and ran nearly two-thirds the length of the place. The bistro was long and narrow and had a high ceiling. Behind the bar were innumerable, multi-colored bottles of liquor. Piscos, brandies, classic apertifs and digestifs like Pernod, Aperol, Campari, Cynar, and others with unfamil
iar names, many of them decorated with highly artistic, old-fashioned labels. There were numerous framed black-and-white photos of people in Victorian clothing hanging from the warped plaster walls. Antique light fixtures provided dim light and a standup piano stood against a wall in the rear, silent and dusty. The whole place struck Arkin as something that had been frozen in time for the better part of a century. They could have been sitting in a bistro of 1920s Paris.
Arkin and Morrison sat at a rickety wooden table, devouring excellent grilled salmon, cow tongue in some sort of walnut sauce, heart of palm salad, and French fries that were as big as carrots.
"Alright," Morrison said as their server poured them each a tiny glass of some sort of reddish-brown bitter Chilean digestif called Araucano. "I'll ask you again: what's our next move?"
"Well sir, as you know, my internet searches for the fax number turned up jack squat. In the U.S., of course, it would be easy enough for us to link a fax number to an address. But how do we do that in Chile?"
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