Nunez whispered to El Niño, "Frankly, patron, it would be better if she died."
El Niño sat in a chair beside her bed and took her hand. She squeezed it. He said into her ear, "I am going to take care of you." She made a croaking noise. He stood and told Nunez that he would make an arrangement to fly her in his own plane to Texas, where there was a famous burn unit.
"Bravo, El Niño!" Flores clapped.
Outside in the hallway, El Niño whispered to Yayo, "Find the husband and return the favor." He was grateful to reach the outside again and hear the crowd.
Better still, to be back inside the cabin of the Falcon, climbing above the Andes. In truth, he hated Lima. It was a squalid remnant of a squalid conquest. The real Peru had always been on the other side of the mountains.
He drank a scotch and felt the tension go out of his neck. He was exhausted. An early dinner, maybe once with Soledad, beautiful, brown Soledad. Soledad was the real Peru. He should have kept her original name, but "Cicurrakka" was, well… Soledad was a good name, signifying her isolation, with him, between the two cultures.
A faint humming from beneath his feet, a shifting of hydraulic fluids… sometimes it was triggered by a noise, sometimes by a color, sometimes there was no trigger, just the memory of humming along in that idiotic vehicle, the golf cart, across oppressed lawns, her father talking about some snapping turtle that inhabited the pond between the seventh and eighth holes.
"Fearsome old thing. They tell me he might be forty or even fifty years old. They think he got the groundskeeper's dog a few years ago, can you imagine? Do you have them in Peru, Antonio? Snapping turtles? I imagine you've pretty much got everything down there."
He managed to shake it off. When he opened his eyes he saw not the manicured, artificial green of the golf course but the lush eastern slope of the Cordillera Oriental descending into the Huallaga Valley, cradle of the still-New World.
Virgilio was waiting with a pained expression. Virgilio worried all the time, it was another of his virtues.
He listened without comment to what Virgilio had to report. When they got to the house, he lit a cigarette and made Virgilio go through it again, word for word.
"When Sanchez didn't report in, I called the field in Isola Verde. No answer. I mean, the phone didn't even ring. Nothing. Finally Miguel calls me, scared out of his brain, like, like, like-"
"Okay, Virgilio. Go on."
"He said the pilot had called in saying there was a problem with the landing gear, and, and, and Sanchez was all pissed off because of the front off Ecuador and-"
"Yes yes."
"So the pilot called in a half hour out, with the proper ID code. Sanchez gets into his plane and gets it warmed up because he wants to leave right away as soon as they've got the money loaded-"
"Yes."
"And the Aztec appears and lands and taxis up next to Sanchez's Aerocommander and suddenly everything's in the shit, there's shooting and, and Nestor and Freddy are dead, and Julio's dead. Miguel said he got off some shots, then Sanchez's plane takes off and things start to blow up."
"What starts to blow up?"
"Everything! Everything! The hangar, the, the work sheds. Sanchez's plane flies over and everything starts to blow up. The next thing Miguel knows is he's lying in a field twenty meters away with his pants on fire and no hair. He's-"
"What about the money?"
"Gone, Niño. It's all burned. They must have dropped into the hangar or something with the bomb, or-I don't know, but Miguel says the whole place is full of burned hundred-dollar bills."
"Where's Miguel right now?"
"Shitting himself in the Balboa safe house. With no hair. I think he's drunk, Niño. He wasn't making any sense when I had my last conversation."
"All right, listen to me carefully. First, get the men assembled. Call Vidal in Tingo and tell him we need more men, twenty at least. Second, tell Beni to get his missiles ready. Three, get Miguel on the phone, I don't care how he is, it's important that I speak to him right away. Four, call Garza in Bogotá, tell him to get his team to Cabrera's place-never mind, I'll speak to Garza myself. Five, seal the place, nothing in, nothing out. Especially nothing out, understand? Do you understand, Virgilio?"
"Si, Niño." Virgilio ran to the door and stopped.
She was standing in the doorway, wearing a T-shirt that came down to above her waist. She had on nothing else. She smiled at him.
"Go upstairs." He pointed. "Now!" She gave him a hurt look and ran noiselessly up the stairs.
A few moments later the sirens went off, drowning out the sound of the jungle.
17
The square of projector light whitewashed the wall. McNamara sat by the carousel with his bandaged upper thigh extended, trying to get the mechanism to work.
Felix was on the couch, quiet. Ever since they started planting them here on the island, Felix had been acting morose. Charley could not figure it out. Tried to cheer him up and all he got back was grunts. Look at him, like he's just been force-fed a dead toad. His ribs are still hurting him. Charley's leg throbbed some. It was good the bullet had gone straight through. Probably should have hired a doctor at the outset. Mac and Bundy had some training, but it was starting to get wet-
"I'm going to have to do this manually," said Mac. "The advance mechanism's all screwed up."
The square of harsh light turned into a face, youthful with fine features, mouth open in laughter.
"Antonio Fabiano Iglesias y Caceres," said Rostow, using a pool cue for a pointer. "Father a wealthy Lima manufacturer and exporter. Deceased. Education: Markam, elementary school in Lima for rich kids run by German nuns; Culver Military Academy, South Bend, Indiana; Williams College, Massachusetts, BA 1970. University of Miami Medical School, dropped out after one year. Worked for father's company 1972; left 1972. Ran for Senate 1973 on platform of nationalizing various industries, canceling foreign debt and banning bullfighting. Defeated. Left Peru, resided Bogotá, Miami, Honduras, Paris, Zurich. Returned Peru 1979 following death of his father. Turned family residence into mental asylum." Rostow read from his notes: "Caused a stir among neighbors. Residence was in Miraflores district, where the rich people live. City government intervened on zoning grounds. Ran for Senate again." Rostow said, "This is strange-he announced his candidacy in a cemetery."
"Cemetery?" said Charley.
"Yeah," said Rostow, "he gave this speech saying since all the dead people in the cemetery had voted for his opponent the last time, he was going to get their votes this time around."
"Huh," said Charley.
"Lost election, left Lima. Said to be involved with Sendero Luminoso-Shining Path-guerrilla movement in Ayacucho. Moved to various Amazon district towns, Tingo Maria, Uchiza, Tocache Nuevo, eventually his own compound, Yenan-that's the next slide. Changed name to El Niño."
"The Kid," said Bundy.
"Christ Child," said Felix.
"Correct," said Rostow. "There was this weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean in 1982 where these warm currents caused all sorts of problems, floods and droughts. Caused eight billion dollars' worth of damage around the world, and fifteen hundred deaths."
"Don't seem right to name something like that after Baby Jesus," said Charley.
"South American fishermen named it," said Rostow. "It happened right around Christmastime. Next slide."
The square on the wall turned into a large-scale topographical map of northern Peru. "The upper Huallaga Valley," Rostow said, pointing with his cue toward a region northeast of Lima. "Here's Tingo Maria down here, and up here"-he placed the tip a few inches north of the town-"is his place. He calls it Yenan."
"Yenan? Is that a town?"
"Sanchez says it's named after a place in China. I don't really know what the story is with the name."
"Let's find that out." Charley made a note.
"Right. Okay, here's the deal. You've got your Andes Mountains running north and south like a twenty-thousand-foot wall between Lima and
the Huallaga. And to the east of Yenan, you got three thousand miles of Amazon jungle. Between a rock and hard place."
"Now, the Huallaga's where they grow the best leaf in the world. The soil and the altitude are just right for it. Leaves there have an alkaloid content of.79; the stuff down here in the Valle de la Convencion is only about.33."
"The government in Lima didn't mess much with the Huallaga until Sendero moved into the valley in '83. I was there from '81 to '84, until I… When Sendero moved in to provide protection for the narcos, Lima got nervous. Sendero is bad fucking news. I mean, they make Iranians seem reasonable. Their hero, historically, is this Indian Tupac Amaru, who the Spaniards tied to horses two hundred years ago and tore apart. They buried the limbs in like four different provinces-the Spaniards were always doing this sort of thing; you can see why the whole place is so fucked up-and suddenly there's these rumors that the limbs are regrowing. The leader is this guy Abimael Guzman, they call him Presidente Gonzalo, I don't know why, and no one's seen him for like ten years. They're Maoist, basically, but they think the Chinese Commies are soft and forget the Soviets. When I was in Lima the lights would go out about every two hours because Sendero had blown up another pylon. They'll hang dead dogs from lampposts, kill people in ways you don't want to hear about. In Chimbote once they tied a stick of dynamite to a duck-a duck-and blew up a telephone exchange."
"Can't be all bad," said Mac.
"They started providing security for the dopers. It's a great arrangement. They charge a 'revolutionary tax' on every kilo. It works out great for everyone. This whole area here"-he circled the Huallaga-"is a zona rosa. The Red Zone. It belongs to them."
"Scandalous," said Charley, exhaling cigar smoke.
"Every now and then the government decides to do a little pecker flexing and they'll drop in some paratroopers for the photo opportunity, but the moment those boys hit the ground they run for the river-run-where the patrol boats are prepositioned for the extraction."
"Hm," said Charley.
"Now, what our boy did was, his innovation was to figure a way around Colombia. Traditionally the Peruvians only handle it up to a certain point. They take the leaves and soak them in these pits with kerosene and sulfuric acid, then skim off the residue. That's called pasta sucia-dirty paste. Then they wash that, right there in the river, and turn it into pasta lavada, washed paste, or pasta basica de cocaina, PBC. At that point they fly it into Colombia, where they refine it with ether and acetone, and some other precursor chemicals turn it into cocaine hydrochloride, the powder. This guy figured a way to do that himself and cut out the Colombians, which probably didn't make them happy. Sanchez said he owns his own chemical factories in Brazil."
"Vertical integration," said Charley. "Smart businessman."
"Extremely smart. If he's moving a metric ton into the country every week, then he's probably clearing two hundred million a year."
"Jesus," said Charley. "I don't make two hundred million a year."
"Next slide. Here's a sketch of Yenan, according to what Sanchez told us. Four-thousand-foot airstrip for his jets, barracks, drying sheds, soccer field, soaking pits, main house, aquarium-"
"Aquarium?"
"Maybe he likes fresh fish. Communications shed over here, and here," said Rostow, lowering his tone a good octave, "is the radar facility, which is where they keep the Stingers."
"Stingers," Charley grunted.
"He thinks they came from Peshawar, from the muj."
Charley shook his head. "I told Casey not to give those people Stingers. I told him it'd be nothing but trouble."
Rostow drew a circle around the compound with his pool cue. "The perimeter's booby-trapped seven ways from Sunday. Sanchez said that's how they get a lot of their fresh meat. Jaguar, tapir, they got these giant rats, apparently called capybaras. He said they're pretty good."
"I never ate jag," said Mac.
"It's like dog, but stringy," said Bundy.
"You never ate jaguar."
"I ate leopard once in Africa."
"When did you eat leopard?"
"In Angola."
"Bullshit."
"Boys," said Charley, "let's save the gastronomy for later, if you don't mind. Go on."
"That's about it. He's got himself a tight little asshole in there. He's got the Andes on one side, a jungle on the other, a security force from hell, Stingers, a mined perimeter. I don't want to sound downbeat, Mr. Becker, but this isn't going to be easy."
"Is that why you all signed on for this job?" Charley pulled himself up out of his chair painfully. "Because it was going to be easy? Mac? Bundy, is that why you boys signed on?"
"No, sir," said Bundy. "I signed on for the money."
Charley hobbled over to the projection wall. "Gimme a little more scale," he said. The sketch of Yenan disappeared, replaced by a large-scale map of Peru. Charley stared at it, cigar smoke curling upward into the projector light.
He said, "It's been right here the whole time, biting us on the ass."
II
Two months later
18
Charley stood on the bridge of the Esmeralda and surveyed with a squint the Amazon port city of Iquitos. A huddle of beggars surveyed him back.
He didn't feel right looking down as he did on them from his gleaming white high-tech perch. The yacht stood out so, here. Her pristine whiteness seemed to rebuke the filth about her. Lord, she seemed to be saying, when's the last time you took a bath?
At least, Charley comforted himself, he'd had the presence of mind to change her name from Conquistador. Be like steaming into Gdansk on a yacht named Blitzkrieg.
The beggars were trying to get his attention. They shouted, "Capitan! Capitan!" and polished the air hopefully with rags. Leishmaniasis had eaten away the nose of one man, leaving a hole, a sad and terrible sight. Charley waved back.
Conquistador had been Margaret's idea. She bought it without telling Charley after reading that Ibiz Fahoudi, the international arms dealer, was under financial pressures. She took Charley to Miami without telling him why and presented it to him as another of her faits accomplis. "Damnit, Margaret, it's a whorehouse."
"I'm going to make it lovely," she said. Yachts bored Charley; he felt trapped on them. He installed a cantilevered flight deck on the upper deck to allow him to fly his UAVs-unmanned aerial vehicles; model planes. Conquistador became a miniature aircraft carrier. Margaret would be below taking the sun on the fantail deck, Charley and Tasha would be on the flight deck reliving the battle of the Coral Sea, scale-model Avengers coming in too low on final and hitting the sides and blowing up, Margaret shouting up at them to stop, giving up, going on with her reading.
"Capitan!"
Charley reached into his pocket. He was an old-fashioned man, had never used a credit card-didn't believe in them-always kept a thick, comforting wad of cash. He peeled off a few bills and was going to crumple them and toss them down to the beggars, then that didn't seem right either.
A security guard looked out of his shed and saw them and came out waving his stick and shouting at them, "Fuera, fuera! Fuera!" just like Sister Angustia used to do when the chickens wandered in during Mass. Charley called down to the crewman standing watch at the gangplank to let the beggars aboard. The beggars came scrambling up, turning as they did to give the wharf guard various unmistakable hand signals. The man with no nose was grinning and made a hissing noise through his exposed sinuses.
Charley came down the stairs and there they were, standing improbably in the main salon. He approached them with his customary Chargin' Charley gait. The beggar nearest went into a half crouch, thinking he was going to hit them.
He shook their hands and asked their names.
"Okay," he said in his fluent Spanish, "I want to do some business with you. I want to buy some prayers."
The beggars nodded.
Charley said, "You're all Catholic, right?"
"Siii," they said together.
"No Jehovah's Wit
nesses or any of that?" One took out an old rosary looked like it might have belonged to one of the Apostles. Charley peeled bills off his wad, handing each a hundred dollars. "Okay, I want Hail Marys, a hundred of them."
"Si, patron." Another said, "What about some Our Fathers?"
"All right," he said, peeling off another round, "I'll take a hundred of them, too."
The beggar with no nose said, "Capitan, how about Acts of Contrition?"
"All right, fifty."
The oldest one, with an abscessed eye like a runny egg, stepped forward and said with gravity, "Patron, we cannot forget Our Lady of Lourdes." The other beggars murmured assent.
"How many you think she needs?"
"Pues," said the old man thoughtfully, "it's hard to say. Our Lady of Lourdes said, 'Pray to me.' She didn't say how much to pray, but…"
"Si," the others said, nodding.
"Prayer bandits," Charley uttered. He handed over the rest of his wad.
"Patron?"
Charley had already started back up the stairs.
"What's your name? So they'll know who the prayers are for."
"They're for Natasha."
They waved their money at the guard on their way out the gate.
Senator Gallardo arrived with his entourage on schedule. Charley was standing at the head of the gangway to receive him, Felix by his side. Felix whispered, "He's got a photographer with him."
Charley, grinning, whispered back, "You ever see a politician who didn't?… Felipe!"
"Charley!" burst out Senator Gallardo, giving him a manly abrazo. It was like old friends. Actually, they'd never met, but they'd spoken on the phone so many times over the previous months it felt like old friends.
The senator gestured at the enormity of it all. "I thought it was the Titanic."
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