They cleared customs easily, no visa required. The airport, a glass-and-white-tile clone of every other airport in the world, was bustling with people. Nita flinched when people came too close, sticking as tightly to Kovit as she could. She was surprised to see Fabricio cringe every time people looked their way, shrinking in on himself, trying to make himself small and unnoticeable. The black circles under his eyes from his broken nose were stark in the harsh light, and his eyes flicked back and forth, trying to look at all the faces of the people around him at once, as though he might spot someone he knew.
He didn’t look like he thought that person would rescue him.
She wondered if it was his father he was so afraid of. If this was like her and her mother. Nita tried to imagine robbing her mother, and her whole body chilled at the very thought. She imagined how her mother would smile when she caught Nita, so wide, too wide, and she would whisper, “Someone’s been a bad girl.”
Nita didn’t want to think about what would come after.
She jerked her mind away from that path and looked back to Fabricio. He’d mussed his hair across his face so it covered as much as possible, but his bangs were too short to hide much more than his eyebrows and the top of his eyes.
For the first time in a long time, she pitied him. She knew what it was like to be that afraid of family, she knew how parents could warp you as a child. But it still didn’t excuse what he’d done to Nita.
Nita stepped closer to Fabricio. “Relax.”
He turned to her with large red eyes. “Excuse me?”
“You’re with Kovit and me.” Nita gave him a cold smile. “If anyone you know tries to take you from us, we’ll make sure it’s the last thing they try to do.”
Fabricio blinked, and then a small, sly smile came over his face. “Are you trying to comfort me, Nita?”
She stiffened. “Of course not. Just stating fact.”
His smile fell from his mouth, but his eyes were steady and solemn. “Thank you.”
She jerked away. “I wasn’t comforting you.”
People like him didn’t deserve comfort.
Her words clearly had relaxed him a bit, because he was less jumpy as they boarded the bus into the city. The drive was long, and the houses and soccer fields and trees all blurred together in her jet-lagged mind. Kovit napped, head resting against the window.
Nita stared out the window, mind whirling, thinking of how she was going to break into Tácunan Law and steal the information. She’d need to scope out the building—she’d have to do something about the security cameras, certainly. She didn’t want any record of their escapades existing. And there would likely be guards, so she’d need to think of a way to handle them. She’d need a hard drive too. With that much information, she might need several, all of the best quality she could find.
Beside her, Kovit gasped, and Nita blinked herself out of her thoughts and looked out the window. A massive stone fountain loomed beside them, rearing horses elaborately carved to be leaping out of the water, their legs turning into sea foam.
“It’s amazing,” Kovit whispered, face pressed against the glass.
Fabricio smiled, his eyes soft and dreamy. “Isn’t it? There’s nowhere quite like Buenos Aires.”
Nita wasn’t sure what she’d thought Buenos Aires would look like. Maybe something like Lima, smaller office buildings in the business core, wide streets, lots of Spanish colonial architecture that had evolved over the years into something else, something a little unique and different. Colectivos running up and down the roads calling out destinations. A long beautiful path along the cliffs overlooking the ocean, floripondio trees and overpriced shopping malls lining the water.
Buenos Aires looked nothing like Lima.
On one side of the bus was the water of the Río de la Plata glinting in the sunlight. Boats crowded the small docking area, and massive skyscrapers of steel and glass, an ode to the modern world, speared into the sky, seventy or eighty stories high. On the other side of the bus, monolithic Greek columns held up a building that looked like the Parthenon, marble statues reared up in the roundabouts, carved horses leaping up and leading their stone riders to victory.
One side of the bus was the past, beautiful European architecture lining the road and springing up in the distance, breathtaking in its size and majesty. On the other side, towering steel monuments to capitalism.
“It’s stunning.” Kovit’s breath fogged up the glass and he wiped it away, eyes wide. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” He turned to Nita, a bright, happy grin on his face. “I’ve seen pictures and movies set in Europe, but never actually, you know, been anywhere like this.”
Fabricio looked over at him curiously. “Where did you live before . . .”
“Before I joined Nita?” Kovit’s eyes were glued to the passing city outside. “Bangkok until I was ten. And then I was part of the Family, and they had a compound just outside Boston. But I didn’t really get to go outside, they didn’t like that. Occasionally they’d drive me into the city for work, though. It was nice.” He made a face. “And then they sent me to the jungle. But I was only there for a month before I met Nita and we escaped.”
A look flitted across Fabricio’s face Nita couldn’t quite understand. It wasn’t quite pity, it wasn’t quite sympathy. It was just a flicker, a moment of some sort of sadness, and then it was gone.
“You’ve only been free a week?” Fabricio asked.
Kovit nodded, silent.
“Is it everything you wanted?” Fabricio’s question was soft.
Kovit hesitated. “I . . . I don’t know. I never realized how hard it would be when I had to make my own choices. I have the opportunity to be whoever I want to be, but all I can seem to do is the same things I always did.” He gave a short, sharp laugh. “But I got to see my sister, which I never thought I would again. And I’m getting to see Buenos Aires. So, yeah. It’s not perfect, but I’m glad I got out.”
Fabricio nodded slowly. “They say that people are creatures of routine, and even if you put them in different settings, they always end up repeating the same habits.”
“I hope not.” Kovit’s voice was soft. “I don’t want to go back to the life I had.”
“Me neither,” Fabricio whispered. He stared out at the city with sad eyes, his face part fear, part longing.
They were all silent for a time, while Nita tried and failed to figure out what was going on in Fabricio’s head.
Kovit glanced over at Fabricio, his voice containing a little bit of wonder. “Why does the city look so . . .”
“European?” Fabricio didn’t turn, eyes still fixed out the window. “Lots of waves of immigrants from Europe who wanted to re-create the Old World. There was a time when Argentina was very rich, we had a lot of resources that were in demand. We spent a lot of that wealth trying to build a city to rival the famous ones in Europe. To put Buenos Aires on the map.” He smiled slightly. “People call it ‘the Paris of Latin America.’”
Nita considered, looking out as they passed ever more strange and innovative buildings—down some streets, she could see tall brickwork buildings with metal gratings that looked like they belonged in 1930s New York, elaborate fountains that reminded her of pictures of Italy—all of them stunning, none of them matching.
“It doesn’t really look like Paris. It’s too eclectic,” she commented.
Nita had visited Paris a couple of times with her mother when they were living in Germany a few years ago, just before they moved to Vietnam. Her memories of the city were fuzzy, she spent a lot of time dissecting in a small apartment in the south of the city, but she’d got out for a day and wandered around all the famous tourist areas with her mother, trying to burn the images into her memory.
It was one of her few good memories of traveling with her mother.
“They are eclectic, aren’t they?” Fabricio’s expression was fond, and his eyes seemed more vibrant, happier, than she’d seen them before. “It’s because buildi
ngs were built in whatever style was most popular at the time. Or most beautiful. There are buildings here built a few years apart, and one looks like a concrete block, and the other a German palace.”
Fabricio’s voice was wistful, and not for the first time, Nita realized that he loved this city, this strange, eclectic place he’d grown up. He was just very afraid of it. Or of someone in it.
The bus let them off at the side of a major street, across from a massive raised park. Green trees blocked the sun, and a clocktower arched up to the north of them, standing in front of another mass of modern glass and steel buildings. To their other side, the water of the port glinted in the light, reflecting the skyscrapers just beyond.
It was warm outside, a pleasant temperature that was just shy of hot. It was strange to go from a chilly spring in Toronto to a warm fall in Buenos Aires. The sky here was clear and brilliantly blue. Nita felt like her body had whiplash from all the different countries and temperatures she’d been through in the past week.
“Where are we going?” Fabricio asked.
Nita took out her phone and checked her Airbnb reservation. “Here. It’s just south of Plaza de Mayo on the map.”
“Monserrat? San Telmo?” Fabricio looked over her shoulder and pointed south. “Ah. I see. That way.”
Nita wasn’t thrilled about letting him lead, but he knew where he was going, and she followed their progress on an offline map to ensure they were heading the right direction.
As she walked, she turned her attention from the buildings to the people. They were tall. Much taller than she’d expected, taller than anywhere else she’d been in Latin America. Fabricio and his gangly height fit right in.
The people were also, for the most part, whiter than she was used to seeing. Toronto had been a diverse city, lots of people from all over—at least, the central parts she’d been in. Lima had been primarily full of people whose skin was varying shades of brown, interspersed with dollops of white, black, and Asian people.
Buenos Aires was much whiter than both of those cities. Many people were white or had the slightly browned skin that people called “olive” or “tan” in the Mediterranean, and “ethnic” if they were from outside of Europe. There were certainly plenty of people who weren’t white on the streets, but it was less than Nita would have expected, given their location.
Fabricio blended in easily with the other people in Buenos Aires, as did Nita, her mixed heritage making her fit in for once. Kovit stood out a lot.
Kovit noticed it too. “Great. I can be one of three Asians in the city.”
“I’m sure there’s more than three,” Nita said, though she didn’t see anyone else in their immediate area.
Fabricio agreed. “There’s a whole Chinatown.”
Kovit looked around at the people walking on the street. “Yeah, not in this area.” He shifted uncomfortably. “I feel . . . conspicuous.”
No one seemed to be staring at Kovit, which was what usually happened to Nita when she went somewhere that wasn’t used to people who looked like her. Which probably didn’t make Kovit any more comfortable about standing out, but at least no one was being openly rude.
They continued walking, crossing a massive square. On one end, a large pink building surrounded by gates, and on the other, a wide road encircling a monument. In front of the building, dozens of protesters with large banners had camped out, yelling inaudible things into megaphones and banging something metal around, even as a song wafted from speakers. More came down the road, like this spot was the end of a march of some kind.
She looked at the banners, but she couldn’t quite read them through the mass of people, and the wind was blowing them at the wrong angle. She turned to Fabricio. “Are there a lot of protests here?”
He nodded. “Many people remember what it was like to not have a voice, so they use it whenever they can. We’re very politically active. We protest, we vote, we talk politics a lot.”
Someone walked by selling ice cream and water, and then they were across the plaza and into one of the smaller streets. From this angle, she had a clear view of one of the protest signs, but it was all catch phrases and talking points she didn’t have the cultural reference points to understand.
Nita found herself asking, “What are they protesting?”
Fabricio jerked away and continued walking. “What am I, your prisoner or your tour guide?”
Nita tilted her head. “Can’t you be both?”
He glared at her.
Kovit sighed. “It’s not important. Let’s just get to the apartment.”
They continued walking, and after a few moments Fabricio said, “They’re protesting the rules around claiming veteran’s benefits for soldiers of la Guerra de las Malvinas.”
Nita knew of the war. In the 1980s, Argentina invaded the British-occupied islands after negotiations to return them to Argentina broke down. Argentina was thoroughly routed.
“Guerra de las Malvinas?” Kovit repeated, mangling the Spanish.
“The Falklands War,” Nita translated.
Fabricio’s eyelid twitched, and his jaw clenched when he heard the F-word, and Nita immediately wished she hadn’t said anything. Her father once told her that the surest way to get in a fight with an Argentine was to claim the Islas Malvinas weren’t theirs. Nita had a rule about the Falklands—keep her mouth shut. She didn’t want to get in a fight over something she only had the barest understanding of, especially when most of what she knew was from her Chilean father who had little love for Argentina.
She needed to change the subject, and quickly.
“Nice weather today, right?”
Wow. She was really great at this.
Fabricio gave her a mildly exasperated but also a little amused look like he knew exactly what she was trying do. Kovit looked at her like she was speaking gibberish, since he had no idea what a minefield topic this was.
“You should try alfajores while you’re here,” Fabricio said, pointing at a display of white cookies in a bakery window. “They’re delicious.”
Nita’s shoulders loosened, relieved he was playing along.
“I will,” she promised. “I hear the gelato here is good too?”
They continued prattling on about innocuous dessert items as they strolled along the cobblestoned roads. The narrow streets were one way, closed off and small, a perfect little bubble that made her feel like she’d gone back in time. Small café tables cluttered the sidewalks, full of people reading books and drinking coffee. Nita saw a big sign for something called a submarino, which, if the sign was to be believed, involved putting a whole chocolate bar into hot milk and letting it dissolve to make hot chocolate. She made a mental note to try it while she was here.
Kovit was so busy staring at a building nearby with old-fashioned balconies that he nearly stepped in dog poop. Nita and Fabricio both kept one eye on the ground and neatly avoided it. Even this small similarity between them annoyed Nita.
It didn’t take long to find their Airbnb. Kovit had booked it with Fabricio’s money, money he’d gotten selling Nita on the black market. It was only fitting Nita used that money to advance her own goals now.
The Airbnb apartment was small but serviceable. It had a double bed in one room and a pullout sofa beside the kitchen. The walls were white with small pink flowers, and the floors were well-worn hardwood. The windows looked down on the street, with metal shutters that could be lowered over them. The room was light and airy, and the flat-screen TV on the wall was so shiny it could be used as a mirror.
Fabricio looked nervously between the couch bed and the main bedroom. “There’s two beds.”
“And?” Nita threw her bag in a corner and pulled out her phone to connect to the Wi-Fi.
“And there’s three of us.”
“So we’ll share.”
Fabricio tried to play it cool, but Nita could see how tense and tight his body was. “Am I sharing with Kovit?”
Kovit raised an eyebrow. “You don’t l
ike me?”
Fabricio held his bandaged hand tight to his side. “No offense, Kovit, but you’re not my type.”
Kovit blinked at him, clearly not expecting the conversation to go there, and then burst into laughter. He ran his hand through his hair, and his eyes lowered to Fabricio’s injured hand. His smile fell a little.
Nita interrupted, not liking the pensive, slightly unhappy look on Kovit’s face. “It’s fine. I’ll share with Kovit.”
Fabricio looked between them, slight smile forming on his face. “I didn’t realize you two were . . .”
“Were what?” Nita’s voice was soft and dangerous.
He gave her an innocent look. “So close.”
Kovit laughed softly. “Good save.”
Nita rolled her eyes.
“Enough play time.” Nita turned to Fabricio. “It’s time to make yourself useful. We’re going to break into Tácunan Law. What do we need?”
Fabricio sighed. “You need someone with security clearance and door codes.”
“Which you have.”
“Yes.” Fabricio plopped himself on the sofa.
“Let’s talk security cameras.” Nita crossed her arms. “What do you know?”
“They have them? I don’t know much more.”
“Guards?”
“There’s always some.” He shrugged. “If we go in the side entrance, you shouldn’t encounter any, but they’ll come if they hear noise.”
Nita nodded to herself, already making a mental list of things she’d need to do. “How far can your codes get us?”
“I can get you into the building, I can get you right to the computers that can access all the information you need. But that’s as far as I can go. I don’t have the passwords to get into the mainframe.”
Nita crossed her arms and stared at him. “Really?”
“Really.” He ran his uninjured hand through his hair. “Look, if I could get into my father’s information, don’t you think I would have done so before now? I would have left Buenos Aires years ago. I’d have sold some random information, taken the money, and run.”
“Why?” Nita met his eyes. “Why would you have run?”
When Villains Rise Page 10
