The Cain File

by Max Tomlinson

  “I assume Abraham is calling Cain?” Maggie said.

  “Comrade Cain,” Beatriz said.

  “I notice no one calls you ‘comrade’ around here.” Maggie said. “Revolution is just for the boys, isn’t it?” Maggie shook her head. “You’re just the hired help. Believe me; I know what that’s like.”

  Beatriz didn’t respond.

  “So is Comrade Abraham calling Comrade Cain?” Maggie asked.

  “What do you think, princesa? Your amigo isn’t here yet.”

  John Rae should have been here by now, according to Sinclair Michaels.

  Beatriz said, “It’s not going to be good for you if he doesn’t show up, you know.”

  Maggie knew that.

  The front door opened and slammed shut, letting in a blast of garbage-infused air, and waking the baby again, who started to whimper afresh. Abraham marched in, running his fingers through his curly hair. He paced back and forth, pulled the .38 revolver, as if not aware of doing so. He stopped, glaring at Maggie in the lantern shadows. “We’re tired of waiting,” he said.

  “I don’t need Jack Warren to make those bank transfers,” she said, eying the gun in Abraham’s hand.

  Abraham blinked as he squeezed the pistol for apparent comfort. “Keep going.”

  She needed to get hold of Sinclair Michaels. “But I do need to speak to my manager,” she said. “Back in the U.S.”

  “Why?”

  “Jack Warren has the access code. For the transfer. He was to give it to me once he confirmed Beltran was safe and that all was in order. A two-person verification, standard protocol. With Jack Warren out of the picture, I’ll need to get the code from my manager. And I’ll have to bring him up to date on what’s happened as well.”

  Talk about winging it.

  Abraham rubbed his face with his free hand. “I’ll be back.” He went back outside, a gust of trash air filling the room once again. The door slammed. The baby cried next door.

  “He has to clear everything with Comrade Cain, doesn’t he?” Maggie said to Beatriz.

  Beatriz stared at Maggie, impassive.

  Presently Maggie heard Abraham in another intense discussion. She could discern the words not take the risk, comrade. Abraham was getting antsier.

  The front door opened and banged shut. In the room next door the infant cried out again. Through the wall Yalu yelled, “Stop slamming that damn door!” Abraham came blustering into the room, gun in hand. Perhaps it made him feel more in control. He was blinking rapidly. “Call your manager in the States,” he instructed Maggie.

  “I’ll need my laptop.”

  Without looking at her, Abraham snapped his fingers at Beatriz. Beatriz picked up the daypack, came over to Maggie, glaring at Abraham the whole time, dropped the pack with a thump by Maggie’s feet. It was a good thing the laptop was in a padded sleeve.

  Maggie pulled her chair up to the table underneath the poster of Chairman Mao, got out her MacBook, set it up with the network card, powered up, dialed into IKON with Abraham standing behind, breathing down her neck. She turned on the GPS and made sure the IP Masker was off. This was one time she didn’t mind being tracked.

  Opening Skype, Maggie dialed Sinclair Michaels directly. She enabled the webcam so that Sinclair might get a glimpse of where she was. As the ringing droned on, she tilted the screen up so that Abraham, over her shoulder, was hopefully visible. She hit the PrtScn key and her webcam snapped a shot of her with Abraham behind, the top of his pistol showing. Perfect.

  The IP phone on her laptop continued to ring. It was well after 1 a.m. Same time in Washington, D.C., where she was calling.

  On the sixth ring, the call finally picked up. Maggie breathed a sigh of relief. A blurry image flickered across the continents. As it settled she saw Sinclair Michaels, well-composed in a shirt with a collar, sitting in an austere office. With the operation in effect and the emergency of John Rae’s arrest, or detainment—or whatever it was—impacting it, he wouldn’t be lounging at home in his bathrobe.

  Before Sinclair could speak, and use her real name, Maggie said: “Alice Mendes here, sir. Still no sign of Jack Warren.”

  Sinclair gave a slow nod and she could see him peering past her shoulder, where Abraham stood, gun in hand. “And what is the status there?”

  “I’m proposing we go ahead with the exchange—without Warren. But I’ll need the access code.”

  Sinclair nodded. “So you need me to give you the access code?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Is Beltran there? Have you verified his well-being?”

  “No.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Good question.” She turned, looked over her shoulder. “Where is Beltran?” she asked Abraham in Spanish.

  She heard Abraham slip the pistol back in his pocket. “Safe and sound nearby,” he said, stepping out of view of the web cam. “Can’t you turn that camera off?”

  “No,” she lied. But it didn’t matter. Sinclair Michaels had gotten a good look, no doubt recorded it, and had her GPS location as well. Maggie also knew Sinclair spoke Spanish and understood the interchange.

  “I’m prepared to provide the access code, Alice,” Sinclair said, switching to Spanish so that Abraham could follow along. “But not until we have Beltran. That was, after all, the original agreement.”

  Sinclair Michaels was playing his cards just fine. If Grim Harvest knew that Maggie had the code now, they could force the transfer without handing over Beltran. And besides, there was no such thing as an access code to begin with. It had been Maggie’s invention to engineer a phone call back home, so that Sinclair Michaels and the Agency could pinpoint her location and get up to speed on the op, and learn that John Rae was still missing in action. Sinclair had picked up on the ploy.

  There was a pause.

  “I need to make a phone call,” Abraham said, heading back outside. The door slammed. In the next room, the baby cried. Beatriz was left standing back in the shadows, watching Maggie.

  “Do you speak English, Comrade?” Maggie said, not looking at Beatriz.

  “What do you mean?” Sinclair Michaels said.

  “Not you,” Maggie said. “Someone else.”

  “Ah,” he said. “I see.”

  No response from Beatriz. She couldn’t speak English.

  Maggie said to Sinclair Michaels in English: “The guy you saw is second in command. He just went out to call you know who. When he returns, I’ll cough twice.”

  “Understood,” he said. “Are you safe?”

  “Yes,” she said, opening a web browser in a spare window, one that Sinclair Michaels would not be privy to. “They’re playing tough, but they’re too eager for the money not to go along with a change in plans.”

  “Keep stalling them. I’ll contact some people and cancel this op. But it might take twenty-four hours.”

  “No,” Maggie said. “If I need to bail, I can make a run for it.” While she spoke, Maggie logged onto Frenesi, the dating site. “These guys are motivated to keep things on track, so I’m not worried.” Not too worried, anyway. “This can still work out. I say we go through with it.” And get Tica out of her hellhole.

  “I’m impressed,” Sinclair Michaels said. “Good work.”

  Maggie flushed with pride as she logged into her IceLady69 account.

  12inchesInDetroit wanted to buy her dirty underwear but there were no new messages from PerroRabioso. She’d leave him a message—just in case. She flipped to Google Maps, zoomed in on her location, got the coordinates: 4°35′53″N 74°4′33″W, copied them to a text scratch pad. She renamed the screen shot of her with Abraham standing behind her as 4_35_53_n_ 74_4_33_w.jpg. Outside she could hear Abraham raise his voice and say, “. . . Too much deviation from the original plan!”

  She typed a quick message to PerroRabioso: dude, u stood me up! I’m with ur buddies now, top of the hill, and weer all hot to trot . . . if ur the man u say u are, u better make it . . . peace out call me . . . xoxo
heres a pic of me She attached the photo, with Abraham lurking in the background behind, the barrel of his .38 showing. John Rae was a clever boy and would understand—if he could get near a computer with online access.

  She would have liked a picture of the exterior of the place too. Trying to find this shack in a rats’ nest of slums would be a challenge, to say the least.

  An ICE ping alert popped up on her computer. She closed the window, but left the computer running.

  The front door slammed again and Maggie gave two deliberate, loud coughs. Sinclair said, “Got it.” The baby next door was crying steadily.

  Abraham huffed back into the living room. He came over to Maggie sitting at the computer, leaned in front of her, spoke directly to Sinclair Michaels. His body odor had been brewing for a couple of days. “We accept the new arrangement,” he said in Spanish.

  “And what does that mean, exactly?” Sinclair Michaels said.

  “We will take Alice Mendes to Beltran. When she is satisfied, she will call you for the code and make the transfer there.”

  “Where is there?”

  “A few hours away.”

  “Again: where?”

  “I said: ‘a few hours away.’ We’re leaving now.”

  “Where are you going?” Sinclair asked again. “That’s my employee there and I insist on knowing.”

  “Ipiales. Near the border with Ecuador. Don’t worry. She’ll be back in Bogotá with your precious Beltran by nightfall tomorrow. We’re leaving now. This meeting is over.” He stood back, the damn pistol in his hand again. “Shut that computer down,” he instructed Maggie.

  “Talk to you tomorrow.” Maggie frowned at Sinclair Michaels before she closed the Skype window. She left the IKON network up and her computer running. She accessed system preferences in the upper left corner and clicked the Agency override setting to disable hibernate. Then she folded the lid on the laptop, slid the machine with its card running into its protected pouch in her backpack, and fastened the Velcro strap. For as long as the battery held out, the machine would run and would be traceable via GPS.

  “Get ready to leave,” Abraham said, snapping his fingers at Beatriz again.

  Beatriz came over, picked up Maggie’s laptop bag, slung it over her shoulder.

  “Jack Warren is out of the picture now,” Comrade Abraham said to Maggie. “We deal with you. I hope you’re up to it.”

  She would have to be. But she still had two million aces in the hole. Grim Harvest would bend over backwards to make this work. They could talk tough, but they’d already shown their desperation. She had the money. And she had her GPS broadcasting as well.

  “What about Yalu?” Beatriz said to Abraham.

  “She’s staying here. I’m not having my wife ride in the back of an open truck all night. Not with her kid.”

  Maggie thought Abraham’s phrasing a little odd. Her kid.

  “Is that the only transportation we have?” Beatriz sighed. “A camión?”

  “It’s short notice,” Abraham said. “Revolution doesn’t pander to creature comforts.”

  “I see,” Beatriz said. “Is there anything left to eat? Or did you finish it all?”

  Abraham ignored that. “Beatriz, get someone up here to stand guard with Yalu and the kid. Should only be two days max.”

  “Isn’t it late notice?” Beatriz said.

  “Just do as you’re told, please.”

  “Call me ‘comrade’,” she said, smirking.

  “Just do it.”

  Next door, the baby started crying again and they could hear Yalu coddling it.

  ~~~

  “She’s in Ciudad Bolívar,” Achic said, tapping the Google map on his tablet as he sat in the front passenger seat of the crew-cab pickup parked on the outskirts of El Dorado airport. He zoomed in on an undefined snarl of unnamed streets and incomplete roads, haphazard half-formed nothingness that defined the mongo slums on the mountainside overlooking Bogotá. The screen glowed in the darkness of the cab.

  The she in question was Maggie de la Cruz. She was going by Alice Mendes for this op and, apparently, IceLady69 as well.

  “Are you j-joking?” Marcelo said, drumming his spindly fingers on the steering wheel. He was a nervous little guy with thick dark hair combed over in a side part. Wiry little mustache. “We’re talking about a n-needle in a haystack.”

  “A big-ass haystack,” Clarence in the back said in his gringo surfer Spanish. “And a small-ass needle.”

  “Kind of like your p-pinga,” Marcelo said.

  “How did you know, Marcelo?” Clarence said. “You b-been p-peeking again?” Making fun of Marcelo’s stutter.

  Marcelo brayed with laughter, slapping the wheel. “Hell yes, vato. I can’t take my eyes of you p-pinga. It’s like a p-penis—only smaller.”

  Clarence broke down too, a booming guffaw filling the little cab, rank with men waiting all night in a small enclosed space.

  The two of them were getting bored, ready to raid the safe house where Comrade Cain was. Grab him, tie his terrorist ass up, haul it back to Ecuador to face justice. They were amped up. They lived for this kind of thing.

  Well, so did he.

  But where was John Rae? The man in charge?

  “Please, guys,” Achic said, holding one hand up in the dark cab, hoping for silence. He needed to concentrate. The coordinates got him down to an area of within ten feet of the place. But they still had to drive up there.

  They had been sitting in the beat-up 1994 Nissan Frontier 4x4 crew cab, with a camper shell on the back that would hopefully soon be holding a shackled Comrade Cain. They’d moved the truck farther away from El Dorado Airport after John Rae texted Achic the code that meant he had been apprehended getting off the plane: 999. Emergency. Then John Rae’s cell phone went dead. No doubt he’d disabled it. But that had been quite a few hours ago.

  Achic in the passenger seat, Marcelo at the wheel, Clarence in back, all dressed in dungarees, work boots, baseball and cowboy hats—looking like a bunch of campesinos who’d gotten off work, were cruising around. The truck was loaded down with firepower, machine gun and shotgun in tool boxes with blankets piled on top. Small arms in their jackets, waistbands, under seats.

  Achic double-checked the coordinates—4°35′53″N 74°4′33″W—making sure he hadn’t fat-fingered the numbers transcribing them from the photo file someone named IceLady69 had sent to someone named PerroRabioso on some weird site called Frenesi. John Rae had texted Achic the logon and site info prior to landing in Bogotá, saying his partner called it belt and suspenders. And right after the plane came in, John Rae had sent Achic the 999.

  “I can’t wait to m-meet this Alice M-mendes,” Marcelo said.

  “I hear you, bro,” Clarence said. “Any lady looks like the female in that photo, takes a friggin’ selfie with some terruco standing right behind her holding a damn gun to her head, and calls herself IceLady69 to boot . . . well, let’s just say I’m gonna have to get on bended knee, forgo my errant ways, and beg her to marry me.” Clarence, the big gringo from California, played a video game on his smart phone in the back. Tinny gunshots popped out of the speaker. Clarence was an ex-Ranger buddy of John Rae’s, a freelancer. His blond hair was cut and dyed dark to blend in south of the border, and he’d removed his earrings and shaved off his hipster goatee. Marcelo was Achic’s contribution to the team, ex-Ecuadorian Coast Guard—like Achic himself—with sharp eyes that twitched every now and then. But he was battle-hardened and just what you wanted when dealing with someone like Cain. Both men were hired guns on the covert-covert team John Rae had put together with Achic. To take down Comrade Cain. A side mission of John Rae’s that, as far as Achic knew, no one else knew about. Not even IceLady69.

  Problem was, it looked like someone else had found out. That wasn’t good for the Ice Lady, Magdalena de la Cruz, whom he’d almost died working with a week ago, on the failed Quito gig with Beltran. She was up there with those terrucos. Alone.

  Achic a
nd his crew were to follow John Rae and her to where they went to exchange Beltran for two million U.S. And then they were going to grab Cain, shoot the vato in the leg if they had to, tape him up good, throw him in the back of the Nissan, take him across the border into Ecuador to stand trial.

  Shoot anybody got in the way. Cosecha Severa members in particular. Preferably.

  But now it seemed as if someone had found out about John Rae’s little Easter-egg operation, his covert op within a covert op. Had him pulled aside at El Dorado airport. The surface plan to pay Cain and his Grim Harvesters for Beltran the pendejo, who’d tried to burn them all just last week in Quito, was unraveling. Achic was still hurting from the two bullets he took in that carnage, one in the leg, one in the shoulder. Numbed up with Kodon now, over the counter hydrocodone easily acquired in this part of the world, he was foggy and irritable waiting for this op to get rolling.

  Did he mention irritable?

  At almost losing his life.

  Dirtbags like Beltran, selling out his country.

  Angrier still at scum like Comrade Cain, thinking he could waltz into Ecuador, do whatever he and his comunista shitbag pals wanted to. To Achic’s country.

  All in the name of saving the Amazon. Please.

  Sure, no one liked the big gringo oil companies tearing things up, but filth like Cain would send the country to hell faster than you could say Chairman Mao.

  “What we goin’ to d-do, jefe?” Marcelo said. “Sit here all friggin’ night? Wait for your American b-buddy?”

  “If John Rae doesn’t show,” Achic said. “We’re supposed to bail. That’s the rules.”

  “Say w-what?” Marcelo said. “Leave M-miss Eyepopper—who took a hell of a risk for us—up there with the terrucos? With a damn gun to her head?”

  “She don’t know John Rae was planning to catch Cain.”

  “Well, t-that almost m-makes it worse.”

  “He’s right, bro,” Clarence said. “Plus, you been itching to nail Cain since your coast guard days, when he was running into Ecuador like he owned the place.”